Well, the name that really brings me up short is "socio-technical studies". For several reasons:
1. It should be "socio-technological" 2. "Socio-technical" (and STS) in practice gets defined much more narrowly as one way of looking at the world -- building on Latour's work -- rather than as a broad way of looking at the interplay of technology and social. Case in point: one of my grad students didn't get a job this year, despite his fine work, because he didn't make the proper obesiances. 3. Hence I have avoided the STS term in my own work because of the way it is defined narrowly, in practice. This is not to pick on Latour, et al, which I find useful to read and learn from, but to argue/plead for a broader construction. There are many ways to study technology. My .02. Barry _____________________________________________________________________ Barry Wellman Professor of Sociology NetLab Director wellman at chass.utoronto.ca http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman Centre for Urban & Community Studies University of Toronto 455 Spadina Avenue Toronto Canada M5S 2G8 fax:+1-416-978-7162 To network is to live; to live is to network _____________________________________________________________________ On Wed, 27 Jul 2005, Discussions on mobile communicaitons and social change digest wrote: > Date: Wed, 27 Jul 2005 00:01:36 -0400 > From: Discussions on mobile communicaitons and social change digest > <[email protected]> > To: mobile-society digest recipients <[email protected]> > Subject: mobile-society digest: July 26, 2005 > > MOBILE-SOCIETY Digest for Tuesday, July 26, 2005. > > 1. RE: What's in a name > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Subject: RE: What's in a name > From: Ben Anderson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Date: Tue, 26 Jul 2005 12:23:18 +0100 > X-Message-Number: 1 > > Laura, > > On 25 Jul 2005, at 14:55, Laura Watts wrote: > > > > > As another member of the Centre for Mobilities Research at Lancaster > > University UK, I have to add that I do not think that performing a > > division > > between technology and society is at all helpful > > totally agree. And in a perfect world everything you went on to say > would be accepted as true. Sadly I have found it not to be. > > We at Chimera are also committed to 'socio-technical' mainly for the > reasons you outline. I guess most people on this list are too. > > B > > > -- > Dr Ben Anderson > Deputy Director, Chimera, University of Essex > Tel: +44 (0) 7710 187806 > privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~benander > > > > > --- > > END OF DIGEST > > --- > You are currently subscribed to mobile-society as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > To unsubscribe send a blank email to %%email.unsub%% > --- You are currently subscribed to mobile-society as: [email protected] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
