The Socio-Technical Construction of Technology in German-Argentine ICT Cooperation

Abstract

The purpose of this chapter is to present and apply an analytical framework to study the relationship between science, technology, and politics in international cooperation processes. An interdisciplinary theoretical and methodological framework is elaborated, with an analytical focus on the complexity of the process captured by the notion of “socio-technical”. Allowing for a broad understanding, the model is based on a combination of concepts from different fields of social science, particularly International Relations Theory and the Social Studies of Technology. To understand how international cooperation comes about, two dimensions are identified: (a) the of technologies, both at the international and national level; (b) the dynamics of interaction between human and non-human elements (research teams, technologies, governmental institutions, forms, texts, etc.) explained as different configurations of techno-political-economic networks. This framework is applied to the analysis of a cooperation case between Argentina and Germany in the field of Information and Communication Technologies during the 1990s (A more complete description and analysis of this case was developed in Kern 2008). This case study serves to shed light on relevant features of cooperation between developed and developing countries.