• 1. Resistance to new technology and its effects on nuclear power, information technology and biotechnology Martin Bauer; 2. The crisis of 'progress' Alain Touraine; 3. Reinterpreting 'Luddism': resistance to new technology in the British industrial revolution Adrian J. Randall; 4. The changeability of public opinions about new technology: assimilation effects in attitude surveys Danckler D. L. Daamen and Ivo A. van der Lans; 5. 'Technophobia': a misleading conception of resistance to new technology Martin Bauer; 6. Patterns of resistance to new technologies in Scandinavia: an historical perspective Kristine Bruland; 7. Henry Ford's relationship to 'Fordism': ambiguity as a modality of technological resistance John M. Staudenmaier; 8. Resistance to nuclear technology: optimists, opportunists and opposition in Australian nuclear history Roy M. Macleod; 9. New technology in Fleet Street, 1975–80 Roderick Martin; 10. The impact of resistance to biotechnology in Switzerland: a sociological view of the recent referendum Marlis Buchmann; 11. The politics of resistance to new technology: semiconductor diffusion in France and Japan until 1965 Antonio J. J. Botelho; 12. User resistance to new interactive media: participants, processes and paradigms Ian Miles and Graham Thomas; 13. The impact of anti-nuclear power movements in international comparison Dieter Rucht; 14. In the engine of history: regulators of biotechnology, 1970–86 Robert Bud; 15. Product, process, or programme: three cultures and the regulation of biotechnology Sheila S. Jasanoff; 16. Learning from Chernobyl for the fight against genetics? Stages and stimuli of German protest movements - a comparative synopsis Joachim Radkau; 17. Individual and institutional impacts upon press coverage of sciences: the case of nuclear power and genetic engineering in Germany Hans Mathias Kepplinger; 18. Forms of intrusion: comparing resistance to information technology and biotechnology in the USA Dorothy Nelkin; 19. Towards a functional analysis of resistance.

'… Bauer [suggests] that resistance to new technology ... performs a function analogous to acute pain in the body - as an alarm signal. It might be hard to persuade the biotechnologists to accept that idea. But as we move into the century of biology, they may need to begin thinking along these lines if the future is not to be marked by conficts. They should start by studying this thought-provoking collection.' Jon Turney, New Scientist