Hello all,

Sociology for Simmel, is the study of social forms (http://www.jstor.org/stable/2762513
). he says we can empty our interactions of the actual content
(economy, desires, politics) and study the ways through which people
form groups, create connections, introduce conflicts, etc.

Simple, but brilliant. Sociology as the study of social interaction,
bracketing the content of this interaction. And with changing forms of
interaction, it is also very useful, because, as Nathan said, people
don't change. The content of our interactions is pretty much the same,
isn't it? Love, hate, greed, compassion. But the forms, the scope,
vary a lot.

So I would define sociology of technology as the study of those social
interactions which are shaped by technology. Pretty much like urban
sociology is the study of interactions which are shaped by the urban
landscape, that are made possible (or prevented) by our urban
environment.

Abraço,
Heloisa
Cell: 617.794.0526
Work: 412.365.1820
skype: helopait

Em Feb 2, 2009, às 2:48 PM, jeremy hunsinger escreveu:

There's arguably no consistent essence to sociology. Donald Black argues
that the discipline has no standard purpose, goals, criteria, etc. And, from
a very different perspective but with comparable effect, Stephan Fuchs
argues "against essentialism" in a book by that title.

-eg

[mailto:citasa-bounces@list.citasa.org] On

have 50

differentiate it from

later 'cultural

suppose in

technology

On Feb 3, 2009, at 07:47, Andrea Tapia wrote:

Well, there's the idea of having beer and pizza for starters.

Earl Babbie, Chapman University                      Tel: 501-922-6418
ebabbie@mac.com          Skype:earlbabbie        Cel: 501-276-9545
http://www.chapman.edu/~Babbie/                  http://ebabbie.net
The World Wide Web is the Mind of Humanity; the Internet, its Brain.
kth Law of CyberSpace: We are all, as individuals,  in over our heads.
If you can't laugh at yourself, someone else will have to do it for you.

sociology is the discipline, technology is the field, many other
disciplines, interdisciplinary areas, take technology as a field.  so
we have a simple venn diagram of two circles with 'sociology of
technology' as the overlap.

the problem here is that... there are very few non-technical things in
fact, looking around southern virginia, a fairly rural area, i see
virtually nothing that does not fit into the regimes of technology,
even the nature is 'produced', 'managed', 'designed' etc.

In terms of different methods, I think that like all specializations,
there is a tendency of the smaller group to accept the validity of
different methods.  I wouldn't call 'actor-network theory' a method,
but I would call much of sociologist John Law's books methodological,
and some sociologists of technology might be working within a set of
theories and methods that are not recognized outside.  As an sts'er, i
recently sent a piece in that left the editor 'befuddled' 'perhaps
disciplinary clash'... They were in comm, weren't really paying much
attention to current debates in philosophy of social science, weak
ontologies, and related matters, so the text was lost to them.  Small
fields, specialization, might have things in them that they debate
about, that aren't recognized by the larger fields.  One topic that is
becoming somewhat big in 'sociology of technology' is 'thing theory',
which spun out of questions of materiality and objects in society, I
saw a blog post with 5 or 6 syllabi titled 'thing theory' being
taught, not all were sociology of technology courses, but all had some
sociology of technology readings.

don't think this is a valid question.  the reason is that each of
these people could be in a subfield in the discipline /
interdisciplinary area that pretty much makes them unable to work
together.  I can easily imagine an hci person working on ubiqitous
computing, a communications scholar working on interpersonal
dialogues, an sts scholar working on nanotechnological ethics,
sociologist of science mapping scientific conflicts, a philosopher of
technology concerned with biological engineering.  they might have
nothing in common at all.  (I've been in such crowds, the weather is a
popular topic...)

If we grant the possibility that they are all working on web 2.0, then
they might have a conversation.  The question then becomes for me,
what does the sociologist of technology do.... here i would suspect
they would bring a stronger sense of separation between the social and
the technology than say the STS scholar, and more of a concern for the
'things' or 'objects' in the world than the sociologist of knowledge.
For the rest, the spectrums are too huge to posit a possibility.  I
know of several hci scholars who are indistinguishable from
philosopher's of technology, except for where they publish, similar
communications is a 'field' that has somehow become a discipline, and
some of them are sociologists of technology, etc.

Whenever I've taught Intro Soc or something similar, I tell
students that if they imagined all the disciplines making
up the liberal arts as a bunch of eggs, Sociology is the
carton they come in.

I have always felt Sociology was more powerful as a
context than as a content. Those times when I felt my
Sociology was giving me special insights in an applied
situation (e.g., politics), I rarely thought about what
Durkheim or Weber had said, but I knew they were
shining a light on things for me.

If we were holding this discussion in the Catskills, we
might say, "Sociology is like a glass of tea." But
realize that Sociology is the glass, not the tea.

Sociology is like the Confucian model of leadership:
when the job has been accomplished, the people
say, "We did it." We are not necessarily the "Decider"
--that's been done--but our function is often one
of leadership in a subtle yet powerful way.

But, I could be wrong.

~earl

Earl Babbie, Chapman University                      Tel: 501-922-6418
ebabbie@mac.com          Skype:earlbabbie        Cel: 501-276-9545
http://www.chapman.edu/~Babbie/                  http://ebabbie.net
The World Wide Web is the Mind of Humanity; the Internet, its Brain.
kth Law of CyberSpace: We are all, as individuals,  in over our heads.
If you can't laugh at yourself, someone else will have to do it for you.

Just seconding Tracy's comment about the 'disconnect' within sociology
around studying Internet technology, but I remain hopeful that this may
change.

I was recently asked by Patricia Hill Collins, incoming ASA president, to
organize a thematic session for the 2009 meetings about race, gender and the
'new politics of community' on the Internet.  I could pretty easily think
of lots of scholars doing interesting work in these areas, but in order to
be included on the panel the people needed to be current ASA members and
that requirement narrowed the pool of rather dramatically.  I ended up
including 2 current ASA members, 1 person from outside the field (political
science) and 1 person from outside the U.S. (UK) - (and, offered to sponsor
the membership of the 2 non-ASA members).

In part, I think this disconnect reflects the fact that the field is
international and interdisciplinary - both good things in my view.  And
yet, there's still this 'lag' in terms of sociology's participation in this
area of study.  As Paul DiMaggio and colleagues pointed out in their 2001
Annual Review of Sociology article, *"sociologists have been slow to take up
the challenge of studying the Internet." *  It was true in 2001 and, from my
view, it continues to be true.  Still, I remain hopeful it's changing.

~ Jessie

--
http://www.jessiedanielsphd.com
http://www.racismreview.com
http://www.homelessyouthservices.org

On Tue, Feb 3, 2009 at 9:06 AM, T. Kennedy tkennedy@netwomen.ca wrote: