Is Big Beautiful?

In this essay, I argue that large‐scale technologies may be more threatening to open democratic institutions than to ecological systems. I describe the threat in terms of an alliance between bureacrats and entrepreneurs to govern society according to their own methods, e.g., cost‐benefit analysis, and thus to usurp the rule of law. In America, though not in England, blue‐collar and environmentalist constituencies have on occasion beaten back this threat, a triumph of democracy. I use ‘grid‐group’ theory, as developed by Mary Douglas and her students, to make these arguments about the relation between technology and democracy.