Wiebe E. Bijker

Shaping technology, building society : studies in sociotechnical change

A PNIPN (or PNPN) semiconductor structure, with a pair of terminals on each of the intermediate N and P zones, is forward biased with respect to the outer P and N zones. Thereby, a current filament is formed whose lateral position can be controlled by control of the voltages across each of the pairs of terminals, as well as by an external magnetic field. Such current filaments can be utilized in a variety of semiconductor devices including magnetic field detectors, optical cameras, binary encoders and other logic devices.

Paradox of Scientific Authority: the Role of Scientific Advice in Democracies

Today, scientific advice is asked for (and given) on questions ranging from stem-cell research to genetically modified food. And yet it often seems that the more urgently scientific advice is solicited, the more vigorously scientific authority is questioned by policy makers, stakeholders, and citizens. This book examines a paradox: how scientific advice can be influential in society even when the status of science and scientists seems to be at a low ebb. The authors do this by means of an ethnographic study of the creation of scientific authority at one of the key sites for the interaction of science, policy, and society: the scientific advisory committee. The Paradox of Scientific Authority offers a detailed analysis of the inner workings of the influential Health Council of the Netherlands (the equivalent of the National Academy of Science in the United States), examining its societal role as well as its internal functioning, and using the findings to build a theory of scientific advising. The question of scientific authority has political as well as scholarly relevance. Democratic political institutions, largely developed in the nineteenth century, lack the institutional means to address the twenty-first centurys pervasively scientific and technological culture; and science and technology studies (STS) grapples with the central question of how to understand the authority of science while recognizing its socially constructed nature.

Constructing a City: The Cerdà Plan for the Extension of Barcelona

This article applies a constructivist perspective to the analysis of a town-planning innovation. The so-called Cerdà Plan for the extension of Barcelona was launched in the 1860s and gave this city one of its most characteristic present features. For different reasons it can be considered an extraordinary case in town-planing history, though almost unknown to international scholars. The authors analyze the intense controversy that developed around the extension plan and the three technological frames involved. Finally, the relationship between power and technology is discussed. The sociohistorical account is used to illustrate a specific concept of power, to be used in a politics of technology.

Dikes and Dams, Thick with Politics

Things are thick with politics. This essay illustrates the point by focusing on a variety of technologies that help to manage water: anicuts and tanks in India, dikes and a storm surge barrier in the Netherlands, and levees in New Orleans. Technologies are not only shaped by political forces; they also exert political force themselves: on social stratification in Indian villages or on government stability in the Netherlands. We should recognize, then, that the functioning of technologies and the functioning of societies are intricately linked. The essay traces this interlinking by using the concept of “technological culture.” It argues that the different styles of coastal engineering in the United States and in the Netherlands can be explained by differences in their technological cultures, particularly the different styles of risk handling. This conclusion is then applied to the Indian case and to issues of development, democracy, and innovation.

The nature of technological knowledge: are models of scientific change relevant?

Communities and Hierarchies: Structure in the Practice of Science and Technology.- Paradigms, Revolutions, and Technology.- Organizational Aspects of Technological Change.- Cognitive Change in Technology and Science.- Notes Towards a Philosophy of the Science/Technology Interaction.- The Structure of Technological Change: Reflections on a Sociological Analysis of Technology.- Author Index.

American and Dutch Coastal Engineering: Differences in Risk Conception and Differences in Technological Culture

How is it possible that the USA failed to keep New Orleans dry, when large parts of the Netherlands can exist below sea level? This question, with all its implicit rhetoric about the big and mighty Americans and the small and weak Dutch, generated a flock of American expeditions to the Netherlands in the aftermath of the flooding of New Orleans by hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005. The big US television networks, channels such as National Geographic, and political delegations, including the Louisiana governor and members of the US Congress, visited the Netherlands within a few months after the flooding, and all parties returned with spirited reports of how the Americans could learn from the Dutch. Does this suggest that the US Army Corps of Engineers is less able than the Rijkswaterstaat engineers in the Netherlands? I will argue that something else is going on: that the difference is not one of expertise and competence. In this paper I compare the styles of US and Dutch coastal engineering, and argue that they express different conceptions of risk management in relation to flooding. These differences can, perhaps, be explained by reference to the wider technological cultures of both countries, rather than to the specific engineering cultures. The core of my analysis, however, is aimed at the styles of coastal engineering. In this paper I am not interested in blaming artefacts or humans – levees/dikes and warning systems – or politicians or engineers involved in their design or maintenance. My conjecture is that even had everyone and everything functioned effectively, the historical style of American coastal engineering would encourage accepting the kind of flooding that occurred after Katrina.How is it possible that the USA failed to keep New Orleans dry, when large parts of the Netherlands can exist below sea level? This question, with all its implicit rhetoric about the big and mighty Americans and the small and weak Dutch, generated a flock of American expeditions to the Netherlands in the aftermath of the flooding of New Orleans by hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005. The big US television networks, channels such as National Geographic, and political delegations, including the Louisiana governor and members of the US Congress, visited the Netherlands within a few months after the flooding, and all parties returned with spirited reports of how the Americans could learn from the Dutch. Does this suggest that the US Army Corps of Engineers is less able than the Rijkswaterstaat engineers in the Netherlands? I will argue that something else is going on: that the difference is not one of expertise and competence. In this paper I compare the styles of US and Dutch coastal engineer ing, and argue that they express different conceptions of risk management in relation to flooding. These differences can, perhaps, be explained by ref erence to the wider technological cultures of both countries, rather than to the specific engineering cultures. The core of my analysis, however, is aimed at the styles of coastal engineering. In this paper I am not interested in blaming artefacts or humans - levees/dikes1 and warning systems - or politicians or engineers involved in their design or maintenance. My con jecture is that even had everyone and everything functioned effectively, the historical style of American coastal engineering would encourage accepting the kind of flooding that occurred after Katrina.

The Oosterschelde Storm Surge Barrier: A Test Case for Dutch Water Technology, Management, and Politics

relationship is not as straightforward?humans dominating nature?as the phrase suggests. It is, for example, mediated in complex ways by science and technology. In this essay I will focus on one recent crisis in this relationship between the Dutch and the sea, the disastrous flood of 1953, and its resolu tion through the Delta Plan, and in particular the building of the storm surge barrier in the Oosterschelde.1

The need for public intellectuals: a space for STS

In this address to the presidents plenary at the 2001 annual meeting of the Society for Social Studies of Science in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the author reflected on then recent international events and their possible implications for the research and teaching agendas of the social studies of science, technology, and medicine. He proposed the political engagement of science, technology, and society (STS) institutions and individual STS researchers while maintaining a strong commitment to the scholarly studies of science and technology. Drawing on the work of René Gabriëls, the author elaborated a role for STS scholars as the new generation of “public intellectuals.”

SCOT Answers, Other Questions: A Reply to Nick Clayton

We welcome the opportunity offered by the editor of T&C to engage in this debate. As well as addressing specific questions raised by Nick Clayton we hope to move the discussion forward by focusing in particular upon the role of theoretical concepts in the history of technology. Clayton criticizes our account of the history of the bicycle and concludes that overall SCOT does not answer. We will readily concede that Clayton, as a specialist historian of the bicycle, is able to offer a more complete historical narrative drawing upon research not available to us eighteen years ago, but we will also argue that his conclusion about the (in)adequacy of SCOT does not hold and is based upon a misconception of the relationship between theory and empirical evidence in the history of technology (or indeed any other field). Our essay “The Social Construction of Facts and Artifacts: Or How the Sociology of Science and the Sociology of Technology Might Benefit Each Other,” in which we outlined the approach known as SCOT, was programmatic.1 The original journal article (longer, and published three years earlier than the account in the book) was published as a discussion paper.2 It reviewed different bodies of literature and was written to stimulate theoretical debate over how best to do the sociology and history of technology. It used historical vignettes (in the original version drawn from both science E X C H A N G E

Hydrology and hydraulics expertise in participatory processes for climate change adaptation in the Dutch Meuse

Many scientists feel that scientific outcomes are not sufficiently taken into account in policy-making. The research reported in this paper shows what happens with scientific information during such a process. In 2001 the Dutch Ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water Management commissioned their regional office in Limburg to assess how flood management objectives could be achieved in future in the Dutch Meuse valley, assuming climate change will increase peak discharges. To ensure political support, regional discussion rounds were to help assess the measures previously identified. This paper discusses the ways in which hydrological and hydraulic expertise was input, understood and used in this assessment process. Project participants as a group had no trouble contesting assumptions and outcomes. Nevertheless, water expertise was generally accepted as providing facts, once basic choices such as starting situation had been discussed and agreed. The technical constraints determined that politically unacceptable measures would have to be selected to achieve the legally binding flood management objective. As a result, no additional space will be set aside for future flood management beyond the already reserved floodplain. In this case, political arguments clearly prevail over policy objectives, with hydraulic expertise providing decisive arbitration between the two.