[CITASA] Take two-Will the real sociology of technologies standup?
Joseph Simpson
josephmsimpson at hotmail.com
Thu Feb 5 20:29:36 EST 2009
This is shameful. I applaud you for refusing to change the request.
Institutional legitimacy is difficult for small organizations to get
and receiving a grant like this would allow you to gain that
legitimacy. The tautology of it all is maddening.
On Feb 5, 2009, at 5:54 PM, Ryan, Charlotte wrote:
> In light of the discussion,
> an anecdote might be of interest.
>
> 1998-99, the Movement and Media Research Action
> Project had just completed a multi-year communication
> capacity building project with ten Massachusetts-based
> community organizing groups, primarily (save one) in communities
> that were primarily African American, Afro-Caribbean,Cape Verdean
> and Cambodian.
>
> Our media fellows, almost exclusively women, flagged as a top
> priority helping their
> groups establish themselves on the internet, and bringing their
> surrounding community into
> a digital era. We wrote a grant to the Dept of Commerce pitched as
> "helping communities of color bridge the digital divide."
>
> We were rejected although we were urged to resubmit. The change
> requested: instead of strong but small organizations in communities
> of color, could we find a more institutionalized partner, maybe the
> United way. If we resubmit with a more
> established, large non-profit, we would very likely succeed.
>
> We refused.... resulting grant would miss the point.
> And the winner of the grant for Massachusetts
> The State of Massachusetts Corrections Facilities requesting support
> to digitalize prisoners' records.
> THis would, given the racial composition of Massachusetts prisons,
> "help communities of color bridge the digital divide."
>
>
>
>
> Char Ryan
> charlotte_ryan at uml.edu
>
> Sociology Department
> Center for Family, Work and Community
> UMASS - Lowell
>
> Co-Director
> Movement and Media Research Action Project
>
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: citasa-bounces at list.citasa.org on behalf of Jessie Daniels
> Sent: Thu 2/5/2009 8:34 AM
> To: Harvey Rich; Emily Noelle Ignacio
> Cc: citasa at list.citasa.org
> Subject: Re: [CITASA] Take two-Will the real sociology of
> technologies standup?
>
> 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.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> CITASA mailing list
> >> CITASA at list.citasa.org
> >> http://list.citasa.org/mailman/listinfo/citasa_list.citasa.org
> >>
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> CITASA mailing list
> >> CITASA at list.citasa.org
> >> http://list.citasa.org/mailman/listinfo/citasa_list.citasa.org
> >>
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ------------------------------
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > CITASA mailing listCITASA at list.citasa.orghttp://list.citasa.org/mailman/listinfo/citasa_list.citasa.org
> >
> >
>
>
> --
> http://www.jessiedanielsphd.com
> http://www.racismreview.com
> http://www.homelessyouthservices.org
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> CITASA mailing list
> CITASA at list.citasa.org
> http://list.citasa.org/mailman/listinfo/citasa_list.citasa.org
Joseph M. Simpson M.S.
College of Arts & Sciences
Sociology
Oklahoma State University
josephmsimpson at hotmail.com
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