Social digitalisation : persistent transformations beyond digital technology

Summary: "In a theoretical and empirical tour de force , Kornelia Hahn demonstrates, contrary to the generally accepted view, that digitalization is neither something new nor is it limited to contemporary digital technology. Of key importance is her innovative theory of the relationship between social digitalization, the development of advanced digital culture, and the widespread increase in digital literacy." -- George Ritzer , Distinguished University Professor Emeritus, University of Maryland, USA "Kornelia Hahn's thought-provoking book has radically changed my view on digital transformation, offering a genuinely fresh sociological approach that turns prevailing views on their head. ' Social Digitalisation ' exemplifies the power of cultural analysis at its best. " -- Frank Welz , Former President of the European Sociological Association and Professor, University of Innsbruck, Austria This book shows how many previously contingent social processes have gradually been re-organised and transformed into entangled processes of 'discontinuance' and 'continuance' through the implementation of digital logic. Together with the necessary co-evolution of our collective digital literacy, this persistent process of transformation throughout modernity is theorised here as one of 'social digitalisation.' Social digitalisation highlights the ways in which material digital technology, like preceding material technologies, has been fitted into the longer term trajectory of digital transformation. This new social theory thus reverses prevailing accounts of the 'digital revolution' that focus exclusively on changes allegedly caused by material digital technology in recent decades. The book also demonstrates the fruitfulness of applying the theory of social digitalisation as a holistic approach in researching the wide-ranging consequences of contemporary digitalisation, including its contrasting effects on different social groups. It will be useful to students and researchers of sociology, communications, media and history, but also for general readers interested in understanding the overall complexity of digitalisation and how digital transformation has come to dominate the ways we live today. Kornelia Hahn is Professor of General Sociology and Sociological Theory and Chair of the Department of Sociology at the Paris Lodron University in Salzburg, Austria.

Record details

ISBN: 9783030798666 (hardcover)
Physical Description: print
xv, 300 pages : illustrations ; 21 cm
Publisher: Cham : Springer International Publishing AG, 2021.
Copyright: ©2021

Content descriptions

Bibliography, etc. Note:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Formatted Contents Note:

Chapter 1. Introducing social digitalisation --Digitalisation beyond technology: 'digital fruits' and other examples of digitalisation in food production, retail and marketing -- Digitalised organisation in early modernity -- The logic of social digitalisation: organising processes of dis/continuance -- References -- Chapter 2. The dis/continuous factory system and the rise of the digital era -- The culture of industrial productivity -- The manufactory: setting the scene for digital organisation -- The factory: perfecting systems of dis/continuance -- Mediators of digital processing: commodities -- Technologies of industrial productivity -- References -- Chapter 3. The technological innovations of bourgeois privacy -- The concept of bourgeois privacy -- The distinctive bourgeois lifestyle -- The organisation of bourgeois life as a series of dis/continuances -- Manufacturing in the bourgeois household -- Technologies of household reproduction -- References -- Chapter 4. The formalisation of the modern market -- The 'open' market and its 'closed' organisation -- The department store: the formalisation of interaction designs inside the retailing machine -- Technologies of physical and logistical assemblage in the department store -- Physical and logistical assemblage of self-service and prosumption -- The imaginative assemblage undertaken by purchasing audiences -- References -- Chapter 5. The evolution of advanced digital literacy -- The networked household 'homes with a view' -- The industrial production of digitalised television programmes -- The fluid technologies of programming reality -- Imaginative assemblage of TV audiences: 'continuity editing' as an advanced form of digital literacy -- References --Chapter 6. Augmented and reduced realities -- Theories about technologically mediated realities -- Modern perception styles -- Experiences of augmented and reduced realities -- Diverse readings of augmented and reduced realities -- Co-programming technologically programmed sign-worlds -- References -- Chapter 7. The dynamics of social digitalisation -- Social digitalisation and material digital technology -- Social digitalisation's chains of interdependence -- Semiotic resources supplying digital processing -- The significance of digital literacies -- Researching social digitalisation -- References -- Epilogue: social digitalisation theory encapsulated in a cup of coffee -- References -- Index.