Research in Science and Technology Studies: Knowledge and Technology Transfer

This text documents the various ways in which knowledge and technology transfer happen in practice. In reporting on the travel of thoughts and things, the authors in the volume undermine commonly held ideas about technology transfer. Their story shows how the process of transfer transforms and reshapes the object that travels. More importantly, they show how the travel of knowledge and technology results in new socio-technical arrangements, as well as in new socio-technical objects. These stories also relate how the authors themselves take part in achieving such processes of transfer and transformation. As anthropologists, consultants, and science studies researchers they do not stand outside the transfers that they describe. The volume is, therefore, a commentary not only on the practice of knowledge and technology transfer, but also on the practice of observation and intervention.