Internet and Society Relationship An Interdisciplinary Approach

This book aims at understanding how Internet being a particular technology, integrates into daily practices in a small town. By doing this, it follows a theoretically informed ethnography based research concluding that the relationship between technology and society cannot be grasped by analysing both as separate entities. Hence, it attempts to develop a theoretical and methodological framework that is aware of problems raised by dualistic assumptions analysing technology-society or human-nonhuman as separate entities one impinging upon other. It is this awareness that led the writer to apply Bourdieu's concept of habitus and Latour's concept of actant into her field of inquiry. These two notions promote an understanding that takes into account the contingency of practices and provides researchers with the analytical means to comprehend technologies within the contexts of their "use." Book also contains findings from the writers' field study denoting that particular 'technology' does not create a 'social impact' but as itself being social, it allows this already occurring practice to find an avenue for its expression.