-Les techniques au quotidien au XIXe siècle,Manuel Charpy (CNRS-IRHIS) et François Jarrige (Université de Bourgogne)
Des gabiers aux chauffeurs : mutations d’un espace de travail et d’un métier dans les navires marchands de haute mer, Jean-Louis Lenhof, Université de Caen
-Le « bousillage » ou la perruque dans l’industrie verrière au XIXe siècle (France), Stéphane Palaude, Université de Lille III
-Techniques quotidiennes et innovation
agronomique,Fabien Knittel, Université de Franche-Comté
-Les monte-charge de l’hôtel des Postes de Paris (1878-1888). Limites et ambiguïté d’une mécanisation de l’espace de travail, Guy Lambert, École nationale supérieure d’architecture de Paris-Belleville
-« Histoire d’une maison » – The adoption of construction machinery at building sites as social phenomena (Suisse), Christoph Rauhut, Institut für Denkmalpflege und Bauforschung, Zürich
-Une pratique domestique paradoxale : travaux manuels amateur et modernité, Claire Le Thomas, EHESS-LAHIC
-La mesure du temps à Paris au XIXe siècle, Marie-Agnès Dequidt, Université Paris-Est -Usages politiques et sociaux d’une machine à tirer le portrait : le physionotrace aux États-Unis (1793-1810),
Guillaume Mazeau, Paris I, Institut d’histoire de la Révolution française
-Une utilisation controversée des lampes à incandescence : les illuminated signs londoniens, Stéphanie Le Gallic, Paris I
-Entre musique mécanique et objet technique : quelques enjeux de la théorie musicale au XIXe siècle, Aurélie Barbuscia, Institut Universitaire Européen de Florence

Departing from whiggish grand narratives of innovation, the special issue of the Revue d’histoire du XIXe siècle will analyze the social uses and processes of co-construction of technology and society. Although historical literature has mostly produced views on the rise of new technologies, recent studies have offered new perspectives on the social uses of things and the role of technology in the everyday fashioning of social order. Inspired by the sociology of science, the SCOT programme (Social Construction of Technology), based on the study of individual items, greatly contributed to this new point of view, discussing how technologies were socially defined and constructed. This constructivist turn, which took place in the 1980s, strongly influenced French pragmatic sociology, with greater attention on actors and their agencies. In this context, technology became a new and richer instrument to understand the social and political order. New research in social science, questioning technological practices, has flourished (Gilbert Simondon, Bruno Latour…). However, it paradoxically remains underrepresented in 19th century studies, technology being appended to economic and industrial history. Yet, the nineteenth century underwent a fast-growing spread of technological equipment, as well as faith in technology and its liberal endowment, which thus became characteristic to advanced capital societies. In addition, 19th century everyday life was dramatically changed by technological items.
Internalist studies of structures and “technological systems” (Bertrand Gilles) have become one way to analyze technology experienced in everyday life, through the analysis of social actors, representations, practices and negotiations. Social studies used new methodologies, such as direct or participant observation, frame and interaction analysis, or had recourse to family or life histories. Historians developed new thinking on tools and methodology implied by technological study: it supposed the taking into consideration of common people’s creativity and the ongoing tricks they employed to make their way into the crowd of goods (Michel de Certeau). In this perspective, technological items and their systems dynamically acquired identities through their uses and forms. Contrasting with the dominant perspective of possession, dominant in material culture studies until recently, consumption studies have recently analyzed the successive mutations of artefacts, from their trade to their social uses, and, extending 18th century studies on uses of technology, have underlined their marketing, retailing and publicity. In terms of space, devices circulated between the public and domestic spheres, with that of labour. It also circulated at local or international scale, in rural areas, colonial or extra-European regions.
The special issue aims at presenting new ways of writing the history of technology, between technological theories and social practices. Methodological shifts and original documentation – private and trade archives – or new approaches to classic sources for historians of technology – adverts, textbooks or patents.