[Air-L] ASA Pre-Conference and Student Workshop : Call for Participation

[Keith N. Hampton]

CALL FOR PARTICIPATION
http://www.citasa.org/pre-conference

ASA COMMUNICATION & INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES PRE-CONFERENCE AND GRADUATE
STUDENT WORKSHOP

"Worlds of Work: Communication and Information Technologies"

July 31, 2008
Boston, MA

Submission Deadline: March 1, 2008
Send Submissions to: CITASA2008 at CITASA.ORG 

Organized by the Communication and Information Technologies Section of the
American Sociological Association (CITASA)

This one day event combines a pre-conference on information and
communication technologies (ICTs) and "Worlds of Works," building on the
theme of the 103rd annual meeting of the ASA, and a workshop for 20 selected
graduate students researching any aspect of the sociology of communications
or information technologies.

The program will include a keynote address by the winner of the "Microsoft
CITASA Port 25 Award," a series of presentations on ICTs and the sociology
of work, and a series of select student presentations of work-in-progress
(on diverse themes within the sociological study of communications and IT)
to both a general audience and to a mentor panel of well known and
established researchers in the field.

Communication and information technologies are an important source of change
in work today, affecting both the ways work is done on a day-to-day basis
and the long term relations of labor and production.  The different types of
communication, markets, goods and services enabled by ICTs have allowed new
work configurations to become prominent, even as they help to reshape
existing ways of working.

These new configurations and changed practices are creating altogether
different kinds of "worlds" in which work is done.  Office work activities
are increasingly becoming computer-mediated, allowing work to move from
traditional settings to the home or to virtual environments.  The use of
ICTs allow the emergence of new organizational forms, ushering in an era of
globally distributed work no longer as reliant on geographic co-location and
moving some work processes out of firms and into "communities."  New forms
of industrial production that challenge many of the traditional ideas about
work are becoming more common, open source software development being the
primary example and providing serious challenges to the traditional
sociology of work.

This pre-conference workshop will address these issues and others that lie
at the intersection of sociology of work and the sociology of communication
and information technology.

PRE-CONFERENCE CALL FOR PARTICIPATION
Submissions can be in the form of an abstract of 500 words OR a full paper
of no more than 7,000 words. Any full paper accepted for presentation can be
considered for inclusion in the annual CITASA special issue of the journal
Information, Communication and Society (iCS).

Any research that lies at the intersection of sociology of work and ICT is
welcome. Sociologist working outside of sociology departments and those with
formal training in other disciplines who take a sociological approach are
strongly encouraged to apply. Submissions are encouraged in the following
specific areas:
- ICTs in the office
- ICTs and globalization of work
- Telework and distributed teams
- New "worlds" of work
- Online communities and work
- Software development and the sociology of work
- Open source and user-created content and sociology of work
- ICTs and research methods in the study of work

GRADUATE STUDENT WORKSHOP CALL FOR PARTICIPATION Submissions are encouraged
from all areas related to the sociology of communication and information
technologies (not exclusively the study of work). Submissions should be in
the form of an abstract of 500 words OR a full paper of no more than 7,000
words. Any full paper accepted for presentation can be considered for
inclusion in the annual CITASA special issue of the journal Information,
Communication and Society (iCS).

Selected students will give a 15-20 minute presentation of their research to
a mentor panel of well-known senior researchers. Each presentation will be
followed by questions and discussion prompted by the panel and general
audience.

Students will be chosen by the organizing committee with the intent of
inviting students from diverse backgrounds, with diverse methods, working on
a broad range of topic areas (not exclusively the study of work). Students
actively preparing a dissertation proposal or working on thesis that has
already been approved by your university are strongly urged to apply
(students do not need to be in sociology departments to apply). A maximum of
20 students will be invited to participate and will receive a "Microsoft
CITASA Port 25 Emerging Scholars Award" in the amount of $200 to help defray
travel and accommodation.

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: March 1, 2008
Full papers submitted to the CITASA pre-conference and workshop can
simultaneously be submitted to sessions of the regular ASA conference.
Papers accepted for the CITASA pre-conference and workshop do not count
against ASA limits on the number of papers an author can present at the
regular meeting.

SEND SUBMISSION TO: CITASA2008 at CITASA.ORG Authors will be notified by April
2.

MENTOR PANEL (more to come)
Paul DiMaggio, Princeton University
Barry Wellman, University of Toronto

LOCATION
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Sidney-Pacific Graduate Community Building 70 Pacific Street Cambridge, MA
02139 http://s-p.mit.edu/about_sp/directions.php

ORGANIZING COMMITTEE
Katie Bessiere, Carnegie Mellon University 
Sarah Gatson, Texas A&M University 
Keith N. Hampton, University of Pennsylvania 
Steve Sawyer, The Pennsylvania State University 
Yuri Takhteyev, University of California Berkeley 
Jim Witte, Clemson University

The ASA Communication and Information Technologies Pre-Conference and
Graduate Student Workshop is made possible thanks to the generous support of
the Open Source Software Lab at Microsoft.
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