TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 177 one context, recombinant DNA research and development, will be badly misconstrued if it is seen as nothing more than a risk ques tion in another emerging context—public policy on genetic engineer ing” (p. 153). The previously unpublished chapters are the weakest. In one of them, a discussion of values, the reader begins to antici pate, or hope for, a synthesis of all that has gone before, but a synthe sis is not provided. Although they do not constitute an integrated whole, I enthusiasti cally recommend these essays on a variety of contemporary technopolitical issues. William McGucken Dr. McGucken, professor of history at the University of Akron, is the author of Sci entists, Society, and State: The Social Relations of the Science Movement in Great Britain, 1931—1947 (1984). Currently he is preparing a book tentatively titled “Fashioning an Acceptable Technology: Biodegradable Synthetic Detergents in the United States.” Sons of the Machine: Case Studies of Social Change in the Workplace. By Charles H. Savage, Jr., and George F. F. Lombard. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1986. Pp. xvi+313; illustrations, tables, notes, glossary, appendixes, bibliography, index. $25.00. Since mid-century, studies of industrial behavior in Third World nations have employed numerous models in developing intellectual criteria for useful study and analysis. In publishing Charles Sav age’s observations on industry and management in Colombia dur ing the early 1960s, his former mentor at Harvard Business School, George F. F. Lombard, has contributed a meaningful, though some what incomplete, chapter in these studies of modern industrial devel opment. In Sons of the Machine: Case Studies of Social Change in the Work place, Lombard presents a summary of Savage’s research conducted in three separate factories. Foremost in Savage’s mind was the test ing of Frederick Taylor’s premise that managerial production con trol provided the heartbeat of sound, healthy industrial relations. One of the primary themes of the study prepared by Savage and ex panded on by Lombard is that the workplace is a functional social, not merely economic, entity. Thus, timely production quotas and op timum labor-management relations are usually beyond supervisory control in that they stem from the unique social and personal work ing relations among laborers. In amplifying this central point, Savage maintains that workers erect and dismantle barriers between themselves and their supervi sors. While examining pottery works at Santuario and La Blanca and a tailoring factory in Medellin, Savage concluded that indus trial productivity and efficiency fundamentally depended on the intri cate social and working relationships of craftspeople involved. 178 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Managerial tendencies to subvert or ignore these relationships re sulted in alienation, production decline, mistrust, and corporate dis satisfaction. This study also asserts that industrial changes often occur in rapid bursts, rather than along evolutionary lines. The author’s findings at the small pottery plants confirmed this notion. However, since comparative data do not hold up in connection with the third site—Medellin—it appears that this idea requires more intense and protracted testing. The limited efficacy of the models and testing mechanisms also fails to support the final important thesis in Savage’s study—that changes in the workplace affect significant changes in the surround ing community. Again, as in the concept of rapid change, this study offers definite tendencies without sufficient comparative and statis tical treatment. Though somewhat different, La Blanca and Santuario were both small industrial village operations, and even when presented against the backdrop of nearby Medellin fail in pre senting a convincing model for a relatively revolutionary thesis on work and management. Moreover, Lombard’s summary attempt at placing these ideas into a more contemporary context is disappointing. For example, on the question of quick versus evolutionary change, Lombard of fers a two-page synopsis of paleobiological research in the 1970s as a challenge to the uniformitarians’ ideas on fossil records. Without constructing a viable bridge connecting paleobiology and 20thcentury industrial sociology, he merely concludes this brief discus sion by stating that: “Savage’s descriptions of the process of change in the structure of work groups suggest analagous patterns.” Such an assertion, if not alone worthy of book...