Students will
By promoting interdisciplinary thinking, this area of concentration aims to reflect the necessity of viewing these issues in a nuanced and complex way.
In this area of concentration, we seek to fuse the material and the social to encourage students to interrogate technologies in context. In combining the past and the present, this area of concentration fosters critical insight into how technologies shape and reshape society. Our definition of technology is much wider than merely “digital technology;” we offer courses that see technology as a socio-material object. A technology can be tangible objects like the elevator, a nuclear reactor, genetically engineered corn, or a bridge, or intangible things like an algorithm, privacy regulations, or a number. What is key is that students understand that technology is never objective or neutral. It only exists or is used in a certain societal context, and as such, it cannot be seen as separate from social structures. In particular, within the larger remit of Contextual Studies, the Technologies area of concentration is therefore offering courses that investigate how (emerging) technologies, often presented by tech industry hype as a fix to existing societal problems from global warming to racism, can themselves reinforce or deepen social inequalities. What about the carbon footprint of streaming media, or the material pollution of technological waste, for example?
Bachelor: Students will be introduced to key concepts and methods within STS (Science and Technology Studies), and in particular its connections to crucial social issues confronting our society. They will be able to understand technology in its broadest sense, from infrastructure to object.
Master: Students gain a more theoretical background of technologies, having a more nuanced understanding of the approaches in STS (Science and Technology Studies), or other relevant fields such as anthropology, sociology, philosophy, environmental studies, media studies, or human geography.
Key Topics:
Associate Prof. Sociology of Digitisation
Assistant Professor for American Studies