Alongside the development of SCOT theory emerged a slightly different view of socio- technical developments, broadly termed the Social Shaping of Technology (SST) approach. SST is not a single method or approach but a collection of approaches that share common priorities: they are concerned with the socially produced form and content of technologies and processes of innovation from a political perspective (Edge and Williams, 1996). What distinguishes this approach from SCOT is its greater emphasis on the political, economic and social structures embodied in technologies and artefacts, and the mutually shaping effects that those can in turn have upon society (Mackenzie and Wajcman, 1985). This
complements the internal relations that shape the development of artefacts, systems and technologies as emphasised in SCOT theory, arguing that those localised, internal processes are also shaped and constrained by external ones, so cannot be separated in analysis (Mackenzie and Wajcman, 1999). Langdon Winner’s (1993b) article entitled “How
technologies reweave the fabric of society” uses the example of the Clinton administration’s approach to redeveloping infrastructures – specifically highways and ICT networks - in the United States. It shows how the narrowly constituted assumptions and attitudes of those in positions of power – the administration - about the functions and ends of those
technologies and systems exerted significant changes affecting those who did not occupy positions of power – the citizenry.
Other SST advocates raise further socio-political issues in relation to technology and society. These include: Russell (1993) who adopted a broadly Marxist approach to his analysis of the
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political shaping of decisions around technology, particularly when concerned with environmental issues; Wajcman (1991 and 2010) who adopted a feminist approach in her analysis of how male bias in socially constructed views of technology has shaped the
perceived capabilities of men and women to use and develop technologies, particularly ICT, affecting work roles, practices and male-female power dynamics over time; and Mackenzie (1990) who highlighted the impact both at the time, and in terms of the technological trajectory of missile designs, of designers avoiding politically sensitive design options when developing U.S. submarine ballistics systems. Knut Sorensen (2004) and in conjunction with others (e.g. Gansmo, Lagesen and Sorensen, 2003) has been preoccupied with intersections between technology policy, culture and gender, particularly multimedia and ICT, and later sustainability and climate change and innovation, arguing that the role that the SST approach can play is in exposing the power dynamics in the development of new socio- technical systems and in doing so, helping to focus technology policy on protecting and nurturing more socially sensitive and democratic innovations.
In a similar way to SCOT, SST has been used to analyse both large socio-technical systems as well as localised, specific technologies or innovation processes. As Mackenzie and Wajcman (1999) argue, this is because whatever the ‘size’, the processes and dynamics are still between the social and the material, and are still embedded in particular contexts. They point to two particular case studies to illustrate this: firstly, Cerruzi’s (2003) historical analysis of the development and widespread adoption of personal computing. This was shown to be the result of many parallel and enmeshed factors; the behaviour of the computing firm IBM, the development of programming languages, the political will of certain social groups to make computing more accessible and less exclusive to industries and corporations, political decisions around research and development funding in ICTs, and many others. The second case study, of Kranakis’s (1997) analysis of the development of designs for a suspension bridge, documented the process by which two engineers in two different local contexts produced two different solutions to the same problem, because of different social structures and interactions such as the reward structure for professional engineering associations in different places. The contrast between the large system and the specific issue demonstrates the broad applicability of the SST approach.
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The SCOT and SST approaches both reject of technological determinism, acknowledge a range of actors and factors involved in socio-technical developments, as well as the competing interests and priorities of different social groups at different levels. However, whilst there are many divergences even within the SST field alone, there are some common concepts and preoccupations that characterise the social shaping, rather than the social construction approach to technology and make it more appropriate for this particular research:
1. SST highlights the mutual shaping of society and technology, rather than one on the other, which is a key concept in terms of appreciating the effects that the domestic retrofit initiatives are intended to have, have had, or may have, upon the people and places involved in them.
2. SST is more concerned with the choices in and negotiability of socio-technical developments, whether they were selected or not, and how those embody contextual political and power dynamics, both locally and in a broader sense. As Edge and Williams (1996, p866) term it, technological innovation under the SST approach is “a garden of forking paths”. This begins to provide an explanatory element to understanding why different domestic retrofit responses may have emerged in different English cities.
3. Alongside the acknowledgement that socio-technical developments are negotiated, non-linear and are a result of more than one factor or actor, there is a greater appreciation of the constraints upon choices and change, as a result of political contexts. This aids our understanding of how the policy context and its
particularities shape and direct the decisions made at individual levels within the formation of the domestic retrofit initiatives.
4. Similarly, there is greater focus on the irreversible effects of lock-in to particular choices once they are made and a particular technological trajectory has been adopted – not necessarily because that path is ‘the best’, but because of historical events or the ‘success breeds success’ phenomenon. This again has a political dimension in both its construction and its effects (Russell and Williams, 2002 and Edge and Williams, 1996), and addresses issues around why radical changes could be less accepted beyond the initial experimental stage of the domestic retrofit
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initiatives under question, or why certain more conservative choices may be made within those initiatives.
5. The range of SST-based studies identify a number of socio-technical relationships that shape, direct and constrain change, which connect well with the broad pressures identified in chapters 1 and 2. These include relationships between technological development and the state, the economy and the different
organisations that coalesce around it, and how these relate to different knowledge priorities (Edge and Williams, 1996, Mackenzie and Wajcman (1999) and Russell and Williams, 2002).
6. SST has been particularly commandeered by those interested in ‘innovation’, that is: technologies, artefacts or systems at the beginning of their development, whether that be green ‘niche’ technologies, or industrial innovations (see Vergragt, 1988, Kemp et al, 1998, and Jorgensen and Jorgensen, 2009a and 2009b) As a result, it has focussed on the different routes and paths that innovations can take, which can have significantly different outcomes and effects both technologically and socially for different groups of society (Edge and Williams, 1996). If we understand
innovation as experimental and novel responses to a particular ‘problem’, we can see how this perspective might highlight the different options and opportunities that these responses might face and negotiate in their creation.
For this research on domestic retrofit in cities, the increased focus of SST perspectives on the political context of the construction of, and responses to socio-technical issues, is most welcome. One of the goals of the research is to examine why such different responses to an issue that has been constructed by global and national priorities have emerged in different local contexts, and in order to do this a framework is required that can address the
interactions between the local interactions and processes and their entanglement with national and global priorities and issues, and SST goes some way to providing this. It is also useful to delineate the aspects of socio-technical innovations in terms of contributing factors and relationships, as well as in terms of the different directions, forms, outcomes and impacts that these innovations may have, both during their development, and once they are established. However, there have been criticisms of the SST approach, there are alternatives, and there have been more recent developments and embodiments of it in
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newer theoretical frameworks. Mackay and Gillespie (1992) identified what they felt to be a lack of attention on the appropriation or use of the technologies as part of the story,
particularly in relation to domestic technologies, which is a relevant and important point. They also point out a lack of attention to marketing and semiotics around certain
technological artefacts, and a lack of attention to ideologies as the foundations that shape choices and expectations during the innovation process. Furthermore, there is still an issue with the multiplicity of socio-technical elements to domestic retrofit – none of which have priority over the other in a holistic study of this nature (and in fact it is the multiplicity that defines this socio-technical problem in this particular way), as well as the distinct lack of place sensitivity and focus on the peculiarities of urban contexts that has not been addressed by either the SCOT or the SST approaches.