People, Technology, and Social Organization

This insightful and accessible book is a response to the increasing important role that technology plays in everyday life, and the urgent need for empirical studies that analyse the impact of technology on social practices. The chapters in this co-edited collection reveal how technology is oriented to and embedded within the social organization of action in a wide range of settings and institutions, including education, markets, arts and culture, health and social care, media, politics, and science. In their analyses, the contributing authors adopt interactionist perspectives to explore how the meanings of technology emerge and are negotiated within and through action and interaction. The volume comprises 14 empirical chapters from authors working in fields such as symbolic interactionism, ethnomethodology, conversation analysis, discourse methods, ethnographic enquiry, video-based methods, and others. The chapters are framed by an introduction and a concluding discussion by the co-editors which draws out the key themes and issues that the individual chapters speak to, and show the importance of these themes for the social sciences and for society.The book is primarily aimed at researchers in the social sciences, including sociology, social psychology, organization studies, and beyond whose work is concerned with the interplay between social interaction, technology, and institutions.

Dirk vom Lehn is Professor of Organization and Practice at King’s Business School/King’s College London, co-editor of The Routledge International Handbook of Interactionism, and author of Harold Garfinkel: The Creation and Development of Ethnomethodology.Will Gibson is Professor of Interactional Sociology and Qualitative Research at the Institute of Education, University College London, co-editor of The Routledge International Handbook, co-author of Interactionism and Institutions, Interaction and Social Theory.Natalia Ruiz-Junco is Associate Professor of Sociology at Auburn University, USA, and co-editor of Updating Charles H. Cooley: Contemporary Perspectives on a Sociological Classic, and The Routledge International Handbook of Interactionism.