Artefakter: Industrin, vetenskapen och de tekniska nätverken (review)

In the organization of research, the humanities and the social sciences have become increasingly similar to the natural and engineering sciences. European research councils tend to fund "big-science" projects and large, often interdisciplinary graduate schools. It is probably safe to say that most historians are skeptical about this. To many, writing history remains an individual endeavor that cannot meaningfully be pursued in the same way as biochemical research. Artefakter—a collection of essays by researchers and students from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm and Uppsala University—suggests otherwise by summarizing the impressive accomplishments of a ten-year project financed by the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation and called Scientific Research, Technological Change, Industrial Innovation.

In his introduction, editor Sven Widmalm argues that artifacts "can be studied along the same lines as individuals or institutions—biographically or as integral parts of networks and systems" (p. 9). Most readers familiar with Wiebe Bijker, Thomas Hughes, and Trevor Pinch's classic volume The Social Construction of Technological Systems (1987) will recognize this approach. Still, it is important to add that none of the contributors to Artefakter use social construction of technology (SCOT), or actor-network theory (ANT), or the large-technical-systems perspective (LTS) as conceptual cookie cutters when approaching historical reality. The strength of the individual essays lies in the richness of the empirical material, including the design of ultracentrifuges, ion valve converters, and nuclear reactors, and from chemical laboratory equipment in the eighteenth century to hydroelectric dams in the twentieth. At least for readers of this journal, there is really no point in flogging the dead horse called "the linear view of research and development."

As with most anthologies, one may complain that this one tries to cover too much territory and is too disparate. What holds the book together, however, is the focus on artifacts, human-made objects that have meaning and contribute to the rearrangement of social structures. Take Anders Houltz's discussion of the Borgvik tilt hammer, for example. In the mid-nineteenth century this was installed in an ironmaking plant in the middle of Sweden, only to be replaced by another type in twenty years. But its history did not end. Many years later, this "beautiful" (p. 320) piece of craftsmanship was rediscovered and transported to Gothenburg, where it was given a central position at the 1923 industrial exhibit. It was also given a completely new meaning. Instead of creating economic surplus value, its purpose was now to produce "symbolic value" (p. 331).

Not all contributors place artifacts at the center of their analysis, and the last chapter does not fit into the overall framework. Instead of discussing the embeddedness of artifacts in the social and cultural fabric, Håkan Håkansson and Alexandra Waluszewski introduce an economic discourse in which "effects" and "consequences" are at the center of the analysis (p. 377). If historians of science and technology wish to continue discussing artifacts, they should move in the direction of cultural studies and treat them as part of what anthropologists call "material culture." Economic network theory, SCOT, ANT, and LTS are not the only relevant social theories out there.