Social Determinism

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Social determinism is a concept that views the relationship between culture and technology as cause-and-affect. In a nutshell, social determinism espouses the belief that development of new technologies are driven by economic forces of capital, rather than the reverse. As Jacob Schmookler explains, “both the similarities and the differences in invention in these substantial economic sectors [railroading, building and all other fields] suggest that the principal determinant of the volume of invention in a field is not its cost but its value.”^[1] Social determinism opposes Technological Determinism, which maintains that social change is instigated by new technologies. Slack and Wise point out that social determinism shifts the responsibility of change away from technology and on to other wider forces. Social determinism certainly disrupts any sense of technology possessing its own autonomy.

In Culture & Technology: A Primer by Jennifer Daryl Slack and J. McGregor Wise, the authors state that technological is based upon the following two assumptions:

1. that the values, feelings, believes and practices of culture cause particular technologies to be developed and used
2. that changes in culture result in changes in technology^[2]

To further illustrate, a social determinist view of a technological development, such as the automobile or airplane, would consider them as stemming from an economic need to make money from manufacturing these technologies. On the other hand, a view informed by technological determinism would determine that cultural changes that result from the development of the automobile, such as people travelling more quickly and in a sense making the world smaller, stem from the technology itself, rather than the economic forces which may have spurred its creation.

Technologies will not be developed and marketed if they have no hope of producing an economic gain, whether they be useful, useless or too far ahead of their time. While a device such as a gerbil powered golf ball cleaning hat sounds innovative in theory, it will never realistically bear its creators economic profit. Conversely, while surely there is a want for computerized smart homes, the cost of such a system is unrealistic that they have not found a dominant place on the mainstream housing market. David MacKenzie points out, “Often, heterogeneous engineering required from those pushing a new technology is the creation of the sense of a need for that technology. A radically new device does not find a market ready made: that market has to be constructed.”^[3] Thus, social determinism can also encompass the creation of new markets in order to sell new technologies.

Contents 1 Arguments Against 2 See also 3 External Links 4 References

[edit] Arguments Against

While it is certainly a simpler task to deconstruct a technological determinist position, there are some areas where social determinism can be refuted. For example, Slack and Wise point out the ways that technologies have unwelcome side effects that do not reflect economic needs, such as greenhouse gasses from automobiles.^[4] This point certainly highlights the problematic nature of the absolutist nature of social determinism. While it is possible to break the effects of technology into its primary and secondary side effects, this also has its flaws. Slack and Wise point out that “Differentiating between effects and side effects thus has the power to minimize whatever is undesirable about technology by favoring and highlighting the potential for positive change.”^[5]

Other scholars have further questioned the role of capital and private enterprise in driving technological innovation forwards. David Mowery and Nathan Rosenberg, argue, "whatever the merits of this questioning of the earlier assumptions and goals of science and technology policies, the notion that market demand forces ‘govern’ the innovation process is simply not demonstrated by the empirical analyses which have claimed to support that conclusion.”^[6] As Savvas A. Katsikides explain, “Eventually, Mowery and Rosenberg came to the conclusion that innovation is the result of the interaction between science and technology push factors.”^[7] What social determinism provides is an oversimplification of reality which ignores other factors which may affect technological innovation, such as scientific or technological limitations, historical context or sociological context. Katsikides goes on to explain that “For industrial societies which recognize 'growth' as a constitutive necessity, constant change could even guarantee preservation. Such a societal development can only be maintained continuously if it is able to remodel itself by adapting to constant change in a controlled way.”^[8] Society then may develop new technologies, not purely out of gain, but for the purposes of self-preservation. For example, when atomic weaponry was developed by the American government in 1945, by the Soviet Union in 1949 and China in 1964, it was not for the purposes of creating a valuable commodity to be sold and traded. Rather, it was for a perceived need of self-preservation. Of course, the maintenance of economic power could potentially be a secondary benefit of maintaining military power; it is not the primary motivation for the development of this particular technology. In fact, throughout history it was the need for military might, rather than economic, which drove the creations of new technologies, such as armour, catapaults, and other types of weapons. This example is useful in this discussion precisely because it proves that technological innovation is born not out of a monolithic singular motivating factor, but a complex constellation of various social, historical, scientific and economic processes.

[edit] See also

• Cultural Determinism
• Technological Determinism

[edit] External Links

• Social Determinism on Wikipedia
  
• Chindogu, unuseless Japanese inventions
  
• Social Determinism
  

[edit] References

1. ↑ Jacob Schmookler, Invention and Economic Growth, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966), 204.
2. ↑ Jennifer Daryl Slack and J. McGregor Wise, Culture and Technology: A Primer, (New York: Peter Lang, 2007), 46.
3. ↑ David MacKenzie, “Missile Accuracy: A Case Study in the Social Processes of Technological Change,” Wiebe E. Bijker, Thomas P. Hughes, and Trevor Pinch (ed.), The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology, Cambridge: The MIT Press, 204.
4. ↑ Jennifer Daryl Slack and J. McGregor Wise, Culture and Technology: A Primer, (New York: Peter Lang, 2007), 46.
5. ↑ Ibid, 47.
6. ↑ David Mowery and Nathan Rosenberg, “The Influence of Market Demand Upon Critical Innovation: A Critical Review of Some Recent Empirical Studies,” Research Policy, Volume 8, Issue 2 (1979): 104.
7. ↑ Savvas A. Katsikides, “Sociology and the Functions of Technological Autonomy,” Innovation: The European Journal of Social Sciences, Volume 10, Issue 2 (1997): Academic Search Premier.
8. ↑ Ibid