Cultural Turn Of Studies On History Of Technology

The paradigm of "cultural studies" of technology that was opened by constructivism of technology and "new cultural history" opened by the "cultural turn" of historiography, both influenced studies on history of science/technology. But almost no student in the west synthetically investigated the influence or studied on the ontological, epistemological or methodological problems of history of technology from the perspective of historiography; So did students in China.Based on that analysis, the aim of this dissertation was to investigate the theoretical and practical studies in the science and technology studies and history of S&T in the latest twenty years in the west, then to show the "new cultural history" transcend in history of technology; and to think on some important historiography problems of "new cultural history of technology" so as to construct a fabric of theory for that.Firstly the article retrospected the stream of the solution to the "contextualism" problem by storytellers of technology, then make clear that the introduce of constructivism into history of technology open a cultural turn of history of technology, and analyze the merits and demerits of every period one by one. Secondly the article show the "cultural turn" transcends in history of technology by synthetically reviewing the practical studies in the history of technology.Thirdly this article synthesize the theoretical resources of the cultural turn of history of technology, based on which had a chance to construct a fabric of theoretical thinking for that, including concepts and categories as analytical tools, the cultural meaning of storytelling of technology and the am, methodology, horizon of problems, and so on.. At last, as conclusion, the article reviewed the significance and the future of the new cultural history of technology.The author anticipates that this study would call upon the students in China pay more attention to the progress in historiography of technology and the introjection between general history and history of technology and between cultural studies and technology studies.