MASTERARBEIT - Institut für Wissenschaftsforschung - Universität ...

4.5 goals and scope of the project 39
they can bring along has been widely ignored so far although it might
be a key aspect to understand people’s engagement and support for
the new technology. Nevertheless, and I am going to show this in
the writing, the imagination of futures was opened up by Count Zeppelin.
His different conceptualizations of his technology and its uses
enabled not just a limited, but very diverse public to get attached to
the airship. He himself opened the discourse around the purpose
of his invention thus allowing for more different groups to imagine
different futures with his machines. This fits nicely to another theoretical
conception mentioned: the consideration of how those imaginaries
are assembled by Felt tie into the development of those foundations
of SCOT. They show that interpretations of technology are not
just there or given, but develop and change over time. This process of
development does, of course, underlie influences and can thus be controlled
or it can at least be attempted to gain control over it. Therefore,
Jasanoff’s concept is going to be one keystone to my work. However,
I use her concept a bit different from her original intention: Jasanoff
aims at illuminating how science and technology policies can lead
to a redefinition of conceptualizations on nationhood and its documentation.
The case of Zeppelin airships can show how different
imaginations of a technology can be united in common points and
how this unity can be used to build a shared concept of a nation
in the first place. Thereby, S&T policies are made themselves. This
conceptualization of a case has three, maybe four goals:
1. First of all to enrich the number of cases with one of a different
kind: Many STS cases present deal with recent technological developments.
The study at hand would provide another historic
example to show that it is suitable for the same analysis.
2. Secondly, it aims at enriching the research around zeppelins by
a new perspective. While much has been written about it, it
is still hardly reflected what fascinated people about it - the
proposed application of imagined futures will contribute to understanding
the social dynamics in a better way and enrich the
existing literature by a further perspective.
3. Thirdly, it adds to the relatively new concept of STI: while developed
as a top-down perspective, the case at hand shows that
these imaginaries can also work bottom-up and be a useful resource
to bring order into unordered discourse. Top down is
meant here as an interpretation that Jasanoff does not mean primarily
that STIs are developed through discourse in the entire
socitey. Instead, the STIs are meant to be developed for socitey
and then spread in it. Much like the re-interpretation of ’Frenchness’
in the French nuclear enerrgy discourse[20], the discourse
happens in rather small groups for society, not by society. The formation
of groups (or even nations, see above) through shared