Schedule and Topics

Posted by Nancy Van House on August 04th 2011 to


The goals of this course are to:

  • -Introduce you to the concepts and approaches of STS
  • -Address issues of particular relevance to the people in the class
This class is different each time it is offered, depending on recent developments and emphases in the field; and on who’s in the class.  Given the large scope of what we could cover, I take the students’ interests into account in determining what we do cover.

Week 1 (Aug 22)

Intro to course

Intro to participants

Overview of STS and its relevance to Info and Communications Technologies and to New Media

Week 2 (Aug 30 and Sept 1)

Intro to STS

Topic for discussion: Does social media have politics?   Mobile technologies and the UK riots.

(We may keep returning to this event as a way of grounding our STS analyses.)

 

Week 3 (Sept 6  & Sept 8 )

(Social Construction of Technology (SCOT)

If you read some SCOT in i203, you barely scratched the surface.

We’ll start with this as a way to look at how STS treats technology, and the importance of STS for people interested ICTs.

SCOT isn’t used in its original form but its concepts and approach are fundamental to much of STS. Especially useful to us for its approach to technology and its users.  Technology is not necessarily what its designers think. Many fields try to explain “adoption” of technology; STS challenges that terminology.

 

Week 4 (Sept 13 & 15)

Due Sept 15: a SCOT reading of a topic of interest to you

Configuring Users  Updated 9/12/11

Week 5 (Sept 20) Users, cont.

revised 9/16

Latour, Bruno (Jim Johnson). (1995). Mixing humans and nonhumans together: The sociology of door-closer. In S.L.Star (Ed.),Ecologies of knowledge: work and politics in science and technology (pp. 257-277). SUNY Press. Online in Social Problems,Vol. 35, No. 3, Special Issue: The Sociology of Science and Technology, Jun., 1988 (Other articles in this issue are also valuable) Pay most attention to the topic of delegation.

 

Useful:Akrich, M. and B. Latour (1992). A Summary of a Convenient Vocabulary for the Semiotics of Human and Nonhuman Assemblies. In W. Bijker and J. Law (Eds.) Shaping Technology, Building Society: Studies in Sociotechnical Change. Cambridge, Mass, MIT Press: 259-264.
“A concise description of a possible semiotic vocabulary for undertaking symmetrical studies of the relations between entities, and thus the ways in which these are constituted.”

Not online, but you can read most of this chapter online via Google Books.

SILVERSTONE, R. & HADDON, L. (1997) Design and domestication of information and communication techologies: technical change and everyday life. IN MANSELL, R. & SILVERSTONE, R. (Eds.) Communication by design : the politics of information and communication technologies. Oxford, Oxford University Press. (scanned and  in Dropbox)

 

 

Week 6 (Sept 27 & 29)

Tues: we will (finally) discuss

Latour, Bruno (Jim Johnson). (1995). Mixing humans and nonhumans together: The sociology of door-closer. In S.L.Star (Ed.),Ecologies of knowledge: work and politics in science and technology (pp. 257-277). SUNY Press. Online in Social Problems,Vol. 35, No. 3, Special Issue: The Sociology of Science and Technology, Jun., 1988 (Other articles in this issue are also valuable) Pay most attention to the topic of delegation.

Optional but Useful:Akrich, M. and B. Latour (1992). A Summary of a Convenient Vocabulary for the Semiotics of Human and Nonhuman Assemblies. In W. Bijker and J. Law (Eds.) Shaping Technology, Building Society: Studies in Sociotechnical Change. Cambridge, Mass, MIT Press: 259-264.
“A concise description of a possible semiotic vocabulary for undertaking symmetrical studies of the relations between entities, and thus the ways in which these are constituted.”

Not online, but you can read most of this chapter online via Google Books.

SILVERSTONE, R. & HADDON, L. (1997) Design and domestication of information and communication techologies: technical change and everyday life. IN MANSELL, R. & SILVERSTONE, R. (Eds.) Communication by design : the politics of information and communication technologies. Oxford, Oxford University Press. (scanned and  in Dropbox)

Thurs: Start Actor-Network Theory

 

Week 7 (Oct 4 & 6)

Actor-Network Theory, cont.

Week 8 (Oct 11 & 13)

 

Boundary objects

Intro to materiality and practice

Week 9 (Oct 18 & 20)

Materiality and Practice

 

Assignment 2 due Oct 20

 

Week 10 (Oct 25 & 27)

Infrastructure:

Classification & naming

Archives, databases and collective memory  (optional; useful but we’ll concentrate on the other topic and readings)

Week 11 (Nov 1 & 3)

Representation and visualization

Week 12 (Nov 8 & 10)

Epistemic Communities

Week 13 (Nov 15 & 17)

STS & Policy-Making

Week 14 (Nov 22; Nov 24 is Thanksgiving)

Donna Haraway

Week 15 (Nov  29 & Dec 1)

Wrap up and review

 

Week of Dec 5: RRR week

Tentatively: student presentations of your final papers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

* 2 Comments

2 Responses to “Schedule and Topics”

  1. STS and Information Technologies » Syllabus
    August 4th, 2011 | 8:37 am

    […] syllabus is this page.  I’ll be updating this continually.  Check back often if you want to know what we’ll […]

  2. STS and Information Technologies » About this Course
    August 8th, 2011 | 8:36 am

    […] The current, evoloving syllabus is here. […]