Brian Martin - Technology for Nonviolent Struggle

I thank Ellen Elster for emphasising this point.

For a vision of government policy for socially beneficial technology, see Michael Goldhaber, Reinventing Technology: Policies for Democratic Values (New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986). What is lacking in Goldhaber’s otherwise stimulating picture is a feasible process for moving towards such a policy.

This account, based on discussions with Johan Niezing, is adapted from Brian Martin, “Impressions of the Dutch social defence network,” Nonviolence Today , #34, September/October 1993, pp. 16-18; Civilian-Based Defense , Vol. 8, No. 6, Winter 1993-94, pp. 2-5.

Johan Niezing, Sociale Verdediging als Logisch Alternatief: Van Utopie naar Optie [Social Defence as a Logical Alternative: From Utopia Towards Option] (Assen, Netherlands: Van Gorcum, 1987).

One way that this cutback was justified was on the basis of a critique of the Niezing committee proposals by social scientist Koen Koch. For Koch’s views, see Koen Koch, “Civilian defence: an alternative to military defence?” Netherlands Journal of Sociology , Vol. 20, No. 1, 1984, pp. 1-12.

Alex P. Schmid, in collaboration with Ellen Berends and Luuk Zonneveld, Social Defence and Soviet Military Power: An Inquiry into the Relevance of an Alternative Defence Concept (Leiden: Center for the Study of Social Conflict, State University of Leiden, 1985). I reviewed it in Civilian-Based Defense: News & Opinion, Vol. 4, No. 4, May 1988, pp. 6-11.

Giliam de Valk in cooperation with Johan Niezing, Research on Civilian-Based Defence (Amsterdam: SISWO, 1993). The proposals were sketched in chapter 4.

Ulrich Albrecht, “The aborted United Nations study of the military use of research and development: an editorial essay,” Bulletin of Peace Proposals , Vol. 19, Nos. 3-4, 1988, pp. 245-259. I thank Mary Cawte for finding this reference.

I thank Sharon Beder for helpful discussions about theories of technology and Stewart Russell for helpful discussions and a thorough reading of this chapter. For overviews and critiques of approaches in studies of science and technology, see David J. Hess, Science Studies: An Advanced Introduction (New York: New York University Press, 1997); Sheila Jasanoff, Gerald E. Markle, James C. Petersen and Trevor Pinch (eds.), Handbook of Science and Technology Studies (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1995); Sal Restivo, Science, Society, and Values: Toward a Sociology of Objectivity (Bethlehem, PA: Lihigh University Press, 1994).

For a critique of technological determinism, see Langdon Winner, Autonomous Technology: Technics-out-of-Control as a Theme in Political Thought (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1977). For differing views by historians, see Merritt Roe Smith and Leo Marx (eds.), Does Technology Drive History? The Dilemma of Technological Determinism (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994).

One of the few works that comes close to this view is David Dickson, Alternative Technology and the Politics of Technical Change (London: Fontana, 1974).

Donald MacKenzie and Judy Wajcman (eds.), The Social Shaping of Technology: How the Refrigerator Got its Hum (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1985).

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.

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).

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).

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.

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.”

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).

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).