TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 391 Divided. We Stand has many strengths. Schwarz and Thompson provide a complex analysis in a clear, direct, understandable way. The book is written with style and wit; case studies illuminate arguments and help persuade the reader. I was convinced by their critique of current technology assessment, by their redefinition of technology as politically embedded from its inception, and by their argument for an alternative approach. My concern, however, is with the effectiveness of their particular approach. Schwarz and Thompson acknowledge that policy actors do not have equal access to resources, and they mention the “all-too-common” situation of technology assessment being dominated by one perspec tive. They would like to make sure that “our institutional procedures cannot be captured by just one cultural bias” (p. 147), and thus they are concerned about how to ensure greater equality. They do not, however, adequately address how the absence of such equality may ultimately undermine their reorientation of technology assessment. They pin their hopes on cultural theory since it allows us to under stand and incorporate existing political variety. Cultural theory may well allow this theoretically, but to hope that it will also influence not only technology assessment but technological development ignores or at least minimizes how inequality and differences in political power ensure that certain perspectives dominate. It is not for lack of information about alternative viewpoints that some paths are chosen and others avoided. Schwarz and Thompson note, for example, that nuclear power has been dominated by a hierarchical approach, and that it may have assumed very different forms if the egalitarians had a voice in its design and development. Well, yes, but why didn’t they? Would pointed knowledge of the other three cultural biases have done the trick? It strikes me that what we need is not more knowledge or understanding of diversity but more equality. Schwarz and Thomp son claim that all the biases must have access to the design process or else “it is extremely unlikely that the technology will be steered along a viable path” (p. 147). Given existing inequality, equal access seems more a struggle than a probability. Eileen Leonard Dr. Leonard, professor of sociology at Vassar College, is currently working on a manuscript on women and new technology. Technologies and Society: The Shaping of People and Things. By Ron Westrum. Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1991. Pp. xix + 394; notes, index. Paper. Ron Westrum has written an excellent textbook on the sociology of technology intended for courses in science, technology, and society (STS) programs. Technologies and Society is the first textbook that 392 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE explicitly combines the “social shaping” approaches inspired by the sociology of knowledge with the social impact studies that formerly dominated the sociology of technology. Westrum relies on an impres sive array of sources, ranging beyond the scholarly literature to include newspaper articles, popular books on technology, interviews with inventors, and Westrum’s own experience as a consultant to large corporations. For the historian, this book is especially valuable as an introduction to recent social-scientific literature on technology. Unlike most textbooks, Technologies and Society is richly footnoted, which greatly increases its value to scholars. Historians may feel a bit discomfited at Westrum’s somewhat uncritical use of historical sources, but this is not a textbook in the history of technology. Westrum uses history to illustrate principles in the sociology of technology; even if specific examples are arguable, the principles are generally valid. The book has four major sections. The first section, theory, surveys the approaches to technology of Marx, William Ogburn and his associates, and the recent European approaches that have emerged from the sociology of science. The second section examines the creators of technology—inventors, designers, and sponsors. The third and most original section deals with technology from the user’s perspective, dealing with the issue of skill, the modification of devices by users, technological accidents, and some of the social-psychological effects of technology. The final section focuses on the social control of technology and technology assessment, largely from an ethical per spective. As one would expect from a textbook in a diverse and rapidly changing field, this book...
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Feb 12, 2005
A.J Dickenson + 1
Open Access