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Trevor Pinch

Trevor Pinch is Professor of Science and Technology Studies and Professor of Sociology at Cornell University. He is the coeditor of How Users Matter: The Co-Construction of Users and Technology (MIT Press, 2003) and the coauthor of Analog Days: The Invention and Impact of the Moog Synthesizer and other books.

Titles by This Editor

The Social Construction of Technological Systems, Anniversary Edition

New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology
Edited by Wiebe E. Bijker, Thomas P. Hughes and Trevor Pinch

This pioneering book, first published in 1987, launched the new field of social studies of technology. It introduced a method of inquiry--social construction of technology, or SCOT--that became a key part of the wider discipline of science and technology studies. The book helped the MIT Press shape its STS list and inspired the Inside Technology series. The thirteen essays in the book tell stories about such varied technologies as thirteenth-century galleys, eighteenth-century cooking stoves, and twentieth-century missile systems.

Living in a Material World

Economic Sociology Meets Science and Technology Studies
Edited by Trevor Pinch and Richard Swedberg

Although social scientists generally agree that technology plays a major role in the economy, economics and technology have yet to be brought together in a coherent framework that is both analytically interesting and empirically oriented. This book draws on the tools of science and technology studies and economic sociology to reconceptualize the intersection of economy and technology, suggesting materiality—the idea that social existence involves not only actors and social relations but also objects—as the theoretical point of convergence.

How Users Matter

The Co-Construction of Users and Technology
Edited by Nelly Oudshoorn and Trevor Pinch

Users have become an integral part of technology studies. The essays in this volume look at the creative capacity of users to shape technology in all phases, from design to implementation. Using a variety of theoretical approaches, including a feminist focus on users and use (in place of the traditional emphasis on men and machines), concepts from semiotics, and the cultural studies view of consumption as a cultural activity, these essays examine what users do with technology and, in turn, what technology does to users.

The Social Construction of Technological Systems

New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology
Edited by Wiebe E. Bijker, Thomas P. Hughes and Trevor Pinch

The impact of technology on society is clear and unmistakable. The influence of society on technology is more subtle. The 13 essays in this book draw on a wide array of case studies from cooking stoves to missile systems, from 15th­century Portugal to today's AI labs - to outline an original research program based on a synthesis of ideas from the social studies of science and the history of technology. Together they affirm the need for a study of technology that gives equal weight to technical, social, economic, and political questions.