The Sociology Students Association of the CUNY Graduate Center

invites paper proposals from graduate students for the interdisciplinary conference:

Friday, November 5, 2010

The Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY

Sociology has a deeply reciprocal relationship with technology. As Foucault reminds us, sociology has
its origins in technologies of governance, especially the birth of statistics and the concomitant
emergence of 'populations' as objects of study. Despite critical interventions at the margins, mainstream
sociology continues to treat technology as a mere object of study. Technologies generate new forms of
sociality that encompass both the researcher and her method - technology is already social, just as the
social is already delimited by technology.

While social scientists often associate technologies with physical forms, the idea of technology has its
origins in the Greek word tekhnologia, or technique - a mode or pattern of thought that is inclusive of,
but not limited to, specific ‘technological objects.’ Necessarily, systems of thought often emerge before
the generation of appropriate technological objects. Although there has been some research on
technological objects, there has been less interest in the techno-social nexus from which these objects
emerge and the ways they are shaping method – even when method does not consider itself
‘technological.’

This conference will explore the ways in which technology engages with method and method engages
with technology. What subjectivities, potentialities and capacities are being generated – or suppressed
– at the techno-methodological juncture? How have ideologies and social facts preceded and
necessitated technological objects? How do systems of thought generate or influence the techniques
of method? What kinds of technologies/methods are we using today? How is technological change
shaping the questions we ask and methods we use to study the social world? What ethical problems
do technologies/methods pose? What kinds of innovative methods are researchers employing using
‘new’ and ‘old’ technologies? How are new technologies (i.e. social networking media, portable
media devices, etc) shaping the methods we use? How do we define a technology/method as a
‘legitimate’ research tool and how do time and technological changes alter our perception of that
validity? What qualifies old (‘classical’) technologies/methods as relevant?

Technology as Method/ Method as Technology invites proposals addressing the above questions and
the following thematic areas:

the boundaries of 'legitimate' methods power of methods

transgressive methods method and political economy
methods beyond disciplines the institutionalization of marginal
hierarchy of methods methods
power relations in methods theorizing quantitative methods and
technologies

Please submit an extended abstract of 500-750 by Wednesday, September 15, 2010 at:
http://opencuny.org/gcsoc/technology-as-method/submit

Applicants will be notified of final decisions for participation by October 1, 2010.