Beyond Harmony and Consensus: A Social Conflict Approach to Technology

This article presents a sociological perspective that suggests that technology should be seen as a means for groups to retain or rearrange social relations. Claiming, first, that the sociotechnical systems approach in technology-and-society studies often tend to bring out harmony and cooperation as an ideal and, second, that central social construc tivists tend to interpret closure and stabilization processes in terms of consensus, this article, instead, argues that technology should be regarded as the outcome of conflicting interests and ideas. To make the perspective plausible, a number of analytic concepts are put forth and illustrated, some case studies are reinterpreted in conflict language, and a few tentative research hypotheses are formulated.