Paper short abstract:

I analyse how artefacts are designed to embed particular political economies, or to be compatible with particular political economies. I use this analysis to call for a specifically constructivist political economy to address the vagaries of contemporary technoscientific capitalism.

Paper long abstract:

Harking back to Langdon Winner’s now classic article, ‘Do artifacts have politics?’, my aim in this paper is to ask a very similar question – namely, do artefacts have political economy? Winner’s original contention was to examine the politics inherent within technologies, without resorting to simplistic technological determinism. Following Winner, I analyse several examples of where artefacts: (1) have been designed in ways that embed and lock us into particular political economies; or (2) are compatible with particular political economies. I illustrate the former using Winner’s own example; that is, Robert Moses design of bridges in New York City in the early 20th century. In turning to the latter, I illustrate, like Winner, a strong and weak version of the compatibility claim by outlining artefacts that have an inherent political economy (strong version) and artefacts that are compatible with a particular political economy (weak version). I use the example of advertising technology (‘adtech’) and artificial intelligence respectively to illustrate these two versions. Finally, I conclude this paper with a call for a specifically constructivist political economy sitting at the interface between science and technology studies (STS) and critical political economy in order to analyse and address the vagaries of contemporary technoscientific capitalism, especially the tendency towards techno-economic lock-in.