Description
| Product ID: | 9780335199136 |
| Product Form: | Paperback / softback |
| Country of Manufacture: | GB |
| Title: | The Social Shaping of Technology |
| Authors: | Author: Donald MacKenzie, Judy Wajcman |
| Page Count: | 480 |
| Subjects: | Sociolinguistics, Sociolinguistics, Sociology and anthropology, Impact of science and technology on society, Sociology & anthropology, Impact of science & technology on society |
| Description: | Select Guide Rating Demonstrates that technology is affected at a fundamental level by the social context in which it develops. This book features arguments about the relation of technology to society. It examines different types of technology and argues that social scientists have tended to ignore the question of what shapes technology? Reviews of the 1st Edition: "....This book is a welcome addition to the sociology of technology, a field whose importance is increasingly recognised." - Sociology "....sets a remarkably high standard in breadth of coverage, in scholarship, and in readability and can be recommended to the general reader and to the specialist alike." - Science and Society "....This remarkably readable and well-edited anthology focuses, in a wide variety of concrete examples, not on the impacts of technologies on societies but in the reverse: how different social contexts shaped the emergence of particular technologies." - Technology and Culture
The book draws on authors from Karl Marx to Cynthia Cockburn to show that production technology is shaped by social relations in the workplace. It moves on to the technologies of the household and biological reproduction, which are topics that male-dominated social science has tended to ignore or trivialise - though these are actually of crucial significance where powerful shaping factors are at work, normally unnoticed. The final section asks what shapes the most frightening technology of all - the technology of weaponry, especially nuclear weapons. The editors argue that social scientists have devoted disproportionate attention to the effects of technology on society, and tended to ignore the more fundamental question of what shapes technology in the first place. They have drawn both on established work in the history and sociology of technology and on newer feminist perspectives to show just how important and fruitful it is to try to answer that deeper question. The first edition of this reader, published in 1985, had a considerable influence on thinking about the relationship between technology and society. This second edition has been thoroughly revised and expanded to take into account new research and the emergence of new theoretical perspectives. |
| Imprint Name: | Open University Press |
| Publisher Name: | Open University Press |
| Country of Publication: | GB |
| Publishing Date: | 1999-06-16 |
