Of Bicycles, Bakelites, and Bulbs

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 853 were not adapted for wide adoption until the mid-1930s and had not been proved over a wide area until even later; the drought had a lot to do with why farmers adopted hybrids, as did the AAA, which Clarke emphasizes. Corn pickers, on the other hand, were practically useless in fields where most of the corn was on the ground due to wind damage or heavy rains. One of hybrid corn’s most visible fea­ tures, on the other hand, was its strong root system and ability to stand up in wind and rain. Thus, hybrids made fields safe for corn pickers. But these are quibbles and should not detract from a fine and provocative study. We can only hope that this book will generate many other works that also seek to challenge prevailing simplistic explanations of change and that build on Clarke’s elegant assess­ ment of the emerging issues. Deborah Fitzgerald Dr. Fitzgerald is associate professor of the history of technology at the Massachu­ setts Institute of Technology. OfBicycles, Bakelites, and Bulbs: Toward a Theory ofSociotechnical Change. By Wiebe E. Bijker. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1995. Pp. x+380; illustrations, figures, tables, notes, bibliography, index. $35.00 (hardcover). Rarely does a historian allow such a frank glimpse behind the scenes as in Wiebe E. Bijker’s analysis OfBicycles, Bakelites, and Bulbs. Referring to his fifteen-year excursion into historical research as a detour from contemporary concerns of the science and technology studies movement, Bijker proposes to turn a detour into a main route by offering a politically useful theory ofsociotechnical change. A brief outline and summaries of two case studies appeared in a collection he edited with Trevor J. Pinch and Thomas P. Hughes, The Social Construction ofTechnologicalSystems (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1987). But the expanded treatment of the current work is en­ tirely justified. While Bijker’s earlier accounts of the safety bicycle and Bakelite were sketchy, he has added considerable primary re­ search and crafted historical narratives whose attention to detail and engaging story lines are rewarding in themselves. However, the strength of these narratives resides in their interruption by theoreti­ cal “intermezzos” at precisely the right moments to create useful juxtapositions. Factual narrative and theoretical interpretation play off one another in a complex way, with neither side dominating. Although Bijker projects contemporary application of his theory, he avoids sterile theoretical reductionism. The first case study contrasts the Ordinary bicycle (high front wheel) and the Safety bicycle (low wheels with chain drive). Bijker 854 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE suggests identifying “relevant social groups” when tracing the defi­ nition and reception ofa new technology. Such groups, which might encompass scientists, engineers, manufacturers, merchandisers, or consumers, construct different “artifacts” from the same physical objects, thereby exhibiting “interpretative flexibility”—as when young men constructed the Ordinary as a macho racing machine, but women and older men chose to regard it as unsafe and instead patronized a new machine, the Safety, which permitted greater cer­ tainty of control. Describing how an artifact gains relative perma­ nence, Bijker defines “closure” as a growing consensus across rele­ vant social groups, while “stabilization” reflects increasing lack of discussion of an artifact within a group. In the second case study, tracing Leo H. Baekeland’s invention of Bakelite plastic, Bijker deconstructs the myth of the heroic inventor and introduces the “technological frame” as a somewhat Kuhnian set of assumptions shared by members of a relevant social group. Some readers will question the perplexing nonmateriality of “arti­ fact” and “technological frame” as Bijker defines them. Again, how­ ever, the strength of his analysis lies in its convincing “just-in-time” interpolation of theoretical intermezzos into an otherwise tradi­ tional historical narrative. The third case study, new to this volume, explores power conflicts that developed during the social construction offluorescent lighting by companies involved in making bulbs or fixtures and by utility com­ panies involved in supplying electricity. This chapter leads to a con­ clusion in which Bijker meditates on the use of “micropolitical power” in the construction of artifacts and on the subsequent use of “semiotic power” to maintain them. Here his detour finally con­ verges with

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