Technologies and ‘Revolutions’
Transforming the means of
production, consumption and
regulation
Lecture structure
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Defining technology
Revolutions and transformations
Analyses of technology:
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Technology as enlightenment
Technological determinism
Technology as a dark evil
Control and mass deception
Revolutionising leisure concepts
Next week’s task
Technology: defining concepts
Def: “application of the discoveries of science, or
the scientific method, to the problems of man
and his environment” (Fontana Dictionary of
Modern Thought)
 Transformational
 Contestation over nature and scope of
transformational potential:
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Continuation and amplification vs break and
rupture
Rojek’s (1995) Modernity I, II and Postmodernity
Revolutions and Transformations
Revolutions
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Transformations
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‘Means of production’ (Marx,
1964)
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‘Means of consumption’
(Ritzer, 1998)
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Means of regulation
Pre-industrial/pre-modern:
Industrial/modern:
Postindustrial/postmodern:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/histor
y/
Technology as ‘enlightenment’
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Enlightenment, Modernization, Modernism:
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Intellectual, social and political changes
Belief in the ‘faculty of human reason and agency as the keys to unlocking, and
bringing under the domain of a unified humanity, all the mysteries of the
natural and social universe’ (Hancock and Tyler, 2001)
Key concepts - PROGRESS, EMANCIPATION and FREEDOM
Taming of the natural through the application of the rational tools of science
and technology
Centrality given over to science, technology and the expansion of industrial
capitalism within it; modernization across the Western world
Remember: technology = progress, emancipation and freedom
Technological determinism
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An ‘affirmative’ modernist perspective (Cooper and Burrell, 1988):
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Inevitability of social, political and cultural changes
Objectivity of society, neutrality of science and commitment to the promise of
social progress through the harnessing of nature and the extension of
technology (Hancock and Tyler, 2001)
Major changes in society the product of changes in tools/techniques
BUT technology not neutral – governed by social values and social interests
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State and capitalism drive technological ‘progress’: ABC of technological advantage
(Green, 2003: 9)
Need to problematise ‘interests’ (e.g. commerce) driving technological innovation (i.e.
software/hardware development and release)
Technology as a dark evil
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A critical modernist position (conspiracy theorists?):
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Rejects the uncritical acceptance of science’s neutrality and association of
reason (and technology) with progress and freedom:
The principles of science appropriated in order to dominate both the natural
and human worlds:
Dystopia
Surveillance
Control
Exclusion
Science and technology produce ‘alienation’, ‘anomie’ and ‘de-humanisation’
in work and leisure contexts:
Control and mass deception
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Critical Theory analysis:
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Adorno, Marcuse, Althusser: the ‘Frankfurt School’
Technology facilitates a uniform and debased ‘mass culture’, silencing
criticism (Bottomore, 2002)
Dominant ‘technological rationality’ (Marcuse, 1964)
Nature dominated through science and technology – loss of humanness
Produces a mechanization of life
Technology enables ‘cultural industries’ to homogenise products and services
and exploit consumers
Critical of the capitalist ‘beast’:
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Harnesses technology to enhance its production capabilities whilst further
standardising consumption ‘choices’
Revolutionising leisure concepts/forms
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Leisure a thoroughly ‘modern’ concept revolutionised by
technological innovation
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Technological ‘advance’ challenges concepts of leisure:
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Work
Time and space
Activity
State of mind
Revolutionising leisure concepts
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Structure and agency: freedom and control
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Technologies harnessed by global power elites to exacerbate control
mechanisms and structuring factors:
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BUT technologies also utilised to enhance human agency:
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Choice
Indicative References
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Green, L (2003) Communication,
Technology and Society, Sage
(Chapter 1)
Kumar, K (1978) Prophesy and
Progress: The Sociology of
Industrial and Post-Industrial
Society, Harmondsworth
Kumar, K (1995) From postindustrial to post-modern society:
new theories of the contemporary
world, Blackwell
Roberts, K (2004) The Leisure
Industries, Palgrave, Chapter 10
Marcuse, H (1964) OneDimensional Man, Beacon Press
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Bottomore, T (2002) The Frankfurt
School and its Critics, Routledge
Bryce, J (2001) 'The Technological
Transformation of Leisure', Social
Science Computer Review, 19 (1): 716
Cooper, G et al (2004) The Mobile
Society, Berg
MacKenzie, d & Wacjman, J (1999)
The Social Shaping of Technology,
Open University Press
Hancock, P and Tyler, M (2001)
Work, Postmodernism and
Organization, Sage
Bauman, Z (1989) Modernity and
the Holocaust, Polity