Previous - Next
This is the old United Nations University website. Visit the new site at http://unu.edu
A critical analysis of the enlightenment model of industrial development (technological imperialism)
The model of development described above is, as observed earlier, still dominant in the thinking of many innovating elites in modern industrial societies. It will also continue to be so in future decades, as it correctly describes tendencies that can be observed in the actual development of industrial societies. It is therefore worth while to have a closer look at the assumptions on which this model is based.
As will be apparent from our description of the industrialist model of development, the origin of scientific discoveries and technological innovations does not need to be explained by factors other than the inquisitive mind, following the rules of positivist science. Society has just to wait and see what comes out of these processes of discovery and to adapt to their results. There are no other possibilities for controlling this "march of rationality" than the control exercised by scientists and technologists themselves. They do not control the direction of scientific development but must see to it that their fellow scientists abid by the tenets of logico-empirical science. The development of science and of new technologies based on these scientific developments is as such not determined by human needs. In fact, the logic of the model implies that societal development is a process of reduction of human subjectivity by rational calculation. Control over men and things is secured by substituting technological rationality for human desires and needs when organizing any activity. "Subjectivity" is subordinated to "objectivity." An important consequence of this development is that "technology tends to shape the user and not simply in ways suggested by cultural materialism, specifically, technology shapes the user as it alters society's paradigms" 30 (for example, by replacing social relationships by technically determined links).
The uses of technology in this model of development stand in sharp contrast to the utilization of technical tools in the pre-industrial period. While all societies developed technologies to cope with the problems of their existence, it is only in the West that a model of development is applied in which human beings are systematically brought under the yoke of technology and in which most energy is invested in the improvement of technologies and technological systems, rather than the improvement of craftsmanship for its own sake. In other systems technologies may be used in accordance with the standards of craftsmanship of those who apply them but who compensate, by their skill, for any deficiency in the tools they use when accomplishing these productive tasks.
Ellul described very aptly this difference between pre-industrial and industrial technology:
Technical progress today is no longer conditioned by anything other than its own calculus of efficiency. The search is no longer personal, experimental, workmanlike; it is abstract, mathematical, and industrial.... The individual participates only to the degree that he is subordinate to the search for efficiency, to the degree that he resists all the currents today considered secondary, such as aesthetics, ethics, fantasy In so far as the individual represents this abstract tendency, he is permitted to participate in technical creation...' 31
In the next section we will discuss whether this statement also applies to "post-industrial technology." At this point it is important to note that the Enlightenment model of industrialism is based on a cluster of values - the "technological culture" or the "culture of rationality" - that comprises universalism, instrumental rationality (Zweck-Rationalität, in the Weberian sense), calculability of processes and outcomes, control, efficiency, effectiveness or efficacy, contract relationships, materialism, economic growth as the primary source of welfare, individualism, and individual remuneration (primarily material remuneration).
This march of rationality that is the basis of industrial development promises, as we have seen, the liberation of individuals from traditional bonds and an increase of individual autonomy. Although the coming of Western industrial society went hand in hand with the development of citizenship for all, a strong increase in welfare and opportunities to conduct one's life according to one's own preferences, it is also true that this industrial society did reduce many opportunities for workers. Historically, the coming of industrial society was accompanied by strong resistance by artisans who provided small-scale, custom-oriented local markets with their goods and services and who feared the replacement of their craft by factories. Calhoun shows in his analysis of the south-east Lancashire textile region that it was such workers who were at the base of revolutionary movements at the beginning of the nineteenth century, rather than the mass of unskilled factory workers who had been in most cases unskilled agricultural workers before entering the factories.32
It is certainly true that the further development of industrial society provided many opportunities for individual advancement, especially at the end of the nineteenth century and in the first half of the twentieth century, as a consequence of the enlargement in scale of organizations and the accompanying increase in complexity of production processes and market relations. In this period we witness an increase of upward social (occupational) mobility in all of the industrialized countries. But we also notice that the ongoing rationalization of economic life tends to reduce, in many instances, the autonomy of both blue- and white-collar workers and tends to contribute to an increase in long-term unemployment. These trends are reflected in the present-day debate, whether the long-term development of jobs is connected with gradual degradation of the work content or with the polarization which occurs when a few types of jobs are upgraded while the mass of jobs loses qualities considered to be rewarding or attractive to those performing them.
All this is, of course, related to the right to work and to the idea that man does not work for bread alone, but also wishes to be a creative, autonomous worker. The future of work is, however, rather uncertain in this respect. Those in particular who accept as valid the industrial model of development that we have presented view the march of rationality as unavoidable. They are inclined to regard the reduction of the tension between determinism and autonomy as associated with a future which is not so far away, wherein there will be no jobs in the present sense. The Polish philosopher Schaff expresses it in the following way:
This will be a great achievement of science and technology as it will put an end to the Biblical Jehovah's curse that man has to cat bread in the sweat of his brow. But this revolution - for it is the most deep-reaching social revolution we can imagine - which reopens the gates of paradise to man, implies problems which, if left unsolved, may be much worse than the old curse of the Maker who became angry with his creation.33
This is only one of the many points of view which can be discerned with respect to technology and the future of work. We will return to this problem after our analysis of the theoretical reactions to the Enlightenment model of industrialism and to the technological determinism this implies. Before doing so, we have to make some remarks about the Enlightenment, the advent and development of industrial society, and the development of the social sciences.
The development of the social sciences and the reactions to the social and cultural effects of the Enlightenment and industrial development contain some explanations for the puzzling fact that the impact of technology on human rights has only recently become a topic for scientific analysis. We have pointed out that the Enlightenment and industrialism are closely connected when we look at their common pattern of values and also that human rights as individual liberties are imbued with "rationalism," "individualism," "universalism," and "cosmopolitanism." Already in the eighteenth century this modernization trend was criticized severely, among others by Herder, who introduced in 1774 the idea of Volksgeist, a concept that emphasizes the uniqueness of peoples and cultures. He rejected the idea of universal, timeless principles concerning, for example, Truth, Justice, Beauty. He argued that all norms originate within a specific cultural context and are dependent on this cultural context for their further development.34
THE SOCIAL SCIENCES AND TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE
Since the advent of industrialism we have witnessed a continuous conflict between the emerging new society and the "universal" values it represents on the one hand, and the varied types of social life and their values which are threatened by modernization on the other. This opposition is strongly set out in such studies, published at the end of the nineteenth century, as Tonnies' Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft (Community and Society, 1887) and Le Play's Les ouvriers européens (European Workers, 1885).
Until the present time this opposition has been reflected - and this has not yet been overcome - in the rift in the West between positivist social sciences standing in the tradition of the Enlightenment, and the historicist tradition related to Romanticism, in which Truth is not the "work of reason - emancipated from all forms of unreason like emotions and partnership," but an understanding that can be made compelling only for a time, even with the best available methods.35 This is not to say that this rift is the only important one in the social sciences, but it is a very basic one in the context of the divide between methodological, individualistic, and structuralist approaches.36 These oppositions have also important consequences in our time for policy implementation in the social sciences and for the interpretation of the development of human rights.
It is necessary to make the observation that the social sciences have not analysed in a serious way the development of technology since the coming of the industrial society. Within the positivist tradition the social sciences could only, logically, restrict their analyses to the social and cultural consequences of science and technology. The social sciences could not claim, and still cannot claim, within this approach to be sciences with a methodology that enables them to evaluate the rationality of the natural sciences. Nor did the social sciences which were opposing the tenets of positivist science analyse the nature of technological development as such, but restricted themselves largely to the analysis of nonindustrial ways of life, including ways of life which were being threatened by industrialism. Still another bias may be discerned within the social sciences. As a consequence of the fact that industrial development primarily touched the lives of workers and their families, an overwhelming part of the attention of the social sciences has been directed to the analysis of the impact of technological change on the division of labour in the production processes, on workers' behaviour and attitudes, and on changes in the class structure of society.
There has been a neglect of the study of:
(1) the societal and cultural conditions of technological development and technological applications;
(2) the nature of technological development themselves, such as the analysis of the socio-political factors which impinge on the selection of technological trajectories;
(3) the nature and types of new technologies introduced within organizations (in which ways are new technologies selected, by whom, how are they introduced, and with what consequences?);
(4) the opportunities that are provided by the different options in the process of implementation of new technologies with respect to human dignity, human rights, and collective or solidarity rights;
(5) the consequence of the contemporary systematic character of technological developments and the increasing intertwining of technological and societal systems;
(6) the significance of technological developments in everyday life (for example, the changing patterns of social relations in the family as a consequence of technological innovations, or how people deal with the new, often imposed, choices produced by technological change).
The rather one-sided views on the relationships between technological development and societal change, in which the problem is largely restricted to either adaptation of social life to technological exigencies or to the protection of ways of life against the attacks of an aggressive technological culture ("modernity" versus "cultural identity"), have not only hampered - and still hamper - the actual systematic analysis of technological development in the Western industrial countries, but are also clearly present in the debate on the impact of technology on developing countries. However, we must be aware of the fact that
Science and technology are not independent variables in the process of development: they are part of a human, economic, social and cultural setting shaped by history. It is this setting above all which determines the chances of applying scientific knowledge that meets the real needs of the country. It is not the case that there are two systems -science and technology on one side and society on the other - held together by some magic. Rather, science and technology exist in a given society as a system that is more or less capable of osmosis, assimilation and innovation - or rejection -according to realities that are simultaneously material, historical, cultural and political.37
From this statement it follows that one cannot, at the same time, introduce Western technological changes in a specific country and avoid changes in the traditional ways of life. This is impossible because technological changes are part of a technological system that includes a broad technological culture base and specific, often implicit, notions of social relations. In the context it is perhaps useful to refer to our discussion of the concept of technology that comprises artefacts, the know-how to design, use, and repair them, and the body of knowledge necessary to generate new rules for the design, construction, and application of technological potentialities in relation to different types of problems (pp. 15-17 above). Moreover, the increasingly global character of modern technology makes it impossible to think about these problems in terms of "nations." Technological systems are in many instances quickly developing as transnational information systems.
The conclusion must be that there is no way back on the road that has been taken by Western technologies and by the Western countries since the eighteenth century. There will not be opportunities to hide from this worldwide development and to protect such cultural diversity as still exists against technological change. But it is also true that within this general direction of development, choices can be made which may engender new types of diversity and reinterpretations of traditional cultural differences. But such a policy must be based, as we shall see, on a careful analysis of the nature of technological-social constraints in development processes and of the opportunities to choose.
Models of development and the technological factor
Until now we have described the Enlightenment model of development (industrialism) and discussed the consequences of the technological deterministic view of development that this powerful model still implies. We now turn to:
(1) some other theoretical models of development which have been presented largely in opposition to the Enlightenment model of industrialism; and
(2) contemporary efforts to understand the societal changes of the post-industrial stage.
Looking at the major models of development that were formulated at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, models that still have an impact on present-day thinking, we discern some models which resemble the industrial convergence model that has already been presented.
In the first place we refer to the Marxist model of development, which views capitalist society as a class society that will in due time be replaced by a socialist one. This model is rather similar to the industrial convergence model and in fact it is based on the same assumption concerning the basic deterministic role in the development of science and technology (productive forces). But instead of adopting a gradualist view of societal development, the model postulates the importance of revolutionary change and the pivotal role of class struggle, rooted in the conflict between productive forces such as technology and the existing relationships of production. In this model societal changes are regarded primarily as effects of changes of technology and the concomitant reorganizations of the economy. Marx himself rejected at least part of the human rights laid down in the Declaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen, which he regarded as liberal rights based on a false concept of the nature of man. Marx stressed the importance of the social nature of man and of the priority of socio-economic rights in a world in which sharp socio-economic inequalities prevail. Marxism neglected to develop its own theoretical basis of this concept of human rights.38
Our third model of societal change is the reformist one, which contests the interpretations of the above-mentioned models. In the reformist model the disruptive consequences of industrial development are regarded as a major ailment of industrial development. At the same time class struggle is seen as an abnor mal phenomenon, resulting from the lack of social integration, not as the crux of the process of change. This model represents Durkheim's view on industrial society. In Durkheim's conception of social life, individuals can realize themselves thanks to the increasing division of labour that allows them to develop their individual talents. But individualism and individual freedom are, in Durkheim's view, always connected with his conception of society as a moral order. The individual is "free" in some respects because he is part of that moral order.39 So Durkheim's individualism is diametrically opposed to the liberal conception that states that individuals are primarily motivated by self-interest to establish contractual relationships and that social life emerges from individual interactions. In contradistinction to this conception, Durkheim pointed out that human beings participate in a collective conscience, which embraces concepts about the nature of the social order and of the relationships between men, a conscience that is the product of a long historical process.40
The industrial development of society, especially when the pace of change is high, produces, as Durkheim observed, disruptive consequences for society, because the processes of differentiation within the social order, brought about by this industrial development, destroy the basis of society's solidarity. Uncontrolled industrial development gives rise to an anomie division of labour, a pathological condition of society that arises when the processes of differentiation are not sufficiently counteracted by forces in society that coordinate or integrate social processes in a well-balanced order. However, this pathological condition of society, caused by industrial development, may be remedied or prevented by a better organization of societal relationships, a goal to which both professional organizations and the state -as society's main coordinating agency - would have to contribute in concerted action. In this context, the educational system has to contribute to a population's consciousness of the moral nature of society by giving its members a deeper insight into the nature of society as a phenomenon sui generis and of the dependency on this order of every individual.
In Western industrial countries this model of development has been - and still is -quite influential (e.g. in Parsonian functionalism). The model is attractive because it not only offers an analysis of processes of change, but also opens the road to interventions by the state to redress non-desirable effects of industrial development. This was in fact the case during the Great Depression, when functionalism played an important role in the New Deal programme in the USA. This model also contributed to the development of the Western welfare states.
This reformist model of development, like the other two models presented so far, concentrates on the impact of industrial (technological) development on society. However, it does not lead to an analysis of the technological factor as such. The objects of analysis are the processes of adaptation of society and culture to the exigencies of industrial development or the opportunities that may facilitate this adaptation. None of the three models leads to an analysis of the impact of technology as such on human rights. In fact, this holds true not only for human rights. All of the models of development presented thus far have their roots in the Enlightenment. The emphasis on the of the scientific-technological processes within our technological culture has produced a division of labour in which the social and human sciences restrict themselves in great measure, as we argued before, to the consequences of technological change and to the ways in which societies adjust themselves to such technological impacts.
Moreover, the three models have in common an evolutionary view of society's development and all of them place a strong emphasis on development from within. "Societies," "class systems," "techno-structures," and "states" are considered primarily as closed systems which develop as a consequence of internal mechanisms and their dynamics (e.g. technological development and class struggle) or as a consequence of external influences impinging on a system and forcing it to mobilize its resources in order to establish a new equilibrium. The models tend to pay attention neither to changing interrelationships between societies, or, more generally, between systems, nor to treat them adequately as relatively open systems with changing boundaries.
We pass over a fourth model, Pareto's model of societal change as a cyclical process, a model that leads neither to the analysis of technology nor to an examination of its impact on human rights (human rights are treated in a cynical way as being ideological veils of interest groups).41
We turn next to the most important non-industrial approach of this period, the still very influential approach of Weber. Weber did not start with the analysis of the consequences of industrialism, but highlights more remote origins of modern social transformations by going back to the historical conditions within Europe that were conducive to the rise of a bureaucratic or rational way of controlling human interactions. These specific historical conditions, related to the separation of secular and spiritual powers and the ongoing rivalry between them, contributed to the development by trained lawyers of a formal and rational juridical system. They introduced the authority of secular juridical norms binding on all subjects. With the victory of formal juridical rationalism, legal authority came into existence in Western societies, alongside the older types of authorities, such as traditional and charismatic types. The most important variant of legal authority was (and still is) the bureaucratic one.
The development of this model of legal authority was a necessary condition in the West for the later development of an economic order based on rational management of private enterprises and on accurate calculations. Only the West had at its disposal such a complete, formal juridical system as a model of administration that could be used in economic development.42
This development has been of paramount importance to the specific relationships between science, technology, and economy in the West. Science and technology have strongly determined economic development. The sciences - especially the exact and empirical sciences - did not have their origin in capitalist market conditions, though the technological applications of scientific knowledge have been strongly influenced by economic stimuli. In this process formal law too played an important role, according to Weber, and so did the rise of a practical-rational way of life and of a new Wirtschaftgesinnung or economic thinking. Weber's great contribution was to make explicit the importance of the affinity between economic ethics and the rational ethics of ascetic Protestantism in the development of Western capitalism.
These brief references to Weber's approach show some essential differences between this approach and those of the industrialists. While the later (the first three models) and their followers like Veblen, Ogburn, Bell, and Kerr43 tended to accentuate the consequences of technological change, Weber's approach attracted little attention in the field of research on technology and society. There arc, however, some important contributions, such as Merton's,44 involving an approach which leads logically to the systematic analysis of the impact of society and culture on scientific and technological developments.
Development, choice, and human rights
We have presented the main models of development not for historical reasons, but because contemporary prevailing ideas about societal development and goals of development are derived from them. It is an uneasy heritage because these models of development in their present-day appearance fail to offer adequate explanations of current social changes. Nor do they give us a frame of reference that enables us to analyse the interrelationship between technological change and human rights and their development and implementation.
This uneasy heritage hampers an adequate understanding of what is happening in this domain. Increasingly, the social scientists are reacting critically to this heritage Among them is Tilly, who advises us, referring especially to Durkheim's legacy, to shrug off the nineteenth-century "incubus." 45
The reasons for the reassessment of these development models stem from different sources:
1. A growing concern over the direction in which industrial societies (or the industrial system) are (is) developing. Technical systems, especially information systems, are penetrating modern societies in all spheres of life in such a way that technological systems and social structures have become inextricable. Moreover, the adaptation of society to the impact of technology certainly does not exclude the rise of a societal type in which alienation prevails. It's also confronted with serious, massive, and undesirable long-term effects of unplanned technological development.
In many cases policy makers and opinion leaders in developing countries, looking at the direction in which advanced societies are moving, wonder whether major consequences, which are considered by them to be negative with respect to their ways of life, can be avoided.
2. A growing awareness of the ideological character of the industrialist developmental models. They express a specific pattern of values that supports the endeavours of specific managerial and technological elites.
3. A hopeful prospect that the development of post-industrial technological developments, especially of information technology, brings new possibilities for choice in its wake. While admitting that industrial development thus far did have unavoidable social consequences, this determinism is weakened by the fact that (as Gershuny summarizes this debate on the malleable society)
(a) increasing wealth means less unrequited need for goods to satisfy basic needs;
(b) as technologies develop, advantages of scale accrue to increasingly small productive units;
(c) technologies are no longer scarce. Instead of social shortcomings demanding technical solutions, we now often find, according to Gershuny, multiple technologies chasing scarce applications; and
(d) the development of new "control" technologies may be a substitute for some of the earlier determining factors. "Improvements in transport, telecommunications and data handling may produce the opportunities for different types or uses of organization." 46 Among these may be the facilitation of worker participation.
4. The above-mentioned sources have given a new impetus, in the late 1960s and onward, to a critical reconsideration of industrial development. This gave birth to numerous efforts to formulate new models or "paradigms" of development, such as those of Etzioni, Eisenstadt, Habermas, Giddens, and Touraine.47 All of these authors emphasize the significance of choice, of opportunities to direct change in a planned direction, and of the pivotal role of (collective) meanings or values in societal development.
5. Finally, since the 1970s, empirical research directed at the analysis of the linkages between (new) technologies and types of organizations has shown that the tenets of technological determinism do not stand a systematic empirical test. We will return to these research results afterwards. Moreover, the rise of Japan, as the first industrial nation outside the Western world, and its avoidance of many of the disrupting consequences - at least for the time being - of industrialization in Western societies, has also contributed to the reconsideration of the Western industrial models of development.
Technological determinism is under attack, and so are models of development that are based on social determinism. Sometimes we meet in the literature advocates of extreme voluntarism who push aside all factors which restrain our choices, maintaining that we are free to build our society according to our wishes: everything is considered to be "political" and to depend on the choices we make as political communities. This is certainly not an attractive approach, because in actual life we meet numerous constraints. We have to analyse the nature and variety of constraints and social life (technical, political, social, cultural, etc.) and to look systematically for opportunities for choice. But once we admit that we have choices which reach further than adaptation to the "inevitable march of technology," we are confronted with a compelling question: How do we decide on a specific course of action? Which standards should play a role in the decision-making processes? It is quite evident that, once we are confronted with opportunities to select from courses of action connected with the development and application of new technologies, human rights comes to the fore.
In order to indicate as clearly as possible the emerging ideas concerning choice, we give a schematic representation of the industrialist model of development that subsequently will be broken down into its component elements (fig. 1). This schematic representation, working downstream from the individual inventors, represents the industrial model of development that has been described above (pp. 18-20, 22-27). Basically, it is a simple model. As Ogburn expressed it 50 years ago:
Changes are started by one institution which impinges on others, and those on still others. . . in the past in many important cases a change occurred first in the technology, which changed the economic institutions, which in turn changed the social and governmental organizations which finally changed the social beliefs and philosophics.48
This series is presented as a mechanical, causal chain.
Let us start our analysis with the links between T and O (TL) and then proceed by working down- and upstream. At every step we will ask questions which deal with the impact of technology on human rights.
Since the end of the 1970s several empirical and theoretical studies, dealing with the development of new technologies and their application to industrial production and services, have been published. In them it is shown that specific new technologies, such as CNC machines, may be accompanied by quite different types of organizations. In those studies, often of an international comparative nature, it is shown that specific social consequences of the introduction of new technologies are not primarily contingent on the nature of the technology itself, but on the organizational conceptions of the interest groups that decide on the introduction and the nature of the application of the technologies. International comparative research has, moreover, demonstrated that the same technologies may have different social consequences in different countries, depending on both the nature of institutional arrangements existing between relevant interest groups and the educational system. Important studies in this area are those of Maurice, Sellier and Silvestre, Gallie, Lutz, Kerna and Schumann, Dore, Smith, and the theoretical analysis of Winner and Hirschhorn.49
Although it is made clear that technological development theoretically opens up new options for social development, the prevailing institutionalized power relationships may prevent them from being used in ways other than those prescribed by the restricted logic of technological rationalization. Nevertheless, research in this domain has demonstrated, according to a five-point summary by Grootings, that
(1) technology itself is designed and introduced by people who, in doing so, try to realize their own interests;
(2) a given technology leaves room for different alternative organizational solutions;
(3) these solutions are the result of social relations between people that are, however, not always and everywhere based on domination;
(4) social actors are socialized by their environment, which also shapes the nature of their social relations;
(5) the impact of technological change depends on the aims and goals of its introduction, under both capitalist and socialist conditions.50
From this it follows that technological changes have a predictable impact on working relationships and on the content of jobs only as long as the innovators' minds are imprisoned in the deterministic model of industrialism. In this respect the West seems to be at a disadvantage in comparison with non-Western nations. This is because the Enlightenment model of development logically implies a great divide within modern organizations between the technological and managerial elites on the one hand and the mass of the blue- and white-collar workers on the other. The first category of members of an organization see themselves confronted with the task of transferring their (rational) knowledge to the "uninformed" workers.
K. Matsushita of the Matsushita Electric Company in Japan made this point very clear when he addressed a group of Western managers a few years ago:
We are going to win and the industrial West is going to lose: there is nothing much you can do about it because the reasons for your failure are within yourself ... With your bosses doing the thinking, while the workers wield the screwdrivers, you are convinced deep down that this is the right way to run a business.51
Matsushita states, in reference to this Western model, that the survival of firms is very hazardous in an environment which is increasingly unpredictable, competitive, and fraught with danger. Their continued existence depends on the day-to-day mobilization of all human resources. Management is then considered to be the art of mobilizing and pulling together the intellectual resources of all employees in the service of a firm. This type of management is clearly reflected in the organization's structure. Unlike comparable Western companies, the Japanese companies tend to carry out research, development, and the design of manufacturing processes concurrently so that knowledge from one area can readily influence decisions made in other areas. A new concept moves back and forth among the different groups until it is perfected. In most Western companies these processes are sequential: once a department has completed its task it is handed over to the next department.52
This flexibility with respect to the establishment of links between technology, the organization's structure, and the content of jobs is a very important issue both for new industrializing countries and for the industrialized world, as it shows that there is room for human choice and for innovations in the domain of human interactions. It shows also that centralized planning and the application of models from above are not the right ways to handle organizational problems. The a priori rationality of the Enlightenment model is not the right way to change reality; innovations can only be really effective when they are solidly linked up with the experience of all workers.53
The point is, however, whether these opportunities for choice will be used only with the goals of efficiency and efficacy in mind, or whether other values will also come to the fore, such as opportunities to learn within teams, an increase in individual autonomy, "sustainable" growth, and participation in decision-making.
Much will depend on the awareness of opportunities to make choices when technological and organizational changes are drawing near. Looking at figure 1, this signifies that we must be able to dislodge the technological-imperial interpretation of the links between T. O. and TL. Furthermore, choices among alternatives must be assessed not only on the basis of efficiency and effectiveness, but also by reference to the relevant human rights. This again needs to be done not only in a defensive way so as to protect human dignity, but also in an affirmative manner, by referring to these rights as standards of achievement for the next period. The contribution of the human and social sciences can be critical in this domain, as they have the task, as can be deduced from our analysis of the Enlightenment model of development, to go upstream (see figure 1) and to analyse in a systematic way the actual choices that enter the development of S. T. and their interrelations. This analysis can pertain to the ways scientists manage, in their laboratories, for example, to win support for their interpretation of scientific problems. Certain groups of scientists, technologists, and clients (e.g. powerful segments of markets) have an important interest in specific research lines and research outcomes, as Latour demonstrated,54 and alliances could be made among them.
Moving upstream signifies also the analysis of the ways cultural values impinge on the links between S. T. O. and TR. Analysis of organizations in highly industrial countries shows that the inner workings of modern organizations are not only influenced by "'re-industrial" values, but are even dependent on behaviour that is based on such values. Recently Philippe d'lribarne showed that organizations with the same formal, "universalistic" structure and technological processes differed widely with respect to such variables as the nature of interaction between superiors and workers, discipline, and ways of handling social interactions between co-workers. He demonstrated that these differences were interrelated with differences in the cultural surroundings of these organizations.55 Going upstream also implies a continuation of analysis pertaining to the impact of social and political factors on the choice of specific scientific and technological trajectories and the exclusion of other possible lines of development.
It follows from what we have said that the more the social and human sciences go upstream and the more they are successful in demonstrating opportunities for choice in fact by systematically "deconstructing" the "overdeterministic" Enlightenment model of development - the less downstream activities can be considered as only adaptations to technological-organizational exigencies and the more room there will be for assessing and evaluating upstream activities with systematic reference to human rights. This implies early warning systems and debates concerning the risks that are connected with new types of R&D. It signifies the analysis of technological designs with reference to the context in which the technology will be used, as characteristics of a design may already block certain downstream choices. Moreover, it emphasizes the need for a systematic analysis of the diffusion of technological innovations within the industrialized world and the impact on the developing world of Western decisions to stop production of certain types of commodities, for example when non-sustainable production processes are transferred to these countries, or when products that are considered to be a hazard to health in Western countries, and as such are forbidden by Western governments to be sold on Western markets, are still available in developing countries.
Fig. 1. Schematic representation of the industrial model of development.
We stated earlier that the development of industrial systems is a transnational process. No "society" or "culture" in the world can escape the impact of this process. There is no way back. But it is important to keep in mind that the future is not determined in a mechanical way by forces that are totally out of control. The more we go upstream and look carefully at what is going on, the more we will discover opportunities to influence downstream development in a direction that implies an enhancement of the quality of life.