Technology and Social Agency (review)

Marcia-Anne Dobres brings historians and scholars in other disciplines up to date on the theories and research programs employed in the study of prehistoric technologies. Her central thesis is that technology studies are at a turning point in which new theories on the human condition are forcing scholars to abandon older views in favor of agency-centered perspectives. Specifically, Dobres argues for a framework for archaeology focusing on the human body as a conduit linking social and material practice.

In order to contextualize her argument, Dobres provides a background to the technological determinism that dominated scholarship in archaeology for most of the twentieth century, addressing recurrent themes drawn from an interdisciplinary sample including "positivist, processual, neo-Darwinian, selectionist, behavioral, feminist, marxist, postprocessual, and hermeneutic standpoints" (p. 1). Even though historians of technology may be familiar with some of the works cited, they will find the consistency of argument an important contribution to an ongoing interdisciplinary dialog. The book provides a sampling of recent research on prehistoric technologies and the results of Dobres's own studies of materials from the Late Magdalenian (circa twelve thousand years ago) Paris Basin.

Dobres develops her argument and presentation of the results of prehistoric research in seven expertly crafted chapters. All are presented in a highly readable format, although jam-packed with detail and wide-ranging bibliographical sources. Chapters 1 and 2 provide the historical background to and the particular brands of technological determinism practiced by archaeologists, and throw light on her objections. Although much of what Dobres describes mirrors the progression of other disciplines, scholars outside of archaeology will find its particular brand of technodeterminism, based in evolutionary and general systems theory, of interest. Technologies also have been linked with many of the modern masculinist "techno-metaphors" (p. 14), known to historians of technology but here retrofitted onto the deep past.

Chapters 3 to 6 are the core of Dobres's proposal for a practice framework for archaeology. These chapters examine various concepts, methodologies, and research drawn from philosophy, sociocultural anthropology, sociology, history, archaeology, and science and technology studies—all presented as alternative frameworks for understanding ancient technologies "as if people mattered" (p. 97). Central to the practice framework are the fine-tuning of such concepts as structuration and structures, agency, and agents, described by Dobres as follows: "Structuration depends on the agency of people, but in turn provides the structures within which agents exist. In agency theory, then, societal institutions become structures through the agency of individuals and collectives, at the same time that agents are structured by and exist within them" (p.133). Dobres demonstrates the practice framework she advocates for archaeology by combining structuration and agency theories with reconfigured understandings of a methodology developed by the archaeologist Andre Leroi-Gourhan in the early twentieth century, the chaine operatoire or technical routines involved in production, using her Late Magdalenian research to provide a window into "the social relations, meaning, and agency" (p. 188) embedded in prehistoric technological activities.

In the final chapter, Dobres assesses the future of a practice framework, its variable premises and uses, and calls for research specifically designed to uncover the social relationships that underlie technological practices. She also raises provocative questions that might now be addressed by employing the methodologies and concepts introduced in the book.

Technology and Social Agency pulls together many disparate ideas and fields of interest and exemplifies the value of the interdisciplinary dialogs Dobres advocates. Her rich and provocative discussions of the concepts and methodologies around which technologies have been studied provide thoughtful and critical appraisals that should be read by all scholars with an interest in the relationship of technology and culture. It is a strong statement for reconfiguring the history of technology to include the prehistoric past. Dobres's text and her sixty-three pages of notes and bibliographic references make a good start.