Examining Social and Technological Research in Library and Information Science

Abstract

In this paper we employ a philosophical-historical approach toward understanding (Library and) Information Science as both a social and a technological science. We do this, via Martin Heidegger’s works, by returning to the etymological roots of technique and technology, the Ancient Greek term techne, and through this we see how this term has been diametrically characterized in the Western philosophical tradition. We propose an account of socio-technical and technological causality that explains (L)IS technical and technological research in terms of cultural-social, as well as material and professional, affordances, rather than as determinative causation. Our argument aims not only to contribute an understanding of the role of social and technological research in the field, but also to begin a critique of some quantitative and qualitative research in the field.