Technology or Politics?

Sujatha Raman
Additional contact information
Sujatha Raman: Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, University of Pittsburgh

Journal of Peace Research, 1992, vol. 29, issue 3, 345-352

Abstract: In Inventing Accuracy, Donald MacKenzie presents a strong argument for refuting the belief that the socalled arms race is caused by an inherent technological imperative. This is an empirically rigorous and highly readable book about what first seems to be an area only accessible to experts. Based on over a hundred-and-forty interviews with various people, politicians and engineers involved in the US nuclear program, the author unravels the open-endedness of technical development. The achievement of high accuracy in nuclear missiles is believed to have brought about the shift from countercity to counterforce strategy. The author shows that this linear model of technology-influencing politics overlooks both technical uncertainty and the political shaping of technology. Drawing on the social construction of technology (SCOT) approach, he demonstrates the conventionality of knowledge claims and argues that determinism only paralyzes action toward change. However, there are still barriers to large-scale change within the bureaucratic politics of technology he describes. Hence this work needs to be related to broader political issues in peace research.

Date: 1992
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://jpr.sagepub.com/content/29/3/345.abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:joupea:v:29:y:1992:i:3:p:345-352

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Peace Research from Peace Research Institute Oslo
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().