Technology and Modernity: The Empirical Turn--Proposal for an International Research Workshop, November 1999

misa, Thomas J.（伊利诺伊理工学院）本次研讨会将汇集两个很大程度上独立的学者群体，并将寻求创建一个新的领域来研究技术与现代性的共同构建。虽然“现代技术”一词是流行话语的主要内容，但分别对技术和现代性进行过最仔细研究的学者在很大程度上是相互孤立的。具有哲学、人类学、文化研究和社会理论背景的学者们创造了一种复杂而理论密集的文学，我们可以称之为“现代性研究”。与此同时，历史学家、社会学家和某些经济学家在“技术研究”方面创造了大量基于经验的文献。这次研讨会将面对分隔这些社区的障碍（主要是学科术语和分析水平的差异），并制定一个联合研究议程。这种雄心勃勃的国际议程建设工作所必需的持续的智力工作将需要一个多天的、事先精心准备的讲习班和重要的后续活动。我们正在寻求美国国家科学基金会的支持，以使12名美国学者参与这项工作。我们将于1999年11月在荷兰特温特大学举办讲习班。特文特的地理位置特别适合成为这些活动的中心。这所大学不仅有舒适、方便的会议设施，而且它的系统哲学系和STS在过去三年中一直在努力解决同样令人烦恼的问题（学科术语和分析水平），以发展“技术与现代性”的联合研究主题。1997年春季关于这个主题的一个学期的研讨会（由Misa协调）帮助确定了我们在这里提出的研讨会中最有前途的智力问题。其中一个发现是，在现代性和技术研究界，人们越来越意识到交叉受精的前景。一个旨在促进这两个社区之间国际合作的讲习班是及时的。我们相信，这样的努力不仅会影响我们作为学者如何理解技术在现代世界中的地位，也会影响我们作为公民如何在社会中管理技术

***SBR 99-00894Misa, Thomas J. (Illinois Institute of Technology)This workshop will bring together two largely-separate communities of scholars, and will seek to create a new field that examines the co-construction of technology and modernity. While the term "modern technology" is a staple of popular discourse, the scholars who have most closely examined technology and modernity, respectively, have proceeded largely in isolation from each other. Scholars with backgrounds in philosophy, anthropology, cultural studies, and social theory have created an elaborate and theoretically dense literature that we may call "modernity studies." Meanwhile, historians, sociologists, and certain economists have created a large empirically grounded literature in "technology studies." This workshop will confront the barriers that have separated these communities (principally disciplinary jargons and differences in the level of analysis) and develop a joint research agenda. The sustained intellectual work necessary for such an ambitious, international agenda-building effort will require a multi-day workshop, carefully prepared in advance, and significant follow-up activities. We are seeking NSF support to enable 12 U.S. scholars to participate in this effort.We will hold the workshop at the University of Twente, The Netherlands, in November 1999. Twente is especially well situated to be the center for these activities. Not only does the university have comfortable, accessible conference facilities, its departments of Systematic Philosophy and STS have in the last three years grappled with these same vexing issues (of disciplinary jargon and levels of analysis) in developing a joint research theme in "technology and modernity." A semester-long seminar on this theme during Spring 1997 (coordinated by Misa) helped define the most promising intellectual problems for the workshop we propose here. One finding was a growing awareness, in both the modernity and technology studies communities, of the promise of cross-fertilization. A workshop designed to catalyze international collaboration between these two communities is timely. Such an effort, we believe, will have ramifications not only for how we as scholars understand technology's place in the modern world but also for how we as citizens may manage technology in society.***