Toward a Political Sociology of Blockchain - Thesis Defended!

So once again, I'm back with a short update and some outlines for my plans for this blog space.

Firstly, I successfully defended my master's thesis titled Toward a Political Sociology of Blockchain (through the department of sociology at Queen's University). My research and thesis was an attempt to start looking at aspects of the technology through a sociopolitical lens, and an exploration of some of the groups and relationships within the blockchain space. I also discussed aspects of ideology power relations, as well as some interesting potential implications for the future of the tech.

If you're interested in reading the thesis in its entirety, it is available without any paywalls here: https://qspace.library.queensu.ca/handle/1974/24924

Today's post is going to be a short one, but I am going to post the table of contents from the thesis here, with the intention of giving a very high level breakdown of the concepts discussed within. My posts over the next while will consist of a section or two of the thesis (likely just the social theory/discussion sections, unless someone really wants me to get methodological). I am planning to do this for a couple reasons. First, the thesis is simply way too long, even if I were to separate out just the theory or just the discussion, for a blog post. I found that my old pieces were likely difficult to digest due to their length, and given the platform, I should be making my content more engaging and accessible here. Second, I think that by concentrating the posts on smaller chunks of the thesis will allow me to break down some of the concepts a bit more than I was able to do in the thesis, and really explain a few of the more interesting concepts in detail.

Anyway, as a little teaser to some of the upcoming content, here's the table of contents from the thesis. I plan to roughly go through these in order, but if there is a section you're particularly interested in and would like me to cover or talk about, just toss a comment in on this post.

Table of Contents:
Chapter 1: Introduction

Chapter 2: Describing Blockchain

Chapter 3: Blockchain Publications and Research

Chapter 4: Theorizing Blockchain

• Introduction
• Actor Network Theory
• Critical Data Politics and Surveillance
• Responding to Surveillance: Multiplicity, Enactment, Conversations, and Risk Theory
• Free and Open Source Software Development
• Prefigurative Politics and Prefigurative Political Space
• Gradual State Function Absorption and Transcendence
• Blockchain and the Future of Work
• Addressing Theoretical Critiques

Chapter 5: Methodology

• Research Design and Description
• Data Sources, Demographics and Justification
• Issues of Online Identity and Legitimacy
• Principles of Ethnography
• What I Actually Did
• Personal Position

Chapter 6: Findings

• Demographic Information
• Group Descriptions and Characteristics
• Most Exciting and Problematic Aspects
• Media Coverage Content Comparison
• Breakdown of Potential Actants

Chapter 7: Discussion

• Hacker Culture and the Hacker Ethic
• Ideology and an Authentic Politics of Technology
• Novel Economic Experimentation
• Tokens, Coins and Money
• Multiplicity and Software Development

Chapter 8: Conclusion

Thanks again for reading, will be back soon, hopefully with some more interesting content based on my thesis research!