Approximating Social Movement Studies and STS
David J. Hess
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Citation: "Technology- and Product-Oriented Movements: Approximating Social Movement Studies and STS." Science, Technology, and Human Values 2005, 30(4): 515-535. © 2005 Sage Publications.
This is a final draft. The final published form is available from Sage Publications.
Technology- and product-oriented movements (TPMs) are mobilizations of civil society organizations that generally include alliances with private-sector firms, for which the target of social change is support for an alternative technology and/or product, as well as the policies with which they are associated. TPMs generally involve "private-sector symbiosis," that is, a mixture of advocacy organizations/networks and private-sector firms.
Case studies of nutritional therapeutics, wind energy, and open-source software are used to explore the tendency for large corporations in established industries to incorporate the products and technologies advocated by the TPM. As the incorporation process proceeds, the alternative technologies undergo design transformations that make them more compatible with existing products and technological systems. As the technological/product field undergoes diversification, "object conflicts" erupt over a range of design possibilities, from those advocated by the more social movement–oriented organizations to those advocated by the established industries.
As technology has become an increasingly important part of public policy
debates and a concern of social movements (SMs) and advocacy organizations,
the problem of integrating the fields of science and technology studies
(STS) and SM studies has drawn increasing attention (e.g., Brown et al.
2004, Epstein 1996, Jamison 2001). The concept of technology-oriented and
product-oriented movements (TPMs) is explored here as a contribution to
the ongoing theoretical approximation of the fields. The concept represents
a coherent subcategory within the general category of collective action and
SMs that facilitates the comparative study of some dimensions of the study
of social movements and technology. TPMs are mobilizations of civil society
organizations that generally are also linked to the activity of privatesector
firms, for which the target of social change is support for an alternative
technology and/or product, as well as the policies with which they are
associated. TPMs may occur within or alongside much broader social movements.
For example, within the broader environmental movement, there
were both oppositional movements, such as the antinuclear movement, and
TPMs in favor of wind, solar, and other forms of renewable energy or "appropriate"
technology. Although TPMs may be seen as currents within broader
SMs, in general, their mode of action involves less emphasis on the politics
of protest and more on building and diffusing alternative forms of material
culture.
This article considers three hypotheses of processes that may exist in other
forms of social change efforts and SMs but are particularly pronounced in
TPMs. First, the "private-sector symbiosis" hypothesis postulates that the
emphasis on technology and product innovation leads to the articulation of
SM goals with those of inventors, entrepreneurs, and industrial reformers. A
cooperative relationship emerges between advocacy organizations that support
the alternative technologies/products and private-sector firms that
develop and market alternative technologies. Second, the "incorporation and
transformation" hypothesis postulates that there is a tendency over time
for established industries to absorb the innovations of the TPMs, but in the
process they also alter the design of the technologies and products to make
them more consistent with existing technologies and with corporate profitability
concerns. Third, the hypothesis of "object conflicts" suggests that as
the incorporation and transformation process modifies technological and
product design, the field of technologies and products undergoes diversification,
and conflicts become evident among various actors, from the
original SM organizations to the large industries, regarding the range of
technologies/products and their design. This article will explore the three
hypotheses through a comparative analysis of three TPMs: the nutritional
therapeuticsmovement, the renewable energymovement, and the open
source movement.
Definitions
SMs are understood here to have three major distinctive features: broad
scope in terms of organizational diversity and temporal duration, articulation
of a social conflict by groups that are disempowered or perceive themselves
to be disempowered on at least some issues, and extrainstitutional strategies
such as protest against dominant institutions or the creation of alternative
institutions (McAdam and Snow 1997, Touraine 1992). SMs embrace multiple
organizations and campaigns, and they involve much more extensive
mobilization than networks of activists or solo advocacy organizations
(Flacks 2004). One might argue that TPMs represent a type of "new" SM
(Melucci 1980), but the concept has well-known theoretical difficulties that
are already adequately reviewed elsewhere (e.g., Pichardo 1997). Instead,
this article assumes that TPMs generally emerge out of existing SMs
(whether "new" or "old") and that they can utilize protest or alternative institution
building as means for change. As an analytical category, TPMs are distinctive
because their principle means of social change is the development of
new or alternative forms of material culture, a means of change that is often
associated with calls for significant institutional and policy changes as well.
At an organizational level, TPMs usually have two poles. In addition to
comprising NGOs, nonprofit, and advocacy organizations that often have
links to a broader SM, they also include networks of occupational, research,
or industrial organizations that seek to introduce alternative technologies and
products as well as associated research programs. The second dimension is
described here as the reform movement (RM) side of the TPM. Private-sector
reform organizations that produce alternative technologies and products are
typically entrepreneurial, at least in the early phases. Typically, the first large
corporations or firms from existing industries that embrace the alternative
technologies and products are situated in a countervailing industry, such
as food companies that support the development of therapeutic nutraceuticals
when pharmaceutical companies may oppose them, or energy companies
that support the development of wind energy when utility companies
oppose it.
The distinction between SM versus RM organizations or networks is ideal
typical, but it is defended here as analytically valuable in understanding the
empirical case studies. Because SM organizations often interact with forprofit
business organizations that have overlapping but not identical goals,
the relationship between the SM and RM side of the TPM may have varying
levels of cooperation or conflict. From the SM side, the business organizations
that develop and sell the alternative technologies and products may be
seen as "private-sector vehicles" for SM goals. However, such vehicles are
ultimately in the business of making money, so their long-term adherence to
SM goals may be difficult to maintain (Weinberg 1998). Furthermore, the
RM firms may be bought up by large corporations during the incorporation
and transformation phase of the movement cycle.
The term technology is understood here to mean material objects that are
intentionally used to modify the social and/or material world, whereas products
are (for modern economies) capital or consumer goods that are sold in
markets. The two categories overlap but are not identical. For example,
organic food is a product but not a technology, whereas organic agriculture is
a technology of production that may rely on some commercial products as
inputs. To be effective, technologies must be embedded in socially and historically
situated cultural practices (Monahan 2003) that co-constitute
a sociotechnical system (Hughes 1987), a web of human-object relations
(Bijker and Law 1992), or a network of persons, institutions, and things
(Callon 1986).
At a general level, the focus on technology as a target of change challenges
SM theory to pay more attention to material culture, but as an arena for
contestation rather than as a resource to be mobilized. This view is similar to
and owes some debt to the analysis of the politics of artifacts in STS (Winner
1986) and to the work of health and feminist SM scholars, who have pushed
SM theory to pay more attention to the body (Brown et al. 2004, Clarke
2000). Clearly, the politics of design is subject to interpretive flexibility, and
the degree of interpretive flexibility depends on issues such as the scale of the
sociotechnical system, the user-object relationship, the design of the object,
and the regulatory and market conditions. The main point about the assumption
that politics are embedded in the design of sociotechnical systems is that
a challenge to authority can also be directed at technology design in addition
to or instead of being directed at technology policies or the lifestyles that govern
patterns of use. Although TPMs are defined here as having change in
technology, products, or material culture as a primary focus, it is also true that
TPMs can include campaigns for or protests against regulatory and research
policies, and they can also support changes in consumption patterns and lifestyles
(such as technology use patterns). Thus, while it is satisfactory to
define the primary target of change as technology and products, usually the
goal comes embedded in a much more extensive agenda that is often linked to
a broader SM.
Theoretical Background
There are various ways to think about the approximation of the fields of
SMstudies and STS. One approach might be through comparison of theoretical
traditions, such as the similar theory traditions that highlight structure,
agency, and meaning. For example, political process theory (e.g., McAdam
1983) and some of the Marxist European frameworks (e.g., Castells 1983) in
SM studies emphasize structural analysis in ways that are similar to interests
analyses (e.g., Barnes and MacKenzie 1979) and subsequent structural programs
in STS (e.g., Kleinman 1998, 2003; Frickel and Moore forthcoming).
Likewise, resource mobilization theory (e.g., McCarthy and Zald 1987) and
the process of "scale shift" (McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly 2001) have some
parallels in STS to studies of the growth and transformation of scientific and
technical networks (e.g., Callon 1986, Hughes 1987). As Frickel (2004) has
noted, SM theories of framing and identity (e.g., Benford and Snow 2000;
Melucci 1996) have parallels to social worlds analyses in STS and the study
of boundary objects (e.g., Clarke 1998, Star and Greisemer 1989). Additional
analysis would be needed to explore how far the three parallel theory
traditions could be credibly synthesized; this article will assume only that the
basic conceptual triad of structures, action, and meaning is a valuable starting
point, provided that material culture is added as a fourth point of reference.
A second approach to articulating the research fields, and the one that is
the focus of this article, examines the processes that are described at the intersections
of the two fields. For example, both the SM literature and the STS literature
examine processes of incorporation or cooptation. In SM studies, the
problem of the routinization, absorption, or cooptation has been a persistent
topic over the generations. Weber’s (1978) analysis of the routinization of
charisma influenced Michels’s ([1915] 1958) classic work, and subsequent
generations ofSMtheorists have also examined howstates selectively accept
SM demands in ways that tend to divide and exhaust movements (e.g., Piven
and Cloward 1977). Although unilinear phase models of SMs lack wide
applicability, SMs do undergo cycles of mobilization and demobilization,
and the incorporation of demands is one example of an outcome of SM protest
(Tarrow 1998, chap. 9).
The STS literature on incorporation has focused more on scientific
research communities, whose relations with SMs have often been tense or at
least ambivalent (Nowotny and Rose 1979, Yearley 1992). In the context of
science and SMs, one mechanism of incorporation is the "expertification"
process that SM leaders undergo as they occupy positions of mediation
between SMs and research communities (Epstein 1996). A scientific research
community can also capture SM demands for new research programs
and associated technologies by rechanneling them into their own priorities
for research. For example, during the early and middle decades of the twentieth
century, reproductive scientists responded to SM demands for birth control
technologies by redefining the technologies in high-tech ways (Clarke
1998, chap. 6). SMs can also serve as crucibles of new knowledge creation
that in turn challenges and shapes scientific research agendas (Eyerman and
Jamison 1991, Jamison 2001).
Regarding the specific issue of private-sector symbiosis, the literature
on innovation has occasionally examined the role of SMs as a contributing
force to industrial innovation (e.g., Lounsbury, Ventresca, and Hirsch 2003,
Truffer and Durrenberger 1997), and the history of the appropriate technology
movement also points to how SMactivists sometimes start businesses or
merge SM and business values (e.g., Kleiman 2003, Turner 2003). Ecological
modernization theory (e.g., Mol 2000) is another example of research that
points to cooperative, symbiotic relations between SMs and private-sector
organizations. Those relations can easily turn into cooptation by large corporations,
as treadmill of production theorists note (e.g.,Weinberg, Pellow, and
Schnaiberg 2000). Jamison (2001) also describes the incorporation process
for the environmental movement. His analysis is extended here in the incorporation
and transformation hypothesis, which focuses specifically on the
ways in which the transformation of technical design becomes a key arena for
object conflicts that emerge during the incorporation process.
The concept of object conflicts draws on a somewhat different STS
research tradition, developed in part from the analysis of "boundary objects"
(Star and Greisemer 1989) and "boundary organizations" (Guston 2001). In
the context of health SMs, Brown and colleagues (2004) extend the concepts
to point to the role of medical technologies as boundary objects and the role
of health SM organizations in constructing and maintaining boundary
objects across different constituencies. Likewise, Clarke and Montini (1993)
show how different social worlds interpret a boundary object differently,
Clarke (2000) shows how the interaction of SMs and maverick scientists
leads to product innovation,Winner (1986) shows how design choices have
political implications, and Jørgensen and Karnøe (1995) show how design
choices coincide with differences between SM and industrial views of technological
and societal development. The concept of object conflicts extends
thiswork by focusing on howthe design choices between different variations
of similar objects become sites for conflict among the range of organizational
and individual actors that develop from SMs to established industries.
In summary, although previouswork inSMstudies and STS has occasionally
examined some of the processes described here, this article draws attention
to private-sector symbiosis with SMs and the object conflicts that
emerge during the process of incorporation and transformation. The concepts
were developed from reflections on the the author’s research on the
movement for alternative and complementary cancer therapies in the United
States, which is a mixture of an SM anchored in patient-advocacy NGOs and
an RM among clinicians and food supplements companies (Hess 2002,
2003). During the 1990s, the author watched the movement achieve critical
concessions from the state, industry, and medical profession, but those concessions
were associated with a transformation of therapies as they were
incorporated into the mainstream. Comparisons with the history of similar
developments in renewable energy, open source software, organic foods, and
recycling led to the concept of TPMs as developed here.
This article will focus on nutritional therapeutics and discuss some comparisons
with the cases of renewable energy and open-source software. The
cases represent some of the more full-fledged dynamics of the incorporation
and transformation process, and they also represent different types of technology
during different time periods. Methodologically, the three case studies
represent small segments of broader TPMs, which in turn are associated
with broader SMs. For example, the movement for alternative cancer therapies
is just one example of the complementary and alternative medicine
(
reform movements. The first case history is based on extensive research
by the author that draws on several years of fieldwork, more than 100
interviews and conversations, and extensive documentary analysis. In contrast,
the two comparison cases are drawn largely from secondary sources by
historians, social scientists, and journalists. The analysis presented here is
exploratory; its intention is to examine the applicability of the concepts and
to draw attention to some theoretical and empirical intersections of the fields
of STS and SM studies.
Nutritional Therapies for Cancer
In the nineteenth century, medicine had a sectarian or pluralistic structure
that included the widespread use of dietary and herbal therapies. In the
of the twentieth century, when the American Medical Association gained
control over medical education and professional licensing (Starr 1982).With
the growth of the pharmaceutical industry during the middle decades of the
twentieth century, coalitions of surgeons, drug-prescribing physicians, and
pharmaceutical companies emerged in many of the chronic disease fields.
The therapeutic iron triangles tended to be highly resistant to nutritional
interventions; for the professionals, the alternatives threatened existing therapies
and livelihoods, and for the pharmaceutical companies, dietary and
herbal approaches to chronic disease provided competition from publicdomain
products for their patented drugs. The field of cancer research and
treatment in the
case in the alternative health field of SM dynamics, so it will be considered
here as one example within the broader TPM for
Until the 1970s, the social organization of popular support for nutritional
therapies for cancer in the
researchers, clinicians, and patients around a specific innovator (Hess 2003).
The networks demonstrated a symbiosis of patients and innovating
researcher-clinicians, but the patient advocacy groups forCAMcancer therapies
had not yet congealed into long-term, multitherapy, formal advocacy
organizations. Nonetheless, some of the networks were quite substantial,
such as the system of clinics and networks of patient advocates that developed
around the herbal therapy of Harry Hoxsey during the 1950s; others,
such as the network of patients and clinicians interested in the dietary therapy
of Max Gerson, M.D., were smaller. Figures such as Hoxsey and Gerson
were entrepreneurs in the sense that they ran business enterprises (clinics),
but they were also SM leaders in the sense that they advocated a grassroots
patient-based transformation in therapeutic politics, as well as policy
changes from the state that would be more favorable to the alternatives.
In the 1970s, the field shifted with the emergence of laetrile, a food-based
substance that some advocates characterized as a vitamin. Doctors who prescribed
the substance and patients who used it were subject to prosecution by
authorities. In 1972, the arrest of a
be a member of the John Birch Society launched a significant SM that drew
on spillover support from the Birchers. However, the Bircher spur was soon
subsumed by increasing movement diversification, as people from across the
political spectrum united under the libertarian banner of medical freedom
(Hess 2003, Markle and Peterson 1980). Support for laetrile and other nutritional
interventions for cancer (especially vitamin C, Richards 1981) also
exploded into scientific controversies within the research establishment as
SM for alternative cancer therapies took off. The movement benefited from
spillover from other health movements, such as the macrobiotics movement
and, especially after the mid-1980s, pockets of more alternatively oriented
breast cancer advocates (Wooddell and Hess 1998). The movement was
focused on skirmishes with state and federal governments over regulatory
and research policy, but it also played itself out in the lifestyle domain of
decisions of patients who opted for alternative cancer treatment.
Organizationally, the movement for
structure that provides one example of private-sector symbiosis. Some of the
patient advocacy organizations (e.g., the Cancer Control Society and Cancer
Victors and Friends) emerged prior to the laetrile movement; others were
originally laetrile-related organizations (e.g., Committee for Freedom of
Choice in Medicine), and others were subsequent patient-support organizations
with a broader therapeutic approach (e.g., Center for Advancement in
Cancer Medicine, the Moss Reports, CanHelp, People Against Cancer). At
the same time, a parallel reform movement developed in medicine among
CAM-oriented physicians and other health-care providers, including clinics
in
nutritional supplements firms became involved in making products
oriented especially to cancer patients, such as bovine and shark cartilage.
Although at an analytical level one can separate out the patient advocacy
organizations from the clinical and nutraceutical organizations, there were
dense networks that justify seeing the SM and RM as two sides of a TPM.
During the 1990s, themovement and its therapies underwent considerable
change. First, studies on cancer prevention increasingly documented the
powerful effects of nutritional and dietary interventions. Some of the funding
for the studies came from the food industry (which developed an increasing
interest in "functional foods" and food fortification) and from the supplements
industry, and some funding came from government agencies, such as
the
began to incorporate nutritional and dietary recommendations into
clinical practice, and in some cases it also began to include
(such as naturopaths and acupuncturists) in settings of "integrated" clinical
care. Under those circumstances, longtime members of the alternative cancer
therapy SM could see that their efforts had finally attained a degree of success.
Although much of the recognition remained restricted to nutritional
interventions for prevention, therewas increasing recognition for therapeutic
uses as well (that is, after people were diagnosed with cancer).
However, the integration of alternative cancer therapies into mainstream
research funding portfolios, the nutraceutical industry, and clinical practice
also involved a selection of the therapeutic field away from therapeutic interventions
that were used instead of (that is, as alternatives to) chemotherapy,
radiation, or other conventional therapies and in favor of those that could be
used alongside (that is, complementary to) conventional therapies. This is
where the idea of incorporation becomes inseparable from transformation.
For example, the standard uses of Pauling’s vitamin C or Gerson’s dietary
treatment did not call for concomitant chemotherapy and radiation therapy.
In the transformation process, the alternative forms of
be swept aside in favor of rather moderate, adjuvant uses of nutritional interventions
that, in some cases, are brought in to reduce the toxicities of conventional
therapies or enhance their efficacy.
With these kinds of tensions between "stronger" and "weaker" forms of
integration (Hess 2002), there were evident splits between a more mainstream
physician-oriented, insider wing of the
and a more grassroots, alternative wing, each of which consisted of networks
of providers, researchers, conferences, and patients (Hess 2003). In
the process, object conflicts developed over the design ofCAMcancer therapies
and their position with respect to mainstream therapies. One site of
object conflictswas in the doctor-patient relationship, a specific case of what
might more generally be conceptualized as the consumption junction
(Cowan 1987) or point of consumption. Would nutritional interventions be
configured so that they were merely added to conventional therapies to
reduce their side effects or enhance their efficacy? Or would they be configured
as alternatives? This is not merely a question of the position of the same
therapies; rather, the design of the therapy changes depending on its use. For
example, high-dose vitamin C given intravenously at 20 to 50 grams per day
is generally part of an alternative therapy package, whereas given orally at a
much lower dose, it may be used to reduce side effects in a protocol with radiation
therapy or chemotherapy. Likewise, the radical dietary changes of the
Gerson and macrobiotic therapies were being replaced with much more modest
dietary recommendations and modest nutritional supplement programs
that accompanied conventional therapies.
In addition to the subpolitical site of the doctor-patient relationship, object
conflicts emerged in two other sites. As activists and sympathetic elected
political officials pushed the integration of
funding agenda, research organizations such as the National Institutes of
Health faced decisions between spending limited funding on alternative
some funding in theCAMcancer area has gone toward one alternative protocol
(the Gonzalez regimen for pancreatic cancer patients), much of the rest
has focused on more complementary approaches to nutritional interventions.
A second site for object conflicts has been regulatory policies for nutritional
supplements. Here, object conflicts have at some points erupted into classic
SM protest, such as the case of street protest directed against the proposed
harmonization policies of the Codex Alimentarius Commission, a joint project
of the Food and Agriculture Organization and theWorld Health Organization.
In 2000, health activists from around theworld protested the undemocratic
structure of Codex and its plans to restrict over-the-counter availability
of vitamins and other nutritional supplements (Weiwel 2000). The alternative
wing of the
limits proposed for vitamins, such as small multiples of the RDA (e.g., 250
mg for vitamin C),would restrict access for patients who relied on high doses
(10 g or more per day). Because patients take many supplements per day, a
low limit on supplement dose per pill would mean that patients would reach
the limits of digestibility before reaching the targeted therapeutic dosage.
They saw the Codex standards as an attempt by the pharmaceutical industry
and medical profession to eliminate alternative nutritional therapeutic programs
through international standards.
In summary, as the object is incorporated and transformed, its physical
design changes (the dosage, mix with other supplements, and mode of delivery)
and its status with respect to mainstream objects (conventional cancer
therapies) also changes (from alternative to complementary). As the Codex
protests show, it is possible for the object conflicts to reach the level of street
protest, a possibility that justifies the conceptualization of TPMs from the
SM perspective. However, in general, the object conflicts are embedded in
much more hidden processes, such as physicians’ choices to offer specific
types of programs, patients’ choices of physicians or other health-care providers,
and research funding priorities.
Comparison Cases
There are many possible candidates for comparison cases. In the area of
health SMs, additional cases might include the movement for alternatives in
reproductive technology, such as efforts to create male contraceptives
(Oudshoorn 1999). Rather than examine additional cases in the health field,
the environmental and information technology fields are examined to gain
some sense of the applicability of the concepts across different SMs. The
environmental case focuses on renewable energy, but additional case studies
from the environmental arena could include organic agriculture, ecologically
oriented design of buildings, eco-labeling and sustainable consumption, and
the postrecycling movement toward zero-waste production (Hess 2005). For
the information technology area, privacy advocacy and alternative educational
software (Fleischmann 2003) are additional possibilities. Reform
movements in urban planning, transportation, and the media are additional
topics for which the concepts and processes described here are being explored.
The brief cases presented here give a preliminary sense of some of the
similarities and differences that occur across SMs.
1. Renewable Energy
As in the case of alternative health, whichwas narrowed to focus onCAM
cancer therapies in the
wind power movement, partly because the topic has already been well studied
by social science researchers. The development of modern wind power in
(Jørgensen and Karnøe 1995). Involved in the folk high school movement,
farmers’ associations, and cooperatives, La Cour made it his goal to develop
electricity to serve farms and small industries, and his work was aligned with
the peasants’ movement and social democratic politics. In the 1920s, the
advance of electricity grids displaced wind turbines, but interest in wind
energy resurfaced duringWorldWar II, and during the 1950s, a second wave
of wind power advocacy experimented with the problem of connecting wind
turbines to the power grid. From a comparative perspective, the question of
howthe technological innovationswould be related to the power industry and
electricity grid was similar to that of how the therapeutic innovations in the
alternative cancer therapy fieldwould be related to conventional cancer care.
In the early 1960s, the wind energy experiments foundered on cost-effectiveness
arguments, but the controversy over atomic energy in the mid 1970s led
to renewed interest in wind power. In 1975, a new renewable energy organization
was formed, the OVE (Organization for Renewable Energy). The
OVE drew on the folk high school movement, but it was also directly connected
to the environmental movement against nuclear power (Jamison et al.
1990, 96).
During the mid 1970s, the reform movement side of the wind energyTPM
developed through small entrepreneurs who began building and, in some
cases, marketing wind turbines to environmentally oriented consumers
(Jamsion et al. 1990, Jørgensen and Karnøe 1995). Most of the turbines were
correspondingly small scale, that is, in the range of 20 to 50 kilowatts. However,
the work also produced some larger turbines, as in the case of the Tvind
wind generator, a two-megawatt project that began with teachers, students,
and other volunteers in 1975 (Tvindkraft 2002). In 1978, the Danish government
set up a research test station for wind at Riso, the atomic research facility
(Jørgensen and Karnøe 1995), and in the same year, the Association of
DanishWindpower Owners and the Association of DanishWind Mill Manufacturers
were started.
During the early 1980s, the industry took off, in part due to exports to
but also due to government subsidies (Jørgensen and Karnøe 1995).
Although the industry went through a shake-out period in the late 1980s as
a result of the collapse of the
Danish government subsidies, the industry regrouped and continued to prosper
during the 1990s. By 2002, the Danish wind industry held about half of
the $6 billionworld market share, accounted for 16,000 jobs in
contributed 18% of Danish electricity consumption (Krohn 2002a, 2002b).
The industry was also under a new wave of pressure from political changes
within
which modified industrial and policy relations that had helped spur the
growth of the wind sector in
Over the two-decade period beginning in the 1980s, wind technology
became incorporated into the power industry, but in the process, the design of
the technology was transformed. The scale increased to thousands of megawatts
per generator, and wind turbines were grouped into large-scale wind
farms (Jørgensen and Karnøe 1995). Although the incorporation and transformation
process is much more extensive than with
both technologies/products were redesigned to fit within conventional
technologies, policies, and corporate priorities. In comparative terms, wind
energy has become increasingly complementary rather than alternative.
However, the more alternative, smaller-scale approaches to wind technology
did not disappear entirely. Wind-power ownership in
through quasi-cooperative organizations or wind "guilds," which grew
to 55,000 members by the mid 1990s (Tranaes 2003). In the
mobilization gradually emerged in the form of the home-power movement,
which continued to develop smaller scale applications for homes and small
businesses (Tatum 1995, 2000). Object conflicts between the industrialized
forms of the technology and the alternative forms took at least three different
forms. First, at the point of consumption some businesses and consumers
have the economic and technical resources to make choices between "green"
power produced by power companies and their own "home power" or cooperative
systems. Second, those who take the local ownership route have
sometimes become involved in activism around standards for allowing grid
sell-back from home or local producers. In
movement faced long battles to gain grid connection rights, and in the United
States, a tradition of "guerilla" hookups and civil disobedience emerged
alongside state-by-state legislative campaigns (Tranaes 2003, Home Power
2004). Third, in both
has generated opposition from preservationists and other groups concerned
with visual and noise pollution, environmental risks to birds, property values,
and the general issue of rights to a viewshed (Tranaes 2003, Walsh 2003).
Interestingly, those conflicts have not emerged in some cases where the scale
of the wind farm is smaller and energy control rests in the hands of the
affected community, that is, where the design of the "object" was closer to
that intended in the original Danish wind movement (Walsh 2003).
2. The Open-Source Movement
The open-source software movement grew out of shared uses of the Unix
operating system, whichwas developed at Bell Labs in 1971 and licensed for
a nominal fee to various universities. The lack of backup support led to a culture
of sharing bug fixes among university participants (Moon and Sproull
2002). In the early 1980s, MIT computer scientist Richard Stallman ledwork
on a free operating system based on a "copyleft" or anticopyright software
agreement (Moore 2002). The agreement allowed users to rewrite software
code as long as their own code was also freely available, and it forbade privatization
of software that used the "free" code.
In 1987, Andrew Tannenbaum developed Minix, an open-source clone of
Unix, and four years later, Linus Torvalds, a computer science graduate student
in
to contribute (Bretthauer 2002). Although there were also some heated
discussions within the Minix newsgroup, soon thousands of programmers
were contributing. Concern with the market dominance of Microsoft over
consumer operating systems provided a strong motivating force for the SM
that emerged around open-source software. Over the years, the open-source
movement saw only rare instances of protest politics, such as picketing of
Microsoft when it refused to refundWindows operating systems from Linux
users (Moore 2002). Instead, the main means of protest has been writing code
for the alternative software, that is, by creating an alternative technology/
product. A system of crediting contributors, as in scientific contributions,
provided an additional incentive for ongoing contributions (Kelty 2001).
By the mid 1990s, Torvalds had released version 1.0, and private-sector
symbiosis had begun as start-up companies were distributing the Linux system
for a small fee. Although the code was free, consumers and firms were
willing to pay for the package, support, or training through newservice companies
such as Red Hat (Moody 2000, 97). The rechristening of free software
as "open source" crystallized a division in the movement between the more
radical visions of Stallman (2003) and the business-oriented approach of
Linux supported by Torvalds and Linux analysts such as Eric Raymond. A
second level of private-sector participation occurred when major information
technology firms began incorporating open-source into their products. In
1995, an open-sourceWeb server named Apache was launched, and in 1998,
Netscape released source code for its browser under an open-source license
while IBM shifted to the Apache server and Intel took out stakes in Red Hat
(Moody 2000, 199-218). In 1999, other major
including Hewlett Packard, Dell, and Compaq—offered support for Linux
(Moody 2000, 220-23). By early 2001, IBM had released a version of its
most powerful Intel-based server geared to run on Linux (significantly, also
deciding not to release a version runningWindows), and it announced plans
to spend $1 billion in research and development on Linux-based products
and services (McDougall 2001, Abreu 2001). By 2003, many urban and
national governments, as well as corporations, across theworld were switching
to Linux.
Whereas "hardware" firms led the transition to Linux, resistance was
strongest from the firms that produced proprietary operating systems, and
they moved to incorporate and transform the threat posed by Linux. For
example, in 2001, Microsoft announced an alternative called "shared source"
(Ricadela 2001). Under the newarrangement, select customers were allowed
to view the code and report suggestions back to Microsoft, but they could not
modify it. In contrast, Apple opted for a transformation of the open-source
license that was closer to the Linux license. Components of Apple’s OS X,
whichwas Unix-based and therefore much more stable than previous operating
systems, were based on the Berkeley Software Design (BSD) license
model (Ricadela 2001). Whereas theGNU license of Linux required users to
pass on unimpaired rights to copy, distribute, and change software, under the
BSD model an additional license may be appended to modified BSD programs
that limits the distribution of modifications. Apple’s license, which
became known as Apple Public Source License, was later approved by the
Open Source Initiative (2004), but Apple did keep some parts of its operating
system proprietary. In short, there were significant differences between the
Microsoft and Apple licenses, but both approaches represented shifts in the
openness of open source and set the stage for ongoing object conflicts over
the standard that would govern relations between open-source and proprietary
systems.
In the
over standards for open-source licenses, and development has taken place
largely via the programmer movement itself. Consequently, the sites for
object conflicts involving regulation and funding are not as salient as in the
other cases. Rather, in the open-source movement, object conflicts take place
at the point of consumption (the choice between operating systems) and
among programmers and firms as choices of what type of license or definition
of free software or open source to adopt. At the radical end of the spectrum,
Stallman (2003) and colleagues still distinguish free software from
open-source software, which he claims has some unacceptable licensing
restrictions. Between the extremes of Stallman’s "free software" and
Microsoft’s "shared source" is a wide range of licenses that define the object
free or open-source software (Siltala 2003, Stallman 2003). The technical
distinctions between licenses are a primary site for the ongoing object conflicts
in the open source movement as it negotiates its way through the incorporation
and transformation process.1
Conclusions
The comparison of the three cases suggests that the concepts of privatesector
symbiosis, incorporation and transformation, and object conflicts may
help elucidate a variety of SM-based efforts to change technology and products.
The cases reveal significant differences in the relations between SM
organizations and private-sector firms, the degree to which incorporation and
transformation occurs, and the types of object conflicts that emerge. Yet, the
case studies also support the claim that the concepts provide a valuable starting
point for comparative analysis.
Comparative analysis has the value of revealing patterns that might not
otherwise be evident from a detailed study of one case. For example, in the
three cases examined here, issues of property appear crucial to the object
conflicts that emerge. Food-based medicines, home or community electric
power, and open-source software are all forms of goods that potentially could
shift power and property relations away from oncologists, pharmaceutical
companies, power-grid utilities, and proprietary operating system manufacturers.
The alternatives become acceptable to the dominant professions and
industries to the extent that they can be transformed into objects that are complementary
to existing technological systems and product portfolios, such as
patented drugs, grid-based energy, and proprietary software.
A second emergent pattern is that over time, the source of SM support for
an alternative technology/product may shift. In the Danish wind case, the
original supportwas anchored to the folk high school movement and agrarian
populism, whereas later the antinuclear and broader environmental movement
became important. In the
macrobiotic and women’s health movements in the 1980s and 1990s represented
a second wave of SM interest in a similar technology/product that
occurred following the Bircher spillover effect of the 1970s. The parallel
leads to the hypothesis that such a process could occur in the open-source
movement, such as a connection between open-source software and various
digital divide organizations or national anticolonial movements.
In addition to encouraging comparative analysis across movements, the
concept of TPMs draws attention to the complex relations between SMs and
the private sector, particularly when modifications of material culture are a
central target of change. Whereas one tends to think ofSMrelationships with
the private sector as largely antagonistic, such as boycotts directed at sweatshops
or corporate environmental policies, the analysis of TPMs points to
both the development of symbiosis and its limitations. TPMs need privatesector
organizations to produce and supply the alternative technologies and
products. They need naturopaths, holistic physicians, supplements firms, turbine
manufacturers, wind power contractors, and software assistance providers.
Furthermore, as the TPM achieves success, it begins to win support
from companies in countervailing industries, such as the food, supplements,
energy, and hardware industries. As the new products and industries grow,
the established or target industries (pharmaceutical, electric power, and software
operating systems companies) can no longer ignore the alternatives,
and theymove to incorporate and transform them. As a result, one can distinguish
three types of private-sector firms: entrepreneurial firms that are most
evident in the early phases, firms from countervailing industries and breakaway
reform firms within target industries, and finally the firms in the target
industries that are sometimes moved to incorporate and transform the
alternatives. However, preliminary analysis of other cases not discussed
here suggests that the role of the three types of private-sector firms is quite
variable.
The concept of TPMs is also valuable because it raises a more philosophical
question about what constitutes success for an SM. From the narrow perspective
of achieving a transformation of material culture, success might be
construed as the conversion of a major industry that originally ignored or
resisted TPM demands and goals. The increasing integration of nutritional
medicine with chemotherapy and radiation therapy, wind energy with gridbased
fossil fuel energy, and open-source software with proprietary software
could all be described as successes. In theory, people have access to potentially
safer and more efficacious therapies, cleaner and more Earth-friendly
energy, and less buggy and less expensive software. Societies benefit from
greater efficiency (therapeutic efficacy, energy efficiency, or more stable
software) and reduced risk (iatrogenic side effects, environmental damage,
and software failure).
Yet, part of the original vision of TPM founders (the Gersons, LaCours,
and Stallmans) is lost in such a narrow understanding of success. From the
perspective of the SM side of the TPM, the incorporation and transformation
process becomes a story of cooptation or at best only Pyrrhic victory. The
tensions between SM-based understandings of success and the more limited
understandings that emerge as the TPM develops are the basis for ongoing
object conflicts and the continued dynamics of TPMs. Rather than becoming
exhausted by the incorporation and transformation of the alternative technologies
and products, activists and advocacy organizations find themselves on
a newhistorical terrain characterized by a diversification of the technological
and product field. The new terrain constitutes the starting point for the next
wave of conflicts over the future of material culture and society.
Note
1. Another type of conflict involves SCO, a company that at the time of writing had no known
links to any of the large proprietary firms. The firm has claimed that IBM imported copyrighted
portions of the Unix code into Linux and that it owed damages of $1 billion. Because Microsoft
and Sun Microsystems had licenses from SCO, they were not affected by the lawsuit (Lashinsky
2003). The conflict does not involve the design of open source or its license but rather the rights to
claimed proprietary content in the original code, so it is not considered an object conflict.
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David J. Hess is a professor in the Department of Science and Technology Studies at
RensselaerPolytechnic Institute.He has recently edited a special issue of Science as Culture
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AUTHOR’S NOTE: Panels and workshops organized by Phil Brown, Adele Clarke, and Steve
Epstein, as well as their research projects, provided an important background for this article. I
also appreciate comments and suggestions from Phil Brown, Casey O’Donnell, Lane DeNicola,
Steve Epstein, Ken Fleischmann, Torin Monahan, and two anonymous reviewers. Research
assistant Rachel Dowty provided bibliographic background for the Danish wind case study.