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Cement is central in issues of environment and society the world over. But what is the stuff and how did we get here?
Cement is central in issues of environment and society the world over. But what is the stuff and how did we get here?
Cement is a powder that, when wetted, binds together the sand and gravel that are the bulk of a concrete structure.Â
My book project reveals how cement shaped American cultures through its application in concrete structures that were at least regionally if not nationally ubiquitous. The book follows the US adoption and standardization of modern cement. Those processes ultimately guaranteed that any material called cement could obstruct the movement of water, dirt, sound, people, and more. The project uses mapping and digital databases in combination with traditional history methods to trace development of concrete sidewalks, home basements, and prison cells in the US. Each type of structure serves as a case study of how cement's barrier properties factored into American civic, domestic, and carceral cultures.
1953 Federal Civil Defense Administration image of a mother and baby mannequin next to a concrete block wall. Cement lent feelings of safety and comfort to a national basement ideal that included nuclear preparedness.
The material environments that people set up around themselves affect society.
Paying attention to that in history has led to:
investigating historical mineral extraction as history of cultural dependencies, in addition to economic and industrial histories (Vrtis and Elsass, "Mining and the Environment," Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History)
sharing past lessons with today's engineers and material scientists to make technological transitions more ethical and effective (Intemann, Lavoie, Elsass, Scott, & Gerlach, "The Challenge of the Yuck Factor in Public Acceptance of Engineered Living Materials," Global Challenges)
critiquing the supposed divide between "nature" and "culture," in support of a more grounded and integrated worldview that humanity's major problems clearly demand us to adopt (Elsass, "Cement's Role in Modernizing Montana:, 1867-1960," Montana: The Magazine of Western History)
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