AN 110: TECHNOLOGY & CULTURE
Winter 2002
Instructor: Francesca Bray Lectures: MW 2-3.15
893-8815, bray@anth.ucsb.edu Buchanan 1910
Office: HSSB 2034
Office hours: W 9-11, or by appointment
TA's: Scott MacLeod (scot@umail.ucsb.edu) principal TA; Benedetta Rossi (b.rossi@lse.ac.uk) associate TA.
Technology is not autonomous from culture. The technologies we develop to control our material environment also reflect or shape our values, our patterns of thinking and behavior, our notions of self and society. This course considers from an anthropological perspective the political, social and cultural dimensions of some basic technologies that shape our everyday lives and identities in late twentieth-century California. Themes include: technology as culture; technology and social differentiation; invention and the processes of technical development; the politics and morality of everyday artifacts; building domesticity (house design and cultural values; do appliances really make life easy?); modern communications technology and the conquest of space and time (telephones or meetings; the virtual identity; the family photo album: pictures and realities); body technologies (the New Reproductive Technologies and new families; medical technologies and and the dream of the infinitely renewable body).
There are no required books; a required course reader is available from GRAFIKART, 6550 Pardall Road, Isla Vista (968 3575)
The course will be assessed on the basis of a mid-term and final exam, and a research paper. Students must take exams and submit the paper at the time and place stated unless they have a doctor's certificate excusing them; papers submitted late without a doctor's excuse will be penalized. In the interests of equity no exceptions will be allowed. Students with disabilities who require special examination facilities should contact the instructor or the TA well before the mid-term.
EXAMS:
Each exam will last 75 minutes, each will count for 30% of your total course grade.
In each exam you will be asked to give two definitions of key terms or concepts (each for 10 points out of 100); to write brief summaries (no more than half a page each) of two course readings out of a choice of five that you will be given in the exam (each for 15 points out of 100); and to write two essays (each up to two pages long; each for 25 points out of 100) based on how the lectures and readings so far have tied together different approaches to a particular object or theme. To prepare for the essays, six topics will be given out in advance; in the exam, you will be given a choice between four of these topics, which I reserve the right to select and to group into sections.
The final exam will only test readings and definitions for the second half of the course, but in the essays higher grades will be given to those who draw on the ideas and readings from the whole course.
PAPER: The paper will count for 40% of the grade (papers submitted late will have 10 points per day deducted from the total of 40).
You will write a research paper of roughly 2,000 words (8 pages) on how technological artifacts contribute, or are marketed as contributing, to a particular social identity (young mother, retiree, college student, house cleaner, responsible father, blue-collar worker looking for a job, couch potato, CEO, busy mum of teenagers ...). You should first select at least two advertisements for technological products aimed at this kind of person. Then write a critical analysis of how these technologies contribute (or are represented as contributing) to this social identity, drawing on and engaging with the concepts and ideas from the class and from the readings, as well as any other relevant materials you have identified in the course of your research. You should refer to at least four course readings in your analysis; if you fail to do so, you will loose marks.
You should start planning your paper early, and you are strongly encouraged to consult with the instructor and/or TAs as you identify your topic and as you proceed with the drafts of your paper.
The paper should be printed in Times Roman 12-point, double-spaced, with pages numbered bottom center. Sources should be cited social-science style in your text and given in full in a bibliography at the end of the paper (the bibliography should not be included in the word count). Be sure to include copies of the advertisements along with the paper. The paper should be put in my mailbox in the Anthropology mailroom (HSSB 2022) by 12 noon on Tuesday 19 March.
SYLLABUS
Mon 7 January: Introduction
Wed 9 January: Technology and social systems I
Glynn: Where enough is a bit too much
du Gay et al: Making sense of the Walkman
Mon 14 January: Technology and social systems II
Bray: Machines for living
Pursell: Dirt and disorder
Wed 16 January: How do "inventions" happen?
Basalla: Diversity, necessity and evolution
Pinch & Bijke: Social construction
Gladwell: The pitchman
Mon 21 January: MARTIN LUTHER KING DAY HOLIDAY
Wed 23 January: The morality of technical objects
Winner: Do artifacts have politics?
Latour: Where are the missing masses?
Mon 28 January: The building of industrial culture, early and late
Pursell: Makes no sense
Leidner: Over the counter: McDonald's
Wed 30 January: Networked: politics and class in a global era
Downey: Virtual webs, physical technologies, and hidden workers
Slevin: Organizations and the internet
Barbrook: The high-tech gift economy
Mon 4 February: Gender in the technical workforce
Heiman: Beyond thinking pink
Cockburn & Ormrod: Gender in the microwave world
Freeman: Myths of docile girls and matriarchs
Wed 6 February: Can technological fixes make the poor rich? I
Akrich: A gazogene in Costa Rica
Bray: Genetically modified foods: shared risk and global action
Grassroots innovator
Mon 11 February: Can technological fixes make the poor rich? II
(guest presentation by Benedetta Rossi)
Wed 13 February: MID-TERM EXAM
Mon 18 February: PRESIDENTS' DAY HOLIDAY
Wed 20 February: Technologies of privacy and property, I: domesticity, house and family
Cowan: Technology and utopia
Hayden: From ideal city to dream house
Mon 25 February: Technologies of privacy and property, II: inside and outside
Davis: Fortress LA
Sachs: Independent as a lord
Rosen: Being watched
Wed 27 February: Shaping ourselves
Bordo: Reading the slender body
Slevin: The internet, the self and experience in everyday life
Sterling: The hot seat
Mon 4 March: Shaping our connections
Boden and Molotch: The compulsion of proximity
Vidal: Anatomy of a nineties revolution
Lebkowsky: A few points about online activism
Clarke: Online activism
Wed 6 March: Building the family I: photography
Berger: Ways of seeing
Seabrook: My life is in that box
Scheeres: "Photo homage to the stillborn"
Mon 11 March: Building the family II: making babies
Strathern: Kinship assisted
Pollitt: Checkbook maternity
Arent: Serving up eggs on the web
Helmreich: Replicating reproduction in artificial life
Wed 13 March: The compulsion of technology and the ethics of life
Sandelowski: Compelled to try
Renee Fox: Continuing reflections on organ transplantation
Mon 18 March, 4-5.30: FINAL EXAM
Tue 19 March, 12 noon: HAND PAPERS IN TO F. BRAY'S MAILBOX, HSSB 2022
Reading list
John M Glynn: "Where enough is a bit too much", Guardian Weekly, 2 October 1994.
Paul du Gay, Stuart Hall, Linda Janes, Hugh Mackay and Keith Negus: "Introduction", "Making sense of the Walkman", and Readings A (Benjamin) and B (Williams) in Doing Cultural Studies: the Story of the Sony Walkman, London, Thousand Oaks, Delhi, Sage Publications in association with The Open University, 1997: pp 1-40, 125-9.
Francesca Bray: "Machines for living: domestic architecture and the engineering of the social order in late imperial China", Cambridge Anthropology 20, 1-2 (1998): 92-110.
Carroll Pursell: "Dirt and disorder", White Heat: People and Technology, London, BBC Books, 1994: 168-91.
George Basalla: "Diversity, necessity and evolution", The Evolution of Technology, Cambridge University Press, 1988: 1-25.
Trevor J. Pinch and Wiebe E. Bijker: "The social construction of facts and artifacts", in Wiebe E. Bijker, Thomas P. Hughes and Trevor J. Pinch (eds): The Social Construction of Technological Systems, MIT Press, Cambridge MA, 1987: 17-51.
Malcolm Gladwell: "The pitchman: Ron Popeil and the conquest of the American kitchen", New Yorker, 30 October 2000: 64-73.
Langdon Winner, "Do artifacts have politics?", The Whale and the Reactor: a Search for Limits in an Age of High Technology, University of Chicago Press, 1986: 19-39.
Bruno Latour: "Where are the missing masses? The sociology of a few mundane artifacts". In Wiebe E. Bijker and John Law (eds), Shaping Technology/Building Society, Cambridge, MIT Press, 1992: 225-58.
Carroll Pursell: "Makes no sense", White Heat: 92-117.
Robin Leidner: "Over the counter: McDonald's", Fast Food, Fast Talk: Service Work and the Routinization of Everyday Life, University of California Press, 1993: 44-87.
Greg Downey: "Virtual webs, physical technologies, and hidden workers: the spaces of labor in information internetworks", Technology and Culture 42 (April 2001): 209-235.
James Slevin, "Organizations and the internet", The Internet and Society, Polity Press, Cambridge, 2000: 118-56.
Richard Barbrook: "The high-tech gift economy", Cybersociology Magazine, Issue 5, 1999.
Andrea Heiman: "Beyond thinking pink", Los Angeles Times, October 1996.
Cynthia Cockburn and Susan Ormrod: "Gender in the microwave world", Gender and Technology in the Making, Sage Publications, London and Thousand Oaks, 1993: 40-74.
Carla Freeman: "Myths of docile girls and matriarchs: local profiles of global workers", High Tech and High Heels in the Global Economy: Women, Work and Pink-Collar Identities in the Caribbean, Duke University Press, Durham N.C., 2000:102-139.
Madeleine Akrich: "A gazogene in Costa Rica: an experiment in techno-sociology", in Pierre Lemonnier (ed), Technological Choices: transformation in material cultures since the neolithic, Routledge, London & New York, 1993: 289-337.
Francesca Bray (forthcoming): "Genetically modified foods: shared risk and global action", in Barbara Herr Harthorn and Laury Oaks (eds), Redefining Risk, Routledge.
"Grassroots innovator", Economist Technology Quarterly, 8 December 2001.
Ruth Schwartz Cowan: "Towards Utopia: the post-war years", More Work for Mother: the ironies of household technology from the open hearth to the microwave, Basic Books, New York, 1983: 192-216.
Dolores Hayden: "From ideal city to dream house", Redesigning the American Dream: the future of housing, work and family life, Norton, New York, 1986: 17-38.
Mike Davis: "Fortress LA", City of Quartz, Vintage, New York, 1992: 221-263.
Wolfgang Sachs: "Independent as a lord", For Love of the Automobile: looking back into the history of our desires, U. California Press, Berkeley, 1992: 91-109.
Jeffrey Rosen: "Being watched: a cautionary tale for a new age of surveillance", New York Times, 7 October 2001.
Susan Bordo: "Reading the slender body", in Mary Jacobus, Evelyn Fox Keller and Sally Shuttleworth (eds), Body/Politics: women and the discourses of science, Routledge, New York, 1990: 83-112.
James Slevin: "The internet, the self and experience in everyday life", The Internet and Society, Polity, 2000: 157-180.
Bruce Sterling: "The hot seat", Wired Archive, 8 July 2000.
Deirdre Boden and Harvey Molotch: "The compulsion of proximity", in Deirdre Boden and Roger Friedland (eds), Now/Here, U. California Press, 1994: 257-86.
John Vidal: "Anatomy of a very nineties revolution", Guardian, 13 January 1999.
Jon Lebowsky: "A few points about online activism", Cybersociology Magazine, Issue 5, 1999.
Ben Clarke: "Using the Internet: online activism", TechSoup, 2000.
John Berger: Ways of Seeing ch.7, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1972: 129-155.
Jeremy Seabrook: "My life is in that box", in Jo Spence and Patricia Holland (eds), Family Snaps: the Meanings of Domestic Photography, London, Virago: 171-85.
Julia Scheeres: "Photo homage to the stillborn", WiredNews, 28 December 2001.
Marilyn Strathern: "Kinship assisted", Reproducing the Future: anthropology, kinship and the new reproductive technologies, Routledge, New York, 1992: 14-30.
Katha Pollitt: "Checkbook modernity: when is a mother not a mother?" The Nation, 31st December 1990.
Lindsey Arent, "Serving up eggs on the web", Wired News, 26 August 1999.
Stefan Helmreich: "Replicating reproduction in artificial life: or, the essence of life in the age of virtual electronic reproduction:, in Sarah Franklin and Helena Ragoné (eds), Reproducing Reproduction: Kinship, Power, and Technological Innovation, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 1998: 207-234.
Margarete Sandelowski: "Compelled to try: the never-enough quality of conceptive technology", Medical Anth. Quarterly 5, 1 (March 1991): 29-47.
Renée C. Fox: ""Continuing reflections on organ transplantation", in Stuart J. Youngner, Renée C. Fox and Laurence J. O'Connell (eds), Organ Transplantation: Meanings and Realities, University of Wisconsin Press, 1996: 252-72.