SOC3061-Lecture 03

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SOC3061-Lecture 03

• Military and Productive Technologies

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Last week

• 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

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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.)

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Case-studies

• 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)

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Productive technology

• Invisible, but still central
• Economist and sociologists on productive
  technology
• Information society (capital/labour gt
  information/knowledge)
• Post-Fordism (end of mass-production, unskilled
  labour)
• Postmodernity (work has become knowledge-based
  work)

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• 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,
  de-skilling, repetitiveness. Its the inevitable
  result of progress
• David Landes the machine imposed a new
  discipline

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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.

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Case-studies from the Marxist Tradition

• 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

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Numerical Control

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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)

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Conclusions

• Social relations are already embodied in the
  actual design of artefacts
• Different designs different priorities