Gender & 'Technology' (was RE: technology...)

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Doug wrote:
>People often talk about technology as if its development and adoption
>weren't driven by money and competitive capitalist markets. For
>conservative critics of capitalist society, who often speak of
>"globalization" and "technology" and the "destruction of tradition"
>instead, innovation and internationalization are treated as evils in
>themselves. It just struck me that one reason for this is that they're not
>offended by the social hierarchies of capitalism themselves, but just the
>turbulent bits, which often disturb those hierarchies.

Especially gender hierarchy. They hate the idea that 'globalization,'
'technology,' the 'destruction of tradition,' etc. may pervert the Nature
of the Fair Sex.

The oppositions between 'modernity' and 'tradition,' 'nature' and
'artifice,' etc. have been frequently used to advance conservative
criticisms of some effects of capitalism, while leaving capitalism itself
off the hook; at the same time, women have usually been cast as bearers of
'tradition,' who are said to have the most to lose in our exposure to The
Heartless World. Even some feminists go for this idea, such as ecofeminist
fans of Vandana Shiva.

Yoshie