3. Classical theorists beyond the instrumentalist-determinist divide (interlude I) Moving beyond the idea of “technological dramas” introduced in Chapter 2, this chapter
3.1 Determinism and the unit of analysis
Scholars have construed different spatial demarcations and principle actors in their studies of technological innovations. The emphasis here, instead of asking how empirical observations or data can be utilized to theorize, is to revisit the nexus between these conceptual abstractions and determinist frameworks; especially, concerning the “unit of analysis”. My thesis is that the unit we select as the focus of our inquiry and subsequent explanations often implies certain types and directions of determinism to which we have to tackle subsequently. This point is exemplified by Max Weber’s critical commentary on Marx’s determinism:
“in Marx (…) that oft-quoted passage (…) is contradictory: the hand-mill causes feudalism, the steam-mill causes capitalism. (…) This is not an economic, but rather a technological construction of history; and that it is simply wrong is indisputable from the claim itself.
This is because the era of the hand-mill, which reaches to the threshold of the modern age, has seen every conceivable kind of cultural ‘superstructure’ in all fields. (…) The same technology does not always denote the same economy, nor is the reverse always the case.
(…) In Antiquity there was above all a capitalist development which can be measured against any other capitalist development in the world. But the capitalist development of Antiquity started the ascent – and I’d like to emphasize this here while exaggerating a bit –
to its highest peak at that moment when, according to our knowledge today, the technical development of Antiquity was at an end. (…) Capitalist development today apparently goes hand in hand with technological development, so much so that technicians have seriously come to believe that technology and its evolution may be the exclusive leading element in our cultural development.” (Weber 2005, pp. 26-28)
One can, of course, agree with Weber’s refutation of “hard” determinism albeit his treatment does not do justice to the nuanced modes of “productive determinism” that Marx developed throughout his works. Weber (2005, p. 28) is equally correct when he, continuing his argument, rejects the opposite extreme of a purely human/social determination of machines. However, the critical aspect I want to point out is that the viewpoints of both Weber and his opponents are animated by a similar historical macro-narrative. They advanced large units of analysis such as “civilization”, “capitalism” or
“society” combined with abstract levels of generalization. There is no coincidence that macro-sociological framing would lend itself more readily to technical determinist views than micro-level analysis (Misa 1994, p. 141). The reason that they tend to over-simplify technologies is because these perspectives boil down highly complex matters into the juxtaposition of a technical world of machines on the one side and human collective activities on the other.
Furthermore, the grammar of the related macro-level language may easily lead to dystopian or pessimist (for others triumphant, cf. Berman 2010, p. 25ff) opinions about future developments. The critiques of modernity are often driven by a fear of the unstoppable force of machines overwhelming the fragile social fabric. In macro schemes there is no place for a differentiated determinism that highlights varying institutional responses to the effects of machines and infrastructures (e.g. Heilbronner 1994, Winner 1986). The “big picture” view prevails. Generations of philosophers and theorists trumpeted the fanfare against the techno-titans that, as many believed, undermined democratic/liberal institutions and ultimately were bound to enslave humankind (Feenberg 1991).39 Against the machine culture of Enlightenment, Horkheimer and Adorno (1997, p. 25), for instance, lament that “thinking becomes an automatic,
39 Authors writing in this tradition include Ellul (1964), Mumford (1966), Heidegger (1977), Postman (1992), Watson (1997), and Luke (1994).
activating process; an impersonation of the machine that it produces itself so that ultimately the machine can replace it.” Three Canada-based technology theorists have then developed a similarly critical understanding of modern technologies. In the view of Harold Innis, Marshall McLuhan, and George Grant,
“one finds practice-based understandings of technology, which emphasize the danger that technology poses to our civilization. Over the course of their careers each of these three thinkers also argued that our ordinary involvement in technological practice can create a dependence on a technological approach and that meeting the ethical challenges of technology must involve an appropriate awareness of this kind of dependence.” (Gerrie 2007)
While these concerns have not ceased to exist, recent research advanced much more fine-grained approaches to technology. Historians are at pains to avoid the opposition of abstract binary notions. In addition, their description of change in a technologically mediated world does not imply a process of “hybridization” of separated domains such as suggested by terms like “socio-technical” or “society-nature”. Instead they uncover that, though in diverging manners, there had never been a separation in the first place (MacKenzie 2006, Carroll 2006, Thrift 1996). This task is difficult since it tends, as we have seen, to defy conventional language and conventional wisdom.
Peter Galison, for example, introduced the notion of “critical opalescence” in order to describe the historical “emergence” of the idea of relativity (Galison 2006). By using this conceptual metaphor, he highlighted the “triple intersection of practical, abstract, and philosophical issues” (Yerxa 2003, p. 6). Critical opalescence neatly corresponded with the idea of a “seamless web” that Thomas Hughes regarded it so characteristic for technological systems (Hughes 1986). This approach is the radical opposite of macro-sociology for Galison urged to dissolve the dichotomies, which are often mapped upon modernization. Remaining somewhere in an explanatory no man’s land, he did not allow for a single primary reason that explained the emergence of relativist thinking in physics (and beyond). It is neither technically, nor socially, nor philosophically determined.
“There isn’t one scale at which this story is grounded or founded. There isn’t an originary or fundamental scale. It is all at once about philosophy, technology, and physics. And the fluctuations of scale between the abstract ideas of conventionalism and a new kind of
knowledge and the practical exigencies of wiring up continents so that they’ll tell the same time are very rapid and an essential aspect of this story. Is this a story of social history?
Yes. Look at the coordination of cities, trains, markets, and maps. Is this a story about the intellectual history of physics? Yes. Relativity is one of the epochal changes in the discipline. Is this a question about the history of philosophy? Again, yes. Conventionalism reshaped modern philosophy.” (Galison cited in Yerxa 2003)
The first move that Galison emphatically stressed is not to discriminate between social, scientific, and technical contexts. His stance indicated a strong form of anti-foundationalism that challenges both logocentrism and determinism. Whereas Galison (2006) noted that the conditions of critical opalescent are exceptional rather than the norm, the puzzles presented in Chapter 2 indicated that his notion is carried upon the politics of technological innovations in general (cf. de Laet, and Annemarie Mol 2000, Law 2002). It is in this sense that we have to look for conceptual frames that mirror fluid, hybrid, interconnected worlds, concepts that nevertheless offer a well-tailored unit of analysis. From Galison’s analytical perspective, classical IR units like the state, the international system and so on have limited use, because applying “methodological nationalism” to the exploration of technological innovations would inevitably lead to paradox puzzles. Yet Galison’s solution to simply abstain from a clearly shaped unit of analysis is not so satisfying, the notorious oppositions of empty signifiers such as “state”
vs. “technology” are similarly the misleading. Neither does the idea of “hybridization”
suffice if it means adding up previously separate domains in order to regain the conditions of possibility for “parsimonious” theoretical puzzles.
So, while macro and micro framings do not offer a way forward, there are middle-sized approaches to theorize technological innovations that seem most apt. For instance, Braudel’s (1992c) “world-economies” and Jasanoff’s (2004a) “coproduction of order”
provide an alternative vision how we might shape the unit of analysis. At closer inspection, however, the scope of these notions is still too encompassing and they (deliberately) remain underspecified in analytical and conceptual terms. 40 They
40 Braudel’s structural historiography explores the interplay of technological shifts and the social, economic and political (Arrighi 2001). Yet, his somewhat organic unit “world economy” is by and large physically and not technologically determined (see Kinser 1981, pp. 77ff, 91ff, and p. 103). “Coproduction” does in a different sense not suit our purpose. Jasanoff’s idea of coproduction is not intrinsically linked to a particular
nonetheless have great value as metaphysical umbrella concepts, which could supplement mid-range approaches (see Jasanoff 2004b, pp. 19ff).
TABLE 3.1 CONCEPTUAL APPROACHES TO TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATION ©AUTHOR
The most promising “scope” for the unit of analysis seems to be the middle-sized notions that have been advanced by STS scholars. To name just a few: “technological system”
(Hughes 1994), “sociotechnical systems” (Fox 1995), “heterogeneous networks”, “actor-networks”, “collectives”, or “assemblages” (Latour, Callon, Law), “technological zones”
(Barry 2006), and “sociotechnical ensembles” (Bijker 1993).41 Without going into much detail at this point their advantages are obvious. They are heterogeneous in the sense that they assume (in different variations) the confluence of social and technical aspects into a single reality. Furthermore, these conceptual approaches confine the unit of analysis to a tangible, hybrid entity delimited in time and spatial extension. In turn, these authors
unit or level of analytical perspective. It has indeed been used among other things to analyze “global-local”
puzzles. Its flexibility can be seen as strength.
41 See for early collections of these approaches MacKenzie and Wajcman (1985), Bijker, Pinch, and Hughes (1987), Bijker and Law (1992) and Law (1991a).
assume their units to be surrounded by a distinguishable environment while both have mutual effects on each other. The conceptual move of heterogeneous approaches has a dual strength. For one, it is widely tested by diverse empirical case studies that avoid social reductionism. For another, it promises to replace determinism of all sorts with a fine-tuned research framework based on notions of interaction, co-constitution, or coproduction (see table 3.1).