Social Construction of Scientific and

technical realities
The chapter explores how scientific and technological developments are social constructs. It

starts with three assumptions, that science and technologies are social, active and humanly

mediated or not “natural”. In contrast with realism, that is defined as the intuition that the truth

depends on the external natural world, independent of its analysis. ​

Social constructionism states that the categories used in a theory are humanly imposed rather

than natural kind. Social construct exists if the knowledge of the construct imposes such

behaviour that enforces its existence or lack thereof, knowledge is commonly spread, and there is

a transmission of that knowledge. ​

From the example of Mendelian genetics it shows that scientific discoveries are social objects

because they are named retrospectively rather than being a clear cut event. Scientists are active in

this process as they perform actions in order to establish a fact.

Construction of things and phenomenon, suggests that the “object” that scientists study are often

non natural, in a laboratory objects are manipulated and and its reaction is analysed, this creates a

phenomena and in turns a new stable object for analysis that can be non natural. Technology can

give a new shape and form to old material, leaving nature behind.

On the other hand science and technology construct our material and social environment. For

instance city infrastructure can govern social relations and science can naturalise stereotypes. ​

How scientists and engineers construct accounts, models, and theories on the basis of data and

the models for transforming data into representation demonstrates the social construction of

theories. ​

Empiricists claim that since multiple theories can fit the same data, there's no point assuming that
one is true, while realists argue that the success of scientific methods is best explained by the

truth of background theories, here the role of local contingencies, tinkering and “established

practices” plays a role in determining the theories.​

Heterogeneous construction involves building of artifacts and environments. Technologists have

the task to build a stable field in which both of these can function. It's the co construction of

artifact/science and material and social world. ​

The chapter later discusses the construction of kind, whether natural kinds are part of the human

classification. The realist view says that the kinds are real features of the world, where STS often

leans toward nominalism viewing the categories science uses to classify the world as human

impositions. The most radical form, neo-Kantian constructivism, suggests that when scientists

agree on a claim, they literally "make" it true. This explains the construction of nature, because

we can not analyse the natures of things without their representation and there’s a large amount

of contingency in our knowledge before it stabilizes. ​

This part deals with the question whether technologies are applied science? The linear view that

sees innovation of new technical artifacts as a direct result of scientific advancement dominated

the science policy sphere. However, the accounts of historians and theorists of science shows that

science has a little role to play in technological advancements. There are technical knowledge

traditions that are independent of science. This knowledge tradition is often downplayed, the

author analyses the studies on technological developments to demonstrate that it's more of a case

that science actually depends more on the tools provided by engineers than the opposite.

Engineers often operate within their own paradigms. These technological knowledge traditions

are deeply tied to social networks and material circumstances, often involving practical and tacit

knowledge that must be passed through socialisation. ​

Some scholars in STS challenges the distinction between science and technology altogether,

these disciplinary boundaries often get blurry; scientists may act as inventors and visa versa. ​

The concept of “Basic science” is flexible and ambiguous, which serves as a function to draw

prestige and independence. However a pragmatist view suggests that science is less about

discovering what exists independently and more about what can be constructed or made to

happen, in the same ways technical advancements occur.

Part 2:

This part deals with the question Does Technology Drive History? This section discusses

technological determinism, the theory that material conditions and properties of available

technology determine social events. This perspective is illustrated by Marx's claim that the
"hand-mill gives you society with the feudal lord, and steam mill, society with the industrial

capitalist." In this way Robert Heilbroner's claims that different technologies necessitate specific

types of labor forces and schedules. This reveals the political nature of the artifacts author uses

the example how industrial automation reveals many choices made to empower and disempower

different key groups. Some argue that technologies are inherently compatible with certain

political arrangements, such as nuclear power requiring centralized policing. Furthermore,

artifacts like industrial automation can be intentionally designed to "deskill" workers and

disempower unions, while hybrid seeds can be designed to make farmers dependent on seed

companies.

However, many STS researchers challenge the idea that technologies have any "essential

features" or systematic effects. If a technology has no essence, it cannot independently determine

the structure of the social world. Technologies don't play a singular purpose, their effect depends

entirely on the human environment hence it can not have a singular, systematic impact. ​

The author introduces the framework of Social Construction of Technology (SCOT) with the

example of safety bicycle, the design of the new bicycle was not intrinsically superior, but it was

the result of negotiation with new riders. This leads to interpretive flexibility, which means that

the meaning and design of a technology are defined by the users and the problems they prioritize.

The users of technologies who were the early adopter tends to make substantial influence on the

development of technology.

To establish a determinate meaning of a technology it requires work, on one hand technology has

to cater to all users in terms of being “user friendly” on the other hand it can also be seen as

configuring its own user. The appearance of "autonomy" in a technology often stems from a lack

of knowledge regarding the human roles involved in its historical path. ​

how technology is used to manipulate social relations, such as labor and gender. However to

understand the economic shifts within a social framework, scholars use technological change as a

heuristic. This is called soft determinism. ​

In STS studies technological determinism is not completely rejected, Wiebe Bijker’s theory of

"sociotechnological ensembles" suggests that the social and technical are intertwined. He

introduces the "technological frame" that is a set of practices and infrastructure built around an

artifact to explain why systems like "automobility" appear so durable and deterministic.
 Do Artifacts Have Politics?
Winner situates the discussion of technology away from their contribution of efficiency and

productivity or environmental effect and situates it to how they can embody forms of power and

authoritarianism. Drawing of Lewis Mumford he identifies two major type of technologies in the

history. 1, Authoritarian (System centered and powerful but unstable) and 2, democratic (human

centric and durable). Taking examples from recent technologies, Denis Hayes claims that nuclear

energy leads towards authoritarianism and on the contrary solar power is a democratic and

durable alternative. “Boosters” of technology often claims that inventions like telephones, radio,

and television are democratizing and are forces of freedom and social justice. Winner emphasises

that its not the hardware alone but the social and economic systems in which these technologies

are embedded. This view is called social determination of technology, which serves as the

corrective to naive technological determinism.

Winner introduces his theory of "technological politics," which takes technical objects seriously

and identifies two ways artifacts contain political properties

1: Technical Arrangements as Forms of Order: Instances where the design or arrangement of a

system settles a community issue

2: Inherently Political Technologies: Systems that appear to require, or be strongly compatible

with, specific political relationships

Politics is defined here as the arrangements of power and authority in human associations, while

technology refers to modern practical artifice.

Author takes the example of Robert Moses’s low-hanging overpasses on Long Island. These

bridges were deliberately designed to be as low as nine feet to prevent buses from using the

parkways, effectively excluding low-income groups and racial minorities who relied on public

transit from accessing Jones Beach. Through several other examples author demonstrates that

technologies are meant to build order in the world. Even everyday technical devices have the

potential of ordering human activity. “Consciously or not, deliberately or inadvertently, societies

choose structures for technologies that influence how people are going to work, communicate,

travel, consume, and so forth over a very long time.”

Inherently Political Technologies

Some technologies are political by nature in a specific way. That means the adoption of a given

technical system, pecific way.

According to this view, the adoption of a given technical system unavoidably brings with it

conditions for human relationships that have a distinctive political cast. For example, centralized

or decentralized, egalitarian or inegalitarian, repressive or liberating. Winner references Friedrich

Engels’s essay "On Authority," which argued that strong authority is a necessary condition for

modern industry. Engels claimed that the "authority of the steam" in a factory requires a rigid

discipline that is more "despotic" than any capitalist. The notion of big factories in Engles’s

views was coming from the sociotechnical system of his time. The author further draws upon

Engels’s analysis of railways and ships, as both of them required a particular kind of social

hierarchy. Engels here doesn’t talk in terms of analogy but in terms of the technology itself.

Winner distinguishes between two versions of this argument:

centralized, hierarchical, or even military elite to be safely managed. Second, Strong

Compatibility: Systems like solar energy that are strongly compatible with decentralized,

democratic societies because they are more accessible and controllable by local communities

Winner notes that in modern societies, "practical necessity" often eclipses other forms of moral

and political reasoning

Winner utilizes Chandler’s documentation to show that the operation of nineteenth and

twentieth-century systems like railroads, chemicals, and electricity "demanded" the development

of large-scale, centralized, hierarchical organizations. He advocates for a "both/and" position,

recognizing that technical history and political theory must be studied together to understand

how we are changing our lives to fit technological innovation.