ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the conceptual and real link between technology and social action has been coherently drawn in recent years. Many authors have already noted that technology is not simply a body of explicitly formulated and objectively described knowledge. Technology is one of the social processes by which individuals negotiate and define their identities, in terms of gender, age, belief, class, and so on. The anthropologist Tim Ingold has drawn attention to the fact that our common understanding of the term "technology" refers solely to implements themselves and their standardized modes of use. Technology is equated to the machine. The development of mass manufacture and machinery has resulted in a removal of the personal so that procedures for tool manufacture or use have become standardized and objectified, related to the tools and not their users. The operating knowledge for machines is now separable from the individual skills of craft workers.
