CALL FOR ABSTRACTS 

“A Sociology of Artificial Intelligence: Inequalities, Power, and Data Justice”

Special Issue of Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World

Abstract Deadline: June 1, 2023

Description: Investments in artificial intelligence have sparked broad-ranging conversations about AI’s impact on how we live, learn, and work. Software applications ranging from clinical algorithms, predictive policing, and generative AI such as ChatGPT provoke strong controversy across multiple institutional spheres, and public and private investments in AI suggest many more sociotechnical systems will be developed in the coming years. Sociology, with its focus on inequalities, power, and social justice and its robust methodological and theoretical toolkit, has much to offer to the critical study of AI. 

This special issue seeks to outline an emerging sociology of AI, algorithms, and machine learning. We aim to highlight new work in this area, building from our original call for sociological research into AI and inequalities (Joyce et al. 2021, Socius) as well as the White House’s Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights under the leadership of sociologist Alondra Nelson. We welcome a wide range of submissions on sociological examinations of AI, including but not limited to: 

-Empirical studies of AI, algorithms, and data-intensive technologies in social practice;
-Intersectional research on AI inequities by gender, race, class, sexuality, and disability;
-Public construction of AI-related social problems, such as surveillance and automation;
-Comparative scholarship on AI across institutional, structural, and/or global contexts;
-Methodological pieces that investigate how to study AI technologies; and
-Reflexive accounts of interdisciplinary collaboration with computer and data scientists. 

We seek contributions from all subfields of sociology, including science and technology, culture, work and occupations, health and medicine, politics and policy, race and racism, education, criminal justice, gender and sexuality, aging and the life course, and global and transnational sociology. We particularly welcome submissions from graduate students and early career scholars, as well as scholarly contributions with a thematic focus on inequalities, power, and social justice. We welcome traditional manuscript styles and encourage short papers providing interesting empirical findings that may spark innovation and future work. 

Journal: Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World is the American Sociological Association’s open access journal that aims to make new research readily available. It provides an online forum for the rapid dissemination of peer-reviewed empirical work, produced in time to be relevant to ongoing debates. For more information, please visit the journal’s website (https://journals.sagepub.com/description/SRD). 

To Submit an Abstract: Prospective contributors should send an abstract up to 300 words to Kelly Joyce, kaj68@drexel.edu, and Taylor Cruz, tacruz@fullerton.edu by June 1. Name and contact information of author(s) should be included in the submission. Abstracts should clearly demonstrate the proposed paper’s sociological importance for the special issue. Invitations to submit full papers will be issued by July 1. An invitation to submit a full manuscript does not guarantee acceptance; all manuscripts must undergo the journal’s rigorous peer-review process. Full papers should be submitted by November 1 to ensure timely publication.

Guest Editors:

Kelly Joyce, PhD 
Professor, Sociology Department 
Center for Science, Technology & Society 
Drexel University 
Philadelphia, PA  
Kaj68@drexel.edu

Taylor M. Cruz, PhD 
Associate Professor, Department of Sociology 
California State University, Fullerton 
Fullerton, CA 
tacruz@fullerton.edu

Call for Abstracts (PDF).