Sicilia Co-edits New Book

David Sicilia's New Book on Technology and the Circulation of Business Practices in East Asia

David Sicilia has published a new book, Strands of Modernization: The Circulation of Technology and Business Practices in East Asia, 1850-1920 (Japan and Global Society) with the University of Toronto Press, a leading academic publisher of books on East Asian history. The book is co-edited with David G. Wittner. In addition to co-editing the book, Sicilia is co-author of the Introduction and author of a chapter on the role of multinational corporations in technology transfer.

According to Amazon.com: "While most scholarship on nineteenth-century technology transfer beyond Europe and North America has focused on the West-to-East movement of artifacts, skills, and knowledge, Strands of Modernization considers the transfer of technology and business methods within East Asia in the period between approximately 1850 and 1920.

Highlighting currents moving in multiple directions, contributors expand upon conventional notions of what qualifies as a "technology" or a "business practice," looking more broadly at skills, systems of technology, tacit knowledge, and the ideologies and other belief systems with which they interact. The core ambition driving Strands of Modernization is to illuminate processes of adaption, versus adoption, that occur when technology and business practices cross sociocultural boundaries."