Socio-technical dynamics of counter-hegemony and resistance

Abstract

Innovation studies have, at least until now, neglected to analyze the actions of resistance to technological change. It seems possible to say that the neo-Schumpeterian and evolutionary economics of innovation focused on a particular range of socio-technical actions: those related to the generation of new products and production systems aimed at maximizing income by generating conditions of market monopoly. That is, the studies on innovation only consider a limited range of possibilities in terms of accumulation models, forms of production and circulation of goods, and problem-solution dynamics.Given these restrictions, it is not surprising that other processes of technological innovation generated by other social actors in other loci (public R&D institutions, public enterprises, NGOs, grassroots organizations, trade unions, indigenous communities and also individual users) have not been analyzed. As these actors are key to processes of socio-technical resistance, the forms of rejection or construction of counter-hegemonic alternatives have not been addressed. This chapter aims at recovering, analytically, resistance actions carried out by actors which have been so far overlooked by mainstream studies on innovation. The idea is to analyze socio-technical resistance as a resignification of innovation, as a type of re-innovation.