America Calling - by Claude S Fischer (Paperback)

About the Book

"A model for historians and sociologists and . . . a standard to which all future research on technology will refer."--Daniel Bell, Harvard University
"Will be essential reading in the social history of the telephone for a long time to come."--Carolyn Marvin, author of "When Old Technologies Were New"
"Everybody uses the telephone; only Claude Fischer has thought about it. The telephone has liberated us from neighborhood boundaries. It lets us play and work together over long distances. Long before the computer, its communication potentials helped change our society. Claude Fischer documents the planned decisions--and the unplanned events--that made the telephone such an important instrument for connecting America."--Barry Wellman, University of Toronto
"Fischer confronts the most significant, but also the most difficult, question we can ask about a new technology--what differences did it make in the lives of its users?. . . Fischer alerts us to the complexities involved in the incorporation of a new technology into everyday life. The richness and sophistication of his analysis should caution us not to jump to easy conclusions about the effects of technological change."--Roland Marchand, UC Davis

Book Synopsis

The telephone looms large in our lives, as ever present in modern societies as cars and television. Claude Fischer presents the first social history of this vital but little-studied technology--how we encountered, tested, and ultimately embraced it with enthusiasm. Using telephone ads, oral histories, telephone industry correspondence, and statistical data, Fischer's work is a colorful exploration of how, when, and why Americans started communicating in this radically new manner.

Studying three California communities, Fischer uncovers how the telephone became integrated into the private worlds and community activities of average Americans in the first decades of this century. Women were especially avid in their use, a phenomenon which the industry first vigorously discouraged and then later wholeheartedly promoted. Again and again Fischer finds that the telephone supported a wide-ranging network of social relations and played a crucial role in community life, especially for women, from organizing children's relationships and church activities to alleviating the loneliness and boredom of rural life.

Deftly written and meticulously researched, America Calling adds an important new chapter to the social history of our nation and illuminates a fundamental aspect of cultural modernism that is integral to contemporary life.

From the Back Cover

"A model for historians and sociologists and . . . a standard to which all future research on technology will refer."--Daniel Bell, Harvard University

"Will be essential reading in the social history of the telephone for a long time to come."--Carolyn Marvin, author of When Old Technologies Were New

"Everybody uses the telephone; only Claude Fischer has thought about it. The telephone has liberated us from neighborhood boundaries. It lets us play and work together over long distances. Long before the computer, its communication potentials helped change our society. Claude Fischer documents the planned decisions--and the unplanned events--that made the telephone such an important instrument for connecting America."--Barry Wellman, University of Toronto

"Fischer confronts the most significant, but also the most difficult, question we can ask about a new technology--what differences did it make in the lives of its users?. . . Fischer alerts us to the complexities involved in the incorporation of a new technology into everyday life. The richness and sophistication of his analysis should caution us not to jump to easy conclusions about the effects of technological change."--Roland Marchand, UC Davis

Review Quotes

". . . a significant contribution to the historical and sociological understanding of technology and modernity." -- "Journal of Interdisciplinary History"

". . . this innovative study advances our understanding of the social role of technology and is a significant contribution to the debate over the modernization process." -- "Journal of American History"

"[American Calling] is to be highly recommended for its pioneering approach to the social history of a technology and for its many revisionist conclusions about over-worked concepts like modernity and the decline of community." -- "Journal of Social History"

"[An] insightful and thorough study. . ."-- "Business History Review"

"A warning to those who see technology as having clear and far-reaching consequences in American life: Don't use the telephone as an obvious example. From a user-centered view of technological dispersion, the author argues convincingly that the telephone reinforced social and cultural patterns rather than changed them. . . . Well researched, with an excellent bibliography and fascinating endnotes, Fischer's study is likely to be a required purchase for comprehensive collections in sociology, business, and the history of technology. It is accessible, however, to a wider audience because of its readability."-- "Library Journal"

"Although it is impossible to reconstruct with complete accuracy how technologies were used and perceived decades ago, America Calling gives us a convincing picture of how a particular technology became part of everyday life." -- "Technology and Culture"

"Delightful. . . . A thought-provoking, often entertaining book that makes it impossible to take the telephone for granted."-- "Milwaukee Journal"

"Fischer's discussion of historiographic methods, insights into communication technology, and the use of positivistic and post-positivistic research can be an excellent model for technology education researchers. . . . America Calling: A Social History of the Telephone to 1940 is an excellent work of historical research that can offer important STS insights for technology education."-- "Journal of Industrial Teacher Education"

"Professor Fischer's inquisitiveness is refreshing. Many of the methods in this path-breaking book (carefully documented in the text and in seven statistical appendices) are applicable to other social histories of technology; much more could be said about the facility with which he handles his subject's complexities, or about the useful contrasts he draws between the telephone and other space-transcending technologies." -- "Journal of Economic History"

"The book is a treat. Fischer should be the industrywide standard; fortunately, it's a very high standard that he has set." -- "Contemporary Sociology"

About the Author

Claude S. Fischer is Professor of the Graduate School in Sociology, and the author of To Dwell among Friends: Personal Networks in Town and City (1982) and The Urban Experience (1984).