Cultural Geography

poststructuralist understandings of technology

that emphasize its situated and embedded charac-

ter. Situatedness exhibits several characteristics.

Foremost of concern here is the insight that we

develop (construct) technologies in relationship

to a particular use and ‘problem area’. The

modernist understands technology as a problem

of determining the proper tools and the correct

steps to follow. While Marx’s analysis went

beyond liberal notions of technology as ‘tools’, it

constrained itself to functions in the labor

process. The poststructuralist concept of situated-

ness helps problematize this limited model, pro-

viding for a more culturally cogent understanding

of the complexity of technology. Although

authors in this area rarely directly address geo-

graphical dimensions of embeddedness, there is a

clear awareness of spatial aspects of technology.

Second, poststructuralist recognition of the

embeddedness of technology in cultural produc-

tion points to the importance of reassessing

cultural geography’s engagement with techno-

logy. Technology, beginning with the humble

binary on/off light switch, is at the heart of

western culture’s analytic approaches to the

world and is decisive in arbitrating numerous cat-

egorizations and classifications. Poststructural

theories provide the necessary purchase for

engaging the hegemonic cyberepisteme of

western civilization. They also provide a means

of overcoming technology’s modernist hege-

mony. Extending Marxian analysis of production,

a key thought underlying poststructuralist reflec-

tions on technology is the political awareness that

all technology is culturally mediated: inextricable

from culture, technology used in the material pro-

duction of knowledge is also imbricated in the

cultural instability that occupies a key moment in

poststructuralist thought. Authors draw on exam-

ples from geography to underscore this point

(Latour, 1993; 1995; 1999). The now yellowed

spaces on turn-of-the-century maps showing the

extent of the British empire point to the role of

geographic technologies in facilitating colonial

hegemony. The changing technological produc-

tion of culture continues, reflected in popular

cyberepistemes that rely on epistemologies of vir-

tual representation. For example, the disembod-

ied view that, with technology, ‘geography is

dead’ points to new instabilities in a modernist

knowledge production that is intricately

interwoven with technology (Castells, 1996).

Science and technology studies

Although it is impossible to demarcate science and

technology studies (STS) from post-structuralist

work, the distinction seems relevant given the

pervasiveness of STS. A number of French scho-

lars and a growing number of Anglo-American

ones have been strongly influenced by the grow-

ing interdisciplinary corpus of STS. Although

known largely in the Anglo-American world

through the prolific writings of Bruno Latour, this

area is far broader and is distinguished in a num-

ber of ways. Of particular importance is a distinc-

tion between the strong program of Edinburgh and

the approaches taken by Michael Serres, Bruno

Latour, and Madeline Akrich of Paris and John

Law in the United Kingdom. The strong program

was dedicated to studying science (physics, chem-

istry, etc.) by the same techniques that empirical

science used in producing knowledge. Others

challenged what they saw as the limitations of this

approach and brought in anthropological, socio-

logical, and critical philosophical concepts and

methods to study science. Latour’s aphorism

‘Follow the actors’ suggests the broader orienta-

tion of these approaches, but substantial distinc-

tions remain, above all between actor network

theories and symbolic interaction or activity

theories. Whereas the former focus on a few key

individuals and institutions (for example Louis

Pasteur and the laboratory), the latter seek more to

unravel the details of the mundane practices and

unsung people struggling with conventions, rules,

and guidelines (Clarke, 1990).

Symbolic interactionism and activity theory

originated largely in the work of Anselm Strauss

and are influenced by a variety of mid-twentieth-

century scholarship, ranging across Ludwig

Wittgenstein, Margaret Mead, John Dewey,

Howard Becker, and the Frankfurt School,

among others. Several key concepts underpin

work in this area. First, they are anti-determinist,

that is, there are no predetermined explanations:

‘the meaning of knowledge is given in its conse-

quences’ (Star, 1996: 303, emphasis in the origi-

nal). Second, they are non-rational. Work in this

vein has always emphasized collective ways in

which we constitute others’ ontologies and

epistemologies through pragmatic and dialectical

representations and technologies (Star, 1996).

Knowledge is the representation of ordered local

knowledges, which are always partial and

flawed. Much work in this vein has focused on

the role of technology in the production and

ordering of knowledges.

Geographers have made significant contribu-

tions to this literature. The work of Trevor

Barnes (1997) stands out for his historical analy-

sis and engagement with the politics of the disci-

pline. This resonates with feminist criticisms of

actor network theory which have problematized

the tacit assumptions that reproduce masculine

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