Confl icting Threads. Technological Innovation and the Socio-technical Ensemble of Weaving

Abstract

This paper refers to two new approaches to conceive the relationship between technological innovation and society as one of anchoring: The TASC concept (Technologies as Anchors for Societal Conflicts) aims to show how societal conflicts are anchored in technologies that, as such, are not responsible for the conflict. The ‘Anchoring Innovation’ research program of the Dutch Research School in Classical Studies (OIKOS) aims to explain how technological in- novations were anchored in ancient society. Our paper trials these concepts along the threads that connect the social and the technical in the weaving of contemporary India and archaic Greece. The first part of the paper examines the Indian government’s efforts to provide technological upgradation to a community of weavers who insist on their loin loom that is embedded in their local ecology, making them appear backward and ignorant of innovation. In the second part, we examine how innovation in ancient Greece was anchored in the socially ubiquitous technology of weaving. In both cases, the social turns out to be an essential part of (the technology of) weaving. Conflicts arise where technology claims to be ahead of a society that must constantly adapt to it.