The Discursive Structure of the Social-Technical Divide

The Example of Information Systems Development

Bibliographic Data

ID3188048
AuthorsJanet Rachel (Brunei University), Steve Woolgar (0000-0003-1465-3136, Brunei University)
Year1995
Volume43
Issue2
Pages251-273
Publication date1995-05-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Sociological Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0038-0261 • E-ISSN: 1467-954X
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1111/j.1467-954x.1995.tb00603.x
OpenAlexW2028673732
LanguageEN
Citations received5
References cited16

The social and technical are commonly defined in opposition to each other. Yet technology practitioners are often quite comfortable with the idea that the technical is constitutively social. Drawing on an ethnographic study of a computerised information systems development project, this paper examines various usages of notions of 'technical'. Attempts to situate the study at the 'technical core' of the project were met with a series of rebuffs. 'Technical' talk is to be understood as a categorising device which does boundary work. Technical talk invokes and performs a disjunction between networks of social relationships and stipulates a moral order with associated norms for acceptance and transition. The difficulty of penetrating the intelligibility of technical talk is understandable as a struggle in familiarising oneself with the routine social actions of a separate community. In addition, the private sphere of the technical is often distanced in time. The costs involved in journeying into the future are analogous to those of penetrating alien cultures. Ideas of progress and advance are often associated with the invocation of 'the technical'. These connote a notion of timing which reinforces the distance and difference of - and hence depicts the costs involved in penetrating - removed sets of social relationships. Technical a. Appropriate or peculiar to, or characteristic of, a particular art, science, profession, or occupation (OED

Epistemology · Ethnography · Invocation · Knowledge management · Opposition (politics) · Political science · Public relations · Social science · Sociology · Sociotechnical system · Technical communication · Technological determinism · Computer Science · Information Systems Theories and Implementation · Innovative Human-Technology Interaction · Law · Usability and User Interface Design

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