300750 Material Media: Circuits of Labor, Data and Delivery (MA: Mediensoziologie) (S) (WiSe 2025/2026)

How do supply chains and data infrastructures reinforce global hierarchies of race, class, and gender? How do logistical systems classify, sort, and prioritize not just goods and data, but people? What kinds of work, materials, and lives are considered essential—and what does that reveal about social hierarchies of worth and power?

This course examines the material infrastructures and labor that enable digital circulation, exploring logistics as both a technical system and a cultural phenomenon. We follow the movement of goods, data, and people across global networks, with a focus on the political economies and often unseen labor that sustain platforms, warehouses, and supply chains. Drawing on critical logistics scholarship, media studies, and sociological studies of classification, students will analyse the complex intersections of technology, capital, and control. The course connects everyday experiences with deeper sociological questions about inequality, value, and power.

Students will develop skills in critical reading, discussion, leading conversations, giving presentations, and collaborative teamwork. The final assessment is an independently written term paper. The course is offered in a block seminar format and will be conducted in person.