Table Of ContentThe Social Construction of Technological Systems
The Social Construction of Technological Systems
New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology
anniversary edition
edited by Wiebe E. Bijker, Thomas P. Hughes, and Trevor Pinch
foreword by Deborah G. Douglas
The MIT Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
© 2 012 M assachusetts Institute of Technology
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The social construction of technological systems : new directions in the sociology
and history of technology / edited by Wiebe E. Bijker, Thomas P. Hughes, and
Trevor Pinch; foreword by Deborah G. Douglas. — Anniversary ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-262-51760-7 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Technology — Sociological aspects — Congresses. I. Bijker, Wiebe E. II. Hughes,
Thomas Parke. III. Pinch, T. J. (Trevor J.)
T14.5.S6375 2012
303.48 ′ 3 — dc23
2011042098
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Foreword vii
Deborah G. Douglas
Preface to the Anniversary Edition xi
Acknowledgments (preface from original edition) xxxv
General Introduction (from original edition) xxxix
I Common Themes in Sociological and Historical Studies of
Technology 1
Introduction 3
The Social Construction of Facts and Artifacts: Or How the Sociology of
Science and the Sociology of Technology Might Benefit Each Other 11
Trevor J. Pinch and Wiebe E. Bijker
The Evolution of Large Technological Systems 45
Thomas P. Hughes
Society in the Making: The Study of Technology as a Tool for Sociological
Analysis 77
Michel Callon
II Simplifying the Complexity 99
Introduction 101
Technology and Heterogeneous Engineering: The Case of Portuguese
Expansion 105
John Law
The Nelson-Winter-Dosi Model and Synthetic Dye Chemistry 129
Henk van den Belt and Arie Rip
vi Contents
The Social Construction of Bakelite: Toward a Theory of Invention 155
Wiebe E. Bijker
III Strategic Research Sites 183
Introduction 185
Missile Accuracy: A Case Study in the Social Processes of Technological
Change 189
Donald MacKenzie
The Social Locus of Technological Practice: Community, System, or
Organization? 217
Edward W. Constant II
Regulatory Science and the Social Management of Trust in Medicine 237
Henk J. H. W. Bodewitz, Henk Buurma, and Gerard H. de Vries
The Consumption Junction: A Proposal for Research Strategies in the
Sociology of Technology 253
Ruth Schwartz Cowan
Seeing with Sound: A Study of the Development of Medical Images 273
Edward Yoxen
IV Technology and Beyond 297
Introduction 299
Reconstructing Man and Machine: A Note on Sociological Critiques of
Cognitivism 303
Steve Woolgar
Expert Systems and the Science of Knowledge 321
H. M. Collins
References 341
Contributors 371
Name Index 375
Subject Index 385
Foreword
Deborah G. Douglas
The ideas of this book are everywhere. Collectively, the authors of these
essays have captured the most ancient and most modern notions of history
and the telling of the story of technology. It is, quite simply, a treasure.
However, every author, every publisher when contemplating a reprint has
a fundamental concern: is this book now a relic or does it still have rele-
vance and the capacity to shape a discipline? By analogy, I found myself
thinking about a quarter-century-old Boston road map, which I recently
discovered in my car ’ s glove compartment. It was fascinating as a historical
document about the city I have called home off-and-on since 1973, but it
is no longer a good guide to the current terrain. For sentimental reasons,
I was thrilled that this book would remain in print and accessible, but I
wondered, how would new readers consider this volume?
This book was astonishing when it was first published. “ Combustible, ”
“ constructive, ” “ catalytic, ” and “ creative ” were the alliterative quartet of
adjectives that I wrote down in my seminar notes in the fall of 1987. The
book was hot off the press when Professor Arnold Thackray assigned it to
all incoming graduate students in the introductory seminar of the History
and Sociology of Science department at the University of Pennsylvania.
Some of our older classmates had read drafts of one or two of these essays
or had heard Professor Tom Hughes describe the 1984 workshop at the
University of Twente, but our class was the first to perceive the sociology
of technology not as a provisional idea but rather as received knowledge.
Within weeks we cracked the binding of our respective copies as we con-
sidered — “ discussed ” and “ argued ” are more accurate ways of putting
Deborah G. Douglas is the curator of science and technology at the MIT Museum.
A specialist in aerospace history, Douglas is the author of A merican Women and Flight
since 1940 and has curated more than two dozen exhibitions on a wide variety of
science and technology topics.
viii Foreword
it — the ideas herein. The phrase “ shaped and shaped by ” quickly became
part of our vernacular and identity as scholars.
Not everyone has been quite as enamored by the social construction of
technology as my Penn cohorts. It is, after all, a bold thing to lay claim to
a new discipline, so it is important to acknowledge that this book proved
as irritating to some as it was exhilarating to others. As a young and impres-
sionable scholar, I read the book ’ s introduction as a descriptive (and excit-
ing!) account of scholarly practice. For me, the thirteen essays were not,
as some have since implied, dogmatic treatises but rather were like accounts
of the various ascents up a mountain. Each offered a new insight, a
pathway that enabled one to get to a place with a new and meaningful
view of an important historical topic.
As a scholar at the midpoint of my academic career, I now have a much
deeper appreciation of the fact that those who commit themselves profes-
sionally to the study of technology revel in the field ’ s interdisciplinary
qualities and limited licensure for practice. There is great freedom in het-
erogeneity. So looking at the book today, it is more audacious than I had
originally thought. It is one thing to announce that there is such a field
of inquiry as the “ sociology of technology” and quite another to assert a
formal method of inquiry. Since this book ’ s original publication, some of
its contributors have become forceful and articulate advocates for the
latter, and I see now that the intellectual agenda of what is now called the
SCOT Program is unambiguous.
The source of all epistemic power is based in constraint. All models, all
methods of analysis, and all belief systems, no matter the duration of the
scholar ’ s embrace, demand the acceptance of a particular structural frame-
work to the exclusion of all other alternatives. For there to be t echnology ,
one has to be willing to offer at least a provisional definition; for there to
be a field of scholarly endeavor, there has to be a community willing to
identify with a common set of ideas. Whether or not one agrees with the
ideas of social construction, the certainty and power with which anyone
today can claim to being a scholar of technology owes much to this book.
It is possible to read this new edition merely as a kind of historiographi-
cal homage, but I believe it remains a work of opportunity. As contempo-
rary science and technology practitioners embrace interdisciplinarity as a
fundamental attribute, the essays in this book have gained a new vitality
and reward close study. Personally, the ideas in these essays have increased
in relevance and inform every aspect of my current job as curator of science
and technology for the MIT Museum from what to collect to how to inter-
pret those artifacts. Coincidentally, at this particular moment, this book
Foreword ix
has become an artifact, embedded in a larger display about the MIT Press
and its most influential titles that is part of our exhibition celebrating MIT ’ s
150th anniversary.
That exhibition is atypical for a science and technology museum because
its focus is not on explaining how things work but rather on why they
matter . Teaching others to frame the study of technology in this manner—
why things matter— is both the grand ambition and great achievement of
this book. To that end, it is worth observing that this book has shaped a
generation of scholars. Now with this reprint, we have the opportunity to
reflect on how their scholarship has shaped the ideas of the social construc-
tion of large technological systems and technology more broadly. It is still
a combustible, constructive, catalytic, and creative collection of ideas. Like
the editors and contributors, I look forward with enthusiasm to a renewed
and invigorating discourse.
