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Technology and coastal engineering make it possible for some 10 million Dutch to live below sea level behind dikes. Without this technology, there would have been no Netherlands. Technology thus plays in this instance as in others a crucial role in constituting modern society. It seems pertinent to try to understand how technology can play such a role, how it influences society, how it develops, how it-in turn–may be controlled. This chapter will review studies that have aimed to do this. It will also say, by way of illus-tration, something about the dike-building technology that the Dutch have used to defend their coast against the sea.

In this chapter I will focus primarily on sociological studies oftechnology, thereby neglecting several other important bodies of literature. First, there is the history of technology. For a comprehensive review of, especially, the American work in this field, see Staudenmaier (1985). Troitzsch and …