IJOC-MASTS Special Forum

If change is the only constant, then what drives sociotechnical change? Who creates change within and through systems of humans and nonhumans? Which changes echo and repeat? Who suffers or benefits from change? What normative ideals guide hopes and fears of change?

Through empirically grounded, conceptually provocative, and wonderfully playful essays, this Forum on Sociotechnical Change: Tracing Flows, Language, and Stakes Across Diverse Cases, guest edited by Mike Ananny and Simogne Hudson, considers these questions and more by critically tracing different places where people and technologies meet. 

From studies of sports stadiums, homelessness counts, policing jaywalking, travel maps, and chicken farms to venture capitalism, refugee communities, climate crises, diasporic conflict, and autopen controversies, the forum offers not only unique case studies of change but also a larger story of how change emerges from messy but traceable collisions of people, practices, genealogies, representations, infrastructures, and values. 

Intended as provocations and starting points, the essays show how sociotechnical change is everywhere, and how the study of sociotechnical change can be interdisciplinary, playful, creative, and rigorous.