Social Facts: TRUST
The world abounds with social facts, things which are true because society has decided to behave as if they are true. If you were to turn to a fellow student and say 'I do' or 'I sentence you to 5 years in prison', your listener would not become your spouse, nor be hustled off to Rikers. Nothing *happens* during a wedding or a sentencing hearing; those events are just special forms of talking. Yet talking, in those circumstances, creates real change in the world. There are two nested effects here -- the inner one is the conditions under which speech becomes action, and the outer one is the ways we give groups the power to enforce those actions. Social software creates novel contexts for groups, but currently operates outside traditional social support for group action. For example, both corporations and online groups can have high degrees of internal cohesion and strive for external effects on the world, but corporations have the blessing of society, as an official 'legal fiction,' to take actions that ordinary groups, no matter how cohesive, are forbidden to take. That gap is mainly one of tradition -- one can readily imagine alternate 'legal fictions' to support alternate kinds of groups. Social Facts, Social Software, and Group Action is centered around weekly readings and class discussions of primary materials, some historical, some current, revolving around four questions: What effect does social software have on groups who want to take action in the world? How do groups come to binding decisions about the action they want to take? What are the traditional supports and constraints for real world groups (corporations, governments, NGOs, etc) that act on the world? And what new forms of social support can we imagine for groups that are mainly or solely organized online? The class features readings from political and economic theory of group action, the social structure of engaged (as opposed to merely conversational) groups, and field observations of real-world groups using social software. Students are expected to keep a weekly journal, to write midterm and final papers on groups trying to use social software to affect real change in the world. NOTA BENE: This class is politically neutral. The design issues discussed will be relevant to both liberal and conservative political actors. Students interested in taking this class should be comfortable entertaining political ideas they disagree with personally. ( Seminar, Social Software, Teamwork )