In social studies of technology, as in many other scientific disciplines, highly persuasive similes are at work: pious stories, seemingly reaped from research, suggesting certain general theoretical insights. Variously adapted, they are handed down: in the process, they acquire almost doctrinal...

This paper explores a little studied arena that exists between science and technology, an arena in which a singular and important variety of open-ended, multipurpose instrumentation is developed by practitioners (neither scientist nor engineer, call them researchtechnologists) for use in...

The official beginning of the new Millennium, bureaucratically correct on January 1, 2001, gives occasion to reconsider the meanings of that divide in time celebrated globally a while ago. A year into the new century, one is still hard put, in our part of the world, to find public utterances...

Der Aufsatz setzt sich mit dem tiefgreifenden, aber gänzlich unabgeschlossenen, Wandel der sozialwissenschaftlichen Technikforschung in den vergangenen zwei Jahrzehnten auseinander. In durchaus autobiographisch gefärbter Form wird auf unterschiedliche Versuche verwiesen, technische Artefakte...

Die im Reader versammelten Beiträge verstehen sich als Versuche zu einer Soziologie des Visuellen. Sie untersuchen am Beispiel des Mediums Stadtfilm, welche Rolle die dort erzeugten Bilder großer Städte bei der Produktion urbanistischer Repräsentanten spielen. Aus diesem Grund werden...

Between 1904 and 1908, there appeared in Berlin 51 volumes called collectively Großstadt- Dokumente, which presented a vast mosaic of the modern metropolis. While the Berlin series was ignored by proponents of contemporary academic sociology in Germany, it was well received by the founding...