Where Are the Missing Masses? The Sociology of a Few Mundane Artifacts

Abstract

One of the most popular and powerful ways of resolving the technological determinism/ social constructivism dichotomy in technology studies is the actor network approach. Those advocating the actor network approach agree with the social constructivist claim that sociotechnical systems are developed through negotiations between people, institutions, and organizations. But they make the additional interesting argument that artifacts are part of these negotiations as well. This is not to say that machines think like people do and decide how they will act, but their behavior or nature often has a comparable role. Actor network theorists argue that the material world pushes back on people because of its phys- ical structure and design. People are free to interpret the precise meaning of an artifact, but they can’t simply tell an automobile engine that it should get 100 miles per gallon. The laws of nature and the capacities of a particular design limit the ways in which artifacts can be integrated into a sociotechnical system. In this chapter, one of the foremost contrib- utors to the actor network approach, Bruno Latour, explores how artifacts can be deliber- ately designed to both replace human action and constrain and shape the actions of other humans. His study demonstrates how people can ‘‘act at a distance’’ through the technol- ogies they create and implement and how, from a user’s perspective, a technology can ap- pear to determine or compel certain actions. He argues that even technologies that are so commonplace that we don’t even think about them can shape the decisions we make, the effects our actions have, and the way we move through the world. Technologies play such an important role in mediating human relationships, Latour argues, that we cannot under- stand how societies work without an understanding of how technologies shape our every- day lives. Latour’s study of the relationship between producers, machines, and users demonstrates how certain values and political goals can be achieved through the construc- tion and employment of technologies. Again,