The Evolution from Horse to Automobile: A Comparative Internation ...

Chapter 1

Converting Consumers: The Conceptual Dependence of Controversial Artifacts

The concept of practices, namely, ways of doing things, has not been used extensively to examine technological change and diffusion. Research on technology tends to break down its analysis into two major components—people and things. The dynamics of the relationship between the two have been examined through various lenses—social groups, networks, gender, economics, technical content, and functional features, among others—to explain how an artifact comes to be, or why a certain social order exists. Although studies focusing on people and things complement each other, they differ on many fundamental points, particularly with regard to the agency and impartiality of social actors. Actornetwork theorists and gender scholars, for instance, see artifacts as forces that shape social orders, whereas social constructivists recognize agency among humans exclusively.