From SSK to SCOTs and STS: The macro analysis of Sociotechnical Systems

The Connectedness of Techniques & “Technical Systems”

“Systems”: whole(s), part(s) and relations
- Interrelated elements
Extension to the concept of “Society”
- From Durkheim to Evans-Pritchard’s
- Structuro-functionalism
Critique
- Mechanistic view
- Abstract models ~LC: etic model, linear~

Look into how processes came into being and the resistance to the changes
After WWI and WWII, a critique of rationality, technocracy, the separation of technical processes and the turmoil life
- social determinism
- critique of linear (technical) determinism
- between hope and fear

Pre 1970:
- Histoy of technology (US & UK)
  - Society of History of Technology (US)
  - Lewis Mumford (US)
  - Thomas Hughes (US)
1970: SSK: Sociology of Scientific Knowledge
- David Bloor (Edinburgh), Harry Collins (Bath)
- Controversy: study of the content of scientific statement (as with an artifact)
  - causality
  - impartiality (success stories and failure)
  - symmetry
  - reflexivity: applicable to sociology itself (ontology)

1970s: Sociology of Technology
Influence of Thomas Kuhn (1962)
- The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
- Paradigm
Constructivism/Constructionism
- Sociology of Knowledge: Luckhman & Berger 1966
- Critique: Hacking

Seamless web (1998)
Technical Systems are both:
- socially constructed
- Society shaping (1989: 51)
Critique of the internalist approach
Contexual considerations
- technical system emerge out of social systems
Systemic nature (ef. Gille & Lemonnier)
- Relate to other systems (some dependants on them)
Systems:
- As problem-solving arrangements
- are bounded by the limits of control exercised by artifacts and humans
- are organized in Russian Dolls. ~ America, despite the claims...~ (quoted by Pfaffenberger)

Classical View on Innovation
Mixing of humans and non-humans; change in one element creates a new problem; a problem-solving model
material, socio-economical negotiations; prototype artifacts

Plastic Materials: resin, ivory, tortoise shell, amber
- 2 uses
  - a) Varnish
  - b) Moulding (Production of small objects)
19th:
- Shellac: A & B
- Rubber: B
Describe a series of processes of “inventions”, controversy at the end of the 19th century
Concept of “technological frame”
- Concepts and techniques employed by a community in its problem solving
- Includes interactions between various actors
1907: Baekeland’s patent on Bakelite (stablizes the technical formula -> stops the social relations/negotiations -> conceals the processes it stems from)

Langdon Winner (1977)
- False neutrality of technical systems
  - Autonomous Technology & Technological Somnambulism (appears to be historical, contingent)
  - Difficult to see the politcal dimensions
- “Technological politcs” ‘Technology as (political) domination:
  - ‘Technological’ imperatives
    - Case study: How Internet providers established themselves as gatekeepers (effect on humans)
  - “Reverse adaptation” (how we adapt to technology)
  - e.g. Robert Moses: class and racial prejudices (New York)
Critique on Winner’s determinism
- Woolgar & Cooper: role of interpretation by different social groups
Pfaffenberger (1992)
- Anthropology
- Relation of “Technical systems” with “non-technical” systems
- Role of aesthetics, economics, social values, rituals
- Proposes “Technological Dramas” as an alternative model
  - Cf. Victor Turner’s social drama (1969)
- “Technological Dramas”: 3 processes
  - Regularization
  - Adjustment
  - Reconstitution
- Regularization:
  - Strategies for constructing hegemonic ideologies
- Adjustments:
  - Direct reactions to regularization (real or imagined)
    - e.g. Conspiration theories, claim for democratization, fiddling with artifacts
- Reconstitution:
  - Reshaping/creating artifacts or processes with a conscious revolutionary or resisting
- Materials that resist the determinstic nature of technical systems
- Artifacts as products of the past

Techniques: embedded in the social
SSK, SCOT, STS, Pfaffenberger
- Critique of the fallacy if technical determinism
- Re-inject of the Social
- Reliance on discourses and power relations
Importance of relations between Paradigms and Interpretative Frame
Critique:
- Defition of Social groups
- What is the relations btw Technological Frame and power relations