An Integrative Framework for Studying Technological

Change

Theory Paper

Gabriela-Alexandra Banica

1
Contents

List of Illustrations.page 3

Introductionpage 5

Studying Technological Changepage 6

Gendered SCOT and ANT.page 10

Conclusion.page 14

Bibliography..page 15

2
 List of illustrations

1. Straight Wire Filament, 1890, Toshiba Museum.page 4

2. Coiled Coil Filament, 1921, Toshiba Museumpage 4

3. Demonstration of Coiling Effect, www.lamptech.co.uk..page 4

4. Table 1 Commonalities and Complementarities among Three Approaches to Technical

Change: Evolutionary Economics, Social Construction of Technology and Actor-Network

Theorypage 10

3
Illustration 1. Straight Wire Filament Illustration 2. Coiled Coil Filament
1890, Japan 1921, Japan

Illustration 3 Demonstration of Coiling Effect

4
 Introduction

My second essay dealt with the changes in the design of the filament from straight wire to

double coiled one. My focus was on Japan from 1890- when the first incandescent light

bulb was manufactured in Japan, to 1921- when the Japanese claim the engineer Miura

invented the double coiled filament, illustrations 1 to 3. Doing research on the topic I was

accounted with the notion of technological change and ways of studying it. The need for

an interdisciplinary framework when discussing technological change is an obvious must.

This interest in the proper way of studying technological change led to choosing my

theory paper to be about frameworks for studying technological change.

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 Studying Technological Change

Henrik Bruun and Janne Hukkinen in their article 'Crossing Boundaries: An Integrative

Framework for Studying Technological Change' are set to outline the contours of a

comprehensive framework, composed of EE, SCOT, and ANT, to serve for the study of

technological change. The authors analyse EE, SCOT, and ANT in terms of the

connections between the three approaches and their potential to complement each other.

According to them the value of such an integrative framework is that it helps students of

technology to choose research approaches.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the validity of using such a integrative framework

as a tool for history of design studies. Crossing boundaries became a must for design

historians when pursuing research and Bruun and Hukkinen's article attracts attention

from the first words of its title: 'Crossing Boundaries: An Integrative Framework for

Studying Technological Change'. Creating an integrative framework for studying

technological change sounds promising as it presents the three approaches to technology

studies: EE, SCOT and ANT, not as alternative ways of accounting for technological

change but as connected and, in some cases, as complementary. Such a perspective

enriches the researcher's possibilities of viewing his/her topic: 'two complementary

6
formulations of fundamental concepts and relationships are more likely than one to shed

new light on the multifaceted research issue under consideration'1.

According to the authors these three approaches can be integrated into the study of

technology and technological change considering their capacity to provide answers to the

following questions: What changes in the technological change?, What is the driver of

such change?, What is the process of change?, What delimits change?.

Providing answers to the first question brings into discussion aspects of the technological

system that are needed to change from one state to another before reaching the conclusion

that the system has indeed changed. Offering answers to the second question equals with

shading light over which human, social, technological and other factors, relevant to the

research dealing with technological change. Trying to locate the nexus of agency in

technological change is a demanding task considering the fact that 'technological change

can be seen as being driven by socially-embedded actors networked with other actors and

processes, but attribution of causality to a particular social context, organizational

practice or even network would in this view be problematic'. Finding answers for the

third question directs the discussion toward the mechanisms and dynamics that take place

when the technological system changes from one state to another. The boundary

conditions and the contextual factors meant to guide toward a path of technological

change are found in the answers to the fourth question.

1
Brunn, Henrik and Hukkinen, Jane., 'Crossing Boundaries: An Integrative Framework for
Studying Technological Change', Social Studies of Science, Vol. 33, No. 1 (Feb., 2003), pp. 98

7
8
These sets of answers are illustrated in Table 1, the authors state its purpose as being to

'concisely summarize commonalities between the approaches and, in the absence of

precise commonalities, bringing together mutually compatible complementarities'.

Moreover, the authors offer advice on how Table 1 can be used when pursuing research:

If, for example, the student wants to understand what is the driver of technological change

(question 2 in Table 1), then she should be sure to choose ANT as one approach because its

conception of agency is radically different from the other two approaches. ANT sees technological

change as an implied element in network formation rather than an ontologically independent

outcome from action and interaction. If the issue of interest is the process of change (question 3),

then she should definitively use EE as one approach to get a perspective on the role of learning in

the technological change. Finally, if the boundary conditions of technological change are in focus

(question 4), then ANT ought to be one of the approaches to get a handle on contingencies in

technological change.2

The author's theory that ' two complementary formulations of fundamental concepts and

relationships are more likely than one to shed new light on the multifaceted research issue

under consideration' is problematic as two of the three approaches that constitute the

integrative framework, SCOT and ANT, are particularly influential in relation to feminist

studies.

2
Ibid 1, pp. 100

9
 Gendered SCOT and ANT

In SCOT studies 'relevant social groups are typically identified empirically as the actors

that participate in the negotiations or controversies around a specific technology. Feminist

studies point out that as women are usually absent from these groups, there was a

tendency to overlook the need for a gender analysis of the technology' 3. In ANT studies '

the user interacts with the pre-inscribed artefact, and can challenge and renegotiate the

meanings and uses of the artefact'4. The fact that consumers may be an integral part of the

processes that constitute technological development plays an important role in feminist

research as it directs again toward the need for a gender analysis in discussing

technology.

Viewing SCOT and ANT through feminist studies lenses brings doubt upon the

possibility that Bruun and Hukkinen's integrative framework can stand as a tool for

shedding 'new light on the multifaceted research issue' taken under consideration by the

researcher.

SCOT and ANT being targets of debate in feminist research has partially to do with the

fact that they are part of the STS discipline, and as part of it they inherit its problems.

Gender is a recurrent topic of debate in STS studies. In order to illustrate the problems of

gender in STS studies insides on the importance of gender in STS studies and feminist
3
Wajcman, Judy., 'Reflections on Gender and Technology Studies: In What State is the Art',
Technology Studies Volume 4, ed. R. Fouche, Sage Publications, 2008, pp.284
4
Ibid 3

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research and the STS tradition will be approached through the article's of Eulalia Perez

Sedeno and Judy Wajcman.

Eulalia Perez Sedeno5 considers that technology is 'designed by human beings, men and

women, situated in specific economic, political, and historical circumstances, who, in part

because they are of different sexes, have their own specific interests, and are in their own

particular power situations'. Her article: 'Gender: The Missing Factor in STS' deals with

the matter of the importance of gender in STS studies, according to her:

It is also important to understand that while technologies are created with certain goals in mind,

the end-users will often transform how they are used or use them to perform other tasks. It is not

the case that a certain technology is created in the abstract and then put to another use (be it good

or bad), for technology is always created by a "designer" who has a final aim in mind. End-users

adopt technologies for a specific purposes from the beginning but they may build in improvements

and extensions in such a way that the original is concerted into a completely different technology

and is thus unrecognizable from what was originally intended. This is what happened with the

contraceptive pill, which started of by being a treatment to control the menstrual cycle of married

woman in order to help them to become pregnant. Thus, it developed as a family planning aid, but

at the same time it became a means by which women could enjoy their sexuality without

unwanted pregnancies, and an instrument which males could use to enjoy their own sexuality

without unwelcome responsibilities. Or, take the case of the internet which was created by the

military so that the "enemy" could not intercept or make use of classified information. However, it

5
Eulalia Perez Sedeno is a professor of logic and philosophy of science at the Complutense University of Madrid, she
has published widely on the role of women in science, technology, and mathematics, especially with regard to matters
of their education in Spain. She edited a collection of essays on STS studies in the Hispanic-speaking world. Her work
in the field makes her particularly well-suited to raise questions regarding issues of gender in science and technology
studies.

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 quickly developed into a participatory support technology in the hands of feminist groups,

progressive political parties, NGO groups, and the like.6

Considering the fact that end-users are able to attach to the designed technology

improvements and extensions, thus creating a different technology from what was

originally intended, and that the end-users are both male and female it becomes obvious

that there is a need for gender analysis in discussing technology.

Judy Wajcman' research offers examples of gender analysis being incorporated in

technology studies. In the article: 'Reflections on Gender and Technology Studies: In

what state is the Art?' presents an account of feminist research in the STS studies. She

focuses her attention on three projects that pay attention to the 'development and

diffusion processes of specific technologies in an attempt to deconstruct the designer/user

divide'. One is Cynthia Cockburn and Susan Ormrod's study that deals with tracing the

trajectory of the microwave oven from its conception to its consumption, by doing so the

authors offer an inside of the gendering process that is visible in various stages of the

artefact's life. The remaining two focus on cervical cancer screening, and are part of

Monica Casper and Adele Clark's work, and, also Vicky singleton and Mike Michael's.

They provide examples of how technologies are deployed and appropriated by end-users.

Wajcman describes Cockburn and Ormrod's study as in terms of gender relations:

Well aware that the standard STS focus on invention underplays the rule of women, the

authors unravel the way that sexual division of labour is mapped on to each stage in the

Sedeno, Eulalia Perez., 'Gender: The Missing Factor in STS', Visions of STS, ed. Cutcliffe and
6

Mitcham, State University of New York, 2001, pp. 125

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 journey of a domestic technology. Like other domestic technologies, the microwave is

designed by men in their capacity as engineers and managers, people remote from the

domestic tasks involved, for use by women in their capacity as house workers. Where

women do enter the picture (apart from on the production line), it is primarily as home

economists. Cockburn and Ormrod observe that the cooking expertise of the home

economists is crucial to the successful design of the artefact. The women see themselves

as doing ' a kind of engineering or science', but it is not acknowledged as such by the

predominantly male culture of engineers. Their technical skills are undervalued because

of the strong association of cooking with femininity. As a result, even at the one point

when women enter the innovation process, they wield little influence over the

development of new technologies. 7

Wajcman also acknowledges the study to be proof of the fact that gendering is not just

about design and manufacturing, but there are gendered meanings expressed in the

process of marketing and retailing the artefact and its appropriation by users. The vision

over the concept of technology is extended. Technology is not just about the physical

object that is done during production. But, also, is made out of the symbolic meanings,

that are attached to it and that are under continuous negotiation and reinvention.

What Cockburn and Ormrod's study manages to approach in particular is to ' explore the

extent to which interpretative flexibility exists once a given commodity reaches the

hands of the consumer'. Considering the fact that 'there is an unclear dividing line

7
Wajcman, Judy., 'Reflections on Gender and Technology Studies: In What State is the Art',

Technology Studies Volume 4, ed. R. Fouche, Sage Publications, 2008, pp.290

13
between accurately representing the customer, constructing the customer and controlling

the customer ' Cockburn and Ormrod argue that marketing and consumption are both part

of the social shaping of technology.8

Wajcman also presents the minuses of Cockburn and Ormrod's study, setting a new limit

that gender studies need to go beyond in STS studies:

While the microwave study set out to demonstrate how gendering processes affect every

stage in the field of a technology, its analysis is stronger in relation to gendered

construction of the potential users than in relation to the machine's design. It does not

fully succeed in showing, in any detailed sense, how the development of the microwave

reflected designers' assumptions about the gendered characteristics of the prospective

users. Much of what goes on inside the black box of innovation remains a mystery. 9

Conclusion

The theories chosen by Henrik Bruun and Janne Hukkinen to create the integrative

framework are subject of debate in different studies. SCOT and ANT are of constant

interest to feminist research. And put in such a context, of feminist studies, doubt falls

over the possibility that the integrative framework may function as a tool 'to shed new

light on the multifaceted research issue under consideration'.

8
Ibid 7
9
Ibid 7, pp. 291

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Bibliography

Brunn, Henrik and Hukkinen, Jane., 'Crossing Boundaries: An Integrative Framework for

Studying Technological Change', Social Studies of Science, Vol. 33, No. 1 (Feb., 2003),

pp. 95-116

Sedeno, Eulalia Perez., 'Gender: The Missing Factor in STS', Visions of STS, ed.

Cutcliffe and Mitcham, State University of New York, 2001, pp. 123-138

Wajcman, Judy., 'Reflections on Gender and Technology Studies: In What State is the

Art', Technology Studies Volume 4, ed. R. Fouche, Sage Publications, 2008, pp.281-298

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