• Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the course’s theories and concepts and their relevance to digitization and economic life;
• Reflexively interrogate ongoing trends in digitization and contextualize them as part of broader sociological trajectories;
• Critically reflect on the implications of the theories used for the management or governance of an issue area;
• Use cases to illustrate how to empirically study the digital organization of economic life with appropriate methods and data.

In sector after sector, ranging from production to communication, seismic technological shifts driven by digitization are underway; the pervasive economic and social impact of these shifts is already evident in many aspects of daily life. ‘The digitization of economic life’ hones in on the ways in which these macrolevel trends are shaping and redefining individuals’ daily lives and practices, with a particular focus on four key areas: (1) work, (2) wealth, (3) welfare, and (4) wellness.

The course departs from a 'thick' understanding of digitization as not just a technological phenomenon, but also a deeply sociological one. Fruitful analysis therefore requires more than just applying sociological methods to the digital elements of social life or, conversely, using new computational and digital tools to do social research. Rather, in studying our four key areas we will emphasize the ways in which digitization and digitalization and the ‘devices’ that they yield are reconstituting social relationships and concepts of the self in ways that call for serious scrutiny.

Taking this approach to our four key areas directs our attention towards recent
developments such as (1) the rise of platform technology and the gig economy in labour markets and the concomitant requirement for workers to both self-manage and self-promote; (2) the algorithmic diagnosis of financial worth and the growing use of banking apps and mobile payment technologies, as well as the role of such technologies in the changing sociality of wealth and money; (3) the use of digital tools for individual identification and a closed ‘digital welfare state’ determining access to services, benefits and entitlements; and (4) the use of new technologies to both define and police everyday metrics of ‘health’, diagnose illness and blur the lines between personal responsibility and social provision.

We situate these developments in a broader context of digitization but also, long-established trends of quantification and classification, considering debates on skills and the place of robotics and artificial intelligence in the workforce; the deep-rooted socio-economic, gender and racial biases affecting life chances in terms of access to schooling, housing, credit and employment; data privacy and the commercialization of personal data; and which actors have the resources, capacity and legitimacy to best tackle big and less big societal challenges, from the climate crisis, to persistent inequality, to ageing populations across the globe.

Taken together these developments are likely to fundamentally alter a number of taken for granted institutions and challenge established norms and social relationships. More concretely, digital developments in our four key areas stand to impact future patterns of inclusion and exclusion; definitions of relevance and insignificance; and projections into the future on the basis of how resources are allocated. As digital data and analysis shapes and constrains daily life we are also likely to see its incorporation and internalization into social practice and contestation by the public.

Theoretically, the course draws on Science and Technology Studies and Actor Network Theory and students will learn to apply the analytical lenses of devices and instruments. The course also tackles theories of market society, including discussions on the morality of markets, and deals with the implications of digitalization for the governance of the markets developing out of these processes. These theoretical insights will be complemented by more applied work centred on empirical cases that will ground the theoretical frame in concrete realities. At the end of the course we expect students to be able to reflexively interrogate ongoing digitzation trends and contextualize them as part of broader sociological trajectories.

As part of the course, students will engage in the following assignment activities, which are linked to the group exam.

Oral group presentation of research topic:

The presentation should introduce the digitization initiative that the group plans to research and shed light on methods and theoretical approaches that the group aims to use in the written assignment.

Written outline of final group project:

The outline should include a clear delineation of the issue area to be analyzed, empirical sources and the theoretical approach to be used.

The course document will be based primarily on journal articles available through the CBS library. In addition, the course will make use of some readings in recent relevant volumes for concepts and empirics. This is a rapidly evolving empirical field and the following is an Indicative reading list:

Bernards, N. & Campbell-Verduyn, M. (Eds.) (2019). Special Issue on Fintech, Review of International Political Economy, 26(5).

Callon, M., Millo, Y. & Muniesa, F. (Eds.). (2007). Market Devices (1 edition). Wiley-Blackwell.

Day, M. S. (2018). Bits to Bitcoin: How Our Digital Stuff Works (1 edition). The MIT Press.

Healy, K. (2017). Public Sociology in the Age of Social Media. Perspectives on Politics, 15(3), 771–780. 

Lupton, D. (2013). Quantifying the body: Monitoring and measuring health in the age of mHealth technologies. Critical Public Health, 23(4), 393-403.

MacKenzie, D. (2018). Material Signals: A Historical Sociology of High-Frequency Trading. American Journal of Sociology, 123(6), 1635–1683. 

Marres, N. & Gerlitz, C. (2016). Interface Methods: Renegotiating Relations between Digital Social Research, STS and Sociology: The Sociological Review, 64(1), 24-46.

Plesner, U. & Husted, E. (2019). Digital Organizing: Revisiting Themes in Organization Studies (1st ed. 2020 edition). Red Globe Press.

Sundararajan, A. (2016). The Sharing Economy: The End of Employment and the Rise of Crowd-Based Capitalism. The MIT Press.