SOCI221 – Sociology of Cyberspace

Meeting 11: November 24, 2014 Cultural Contexts to Posthumanism

Last Week

Cultural Contexts

Activity: Online Interview

  • How easy was it to find an interviewee?
  • How did you prepare?
  • How did you conduct the interview?
  • What kind of insight did you gain?
  • Would a face-to-face interview be preferable?

Required Texts

Horst, Heather “ Free, Social, and Inclusive: Appropriation and Resistance of New Media Technologies in Brazil.” International Journal of Communication 5 (2011): 437–462. Kelty, Christopher. “ Geeks, Social Imaginaries, and Recursive Publics.” Cultural Anthropology 20, no. 2 (May 2005): 185–214. doi:10.1525/can.2005.20.2.185.

Horst

Horst, Heather “ Free, Social, and Inclusive: Appropriation and Resistance of New Media Technologies in Brazil.” International Journal of Communication 5 (2011): 437–462.

  • Unexpected uses
  • Networked sociality
  • Similar experiences?
  • Different Internets?

Kelty

Kelty, Christopher. “ Geeks, Social Imaginaries, and Recursive Publics.” Cultural Anthropology 20, no. 2 (May 2005): 185–214. doi:10.1525/can.2005.20.2.185.

  • (Re)constructing the Internet (links to Leiner et al.)
  • Science and technology studies
  • Technology and law (copyright…)
  • Dense network of influential people
  • Transhumanism

Next Monday

Posthumanism

Activity: Project Plan

  • Based on your experience with an online group (field entry, interview), what type of research could you do in this context?
  • What type of insight would you try to gain?
  • Which methods would you use?
  • How would you explain your project to others?

Required Texts

Chapters 1–2 in Human No More: Digital Subjectivities, Un-Human Subjects, and the End of Anthropology, edited by Neil L. Whitehead and Michael Wesch. Boulder, CO: University Press of Colorado, 2012. doi:10.5876/9781607321705 Cool, Jennifer. “ The Mutual Co-Construction of Online and Onground in Cyborganic: Making an Ethnography of Networked Social Media Speak to Challenges of the Posthuman.” Tufekci, Zeynep. “ We Were Always Human.”

Cool

Cool, Jennifer. “ The Mutual Co-Construction of Online and Onground in Cyborganic: Making an Ethnography of Networked Social Media Speak to Challenges of the Posthuman” in Human No More: Digital Subjectivities, Un-Human Subjects, and the End of Anthropology, edited by Neil L. Whitehead and Michael Wesch, 11–32. Boulder, CO: University Press of Colorado, 2012. doi:10.5876/9781607321705

  • Post-/Transhumanists
  • Cyborganic ethnography
  • Liberal subject
  • Who decides?

Tufekci

Tufekci, Zeynep. “ We Were Always Human” in Human No More: Digital Subjectivities, Un-Human Subjects, and the End of Anthropology, edited by Neil L. Whitehead and Michael Wesch, 33–47. Boulder, CO: University Press of Colorado, 2012. doi:10.5876/9781607321705

  • Technology and society
  • Facebook ethnography and surveys
  • Responding to media
  • Embodiment
  • Cyberasociality

Ethnography

Descriptive approach to cultural diversity. -- Alex

  • Fieldwork
  • Establishing rapport
  • Insider and outsider
  • Participant-observation
  • Cultural translation (making exotic familiar and familiar exotic)

Surveillance Society

  • Panopticon
  • Sousveillance
    • Surveillance, sousveillance and PRISM – an op-ed for Die Zeit | ... My heart’s in Accra http://lar.me/2zk
  • Internet Bill of Rights

Coursenotes, SOCI221 Meeting 11

By Alexandre Enkerli

Coursenotes, SOCI221 Meeting 11

Notes for the eleventh class meeting in Alex Enkerli’s SOCI221 Sociology of Cyberspace course at Concordia University.

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