The Social Construction of Technology

A foundational theoretical framework in sts addressing Actor-Network Theory at the meso level of analysis.

A Social Construction of Technology (SCOT) framework demonstrating that artifacts possess interpretive flexibility, shaped by technological frames held by relevant social groups until closure is achieved.

An STS and organizational theory explaining how artifacts, diagrams, or classifications maintain enough plasticity to adapt to local needs while preserving a robust common identity across diverse intersecting communities.

An evolutionary economics and historical institutionalism theory showing that early, contingent events combined with increasing returns to scale can permanently lock society into inferior technological or institutional paths.

An ecological psychology theory positing that the environment directly presents actionable properties and possibilities ("affordances") relative to the bodily capabilities of an organism without mediating mental representations.

A foundational sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) thesis asserting that all scientific claims—true and false, rational and irrational—must be explained impartially and symmetrically by social causes.

A revolutionary philosophy and sociology of science treatise showing that scientific progress is not linear accumulation, but punctuated by paradigm shifts driven by anomalous crises in normal science.