The Social Construction
of Technology
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Central elements of
this presentation come from the thoughts and ideas developed by Wiebe Bijker in
"The Social Construction of Technological Systems" (1987) and "Of
Bicycles, Bakelites and Bulbs" (1992); as well as the work of Donald MacKenzie:
"The Social Shaping of Technology" with Judy Wajcman (1985) and "Inventing
Accuracy" (1993).
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Main Focus:
- Understand links between
social and technical processes
- Understand both as human
(social) constructions
- Technology shaped by-
- Human engineers
- Market forces
- Consumer needs and
demands
- All individuals and
groups who are also social products
- Attempt to link the activity
of individuals to wider social processes
- Power
- Internal Structure of
Technology
- New ways to theoretically
ground the relationship between Society and Technology in order to allow for
Action (case studies=> theoretical formulations=> political analyses
and change)
Constructionist
Studies:
- Meaning of a technic
does not lie in technology.
- SCOT/Actor-network/Technological
Systems
- Avoid linear analysis
of technological development
- Avoid asymmetry: include
focus on failed technology: How a particular technic becomes seen as successful.
- Focus on the internal
dynamics (details of technologies) and the social context in which these details
come to have particular meaning
- The common evolution
of Technology and Society
- Invention and Creativity
as Social Processes. Individuals matter, yet only within particular social
contexts- the inevitability of inventions (Ogburn)?
Theory Requirements
- Accounts for both change
and continuity- specifies conditions in which either occurs
- Symmetry: Success and/or
failure of a particular technic is explained as a result of socio-technological
developments- not as a cause of these developments. Success does not equal
an artifact that "works," what works is a product of the eye of
beholder.
- Bakelite was ignored
at first- only after WWI and the dumping of surplus phenols did the possibility
of low cost production become a reality. Bakelite "became" a
successful competitor to natural substances
- The criminalization
of hemp in 1937 "allowed" for the synthetic fibers and solvents
under development by DuPont to become commercially viable
- Actor/Structure Integration:
Understand specific individual actors within particular situations, yet options
and choices constrained by broad structural elements.
- Seamless
Web: No a priori
distinction between Society, Technology, Science, Politics, Economics, etc.
"A good engineer is a good technician, sociologist, economists, and politician."
Net result will be
the construction of an understanding of Socio-technical change which is Probabilistic:
neither simply rational and goal directed nor purely idiosyncratic and spontaneous.
Socio-technical change is contingent on a variety of factors, including systematic
structural constraints (which are contingent factors, too!).
- Science and Technology
as socially constructed sub-cultures
- Boundaries between them
are the product of social negotiations
- The meaning of an artifact,
the nature of Truth=> as a social construction. Focus on:
- Flexibility of interpretations
- Consensus building
and closure mechanisms: Stabilization
- This activity within
a socio-cultural milieu
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The Safety Bicycle
- The role of the "Penny-farthing"
in contrast to a variety of other models
- Many of the competing
models had success, yet the Penny Farthing is seen as the "direct descendant"
of the modern bicycle.
- Lawson's bicyclette (in
linear terms the direct successor) was not successful, yet gave rise to the
modern safety bicycle
- To understand the development:
focus on the problems, interests and groups which influenced the bicycles
development.
- Variety of groups- Interpretive
flexibility: Engineers, consumers, anti-cyclists
- Heterogeneity: Users-
male and female users
- Women's use of the
high wheelers was viewed as inappropriate- moral concerns/dress codes
- Safety and stability
was a central concern for women who had previously been restricted to
the use of tricycles
- Some parts of the
modern bicycle's development are due to the specific interests and perceived
market influence of women bicyclists.
- Power and Economic strength
of relevant groups and artifact's interpretation:
- Early users of high
wheelers- young men, economically well off, concerned with bicycling as
a sport rather than a means of transportation- focus on speed.
Another example of
Interpretive Flexibility: The air tire
- Solution to vibration
problems of the low wheeler, (other designs used springs in the frame) or..
- A means of increasing
speed, or..
- An ugly compromising
of safety (side slipping)
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Different solutions
to different problems are related to needs and concerns of specific groups.
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Stabilization:
- Invention of the safety
bicycle was not an isolated event, but the culmination of a 19 year process
- At the end, 1898: The
low wheeled, rear chain drive, diamond frame and air tire cycle emerged as
"the" bicycle
- After 1898 these details
became, "taken-for-granted.
Closure (problem
being solved versus relevant groups perceiving it as being solved?)
- Rhetorical closure: just
say the problem has been fixed. Advertising the improved safety features.
- Redefine the problem:
- Few liked the air
tire- difficult engineering and practicality, ugly
- Dunlop- thought it
the best solution to vibration
- Sport cyclists- not
concerned with vibration
- Increased speed afforded,
won over significant groups
- Closure reached,
not due to vibration issue but as a solution to the "need for speed."
- Closure is not a "natural"
process, but a social construction.
Read the Exchange
between Bijker, Pinch, and Clayton concerning the revelance of SCOT and the
case study of the development of the safety bicycle.
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Other Examples from
Bijker:
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Focus on the
Interrelatedness of Technology and Everday Life
- Ruth Schwartz Cowan:
"The Consumption
Junction"
- Not technological
determinism, but a recognition of interrelatedness.
- Review L. Winner
on the politics of technology,
and "Techne' and
Politera"
- Marx: People construct
(make) history, but they do so within the circumstances transmitted from
the past. "The legacy of technology."
- Impact of technology
on the environment (ecological critique as a significant voice in the
shaping of technology
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What Shapes
Technology
Focus on Gender
and Technological Development
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Domestic Issues
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Technological
Systems
- Technology shaping technology
with the structure of socially constructed technological systems
- McGinn
on invention and innovation
- Thomas
Hughes on Edison
- Edison's work is
perhaps best seen as minute and painstaking modification of existing devices
- His imagination=>
looking at what exists in new ways and combinations
- Design and development
of the light bulb- as a part of a system of electrical generation and
distribution. The system designed the bulb!
- As system expands
and new elements are placed within it- we encounter "reverse salients":
Products of uneven development, technological lags. Attention is directed
there- defined as "critical problems"
- Example: electrical
supply- transmission requires high voltage, power is lost through the
lines: development of alternating current, transformers, power stations,
etc.
- The light bulb? In
order to make electric lighting competitive with gas systems, Edison had
to find a way to get lots of light from lower current levels (and lower
current allowed for less copper in the wires). Reverse salient (goal oriented
system)- unprofitability. Scientific research on electrical resistance
(Ohm's and Joule's laws)- search for the proper filament.
- Edison: Good grasp
of the system.
Economic Factors
and Technological Change
- Understanding technological
change as within, rather than outside of, society.
- Power of "market
forces"
- Economic shaping of technology
is the social shaping of technology, and is particular to specific societies
and their social relations of production. Economic System<=>Social System<=>Technological
System
- Bhaduri's study of
agriculture in India. Limiting technological change limited productivity
and kept peasants tied up in a cycle of debt- reinforcing their dependency
on the landowners. Resistance to technological change cannot be explained
by "cultural backwardness," but by "rational calculation"
on the part of land owners (within a different "frame" than
industrial capitalism. (I.e. socio-economic system=> rate of innovation)
- Type of society:
Type of technology, yet many analyses suggest that technological development
is, in one way or another, a means to embody control (owners over workers,
producers over consumers)
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Economics, Social
Relations and the State
- Gender
issues and other social relations shape technological development.
- Other needs: State determined
outweigh rational economic calculations (Germany and synthetic petrol during
WWII).
- 17th and 18th Century
France and England: Technology as source of power, population and wealth-
yet in France- "work must be found for the largest number of hands."
Brocade loom vs English plain-cloth loom (Former required twice as many workers)
- Military operations:
The state's military interest in new technologies is often the critical element
that allows change in the face of overwhelming costs or other obstacles
- Nuclear power: Military
development, economic drawbacks overridden by "need for autonomous"
energy supply
- Jet airliners- technology
directly descended from military developments
- Electronics- especially
computers and the internet
Conclusions:
from Bijker
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Extensions
of The Constructionist Perspective:
Actor-Network Theory
- "An actor network
is simultaneously an actor whose activity is networking heterogeneous elements
and a network that is able to redefine and transform what it is made of."
- An actor-network includes
both human and non-human elements
- An actor-network is not
fixed or stable- it is capable of redefining its identity and relationships
in new ways.
- (From: Michel Callon,
"Society in the Making: The Study of Technology as a tool for Sociological
Analysis" in The Social Construction of Technological Systems)
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Technological
Systems
- "Technological systems
contain messy, complex, problem-solving components."
- "They are both socially
constructed and society shaping."
- They contain: artifacts,
organizations, and institutions
- They are shaped by their
components.
- They are goal oriented
and evolve over time.
- "Reverse Salients"
- (from: Thomas P. Hughes,
"The Evolution
of Technological Systems" in The Social Construction of Technological
Systems
McGinn: Interactivity-
Technically induced social change: IDUAR
Model
- Innovation and Diffusion
(as above- shaped by SCES)
- Pattern of Use: purposes,
how much, how widely shapes social reality
- Adaptation (may or may
not require changes, similar in ways to Hughes' idea of momentum)- example
of the automobile
- Resistance
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Technology,
Power and Social Control: Marx and Conflict Theory
URL: http://www.umsl.edu/~keelr/280/soconstr.html
Owner: Robert O. Keel: rok@umsl.edu
Last Updated:
Monday, February 1, 2016 14:13