TAD-30306 Technology, Social Choice and Development

Course

Credits 6.00

Contents:

New technologies can provoke heated discussions. The societal concerns about pesticides and biotechnology are two typical examples. This course will explore the idea that technology paths are an outcome of social choices instead of individual choices or autonomous scientific work. How are technology development, transfer, and use, as social activities, interwoven with the social organization and practices of teams, firms, policy platforms, laboratories, social movements, farmer communities, and so on?
The subject matter of this course is how social organization regulates technology development and use, and, conversely, how institutional change may be a response to new technologies. The course examines the usefulness of the concepts social choice and politics of technology innovation for understanding the links between society, technology, and inequality and underdevelopment.

Aims:

By the end of the course you should be able: - to explain in outline what is involved in the identification and analysis of:
- interactions between social institutions and technological trajectories,
- inequality and power in the regulation of technologies, and
- institutionalized perspectives in controversies over technology innovation
- to set out some key arguments of grid-group cultural theory and political ecology;
- to evaluate different types of social choice of technologies in agrarian development;
- to test key concepts through qualitative research on institutionalized perspectives.

Examination:

Weighted mark of:
- participation in discussions and presentations (10%);
- coded interviews (30%);
- essay (30%);
- assignments and exam (30%).

Literature:

See www.sls.wau.nl/tao/education/tscd.