From the Lab to the City: Wiebe Bijker Talks about the Evolution of the Social Studies of Technology

Abstract

Wiebe Bijker is an unorthodox and, paraphrasing John Law, heterogeneous engineer. If we understand engineering in a broad sense as the use of knowledge and experimentation for the creation of socially useful objects, then Bijker's career is certainly an engineering one--as can be seen in the construction of entities as diverse as political movements, Physics textbooks, graduate programs, high school curricula, academic disciplines, and sociological writings. However, in the midst of so much diversity there has been at least one constant element: his passion--and perhaps obsession?--to democratize technology by showing that its rigidity is the result of hardened social processes usually disguised as technical motives, thus open to social reconstruction. His forays into occupations and scientific fields found himself pioneering the so-called New Sociology of Technology at the dawn of the eighties. In this conversation, Bijker reflects on the evolution of the social studies of technology since then, and comments on his current research.