Chapter summaries

PART 1 – The Ages of Iron introduces the founding moments of iron and steel-making, re-presenting them in ways that can inform the present and future.

Chapter 1 – Ecologies of Mind: A Multiplicity of Stories presents a trans-cultural prehistory of iron-making that aims to confound the idea of a linear history and show how the making of iron was implicated in the development of an ‘ecology of mind’. The spread of knowledge of methods of iron-making from the Middle East to Asia, Africa and Europe evidences a traffic in ideas and demonstrates the ‘world shaping’ force of ideas. The chapter examines the advanced iron-making industry of ancient China and the emergence of iron and steel-making in Greek and Roman culture, demonstrating a surprising sophistication in early iron-making.

Chapter 2 – Ecologies of Carbon historically reviews the dependence of iron and steel-making on carbon-based fuels (wood, charcoal, coal and coke), demonstrating that from its inception, iron-making generated environmental problems, and that there were ‘environmental crises’ from the late Middle Ages onwards. This history is then connected to present day concerns about greenhouse gas induced climate change by considering how the steel industry’s emissions could be reduced by, for example, newly reinvented charcoal-based methods or the use of materials like plastic waste as fuel.

Chapter 3 – Ecologies of Science and Magic examines how the making of metals and the quest to understand them grew out of a complex collusion between magic, alchemy and metallurgy. This inter-weaving of seemingly incommensurate areas of knowledge runs counter to the more familiar notion that science superseded magic and alchemy. Magic, alchemy and science continue to co-exist in the present as the nature of contemporary advanced materials show. A case study of a particular alchemist, George Starky, and his connections to Isaac Newton, is presented, as is the emergence of process and physical metallurgy.

PART 2 – The Ages of Industry examines iron and steel-making as crucial agents of the creation of industrial society.

Chapter 4 – The Proto-Modern besides looking at the emergent technology of steel-making in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and its relation to industrialisation, addresses the machine tool industry, specialised tool steel, workplace management and the rise of leadership in engineering from America. The drive to make ever more accurate, precision-performance machine tools and the development of the kinds of steel to make such tools is shown to be pivotal to the rise of industrial mass production and much more.

Chapter 5 – Impacts of the World Made Modern shows how steel established its presence as the dominant material of the modern epoch by considering some of its major world-forming and transforming applications  —  modern warfare; railway systems, shipbuilding and the construction industry. Also included is a case study of Austin, a ground-breaking American systems building company, which established a particular typeform of steel-framed industrial buildings that has had massive, but mostly unacknowledged impacts.

Chapter 6 – Aftermath of the Modern reviews the ‘state of the art’ of current steel-making technologies in the context of ‘the state of the world.’ The fate and environmental implications of integrated steel works, electric arc furnaces and iron substitute materials are considered.

PART 3 – Towards the Ages of Sustainment confronts the essence of the present and future challenge for the steel industry, which is: given the extent and nature of its environmental impacts, a very significant net reduction of the overall impact of the entire industry is the only way forward. This means that it is just not viable to improve the environmental performance of the industry while increasing its output. The pressing challenge for the steel industry is to be able to create economic value by advancing the ability to sustain.

Chapter 7 – Iron and Steel-Making Environments shows how particular materials exchanges such as the extraction, transport and processing of ore and fuel, create distinctive environments which then impact upon other ecologies and environments. It argues that the reductive empiricism of environmental science and the rigid legalism of regulation do not have a sufficiently relational picture of impacts and therefore are not capable of dealing with the difficult issue of structurally inscribed unsustainability. The contention is that seeking to understand the fundamental nature of the processes of iron and steel-making, and the kinds of environments that they create, is a prerequisite for posing appropriate solutions.

Chapter 8 – Regulating Industrial Environments gives an account of the ways in which the steel industry (and industrial environments more generally) have been sought to be regulated over the last one hundred years. It reveals the limitations and contradictions of government control of environmental matters, as well as something more troubling — which is the fundamental limits of current economic and political structures for the advancement of sustainment.

Chapter 9 – Futuring: Sustainment by Design looks to the future, but not as a vacant space waiting to be filled nor as a time when science and technology will have resolved the mounting planetary problems of unsustainability. The chapter opposes such ‘future visions’ by: re-examining the very nature of materials; considering the potential for transformation and redirection of the steel industry by design, design innovation and new standards; addressing the problems of public perception of industry change; and stressing the importance of bringing questions of the immaterial to any new thinking about materials and the economy.