This document contains 5.500 words summarizing the obligated readings and lecture notes for the course Technology and Social Order as it was taught as part of the first year of the Master Philosophy of Science, Technology and Society in 2020/2021.
Inhoudsopgave
Week 1...............................................................................................................................2
Leo Marx – Technology: The Emergence of a Hazardous Concept.................................................2
Week 2: Artefacts...............................................................................................................3
Bernward Joerges – Do Politics Have Artefacts?............................................................................3
Rachel Weber – Manufacturing Gender in Commercial and Military Cockpit Design.....................4
Week 3: Socio-technical Systems.........................................................................................5
Kemp, Schot and Hoogma – Regime Shifts to Sustainability Through Processes of Niche
Formation: The Approach of Strategic Niche Management...........................................................5
Frank Geels - Co-evolution of technology and society: The transition in water supply and
personal hygiene in the Netherlands (1850–1930)—a case study in multi-level perspective.........6
Week 4: Social Practices......................................................................................................9
Hand, Shove and Southerton – Explaining Showering: a Discussion of the Material, Conventional,
and Temporal Dimensions of Practice...........................................................................................9
Shove, Watson & Spurling – Conceptualizing connections: Energy demand, infrastructures and
social practices............................................................................................................................11
Week 5.............................................................................................................................12
Steven J. Jackson – Rethinking Repair.........................................................................................12
Brian Larkin – The Politics and Poetics of Infrastructures............................................................13
Week 6.............................................................................................................................14
Thomas Misa & Johan Schot – Inventing Europe: Technology and the hidden integration of
Europe.........................................................................................................................................14
, Week 1
Leo Marx – Technology: The Emergence of a Hazardous Concept
People learn quite a lot about the history of technology in school, like about famous inventors and
inventions. However, only when talking about recent decades, the word technology is actually used.
Technology was first only used to describe a field of study, not objects themselves. That a certain
concept is starting to be used, also says a lot about society. A word was missing to describe certain
developments. ‘Machinery’ was not suitable enough, since the idea of mechanic arts changed, and
machinery developed materially.
Ideologically, a new respect arose for the power of innovations in the 1840s. A big part of
human life was altered by innovations like the steam engine and electricity. These changes were seen
by many important figures as means towards social and political ends like just, peaceful societies
based on consent of the governed. Innovation was seen as a way towards progress and prosperity for
all. Merely seeing a powerful machine like a steam locomotive made us feel like progress is present,
Mill argued. Other people, like Thoreau, thought these views were symptoms of moral negligence
and political regression.
Materialistically/substantively, mechanical arts changed from more single, free-standing
devices to largescale complex systems like railroads and the electrical system. The tangible, single
mechanical component, like the steam locomotive, ‘constitutes a relatively small but crucially
definitive part of the whole’. There is an entire sociotechnical system surrounding railroads. These
technologies were increasingly built by people with great theoretical knowledge. Only in the
beginning of the 20th century, the word technology became more consequently used. People became
excited of instrumental rationality as the ‘end of ideology’.
People needed a word for a new form of human power with far greater efficacy and scope
than previously ascribed to mechanic arts. Mechanic arts was more about low-skilled, pragmatic,
small-scale work, not sufficient for large-scale, complex technological systems. Something being
technological is still mainly about something material that is artifactually made by men, but this idea
can be ambiguous and misleading, like Heidegger says with ‘the essence of technology is by no
means anything technological’. It can be related to capitalism and the economy, and technology also
encompasses bureaucratic and ideological components. The entire sociotechnical system is
encompassed by the word technology.
The word ‘technology’ has a hazardous character, because it is so unspecified. We shouldn’t
just look at technical objects, since that distracts us from the role humans and relations between
humans play in this field. Thereby technology seems to become objective, while it isn’t. We shouldn’t
say a certain technology caused changes in society, but recognize the human (socioeconomic and
political) relations responsible for social changes. Technology doesn’t determine society, it doesn’t
have agency.
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