ABSTRACT
The shared promise of many recent feminist and constructivist approaches to the social study of technology is the development of radical alternatives to traditional understandings of technology. The target of criticism is both varied and diffuse, and many of the critiques compromise their avowed radicalism. This chapter explores the extent and implications of the problems in some constructivist and feminist perspectives on technology. It outlines the basis for the claim that even 'constructivist' and 'social shaping' approaches are insufficiently sensitive to the demands of an appropriately radical critique of technology. The chapter suggests that the same problems can be found in some feminist approaches to technology. Clearly, the anti-essentialist move has enormous policy implications for technology design, development and use. The anti-essentialists attempt to move away from the former essentialist answer and yet inevitably retain features of essentialism sustained through the unproblematized use of linguistic conventions of representation.
