Research in Science and Technology Studies: Knowledge and Technology Transfer (review)

For some time now, scholars have been rethinking the assumptions that ground studies of technology transfer. Critics have rightly questioned the view of technology transfer as unidirectional and the notion that technology remains unchanged by the process. In Knowledge and Technology Transfer, Marianne DeLaet has assembled an interesting if somewhat uneven collection of essays to explore the topic from a theoretical perspective informed by recent scholarship.

In her thought-provoking introduction, DeLaet argues for thinking of transfer as travel, and for using the idea of travel to question what work must be done to make things or ideas cross boundaries and understand what—in a given context—crossing a boundary means. These essays therefore focus on knowledge and technology transfer in practice, and do not engage with the model-building aspects of some technology-transfer literature. DeLaet emphasizes that the essays are meant to engage with the ways that technologies, knowledge, boundaries, and social worlds are reconfigured when technologies travel. Hence she emphasizes the significance of exploring collaboration as much as resistance in order to understand the shifting social and material alignments that result from travel. DeLaet's goal was to avoid what Madeline Akrich has called technologism, where technological development is seen to be constrained by technical infrastructure alone, and sociologism, in which the analyst assumes that a successful technology must fit into an immutable social order. DeLaet's sophisticated framework draws on literature about the role of users in technological development as well as the idea of the contact zone for rethinking technology transfer as travel.

Although the essays generally avoid Akrich's technologism and sociologism, the extent to which each one embraces DeLaet's broader theoretical challenge varies considerably. For instance, Shardul Agrawala and Kenneth Broad's study of the transfer of climate forecasting models is an interesting study of technological resistance, but does not go much beyond explaining the resistance. Michael Black's piece on the Pacific salmon industry can hardly claim to be about technology transfer at all, since it focuses on the system building of technological supports for salmon breeding, which he calls an inappropriate "technology transfer to nature." His constructions of both nature and appropriateness are rather uncritical, and construing such projects as "transfer" tends to vacate the analytic usefulness of the term.

By contrast, "The People's Water," by Bruce Clemens, Andrew Karp, and Maria Papadakis, engages the theoretical framework to show the technological and social reconfigurations that resulted from a water-supply assistance project in Guatemala. By tracing it from its early stages as a foreign-aid project to its ultimate institutionalization in Guatemala, the authors offer genuine insight into the practices and reconfigurations of traveling technology. Ariane von Raesfeld also gives close attention to social and technical reconfigurations in her examination of the strategies of Dutch timber-frame and calcium silicate builders competing to gain a share of the Netherlands' construction market. Her story usefully explores the interaction between system building and technology transfer. DeLaet's stimulating analysis of the ways that patents are reconfigured when moving from North to South (that is, from the developed to the developing world) convincingly demonstrates the usefulness of rethinking transfer as travel.

Readers should be aware that several essays have a tight focus on knowledge, with technological artifacts playing at most a minor role. Also, as a book of "Research in Science and Technology Studies," the analytic approach varies from author to author. While some essays are historical, many others deal with contemporary topics and draw on methodologies from anthropology, sociology, and policy studies. Some authors are themselves engaged with technology-transfer projects, giving an experiential element to their essays. While readers might prefer just a set of historical essays, the diversity of perspectives opens opportunities for reflection on theoretical issues. Despite the unevenness in quality, this collection has much to offer those hoping...