Introduction: Applying Critical Theory to the Study of ICT

As three academics located in the domain of information systems (IS), we are delighted to act as guest editors and to highlight scholarship that applies a critical lens to the examination of information and communication technologies (ICT). In this editorial, we briefly present how reference disciplines—particularly sociology—have addressed issues of technology in society, placing this discussion in the context of the comparatively new disciplinary field of IS and its paradigmatic roots. We argue that IS has been dominated by inquiry adopting the philosophical approach of positivism but stress that there is a small and growing body of theoretical and empirical research from a critical perspective. We discuss this broadening field of critical research and critical research in IS in particular. Finally, we are pleased to introduce the articles we have chosen for this special issue that apply critical theories and methods to a number of ICT applications. Looking back at the entirety of sociology as a discipline, studying the role of technology in society has been marginal at best. Although never central to their doctrine, Marx, Weber, and Parsons all noted that technology played an instrumental role in society, subordinate to economic action, effectively a means to an economic end (Shields, 1997). With the arrival of the Frankfurt School in the mid-20th century, the study of the role of technology in society merged with the burgeoning field of critical theory, in which technology was part of a critique of modernity and the developments and institutions associated with modern society. For sociologists, critical theory allied technology with modernity and again viewed it instrumentally, as a tool of the modern state used for more perfect subjugation of the masses and the individual. In the later half of the 20th century, sociologists have drawn on authors such as Habermas, Offe, Bourdieu, Foucault, Calhoun, and Kellner to develop a more sophisticated critique of domination with an emancipatory interest, the fusion of social or cultural analysis, and the role of technology in society. Critical theorists of technology are typically seen by sociologists as mild technological determinists who have focused on the coevolution of modernity and technology and their joint limitations, pathologies, and destructive effects (Kellner, 1989).