Jon Clark's study of the effect of the modernization of a telephone exchange on exchange maintenance work and workers is a solid contribution to a debate that encompasses two lively issues in the history and sociology of technology: technological determinism and social constructivism.

Clark makes the point that the characteristics of a technology have a decisive influence on job skills and work organization. Put more strongly, technology can be a primary determinant of social and managerial organization. Clark believes this possibility has been obscured by the recent sociological fashion, exemplified by Braverman's analysis, that emphasizes the way machinery reflects social choices. For Braverman, the shape of a technological system is subordinate to the manager's desire to wrest control of the labor process from the workers. Technological change is construed as the outcome of negotiations among interested parties who seek to incorporate their own interests into the design and configuration of the machinery. This position represents the new mainstream called social constructivism.

The constructivists gain acceptance by misrepresenting technological determinism: technological determinists are supposed tobelieve, for example, that machinery imposes appropriate forms of order on society. The alternative to constructivism, in other words, is to view technology as existing outside society, capable of directly influencing skills and work organization.

Clark refutes the extremes of the constructivists by both theoretical and empirical arguments. Theoretically he defines "technology" in terms of relationships between social and technical variables. Attempts to reduce the meaning of technology to cold, hard metal are bound to fail, for machinery is just scrap unless it is organized functionally and supported by appropriate systems of operation and maintenance. At the empirical level Clark shows how a change at the telephone exchange from maintenance-intensive electromechanical switches to semielectronic switching systems altered work tasks, skills, training opportunities, administration, and organization of workers. Some changes Clark attributes to the particular way management and labor unions negotiated the introduction of the technology, whereas others are seen as arising from the capabilities and nature of the technology itself. Thus Clark helps answer the question: "When is social choice decisive and when are the concrete characteristics of technology more important?"


The information in the passage suggests that which of the following statements from hypothetical sociological studies of change in industry most clearly exemplifies the social constructivists' version of technological determinism?


It is the available technology that determines workers' skills, rather than workers' skills influencing the application of technology.

All progress in industrial technology grows out of a continuing negotiation between technological possibility and human need.

Some organizational change is caused by people; some is caused by computer chips.

Most major technological advances in industry have been generated through research and development.

Some industrial technology eliminates jobs, but educated workers can create whole new skills areas by the adaptation of the technology.

考题讲解

此讲解的内容由AI生成,还未经人工审阅,仅供参考。

正确答案是 B。社会建构主义者认为技术和社会之间是一种互动关系,并坚持认为可能性技术和人类需求之间的持续协商是所有技术进步的根源。因此,B 选项提出的观点最能体现社会建构主义者对技术决定论的看法。

展开显示

登录注册 后可以参加讨论

OG2018-RC