TECHNOLOGY, POWER, AND SPACE - THE MEANS AND ENDS OF GEOGRAPHIES OF TECHNOLOGY

This paper is about the means and ends of geographical inquiries into technology and technoscience. In working through a body of literature commonly grouped together under the collective phrase 'science, techno logy, and society', and in seeking to work upon empirical research on electricity networks, the author draws attention to the ontological an d representational issues that are confronted when thinking through ge ographies of technology and geographies of technoscientific knowledge. In the first part of the paper the ontological status of nonhumans an d the politics of representation are discussed as a consequence of a r ejection of technical and social determinisms. In the second part, the author turns to review some of the analytical metaphors that are conj ured with in order to address the issues raised in the first part. In the third past of the paper the more overtly spatial metaphors of the literature of science, technology, and society are confronted and the move from a measured and ordered managerialist approach to the spatial ity of technologies and technoscience is reviewed. In the fourth secti on, some lessons for the politics of a reconfigured geographical engag ement with technology and technoscience are raised.