Identity and Legitimacy: Military Innovation from Scurvy to Agent Orange

Abstract

What explains which technologies, organizational forms, and doctrinal practices militaries adopt? This dissertation applies a Social Construction of Technology framework to the realm of military innovation and emphasizes that consensuses regarding the legitimacy of military innovation are essential to understanding the circuitous routes that innovations wind from various periods of adoption and rejection. It does so through three case studies: antiscorbutic development in the Royal Navy, British and American airship development, and military herbicides. These case studies are thematically linked by the non-linear stories each of them tell regarding the tortuous pathways through experimentation, adoption, and rejection. They highlight that periods of closure and stabilization temporarily resulted in adoption, but that (re-)opening interpretive flexibility–particularly along lines of innovation legitimacy–provided new opportunities for re-evaluating adoption or rejection. This interpretive flexibility expanded through the entry of new relevant actors (such as civilian scientists in the case of herbicidal warfare), new organizational imperatives and fundamental missions (in the case of antiscorbutics), and the ability of both new actors and new organizational forms to bring new information and interpretations to bear on innovations.