DIGITAL CULTURE AND SOCIOLOGY session 4 – Susana Tosca Digital Culture and Sociology People Online

DIGITAL CULTURE AND SOCIOLOGY session 4 – Susana Tosca Introduction to Foucault Winokur, Mark "The Ambiguous Panopticon: Foucault and the Codes of Cyberspace". Lunn, Robert J. & Suman, Michael W “Experience and Trust in Online Shopping”. Sveningsson, Malin “Cyberlove: Creating Romantic Relationships on the Net”. about today break Foucault texts ?

DIGITAL CULTURE AND SOCIOLOGY session 4 – Susana Tosca

Main Works Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason (1961) –Construction of the category of “madness” and “mad”, psychiatry to correct and normalize. Power. The Birth of the Clinic: An Archeology of medical perception (1963) –Medical academic discourse, humans as object for knowledge.

DIGITAL CULTURE AND SOCIOLOGY session 4 – Susana Tosca Main Works II The Order of Things (Les Mots et les Choses) 1966 –Episteme: patterns of knowledge, each time has its historicity, context important, knowledge not universal, discontinuity. –“Man” as subject is a construction, controversy. The Archaeology of Knowledge (1969) –Humans are objects of knowledge, new rationality, new subjectivity. Research into practise.

DIGITAL CULTURE AND SOCIOLOGY session 4 – Susana Tosca Main Works III Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1975) –Inspired by Bentham (1791) –Prison changes the prisoner. Prison an extreme manifestation of a capitalist tool. –Panopticon everywhere (military, school, work), discipline can have positive effect.

DIGITAL CULTURE AND SOCIOLOGY session 4 – Susana Tosca THE SYSTEM IS SIMPLE: FROM THE CENTRAL TOWER THE GUARDIAN CAN SEE ALL OF THE PRISONERS AT ANY TIME. THE PRISONERS HOWEVER CANNOT SEE THE GUARDIAN FROM THEIR CELLS. THUS, THEY NEVER KNOW IF THEY ARE BEING WATCHED OR NOT. AS A RESULT THEY GET PARANOID AND DISCIPLINE THEMSELVES. OF COURSE PRISONERS ARE ISOLATED FROM ONE ANOTHER SO AS TO MAXIMIZE THE PSYCHOLOGICAL EFFECT. THE PANOPTICAL TECHNIQUE IS WIDELY USED IN BABYLON: RANDOM POLICE CONTROL, REPRESSION, AND CONSTITUTION OF CRIMINAL RECORDS FOR MINOR OFFENCE, ARE THE TYPE OF STRATEGIES USED ON A DAILY BASIS IN LIBERAL COUNTRIES TO MAINTAIN "SOCIAL ORDER", THAT IS, THE STATUS QUO

DIGITAL CULTURE AND SOCIOLOGY session 4 – Susana Tosca Main Works IV The History of Sexuality (3 vols ) –Sex: as art, as knowledge/power. –Actors have more action possibilities through reflection

DIGITAL CULTURE AND SOCIOLOGY session 4 – Susana Tosca Summary Keywords: power, knowledge, the subject. Power –A creative force in society, tension everywhere, not only institutions Subject (everything comes together) –The individual is subject to institutions of power, such as governments, and to discourses, such as theories of the person. Subjectivity was administered through discourses, including those that investigated what it meant to be human (science) and what it meant to be social (government). It is these that discipline subjects, making them manageable, knowable and restrainable. Themes: archaeology, discipline, punishment, body, sexuality, panopticon, state

DIGITAL CULTURE AND SOCIOLOGY session 4 – Susana Tosca

Winokur: the ambiguous panopticon Questions about the text? Discuss: why is the idea of panopticon attractive to us digital culture students? Discuss: is there a connection to what real people do online?

DIGITAL CULTURE AND SOCIOLOGY session 4 – Susana Tosca Internet as Panoptic? Does it serve social control? Power, internalization etc. How is this answered in the article? Internet as modality and medium at the same time (my page 6) Different kind of gazes / surfers

DIGITAL CULTURE AND SOCIOLOGY session 4 – Susana Tosca Are they panoptic? GAZE + / - SPACE + / - AUTHORITY + TOTALITY + DISCOURSE + / - Perfect panopticism, literal. Only in mind not body. We are all oppressive. The level of code question determines the conclusion. Unfocused, confusing.

DIGITAL CULTURE AND SOCIOLOGY session 4 – Susana Tosca

Method: qualitative vs. quantitative Shopping vs. Cyberlove How expected/predictable were the results? Did you learn anything new? What results do you trust more? What results do you think are more useful? (Useful for what?) What results can be generalized more?

DIGITAL CULTURE AND SOCIOLOGY session 4 – Susana Tosca Cyberlove Method: Qualitative: Ethics of names, sampling, what is her goal (p. 49). Vagueness (54), speculation (62), trust subjects? (62) what people don´t say (69) Theme: Relation to Panopticon Theme: Relation to Everyday Life theme Theme: Relation to Digital Borderlands: virtuality. Do New Media change relationships? What do you think of her conclusions?

DIGITAL CULTURE AND SOCIOLOGY session 4 – Susana Tosca Online Shopping Method: 45% are unhappy with your website. Expensive and difficult. –Extremely detailed methodology section, requires training, expectations. –Steps: Sampling, data collection, analysis, results. –We don´t know how this happens, why. Examples of dump categories (559), strange results (567, 569), location not important? (570) –Cultural aspects (USA) more difficult to isolate Themes: are the questions interesting? Conclusions: “the single most important factor predicting Internet shopping behavior is experience” (571), they try to map the multidimensional concept. But why/when/how do people take the leap?