Scientific Standards as Tools for Political Transformation: Prestressed Concrete, European Integration, and the Regulatory State
Scientific Standards as Tools for Political Transformation: Prestressed Concrete, European Integration, and the Regulatory State
Testing was a major tool for the Technical Institute for Construction and Cement in its active relationship with private industry, but one that threatened to turn it into the private industry's vestigial limb. Eduardo Torroja sought to reverse the situation by systematizing tests so that it shaped private production within the interests of the ITCC's industrialization project. This chapter explores this system – the Blue Point - as it was developed for prestressed concrete joists, as well as its rejection by private industrialists and the government. In the process of promoting international standards for concrete production, Eduardo Torroja and some collaborators became relevant figures in the technological integration of Europe. The chapter interprets the process of regulation as the transition not from an interventionist state to a liberalized one but as the transformation of intervention itself. The corporate state became a regulatory state.
Keywords: Private industry, Reinforced concrete, Prestressed concrete, Eduardo Torroja, Regulatory state, Standardization, European integration
MIT Press Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.
