WP9
Inventions, their social effects and modifications of inventions' functions made by society
Key partner: ECIS
Technologies often acquire meanings which transcends their direct function or ordinary use in society. In some cases, the icon can become so powerful as to fully absorb the 'spirit' of a certain historical epochs (Klingender, 1947; Marsden and Smith, 2005). On the other hand, there are technologies that, despite their critical social function, achieve an uneven development and remain almost invisible in a broader cultural perspective. This appears to be particularly the case in the 'feminine' spheres of household and personal technologies, which, in part, reflects the gendered and racial construction of the inventor as a white male. Accordingly, a full fledged understanding of the process of technological change and of its social effects requires taking explicitly into account the cultural dimension of the process of technological evolution (Basalla, 1988). Recently, a growing number of studies, dealing with particular technologies and inventions, have considered the process thorough which technologies acquire broader social and cultural significance. However, we are still short of a systematic (and comparative) assessment of this phenomenon (Staudenmaier, 2002). This work package aims at providing a comprehensive perspective on the relationship between the way technologies develop (i.e. evenly or unevenly) and the broader cultural landscape. This is done by examining the process of representation/construction of technologies and inventions in a wide range of historical sources. The sources are chosen with the aim of providing a comparative perspective of the impact that different technologies exert on the cultural ambience.
Ongoing research on the cultural representation of technologies tends to adopt a 'case studies' approach. Although, it is possible to compare the insights provided by these studies within a view aimed at distilling general interpretive hypotheses, it would seem desirable to examine systematically the representation of different technologies in a coherent set of historical sources. One of the merits of this approach is that it allows tackling this research question by employing a combination of both quantitative and qualitative tools of analysis. The attempt of implementing a quantitative perspective represents a remarkably novel feature of this research project, as the existing literature so far has been mainly qualitative.
The first sub-objective of this WP aims at providing a critical assessment of the existing literature on the cultural dimensions of technological change. This represents a necessary preliminary step as the existing literature on the topic is highly fragmented and scattered across a variety of disciplines (history of technology, sociology of technology, economics, gender studies, etc.). On the basis of this critical survey of the literature, it will be possible to formulate a number of hypotheses concerning the process of representation/construction of technologies in the cultural landscape and, in particular, of the factors accounting for the varying degrees of awareness and visibility of different technologies.
The second sub-objective of the WP will consist in a systematic appraisal of the representation of technologies in a variety of historical sources. A particularly interesting source, which is highly valuable by virtue of its detailed coverage, is represented by authoritative works of collective biography such as the Dictionary of National Biography and the Dictionary of American Biography. By looking systematically at the representation of technologies and inventors in these works, it is possible to derive important insights on the process through which technologies become carriers of specific cultural meanings and values. This is confirmed by recent research contributions which have studied the representation of inventors in works in collective biography for specific historical periods (Khan, 2005; MacLeod and Nuvolari, 2005). The aim of this part of the project is precisely to expand on this research, by enlarging the geographical scope and the time frame of the analysis. Another set of sources that are of particular interest in this context are those journals and publications that are at the interface between the inner world of science and technology and the wider cultural ambience (journals such as Scientific American, New Scientists, etc.). This is a type of source that has been so far very little investigated in the science and technology studies literature. This research project will provide an appraisal of the way the cultural significance of technologies is, implicitly and explicitly, elaborated in these sources.The comparative perspective will be implemented also by the construction of a proper set of bibliometric indicators which will reveal the relative "visibility" allocated to different technologies.
The third sub-objective of this WP is to examine the purposeful construction of cultural spaces such as exhibitions and museums aimed at "celebrating" particular technological undertakings. This will be done by means of detailed historical studies of the processes leading to the creation of these spaces. Recent research on this topic has provided interesting insights on how the cultural meanings of technologies are constructed and further elaborated by different social actors (MacLeod, 2006). We propose to expand on these recent studies, adopting a broad comparative perspective which will consider the creation of the most significant museums of science and technology in Europe.
Last updated April 21, 2009
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