Compare methods
Review your selected methods side by side; rows that differ are highlighted.
| Script Analysis× | Social Shaping of Technology× | |
|---|---|---|
| Field | Science Technology Studies | Science Technology Studies |
| Family | Process / pipeline | Process / pipeline |
| Year of origin≠ | 1992 | 1985 |
| Originator≠ | Madeleine Akrich (with Bruno Latour) | Donald MacKenzie, Judy Wajcman, Robin Williams, David Edge |
| Type≠ | Material-semiotic analytic method for technological artefacts | Analytic tradition and method in the sociology of technology |
| Seminal source≠ | Akrich, M. (1992). The de-scription of technical objects. In W. E. Bijker & J. Law (Eds.), Shaping Technology/Building Society (pp. 205-224). MIT Press. ISBN: 9780262023382 | MacKenzie, D., & Wajcman, J. (Eds.). (1999). The Social Shaping of Technology (2nd ed.). Open University Press. ISBN: 9780335199136 |
| Aliases | De-scription analysis, Technological script analysis, Inscription analysis | SST analysis, Social shaping approach, Shaping of technology framework |
| Related | 4 | 4 |
| Summary≠ | Script analysis, developed by Madeleine Akrich with Bruno Latour, treats technological artefacts like texts. When designers build a device, they inscribe a 'script' into it—a set of assumptions about who the users will be, what skills and motives they have, and how the world around the device is arranged—and the artefact then prescribes roles and conduct for the people and things it encounters. 'De-scription' is the analyst's method of reading that script back out of the object and comparing the user the designer projected with the user who actually appears, revealing the often invisible politics built into ordinary things. | The Social Shaping of Technology (SST) is the umbrella tradition in the sociology of technology that rejects technological determinism and argues that the content and trajectory of technical artefacts are themselves outcomes of social, economic, organisational, and political choices. Rather than treating technology as an autonomous force whose effects society must merely absorb, SST analysis opens the 'black box' of design and shows that at every stage—conception, development, standardisation, and use—things could have been, and were, decided otherwise. |
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