Social Constructionism

   Society and technology studies conducted by historians, anthropologists, sociologists, and communication scholars suggest that social change is too complex and subtle to be explained solely in terms of technology. Chandler (1995) says, "Technology is one of a number of mediating factors in human behaviour and social change, which both acts on and is acted on by other phenomena".

   To counter the technocentrism associated with deterministic theories, a new approach to understanding the relationship between technology and society is emerging, called social constructionism. Edwards's (1996) research on the relationship between the Cold War and the development of computers in the United States used a constructionist model. He maintained that the history of computers needs to be examined in terms of their relationship to the metaphors utilized in Cold War science, politics, and culture. It is only through an examination of the relationship between technological development and culture that the historical development of computers could be fully understood.

   Although some authors group social constructionism into the same category as social determinism, there is a difference between them. Similar to technological determinism, social determinism views technology and society as having a linear cause-and-effect relationship. In contrast, social constructionism views technology and its development as a dynamic system rather than a linear process. Tonkiss (1998) points out, "social constructionist perspectives argue that the forms in which we gather, record and interpret knowledge about social life have important consequences for the ways that we define and understand social structures, social groups and social problems". Applying a constructionist approach to their research, Berg and Lie (1995) state; "Several of our studies concluded that changing technologies initiate a period of instability and provide possibilities for social change, but we also saw that desirable changes had to be initiated by human action". In addition to studying the interactions between technology and culture, social constructionism also gives human agency a central role in understanding the relationship between technology and society.

   Social constructionism examines technology from historical, intellectual, contextual and cultural perspectives and it interacts with these perspectives. Technological change is viewed as a matter of politically significant choices, and the technological metaphor is a fundamental element of culture and politics. Social constructionists ask the following questions: How do people know things about technology? How is knowledge about technology influenced by social contexts? What business, organizational, and political arrangements are formed by technology? What procedures become associated with different technological ideas and artifacts? How do individuals and groups assign meaning to technology? By exploring these types of questions, social constructionists attempt to more fully understand the relationship between technology and society.