Technology and the Other
PhD course with Ernst Schraube
& Langdon Winner,
November 17-19, 2011, Roskilde University
Technology and the Other: Exploring the meaning of material artifacts in everyday life
Modern technologies are not only useful tools expanding human experience and action, they are also powerful socio-political “forms of life” constituting the relationship between “Me” and the “Other” and transforming fundamentally the fabric of everyday life. Drawing on an interdisciplinary body of knowledge the course explores the dialectical relationship between humans and technology focusing on the transformation of human subjectivity, sociality and agency in different contexts of everyday life (e.g. childhood, family life, education, work and institutional life, body and health, environmental change, political participation, etc.). How to overcome conceptually the still predominant dichotomy between people and technology? How to refine the theory of subjectivity, technology, and everyday life? How to understand the first-person perspective, the “Other”, technology critique, and the politics of technological artifacts? How are individuals actively involved in the daily creation and recreation of the technological world in which they live? How to develop a social imagination of material (re)creation? The aim of the course is to establish a platform for reflection and discussion for scholars engaged in the critical social study of technology and everyday life.