Do Artifacts Have Political Economy

Bibliographic Data

ID5337335
AuthorsK Birch (0000-0003-2881-4623, Institute for Technoscience & Society, York University, Toronto, Canada, corresponding author)
Year2025
Publication date2025-08-04
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueScience Technology & Human Values (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0162-2439 • E-ISSN: 1552-8251
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/01622439251352167
OpenAlexW4412950721
LanguageEN
Citations received6
References cited63

Harking back to Langdon Winner's now classic essay "Do artifacts have politics?," my aim in this article is to ask a very similar question-namely, do artifacts have political economy? Following Winner and with the same objective in mind, I analyze artifacts that: (1) have been designed in ways that embed particular political economies; or (2) are compatible with particular political economies. I illustrate the former using Winner's own example of Robert Moses and the design of bridges in New York City. For the latter, I illustrate a strong and weak version of the compatibility claim, with the strong version characterized by the adoption of both a particular technology and political economy while the weak version is characterized by the adaptation of the social context to a particular technology and political economy. I use the example of advertising technology ("adtech") and generative artificial intelligence respectively to illustrate these two versions. I frame this discussion within an approach I define as constructivist political economy sitting at the interface of science and technology studies and political economy, which can provide a useful analytical tool to analyze and address the vagaries of contemporary technoscientific capitalism

Business · Economic system · Economics · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Cybernetics and Technology in Society · Information Systems Theories and Implementation · Law · University-Industry-Government Innovation Models

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