Toward a Political Sociology of Blockchain — an Introduction
I’ve been continuously engaged in the blockchain space since the publication of my Masters thesis back in September of 2018 in various capacities. I continue wanting to expand on some of my writing on social aspects of this technological development, but also know that referencing back to my massive thesis document is asking for a low interaction rate 😅
Often academic writing is intentionally dense, either for using technical and discipline-specific jargon, or for conforming to some sort of rigid writing format. This medium space requires neither! And so, I plan to pull out each section of my thesis and post it here and on my hive blog as more bite-size contemplations of the intersections of sociology and technology, along with the various other interdisciplinary lenses that add depth to analysis. I will eventually move into reflecting on some of these concepts in newer content, but this is just the intro!
Without further ado, here is the thesis abstract, along with a link to access the full PDF for free if you’re into delving into the long form.
Toward a Political Sociology of Blockchain
This thesis project was intended to take an exploratory look at blockchain technology using an interdisciplinary social lens. Drawing on a variety of sources, including Actor-Network Theory, multiplicity, prefigurative politics, Marx’s early writings on technology, and ideological aspects of both hacker culture and free and open source software development, a complex but useful theoretical framework is proposed. Using a multiple methodological approach combining digital ethnography, semi-structured interviews, and content analysis, social aspects of the blockchain space are explored and an initial first description of demographics and characteristics of the blockchain community is proposed. The thesis finds that the utilization of blockchain technology is playing out in many ways, and there are widely varying positions taken from different groups on development and essential technological characteristics as well as potential motivations. The blockchain area is rapidly evolving, and interest from institutions has been growing. Given the potential prefigurative attributes of the space, there is the potential for institutional and capitalist interests to co-opt and integrate within the space, but this could stand to fundamentally change the uses of the technology. The thesis concludes that it is absolutely imperative that social scientists begin to think seriously about this technological development and its social characteristics and implications prior to widespread and institutional adoption.
tl;dr All aboard the blockchain social theory hype train.
Thanks for joining me here, and I hope you find this compelling and consider contributing your own thoughts!
-Kris
