Introduction:The agency of artifacts

Do artifacts act? Should agency be assigned to them in accounts of social change? Or are human beings and social structures like groups and organisations the only social agents? This is a pivotal question for technology studies, but one that has not received an unequivocal answer so far. On the one hand, the literature in technology studies is filled with examples and cases that suggest that technological artifacts and systems do act: they have been claimed to prescribe behaviours, constrain political arrangements, induce cultural beliefs and practices, and shape aspects of their social context. On the other hand, the social constructivist orientation of a large part of technology studies seems to be incompatible with an attribution of agency to artifacts, because it maintains that alleged properties of artifacts can be reduced to the actions and interpretations of social groups.

There is general agreement in technology studies that the introduction and use of a new technology is often accompanied by significant changes in its social context. Such changes may include changes in individual and collective behaviours, attitudes and beliefs, in social statuses and roles, and in social structures and institutions. This generally accepted idea goes against the notion that technologies are neutral, in the sense that they are mere means-toends that function to perform certain tasks more quickly, efficiently or powerfully, and that a proper analysis of them focusses on their function as a means to chosen ends. It is a core belief of technology studies that technologies must also be understood, and perhaps centrally, as building blocks of society and as instigators of social change, in ways that are often unrelated to their intended functions.

Buthere the agreement stops. Onemay agree that thewidespread use of the birth-control pill has been accompanied by, and can be correlated with, sexual liberation and greater freedom for women, and that without the pill these changeswouldnothaveoccurred. Butthenonemaygoontoseriouslydisagree about the agentive role of the pill in this whole process. On the one hand, one may present a narrative inwhich the pill is a powerful actor, a hero (or villain) that single-handedly gave sexual freedom to generations of liberatedwomen.