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

Thu Feb 5 08:34:52 EST 2009

Hi Harvey, Emily, and CITASA folks ~

Harvey - I'm just telling you what Pat Collins (ASA president) and Kareem
(of ASA) told me about organizing the session.  Perhaps the rules are
slightly different for an invited/ thematic panel?  I'm not sure.  The other
stipulation, as I think you note, is that they couldn't be on the program
more than twice.   So, some of the people doing this sort of work were
already on the program in other invited panels.

And, Emily - no apology necessary, if anything apologies are all mine.  I
didn't mean to suggest that no sociologists were doing work on
race/gender/class and the Internet, there are as you rightly point out.
Lori Kendall, has been a pioneer in this area,  Emily's work is exemplary,
and there are new, young scholars such as Tracy Kennedy and Felicia Su Wong,
who are also doing really interesting work.

Let me be clear about what I meant in my original post to the list agreeing
with Tracy about the disconnect between sociology and technology.  My
'subfield,' if you will, within sociology is the study of race/gender/class
and I started using technology in the classroom in about the mid-1990s, so
for me the connections between these two seemed obvious.   And, when Ebo's
1998 book "Cybertopia or Cyberghetto: Race, Class and Gender on the
Internet," came out, I was optimistic that others saw this connection too
and that a new field was emerging.   Now, ten years later, there are very
few (a handful really) of sociologists interested in race/class/gender that
are equally interested in anything Internet-related.      And, most of the
Internet-related literature I read is not so much focused on these
intersections (again, a few exceptions but not the field as a whole -
especially with regard to race).

I see this disconnect between sociology and Internet-studies especially in
my involvement with the journal *Gender & Society* (not sponsored by ASA,
but by Sociologists for Women in Society), a well-regarded sociology journal
with an impact factor close to that of *New Media & Society*).  I'm on the
Ed Board and a frequent reviewer.   I've approached Dana Britton, the
current editor, several times about putting together a special issue on
race/class/gender and the Internet, and she tells me again and again that
there just aren't enough submissions to the journal on this issue to warrant
a special issue, or even a similary themed regular issue of the journal.
Her estimate: "maybe in 5 years" there will be enough work in the area to
warrant a special issue.   I ended up editing a special issue of the journal
recently around Maggie Andersen's work on race/gender/class, but none of the
contributors - all leaders in the field across a range of ages and stages of
career (and invited by Britton, not me) - mentioned the Internet as a
significant development in the field in the last 20 years.    And, indeed,
when I submitted my own work to the journal (about cyberfeminism), they had
trouble even finding reviewers, and then it got rejected as not
'sociological enough.' I re-submitted the piece to a women's studies journal
and it got accepted with very minor revisions  (coming out this year in a
special issue on technology in *Women's Studies Quarterly*).   Again, Lori
Kendall's work is the exception here and has appeared in *Gender &
Society,*but there's only a handful of articles that have appeared
there about gender
and the Internet.   (TIP for scholars in that subfield and on this list:
submit your work there and it's likely to get a good review from me! )

So, all that is a long way round to say that what seemed to me to be an
obvious connection in 1998 between one particular subfield in sociology
(race/class/gender) and Internet studies, has not developed in the way that
I assumed it would 10 years ago.  Perhaps it's different in other
subfields.

There are, in my opinion, reasons to be hopeful that this will change, is
changing (like the fact that ASA is organizing several special sessions on
Internet-related research), but I still see a disconnect to me between
sociology and Internet studies.

Best,
~ Jessie

On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 12:25 AM, Harvey Rich <vcsoc001 at csun.edu> wrote:

>  I'm surprised that you were restricted to only members for a panel.  Did
> you actually ask someone at the ASA, or just assume it?  Here's the policy
> taken from the pages of the ASA website (admittedly it took some doing to
> find):
>
> *The announced Regular Session topics listed in the Call for Papers are
> open to submission of full papers from members of the Association **and
> other interested individuals. *
>
> Admittedly, it is the policy of other sociology associations of which I am
> experienced to require one to join the association if you are presenting a
> paper.  However, the two associations I am most familiar with (PSA and
> CSA) exempt *panel organizers* from this requirement.  Thus, one can get a
> person from the government or a local charitable organization or another
> discipline, without requiring them to join the organization.
>
> I can't find anywhere on the website whether or not one must join the ASA
> if on the program, but I suspect there is no one size fits all rule.  In
> fact, I found a piece, for a CITASA pre-conference and grad student
> conference in July 31, 2008, which says that full papers submitted to the
> CITASA pre-conference do not count against the limit on the number of papers
> that an author can present at the regular ASA conference.  This would seem
> to indicate an inclusiveness rather than exclusiveness.
>
> I would email the ASA on this and perhaps you can expand your contributors
> next time you do this at the ASA.
>
> Harvey
>
>
> Jessie Daniels wrote:
>
> 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 at netwomen.ca> wrote:
>
>> 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
>>
>>
>>
>> ..|::.|.::|::.|.::|..|::.|.::|::.|.::|..
>> |::.|.::|::.|.::|..|::.|.::|::.|.::|..
>>
>> 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
>>
>> ..|::.|.::|::.|.::|..|::.|.::|::.|.::|..
>> |::.|.::|::.|.::|..|::.|.::|::.|.::|..
>>
>>
>>
>> -----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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>
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-- 
http://www.jessiedanielsphd.com
http://www.racismreview.com
http://www.homelessyouthservices.org
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