The Social Construction of Technological Systems, anniversary edition: New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology (Mit Press) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0262517604 ISBN 13: 9780262517607

Publisher: MIT Press, 2012

Synopsis

An anniversary edition of an influential book that introduced a groundbreaking approach to the study of science, technology, and society.

This pioneering book, first published in 1987, launched the new field of social studies of technology. It introduced a method of inquiry―social construction of technology, or SCOT―that became a key part of the wider discipline of science and technology studies. The book helped the MIT Press shape its STS list and inspired the Inside Technology series. The thirteen essays in the book tell stories about such varied technologies as thirteenth-century galleys, eighteenth-century cooking stoves, and twentieth-century missile systems. Taken together, they affirm the fruitfulness of an approach to the study of technology that gives equal weight to technical, social, economic, and political questions, and they demonstrate the illuminating effects of the integration of empirics and theory. The approaches in this volume―collectively called SCOT (after the volume's title) have since broadened their scope, and twenty-five years after the publication of this book, it is difficult to think of a technology that has not been studied from a SCOT perspective and impossible to think of a technology that cannot be studied that way.

About this title

About the Author:

Wiebe E. Bijker is Professor at Maastricht University and the author of Of Bicycles, Bakelites, and Bulbs: Toward a Theory of Sociotechnical Change (MIT Press) and other books.

Thomas P. Hughes is Professor of the History and Sociology of Science at the University of Pennsylvania.

Trevor Pinch is Goldwin Smith Professor of Science and Technology Studies at Cornell University and coeditor of The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology (anniversary edition, MIT Press).

Deborah G. Douglas is Curator of Science and Technology at the MIT Museum. She was the curator and project director for the MIT 150 Exhibition.

Review:

"... required reading for STS teachers and researchers - and, indeed, for anyone convinced that it is essential, in the modern world, to understand the social nature of technical innovation." David Edge, Director, Science Studies Unit, University of Edinburgh

About this edition

• Publisher: MIT Press
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0262517604
• ISBN 13: 9780262517607
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 470
• Editor: Bijker Wiebe E., Hughes Thomas Parke, Pinch Trevor