In his seminal “Clio and the Economics of Qwerty”, Paul David indicates Thorstein Veblen’s famous discussion British system coal rail haulage as an intellectual antecedent to idea lock in. This note documents how Albert G. Keller, a Yale sociologist contemporary Veblen, had presented similar argument in connection establishment brick tax England its effects on size bricks. Like Keller used this...

Images swirl on a screen. A controller in front of it invites you to grab on and start playing. Is this a game? Or is it art? How can you tell the difference between a computer game and new media art? Like any new media technology, interactive computers have established cultural positions by shifting existing understandings of the proper place of things. A starting point for identifying the dif...

The historical relationship[1] between biology and feminist politics is one of proximity and distance, of tensions and contradictions. This is particularly obvious in the current golden age of neuroscience, when arguments supporting sexism, the inevitability of the sex/gender difference, and the equalization of sexuality with heterosexuality, for example, are reformulated based on the findings ...

Critical realism is a subject of growing interest in the IS literature. This article aims at implementing a critical realist framework: Margaret Archer's (2003) internal conversation theory. As a contemporary sociologist, Archer suggests both a general vision of social practice and a typology of reflexivity modes. Her multilayered framework could be extremely useful in overcoming a current limi...

Philosophical arguments regarding academic freedom can sometimes appear removed from the real conflicts playing out in contemporary universities. This paper focusses on a set of issues at front line these conflicts, namely, questions sex, gender and identity. We document ways which work academics has been affected by political activism around and, drawing our respective disciplinary expertise a...