Managing Technology in Society: The Approach of Constructive Technology Assessment ed. by Arie Rip, et al

Abstract

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 813 Managing Technology in Society: The Approach of Constructive Technology Assessment. Edited by Arie Rip, Thomas J. Misa, andJohan Schot. London: Cassell, 1995. Pp. xii+361; figures, tables, notes, bibliog­ raphy, index. £37.50 (hardcover), £18.99 (paper). Based on papers presented at a workshop on constructive technol­ ogy assessment held at the University of Twente in 1991, the essays in this volume present a yeasty if uneven selection of perspectives and case studies on how different technologies have been managed in the past and may hopefully be managed better in the future. This is social construction of technology with a public service mission. As with older paradigms of technology assessment developed during the 1960s and 1970s, the “constructive technology assessment” ad­ vocated by the editors of this volume is motivated by a faith that it is both necessary and possible to influence technological change in ways that serve society as a whole. But unlike older paradigms, con­ structive technology assessment does not view its primary mission as one of anticipating positive and negative effects of new technology on society and devising appropriate policy responses. Older approaches to technology assessment, the editors assert, are based upon a mistaken understanding of technology as a kind of outside force unidirectionally “impacting” society. Constructive technology assessment, by contrast, attempts to systematically take into account the “coproduction of technology and its effects” and ways in which “the social effects of any technology depend crucially on the way impacts are actively sought or avoided by actors involved in the development of technology” (p. 3). The emphasis is less on prediction than on how the ongoing shaping of technology over time can be done better by broadening the range of actors involved, integrating promotional and regulatory activities, enhancing com­ munication and dialogue, and facilitating social learning in the face of inevitable uncertainty. The bulk of the volume is devoted to case studies of the social and political shaping of a range of technologies in Western Europe and the United States. In one of the best essays in the volume, Fred Steward presents a rich account of why safety concerns prompted abandonment of chemical additives in dairy but not in wheat prod­ ucts in Great Britain during the 1920s. Ulrik Jorgenson and Peter Karnoe consider the surprisingly long-lived and problematical rela­ tionships between wind power and decentralist “folkish” social vi­ sions in Denmark dating back to the 1890s. As part of a critique of the after-the-fact character of much medical technology assessment and regulation, Ellen B. Koch describes how idiosyncrasies of medi­ cal research funding in the United States during the 1950s shaped development of medical ultrasound technologies for years after in ways that had little to do with the efficacy of alternative approaches. Other essays consider roles played by social factors and moraljudg­ 814 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE ments in hindering development of contraceptive technologies, the potential of computer aided design and manufacture to be used as a tool in constructive technology assessment, and the construction of a waste disposal site in which uncertainty is acknowledged and provision made for retrieval of wastes. The volume also includes discussions of roles that different theo­ retical and disciplinary perspectives can play in doing constructive technology assessment. Brian Wynne, for example, advances cultural theory ofrisk and technology as a tool for rendering social processes “more explicit and more avowedly negotiated” (p. 28). In otherwise quite different essays, Michel Calion and Rod Coombs both describe points of intersection between models of social construction devel­ oped by sociologists and evolutionary economics approaches. From a different angle, Luc Soete criticizes static economic notions ofmar­ ket failure as applied to technology policy and calls instead for a focus on “dealing with and adjusting to change” (p. 46). Not yet a rigorously worked out method for managing technology, the editors assert, constructive technology assessment can best be viewed as “a paradigm still under construction” (p. 347). Itself an engagingly modest invitation for participation, this statement re­ flects a real strength of the approach to understanding and manag­ ing technology put forward here. An appreciation of variety, an openness to diverse approaches, and avoidance of premature...