Wiebe E. Bijker, Thomas P. Hughes, Trevor Pinch (eds). The Social Construction of Technological Systems. New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology. Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press: Cambridge (Massachusetts), London (England). 1999.
“The impact of technology on society is clear and unmistakable. The influence of society on technology is more subtle. The 13 essays in this book draw on a wide array of case studies from cooking stoves to missile systems, from 15thÂcentury Portugal to today’s AI labs – to outline an original research program based on a synthesis of ideas from the social studies of science and the history of technology. Together they affirm the need for a study of technology that gives equal weight to technical, social, economic, and political questions.”
Table of Contents
Introduction
1. Trevor Pinch and Wiebe E. Bijker.The Social Construction of Facts and Artifacts. Or How the Sociology of Science and the Sociology of Technology Might Benefit Each Other
2. Thomas P. Hughes. The Evolution of Large Technological Systems
3. Michel Callon. Society in the Making The Study of Technology as a Tool for Sociological Analysis
4. John Law. Technology and Heterogeneous Engineering The Case of Portuguese Expansion
5. Henk van den Belt and Arie Rip. The Nelson-Winter-Dosi Model and Synthetic Dye Chemistry
6. Wiebe E. Bijker. The Social Construction of Bakelite Toward a Theory of Invention
7. Donald MacKenzie. Missile AccuracyA Case of Study in the Social Processes of Technological Change
8. Edward W. Constant. The Social Locus of Technological Practice Community, System, or Organization, III
9. Henk J.H.W. Bodewitz, Henk Buurma and Gerard H. de Vries. Regulatory Science and the Social Management of Trust in Medicine
10. Ruth Schwartz Cowan. The Consumption Junction. A Proposal for Research Strategies in the Sociology of Technology
11. Edward Yoxen. Seeing with SoundA Study of the Development of Medical Images
12. Steve Woolgar. Reconstructing Man and MachineA Note on Sociological Critiques of Cognitivism.
13. Harry M. Collins. Expert Systems and the Science of Knowledge
About the Editors
Wiebe E. Bijker is Professor of Technology & Society at the University of Maastricht.
Thomas P. Hughes is Professor of the History and Sociology of Science at the University of Pennsylvania.
Trevor Pinch is Professor of Science and Technology Studies and Professor of Sociology at Cornell University. He is the coeditor of How Users Matter: The Co-Construction of Users and Technology (MIT Press, 2003) and the coauthor of Analog Days: The Invention and Impact of the Moog Synthesizer and other books.
