Pub Date : 2017-11-28DOI: 10.6094/behemoth.2017.10.1.946
Jan-Hendrik Passoth
We are conceptually and theoretically moving towards a return of things, of nature, of materiality exactly when we digitally upgrade every single aspect of our lives. The paper takes this curiosity as a starting point to turn current digital transformations into a test case for the usefulness of an approach that aims at empirically understanding and politically intervening in digital materialities. In the last two decades, three distinct approaches towards digital materialities have been developed with a focus on the materiality of hardware in the case of postkittlerian media theory, software in the case of critical code studies and runtime in the case of data studies. They can be empirically combined and turned into a framework for political intervention. The paper works toward such a framework by commenting on two different ways of moving towards “new materialism”: Karen Barads ethico-onto-epistemology and Bruno Latour’s attempt to map and transform modern modes of existence. While partners in crime in terms of symmetry and in repositioning materiality, Latour’s approach is far more engaged than Barad’s. An empirical and interventionist focus on the politics of (at least) three digital materialities can help to further develop this approach.
{"title":"Hardware, Software, Runtime. Das Politische der (zumindest) dreifachen Materialität des Digitalen","authors":"Jan-Hendrik Passoth","doi":"10.6094/behemoth.2017.10.1.946","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.6094/behemoth.2017.10.1.946","url":null,"abstract":"We are conceptually and theoretically moving towards a return of things, of nature, of materiality exactly when we digitally upgrade every single aspect of our lives. The paper takes this curiosity as a starting point to turn current digital transformations into a test case for the usefulness of an approach that aims at empirically understanding and politically intervening in digital materialities. In the last two decades, three distinct approaches towards digital materialities have been developed with a focus on the materiality of hardware in the case of postkittlerian media theory, software in the case of critical code studies and runtime in the case of data studies. They can be empirically combined and turned into a framework for political intervention. The paper works toward such a framework by commenting on two different ways of moving towards “new materialism”: Karen Barads ethico-onto-epistemology and Bruno Latour’s attempt to map and transform modern modes of existence. While partners in crime in terms of symmetry and in repositioning materiality, Latour’s approach is far more engaged than Barad’s. An empirical and interventionist focus on the politics of (at least) three digital materialities can help to further develop this approach.","PeriodicalId":30203,"journal":{"name":"Behemoth a Journal on Civilisation","volume":"10 1","pages":"57-73"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-11-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46990015","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2017-11-28DOI: 10.6094/BEHEMOTH.2017.10.1.945
T. Scheffer
The article highlights two punch lines of neo-materialistic thought: that apparatuses embrace unexpectedly many different things; that apparatuses are highly prolific in making bodies and things. Both demonstrations are particularly convincing, because they show the manifold materials as well as the powerful apparatuses outside occurrences and their situations. However, the latter contextualization may allow New Materialism to respecify the practical status of things and the material capacities of apparatuses. A trans-sequential analysis, relating events and processes in light of an object-in-the-making, provides the praxeological foundations for the two major neo-materialistic motives. These analytics set off by studying situated work episodes. The episodes are methodically linked via imported and exported versions of an object that is rendered producible by a specifically equipped and conditioned apparatus. The analysis aims for a diagnosis of the limited capacities of such apparatuses.
{"title":"Neue Materialismen, praxeologisch","authors":"T. Scheffer","doi":"10.6094/BEHEMOTH.2017.10.1.945","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.6094/BEHEMOTH.2017.10.1.945","url":null,"abstract":"The article highlights two punch lines of neo-materialistic thought: that apparatuses embrace unexpectedly many different things; that apparatuses are highly prolific in making bodies and things. Both demonstrations are particularly convincing, because they show the manifold materials as well as the powerful apparatuses outside occurrences and their situations. However, the latter contextualization may allow New Materialism to respecify the practical status of things and the material capacities of apparatuses. A trans-sequential analysis, relating events and processes in light of an object-in-the-making, provides the praxeological foundations for the two major neo-materialistic motives. These analytics set off by studying situated work episodes. The episodes are methodically linked via imported and exported versions of an object that is rendered producible by a specifically equipped and conditioned apparatus. The analysis aims for a diagnosis of the limited capacities of such apparatuses.","PeriodicalId":30203,"journal":{"name":"Behemoth a Journal on Civilisation","volume":"10 1","pages":"92-106"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-11-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49519980","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2017-11-28DOI: 10.6094/BEHEMOTH.2017.10.1.950
Sascha Dickel
The paper investigates possible connections between neo-materialistic thinking and society. The empirical case is prototyping as a socio-material practice. The paper reconstructs a) the function of prototypes as material devices to access the future and explores b) how society is increasingly involved in prototyping activities: As prototypes turn into objects of public par-ticipation, social phenomena are designed as prototypical objects. Contemporary prototyping practices are an expression of a society captivated by acceleration and innovation. This society may no longer trust the epistemic authority of expert discourses but rather the material evidence of technoscientific demonstrations of emerging technologies. Just like the new materialisms themselves, prototypes invite us to be irritated by the performativity of matter.
{"title":"Irritierende Objekte. Wie Zukunft prototypisch erschlossen wird","authors":"Sascha Dickel","doi":"10.6094/BEHEMOTH.2017.10.1.950","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.6094/BEHEMOTH.2017.10.1.950","url":null,"abstract":"The paper investigates possible connections between neo-materialistic thinking and society. The empirical case is prototyping as a socio-material practice. The paper reconstructs a) the function of prototypes as material devices to access the future and explores b) how society is increasingly involved in prototyping activities: As prototypes turn into objects of public par-ticipation, social phenomena are designed as prototypical objects. Contemporary prototyping practices are an expression of a society captivated by acceleration and innovation. This society may no longer trust the epistemic authority of expert discourses but rather the material evidence of technoscientific demonstrations of emerging technologies. Just like the new materialisms themselves, prototypes invite us to be irritated by the performativity of matter.","PeriodicalId":30203,"journal":{"name":"Behemoth a Journal on Civilisation","volume":"10 1","pages":"171-190"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-11-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48582263","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2017-11-28DOI: 10.6094/BEHEMOTH.2017.10.1.947
Athanasios Karafillidis
The article contends that cybernetics has a material concept of communication, which is pertinent to construe and model organic-mechanical relations. Construction and design of the latter traditionally dwells in the domains of Artificial Intelligence and Human-Computer-Interaction. Somewhat removed the real utopia of cyborgs emerged simultaneously, then quickly lost its technical significance and was later rediscovered as a concept for reflecting upon hybrid couplings in the social sciences. These three empirical forms of devising and considering organic-mechanical relations ultimately originate in cybernetics, its intimate connection to communication and its specific relation to matter. However, cybernetics has been criticized to be a mere control regime and an immaterial science of regulation. The Agential Realism of Karen Barad is thus deployed to render these reductions unwarranted and to display the lost material and subversive dimension of cybernetics. The cybernetic concept of communication then turns out to be the discursive-material event per se. Finally, a methodology is sketched that frames organic-mechanical hybrids as support relations within communication processes.
{"title":"Die Materie der Kybernetik: Über Kommunikation in organisch-mechanischen Verbindungen","authors":"Athanasios Karafillidis","doi":"10.6094/BEHEMOTH.2017.10.1.947","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.6094/BEHEMOTH.2017.10.1.947","url":null,"abstract":"The article contends that cybernetics has a material concept of communication, which is pertinent to construe and model organic-mechanical relations. Construction and design of the latter traditionally dwells in the domains of Artificial Intelligence and Human-Computer-Interaction. Somewhat removed the real utopia of cyborgs emerged simultaneously, then quickly lost its technical significance and was later rediscovered as a concept for reflecting upon hybrid couplings in the social sciences. These three empirical forms of devising and considering organic-mechanical relations ultimately originate in cybernetics, its intimate connection to communication and its specific relation to matter. However, cybernetics has been criticized to be a mere control regime and an immaterial science of regulation. The Agential Realism of Karen Barad is thus deployed to render these reductions unwarranted and to display the lost material and subversive dimension of cybernetics. The cybernetic concept of communication then turns out to be the discursive-material event per se. Finally, a methodology is sketched that frames organic-mechanical hybrids as support relations within communication processes.","PeriodicalId":30203,"journal":{"name":"Behemoth a Journal on Civilisation","volume":"10 1","pages":"130-153"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-11-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44259926","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2013-11-01DOI: 10.6094/BEHEMOTH.2013.6.1.634
C. Dorn, Thomas Hoebel
In the scientific debate on mafias we find neither a common usage nor a shared understanding as to what characterizes a mafia as opposed to other forms of organized crime. To clarify the mafia concept we suggest following Georg Simmel’s notion that the appearance of a third party substantively alters the constitution of a social configuration. It is our thesis that mafias act as the third party in a variety of settings by creating or sustaining social orders between at least two other involved parties. In order to acquire and maintain these third party positions, mafias assume the shape of formal organizations. In this light we show the usefulness of this approach through empirical cases that demonstrate how mafias operate as mediators, referees and gatekeepers. The concept “mafias as organized third parties” offers benefits to the study of mafias and organized crime as well as social theory more generally.
{"title":"Mafias als organisierte Dritte.","authors":"C. Dorn, Thomas Hoebel","doi":"10.6094/BEHEMOTH.2013.6.1.634","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.6094/BEHEMOTH.2013.6.1.634","url":null,"abstract":"In the scientific debate on mafias we find neither a common usage nor a shared understanding as to what characterizes a mafia as opposed to other forms of organized crime. To clarify the mafia concept we suggest following Georg Simmel’s notion that the appearance of a third party substantively alters the constitution of a social configuration. It is our thesis that mafias act as the third party in a variety of settings by creating or sustaining social orders between at least two other involved parties. In order to acquire and maintain these third party positions, mafias assume the shape of formal organizations. In this light we show the usefulness of this approach through empirical cases that demonstrate how mafias operate as mediators, referees and gatekeepers. The concept “mafias as organized third parties” offers benefits to the study of mafias and organized crime as well as social theory more generally.","PeriodicalId":30203,"journal":{"name":"Behemoth a Journal on Civilisation","volume":"6 1","pages":"74-97"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71271391","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2013-11-01DOI: 10.6094/BEHEMOTH.2013.6.1.632
Thomas Welskopp
Although the deep structural crisis of the American “Old-Time Saloon” and the beer brewing industry was self-inflicted, National Prohibition hit them hard in 1920. Whereas the saloon completely vanished from the scene, giving way to the more or less clandestine “speakeasy”, the brewing companies which did not go out of business altogether or did not resort to the production of legal surrogates like “near beer”, strove desperately after strategies for survival. For lesser known breweries the alliance with organized crime allowed them to enter the illicit shadow economy. Larger corporations fiddled around until they discovered that they could produce the ingredient components of “real” beer and sell it wholesale to the bootleggers as long as their product was not yet fermented and contained no alcohol. In an absolutely legal way they thus provided the raw materials upon which the reconstruction of an (illegal) beer market could take place in the second half of the 1920s.
{"title":"Bottom of the barrel: The US brewing industry and saloon culture before and during National Prohibition, 1900–1933","authors":"Thomas Welskopp","doi":"10.6094/BEHEMOTH.2013.6.1.632","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.6094/BEHEMOTH.2013.6.1.632","url":null,"abstract":"Although the deep structural crisis of the American “Old-Time Saloon” and the beer brewing industry was self-inflicted, National Prohibition hit them hard in 1920. Whereas the saloon completely vanished from the scene, giving way to the more or less clandestine “speakeasy”, the brewing companies which did not go out of business altogether or did not resort to the production of legal surrogates like “near beer”, strove desperately after strategies for survival. For lesser known breweries the alliance with organized crime allowed them to enter the illicit shadow economy. Larger corporations fiddled around until they discovered that they could produce the ingredient components of “real” beer and sell it wholesale to the bootleggers as long as their product was not yet fermented and contained no alcohol. In an absolutely legal way they thus provided the raw materials upon which the reconstruction of an (illegal) beer market could take place in the second half of the 1920s.","PeriodicalId":30203,"journal":{"name":"Behemoth a Journal on Civilisation","volume":"6 1","pages":"27-54"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71271377","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2013-11-01DOI: 10.6094/BEHEMOTH.2013.6.1.633
Bettina Schorr
From business to war: Although illicit markets are generally peaceful, at times they burst into massive transitional violence. One example for such an upsurge in violence is Mexico where the drug cartels are engaged in a bloody war. The Mexican case reveals that two interrelated factors can incite transitional illegal violence. First, market changes that close or open up business opportunities can lead to violent criminal competition. Second, political changes can cause or increase criminal violence. When collusive state-crime relations erode and the state increases law enforcement against criminal groups, they are likely to fight back. Both factors are tightly connected: criminal competition may erode protection rackets and incite harsher law enforcement. Law enforcement in turn may lead to the fragmentation of crime groups and cause more violent competition. Massive criminal violence is fed by further factors such as the easy availability of both weapons and specialists in violence and the displacement effect of intensive law enforcement in regions characterized by weak state structures.
{"title":"From business to war: Causes of transitional violence by the Mexican drug cartels","authors":"Bettina Schorr","doi":"10.6094/BEHEMOTH.2013.6.1.633","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.6094/BEHEMOTH.2013.6.1.633","url":null,"abstract":"From business to war: Although illicit markets are generally peaceful, at times they burst into massive transitional violence. One example for such an upsurge in violence is Mexico where the drug cartels are engaged in a bloody war. The Mexican case reveals that two interrelated factors can incite transitional illegal violence. First, market changes that close or open up business opportunities can lead to violent criminal competition. Second, political changes can cause or increase criminal violence. When collusive state-crime relations erode and the state increases law enforcement against criminal groups, they are likely to fight back. Both factors are tightly connected: criminal competition may erode protection rackets and incite harsher law enforcement. Law enforcement in turn may lead to the fragmentation of crime groups and cause more violent competition. Massive criminal violence is fed by further factors such as the easy availability of both weapons and specialists in violence and the displacement effect of intensive law enforcement in regions characterized by weak state structures.","PeriodicalId":30203,"journal":{"name":"Behemoth a Journal on Civilisation","volume":"6 1","pages":"55-73"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71271384","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2013-11-01DOI: 10.6094/BEHEMOTH.2013.6.1.635
Thomas Schmidt-Lux
Vigilantism is usually perceived as a form of political violence. But we can distinguish three types of vigilantism with respect to its relation to the state: a) vigilantism in place of the state, b) vigilantism as a better state, and c) vigilantism beyond the state. I shall show that the relation between vigilantes and the state is thus not always oppositional, and that the political dimension of vigilante actions in fact varies considerably.
{"title":"Vigilantism as Political Violence. A Typology","authors":"Thomas Schmidt-Lux","doi":"10.6094/BEHEMOTH.2013.6.1.635","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.6094/BEHEMOTH.2013.6.1.635","url":null,"abstract":"Vigilantism is usually perceived as a form of political violence. But we can distinguish three types of vigilantism with respect to its relation to the state: a) vigilantism in place of the state, b) vigilantism as a better state, and c) vigilantism beyond the state. I shall show that the relation between vigilantes and the state is thus not always oppositional, and that the political dimension of vigilante actions in fact varies considerably.","PeriodicalId":30203,"journal":{"name":"Behemoth a Journal on Civilisation","volume":"6 1","pages":"98-117"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71271518","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2013-11-01DOI: 10.6094/BEHEMOTH.2013.6.1.631
L. Paoli
Given the public concern about organized crime, it is important to identify the determinants of organized crime. Without a better understanding of these determinants, linking them to the different forms of organized crime, policy interventions risk selecting unrealistic goals or even obtaining counterproductive results. It is argued that criminal repression is a necessary reaction to the most serious forms of organized crime, such as a mafia-type organization challenging government authority. Nonetheless, governments should always aim at reducing the total harms associated with organized crime and not lose sight of the fact that they also carry responsibility for these harms.
{"title":"Searching for the determinants of OC: Some preliminary reflections","authors":"L. Paoli","doi":"10.6094/BEHEMOTH.2013.6.1.631","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.6094/BEHEMOTH.2013.6.1.631","url":null,"abstract":"Given the public concern about organized crime, it is important to identify the determinants of organized crime. Without a better understanding of these determinants, linking them to the different forms of organized crime, policy interventions risk selecting unrealistic goals or even obtaining counterproductive results. It is argued that criminal repression is a necessary reaction to the most serious forms of organized crime, such as a mafia-type organization challenging government authority. Nonetheless, governments should always aim at reducing the total harms associated with organized crime and not lose sight of the fact that they also carry responsibility for these harms.","PeriodicalId":30203,"journal":{"name":"Behemoth a Journal on Civilisation","volume":"6 1","pages":"10-26"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71271372","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2013-01-01DOI: 10.1515/BEHEMOTH-2013-0007
Thomas Schmidt-Lux
Vigilantism is usually perceived as a form of political violence. But we can distinguish three types of vigilantism with respect to its relation to the state: a) vigilantism in place of the state, b) vigilantism as a better state, and c) vigilantism beyond the state. I shall show that the relation between vigilantes and the state is thus not always oppositional, and that the political dimension of vigilante actions in fact varies considerably.
{"title":"Vigilantismus als politische Gewalt. Eine Typologie Vigilantism as Political Violence. A Typology","authors":"Thomas Schmidt-Lux","doi":"10.1515/BEHEMOTH-2013-0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/BEHEMOTH-2013-0007","url":null,"abstract":"Vigilantism is usually perceived as a form of political violence. But we can distinguish three types of vigilantism with respect to its relation to the state: a) vigilantism in place of the state, b) vigilantism as a better state, and c) vigilantism beyond the state. I shall show that the relation between vigilantes and the state is thus not always oppositional, and that the political dimension of vigilante actions in fact varies considerably.","PeriodicalId":30203,"journal":{"name":"Behemoth a Journal on Civilisation","volume":"818 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77544241","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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