There are some criticisms [Langdon Winner] that can be leveled at the concept of 'relevant social groups.'
Who has the power/authority/expertise to determine what a relevant social group is?
Are there any groups who are affected by the technology (or by technological change) but who are disenfranchised, and thus cannot speak up?
Are any groups excluded from the equation?
Winner stresses the importance of 'looking at the other side of the coin': not just to look at which questions are asked but also which questions are overlooked; which debates are left off the agenda; which groups do not participate in the decision-making process. There is some validity to this argument. We get a fuller picture of society and its structures when we study not only the movers and shakers, but also those at the periphery who usually have no say.
As an aside (but still related), scholars have studied the classic technologies throughout history (nuclear weapons, steam power, automobile, etc.) One thing they all have in common is that they are (or were) successful technologies. No one has seen fit to look at technologies that have failed. Examining what went wrong with a failed technology can surely tell us volumes about the society from which it emanated.
Langdon Winner. "Upon opening the black box and finding it empty: social constructivism and the philosophy of technology."
Now that we've identified relevant social groups in the study of technologies, we can talk about the concept of technological frames.
"A technological frame structures the interactions between the actors of a relevant social group, and shapes their thinking and acting."
The framework comes into existence once interaction among group members begins around a particular technology. When there is no activity, the framework is not built but once constructed, the framework shapes activity.
Interactions occur among actors of a relevant social group, but these interactions are not necessarily typical or characteristic of any individual of the group or the group itself.
A technological frame may include some of the following:
problems
problem-solving strategies
design methods
tacit knowledge
Pinch, Bijker. "The social construction of facts and artefacts: or how the sociology of science and the sociology of technology might benefit each other."
The concept of "relevant social groups" is used to denote those groups in society that share the same set of meanings attached to any particular technology.
Such a group may be a group of individuals (organised or not), an institution, organisation or company. Some examples may be the army, an industrial company that manufactures or develops the artefact, or consumers/users of the artefact. However, to identify relevant social groups as only being producers and consumers of a technology is reductive; there are numerous other groups in addition to these two.
For Bijker, a social group is relevant when the meaning of the artefact is the same for all members of that group. Bijker uses his study of the history of the bicycle to give the example of cyclists, as users of this technology. However, within this group there are also sub-groups; in this instance, women cyclists, for whom the bicycle came to mean emancipation and a vehicle (excuse the pun) to take them into the twentieth century.
One artefact will have several relevant social groups and each group will have greatly differing interpretations of that same artefact. A nuclear reactor serves as an example. Note the varying interpretations of these social groups: Union bosses - a safe working environment compared to, say, a building site or dockside. Local residents - dangers of radioactivity and attendant cancers, but also employment opportunities. International relations experts - the presence of a nuclear reactor causes unrest in the international community (and nuclear proliferation) especially when in the hands of someone we're not too friendly with! Conclusion - "interpretative flexibility"
Trevor Pinch, Wiebe Bijker. "The Social Construction of Facts and Artefacts: Or How the Sociology of Science and the Sociology of Technology Might Benefit Each Other."
Bijker, Wiebe E. Of Bicycles, Bakelites, and Bulbs. Toward a Theory of Sociotechnical Change. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995.
This book is a key exposition of the Social Construction of Technology (SCOT) theory.
Even examples of individual talent for invention and ingenuity can be linked to “wider social interactions and cultural processes.” Bell, Edison, Morse etc. did not work in their own personal vacuums, cut off from society and its influences-processes.
We should look for a connection with individual actors (inventors, engineers, users) and social processes.
Power
Power plays a role in the mutual shaping of technology and society – we can understand the nature of this power by looking at the inflexible nature of some technologies.
Bijker’s “Guideposts”
Bijker uses guideposts as a starting point to examine the concept of science-technology-society (STS), or the “seamless web”. Using the metaphor of a ‘web’ is a reminder of the connectedness and interaction of these three elements, [how they together constitute a network].
Constructivist studies of technology –
Internalist vs contextualist (externalist) studies
Technological creativity
Power
Constructivist studies of technology
Never take it for granted that the meaning of an artifact/technology is to be found in the artifact itself.
Constructivist programme has three threads
the systems approach
the actor-network approach
social construction of technology (SCOT) approach
Constructivist programme avoids the problems of
assuming a linear development (which in itself presupposes an implicit teleology);
Internalist vs contextualist (externalist) studies
How can we understand a technology’s development?
oInternalists –by examining the technology’s internal working details.
oContextualists – by examining the social, economic, political, scientific contexts, as well as the tech’s technical features.
Technological creativity
How do inventions arise?
oIn order to fill a perceived need; or
oOut of the inventor’s ingenuity?
Inventors as system builders [individual actors + systemic constructs/contexts]
Individual creativity examined using history of technology and psychology
Power
What is the role of power in technological progress?
Which strategies do the various actors use to create a certain outcome?
Looking at the distribution of power will give us a summary of that outcome.
Requirements for a theory of sociotechnical change
There are two models of technical change:
change as rational, goal-oriented
change as a matter of trial-and-error
1.contingency: provides no framework for human action. Too much contingency à actors with no history of worth. There must be structural restrictions to limit the number of possibilities. Show how constancy and continuity exist in history. This theory should explain both technical change and stability of artifacts.
2.asymmetrical analysis – when an analysis is conducted in which the success and failure of artifacts are explained in different terms. The fact that an artifact “works” does not explain its success. Success and failure of an artifact must be explained symmetrically, with the same framework.
3.examination of the actor/structure network – contingency does exist but this is tempered by stability of artifacts and society
contingency of technical development + structural restrictions
i.e. strategies of actors are restricted by social structures
4.seamless web of society – an engineer is not just a technical wizard, but also a political-social-economic wizard as well.
Metaphor of the seamless web is applied to our empirical work but should also be applied to our theoretical framework. “I propose that we require our theoretical concepts to be as heterogeneous as the actors’ activities.”
Bijker’s book highlights:
Interaction between empirical research and theoretical modeling
i.e. relation between case study and conceptual framework
[1] An asymmetrical explanation might explain the commercial success of an artifact that we now consider to be working by referring to that “working,” while the failure of that same artifact in another context might be explained by point at social factors. The same factors/framework must be applied in both contexts. An artefact’s “working” or “not working” cannot be used to explain its success, or otherwise. “asymmetrical analysis” = An analysis in which different terms are used to explain the success and failure of artifacts.
e.g. Bijker, Pinch Social constructivists Technology does not determine human actions: human action shapes technology Critic of SCOT - Langdon Winner ("Upon opening the black box ...")
Social construct = concept/practice that is a creation or artefact of a particular group
