[CITASA] Take two-Will the real sociology of technologies stand up?
Emily Noelle Ignacio
eignacio at u.washington.edu
Thu Feb 5 16:10:00 EST 2009
Dear all again ~
Thanks so much, Jessie, for your note!
I may be opening up a can of worms, but, perhaps, one of the reasons that,
at least, the study of race/class/gender and the internet has not developed
as it could have is because, about a decade ago, when a few of us first
started doing this, we graduate students and new assistant professors were
told in so many ways at our work and/or our methods was “not sociological
enough” because we were drawing on theories/methods/works from many other
disciplines to help us with our research.....Of course, that sort of pushed
some of us to do studies on more “traditional” communities so as to
legitimize our place in our fields.....I’m glad that Gender and Society
seems really open to publishing a special issue! I’m not so happy that it
might take 5 years....
But, the key is what Jesse, unfortunately, recently experienced – the charge
that this work is “not sociological enough” and its corresponding argument
against our methods can get in the way of our developing this area. This is
why I’d written a piece re: methods and internet research (“E-scaping
Boundaries: Bridging Cyberspace and Diaspora Studies through Nethnography”)
but, par for course, it was published (because of the editor’s request) in
an anthology comprised of authors from different fields (David Silver’s
_Critical Cyberculture Studies_) which doesn’t help counter the “not
sociological enough” charge...*sigh* round and round this goes......
And then there’s the other part of this equation --- the constant struggle
of sociologists of race, class, gender and/or its intersections to prove
that our methods are sound and our work is sociological enough (i.e., not
“mere experience”).
I’m glad you put this out on the table, Jesse and all! I’m really happy that
we’re, finally, discussing how we can buttress this area of research and,
more importantly, articulating – and, hopefully, addressing - the reasons
why it has been difficult to do so....
Take good care everyone - and, Jesse, really – apologies! That initial email
was not directed at you, but at the ghosts of Christmases past ;o)
Emily
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
"We are better than we think
And not yet quite what we want to be
We are alive to imagination
And open to possibility
We will continue
To invent the future" - Nikki Giovanni, "We are Virginia Tech," April 17,
2007
"We were given everything we need to know
at birth...
We just need to find the courage to grab it
and rise up into this world
expanded" - Carlos Andrés Gómez, "tipping point" from Finding the Music
(2006)
"True compassion is more than throwing a coin to a beggar. It demands of
our humanity that if we live in a society that produces beggars, we are
morally commanded to restructure that society." - Dr. Martin Luther
King, Jr.
Emily Noelle Ignacio
Associate Professor of Sociology, Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences
Box 358436, 1900 Commerce Street
Tacoma, WA 98402
VM: 253/ 692-4542; Fax: 253/ 692-5718
_____
From: Jessie Daniels [mailto:jessiedanielsnyc at gmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, February 05, 2009 5:35 AM
To: Harvey Rich; Emily Noelle Ignacio
Cc: citasa at list.citasa.org
Subject: Re: [CITASA] Take two-Will the real sociology of technologies stand
up?
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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--
http://www.jessiedanielsphd.com
http://www.racismreview.com
http://www.homelessyouthservices.org
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