The Sociotechnocanonicon Great Books Discussion Series allows members of the CDSC to build their familiarity with some of the classic works which are foundational in studies of online communities and peer production. The discussions are open to all, and facilitated by senior members of CDSC in order to introduce the broader context of the work. Meetings are held in person and aired over Jitsi for remote participation.
Themes try to cover including collective action, social movements, participatory-democracy, networks, sociomateriality, sociotechnical systems, and cooperation.
This page covers the Summer 2021 version of the reading group. Links to previous years are at the bottom of the page.
Details and Schedule
Time is Wednesdays at 10 pacific, noon central (except for week 1).
- Week 1 (June 21-25)
- Douglass North's Institutions, Institutional Change, and Economic Performance Part I: Institutions -- Friday at noon Pacific, 2pm Central
- Week 2 (June 28-July 2)
- Douglass North's Institutions, Institutional Change, and Economic Performance Part II: Institutional Change & Part III: Economic Performance Wednesdays at 10am Pacific, noon Central.
On deck for some point in the summer (maybe later):
- Something by Margaret Levi on legitimacy in governance.
- Jenna Bednar's A Robust Federation (on federation in political systems)
2021 Suggestions
- Bainbridge: The Social Structure of Online Communities
- Iris Marion Young: Justice and the politics of difference
- Kropotkin: Mutual Aid
- Scott: Seeing Like a State
- Douglas North: Institutions, Institutional Change, and Economic Performance
- Margaret Levi: ???
- Jenna Bednar: The Robust Federation
- Pierre Bourdieau: Cultural Capital
- Visualizations Series:
- WEB Du Bois's Data Portraits: Visualizing Black America (Ed: Whitney Battle-Baptiste and Britt Rusert)
- Tufte
- Kieren Healy
- Manuel Lima
- Epistemics of Science Series:
- Paul Feyeraband, Against Method
- Thomas Kuhn, Structure of Scientific Revolutions
- Karl Popper, Logic of Scientific Discovery
- Stephen Jay Gould, Mismeasure of Man
- Hasock Chang, Inventing Temperature
- Scholar as Human, (Eds: Anna Sims Bartel and Debra A. Castillo)
- The Economics of Knowledge, Dominique Foray
- Dividing the Waters, William Blomquist
- Cultural Capital, Bourdieu
- Revisiting classics
- Critical Mass In Collective Action, Marwell & Oliver
Suggestions from previous years
Feel free to move up things we missed before and you'd like to cover or things we covered before several years ago that you think it's time to do again.
Post 2020 suggestions
- Ruha Benjamin, The New Jim Code
- Sasha Costanza-Chock, Design Justice
- Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples - Linda Tuhiwai Smith
- A People’s History of Computing in the United States - Joy Lisi Rankin
- Digitizing Race: Visual Cultures of the Internet (Lisa Nakamura)
Data Feminism (2020)(Read it!)- Coding Freedom
- Automating Inequality - Virginia Eubanks
Lessons from 2019 Instantiation
- Deciding on book/s needs to happen earlier so that we can get the word out and folks can plan
- Intersecting reading choices and discussion leaders earlier would also be helpful
Structural Ideas from Post-Summer 2019
- Part of a broader "Samba school" program that CDSC might operate as over each summer?
- What is the periodicity of the STC? 3 years? 4 years?
Reading Ideas From 2019 Planning
- Axelrod's wikipedia:The Evolution of Cooperation. A more controversial suggestion would be Kropotkin's wikipedia:Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution —mako๛
- Claude Shannon (or at least someone else's summary of information theory) Aaronshaw (talk) 16:38, 7 May 2019 (EDT)
- Hayek (on information) Aaronshaw (talk) 16:39, 7 May 2019 (EDT)
- If we want to read something ecological I would pick "organizations evolving" by Reuf and Aldrich. It may be a bit too high level and its kind of a textbook. I'd also be excited to do Marx, Weber, Durkheim. Another idea for a social theory book is "Constructing Social Theories" by Stinchcomb. Groceryheist (talk) 18:24, 5 June 2019 (EDT)
- Giddens, A. (1984). The constitution of society: outline of the theory of structuration. University of California Press.
- Something by Wanda Orlikowski Sneha (talk) 11:49, 6 June 2019 (EDT)
Jo Freeman's Tyranny of Structurelessness Sneha (talk) 11:49, 6 June 2019 (EDT) (this is very short and important! there's no excuse not to do it —mako๛ 20:44, 5 June 2020 (CEST))- Jessica Nembhard's Collective Courage: A History of African American Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice Sneha (talk) 11:49, 6 June 2019 (EDT)
Francesa Polletta's Freedom is an Endless Meeting Sneha (talk) 11:49, 6 June 2019 (EDT) (This is a new classic and and I'd really like to do it. —mako๛)
Reading Ideas From Post-Summer 2019
- Castells (or, perhaps, Phil Howard on Castells, with some auxiliary reading) Kaylea (talk) 15:52, 13 November 2019 (EST)
Exit, Voice, and Loyalty (Hirschmann)(2020) Kaylea (talk) 15:52, 13 November 2019 (EST)- The Sciences of the Artificial, HA Simon. "best known for concepts of bounded rationality and satisficing" Kaylea (talk) 15:48, 8 January 2020 (EST)
Piaget (or, someone covering Piaget) in keeping with last year's pattern of having a reading about education Kaylea (talk) 15:52, 13 November 2019 (EST) (Mako suggests the A Piaget Primer: How a Child Thinks by Dorothy Singer and Tracey Revenson) Kaylea (talk)(2020)- Gabrielle Tard (Mako mentioned in orgcomm class)
- Kollock, Peter and Marc Smith. 1999. Communities in Cyberspace. London: Routledge.
Data Feminism by Catherine D'Ignazio and Lauren F. Klein (—mako๛)(2020)- Coding Freedom: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking by Gabriella Coleman (—mako๛)
