Spaces of Inquiry

This book traces the historical development of key sites of knowledge creation in science and technology and the robust traditions of scholarship around their origins, exploring commonalities, divergences, and transnational features of knowledge-making cultures from the 18th century to the present.

The “space of inquiry” is a meeting of knowledge, labor, and public policy that explodes beyond the confines of lab, campus, and corporation. It is a distinct site connected, formally or informally, to pursuing, teaching, or sharing knowledge – practices that have taken many different shapes across time and around the globe. The space of inquiry ranges from microchips in one scientist’s computer to the factory that builds and sells those microchips around the world. In the Internet age, the spatial aspect of inquiry approaches immateriality, yet knowledge is still produced by people, in communities, in specific places. Through vivid case studies of place-making from East Asia to Europe to North America, this volume documents the historical processes of modernization via scientific and technological intensification in new spaces for knowledge production.

Scholars of science, technology, and institutional practices will find this book essential, and its open-access chapters are accessible for use in a variety of undergraduate and graduate classrooms.