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Appropriating technology: An introduction

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 Appropriating Technology: an introduction

Most social studies of science and technology have focused on either production by

established professionals, or the impact on the general public. But what about the lay

public as producers of technology and science? From the vernacular engineering of

Latino car design to environmental analysis among rural women, groups outside the

centers of scientific power persistently defy the notion that they are merely passive

recipients of technological products and scientific knowledge. Rather, there are many

instances in which they reinvent these products and rethink these knowledge systems,

often in ways that embody critique, resistance, or outright revolt. This book presents the

first collection of case studies of such appropriated science and technology. For

shorthand we will refer to these as ―appropriated technologies,‖ but keep in mind that

they are often as much about scientific knowledge and ideas as they are about gadgets

and technical methods—that is, they encompass the entire realm of ―technoscience‖.1

1) What are Appropriated Technologies?

Sociologists, anthropologists, historians, and other researchers have recently

converged in a new field termed ―Science and Technology Studies‖ (STS). Many of

these studies have been framed in terms of ―social impact,‖ examining how science and

technology change our personal lives or cultural attitudes or environment. Another

approach to STS, dating back to the work of Robert Merton in the 1930s, studies

science itself as a social phenomenon. Recently this has produced some heated

debates about just how much social processes actually influence scientific and
 2

technological research. Other STS research clusters have been built around policy

studies, ethics and values in science, anthropology of medicine, etc.

Despite this diversity of approaches, the vast majority of these studies focus on the

professional as the producer. This approach is so frequent that alternatives can be

easily overlooked. As social scientist Manuel Castells suggests, one way to make the

relations between society and technoscience more visible is to think about a ―space of

flows‖ in which we map not just geographic locations, but the networks of information

and paths of material transport that increasingly define a knowledge-based economy.

Here we will extend visualizations of this space of flows to even more intangible

attributes of people and power—not as a way to reduce social dynamics to a single

point of view, but rather the opposite, to expand our ability to understand appropriated

technologies from a greater variety of perspectives.2

Figure 1 shows how the standard view of science and technology might be visualized.

On the vertical axis we have ―social

power,‖ with some well-to-do

professionals at the top, and some hard-

knock blue collar folks at the bottom.

Granted, there are hundreds of different

aspects of social power; some obvious

such as financial assets, political

legitimacy, or religious
 3

authority; and some more subtle, such as the often unconscious bias against personal

appearance

(ethnicity, gender, age, beauty) that can emerge in even the most nondiscriminatory of

circumstances. Moreover, these different aspects of social power can conflict with each

other. A penniless prophet might hold thousands in his sway, while a lonely rich atheist

might mold society by money. So when producing this type of graph, we need to

remember that there are many different ways each a single case study could be drawn,

depending on the focus of the analysis.

Let‘s assume that we have agreed upon some particular category or dimension of

social power, such as income, which lands our scientists or engineers in this study

towards the upper half (something like upper-middle class). Now we want chart the flow

of artifacts or ideas as they leave the laboratory and find their way to consumers. For

this task we will need the horizontal axis of figure 1, the production-consumption axis.

Again, there is no reason to think of this single dimension as simultaneously

representing the hundreds of different consumption/production aspects of our lives; we

take it that the graph is only trying to show a single aspect of one product. If we divide

our consumers into two groups—the rich and the poor—then we would have two paths

from the professional producers, as shown in figure 1. Of course the graph is only

indicating the general direction of the flow in terms of these two dimensions; in physical

time and space these paths might be quite complex, with knowledge that slowly diffuses

to the public, or circuitous routes from design lab to factory floor to shops to home (cf.

Cowan 1987).
 4

Even with such a simplified view, there are many instances which it do not fit this

picture. The best known are those of the ethnosciences; for example

ethnomathematics or ethnobotany (figure 2). An indigenous society may be at the

margins of political and economic power, but their knowledge systems can produce

information that winds up in a first world high-tech laboratory.

Through ethnopharmacology, for example, indigenous herbal cures can lead to high

profits in the biotechnology industry. Of course that doesn‘t necessarily mean high

profits for the indigenous herbalists -- in fact, their knowledge is often appropriated

without compensation.

Appropriation, however, can be a two-way street, and it is the traffic in the opposite

direction that concerns us. The case studies presented in this book show how people

outside the centers of social power -- from white middle-class homemakers to rural
 5

Native Americans -- have been able to use materials and knowledge from professional

science for their own kinds of technological production. In these appropriated

technologies (figure 3), we begin with production at the usual professional locations, but

it is followed by a second phase in which this technoscience is reinterpreted, adapted,

or reinvented by those outside these centers of power. Of course the trajectory need

not stop there. Such innovations can reappear in professional contexts, mix with

indigenous knowledge, and enter into further appropriations from either top or

bottom.

2) Why study appropriated technologies?

Many of the researchers in social studies of science have entered the field because of

their concern over the real and potential dangers involved in science and technology.

For this reason the field has gain a reputation for pessimistic views, and critics

sometimes accuse them of being technophobes or luddites. Appropriated technologies

 6

offer a rich resource for combining a critical analysis of social issues with an eye

towards the positive application of science and its artifacts. Of course not all of these

case studies are happy stories: neo-nazi groups are also outside the centers of

scientific production, and they too adapt and reinvent to gain power. The stories of

technological appropriations are multifaceted; they are both painful and joyous,

reassuring and shocking. They are complex enough to warrant study for their own sake.

But their primary importance is in their potential contribution to socio-political resistance

and social reconfiguration.

3) Variations along the consumption-production dimension

In collecting the various case studies for this anthology, it became apparent that some

examples made a stronger case for appropriation than others. Using that distinction, we

developed the following three analytic categories, positioned along the

consumption/production axis (figure 4).

The weakest case, reinterpretation, is defined by a change in semantic association with

 7

little or no change in use or structure. Graffiti tags are a good illustration: the physical

and functional aspects of a building are essentially unchanged, but the semantic claim

to possession, as a form of either cultural resistance or criminal turf war, is not trivial

(Castleman 1982, Rose 1994). The next stronger case, adaptation, is defined by a

change in both semantic association and use. For example, the Bedouin society of

Egypt, a relatively disempowered ethnic minority, found that cassette tape players,

which were marketed for listening to music from the Egyptian majority, had an unused

recording capability as well. They began to record their own songs, and this eventually

led to the rise of a Bedouin pop star and the creation of new economic and cultural

opportunities (Abu-Lughod 1989). Adaptation requires two technosocial features. First,

an attribute of the technology-user relationship that Hess (1995) refers to as

―flexibility.‖3 For example, a calculator is less flexible than a word processor, which is

less flexible than a personal computer. Second, it requires a violation of intended

purpose. It is a mistake to reduce this to the intentions of designers; we also need to

consider marketing intentions and ―common-sense‖ or popular assumptions. In the

case of Bedouin cassette players we have a pre-existing flexibility for recording that was

intended by the designers, but this was obscured by the marketing focus on play-back

only. Adaptation can be described as the ―discovery‖ of a ―latent‖ function, but that

definition needs to be problemitized in the same ways that philosophers have debated

whether mathematics is invention or discovery (Restivo et al 1993). The creativity

required to look beyond the assumed functions of the technology and see new

possibilities is a powerful force for social change, yet one that receives insufficient

theoretical attention.
 8

The strongest case for appropriated technology is reinvention, in which semantics, use

and structure are all changed. That is, if adaptation can be said to require the

discovery of a latent function, reinvention can be defined as the creation of new

functions through structural change. Low-rider cars (figure 5) provide a clear

demonstration of this combination. Although automobile shock absorbers were

originally produced for decreasing disturbance, Latino mechanics developed methods

for attaching them to electrically controlled air pumps, turning shock absorbers into

shock producers. Low-rider cars violate both marketing and design intentions, but the

new functionality was introduced by altering the original structure, rather than

discovering functions lying dormant in the original artifact.

 9

Figure 5: Joe Grosso‘s Mazda, ―Desirable Ones.‖ Copyright Lowrider Magazine, use by permission only

It is important to understand that in distinguishing strong versus weak cases for

appropriated technology, we make no evaluation of ideology or effectiveness. One

might, for instance, find more political success with reinterpretation than reinvention in a

given case. But the three categories do offer a useful set of analytic distinctions.

Consider, for example, Native American artist Sharol Graves‘ description of the genesis

of her work (figure 6):

The image of these serigraph prints started out as a joke. When I worked in the

silicon valley, I used to draw on the computer during my lunch hour. I made the

computer do things the software wasn‘t designed to do. I would draw for an

hour and save my ―Indian design‖ drawing. Then the computer would crash

because of a memory overload. Then, I had to figure out a way to save it

another way. When I finally tried to plot out the design on a D-size drafting

plotter, I ran into a similar problem. Once again, I was able to figure out a way

to manipulate the plotter to draw the entire image (Graves 1995).

 10

Figure 6: ―Indian Circuit‖ by Sharol Graves, 1986

Graves first reinterpreted the CAD/CAM software for circuit design as an artistic

medium; she then adapted it for new functionality, and finally reinvented the system,

changing its physical capabilities. She explains, ―I wanted the public to know that a

Native American was working in the research and development of high technology, just

to blow a few stereotypes about the ‗Indian Mind.‘‖ For Graves the activities of

reinterpretation, adaptation, and reinvention map out a journey that progressively fused

cultural and electrical resistance.

4) Variations along the social power dimension

In considering variation along the social power dimension, we need to steer between

two potential pitfalls. On the one hand, we need to avoid multiculturalist relativism, in
 11

which every social group is seen as just another dish in the global smorgasbord (Fraser

1997). On the other hand, we need to avoid a contest for victimhood; we don‘t want to

construct a hierarchy of oppressions. One way to avoid this dilemma is to keep in mind

the multidimensional nature of these categories of social power; as noted earlier each

case could be mapped in several different ways. But even if we reduce our analysis to

one dimension – say, for example, racial/ethnic identity -- both groups and individuals

must be approached in historic, contextual terms, not as a fixed ―essence.‖ Indigenous

(―fourth world‖) societies, for example, can be endangered by the descendants of

colonialists, but many of these descendants are themselves ethnic hybrids seeking to

contest their own marginal ―third world‖ status. Analyses of appropriated technologies

need to consider the historically specific relation between these cultural locations, and

the turbulent mixture of people, artifacts, techniques and texts that make up

technoscience.

Consider, for example, the famous case of Kayapo video (Turner 1992). Deep in the

Amazon rainforest, the construction of a hydroelectric dam threatens Kayapo lands.

The Kayapo use handheld camcorders; at first to rally support in dispersed villages, and

later to help document their protest. Despite the Brazilian government‘s interest in

keeping the activism quiet, the images are picked up by the first world press, showing

the Kayapo in full war regalia with bright tropical bird feathers juxtaposed against the

high-tech camcorders. What could have been an obscure protest becomes an

international media event, resulting in political pressure to stop the dam. But how

should this be analyzed in regard to appropriated technologies? In one sense, the

 12

Kayapo are merely using camcorders the way the Sony corporation intended: to make

videos. In terms of the consumption-production dimension, it is quite weak. But the

Kayapo are not the typical consumer that the Sony engineers had in mind when they

created this technology.

First world consumers, especially those from the white middle class, rarely realize the

extent to which their technological access is ensured simply by their status as ―the user‖

foremost in so many designers‘ minds. For example, even something as seemingly

universal as photographic film embodies decades of chemical refinement using white-

skinned models; similar phenomena exist for furniture, clothing, and many other

products.4 When we think about the dimension of consumption/production, we need to

keep in mind that some consumers have flows of access to the ―production‖ end of the

spectrum that are normally invisible, even to themselves. 5 In the case of Kayapo video

those paths are nonexistent; merely the fact that they were able to translate use of this

technology from the first world context in which it was designed (a context which

assumes, for example, that there will be electrical outlets with stable power sources

available) to the fourth world context of indigenous artifacts and knowledge is in itself an

impressive appropriation accomplishment. In other words, movement across the

dimension of social power is just as important in defining appropriated technologies as

movement across the consumption-production dimension.

Thus we should think of our graph not as a static map, but as a place to chart the

movements of artifacts, ideas, and even people. Movements make visible the contours
 13

of social power in relation to technoscience: we sense the difficulty of movement in the

―wrong direction,‖ the resistance we encounter when these artifacts, ideas and people

try to flow upstream. We can visualize this difficulty or resistance to uphill flow on our

graph by adding a third dimension (figure 7).

Figure 7: The uphill struggle to appropriate science and technology

When I mention appropriated technologies to political conservatives, they sometimes

 14

respond with a Horatio Alger story: ―technology lets anyone pull themselves up by their

own bootstraps.‖ Figure 7 helps to visualize the critique of that myth: a portrait of the

forces that unite elite social power and technoscience production, and of the pull that

keeps disenfranchised groups away. Working class students struggling in school, for

example, often describe their troubles in terms that sound like bad luck—―missed my

exam because I had to take my brother to the hospital‖ or ―my car wouldn‘t start‖—but

when we step back and view the whole of such incidents we can see them like iron

filings in a magnetic field, mapping out flows of power.6 As cultural theorists such as

Michel Foucault and N. Katherine Hayles have pointed out, social power can be so

diffuse that it acts more like a force field in physics, a volume filled with electrical or

magnetic or gravitational vectors. And that too is an appropriation; we need new kinds

of literacy that allow more non-scientists to understand and shape the contours of this

multidimensional space of flows.

5) A brief survey of previous research

Unlike this anthology, the word ―appropriation‖ in STS literature typically refers to the

context of professional scientists and engineers, such as the Marxist critique of the

appropriation of labor by the upper class, or the complex portrait recently offered in

Hård and Jamison‘s anthology titled The Intellectual Appropriation of Technology, which

describes how professionals have used technology for purposes of romanticism,

nationalism, etc. But the appropriation of science and technology by marginalized

groups, as we have defined it here, is a more widespread phenomenon. The following

seven categories describe how some of this research has been conceptualized.
 15

a. The consumption junction. Cowan (1987) charts the relations of consumption and

production in the history of cooking stoves, using innovative diagrams that work like

topological maps to show the collective force of consumers in shaping technology

design through market demands (see also ―evolutionary economics,‖ e.g. Dosi et al

1988). Mackay and Gillespie (1992) and Lie and Sorenson (1996) extend this

analysis to user adaptation through more detailed examples. Smith and Clancey‘s

(1998) anthology includes a collection of essays on ―hobbyist worlds‖ of innovation,

such as Douglas‘ study of the extraordinary role played by early amateur radio

operators.

b. Vernacular knowledge systems. Vernacular architecture has long been a subject

of interest in folk arts and anthropology, particularly where ―high culture‖

components are reassembled into ―low culture‖ structures. Vernacular mathematics

is described by Nunes et al (1993) and Lave (1988), and both Eglash (1995) and

Darrah (1995) describe adaptations in information technology that can be termed

vernacular cybernetics. Akrich (1992) analyzes vernacular engineering of energy

generation in third world development, and demonstrates how differences in both

technical flexibility and cultural context influence adaptation. Pacey (1983) on

―Eskimo‖ adoption of snowmobiles, Manuel (1993) on cassette use in India, and

Gupta (1998) on selective synthesis of indigenous and high-tech agricultural

knowledge are all good examples of such vernacular appropriation. Appadurai

(1996) and Escobar (1995) discuss some of the broader cultural politics of

technological hybrids.
 16

c. The ambiguity of use. Westrum (1991) describes how the ―ambiguity of use‖

invites adaptation and tinkering. ―A device is basically a solution, but there may be

more than one problem to which it applies‖ (p. 239). Tenner (1996) provides an

analysis of the ―unintended consequences‖ of technology, such as the dialectic

between changes in sports technology and changes in sports activity.

d. Creative misuse. Penley and Ross (1991) note several cases of ―popular

refunctioning of foreign technology‖ such as ―the Vietnamese farmers who turn

bomb craters… into fish ponds‖ (although they curiously disregard these as merely

―cute‖ examples, preferring information technology as a more explicitly oppositional

political appropriation of technology). Terry and Calvert (1997), focusing on gender,

point to groups such as the Barbie Liberation Organization, which switched voice

recordings for Barbie dolls and G.I. Joe and slipped them into stores across the

nation, to emphasize the intentionality of what Terry calls ―creative misuse.‖ On a

less political note, Hesser (1998) describes the wide variety of culinary innovations,

from a panty hose consommé strainer to cedar roof shingles for salmon.

e. Public understanding of science. Toumey (1996) points to several examples,

such as evolution versus creationism, the fluoridation debate, and other public

controversies in which the authority of science is brought to play against itself. In the

hands of popular groups such debates at times appropriate science using rigorous

data and analysis, and at other times are merely ―conjuring‖ the effect of science

using its symbols. Irwin and Wynne‘s (1996) anthology emphasizes the

appropriation aspects of certain lay interpretations.

f. The outsider within. Collins (1987) describes the multiple and sometimes
 17

conflicting positions for African American women as ―the outsider within.‖ This

framework in which personal identity and professional identity lie at opposite ends of

the social power axis is descriptive for many situations in which marginalized groups

move into professional science and technology production. Examples include

Manning‘s (1983) study of anti-racist biologist E.E. Just, Koblitz‘s (1983) biography

of feminist mathematician Sophia Kovaleskaia, and others whose upward mobility

did not erase an ―oppositional consciousness‖ (Sandoval and Davis 2000).

6) The role of appropriation in democratizing science and technology

Appropriated technologies do not have an inherent ethical advantage. First, insofar as

appropriation is a response to marginalization, we should work at obviating the need for

it by empowering the marginalized. Second, not all forms of resistance are necessarily

beneficial in the long run. Aihwa Ong, for example, notes that Malaysian women using

spirit possession as resistance to exploitation may be releasing frustrations that could

have gone into collective labor organizing. And as we noted, white supremacist groups

might well be described as marginalized people who appropriate the internet and other

technologies. While free speech must be preserved at all costs, appropriation is not an

ethical win in the case of neo-nazi web sites.

Insofar as science and technology appropriations do have potential contributions to

stronger democracy (cf. Winner 1986, Sclove 1995, Schuler 1996), we need to

understand how these positive attributes can succeed. First, there are obstacles to

appropriation itself; most obviously those created by totalitarian governments, but

 18

corporations can also dampen or discourage appropriation. The flexibility required to

allow user adaptation, for example, is increasingly threatened in contemporary

information technology marketing strategies. The best known case is Microsoft‘s

attempts in securing market shares by preventing inclusion of the Netscape web

browser, but this strategy of selective compatibility is much more widespread. For

example, during the web browser court inquiry, it was revealed that Microsoft had

prevented its competition from gaining complete knowledge of all Windows OS files,

which would mean that Microsoft‘s own application software would be more reliable

than that of its competitors. Encouraging designers to incorporate appropriation as a

positive virtue means reversing this trend towards inflexibility. Of course flexibility itself

can be a means of social dominance, as Martin (1994) points out in examining

concepts of the embodied self under capitalist relations of ―flexible accumulation‖ (eg

flexibility as a managerial strategy). Extending Martin‘s framework to technology design,

we might point to the ways in which the increasing flexibility of software allows it to

adapt to individual users‘ computers, making internal changes to its software

configurations, linking automatically to company websites and engaging in other

activities that blur the line between ―enhancement‖ of user capabilities and a prosthetic

for corporate influence.

 19

Second, we can examine each case of lay/professional relationship in terms of the

dependence or independence fostered by various appropriated technology strategies

(figure 8). Rather than romanticize independence, both users and designers should

strive towards the method of appropriation that will move toward strong democracy

their particular context, while allowing for changes such as increasing independence to

free up new possibilities, or decreasing it to facilitate institutionalization.

Finally, we can encourage, inspire, and incite the use of appropriated technologies for

opening new possibilities in the relations of culture and science. Foucault‘s powerful

phrase, ―technologies of the self,‖ only uses technology in a metaphorical sense, and is

focused on self-making by those at the high end of the social power spectrum, but de

Lauretis‘ Technologies of Gender brings the apparatus of representation together with

discussion of its marginal actors in ways that suggest both the challenge and promise of

appropriation for cultural identity. We need not just more cultural expertise in technical

matters, but more syncretism in both directions. We need not only more scientific

access for local communities, but more cultural workers -- artists, writers, activists and
 20

others -- who can animate the spirit of technoscience, and speak to the soul of

appropriated technologies.
 21

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 27

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End Notes

1
Technoscience is a term introduced by Latour and Woolgar in their seminal text “Laboratory

Life,” in part because repeating the phrase “science and technology” became tiresome, but with

an eye towards critique of the claim for clean separation between the two categories (cf.

Oudshoorn’s identification of this blurred boundary in chemistry and engineering). We

considered naming this book “Appropriating Technoscience,” but no one outside of STS seemed

to know what we were talking about, so instead we are leaning on the crutch of this fuzzy

boundary.
 28

2
As Haraway (1991, pp. 189-190) notes, the rejection of visualization in cultural critique is

based on a faulty assumption that it must always produce a god’s-eye view; but any close

examination reveals that “there are only highly specific visual possibilities, each with a

wonderfully detailed, active, partial way of organizing worlds.”

3
Flexibility was originally introduced into STS terminology in reference to the interpretative

flexibility of scientific theories (Collins), and was imported into social studies of technology by

Pinch & Bijker (1984).

4
Thanks to Rayvon Fouché for the photography example.

5
As Appadurai (1986, p. 41) puts it, “The production knowledge that is read into a commodity is

quite different from the consumption knowledge that is read from the commodity. Of course,

these two readings will diverge proportionately as the social, temporal, and spatial difference

between producers and consumers increases.”

6
Foucault (1979, pp. 139-141) describes such “micro-physics of power” in terms of the

intentional control of minutia by those in authority, but here we see a similar force of minutia

without anyone in charge.

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