Neil Gerlach
BGInS Program Director
| Degrees: | PhD Sociology (Carleton University), MA Anthropology (University of Saskatchewan), Juris Doctor (University of Saskatchewan), Bachelor of Education (University of Regina) |
| Phone: | 613-520-2600 x 1331 |
| Email: | neil.gerlach@carleton.ca |
| Office: | Dunton Tower 2123 |
Areas of Teaching Interest:
Classical Social Theory
Sociology of War
Sociology of the Future
Areas of Research Interest:
The Robot Imaginary. This project is an analysis of how we imagine, anticipate, and mediate developments in robotic technology in our contemporary culture. While our current engagement with robot technologies in everyday life is somewhat limited, rapid progress in artificial intelligence and robot mechanics promises to make the presence of intelligent, humanoid robots a more common experience in the near future. I am interested in how our society will cope with these developments and how our anticipation and expectation of this technology is shaped by our history of experiences with new technologies, the prevalence of science fictional images of robots, the dominance of discourses of economic development and technological progress, and the circulation of corporate marketing. At the same time, the way we anticipate future technologies impacts contemporary actions, vocabularies, knowledge production, geographies, ethics, and politics. As a result, I argue that we increasingly live in a “future present” where the future colonizes the present rather than the other way around.
My previous research has focused on other kinds of socio-technical imaginaries of the future. Through a study of pandemic culture, I analyzed the forms of representation that underlay a growing apocalyptic sense that each of us is indiscriminately vulnerable to the global spread of pandemic germs, arising out of the conditions of global mobility of capital, goods, and people, that put the human species at risk. I have also studied the genetic imaginary by focusing on the use of DNA identification technology in the criminal justice system and the forms of anticipation engendered by this technology for future criminal identification.