SOC 330
Technology, Culture and Society
Last Offered Spring 2016
Division II
Cross-listed SCST 330
This course is not offered in the current catalog

An introduction to major trajectories of theory and empirical research in the sociology and history of technology: the Social Construction of Technology (SCOT), Large Scale Technological Systems (LTS), Actor-Network Theory (ANT), and cultural studies of technoscience broadly. Students will also become acquainted with a number of philosophical positions on technology: instrumentalist, Marxist, cultural/ substantivist, humanist and posthumanist. Topics to be explored include technology, (post)industrial capitalism, and the nature of modern power; the role of technology in giving shape and weight to social institutions and forms of agency; technology, individualism, and everyday life in the modern world; technological determinism; resistance and accommodation to technological change; technology as a point of view and total way of life (culture); language, quantification, computerization, and (tele)visual media; and technology and environment. The course is furthermore designed to allow students to explore and research topics not appearing on the syllabus in the main.