Social Construction of Technology
The Social Construction of Technology (SCOT) is a constructivist framework holding that technological artefacts are shaped by the interpretations and negotiations of relevant social groups rather than by technical logic alone. Introduced by Trevor Pinch and Wiebe Bijker in 1984, it shows that an artefact has 'interpretive flexibility'—different groups see different problems and solutions in it—until a process of closure stabilises one design as the obvious one.
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Sources
- Pinch, T. J., & Bijker, W. E. (1984). The social construction of facts and artefacts: or how the sociology of science and the sociology of technology might benefit each other. Social Studies of Science, 14(3), 399-441. DOI: 10.1177/030631284014003004 ↗
- Bijker, W. E. (1995). Of Bicycles, Bakelites, and Bulbs: Toward a Theory of Sociotechnical Change. MIT Press. ISBN: 9780262023764
How to cite this page
ScholarGate. (2026, June 22). Social Construction of Technology (SCOT) Analysis. ScholarGate. https://scholargate.app/en/science-technology-studies/social-construction-of-technology
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