ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Peripheries of Power: The Political Economy of Technological Transfer in Late Cold War Europe

Session Submission Type: Organized Session

English Abstract

This session investigates the political economy of technological and media transfers during the latter stages of the Cold War. Often narratives around the transfer of technology and their associated media focus on the role of western European and north American penetration of Soviet bloc / aligned or communist states. Research into the influence of the peripheries of continental Europe on information technologies is disregarded due to trade embargoes on high technology; the impermeable borders of non-democratic-capitalist countries (Soviet, and aligned nations, Türkiye); technological lag and subsequent difficulties in accessing archival materials, making the recorded histories of the influence of people, processes and ideas at the European periphery oblique.

Building on the work of the Cooperation on Science and Technology (COST) funded project Grassroots of Digital Europe, (GRADE), of which all three presenters and the chair are leading members, the papers within this session challenge the dominant chronicles of western European and north American sway over nascent computing industries. It achieves this by foregrounding studies of the ‘peripheries of power’, revealing the ontological and epistemological, political and policy and logistical and technical sway of these areas on cultural relations recursively formed within and across regional, national, international and transnational networks.

Therefore, the studies presented at HSS 2026 silhouette how people at the periphery of power contested dominant paradigms of the time. This includes Ireland’s early software industry and its influence on development and publishing in the UK and Europe; Eastern Germany’s position as a distributor of ideas, hardware and software under the watchful eye of the Stasi; Türkiye’s loose affiliation of vernacular engineers who operated in disceptation to dominant corporate directives; the role of ham operators in designing, developing and manufacturing Romania’s satellite infrastructure, charting the genesis of the country’s first INTELLSAT station.

In keeping with the aims of GRADE and wider Council of Europe / EU policy to promote equity and diversity in science and technology, the panel’s presenters have gender balance, are from COST Inclusive Target Countries and encompass Young Researcher Innovators, bringing a plurality of voices to the hidden histories the project aims to uncover.

Sub Unit

• Organized Session

Chair

• Alex Christopher Wade, Birmingham City University

Individual Presentations

• Please Refrain from Modifying Your Ataris”: Region Locking and Vernacular Engineering in Türkiye - Ivo Ozan Furman, Istanbul Bilgi University

• Joining the Signal map: The History and Implications of the Manufactured Infrastructure for Satellite TV Reception in Romania - Alexandra Tatar, Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna

• Epistemic Borders: How Computing Practices Shaped Plural Technological Worlds in Germany - Regina Seiwald, University of Birmingham

• US Gold and Emerald Software: Logistical, Technical and Cross-Cultural Media Transfers from the UK and Ireland’s Collaborative Game Industry (1988-1990). - Kieran Nolan, Dundalk Institute of Technology