A New Generation of CSCW: Reinvigorating CSCW Field-based Research Through A Theory-Inspired Reboot

Abstract

There are those who feel that the CSCW work studies and other interpretivist research streams need to be reinvigorated; they find many CSCW interpretivist studies to be small incremental elaborations over previous studies or studies that elaborate known findings. This paper argues that CSCW has already begun to make intellectual moves that will reinvigorate itself and that others need to be made. The paper traces how Symbolic Interactionism has kept itself vital and alive, noting how it has incorporated modern intellectual turns in the social sciences. The paper then argues that CSCW as a field and as a community needs to make similar moves, updating its theoretical concerns. We feel it is important for the CSCW community to find a communal understanding of the intellectual desirability, if not necessity, of these moves.