From heterogeneous engineering to sociotechnical transitions: the case of Micro and Nano Technologies (MNT)
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24215/23143924e051Keywords:
innovation, technoscience, transition, heterogeneous engineering, nanotechnologyAbstract
While some STS approaches such as actor-network theory have been criticised for their inability to produce explanatory mechanisms for socio-technical transitions (Geels, 2007), the article shows that such theory allows us to account for a complete socio-technical transition, from the design of roadmaps for R&D laboratories to the diffusion of new technical devices in society, without renouncing to “follow the actors” (Latour, 2006) and their concrete and situated practices. To this end, we analyse Micro and Nano Technologies (MNT) as a case of transition and mobilise the concept of “heterogeneous engineering” (Law, 1989) to explain the capacity for social transformation of technoscientific practices at several key sites of this transition: international committees where technological priorities and roadmaps are defined; laboratories where new technical devices are invented and designed; platforms for experimentation and technology transfer to industry; large research and development programmes where academics and industrialists imagine the uses of these new artefacts and shape new socio-technical infrastructures. The articulation of these different case studies provides some clues to account for the transition processes towards the production and use of MNTs, their massive diffusion in contemporary societies and their possible impacts in terms of digital surveillance and social control.
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