SOC08016 2022 Technology, Climate and Society

Technology, Climate and Society

Technology, Climate and Societ

SOC08016

N/A %

SOC - Sociology

SOCS - Social Sciences

08 - Level 8

10 - 10 Credits

Semester

€

2022 - Full Academic Year 2022-23

9999 - The End of Time

Gwen Scarbrough, Ailise McDowell, Susan McDonnell

SG_HJOIN_H08 202200 Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in Sociology and Politics

Technology has been central to progressive, expansive and beneficial developments in human history, as well as being implicated in detrimental and pernicious events and practices. While it has been instrumental in providing good sanitation and healthcare; it is also implicated in the destruction of wars, and impacts on climate change caused by extractive and carbon-fuelled industries. Technologies also permeate our everyday lives, as components of our work, play, communication and travel for example.

While technology is sometimes thought of in terms of material objects or processes, the main premise of a sociological approach is that these things and processes are inextricably bound up in social relations, referred to as sociotechnical systems.

This module looks firstly at key philosophical questions concerning the nature of the relationship between technology and society. Secondly it looks at what is meant by the idea of ‘progress’, and what values may be embedded in sociotechnical systems. Three thematic areas are then explored: Climate Change & Justice, Algorithmic Societies, and Technologies of the Body. Finally, we look at potential visions of the future.

100 %

Required Reading
2020-04-23 Braiding Sweetgrass
ISBN 014199195X ISBN-13 9780141991955

As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer has been trained to ask questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces the notion that plants and animals are our oldest teachers. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these two lenses of knowledge together to take us on "a journey that is every bit as mythic as it is scientific, as sacred as it is historical, as clever as it is wise" (Elizabeth Gilbert). Drawing on her life as an indigenous scientist, a mother, and a woman, Kimmerer shows how other living beings-asters and goldenrod, strawberries and squash, salamanders, algae, and sweetgrass-offer us gifts and lessons, even if we've forgotten how to hear their voices.

Required Reading
2020-09-22 Corona, Climate, Chronic Emergency Verso Books
ISBN 9781839762154 ISBN-13 1839762152

What does the COVID 19 tell us about the climate breakdown, and what should we do about it? The economic and social impact of the coronavirus pandemic has been unprecedented. Governments have spoken of being at war and find themselves forced to seek new powers in order to maintain social order and prevent the spread of the virus. This is often exercised with the notion that we will return to normal as soon as we can. What if that is not possible? Secondly, if the state can mobilize itself in the face of an invisible foe like this pandemic, it should also be able to confront visible dangers such as climate destruction with equal force. In Corona, Climate, Chronic Emergency, leading environmental thinker, Andreas Malm demands that this war-footing state should be applied on a permanent basis to the ongoing climate front line. He offers proposals on how the climate movement should use this present emergency to make that case. There can be no excuse for inaction any longer.

Required Reading
2017 Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet
ISBN 1517902371 ISBN-13 9781517902377

9. Remembering in Our Amnesia, Seeing in Our Blindness -- Coda. Beautiful Monsters: Terra in the Cyanocene -- ... On a Damaged Planet

Required Reading
2021-08-24 Technology and Society, second edition MIT Press
ISBN 9780262539968 ISBN-13 0262539969

Writings by thinkers ranging from Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain to Bruno Latour that focus on the interconnections of technology, society, and values. Technological change does not happen in a vacuum; decisions about which technologies to develop, fund, market, and use engage ideas about values as well as calculations of costs and benefits. In order to influence the development of technology for the better, we must first understand how technology and society are inextricably bound together. These writings--by thinkers ranging from Bruno Latour to Francis Fukuyama--help us do just that, examining how people shape technology and how technology shapes people. This second edition updates the original significantly, offering twenty-one new essays along with fifteen from the first edition. The book first presents visions of the future that range from technological utopias to cautionary tales and then introduces several major STS theories. It examines human and social values and how they are embedded in technological choices and explores the interesting and subtle complexities of the technology-society relationship. Remedying a gap in earlier theorizing in the field, many of the texts illustrate how race and gender are intertwined with technology. Finally, the book offers a set of readings that focus on the sociotechnical challenges we face today, treating topics that include cybersecurity, geoengineering, and the myth of neutral technology.

Required Reading
2021-08-26 Capitalism Vs the Climate Penguin Classics
ISBN 0141996889 ISBN-13 9780141996882

Castells, M. (1996, 1997, 1998) The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture. Oxford, Blackwell

Ervine, K. (2018) Carbon. Cambridge, Polity Press

Fuchs, C. (2014) Social Media: A critical introduction. London, Sage

Gerrie,J. (2018)Technology and Society: A philosophical guide Ontario: Broadview Press

Haraway, D. (1991) A Cyborg Manifesto. Routledge

Haraway, D. (2016) Staying with the Trouble: Making kin in the Chthulucene. Duke University Press

Howson, A. (2013) The Body in Society (2^nd edition) Polity Press

Johnson, A.E. and Wilkinson, k.K. (2020) All We Can Save: Truth, courage and solutions for the climate crisis. Random House

Latour, B. and Woolgar, S. (1986 ) LABORATORY LIFE The Construction of Scientific Facts  Princeton University Press

Latour, B. (1992) Where are the missing masses? The sociology of a few mundane artefacts.In  Johnson, D. and Wetmore, J. (2009) Technology and Society: Building our Sociotechnical Future. Cambridge, Mass, MIT Press

Lupton, D. (2016) The Quantified Self: A sociology of self tracking. Polity Press

Malm, A. (2020) Corona, Climate, Chronic Emergency: War communism in the twenty-first century London, Verso

Pinch,T. and Bijker W.E, (1992) The Social Construction of Facts and Artifacts. In  Johnson, D. and Wetmore, J. (2009) Technology and Society: Building our Sociotechnical Future. Cambridge, Mass, MIT Press

Slevin,A. (2019) Assessing the Corrib gas controversy: Beyond ‘David and Goliath’ analyses of a resource conflict, The Extractive Industries and Society 6(2): 519-530,

Tsing, A., Swanson, H., Gan, E. and Bubandt, N. (2017) Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet. University of Minnesota Press

Wajcman,J. (2009) Feminist Theories of Technology. Cambridge Journal of Economics 

Wall Kimmerer, R. (2013) Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge and the teachings of plants

Williams, B.A.  Brooks,C.F. and Shmargad,Y.(2019) How Algorithms Discriminate Based on Data They Lack: Challenges, Solutions, and Policy Implications    Journal of Information Policy,Vol. 8 : 78-115

Fixed: The Science/Fiction of Human Enhancement (Film)

Mothers of Invention (podcast) 

https://superflux.in/index.php/about/# (Website)