Abstract

CONCEICAO, Cristina Palma. Protagonistas e contextos da produção tecnológica em Portugal: o caso da invenção independente. Sociologia, Problemas e Práticas [online]. 2003, n.41, pp.119-150. ISSN 0873-6529.

Set against the backdrop of some of the questions raised by the theoretical debate on the nature of technological production processes in today’s societies, this article looks at the particular case of independent inventors in Portugal. It seeks to understand a whole set of successive choices that they make during the various phases involved in coming up with, and then (when possible) publicising, their inventions. In doing so, it seeks to take account of factors such as socio-professional insertion, familiarity with given networks of social relations and the capacity to access and manipulate information of different kinds. The invention processes observed by the author would appear to result from the conjugation of a variety of issues that are not exclusively technical, but rather are heavily influenced by the contexts in which they occur and especially by the particular resources which their protagonists dispose of at all sorts of levels.

Keywords : Invention; inventors; sociology of science and technology.

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