[CITASA] Take two-Will the real sociology of technologies stand up?

[T. Kennedy]

What about creating a wiki for this discussion? would be interesting to
create a knowledge base for all these interesting tid-bits.

I find the discussion interesting, useful & timely. As a PhD candidate in
Sociology, I've been wondering about my place in the discipline; I teach all
of my - cyberculture, digital culture, virtual culture, gaming, info/network
society etc etc - in communications, popular culture, film or media studies
depts (for the last 7 years). I have yet to find a 'home' in sociology for
my research or teaching interests. The courses I have taught in socio - tech
& society (co-taught with Barry Wellman) and women & IT (mostly work
related) and have a different slant/focus than my other courses.
This is not to say that I don't use soci theories in these
communications/media classes - I certainly do (and there is overlap) - so I
wonder why sociology (and many depts across the US & Canada) seem so distant
to me (and certainly don't call out to me in job postings)....I've stopped
going to soci conferences (except for citasa & depending on distance &
funding) and have looked to other disciplines when thinking about a future
tenure position. 
Is it just me - or do others feel this same disconnect with sociology?
Tracy



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Tracy L. M. Kennedy
PhD Candidate
Dept of Sociology
University of Toronto

Course Instructor
Dept of Communications, Popular Culture & Film Brock University

Research Coordinator
NetLab
University of Toronto

Second Life: Professor Tracy

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-----Original Message-----
From: citasa-bounces at list.citasa.org [mailto:citasa-bounces at list.citasa.org]
On Behalf Of Andrea Tapia
Sent: February 3, 2009 8:47 AM
To: gustavo at soc.haifa.ac.il; citasa at list.citasa.org
Subject: [CITASA] Take two-Will the real sociology of technologies stand up?

Wow. Double wow.

These questions of mine have generated a lot of discussion yesterday and
today, both on and off the list.

Thank you! This has spurred me on to think in new ways about what we do and
find new ways to translate it to others!

I think the discussions have been very interesting. So much so, that I think
I'm going to anonymize and aggregate them for everyone to read. I think more
than myself might benefit from the responses.

One line of questions keep popping up.

Why did I exclude this or that? Why did I draw artificial boundaries between
sociology of technology and other things? Wouldn't if be better if "X" were
included?


So, I pose a few questions back to the list...

1.  Is the sociology of technology an umbrella term? discipline? That others
fit inside? If so, what fits inside?

2.  If the sociology of technology is just sociology applied to technical
things--then does the sociology of technology offer anything that overall
sociology doesn't in terms of theories/methods/etc.?

3.  One author suggested that the sociology of technology exists only in the
overlap of other things. I think this is an intriguing idea. Do you think it
hold water?

4.  Imagine that you found yourself on a six person team. The other members
of the team were an HCI (human-computer interaction) scholar, a scholar of
communications, an STS (science and technology studies) scholar, a
sociologist of science/knowledge, and a philosopher of technology. After a
few beers and some good pizza they all look at you and ask you what you add
to the team that they don't already have.



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