Conceiving Technology: Rhetorical Alignment, Legal Opportunity, and the Pregnancy Test Coming Home

• In Event: 262 - Section on Science, Knowledge, and Technology Refereed Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 01.

Abstract

This paper explores the trajectory of one of the most common home diagnostic tools currently in use, the home pregnancy test, through a historical study of social groups such as regulators, doctors, and women's health advocates who are often thought of as adversarial. Though the home pregnancy test was not without controversy, the results of this study present a more nuanced narrative: one of boundaries and positions that at once were blurry, later shifted, and were ultimately aligned without compromising the credibility of regulators, doctors, or women's health advocates. The analysis also explores the role of court decisions and regulations and their roles in technological diffusion and settlement. In this case, rather than a control on innovation, law in the process of stabilization provided pathways for widespread acceptance of the home pregnancy test by various groups. In particular, the analysis explores both productive uses of legal texts in STS research and productive uses of concepts such as expertise and coproduction in legal analysis. As more tools move from expert users to layperson users, this paper demonstrates the utility of examining existing technologies as we consider the future of self-monitoring and self-diagnosis.

Author

• Joan H. Robinson, Columbia University