What is the social impact of technology? How is technology tied to gender, race, and disability? What does "structural” or “institutional racism” mean? How does it involve technology? Should technology fix disability, racism, or gender inequality? And can it fix it?

The objective of this course is to allow Ph.D. students to answer questions like these, by making them aware of unexpected and unwanted social impacts of their work, and technological development in general. 

Drawing from research in Science and Technology Studies (STS), Feminism, Race Studies, Disability Studies, and Media Studies, the course aims at looking at the social and political dimensions of technology, with a particular focus on the multiple forms of inequality that can be embedded in technological devices and infrastructures, both at the moment of development and at the moment of implementation and use. The course will explore technology through an intersectional approach, focusing on different social positions (gender, ‘race’/ethnicity, disability, global North and South) and their overlapping.

At the end of the course, Ph.D. students will be able to develop arguments about the relationship between technology and inequalities and apply critical thinking to their own Ph.D. research activity.

The course envisages the contribution of several scholars who are experts in each different topic.

Detailed program:

1. Intro to the course: In this lecture, we introduce the course and give basic coordinates for orienting in the two disciplinary approaches of the course: Science and Technology Studies (STS) and Feminism. STS is the discipline concerned with the cultural and social study of science, technology, and their relationship with society. Thus, we discuss a few concepts concerning the sociology of science and technology. Feminism is both a global social movement for gender equality and a scholarly discipline using a specific methodological lens to understand inequality and injustices related to gender. We also discuss the recent use of the concept of intersectionality to show how feminism has broadened its scope beyond analysing just gender.

2. The STS critique of technological determinism: Does technology really prompt social change, for better or for worse? As our cultural surroundings are full of marketing, media, and common-sense claims about how a certain technology has ruined or fixed a social aspect of our life, in this lecture we will question whether this causal claim has sense and uses an STS lens to understand how technology is implicated in our social world.

3. Infrastructures, power, and ideology: What do technology and inequalities have to do with the contemporary socioeconomic system? In this lecture, we look at technological determinism in digital media by focussing on what hidden labour, inequalities, and power imbalances lie behind digital infrastructures and networks, as well as how digital media are narrated and mythologised in the public sphere.

4. Gender and technology: Technologies can be gendered, i.e., classified and developed according to the opposition between male and female characteristics. Often gender biases can be identified in technological development, design, and use. Technological artifacts, ranging from washing machines and vacuum cleaners to contraception and obstetric tools, are not neutral with respect to gender distinctions, inequalities, and discrimination.

5. Race and technology: Emerging technologies, such as AI and facial recognition algorithms, are constantly told to be biased with respect to race, besides other identities such as gender and class. They often discriminate against non-white ethnicities when used for predictive policing, hiring processes, health monitoring etc. 

6. Disability and technology: Can technology fix disability? Or can it increase disability-based discrimination? As disability is being understood less from its medical facets and more from its cultural and social significance, in this lecture we inquire about the role of technology in aiding and challenging disabled bodies from a cultural perspective, as well as the historical role of science (medicine and statistics) in defining disability. As cochlear implants and artificial limbs are technological artifacts, what is the role of their implementation and maintenance on the cultural phenomenon of disability?

• 25%: proactive participation to groupwork and class discussion;
• 75%: 3000-words final essay.

The group work in class aims to create a peer-learning environment to discuss specific case studies and issues related to the lectures. PhD students will have the opportunity to discuss in groups and among the groups and try to develop some arguments and put them to the test. This will be a training ground for writing the individual essays.