Objects in Flux - RMIT Research Repository - RMIT University

Objects in Flux
2/ Practices of consumption have
continued to be hugely influential on
both the automobile’s social mean-
ing and its market development. As
David Nicholas Lucsko illustrates in
his doctoral thesis, car enthusiasts,
particularly hot rodders, continued
to challenge the perceived norms of
automobile use and indeed end-user
interpretative flexibility has remained
strong throughout the history of the
automobile (1998).
3/ Discrediting alternative products or
practices sometimes involves the dis-
semination of negative, yet vague and
unsubstantiated, accounts. This stat-
egy has come to be known as ‘Fear,
uncertainty and doubt’ (FUD), a term
coined by ex-IBM employee Gene
Amdahl to describe an IBM marketing
technique when speaking of competi-
tors’ personal computer products. FUD
is not reliant on relative technical
merits, but rather attempts to per-
suade consumers that ‘bad things’ will
happen if they stray from the manu-
facturers’ recommended paths. For
further details see Eric S. Raymond,
‘The Jargon File: FUD’, http://www.
catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/F/FUD.
html accessed 10 February 2011.
108
and Pinch claim that this interpretative flexibility did not last forever
and by the early 1950s it had disappeared; ‘closure’ had occurred ‘and
farm people had stopped using their autos for grinding their grain,
plowing their fields, or carrying their produce to town’ (1996, p. 795).
While Kline and Pinch state that ‘closure’ need not be final, they do
not believe that every modification of the car counts as a reappearance
of interpretative flexibility. Such an understanding poses a problem
for my own research. Throughout this study I have been repeatedly
confronted by the diversity and depth of practices of consumer modification,
and by the consumer’s ability to find degrees of interpretative
flexibility, even within heavily structured consumer experiences.
Although these diverse modes of consumption do not always influence
the technology that is brought to market, the possibility for divergent
use appears integral to the meanings we form of objects and, consequently,
our construction of social reality. 2
Kline and Pinch are largely concerned with demonstrating how social
processes influence ‘the very content of technology’ (Pinch, 1996).
However, in focusing on technological change, Kline and Pinch equate
market stabilization with ‘closure’ and hence ‘interpretative flexibility’
is marginalized, its presence validated only when it can be seen to
impact on the marketplace. This approach does not adequately account
for the diversity of consumer practices evident in this research or for
the numerous commercial strategies that are deployed to suppress
divergent consumer use. For this study I propose that interpretative
flexibility be regarded as a permanent condition of the object and that
stabilisation is effected not through closure, but through a sustained
deployment of control mechanisms.
6.3 Control mechanisms
From the various narratives that emerge in Kline and Pinch’s study
it is possible to identify five general control mechanisms by which
manufacturers sought to limit the interpretative flexibility of the automobile.
These control mechanisms are as follows:
• Control through representations of use: Through the use of various
media, including newspapers and trade journals, manufacturers
sought to promote and position the automobile and define its
‘proper’ use. By adopting an authoritarian voice and using ‘ex-