Every major technical change reverberates at
many levels, economic, political, religious, cultural.
Insofar as we continue to see the technical
and the social as separate domains, important
aspects of these dimensions of our existence will
remain beyond our reach.
–Andrew Feenberg, Questioning Technology
Abstract
The article explores how four different
theories have been used to investigate technology.
It highlights the worth and limitiations of
each theory and argues that an eclectic, everevolving
approach to the study of technology is
warranted.
Introduction
Traditional approaches to the history of
science and technology have been challenged
for being too narrow, deterministic, and selective.
For instance, before the creation of the Society
for the History of Technology (SHOT) and the
International Association for Science and
Technology Studies (IASTS), historical investigations
of scientists and technology tended to
focus exclusively on “men and machines” at the
expense of larger social, political, and economic
circumstances (Hirsh 1983; Nye, 1984). When
these approaches did attempt to investigate the
context surrounding science and technology,
they typically reduced changes to secondary
effects of economic and social policy, often subscribing
to doctrines of technological and social
determinism. When historians and sociologists
of science and technology did endeavor to look
closer at context and determinism, they tended
to be inconsistent and parochial in their selection
of case studies, habitually focusing on great
technological systems like electricity or military
weapons at the expense of topics such as gender,
culture, and race.
In contrast, the progressive field of science
and technology studies (STS) has adopted as its
fundamental concern the “investigation of
knowledge societies in all their complexity: their
structures and practices, their ideas and material
products, and their trajectories of change”
(Jasanoff 2004, 2). This perspective views technological
knowledge and its material embodiments
as at once products of social work and
indicative of different forms of social life. A
growing number of academic STS programs, the
increased technological sophistication of society,
and the interdisciplinary nature of its subject
matter have coalesced to deepen the significance
and application of STS. Correspondingly, the
number of scholars subscribing to its views –
and the literature and intellectual momentum
attached to them – has spawned dozens of different
theories, case studies, and analytical tools
designed to illuminate the interplay between
technology and society.
To help focus on the foundations of the discipline,
this paper will investigate four widely
used methodological approaches for studying
technology. Specifically, it will argue that the
social construction of technology, technological
frame, epistemic culture, and actor network theory
together offer a more varied and dynamic
way of differentiating the interconnections
between the “black box” of technology and cultural,
social, political, and economic structures.
The central argument of this paper holds that
these concepts are useful in describing (a) the
different social groups involved in the production
of technological artifacts that might otherwise
remain concealed; (b) the relationship such
technology has with socio-cultural structures
and practices; (c) the tendency for technological
artifacts to have meanings that are mediated and
negotiated, rather than fixed, and contingent on
discourses of conflict, difference, and strategy;
and (d) the often invisible role of knowledge,
expertise, technical practices and material
objects that shape, sustain, and transform relations
of authority and institutions of policymaking.
This paper is not intended to provide a comprehensive
investigation of these technologies or
theories. Rather, it is designed to provide a helpful
and concise guide for scholars and educators
wishing to sample a variety of STS methods and
topic areas. To do so, it focuses on four of the
most cited and used theories in the field. The
paper begins with a discussion of SCOT and
nuclear reactors before examining technological
TheJournalofTechnologyStudies
Reactors, Weapons, X-Rays, and Solar Panels: Using
SCOT, Technological Frame, Epistemic Culture, and
Actor Network Theory to Investigate Technology
Benjamin K. Sovacool
4
Articles
TheJournalofTechnologyStudies
frame and military weapons, epistemic culture
and x-ray hair removal, and actor network
theory and solar panels.
The Social Construction of
Technology (SCOT) & Nuclear
Reactors
Sociologists such as Wiebe Bijker (1992,
1996), Donald MacKenzie (1993, 1999), Trevor
Pinch (1999, 2001), and historian Thomas
Hughes (2001) have promoted a model called
the social construction of technology. This
model holds that technological systems commit
policymakers to a particular set of technical
arrangements and are inherently “socially constructed
artifacts” (Hughes 2001, 52; Bijker &
Law 1992; Kline & Pinch 1999). These authors
propose that large technological systems often
involve many distinct agents, subjecting them
to an interpretive flexibility that gives the same
technological artifact varying meanings for different
groups (Kline & Pinch 2001, 113-114).
Or, as political theorist Landon Winner (1999)
puts it, “artifacts have politics.”
The methodological approach called the
social construction of technology (SCOT) suggests
that technological systems are often organized
according to five interrelated themes. First,
technological artifacts are viewed as intrinsically
complex and, like “the social” or “the economic,”
contain meaning that is not fixed but emergent
(MacKenzie 1998; Bijker & Law 1992).
This meaning materializes through what John
Law refers to as “heterogeneous engineering,”
the process by which multiple meanings get
manufactured into technological objects.
Second, because the development of technology
involves competing organizations, consumers,
entrepreneurs, and politicians seeking to maintain
a particular set of technical arrangements,
artifacts are often the product of conflict, difference,
and resistance. Third, technologies involve
strategy and “are not neutral servants of whatever
social or political order chooses to adopt
them. Their adoption and operation involves
changes to that order – changes that are not
automatic consequences of new technology but
must themselves be engineered, often in the face
of conflict and resistance” (MacKenzie 1998,
14). Fourth, since “technological systems contain
messy, complex, problem-solving components,”
technologies encompass not only physical
artifacts but also an entire network of organizations,
processes, people, research programs,
regulatory laws, and knowledge systems
(Hughes 2001; Bijker, Hughes, & Pinch 2001).
Fifth, since technologies are “invented and
developed by system builders and their associates,
the components of technological systems
are socially constructed artifacts” with disparate
effects on social, economic, and cultural practices
(Hughes 2001, 52; Bijker & Law 1992).
Thus, SCOT proposes that both social
determinism and technological determinism are
flawed because “neither the purely social nor the
exclusively technical is a determinant” in constructing
technology. Rather, technological
designs are shaped both by inescapable physical
realities and ambient socio-cultural factors.
Approaches to understanding technology, then,
must recognize that objects are not universal or
independent of context (MacKenzie 1998, p.
216). Rather, SCOT can reveal that apparently
stable technologies started with many possible
futures and have been shaped by “particular
social interests and relevant social groups and
interpretations” (Mort 2002, p. 22).
The classic example of a socially constructed
technology is Langdon Winner’s discussion
of the American nuclear reactor. Winner proposes
(1986, 1999) that the construction and operation
of nuclear reactors in the United States
requires an authoritarian, systems-centered,
immensely powerful but inherently unstable
technological approach. This approach blurs the
distinction between social and technological
determinism. Nuclear reactors are deeply woven
in the conditions of modern politics, and fundamentally
change the exercise of power and the
experience of citizenship. As one environmentalist
lamented in the 1970s:
The increased deployment of nuclear power
facilities must lead society toward authoritarianism.
Indeed, safe reliance upon
nuclear power as the principle source of
energy may be possible only in a totalitarian
state. (cited in Winner 1986, p. 19)
Yet social values and norms also exert great
influence on the technology of nuclear reactors.
Nuclear reactors can be socially constructed in
two ways. First, many theorists working in the
history and philosophy of technology have noted
that the adoption of a given technical system
actually requires the creation and maintenance
of a particular set of social conditions as the
operating environment for that system. Some
kinds of technology, like nuclear reactors,
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require their social environments be structured
in a particular way much like an automobile
“requires wheels to move” (Winner 1986, p. 32).
In this sense, the specific features in the design
of nuclear reactors provide a convenient means
of establishing patterns of social power and
authority.
In addition, normative social values become
entrenched into the design process of a nuclear
reactor. The average cost of a traditional nuclear
power plant ranges between $5-7 billion, not
including the expense for storage of spent
nuclear fuel, maintenance, and decommissioning;
thus, the existence of a reactor requires a
society with significant amounts of wealth. It
also requires a society that uses electricity and
demands extremely large quantities of energy
for consumption (Nye 1992, 1999; Hirsh 1999;
Melosi 1985). Moreover, the extensive transmission
networks designed to distribute the electricity
provided from nuclear reactors to millions of
customers requires a certain level of democracy,
coupled with the intent that citizens should have
equal access to electricity. In contrast, nuclear
power also requires authoritarian management
styles and extremely tight security precautions.
It is one of those structures whose hazards and
vulnerabilities, in the words of Langdon Winner,
require “ourselves to become increasingly well
policed” (1986, p. 175). And, finally, the truly
gargantuan nature of nuclear power plants
reflects the American notion of progress, but
progress in a very unique way: a monument to
gigantism, science, and the domination of people
over nature. Thus, the nuclear reactor is not
simply a social or technical artifact. Instead, it is
a multifarious technology that fundamentally
embraces democratic and authoritarian tendencies
at the same time (thus being a product of
tension and negotiation) while also embedding
social values related to wealth, electricity consumption,
and progress.
Technological Frame & Military
Weapons
Similarly, the concept of a technological
frame is often mentioned in conjunction with
SCOT. In his influential work establishing a
theory of socio-technical change, Wiebe Bijker
(1995) holds that the idea of a “technological
frame” attempts to enclose the interactions that
occur between, rather than in or above, the
actors. It comprises “all elements that influence
the interactions within relevant social groups
and lead to the attribution of meanings to technical
artifacts – and thus to constituting technology”
(Bijker 1995, p. 123). Bijker argues that a
technological frame must include three components:
(1) the array of values, methods, goals,
tacit knowledge, user practices, and testing procedures
used by a group of practitioners when
developing a particular technology; (2) the individual
actors that constitute such a group; and
(3) the technological artifact itself. Bijker
emphasizes that a “technological frame” is
intentionally an abstract concept and is intended
for use as an analyst’s tool when investigating
technology.
For example, when investigating the social
construction of Bakelite, the first synthetic plastic,
Bijker contrasts two distinct social groups,
one involving celluloid chemists and the other
electrochemical engineers. The chemists, Bijker
documents, were primarily concerned with the
production of fancy articles, price of the solvent
camphor, flammability of celluloid, shrinkage
and distortion of plastic, application of heat and
pressure, and the use of presses and preheaters
to manufacturing celluloid (Bijker 1995, p. 126).
These goals, problems, strategies, theories, and
artifacts are significantly different from those of
the electrochemical engineers. The engineers
were primarily concerned with the flow production
of chemicals, corrosion and reaction efficiency
of plastic, the design of diaphragms,
industrial flow processing, fluid dynamics, and
basic inorganic chemistry (Bijker 1995, p. 141).
By focusing on social groups, Bijker
demonstrates that artifacts possess interpretive
flexibility. That is, different social groups see
particular technologies in different ways. These
technologies, then, become “heterogeneous”
because their meaning, rather than being fixed,
are interpreted and negotiated by those social
groups connected to it. An emphasis on a
particular group of practitioners can reveal the
wider social interests invested in technology,
other associated groups that might otherwise
remain hidden, and the different strategies these
actors use in their contest over the negotiation of
technology.
Such an approach can be especially useful
for studying the social interests attached to the
production of military weapons. Ken Adler
(1997) uses the notion of technological frame
particularly well in Engineering the Revolution,
where he follows the role of Enlightenment
French engineers in their design of gunpowder
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weapons and cannons. Adler holds that the gun
transformed the relationship among officers,
soldiers, and the nation-state in the same way
that our modern landscape is changed by the
presence of computers and nuclear weapons.
Using technological frame, here, reveals
three interesting things. First, by tracing the
work of engineers working in the French
artillery service, Adler demonstrates the importance
of Honore Blanc, who invented interchangeable
tumblers, locks, plates, frizzens,
pans, cocks, sears, bridals, screws, and springs
in muskets. Blanc’s inventions were viewed by
Thomas Jefferson during a visit to France, and
convinced Jefferson to promote interchangeable
gun parts at the armories in Harpers Ferry and
Springfield, a move that ultimately influenced
Eli Whitney and modern techniques for mass
production of products with moving parts.
Consequently, the group-centered approach is
useful for tracing the course of a technology as
it is transferred among different actors.
Second, by following engineers Adler shows
that the role of the French government as the
provider of productive order was changing. The
French Revolution, in eradicating the monarchy,
attempted to establish a new state based on the
absolute right to property and free trade. This
ideal, however, was deeply influenced by engineers,
who presented their own vision of the
nation and its technological life in their discussions
with citizens and politicians. In short, the
engineers expanded their role as benefactors of
the state, establishing themselves as important
actors in creating a productive French order.
Third, such an emphasis on these engineers
reveals that they were most successful, not in
their technology, but in their social influence.
At the beginning of the 1700’s, French military
engineers were at the periphery of power, connected
to a hodgepodge of eclectic social backgrounds,
and answerable to lordly patrons. By
the end of the century, the engineers represented
a highly specialized, autonomous, and professional
elite with a clearly defined workforce
backed by social institutions and universities.
Their corresponding technical advances in the
musket, cannon, and M177, while important,
were not nearly as influential. Adler’s approach
reminds scholars of a profound paradox: the
engineer’s greatest triumph was the assertion to
the right of technocratic rule on the basis of a
technical mastery that they did not possess. Yet
by connecting their vision to popular French
ideals and needs, engineers secured the use of
automatic machinery and positioned themselves
at the center of French industrialization.
On a more contemporary plane, the concept
of technological frame is especially insightful
for investigating large technological systems,
like electric utility equipment, military weapons,
and industrial and manufacturing facilities. For
example, when applied to the development of
the United States National Missile Defense
(NMD) system (formally called the Strategic
Defense Initiative and then Theatre Missile
Defense), technological frame helps reveal at
least three separate groups – engineers, politicians,
and security analysts – that might otherwise
remain hidden.
The requirements for NMD are incredibly
complex, demanding thin margins of error and
the most difficult aspects of rocket science.
Aerospace, electrical, computer, systems, and
civil engineers must work together to create a
system with the precision needed to “hit a bullet
with a bullet” (Mitchell, 2000). This ability to
target and intercept incoming missiles is further
complicated when adversaries can attempt to
overwhelm the system through the construction
of decoys, attempts to Multiple Independently
Targetable Reentry Vehicle (MIRV) warheads,
missile saturation techniques, and the deployments
of cruise missiles and weather balloons to
overwhelm computer targeting systems (Eland
2000). For these engineers, an NMD system is
about protecting the American homeland from a
missile attack, and they must focus on making
its technology work.
Politicians, in contrast, emphasize the
importance of using an NMD system to protect
American allies and provide American aerospace
and defense firms with lucrative international
contracts. The United States supplies over
51 percent of military technology sold globally,
and members of the Department of State and
Department of Defense have already signed
agreements and memorandums with Israel,
India, Taiwan, and South Korea promising to
export our NMD technology (Sadowski 1992;
Warren & Floodin 2001; Mitchell 2000).
Finally, security analysts, often working in
association with large security and defense think
tanks and government institutions, are charged
with providing the justifications for an NMD
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system by assessing hostile enemies and “states
of concern,” such as Iran, Libya, and North
Korea, that may want to attack the United
States. For these analysts, NMD requires the
assessment of rogue nations needed to create
popular support for the missile shield, and the
psychological assurance that such a system will
deter and prevent an attack on the American
homeland (Mitchell 2000; Spring & Anderson,
2000).
Technological frame highlights that these
different social groups employ disparate production
habits, methods, and techniques. For
instance, engineers work mostly in aerospace
and scientific laboratories, evaluate their findings
through research, development, and demonstration,
and present their results at academic
conferences. In contrast, politicians must report
to different committees and panels within
Congress and the Federal Government, evaluate
the “success” of missile projects only in terms
of economic development, the creation of jobs,
and establishment of export markets, and present
their findings through public deliberation.
Security analysts create their knowledge at various
think tanks from reading literature and citing
similar authors, evaluate their findings
through the internal workings of their institution,
and present their research directly to the
public through reports and statements. Yet while
these groups approach NMD differently, they
play an indispensable role in designing, selling,
and justifying the technology.
In sum, the concept of technological frame
can be useful for studying historical and contemporary
military technology. In the case of
arms manufacturing in Enlightenment France,
the concept helps reveal how a particular ensemble
of actors transfer their technology, establish
their profession, mold the course of society, and
use the power of vision and deception to retain
political influence. In the case of NMD, the concept
reveals that the NMD system is not merely
a technical system with military implications.
Instead, it emerges through a web of social
groups concerned about the technology’s feasibility,
economic potential, and psychological
protection. In this instance, each social group
directly relates to the other: a system that cannot
work provides no comfort; a system that cannot
make money will not appease aerospace contractors;
and the lack of public support prevents
the system from being built (and thus working),
and so on. Technological frame reveals that the
technical controversy over making NMD effective
also concerns engineers, politicians, and
security analysts. Put simply: the development
of any large technological project – particularly
one such as NMD – is conceived, planned, and
designed to achieve a complex set of objectives
that will enhance the security and economy of
society. In doing so, it necessarily involves many
distinct groups with competing and complementary
values, goals, and techniques to achieve
them. These each get built into such a technological
system.
Epistemic Culture & X-Ray Hair
Removal
In her work on the sociology of scientific
knowledge, Karin Knorr-Cetina (1999) elucidates
the concept of an epistemic culture when
describing the operation of scientific laboratories.
Knorr-Cetina begins by suggesting that scientific
laboratories configure social and natural
order, and that these reconfigurations work differently
in disparate fields of science. As a
result, scientific laboratories develop distinct
cultural, social, and technical stances.
Experiments within the laboratory, Knorr-Cetina
elaborates, reflect this natural and social ordering,
culminating in her notion of an “epistemic
culture.” For Knorr-Cetina, epistemic cultures
are “those amalgams of arrangements and mechanisms
– bonded through affinity, necessity, and
historical coincidence – which, in a given field,
make up how we know what we know” (1999, p.
1). Thus, epistemic cultures are individual communities
of practitioners that create and warrant
knowledge used to structure, mechanize, and
configure ideas to a natural, scientific, or social
order within the confines of their discipline.
This means that the production of technological
knowledge is fundamentally social
because it is defined or constituted by practices
of work, trust, methods of analysis, methods of
interpretation, values, and institutional arrangements
within each epistemic culture. KnorrCetina
refers to these sets of relations as
“knowledge machinery” because they represent
a complex social network – between agents and
instruments – that constrain the production of
knowledge. The concept of an “epistemic culture”
can expose the ways that the construction
of technology becomes an active social process
that is constantly negotiated, implemented,
superceded, and revised within the confines of
corresponding scientific, social, and political
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epistemologies.
One insidious example concerns x-ray
hair removal technology. Finding its roots
with Darwin and the American Dermatological
Association’s emphasis on the ugliness of
excess hair, from 1914-1945 the popular media
promoted the ideal of the hairless feminine
body. This image was connected to newly
emerging conceptions of race, class, and gender
identity: human hair reflected at once one’s
ethnicity, masculinity/femininity, and affluence.
During the 1920s and 1930s, however, techniques
to remove excess hair (such as abrasives,
razors, tweezing, and waxes) remained painful,
time intensive, and had to be repeated. Similarly,
more expensive techniques such as chemical
depilatories, diathermy and electrolysis offered
permanent solutions, but were meticulous and
extremely costly (Herzig 2003). The concept
of using x-ray technology to remove hair,
despite warnings from the American Medical
Association’s Bureau of Investigation about
potential health effects, was initially promoted
by a small group of doctors as a better alternative.
A group of practitioners working in medicine
with x-ray technology developed the
process of x-ray epilation, or using x-rays to
remove excess hair from the face, back, neck,
arms, and legs. Even though a team of
researchers found that epilation was responsible
for more than 35 percent of all radiation-induced
cancer in women, the practice continued for
three decades from the 1940s through the 1960s
(Martin et al. 1970). The concept of an epistemic
culture helps explain how the use of such damaging
technology became self-sustaining.
Practitioners placed faith in epilation not only
because it was undeniably effective at removing
hair, but because it bypassed the physicality of
other techniques. Since they were invisible,
x-rays were perceived to be harmless (and the
harm from them was attributed to other factors).
In addition, the use of x-ray technology was
closely associated with notions of modernity,
progress, and science. The “mystery” of “science”
convinced both users and practitioners of the
unquestioned benefit of x-ray technology.
Furthermore, the use of x-ray technology established
professional and class identity. For practitioners,
it offered a well paying and respected
profession. For users, it offered a hair removal
procedure unequaled in cleanliness and luxury.
Taken together, the technology of the x-ray
combined with social values about science,
class, and contemporary notions of risk to create
an epistemic culture of doctors, nurses, and
patients convinced about the benefits of x-ray
epilation. Here, the knowledge machinery – the
complex network of instruments, people, and
values – played a unique role in shaping the
acceptance and continuation of x-ray hair
removal. As part of this extensive knowledge
machinery, the x-ray existed not as a passive
object, but an active and interactive vessel that
simultaneously stimulated and constrained
knowledge practices.
Actor Network Theory & Solar Panels
Finally, theorists Steve Woolgar, Bruno
Latour, and Michel Callon are largely responsible
for developing the methodological tool
known as Actor Network Theory (ANT) (Latour
& Woolgar 1979; Latour 1987; Callon 1986;
Callon & Latour 1986; Callon & Latour 1992).
ANT suggests that the processes of creating and
adopting technology are complex, interactive,
and political (Mort 2001, 17). Successful technologies
must not only get built; they must be
built into society. Technical objects are not
things in the usual sense, but “nodes in a network
that contains both people and devices in
interlocking roles” (Feenberg 2001, 114). ANT
suggests that the social alliances in which technology
are constructed are bound together by the
very artifacts they create. Thus, social groups do
not precede and constitute technology but
“emerge with it” (Feenberg 2001, 114-115). In
this way, it is possible to explore the process by
which power relations are configured and rendered
fixed, invisible, and logical by viewing
power as something that circulates. ANT
attempts to investigate the formation of power
before it gets distributed, before facts and
machines become inexplicably bound to societal
perceptions and behaviors. At this level, scholars
are able to see the ordering, not just the order
(Mort 2001, 8-9). ANT, then, attempts to uncover
the facts, machines, people, and bureaucracies
that must be aligned, molded, and disciplined to
create technological development; these combine
to make up the actor world, an “overall
environment that provides the conditions for a
technology to succeed” (Mort 2001, 17).
In the process of creating this world, a
diversity of animate and concealed entities must
be enrolled into the network so that their primary
function becomes the promotion of that
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TheJournalofTechnologyStudies
network. This parallels the way that Latour &
Woolgar (1979) talk about the scientific laboratory.
Latour & Woolgar propose that the scientific
laboratory can be understood as a system of
literary inscription that uses the process of
enrollment to establish “truth.” Scientific laboratories
must publish in science journals to raise
funds for further research, so they often reduce
their experiments to a series of graphs or statements
in an article (and build their argument in
association with other claims being made by
similar scientists in different articles). Thus, scientific
knowledge is sutured not through objective
knowledge practices but a subtle process of
indoctrination through literature. The structure of
this network gives rise to the factual status of any
given claim, rather than any “objective” notion
of truth. For Latour (1987) and Callon (1986),
when you connect enough actors and networks
to a claim, it becomes a fact because such statements
appear to be supported by all of the actors
(or the weight of the network) behind it. The
same is true for the technology: link an invention,
like the microcomputer, to so many different
projects, goals, actors, and businesses, and its
importance becomes a “fact” rather than merely
one among many possible historical outcomes.
Thus, ANT proposes that the power of scientific
knowledge is nothing more than the sheer power
of the scientific network.
Three components of ANT – the socially
constructed nature of technology, the process of
enrollment, and the creation of socio-technic networks
– help frame and conceptualize the current
status of solar panels, or photovoltaic (PV)
sources of energy, in the electric utility industry.
Even though PV systems are relatively old (the
photovoltaic effect was first discovered by
French physicist Antoine-César Becquerel in
1839), cost effective, decentralized, modular,
clean, and offer the ability to be implemented
into architecture, they are not widely used to
generate and produce electricity (Hirsh 1999;
Abate 2004; Clayton 2004; Distributed Power
News 2001; Renaud 2004; Sheer 2001). ANT is
insightful for explaining why, despite these benefits,
more consumers and utility companies do
not rely on PV systems for electricity.
Put simply, the largest impediment to solar
energy remains the traditional socio-technic network
already established by electric utilities.
Solar panels threaten the traditional way of generating
power through large, centralized power
plants because they are small and decentralized.
Technically, it is more reasonable to build systems
in disaggregated and distributed manner
which reduces overall stress on the grid, insulates
the grid from interruptions, and provides better
quality power (Lovins 2002). Politically, the use
of smaller on-site systems of electricity accommodate
local needs more effectively and are
more easily managed, accessible, and comprehensible
(Winner 1986; 32-33). Yet, since the
choice between conventional and renewable energy
systems is really about the power of two competing
sociotechnical networks (one consisting
on the rapid expansion of centralized fossil fuel
energy facilities, the other on decentralized and
efficient renewable technologies), traditional
systems have greater momentum. Even though
solar panels offer many benefits – virtually
renewable sources of energy, diversity, flexibility,
advantages of scale, and the provision of better
quality energy – ANT suggests that these benefits
will never be realized as long as the goals,
actors, and influence of the network behind fossil
fuels is greater than that behind solar panels.
From an ANT perspective, the network
predicated on fossil fuel extraction, the creation
of new coal and uranium mines, maintenance
of oil refineries, and American social attitudes
about consumption and efficiency remains more
established, understood, used, and accepted within
society. Such a path can be understood as having,
to borrow from Thomas Hughes (1983),
significant momentum (i.e., mass, velocity, and
direction involving many powerful industries,
politicians, and consumers). In contrast, newer
technologies such as photovoltaic systems have
not yet achieved the credibility of conventional
forms of energy production, making it illogical
for consumers to accept them.
Thus, ANT highlights that the reason PV
systems fail to gain widespread support is
because the network behind them constituted
by liberals, environmentalists, and local activists
isn’t large enough to offset the network created
by conservative policymakers, investors, and
utility operators. ANT suggests that the debate
over PV systems is not just about technology;
it is really a struggle involving persuasion and
enrollment. Viewed this way, the struggle over
PV systems is also a struggle over values, or
competing knowledge systems. ANT can be
noteworthy, then, for de-centering the technological
artifact as the object of inquiry and expanding
scholastic focus on “technology” to include
the vast social and cultural networks that sur-
10
Approach Primary Authors Central Thesis Key Concepts Contribution
Social Construction of Technology (SCOT
Technological Frame
Epistemic Culture
Actor Network Theory (ANT)
TheJournalofTechnologyStudies
round it, as well as focusing on the importance
of credibility, communication, and the illusion
of objectivity surrounding technological practices.
By focusing on the relational aspects
among engineers, inventors, analysts, politicians,
artifacts, manufacturing techniques, marketing
strategies, historical context, economics, and
social and cultural factors, ANT highlights that
technology emerges through a seamless web of
material objects and immaterial epistemologies.
This situates energy technologies as neither
inevitable nor static. Instead, energy technologies
are the product of a complex power play
between divergent actors and their interests.
Conclusion
Using SCOT to investigate nuclear reactors
reveals how social values become embedded in
technological artifacts. Applying technological
frame to French arms manufacturing and
American National Missile Defense demonstrates
that large technological systems extend
across many different social groups. Considering
epistemic culture when tracing the history of
x-ray hair removal technology suggests that
knowledge, expertise, and technical practices
can combine to shape, sustain, and transform
relations of authority and the institution of medical
policy. ANT highlights that solar panels
have meanings that are mediated and contingent
on communicative or persuasive efforts by proponents
and opponents enrolled in a large sociotechnic
network.
In addition to equipping scholars and educators
interested in technology with more
dynamic tools to assess its relationship with
society, these four tools are also important for
empowering activists and citizens concerned
with preserving their autonomy in a more technologically
sophisticated society. Concepts like
SCOT and ANT help refute the belief in the
technological determinism of technological artifacts.
They suggest that no technological system
is truly self-sustaining, and that there is hope in
dismantling even the most pervasive technological
systems (like the military industrial complex).
In addition, concepts like technological
frame and epistemic culture help identify the
different actors and interests involved in technology.
Such tools suggest who activists should
approach to mold sociotechnical change.
Similarly, such efforts help re-politicize the usually
technical discourse surrounding technology,
showing that it is neither objective nor neutral.
By identifying the relational aspects among people,
artifacts, and knowledge, SCOT and ANT
help show that there is no one person or institution
masterfully manipulating the course of military
technology. Instead, it is a complex amalgam
of political, social, economic, and technical
interests. Finally, because these approaches view
technology as part of a social system, the failure
and acceptance of certain technologies can
sometimes have nothing to do with technical
feasibility, and instead relate to contests over
values, power, and interests (Moy 2001;
MacKenzie 1993) (See Table 1).
11
Table 1. Summary of Four STS Methods and Case Studies
Wiebe Bijker, Donald
MacKenzie, Trevor
Pinch, and Thomas
Hughes
Wiebe Bijker
Karin Knorr-Cetina
Steve Woolgar, Bruno
Latour, and Michel
Callon
Technological artifacts
are socially constructed.
A single technological
artifact is seldom worked
on by only one group of
people.
The sciences produce
knowledge differently,
and are bound by disparate
epistemic communities
and practices.
Technical objects are
nodes in a network of
people and devices in
interlocking roles.
Interpretive flexibility,
heterogeneous
engineering
Relevant social groups
Knowledge machinery
Enrollment,
sociotechnical
networks
Reveals that both
social and technical
factors concurrently
shape technological
artifacts.
Helps reveal otherwise
concealed actors connected
to technological
systems.
Reveals that the way
practitioners think
about problems simultaneously
enables and
constrains their work.
Reveals that knowledge
and power can be
equally important in
why technologies succeed
and fail.
TheJournalofTechnologyStudies
Two conclusions can be drawn from such a
discussion. First, none of these theories need be
viewed as mutually exclusive. They share many
similarities, and can be used to complement
each other. Their cumulative power suggests that
the sociology of scientific knowledge, history of
science, and history of technology have much
to offer each other. ANT and epistemic culture
widen approaches to studying technology by
calling attention to systems of knowledge production,
discipline formation, and the relations
between actors and technological artifacts.
SCOT demonstrates that social values can
become constructed into technological systems,
and technological frame shows that different
social groups working on the same technology
employ distinct methods and techniques to
achieve differing goals.
Second, these theories highlight that the
categories we use to describe, understand, and
theorize technology should not be viewed as
monolithic, and should always be open to revision.
Thus, in the same way that neither social
nor technological determinism can fully explain
technology, the above theories will likely need
to be adapted, revised, and perhaps discarded as
our knowledge about science and technology
expands. The meaning of technology, because
it is intimately attached to social and cultural
interests, will continue to change. Policymakers
and analysts must recognize these changes, or
make visible the social threads weaving the
image of technology together, if they will devise
truly sustainable and dynamic approaches to
designing and understanding technology.
Mr. Benjamin K. Sovacool is a doctoral
candidate in the Department of Science and
Technology Studies at the Virginia Polytechnic
Institute & State University in Blacksburg,
Virginia.
Acknowledgment
The author is grateful to Dr. Richard F. Hirsh,
director of the Consortium on Energy
Restructuring, Dr. Daniel Breslau, Associate
Professor of Science and Technology Studies at
Virginia Tech, and Dr. Barbara Reeves, Assistant
Professor of Science and Technology Studies at
Virginia Tech, for helpful comments in revising
this manuscript. Katie Paul, a research assistant
studying biochemistry and environmental planning
at Virginia Tech, also provided excellent
editorial remarks.
12
TheJournalofTechnologyStudies
13
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