out it. As Bijker puts it, purely social relations are to be found only in the
imaginations of sociologists or among baboons. But equally, technology
could be almost nothing without history. He continues, and purely tech-
nical relations are to be found only in the wilder reaches of science fiction .
(Bijker 1995).
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104 Two Questions Concerning Technology
Box 9.2 Were electric automobiles doomed to fail?
David Kirsch s history of the electric vehicle illustrates both the difficulty and
power of deterministic thinking (Kirsch 2000). The standard history of the
internal combustion automobile portrays the electric vehicle as doomed to
failure. Compared with the gasoline-powered vehicle, the electric vehicle
suffered from lack of power and range, and so could never be the all-
purpose vehicle that consumers wanted. However, technological superiority
was ultimately located in the hearts and minds of engineers, consumers, and
drivers, not programmed inexorably into the chemical bonds of refined
petroleum (Kirsch 2000: 4).
Until about 1915 electric cars and trucks could compete with gasoline-
powered cars and trucks in a number of market niches. In many ways electric
cars and trucks were successors to horse-drawn carriages: Gasoline-powered
trucks were faster than electric trucks, but for the owners of delivery com-
panies speed was more likely to damage goods, to damage the vehicles them-
selves, and in any case was effectively limited in cities. Because they were
easy to restart, electric trucks were better suited to making deliveries than
early gasoline-powered trucks; this was especially true given the horse-paced
rhythm of existing delivery service, which demanded interaction between
driver and customer. Electric taxis were fashionable, comfortable, and quiet,
and for a time were successful in a number of American cities, so much so
that in 1900 the Electric Vehicle Company was the largest manufacturer of
automobiles in the United States.
As innovators, electric taxi services were burdened with early equipment.
Some happened to suffer from poor management, and were hit by expensive
strikes. They failed to participate in an integrated urban transit system that
linked rail and road, to create a niche they could dominate and in which
they could innovate. Meanwhile, Henry Ford s grand experiment in producing
low-cost vehicles on assembly lines helped to spell the end of the electric
vehicle. World War I created a huge demand for gasoline-powered vehicles,
better suited to war conditions than were electric ones. Increasing sub-
urbanization of US cities meant that electric cars and trucks were restricted
to a smaller and smaller segment of the market. Of course, that sub-
urbanization was helped along by the successes of gasoline, and thus the
demands of consumers not only shaped, but were shaped by automobile
technologies.
In 1900 the fate of the electric vehicle was not sealed. Does this failure
of technological determinism mean that electric cars could be rehabilitated?
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Two Questions Concerning Technology 105
According to Kirsch, writing in the late 1990s, that seemed unlikely. Material
and social contexts have been shaped around the internal combustion
engine, and it seemed unlikely that electric cars could compete directly with
gasoline cars in these new contexts. Yet, only a few years later, it appears
that there may be niches for electric cars, created by governments and indi-
viduals commitment to reducing greenhouse gases.
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10
Studying Laboratories
The Idea of the Laboratory Study
In the 1970s a number of researchers simultaneously began using a novel
approach to the study of science and technology: They went into labor-
atories in order to directly observe practical and day-to-day scientific work.
Most prominent among the new students of laboratories were Bruno
Latour (Latour and Woolgar 1986 [1979]), Karin Knorr Cetina (1981), Harry
Collins (1991 [1985]), Michael Lynch (1985), Sharon Traweek (1988), and
Michael Zenzen and Sal Restivo (1982). At the same time, June Goodfield
(1981) and Tracey Kidder (1981) published fictional ethnographies of science
and technology that fit well with the new genre of the laboratory ethno-
graphy. Laboratories are exemplary sites for STS because experimental work
is a central part of scientific activity, and experimental work is relatively
visible (though Lynch (1991) points out that much work in the laboratory
is not researchers may sit at microscopes for hours at a time).
Many of the first students of laboratories used their observations to
make philosophical arguments about the nature of scientific knowledge, but
framed their results anthropologically. In their well-known book Laboratory
Life, Latour and Woolgar announce their intention to treat the scientists
being studied as an alien tribe:
Since the turn of the century, scores of men and women have penetrated
deep forests, lived in hostile climates, and weathered hostility, boredom, and
disease in order to gather the remnants of so-called primitive societies. By
contrast to the frequency of these anthropological excursions, relatively few
attempts have been made to penetrate the intimacy of life among tribes which
are much nearer at hand. This is perhaps surprising in view of the reception
and importance attached to their product in modern civilised societies: we refer,
of course, to tribes of scientists and to their production of science. (Latour
and Woolgar 1986)
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Studying Laboratories 107
Treating scientists as alien gives analysts leave to see their practices as
unfamiliar, and hence to ask questions of them that would not normally
be asked. In line with the methodological tenets of the strong programme,
an anthropological approach opens up the study of scientific practices and
cultures.
The central question asked in the first round of laboratory studies was,
simply, how are facts made? That is, how can, work in the laboratory give
stability and strength to claims, so that they come to count as pieces of
knowledge? Laboratory studies framed their answers to this as rejections [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]