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

*SBR 99-00894Misa，Thomas J.(伊利诺伊理工学院)本次研讨会将把两个基本独立的学者社区聚集在一起，并将寻求创建一个研究技术与现代性共同建设的新领域。虽然“现代技术”一词是流行话语中的一个主要术语，但分别对技术和现代性进行最密切研究的学者们，在很大程度上是相互孤立地进行研究的。具有哲学、人类学、文化研究和社会理论背景的学者们创作了一部精致而理论密集的文学作品，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》中创造了大量以经验为基础的文献。这次研讨会将直面分隔这些社区的障碍(主要是专业术语和分析水平的差异)，并制定联合研究议程。这种雄心勃勃的国际议程建设努力所需的持续智力工作将需要一个为期数天的研讨会，事先精心准备，并开展重要的后续活动。我们正在寻求NSF的支持，使12名美国学者能够参与这一努力。我们将于1999年11月在荷兰特温特大学举办研讨会。特温特特别适合作为这些活动的中心。该大学不仅拥有舒适、便利的会议设施，它的系统哲学系和STS在过去三年里也在努力解决同样令人恼火的问题(学科术语和分析水平)，以开发一个联合研究主题，主题为“技术与现代性”。1997年春季，一个为期一学期的关于这一主题的研讨会(由MISA协调)帮助我们为这里提出的研讨会确定了最有前途的智力问题。一个发现是，在现代性和技术研究界，越来越多的人意识到了交叉受精的前景。旨在促进这两个社区之间的国际合作的研讨会是及时的。我们相信，这样的努力不仅将对我们作为学者如何理解技术在现代世界中的地位产生影响，而且将对我们作为公民如何在社会中管理技术产生影响。

***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.***