SOCI221 – Sociology of Cyberspace

Meeting 11: November 24, 2014
Cultural Contexts to Posthumanism

Posthumanism

Self portrait for LinkedIN profile picture. SteveMann with EyeTap, by Glogger (CC-BY-SA–3.0))

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

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
  • Surveillance & Society, Foucault Issue http://lar.me/2zj
• Sousveillance
  • Surveillance, sousveillance and PRISM – an op-ed for Die Zeit | … My heart’s in Accra http://lar.me/2zk
• Internet Bill of Rights
  • Let’s Write a Digital Bill of Rights http://lar.me/2zl