TAD-30806 Technography, Researching Technology and Development

Course

Credits 6.00

Assumed knowledge on:

Introduction Technology Studies (TAD-10306) or Introduction to Technology, Agro-ecology and Development M (TAD-20804)

Continuation courses:

Thesis Technology and Agrarian Development

Contents:

Social aspects of technology are approached from a central focus on the technology itself. Careful and comprehensive description of technology, technological processes and impacts, technology task groups, and user perspectives - something the TAD group terms "technography" - is an essential basis for any further analytical or policy oriented work in technology studies. The course considers technologies as complexes linking tools, machines, processes and people. Attention is also paid to fields in which technologies operate - to institutional and task-group environments, design processes, policy, entrepreneurship and innovation processes, technological impacts on society and culture, ideas about risks and acceptability, applications of technology to problems of agrarian development and poverty alleviation, selection pressures upon technologies. The emphasis in the course is on how to make these complex issues amenable to description and empirical analysis.

Learning outcomes:

After successfully engaging in the course, the student will be asked to: - understand the main ways to frame technographic investigations and identify or isolate relevant units, components, systems, networks and socio-technical ensembles for study; - handle different analytical approaches; - handle specific instruments of investigation and different investigative approaches as tools of technographic analysis; - identify relevant topics for investigation and to plan, execute and present a piece of technographic research (including hypothesis formation, research planning, data management, presentational skills, research ethics).

Activities:

The course will be taught by seminar and discussion. Members of the seminar will read, analyse and make critical presentations upon a number of exemplary cases drawn roughly equally from the published literature and from recent research or work-in-progress within the TAD. Each seminar participant will also prepare and defend a draft research proposal demonstrating grasp of elements of the technographic tool-kit. The course includes regular moments of feedback on the students research design process and stimulates an interactive methodological discussion on how to unpack the society-technology interface.

Examination:

Examination based on seminar presentations and proposal writing.

Literature:

A list of relevant literature will be composed based on latest findings and tailored to specific interests.