Steven Yearley - Science, Technology, and Social Change (Routledge Revivals)

First published in 1988, this book provides students with a way to increase their understanding of the role of science and technology in society. Steven Yearley draws on and develops ideas from research in the sociology and politics of science to address, in particular: the nature of scientific knowledge and the authority it commands; the political and economic role of science in the West; the relationship between science, technology, and social change in underdeveloped countries. Examples used range from nineteenth-century brain science to the strategic defence initiative, and from hugely expensive experiments in nuclear physics, to proposals for inexpensive boat-building programmes in the Sudan. Overall, this reissue provides a comprehensive and stimulating account of the role played by science and technology in contemporary social change.

Science, Technology, and Social Change

Steven Yearley

First published in 1988
by Unwin Hyman Ltd

This edition first published in 2014 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

1988 Steven Yearley

The right of Steven Yearley to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Publishers Note
The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent.

Disclaimer
The publisher has made every effort to trace copyright holders and welcomes correspondence from those they have been unable to contact.

A Library of Congress record exists under LC control number: 88005613

ISBN 13: 978-1-138-79928-8 (hbk)
ISBN 13: 978-1-315-75611-0 (ebk)

Science, Technology, and Social Change

Steven Yearley

Boston Sydney Wellington

Steven Yearley, 1988
This book is copyright under the Berne Convention. No
reproduction without permission. All rights reserved

Published by the Academic Division of
Unwin Hyman Ltd
15/17 Broadwick Street, London W1V 1FP

Unwin Hyman Inc.,
8 Winchester Place, Winchester, Mass. 01890, USA

Allen & Unwin (Australia) Ltd,
8 Napier Street, North Sydney, NSW 2060, Australia

Allen & Unwin (New Zealand) Ltd in association with
the Port Nicholson Press Ltd,
60 Cambridge Terrace, Wellington, New Zealand

First published in 1988

Yearley, Steven
Science, technology, and social change.
1. Scientific knowledge Sociological perspectives
I. Title
306. 45

ISBN 0043012582
ISBN 0043012590 Pbk

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Yearley, Steven
Science, technology, and social change.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. ScienceSocial aspects. 2. TechnologySocial aspects. I. Title

Q175.5.Y43 1988 303.483 885613
ISBN 0043012582 (alk. paper)
ISBN 0043012590 (pbk. : alk. paper)

Typeset in 10 on 11 point Bembo
and printed in Great Britain by
Billing and Sons Ltd, London and Worcester

As writers on the sociology of science tirelessly point out, there has been a great change in the last fifteen years in our understanding of science. It is only during this period that people studying the role of science in society have begun to make anthropological excursions into the world of the laboratory. Until recently the principal products generated by scientists, their theories, reported findings and experiments, were studiously avoided by most sociologists of science. All this has now changed. Researchers have made long field trips to laboratories or have closely questioned scientists about why they believe the things they do and how they evaluate experiments and observations. As a result we now understand a good deal about the life world of science and have a more sophisticated view of the characteristics of scientific knowledge.

But this increase in understanding has been achieved at the cost of specialization. There is now an area of study within sociology specifically dedicated to the sociology of scientific knowledge. The aim of this book partly runs counter to this specializing trend. My aim is to provide a review of the principal ways in which science and technology currently relate to social change, both in the West and in the underdeveloped world. A second ambition is to show that the view of science which has emerged from the recent, detailed studies of the scientific life world supplies a useful general basis on which to build sociological analyses of science, technology and social change.

I should like to take this opportunity of thanking two friends: Michael Mulkay for his very instructive comments on the argument and structure of the book and Steve Bruce for his careful reading of the text and for many helpful recommendations. I apologize to both of them for not making better use of their suggestions. The book and its shortcomings remain my responsibility alone.

In the past three decades the occupants of the industrialized parts of the world have become increasingly convinced of the importance of science and technology in social change. Although in the 1950s they knew they had never had it so good in terms of material wealth, welfare benefits and employment opportunities, it was also true that they had never before reaped the benefits of science and technology in the same way. Dependence on the domestic use of distinctly technological artefacts such as the television and refrigerator became widespread and brought the link between society and technology to public attention. The impact of science and technology on social change had become an obvious fact. The close connection between social development and technical ability has become an even more acute issue within the last decade, particularly in Britain but also in the longindustrialized countries of continental Europe and North America. Governments in these countries have lately come to insist on the economic benefits which can and must be derived from science and technology and have adopted an increasingly utilitarian attitude to the support and commissioning of research.

Yet this conviction of the importance of science and technology for development is as imprecise as it is widespread. The intricate details of scientific knowledge remain the preserve of a highly trained lite. Under these conditions, a general vagueness about the processes involved in the generation of scientific and technical knowledge is readily understood. Even the more specialized agencies which have tried to comprehend the impact of technology commonly treat it as a factor existing entirely outside society; that is, as an exogenous influence. Thus, while economists models can easily cope with changes in the availability or prices of raw materials, for example, the introduction of a new technology is commonly regarded as a noneconomic change. It tends to be handled as though it occurred outside the economic system altogether. Sociologists responses have generally been similar. Great reliance is still placed on the theories of social change associated with Weber, Marx and Durkheim which stress factors such as religious belief and work motivation, political struggle and the contrast between preindustrial and modern forms of social cohesion. This is not to say that there is no consideration of technical change in the work of these theorists; rather it is to imply that sociologists have looked towards social causes of change and have not incorporated technical change in the heart of their models. Even policymakers have been unsure about the mechanisms linking science, technology and society. Their attitudes have fluctuated greatly; for a considerable period in the 1960s it seems to have been felt that any money spent on science and technology was automatically well spent because of the expected spinoffs. Scientists, encouraged by the generosity with which they had been treated, saw the costs of research soar. A counterreaction set in among planners and politicians which has only been unevenly relaxed as governments have sought to harness science to the national economic interest. It has been hard to know how to treat, even how to classify, this goose which occasionally lays such conspicuously golden eggs (Rip, 1982).