handbook of material culture -...

21TECHNOLOGY AS MATERIAL CULTURE

Ron Eglash

The term ‘technology’ can be defined in termsbroad enough to encompass many of thechapters in this book – architecture, clothing,art, even the body in Foucault’s sense of ‘tech-nologies of the self’. But even in its narrowestsense of machines, it remains a powerfulcultural actor. From looms to linear accelerators,

nanotech to the Titanic, the artifacts thattransform matter and energy hold a special placeas troubling objects of social inquiry. Part one ofthis chapter begins with a review of classics insocial analysis of technology, including Ellul,Krober, Kubler, Marx, Mumford, Washburn,White, and others. While these theorists vary in

Figure 21.1 The hands

26-Tilley-3290-Ch21.qxd 11/16/2005 5:50 PM Page 329

disciplines (anthropology, history, politicalscience, systems theory, etc.), encompass a widevariety of theoretical frameworks (evolution-ary, economic, diffusionist, etc.), and lead toopposing conclusions (techo-optimist, techno-pessimist, instrumentalist, etc.) they are similarin their tendency to take an ‘impact’ view oftechnology: technological change brings socialchange, and social influence is primarily a‘bias’ or ‘contamination’ of what would other-wise be governed by universal technicalconcerns. Part two of the chapter contraststhese traditional frameworks with the socialconstructionist (Bijker, Hughes, Pinch, etc.)and social power (Winner, Barnes, Mackenzieetc.) frameworks. Introduced in the 1980s,these frameworks highlight a ‘seamless web’ ofsocial and technological dynamics; here thereis no purely technical domain, even at the‘pure science’ end of the techno-science spec-trum. Rising at the same time, and in variousrelations to these new perspectives, are actornetwork theory (Latour, Wolgar), boundaryobject studies (Star, Henderson), evolutionary

economics (Arthur, Nelson), and a variety oftechnological analyses based on cultural politics(feminist, anti-racist, queer theory, etc.). The finalsection of the chapter examines the synthesisarising from new cross-cultural comparisons,appropriation studies, emerging technologies(information technology, biotechnology, nan-otechnology, etc.) and other sources whichhighlight the ways in which technology destabi-lizes the very social categories we seek to applyto its analysis, and show the need for a newinterdisciplinary hybridity in which technologyand society will be engaged in mutual analysis.

MODERNITY AND SOCIAL ANALYSISOF TECHNOLOGY

Many authors have noted that modernity itselfseems deeply embedded in an awareness of thesocial significance of technology. Nineteenth-century writers on both sides of the political spec-trum employed relations between technology

PROCESS AND TRANSFORMATION330

TIMEMILLION YEARS

Tertiary63

Cretaceous135

Jurassic180

Triassic230

Permian280

Pennsylvanian310

Mississippian345

Devonian405

Silurian425

Ordovician500

Cambrian570

ECHIN

ODERM

S

PR

OTO

CH

OR

DA

TES

OS

TR

AC

OD

ER

MS

PLAC

OD

ERM

S

AC

AN

THO

DIA

NS

PA

LEO

NIS

CID

SA

CTI

NO

PTE

RY

GII

CH

ON

DR

OS

TEIHO

LOS

TEI

TE

LEO

ST

EI

SARCOPTERYGIILA

BYR

INTH

OD

ON

TS

COTYLOSAURSSYNAPSIDS

PELYCOSAURSTHERAPSIDS

Tritu

berc

ulat

es

DIP

NO

IC

RO

SS

OP

TER

YG

II

ANAP

SID

SPA

RAP

SID

SDIA

PSIDS

RHIPIDISTIANS

Pla

cent

alm

amm

als

Uro

dele

s Anu

rans

Tur

tles

Din

osau

rs Cro

codi

les

Mon

otre

mes

Mul

titub

ercu

late

s

Bird

s

Mar

upia

is

Sna

kes

and

lizar

ds

Gar

i Bow

fin

Stu

rgeo

n

Lung

fishe

s Latim

eria

Cae

cilia

ns

Pol

ypte

rus

(Bic

hir)

ELA

SM

OB

RA

NC

HI

HO

LOC

EP

HA

LI

MY

XIN

I

PE

TR

OM

YZ

ON

TE

S

UR

OC

HO

RD

AT

A

CE

PH

ALO

CH

OR

DA

TA

HE

MIC

HO

RD

AT

A

Earliest vertebrate fossilslate Cambrian

bonyJaws

Paired appendagesLungs Tetrapod limbs

Amniotic egg

Mammalian stance

Homeothermy

Viviparity

Figure 21.2 Phylogenetic tree of the vertebrates. The width of the branches indicates the relativenumber of recognized genera for a given time level on the vertical axis. (Time in millions of yearsindicates the beginning of geological periods).


and society as evidence to support theirtheories. One obvious outcome of such writingis the anthropological framework assigningcultures to various ‘levels of advancement’. Forexample, Morgan’s Ancient Society, publishedin 1877, posited that human society had passedthrough three major stages: savagery, barbarism,and civilization. Thus cultural differences fromEurope were to be explained as societies whichwere still at a previous level along this unilinealchain. The role of technology in these portraitsis vividly detailed in Adas (1989), who providesdetailed descriptions of the writings of colonial-ists comparing indigenous and European mate-rial culture. But it is important to recognizethat such comparisons also served the liberaland radical discourse of those eras, supplyingRousseau’s noble savages and Marx andEngels’s portrait of progressive social evolution.

There is an interesting parallel betweenbiological and social frameworks in the latenineteenth century, as both posit a unilinealsequence. Lovejoy (1922) notes that the image ofa ‘great chain of being’ from animals to people toGod is quite ancient in European history, andwas quickly (and mistakenly) applied by earlybiologists. Contemporary biologists view thephilogenetic trajectories as a tree, not a ladder.The octopus, an invertebrate, has a highly devel-oped nervous system, greater in some cognitivecapacities than that of some vertebrate species.There are no ‘primitive’ species; all contempo-rary organisms are equally well adapted to theirecological niche. Similarly, contemporaryanthropology no longer assumes a unilinearladder of advancement for cultures. Even ‘old-fashioned’ anthropologists like Diamond (1996)will argue that the cognitive demands of hunter-gatherer economies are at least as complex, if notmore so, than those of ‘high-tech’ societies.

In addition to the problematic aspects of thisethnocentric, unilineal model for cross-culturalcomparison, Marx and Engels also used thesocial relations of technology to argue for theneed for political centralization. Just as a shipcannot run without a captain, the ship of stateneeds a single hand on its rudder. This is merelyone version of a wide variety of technologicaldeterminism themes seen throughout socialstudies of technology. Another, also starting inthat modernist era, is the theme of technologyas progress. Contemporary historian Leo Marx(1987) maps out the evolution of that theme.He begins with the Enlightenment era pre-scriptions for moral and social progress. By theeighteenth century writers such as BenjaminFranklin and Thomas Jefferson were usingexamples of technological progress as evidence

for such ethical changes: if stoves and printingpresses could improve, so could societies. Theyalso made connections between liberation fromauthority and the autonomy offered by certaintechnological innovations (but not others, mostnotably the factory). But, with industrializationin the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, thelines between social and technological progressbecame blurred in much of the political dis-course. New inventions – the railroad, the tele-graph, etc. – were hailed as ‘social progress’,regardless of their actual impact on people orthe environment. Much social analysis of tech-nology of the mid-century period was writtenin this celebratory view (e.g. Lillenthal 1944); atone point it even formed its own ‘technocracy’social movement (Elsner 1966). More subtleversions of this thesis are often grouped by itscontemporary critics under the category of‘technological determinism’ – an account oftechnologies as having ‘social impact’ but littlein the way of social origins, and with develop-mental trajectories that are either entirelyobscured or seen as governed by a sort of nat-ural law which makes their forms (and pres-ence) seem inevitable.

The unilineal development model was chal-lenged by twentieth-century writers. Biology’sreplacement of the unilineal development modelwith adaptative diversity inspired anthropolo-gists such as Alfred Kroeber, who associatedcultural differences with differing ecologicalconditions (‘culture areas’). However, Kroeber(1917) also viewed culture as a ‘superorganic’realm of autonomous change, and noted thatvariations in material style could occur inde-pendent of historical events. Leslie White alsoretained this dual view of both local adaptation(in Julian Steward’s terminology a ‘culturalecology’) and superorganic autonomous change,but placed a much stronger emphasis on tech-nology as the source of change – essentially atechnological determinist view. White attemptedto quantify these relations by assessing per capitaenergy use (actually power, since he was mea-suring energy use per unit of time), and show-ing the variation of this measure with transitionsacross the spectrum from low-tech hunter-gatherer to high-tech industrialism.

HIGH MODERNITY ANDTECHNOLOGICAL CRITIQUE

A revolt against such conflations betweentechnological and social progress began earlier,most famously in the writings of Emerson and

TECHNOLOGY AS MATERIAL CULTURE 331

26-Tilley-3290-Ch21.qxd 11/16/2005 5:51 PM 31

Thoreau. Although there are many technologycritics writing in relation to this romantic tradi-tion (and some outside of it, e.g. Max Weber’s‘iron cage of rationalization’), it was not untilthe high modern era, following World War II,that scholarly social analysis of technology uses‘technocracy’ (Ellul 1954/1964) as an explicitframework for critique. Mumford (1964) made adistinction between ‘authoritarian’ technologiesand ‘democratic’ technologies, but saw a stronghistorical progression towards the authoritarian,culminating in the replacement of people withautomation and ‘cybernetic direction’. Mumford,Ellul, and others such as Paul Goodman,Herbert Marcuse, and Theodore Roszak empha-sized this negative view on the repressive,destructive, and authoritarian aspects of tech-nological society. Embedded in much of thisanalysis was an implicit assumption that onlya radical social break – a Marxist revolution, aromantic turn to nature, or a Luddite rejectionof machines themselves could provide anysolution.

The 1970s saw a new direction for technologycritics in its understanding of possible tech-nological alternatives. Emerging more frompractice than from scholarly research, the‘appropriate technology’ movement promotedsolar energy, recycling, and ‘soft energy paths’.Social analysts writing at this time primarilyabsorbed these changes within their currenttheoretical frameworks (Marxism, Keynesianeconomics, etc.). Information technology wasundergoing a similar revolution at this time.Just as groups such as the New Alchemists inthe United States and Intermediate Technologyin the United Kingdom included grass-roots innovation, hackers of hardware andsoftware were also tinkering in garages and atthe margins of universities or other institu-tions. It has taken scholarship some time tocatch up with such challenges to the deeplyembedded notion that democratizing or life-enhancing technological change can come onlyfrom Marxist or other social revolutions. Evensome contemporary authors seem to be lag-ging behind: in his 1993 review of Feenberg(1991), Sclove (p. 399) notes that althoughFeenberg’s construction of a critical theory oftechnology based on Heidegger, Habermas,Lukács and the like is conceptually powerful,‘one might want to descend from the loftyheights of continental discourse to considercarefully the ideas and actions of appropri-ate technologists, ecotechnologists (the NewAlchemy Institute researchers), feminists, com-munitarians, physically disabled design critics ...[and others]’.

Despite this lag between practice and theory,several authors did deliver innovative socialanalyses of technology during this time. Onebody of work that stands out in the 1970s is thestudies of women in development. In the 1960s‘green revolution’ proponents assumed thatspecialized monocropping with chemicalfertilizers would dramatically improve ruralAfrican lives. Instead, these schemes often ledto soil depletion, over-dependence on insecti-cides, loss of genetic variation, and other socialand ecological crises. The problems were exac-erbated by ignoring the gendered division oflabor in African societies. Starting with Boserup(1970), development organizations began to payattention to the critical role of women in tradi-tional societies, and to the social relations oftechnology at this intersection between gender,race and class.

Another body of work began with LangdonWinner’s (1977) Autonomous Technology, culmi-nating in his The Whale and the Reactor (1986).Writing in a ‘technocritic’ vein similar toMumford and Ellul, Winner upended theirassumptions on the primacy of politics, andinstead claimed that there is a politics of tech-nology itself. His classic example was the workof Robert Moses in bridge construction onLong Island, NY. Winner notes that there werelow-pass bridges going to beaches and parks,and that this could be attributed to Moses’sdesire to eliminate the presence of poor people(with both racist and classist intent) in thesepublic spaces. (The poor would travel by bus,which would be blocked by the low-passbridges.) Strong empirical support for Winner’sframework was provided by Noble (1979), inhis classic study of numerical control (NC)machine tools. Noble showed that NC machinetools, and their computer predecessors (CNC),were introduced in an attempt to increasemanagerial control over the shop floor.

While Winner, Noble and like-mindedcolleagues forefronted technology in terms ofthe need for social change, a similar body ofwork with less political focus – although stillappreciating the paradoxical concept that ‘arti-facts have politics’ – began to appear under therubric of social construction. The essential differ-ence between social construction and previouswork is the contention that ‘it could have beenotherwise’ – that technological forms and his-tories of innovation are far more contingent onsocial factors than the technological determin-ist position indicates. The first major work ofthis constructivist genre was MacKenzie andWajcman (1985), and it held many examplescompatible with Winner and Noble’s emphasis



on political embedding (e.g. gendered labor inthe printing industry). But the 1987 anthologyedited by Bijker et al., The Social Construction ofTechnological Systems, became the definitivetext, and it placed greater emphasis on a moreabstract social dynamics of innovation: thetopology of networks of relations betweensocial groups and artifacts, the presence of‘reverse salients’ in the developmental flow,etc. Abbreviated SCOT (Social Constructionof Technology), it was strongly influenced bythe British social construction of science(e.g. Bloor 1976).

The social construction of science is a muchmore radical proposition than the socialconstruction of technology. Technologicaldeterminism was never a strong position in thefirst place. (Who could claim, for example, thatthe wide diversity of automobile designs wasdestined by some natural law?) But to say thatF = MA is ‘socially constructed’ demands thepossibility that ‘it could have been otherwise’ –how could that be possible for a universal lawof physics? Surprisingly, the constructivists ofscience have been able to make a good case forexactly that proposition, showing social forcesat work in everything from particle physics(Pickering 1984) to mathematics (Restivo et al.1993). Thus SCOT was a much easier claim tomake, and the framework of social construc-tion had even greater clarity in its applicationto technology than its original domain ofscience. But SCOT’s greater abstraction and lackof political grounding generated conflict withthe earlier Winner-Noble framework. Winnerresponded with a 1993 essay titled ‘Opening theblack box and finding it empty’, in which hequestioned why it was necessary to import thepowerful apparatus of social constructionistframeworks if one fails to reveal the relationsof political power embedded in the artifactsunder investigation. Woolgar and Cooper(1999) responded by suggesting that Winner’sapproach was asymmetric, demanding an unre-flective realism on the social side while allowingconstructivism on the technological side, andbacked up their critique by providing a copy ofthe Jones Beach bus schedule.

ANTHROPOLOGICAL PARALLELSTO SCOT

While SCOT has been primarily the provinceof historians, political scientists, philosophers,and sociologists, anthropologists have been inconversation with the body of work associated

with SCOT, and have provided some of themost richly detailed cases. Pierre Lemonnier’sTechnological Choices (2002) provides a classicanthology of this sort. For SCOT theorists thechallenge is to explain how the form of newinnovations could be driven by anything buttechnological considerations (at base the lawsof physics). The thesis of constructivism is toreject determinism, and demonstrate that ‘itcould have been otherwise’. But anthropolo-gists are often faced with a bewildering arrayof variation in low-tech indigenous settings.1

The challenge for anthropologists is not to dis-lodge the singularity of one form, but rather toavoid the simple adaptation assumption forthe multiplicity of forms. Just as historianshave been tempted by a technological deter-minism that assures us that it could not havebeen otherwise, the temptation for anthropolo-gists is to use a kind of reductive ecologicaldeterminism to explain this variation. ThusLemonnier’s title of technological choices signalsan emphasis on non-deterministic views of thismaterial variation. That is not to say ecologicaladaptation is irrelevant to their views, anymore than the laws of physics are irrelevant toSCOT theorists; the question is how contin-gency and necessity co-evolve.

Cresswell’s contribution to Lemonnier’santhology beautifully illustrates this co-evolutionin his account of the cultural variation in millwaterwheel design. Western readers are usedto seeing waterwheels of the Mill on the Flossvariety, in which a stream falls over or underhorizontal blades set into a wheel, but this isjust one of a vast number of arrangements inwhich water is converted into mechanical rota-tion. From the twisted propellers of Nepal tothe spoon-shaped blades of Corsica, water-wheel design is clearly driven by more thanjust the laws of physics. But Cresswell’s carefulstudy of the physics of waterwheel engineer-ing – the balance, for example, between theneed to maximize the force of the water on theblade and simultaneously limit the shearingstress on the blade’s insertion into the axle –brings these considerations into play withother factors (such as the variety of grain beingmilled, domestic versus commercial produc-tion, the amount of moisture in the grain, etc.).His conclusion bears some striking similaritiesto Pickering’s (1995) account of the social con-struction of science. In Pickering’s view scien-tists encounter ‘resistance’ in their attempts totest the validity of their hypothesis – the resis-tance of nature, of technology, of other factorsas well. They respond with an ‘accommoda-tion’, by which he means not a correction from



flawed model to perfected model, but ratherinventing one of many possible creativesolutions that reconfigures various elementsof the model. Similarly, Cresswell describeshow the interplay of physics in the water-wheel allows a kind of accommodation, butthat these interrelated forces create ‘resistance’to certain design trajectories. A social needto increase rotational speed, for example,might be met by adding more blades, length-ening the blades, changing their shape,changing the water flow, etc., but changein one parameter then creates greater lim-itation in the variation possible in otherparameters – and thus less room for furtheraccommodation.

Another theme encountered in Lemonnier’santhology is that of modernization – technolog-ical choices not highlighted by internal culturaldifference, but rather external importationswhich are either imposed or marketed (orboth). Akrich’s account of a wood-poweredelectrical generator (gazogene) in Costa Ricagives a striking portrait of one such technologi-cal choice. She begins by noting that whenstudying technology transfer it is necessary toavoid the ‘technologism’ trap of viewing failurein adoption as merely due to cultural barriers,or success as their lack. Conversely, she alsorejects the opposite ‘sociologism’ account inwhich technology must ‘fit’ a predeterminedimmutable social order. Akrich’s thesis is thatwe artificially separate the technical and thesocial to begin with, and thus doom our analysesto that dichotomy. She begins by describingthe partnership between the Organization ofAmerican States (OAS) and the Costa RicanElectricity Institute in Central America (CREI),and their analysis of conditions for bringing agazogene pilot project to one village (nearbybiomass, distance from central electrical grid,etc.). She notes that the original descriptionmentioned only social barriers as problems(conflicts, economic disparity, etc.). But imme-diately after installation, it became apparentthat the humidity in the wood was far toohigh to allow operation. A drying oven wasbuilt, but then additional problems appeared.Each fix – lighting system, airflow regulation,heatproof cement problems, filter maintenance –appeared to reveal other difficulties. Somesymptoms (current instability) did not haveclear causes, and some suspected causes(excessively dirty motor) did not haveclear relations to symptoms. The villagersdescribed it as lack of support from the CREI,the OAS described it as tacit knowledge thatthe French engineers were unable to transmit

to the local technicians, and the CREI describedit as a technology that was not yet matureenough to be transferred. As the need foraccountability increased, a complex web ofinterpretations emerged (villagers accused oflacking motivation, CREI accused of bureau-cratic elitism, the machine accused of techno-logical flaws, etc.). Akrich makes a convincingcase for how the imbrication of the social andthe technical is the true a priori, and how por-traits of isolated technical or social forcesemerge as rhetorical tropes in this ‘decodingcompetition’.

Other contributions to Lemonnier’santhology – in particular Pfaffenberger’sanalysis of factories in Sri Lanka, andBedoucha’s contrast of the wristwatch and thewater clock in Tunisia – highlight the role ofglobal political and economic change in localtechnological decisions. Pfaffenberger is anexcellent example of a scholar who straddlesthe gap between anthropology and SCOT tra-ditions. Outside of Lemmonnier’s anthology,many other researchers have occupied bothworlds. Hakken, for example, draws on mate-rialist anthropological traditions in his studiesof computing (cf. Hakken 1993, 1999). A rela-tively large number of researchers – SarahFranklin, Linda Layne, Emily Martin, RaynaRapp, Monica Casper, Valerie Hartouni, andAdele Clarke, to name but a few – have forgeda strong synthesis through their research onreproductive technology (cf. Franklin andRagone 1997 for a collection of case studies).

POSTMODERNIST ANALYSES

While social construction is widely regarded asa framework of the postmodern era, few of theauthors mentioned in the previous ‘highmodern’ section would regard themselves aspostmodernists: their citations are to Weber andDurkheim, not Derrida and Foucault. For thepurposes of this book postmodernism presentsa unique challenge: generally postmodernismtakes the ‘semiotic turn’ in analyzing materialobjects as sign systems. In that sense there isvery little that is actually material to be foundin the material culture analysis of postmod-ernism. Take, for example, Traweek’s famous(1988) analysis of particle detector technol-ogy. She provides a detailed analysis of thesymbolic meanings of such detectors in thelives of the physicists – as symbols of the rela-tions between nature and culture, male andfemale, life cycles of both laboratories and



scientists, etc. But there is very little mention ofthe actual physical substance of these machines.It is for that reason that Haraway (1996) takespains to persistently point to technology as a‘material-semiotic hybrid’. Her point is notmerely applying a fashionable label. Take, forexample, the previously mentioned work byBoserup (1970) and others. Standard ‘mismatch’of technologies’ frameworks (cf. Khor 1999)would provide an analysis on purely materialterms. Applying a more anthropological frame-work such as the ‘technototems’ of Hess (1995)would provide an analysis on purely semioticterms. Haraway takes the well known exampleof high-yield variety (HYV) rice, which requiredrental of mechanical rice harvesters (due to thethickness of the stem) and artificial fertilizers –thus creating additional farmer debt – butfocuses her analysis on the genetics within therice seed: the ‘congealed labor’ of the laboratoryembedding particular sets of practices withinthe informatics of a modified genetic code; amaterial-semiotic hybrid viewed through theanalytic hybrid of both traditional Marxistanalysis and postmodern semiotic apparatus.

There was also a blossoming of feminist andanti-racist analyses of technology during thistime, but it would be inaccurate to say that theywere consistently allied to postmodernistanalysis. The feminist strand has several 1960sorigins – Rachel Carson’s environmentalism,women’s health care collectives, and women inlabor movements – and some of these have hadan uneasy fit with the emphasis on semioticsand playful hybridity in postmodernist work.Indeed, what is often thought of as the founda-tional text for postmodern feminist technologyanalysis – Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto (1991) –ends in the phrase ‘I would rather be a cyborgthan a goddess,’ a confrontational (or at leastcontrarian) reference to the organic romanti-cism of much feminist analysis from that era.Hacker (1989) for example provides a brilliantaccount of the intersections of race, gender, andtechnology in labor displacements, of sexismand technology in utopian workers’ collectives,etc., but without any gestures towards the flex-ibility of postmodern interpretive frameworks.(Indeed, she holds a particularly modernist,conservative line when it comes to diversity insexual practices, cf. p. 214.) Wajcman (1991)similarly provides a sharp modernist analysisof women and technology, but at a price (in hercase the lack of race as a component of socialconstruction).

Conversely, some of the explicitly postmod-ernist feminist works, such as Plant (1997) arecelebrated for their ‘high theory’ abstraction

and conceptual flexibility, but criticized forhaving neither history of organized resistance(the kind of labor connections that someonelike Hacker excels at) nor any future direction(in contrast to the wonderful ‘alternative out-comes’ provided by Wajcman). Several antholo-gies have attempted to provide a broadersurvey in which both feminist and anti-racistcritique, with both high theory and practicalimplications, can provide multiple perspec-tives for a social analysis of technology. Recentexamples include Nelson et al.’s (2001) exami-nation of race (primarily covering ethnic iden-tity and technologies of everyday life), andEglash et al.’s (2004) examination of the ‘appro-priation’ of technology (reinterpretations,adaptations, and reinventions by users).

While many of the studies mentioned abovecan be viewed as arising out of analysis ofidentity (race, class, and gender), the actantnetwork theory (ANT) approach of Latour andothers (cf. Callon and Latour 1992) has offereda postmodernist challenge that is as often ascriticized for its lack of political commitmentas it is celebrated for going beyond construc-tivism. Latour and his colleagues see socialconstruction as accepting the debate within thescientists’ own framework. That is, sciencelong ago constructed a nature/society divide(often characterized by the Hobbs/Boyledebate). Scientists will speak for the world ofthings – for Nature – and humanists will speakfor humanity. But from the ANT approach,things are also actors (or at least actants) whichmust be recruited as allies, refuted as enemies,or otherwise dealt with in the web of relationsthat constitute scientific and technologicaldevelopment. For example, in his descriptionof Aramis, a proposed semi-automated trans-portation system in France, Latour (1996) allowsthe technology itself to be one voice in thenarrative. Thus the constructionist simply givesmore causal emphasis to the social side, whereasa description in terms of ANT undermines thevery division. ‘[W]e wish to attack scientists’hegemony on the definition of nature, we havenever wished to accept the essential source oftheir power: that is the very distributionbetween what is natural and what is social andthe fixed allocation of ontological power thatgoes with it’ (Callon and Latour 1992: 348).

COMPLEXITY THEORY

Based on the previous sections, one might havethe mistaken impression that although social



analysis of technology was originally dominatedby mainstream technological determinists, oncethat determinism was defeated the entire fieldbecame entirely dominated by a small group ofsocial visionaries. Of course that is not true. Themainstream of social analysis of technology didnot sit idly by while sticking to its deterministroots, and nowhere is this more vividlyportrayed than in the synthesis between com-plexity theory and technology analysis. If read-ers will pardon a brief digression, I will explainthe mathematical basis for complexity theorybefore proceeding to its technosocial application.

In ordinary speech, ‘complex’ just meansthat there is a lot going on. But for mathemati-cians the term is precisely defined, and givesus a new way to approach the concept. Priorto complexity theory mathematicians haddefined complexity in terms of randomness;primarily based on the work of Soviet mathe-matician A.N. Kolmogorov, and GregoryChaitin and Ray Solomonoff in the UnitedStates. In this definition, the complexity of a sig-nal (either analog or digital) is measured by thelength of the shortest algorithm required to pro-duce it. This means that periodic numbers (suchas 0.2727272 .. .) will have a low algorithmiccomplexity. Even if the number is infinitelylong, the algorithm can simply say, ‘Write adecimal point followed by endless repetitions

of “27”,’ or even shorter: ‘3/11.’ Truly randomnumbers (e.g. a string of numbers produced byrolling dice) will have the highest algorithmiccomplexity possible, since their only algorithmis the number itself – for an infinite length, youget infinite complexity. In analog systems aperiodic signal, like the vibration from a singleguitar string or the repetitive swings of apendulum, would have the lowest algorithmiccomplexity, and random noise, like static froma radio that has lost its station (what is oftencalled ‘white noise’) would have the highestalgorithmic complexity.

One problem with defining complexity interms of randomness is that it does not matchour intuition. While it’s true that the periodicsignal of a ticking metronome is so simple thatit becomes hypnotically boring, the same couldbe said for white noise – in fact, I sometimestune my radio between stations if I want to fallasleep. But if I want to stay awake I listen tomusic. Music somehow satisfies our intuitiveconcept of complexity: it is predictable enoughto follow along, but surprising enough to keepus pleasantly attentive. Mathematicians eventu-ally caught up with their intuition, and devel-oped a new measure in which the most complexsignals are neither completely ordered, norcompletely disordered, but rather those whichare half-way in between. These patterns (which


Figure 21.3 Low-rider: An appropriation of standard automobile technology in the US LatinoCommunity


include almost every type of instrumentalmusic) also happen to be fractals – in fact thenew complexity measure exactly co-coincideswith the measure of fractal dimension.

While such complexity measures were firstapplied to abstract systems such as cellularautomata, it soon became apparent that therewere a large variety of phenomena in biology,physics, and economics that matched thismodel. The economic models are where tech-nosocial analysis has had its strongest connec-tion. Economists themselves see the connectionto mathematical complexity theory happeningquite late in the game, and typically citeSchumpeter’s evolutionary view as the essentialconcept, with Nelson and Winter (1982) as thefirst to forefront the evolutionary model in con-temporary analysis. The concept of ‘increasingreturns’, as promoted by Brian Arthur (first pub-lished as a working paper of the InternationalInstitute for Applied Systems Analysis in 1983,see Arthur 1994 for a collection of his work) atthe Santa Fe Institute, provided the basis forforging a strong synthesis with computationalframeworks (although this history is disputed

by Krugman 1998). The essential contrast is thatwhile classical economics emphasized negativefeedback – competition on an even playing field,where the best products and services win out –an evolutionary view could account for thepositive feedback that takes place when morepopular products and services generate sub-industries. The competition between Microsoftand Apple, for example, was not won becauseDOS was a superior operating system – itsgraphics looked positively primitive comparedto the Apple – but rather because DOS allowedany vendor to create software for it – and withmore vendors came greater usability, whichattracted more vendors (hence the phenome-non of ‘lock-in’). Rather than the white noise ofthe level playing field, economic portraits havenow taken on the fractal contours of an evolu-tionary landscape.

Technological development has played a keyrole in these first portraits by Arthur andothers; lock-in examples, for instance, includednot only the Apple/Dos contrast, but also theQWERTY versus Dvorak keyboards, the rota-tional direction of clocks, Betamax versus VHS


Frequency

Pow

er

Frequency

Pow

er

Fractal noise

White noise

Am

plitu

deA

mpl

itude

Time

Time

Periodic

noise

Fractal

noise

Random

noise

Com

plex

ity

Figure 21.4 Postmodern era (post-1970s) view: complexity as between random and ordered(Crutchfield–Smale measure)


video, etc. Analyses from both the Santa Fecomputational side and the neo-Schumpterianeconomist side have created a complete arrayof biological analogs to the innovation process,including concepts such as mutation of inno-vation, selection mechanisms, and measures offitness (see Nelson 1995 for a review). But therehas been surprisingly little conversationbetween the constructivist scholars highlightedin previous sections – politics of artifacts,SCOT, feminist, etc. – and these complexityeconomists. One of the few exceptions isWilliams and Edge (1996), who criticize thecomplexity approach as ‘predicated upon themaintenance of a stable set of social, economicand technical forces, which serve to generatethe necessary uni-directionality of technologicaldevelopment’. A more optimistic outlook onthe possible synthesis has come from LoetLeydesdorff and his colleagues at theUniversity of Amsterdam (cf. Leydesdorff andVan den Besselaar 1994). But here the use ofsystems theory terminology has created littleappeal for the constructivists.

SUGGESTIONS FOR FUTURERESEARCH

Creating a synthesis between these powerfulparadigms – the simulations and quantitativeof complexity scholars and the progressivesocial vision of constructivism – is a dream wehave yet to realize. But there are hopeful signsof convergence. Lansing’s brilliant work oncomputational models of water temples in Balihas intervened on behalf of indigenous knowl-edge against development projects, similar toconstructivist analysis of local knowledge andpolitical critique, but using the tools and tech-niques of complexity theorists. My own workon fractals in African material culture (Eglash

1999) has been accepted, with relatively littleprotest, by some educational institutions formathematics instruction. And Douthwaiteet al. (2002) make use of an evolutionaryframework for participatory design of ThirdWorld technologies. What is odd is that theconvergence of constructivism and complexityapproaches seems to happen, in the main, out-side of First World contexts. Just as anthropologyneeded to revolutionize its perspectives for‘studying up’ (creating ethnographies of FirstWorld middle- and upper-class individuals),this new synthesis needs to make its transfor-mation to the First World technologies thathave been the focus of constructivist and‘complexivist’ analysis.

But complexity theory is just one of manybodies of research with which constructivismneeds to forge a synthesis. Constructivistviews alone have become, in the opinion of thisauthor, rather sterile. At one time it was atremendous challenge to express any view out-side that of the technological determinist. Butsocial influences in technology are now wellaccepted. To say that the purpose of one’sresearch is to defeat the portrait of purely tech-nical determination is to invoke a straw target.Winner’s 1993 essay ‘Opening the black boxand finding it empty’ is still relevant for thosewho wish to push constructivism towardsmore productive challenges. Yet the would-be successor to constructivism – ANT – is notgenerally viewed as having filled that box.And Winner’s own framework is sometimescriticized as overly deterministic: while tech-nologies do indeed have politics, they alsoembody political dynamics, and our analysisneeds to be capable of keeping up with theshifts in such social relations.

Take, for example, the process of participa-tory design (PD). This is not an analytic frame-work, but rather a program for carrying out oneanalytic framework’s implications. PD is a bold


Figure 21.5 Fractal Simulation for an Ethiopian professional cross


claim as to the politics of artifacts: it assumesthat those technologies created more democrat-ically, with the participation of the potentialusers, will have better impact on the lives ofthose using them. But it also assumes somerather static categories. Suppose, for example,that the utopian design is judged vastly supe-rior by the users, but turns out to be unafford-able once manufactured. Or suppose that onegroup’s ideal technology involves maintainingits race, class or gender privilege over others?What is at first a simple proposition becomes acomplicated mess as our analytic categoriesstart to unravel. When our ‘AppropriatedTechnology’ group (Eglash et al. 2004) began toexamine PD, we came to the conclusion that itneeded a more flexible framework for examin-ing the relations between users and the socialforces of interest (Figure 21.6).

When examined in such a space of socialforces, we find PD is not a utopian extreme, butrather one point along a spectrum of practicesin which users have various kinds of ‘voice’ inthe design process. And rather than see theright end of the spectrum, user independence,as an ultimate goal (cf. Figure 21.3), we foundthat various user needs are best met by contex-tually determined positions in the spectrum,and that these positions shift through time. Butthis is only one of a potentially vast array ofpossible conceptual tools, of flexible technoso-cial spaces that could help us map out suchdynamics.

The fact that computers could be an emblemof the military-industrial establishment in 1967and an emblem of counter-culture zeal in 1997says much about the need for understandingthese kinds of flexible dynamics. Whether viaconstructivist synthesis with another disci-pline, Haraway’s material-semiotic hybrids,ANT’s celebration of the agency of things, ormapping dynamics in technosocial space,we need a materialist analysis that is deci-sive enough to enable action, and yet has

the flexibility for avoiding overdeterminedconclusions.

NOTE

1 Unfortunately some anthropologists still usethe term ‘primitive’ to make this distinction.Many biologists, having recognized that allcontemporary organisms, regardless of theiranatomical complexity, are the result ofmillions of years of evolution which leftthem well adapted to their contemporaryecological niche, no longer use the term.There is nothing anachronistic about theamoeba; indeed, it might be that humansare only a temporary ‘blind alley’ in thelong run.

REFERENCES

Adas, Michael (1989) Machines as the Measure ofMen: Science, Technology, and Ideologies of WesternDominance. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Arthur, W. Brian (1994) Increasing Returns and PathDependence in the Economy. Ann Arbor, MI:University of Michigan Press.

Bijker, W.E., Hughes, T.P. and Pinch, T.J. (1987)The Social Construction of Technological Systems.Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Bloor, David (1976) Knowledge and Social Imagery.London and Boston, MA: Routledge.

Boserup, Ester (1970) Woman’s Role in EconomicDevelopment. London: Allen & Unwin.

Callon, Michel and Latour, Bruno (1992) ‘Don’t throwthe baby out with the bath school!’, in AndrewPickering (ed.), Science as Practice and Culture.Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 343–68.

Diamond, Jared (1996) Guns, Germs, and Steel: theFates of Human Societies. New York: Norton.

Douthwaite, B., Keatinge, J.D.H. and Park, J.R. (2002)‘Learning selection: an evolutionary model for


Dependence Independence

Consumermarketingresearch

Consumerombudsman

Participatorydesign

Science shops,communityworkshops

Spontaneousreinterpretation,

adaptation,reinvention

Figure 21.6 Spectrum of lay user relations to expert production


understanding, implementing and evaluatingparticipatory technology development’, AgriculturalSystems, 72 (2): 109–31.

Eglash, Ron (1999) African Fractals. New Brunswick,NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Eglash, Ron, Croissant, Jennifer, Di Chiro, Giovannaand Fouché, Rayvon, eds (2004) AppropriatingTechnology: Vernacular Science and Social Power.Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

Ellul, J. (1964) The Technological Society. New York:Vintage Books. (French edition 1954).

Elsner, Henry, Jr (1966) The Technocrats: Prophets ofAutomation. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.

Feenberg, Andrew (1991) Critical Theory of Technology.New York: Oxford University Press.

Franklin, Sarah and Ragone, Helena, eds (1997)Reproducing Reproduction: Kinship, Power, and Tech-nological Innovation. Philadelphia, PA: Universityof Pennsylvania Press.

Hacker, Sally (1989) Pleasure, Power, and Technology:Some Tales of Gender, Engineering, and the CooperativeWorkplace. Boston, MA: Unwin Hyman.

Hakken, David (1993) Computing Myths, Class Realities:an Ethnography of Technology and Working People inSheffield, England. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Hakken, David (1999) Cyborgs@Cyberspace? AnEthnographer looks to the Future. New York andLondon: Routledge.

Haraway, Donna (1991) ‘A cyborg manifesto: science,technology, and socialist-feminism in the latetwentieth century’, in Simians, Cyborgs and Women:the Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge,pp. 149–81.

Haraway, Donna (1996) Modest_Witness@Second_Millenium. Femaleman©_Meets_OncoMouseTM. Feminismand Technoscience. New York: Routledge.

Hess, David (1995) Science and Technology in aMulticultural World: the Cultural Politics of Facts andArtifacts. New York: Columbia University Press.

Khor, Martin (1999) ‘Global economy and the ThirdWorld’, International Journal of Rural Studies, October.

Kroeber, Alfred (1917) ‘The superorganic’, AmericanAnthropologist, 19: 163–213.

Krugman, Paul (1998) ‘The legend of Arthur: a tale ofgullibility at the New Yorker’, Online at http://web.mit.edu/krugman/www/legend.html.

Lansing, J. Stephen (1991) Priests and Programmers:Technology of Power in the Engineered Landscape ofBali. Cambridge, MA: Princeton University Press.

Latour, Bruno (1996) Aramis, or, The Love of Technology.Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Lemonnier, Pierre (2002) Technological Choices:Transformation in Material Cultures since the Neolithic.London: Routledge.

Leydesdorff, Loet and Van den Besselaar, Peter, eds(1994) Evolutionary Economics and Chaos Theory: NewDirections in Technology Studies. London: Pinter.

Lillenthal, David (1944) TVA: Democracy on the March.New York: Harpers.

Lovejoy, Arthur O. (1936/1971) The Great Chain ofBeing. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

MacKenzie, Donald and Wajcman, Judy, eds (1985)The Social Shaping of Technology: How the RefrigeratorGot its Hum. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.

Marx, Leo (1987) ‘Does improved technology meanprogress?’ Technology Review, January, pp. 33–41, 71.

Mumford, Lewis (1964) ‘Authoritarian and democratictechnics’, Technology and Culture, 5: 1–8.

Nelson, Alondra, Tu, Thuy Linch N. with Hines, AliceHeadlam (2001) Technicolor: Race, Technology andEveryday Life. New York: New York University Press.

Nelson, R. (1995) ‘Recent evolutionary theorising abouteconomic change’, Journal of Economic Literature,33: 48–90.

Nelson, R.R. and Winter, S.G. (1982) An EvolutionaryTheory of Economic Change. Cambridge, MA andLondon: Belknap Press.

Noble, David (1979) ‘Social choice in machinedesign: the case of automatically controlledmachine tools’, in A. Zimbalist (ed.), Case Studieson the Labour Process. New York: Monthly ReviewPress, pp. 18–50.

Pickering, Andrew (1984) Constructing Quarks: ASociological History of Particle Physics. Edinburgh:Edinburgh University Press.

Pickering, Andrew (1995) The Mangle of Practice:Time, Agency, and Science. Chicago: University ofChicago Press.

Plant, Sadie (1997) Zeros + Ones: Digital Women andthe New Technoculture. New York: Doubleday.

Restivo, Sal, Van Bendegem, J.P. and Fischer, Roland(1993) Math Worlds: Philosophical and Social Studiesof Mathematics and Mathematics Education. Albany,NY: SUNY Press.

Traweek, Sharon (1988) Beamtimes and Lifetimes: theWorld of High Energy Physicists. Cambridge, MA:Harvard University Press.

Wajcman, Judy (1991) Feminism Confronts Technology.Cambridge: Polity.

Williams, Robin and Edge, David (1996) ‘The socialshaping of technology’, Research Policy, 25: 856–99.

Winner, Langdon (1977) Autonomous Technology:Technics-out-of-Control as a Theme in PoliticalThought. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Winner, Langdon (1986) The Whale and the Reactor: ASearch for Limits in an Age of High Technology.Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Winner, Langdon (1993) ‘Social constructivism:opening the black box and finding it empty’,Science as Culture, 3 (3) 16: 427–52.

Woolgar, Steve and Cooper, Geoff (1999) ‘Do artifactshave ambivalence? Mose’s bridges, Winners’bridges and other urban legends in S&TS’, SocialStudies of Science, 29 (3): 433–49.



handbook of material culture -...

Documents