Eastern Professor Patrick Vitale Wins Ashby Prize
Willimantic, CT (11/29/2018) — Patrick Vitale, a geography professor at Eastern Connecticut State University, recently won the Ashby Prize for the most innovative paper of 2017 in the journal Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space. Vitale's article is titled "Making Science Suburban: The Suburbanization of Industrial Research and the Invention of 'Research Man.'"
The article traces the invention of the modern "tech worker" to an unlikely location: the suburbs of Pittsburgh. In the early 1900s, Pittsburgh's industrial firms began to move research laboratories away from plants in crowded urban areas and into suburbs.
Vitale explains that workers, scientists and engineers had once worked alongside each other in factories. However, starting in the early 1900s, they increasingly worked in different places, lived in different communities, and began to see themselves and their labor as different. These new "labs" created a geographic and social division between mental and manual work.
"The class, race and gender relations of the suburbs were essential and invisible components of science and engineering," Vitale writes. "In capitalist economies now and in the past, science and engineering are rooted in injustice, misery and inequality; the very problems they are supposed to solve."
Industrial firms even created a new title for scientists and engineers - "research men" - and argued that they needed to be isolated from the factory to do their work. "Many of the most prominent industrial scientists in the United States embraced their identity as 'research men' to cement their own place within industry and society," writes Vitale. "Scientists and engineers actively adopted a class position that industry was producing for them."
Vitale notes: "In the present, when local and state governments are offering billions of dollars to attract technology firms, it is important to realize that these companies are built on inequality and injustice."
Vitale's article is a part of a larger research project: a book manuscript titled "The Atomic Capital of the World," which explores the role of science and engineering in the remaking of Pittsburgh during the Cold War.
Vitale is an urban, economic and historical geographer whose research broadly examines the effects of suburbanization, science and technology, and war on North American cities. He has published his work in academic journals including "The Annals of the Association of American Geographers"; "Journal of Urban History"; and the "International Journal of Urban and Regional Research."
"Environment and Planning A" is an interdisciplinary journal of economic research. Articles focus on regional restructuring, globalization, inequality and uneven development. The Ashby Prize was established in 1990 and is awarded to the most innovative paper published in the calendar year.
Written by Raven Dillon
###
Eastern Connecticut State University is the state of Connecticut's public liberal arts university, serving more than 5,300 students annually at its Willimantic campus and satellite locations. In addition to attracting students from 163 of Connecticut's 169 towns, Eastern also draws students from 26 other states and 20 other countries. A residential campus offering 40 majors and 65 minors, Eastern offers students a strong liberal art foundation grounded in an array of applied learning opportunities. Ranked the 25th top public university in the North Region by U.S. News and World Report in its 2018 Best College ratings, Eastern has also been awarded 'Green Campus' status by the Princeton Review eight years in a row. For more information, visit www.easternct.edu.
Media Attachments
Patrick Vitale
Westinghouse Research Laboratories (depicted here in the 1940s) is a research firm that fled the urban areas of Greater Pittsburgh for the suburbs.
Eastern Connecticut State University
Michael Rouleau; (860) 465-0172; rouleaum@easternct.eduShare this Story
Recent News
- Media Advisory: Eastern's Day of Giving to serve hundreds on Thanksgiving Eve
- 'Eurydice' reimagines Orpheus myth, concludes Eastern's fall theatre season
- Eastern's dual enrollment grows 60 percent in one year
- Eastern to host Veterans Day ceremony with VA Commissioner Ronald Welch
- 'Diasporican' art exhibition celebrates Puerto Rican culture and identity
- Princeton Review names Eastern a 'Green College' 15 years running
- 'Diasporican': Eastern to host art exhibition with National Puerto Rican Diaspora Museum
- Eastern's Music Department announces fall concert schedule
- Eastern announces fall 2024 'University Hour' events
- Multi-media performance remembers an American tragedy during election season