Globalization and vulnerability: Challenges and opportunities for SHOT around its fiftieth anniversary

Technology and Culture

Volumn 50, Issue 3, 2009, Pages 600-612

  Bijker, Wiebe E ^a  

^a MAASTRICHT UNIVERSITY   (Netherlands)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 73449148374     PISSN: 0040165X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/tech.0.0313     Document Type: Article

References (50)

1. See Tom Hughes's essay, "SHOT Founders' Themes and Problems," in this issue of Technology and Culture, 594-99.
2. For links to publications, relevant institutions in the history of technology, and other societies, see SHOT's website at http://www. historyoftechnology.org (accessed 29 April 2009).
3. Brooke Hindle, in his foreword to John M. Staudenmaier, S.J., Technology's Storytellers: Reweaving the Human Fabric (Cambridge, Mass., 1985), xi.
4. Staudenmaier, Technology's Storytellers.
5. These are my terms. In parentheses I have quoted Staudenmaier's terms from his fifth chapter, "Beyond Whig History."
6. See especially http://etc.technologyandculture.net (accessed 29 April 2009).
7. See the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, at http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals (accessed 29 April 2009).
8. I will not try to review the literature on globalization and will only mention a few references by historians of technology (broadly conceived). For a general discussion of the relevance of using a history of technology perspective to analyze the phenomenon of globalization, see chapter 8 in Thomas J. Misa, Leonardo to the Internet: Technology and Culture from the Renaissance to the Present (Baltimore, 2004).
9. On the economics and politics of globalization by the Dutch around 1900, see Joseph N. F.M. à Campo, Engines of Empire: Steamshipping and State Formation in Colonial Indonesia (Hilversum, the Netherlands, 2002).
10. On the role of financial and economic models in shaping (global) markets, see Donald A.MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial Models Shape Markets (Cambridge, Mass., 2006).
11. For a broad introduction to the relations between technology and music, see Hans-Joachim Braun, ed., Music and Technology in the Twentieth Century (Baltimore, 2002).
12. See also Paul du Gay, ed., Doing Cultural Studies: The Story of the Sony Walkman (London, 1997).
13. See Janet Abbate, Inventing the Internet (Cambridge, Mass., 1999).
14. See, for example, the European history of technology project "Tensions of Europe" on the development of Europe at http://tensionsofeurope.eu (accessed 1 May 2009).
15. For a critical discussion, see Shiv Visvanathan, A Carnival for Science: Essays on Science, Technology, and Development (NewYork, 1997).
16. On the history of irrigation technologies in India, see Esha Shah, Social Designs: Tank Irrigation Technology and Agrarian Transformation in Karnataka, South India (New Delhi, 2003),
17. and Chitra Krishnan, Tank and Anicut Irrigation Systems: An Engineering Analysis (New Delhi, 2003).
18. Here, I draw on the work of Shambu C. Prasad, Exploring Gandhian Science: A Case-Study of the Khadi Movement (New Delhi, 2001). I also benefited much from discussions with Annapurna M., Seemanthini Niranjana, B. Syamasundari, Latha Tummuru, and Shambu Prasad.
19. Seemanthini Niranjana, Annapurna M., B. Syamasundari, and Latha Tummuru, Marketing Handlooms: Perspectives from Practice (Secunderabad, A.P., India, 2007), 7.
20. Prasad, Exploring Gandhian Science.
21. Shambu C. Prasad, "Suicide Deaths and the Quality of Indian Cotton: Perspectives from the History of Technology and the Khadi Movement," Economic and Political Weekly 34 (1999): 12-21, quote on 13.
22. See the 2006 electronic newsletter article by Surekha Sule, "Reviving the Cottonto-Cloth Chain," in India Together, at http://www.indiatogether.org (accessed 1May 2009).
23. See, for example, the work of the Vortex firm at http://www.vortexindia. co.in (accessed 1 May 2009).
24. This sounds easier than it is. It is imperative, Annapurna M. argues, not to fall into the trap of marketing handloom weaving as a form of welfare: this "weakens producers by eroding their self-esteem, and brings down their value in the market place." In addition to issues of design andmarketing, logistical problems related to ordering, stocking, and transportation are also nontrivial problems that can arise when accessing international markets. See Annapurna M., "Transitioning Markets, Transcending Consumption," Economic and Political Weekly 41 (2006): 3388-93.
25. This informal research program started to take shape after the events of 9/11 in an NSF-supported workshop organized by Rosalind Williams and Miriam Levin, with SHOT and the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S), at MIT in March 2002. See the special issue edited by Miriam Levin and Rosalind Williams, "Forum on Rethinking Technology in the Aftermath of September 11: Introduction,"History and Technology 19, no. 1 (2003): 29-83.
26. This may now sound like a truism to SHOT members, but it needed some explicit arguing in the past. See, for example, Wiebe E. Bijker and John Law, eds., Shaping Technology / Building Society: Studies in Sociotechnical Change (Cambridge, Mass., 1992), which builds on constructivist approaches to studying technology such as the Social Construction of Technology (SCOT) and actor-network theory (ANT);
27. see also Wiebe E. Bijker, Thomas P.Hughes, and T. J. Pinch, The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology (Cambridge, Mass., 1987).
28. Shah (n. 13 above). For a comparison of this case to other styles of water man-agement, including New Orleans and the Netherlands, see Wiebe E. Bijker, "Dikes and Dams, Thick with Politics," Isis 98 (2007): 109-23.
29. Wiebe E. Bijker, "American and Dutch Coastal Engineering: Differences in Risk Conception and Differences in Technological Culture," Social Studies of Science 37 (2007): 143-52
30. and Cornelis Disco, "Delta Blues," Technology and Culture 47 (April 2006): 341-48.
31. I deliberately use this oxymoronic phrase, "technological culture," to underscore the need to transcend the popular opposition between culture and technology.
32. See the classic text by Charles B. Perrow, Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies, with a New Afterword and a Postscript on the Y2K Problem (1984; reprint, Princeton, N.J., 1999).
33. On "creative destruction," see J. A. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (1942; reprint, New York, 1975).
34. John Law, "Ladbroke Grove, Or How to Think about Failing Systems," paper published by the Centre for Science Studies, Lancaster University, UK, available at http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/sociology/papers/law- ladbroke-grove-failing-systems.pdf (accessed 1 May 2009).
35. Benjamin Sims, "'The Day after the Hurricane': Infrastructure, Order, and the New Orleans Police Department's Response to Hurricane Katrina," Social Studies of Science 37 (2007): 111-18, quote on 115.
36. Jameson M. Wetmore, "Distributed Risks and Responsibilities: Flood Hazard Mitigation in New Orleans," Social Studies of Science 37 (2007): 119-26, quote on 123-24.
37. See Wiebe E. Bijker, "The Oosterschelde Storm Surge Barrier: A Test Case for Dutch Water Technology, Management, and Politics," Technology and Culture 43 (2002): 569-84.
38. In this balancing act, it is crucial to conceptualize the obduracy of technology in addition to its social constructedness; see Anique Hommels, Unbuilding Cities: Obduracy in Urban Sociotechnical Change (Cambridge, Mass., 2005).
39. Key texts in revisiting technological determinism include Thomas J. Misa, "How Machines Make History, and How Historians (and Others) Help Them to Do So," Science, Technology and Human Values 13 (1988): 308-31;
40. and Merritt Roe Smith and Leo Marx, eds., Does Technology Drive History? The Dilemma of Technological Determinism (Cambridge, Mass., 1995).
41. U.S. Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET), "Criteria for Accrediting Engineering Programs," available at http://www.abet.org/Linked%20Documents-UPDATE/Criteria%20and%20PP/ E001%2008-09%20EAC%20Criteria%2012-04-07.pdf (accessed 1 May 2009).
42. See, for example, the project "Technology Assessment in Europe: Between Method and Impact" (TAMI), at http://www.rathenau.nl (accessed 1May 2009).
43. See also Arie Rip, Thomas J. Misa, and Johan Schot, Managing Technology in Society: The Approach of Constructive Technology Assessment (London, 1995).
44. Gezondheidsraad (Health Council of the Netherlands), "Health Significance of Nanotechnologies,"The Hague, 2006, available at http://www.gr.nl (accessed 1May 2009).
45. Wiebe E. Bijker and Ben Peperkamp, Geëngageerde geesteswetenschappen: Perspectieven op cultuurveranderingen in een digitaliserend tijdperk (The Hague, 2002).
46. Some of the argument is also made in Wiebe E. Bijker, "Engaging Humanities: Problems of the Information Society Not to Be Left to Engineers," in Technik Welt Kultur: Technische Zivilisation und kulturelle Identitäten im Zeitalter der Globalisierung, ed. Karl R. Kegler and Max Kerner (Köln, 2003), 103-39.
47. Michael Gibbons et al., The New Production of Knowledge: The Dynamics of Science and Research in Contemporary Societies (London, 1994);
48. Helga Nowotny, Peter Scott, and Michael Gibbons, Re-thinking Science: Knowledge and the Public in an Age of Uncertainty (Cambridge, 2001).
49. S. O. Funtowicz and J. R. Ravetz, "Science for the Post-normal Age," Futures 25 (1993): 739-55;
50. Ulrich Beck, Risikogesellschaft: Auf dem Weg in eine andere Moderne (Frankfurt am Main, 1986).