ICLS Symposium | iY-5_SOCIOCULTURAL-THEORY | Renewing Socio-cultural theory in a Networked, Decentralized Supercapitalist Society

Socio-cultural theory, with its emphasis on identity, culture, critique, and power, offers both an explanatory toolkit given the rise in extremism, authoritarianism, and tribalism, but also faces significant challenges, given the increasingly fractured and dynamically-changing nature of life in online worlds. Traditional metaphors of enculturating students into communities of scientific practice face external threats from a public suspicious toward social institutions. This session asks what socio-cultural theory might have to offer for understanding the current moment, and how this current state of the world may be pushing back on our understanding of socio-cultural theory. This session offers three papers and a robust discussion session by four leading researcher / theorist / practitioners from socio-cultural traditions. Each paper offers a look at how learning is occurring in a networked, digital age, with community partners that include Homeboy Industries, the Network of Academic Esports Federations, and with Indigenous Education Partners. This session is particularly focused on how macro trends across culture, specifically occurring through supercapitalist economic and online cultural structures contribute to cultural logics operating upon us.