Reflexivity in Technology Studies: Toward a Technology of Technology (and Science)?

Abstract

In recent years scholars have begun to apply perspectives of the sociology of scientific knowledge to technology. At the same time, there has been much concern about how to deal, methodologically, with the issue of reflexivity in sociological (and historical) studies of science. This paper considers implications of the reflexivity issue for sociological and historical accounts of technology. Drawing on characterizations of technology (mainly by its historians), the paper develops several senses in which technology is conceived to differ significantly from science. Accordingly, assumptions and approaches, contexts and expectations associated with the sociology of scientific knowledge may be inappropriate to the study of technology. These differences can be used to gain insights into the reflexivity question. If, as we have done in science, we look to the activity we study for guidance about how to study it, we may find technology to warrant a different conception of the location and purposes of its analysts than does science - a conception of the studier not as an isolated knower, but as a socially and politically involved co-creator. In line with recent suggestions of Sal Restivo and Bruno Latour, our activity as STS scholars might then better be characterized as a technology of technology (or science), rather than as a science of science (or technology).