CFP: After Social Construction: Technology, Knowledge and Society
[CFP -- please distribute widely; apologies for cross-posting] AFTER SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION: TECHNOLOGY, KNOWLEDGE AND SOCIETY A Special Issue of _Social Epistemology_ 500 word proposals due: 1 December 2003 Submission Deadline: 1 March 2004 Issue Editors Jonathan Sterne and Joan Leach Formatted .html and .pdf calls available at http://www.pitt.edu/~jsterne/asc.html. As promoted by Bruno Latour, Wiebe Bijker, Trevor Pinch, and many others, social construction of technology (SCOT) approaches have been a major force in technology studies. They have offered vital alternatives to positivistic and deterministic conceptions of technology; rich notions of human and technological agency; and new objects and approaches for the cultural, historical and philosophical approaches to technology. At the same time, critics have charged that SCOT does nothing more than repeatedly discover that it objects are "socially constructed." As the approach becomes more established in technology studies, and as authors like Ian Hacking challenge the limits of the SCOT paradigm, we want to know what comes next. Is this a moment to find the next step after social construction? Or is this a moment where we can build a new social epistemology of technology that presupposes a constructionist paradigm? For our special issue of _Social Epistemology_, the editors seek two kinds of submissions: ***full length essays (approximately 9000 words) that challenge, extend, rethink or pose robust alternatives to the SCOT approach ***short position papers of no more than 1000 words for a forum on the SCOT paradigm and the future of technology studies. Visit the _Social Epistemology_ page at Routledge for full style guidelines: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/authors/sepauth.html Email submissions are preferred, though snail mail is acceptable. Send all submissions and queries to: Jonathan Sterne Department of Communication University of Pittsburgh 1117 Cathedral of Learning Pittsburgh, PA 15260 USA Email MS Word or .rtf encoded attachments to: jsterne@pitt.edu
Today the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel writes about the deliberate conception and use of arcade killer games in the Near and Middle East conflicts and provides some links to the relevant websites: a Syrian game: http://www.underash.net/emessage.htm a game produced by (or for) the Hisbollah: http://www.specialforce.net/english/indexeng.htm the chase for Talibans as a screen leisure : http://www.novalogic.com/games.asp?GameKey=DFTFD the most recent US military "acts of patriotism and bravery" as a civic education play : http://www.kumagames.com/kumawar.html The author also mentions a pro-Israeli war game "Israeli Air Force" without giving a link. But is there anything special to the Internet in these games? I 'd say these are only the most recent developments within a long tradition. I remember tin or plum soldiers in the play boxes of my friends decades ago which had survived the war. They were conceived in the 1930s to mentally prepare the German youth for war. And I guess, there were also glorious British and French tin soldiers refighting past victories in the same era. Today's generation of plays to mentally prepare the war of the cultures is just a more recent version. Nothing special to the Internet, I guess, besides the increased incitives to identify with the Good. Die Hisbollah shootert zurück Von Christian Stöcker <mailto:dr_stoecker@web.de> Dass das Pentagon Spielefirmen sponsert, um jungen PC-Fans das Militär schmackhaft zu machen, und gar Ego-Shooter für das Training nutzt, regt kaum mehr jemanden auf. Mit Ausnahme der Hisbollah, die dieser US-Propaganda nicht länger zusehen will: In ihren Computerspielen fliegen die Kugeln in die andere Richtung.l http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/netzkultur/0,1518,267090,00.html Cheers Frank
participants (2)
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Frank Thomas -
Jonathan Sterne