Brian Martin - Technology for Nonviolent Struggle

A more moderate approach involves examining the interaction of social and technical factors on the development and choice of technology. For example, there have been studies of compression versus absorption refrigerators, numerically controlled machine tools, light bulbs and electricity systems. [4] . Donald MacKenzie and Judy Wajcman (eds.), The Social Shaping of Technology: How the Refrigerator Got its Hum (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1985). This approach has been used in a number of studies of military technology, some of which were mentioned in chapter 2. It is valuable for analysis of actual technologies and also for opening up the possibility that other technologies might have been developed if different forces had been influential.

One of the most cited examples of social shaping of technology is the low bridges, designed by Robert Moses for New York, which allegedly prevented the twelve-foot high buses from passing underneath and hence prevented those relying on public transport, especially blacks and poor people, from easily visiting beaches. [5] . Langdon Winner, “Do artifacts have politics?,” Daedalus, Vol. 109, No. 1, Winter 1980, pp. 121-136. For a critical perspective, see Bernward Joerges, “Do politics have artefacts?,” Social Studies of Science, Vol. 29, No. 3, June 1999, pp. 411-431. This example has been frequently used to show how social values, in this case racism, can be built into artefacts, in this case bridges. Its pedagogical value seems to arise from it being neither too complex nor too simple, and having an obvious bad guy. Military technology provides plenty of examples that are almost too simple. Weapons are designed to kill and destroy. Detailed examples can be produced by the dozen. Brightly coloured landmines are designed to attract the attention of children. Tumbling bullets are designed to cause horrific exit injuries. One can speculate why scholars haven’t raised these sorts of examples more often. Perhaps the social shaping is too obvious.

Although the social shaping approach is quite valuable, it has some limitations as actually applied. Most social shaping analyses look at rejected alternatives that are fairly similar to their successful rivals, such as the AR-15 rifle that was rejected in favour of the M-16. Postulating comprehensive wide-ranging alternatives is unusual, possibly because it requires too much of a jump from the historical record. Certainly there have been no discussions of technology for nonviolent struggle, nor even much study of the field of appropriate technology, which would seem a natural area for analysis.

More fundamentally, the social shaping approach deals with the social influences on technology and says little about the actual technologies that exist or might exist. For example, it is all very well to analyse the social forces shaping military and civilian communication systems, but what guidance does this give for assessing which such systems would be useful for nonviolent struggle? The social shaping approach is restricted by its focus on influences on technology, which leaves out the effects of technology. The next stage in the development of this theory is to look at the ways that society and technology co-shape each other.

Various more focussed theoretical frameworks, such as labour process theory, [6] . The classic work, much criticised but immensely influential, is Harry Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1974). can be applied to technology within the general ambit of the social shaping approaches. A different angle on technology is provided by “actor-network theory,” which is based on getting rid of the dichotomy between humans and artefacts. [7] . Wiebe E. Bijker, Thomas P. Hughes, and Trevor J. Pinch (eds.), The social construction of technological systems: New directions in the sociology and history of technology (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1987); Michel Callon, John Law, and Arie Rip, Mapping the dynamics of science and technology: Sociology of science in the real world (London: Macmillan, 1988); Brian Elliott (ed.), Technology and Social Process (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1988); Bruno Latour, Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1987); Bruno Latour, The Pasteurization of France (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988); John Law (ed.), Power, action and belief: A new sociology of knowledge? (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986). In this approach, anything potentially is an “actor”: a scientist, a scallop, a mechanical door-closer, a bullet. The task of the social theorist is to “follow the actors,” namely to watch what they do without making assumptions about them in advance, and to observe their networks, namely to see how they create, destroy and rearrange relationships between themselves. One advantage of the actor-network approach is that it gets away from the essentialist assumption that social structures such as the state are ordained categories for understanding social reality.

There have been a number of criticisms of actor-network theory. [8] . Olga Amsterdamska, “Surely you are joking, Monsieur Latour?” Science, Technology, & Human Values Vol. 15, 1990, pp. 495-504; Pam Scott, “Levers and counterweights: A laboratory that failed to raise the world.” Social Studies of Science, Vol. 21, 1991, pp. 7-35. It tends to overlook groups such as women and the unemployed who are not prominent in networks associated with technological innovation. Actor-network theorists often seem to smuggle in concepts of social structure that they supposedly have jettisoned.

More importantly, social constructivists seem to restrict their efforts to explaining existing technology, not taking any stance on whether it is good or bad for humans nor saying how to go about changing it. [9] . Langdon Winner, “Upon opening the black box and finding it empty: social constructivism and the philosophy of technology,” Science, Technology, and Human Values , Vol. 18, No. 3, Summer 1993, pp. 362-378. See also Stewart Russell, “The social construction of artefacts: a response to Pinch and Bijker,” Social Studies of Science , Vol. 16, 1986, pp. 331-346, a critique of another constructivist approach called “social construction of technology.” Since actor-network theory builds on actors — including artefacts — that exist, there is no theoretical warrant for examining technology that might be designed in a social system putting a priority on nonviolent struggle, especially since social structural analysis, including the concept of the military, is avoided.

A useful framework for analysing technology for nonviolent struggle is to think of artefacts as non-neutral, biased, political or selectively useful. [10] . There are no central references on this approach. Some representative works are David Elliott and Ruth Elliott, The Control of Technology (London: Wykeham, 1976); Ivan Illich, Tools for Conviviality (London: Calder and Boyars, 1973); Richard E. Sclove, Democracy and Technology (New York: Guilford Press, 1995); Langdon Winner, The Whale and the Reactor: A Search for Limits in an Age of High Technology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986). In other words, they are easier to use for some purposes than others. A key aim of a social analysis of technology then is to find out which purposes a technology can be most easily used for, and why.

Most technologies developed by the military are biased, or selectively useful, for killing and destruction. This obviously is because the aim of most military science and technology has been to develop more lethal and destructive weapons. [11] . Harvey M. Sapolsky, “Science, technology and military policy,” in Ina Spiegel-Rösing and Derek de Solla Price (eds.), Science, Technology and Society: A Cross-disciplinary Perspective (London: Sage, 1977), pp. 443-471 makes this point nicely, commenting that, in the shadow of weapons development, there is some work “in repairing battle wounds, in making rations more tasty, and in preventing machinery from rusting” (p. 459).