Transcript SOC3061-Lecture 03

SOC3061-Lecture 03
Military and Productive
Technologies
Last week:
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Technological Determinism as a
theory of society and a theory of
technological change
Empirical case-studies question the
validity of TD: we need a richer
model
Perspectives on Military
Technology
Relevance of military technology during
and after the Cold War
Traditional theories of the development of
military technology:
1. Rational response to external threats
2. It follows the internal logic of technology
3. Consequence of organisational processes
and bureaucratic conflict (e.g. US
President, USAF, USN, industrial
producers, etc.)
Case-studies
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James Fallow (SST): design of M-16.
Organisational styles and criteria
Michael Armacost (SST): the Thor-Jupiter
controversy between USAF and USN
Mary Kaldor (SST): the “baroque arsenal”. How
the peculiar conditions of the military market
shape technology
Rachel Weber (SST): gender and military
technology
Donald MacKenzie (SST)
Productive technology
Invisible, but still central
Economist and sociologists on
productive technology:
 Information society (capital/labour >
information/knowledge)
 Post-Fordism (end of massproduction, unskilled labour)
 Postmodernity (work has become
knowledge-based work)
In general: technology as an external force
that overpowers pre-existing forms of
social differentiation
Sociology of work:
- inexorable development of the industrial
society, driven by the desire of greater
industrial efficiency
- New technologies required automation, deskilling, repetitiveness. It’s the inevitable
result of progress
David Landes: “the machine imposed a new
discipline”
For an anti-deterministic
perspective
Actually, the effects of new machinery
have been built into its design. There
are always other possibilities.
Production technology as the result of
our social relations
Technical choices are always social
choices as well.
Case-studies from the Marxist
Tradition
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Marc Bloch: on the watermill/hand mill
Harry Braverman: deskilling and
homogenization of the working-class in
order to subordinate labour
David Noble: machine tool automation.
Alternative ways to automate: numerical
control / record playback
Numerical Control
The Marxist Tradition
(To be discussed next week)
Marx as a technological determinist?
Focus on capital-labour relations and
deskilling processes
But see Cockburn and Hofmann (SST)
Conclusions
Social relations are already embodied
in the actual design of artefacts
Different designs = different priorities