Members of RC02 may be interested in two reading initiatives taking place this summer.
The first is an AI and Society discussion group being organized through the ICGC Machines and Meanings Forum at the University of Minnesota. Scheduled to run from late June through mid-August 2026, the program is envisioned as a small reading circle meeting online approximately every two weeks across five sessions, complemented by a shared archive of notes, annotations, references, and discussion materials. The group will explore the intersections of technology, meaning, politics, infrastructure, labor, economy, and society, with particular attention to generative AI and contemporary projects of automation as a central object of inquiry. Proposed themes include Labor and Computation, Ethics and Governance, Artificial Places: Data Centers and Regimes of Opacity, AI as a War Machine, Cultures of Hype, AI in the University, and Ethnographies of AI. An interest form is available that outlines the goals of the group and invites participants to suggest additional themes and areas of inquiry.
A second initiative is the Summer 2026 Social and Behavioral Sciences Interest Group (SoBIG) reading group on political economy. Marking the 250th year of American independence, the group has chosen to revisit Karl Polanyi's The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time as a point of departure for examining the historical foundations of liberal political economy. In this classic work of economic history and social theory, Polanyi traces the emergence of market society during the Industrial Revolution, interrogating the ideal of the self-regulating market and highlighting the social and political processes through which market institutions are constituted and sustained. The reading provides an opportunity to revisit foundational debates concerning laissez-faire, state formation, and the embeddedness of economic life that remain central to contemporary economic sociology and political economy. Information regarding the reading schedule and participation in this hybrid discussion group can be found here.