L. Monsees, Tobias Liebetrau, J. Austin, Anna Leander, Swati Srivastava
Our everyday life is entangled with products and services of so-called Big Tech companies, such as Amazon, Google, and Facebook. International relations (IR) scholars increasingly seek to reflect on the relationships between Big Tech, capitalism, and institutionalized politics, and they engage with the practices of algorithmic governance and platformization that shape and are shaped by Big Tech. This collective discussion advances these emerging debates by approaching Big Tech transversally, meaning that we problematize Big Tech as an object of study and raise a range of fundamental questions about its politics. The contributions demonstrate how a transversal perspective that cuts across sociomaterial, institutional, and disciplinary boundaries and framings opens up the study of the politics of Big Tech. The discussion brings to the fore perspectives on the ontologies of Big Tech, the politics of the aesthetics and credibility of Big Tech and rethinks the concepts of legitimacy and responsibility. The article thereby provides several inroads for how IR and international political sociology can leverage their analytical engagement with Big Tech and nurture imaginaries of alternative and subversive technopolitical futures.
{"title":"Transversal Politics of Big Tech","authors":"L. Monsees, Tobias Liebetrau, J. Austin, Anna Leander, Swati Srivastava","doi":"10.1093/ips/olac020","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ips/olac020","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Our everyday life is entangled with products and services of so-called Big Tech companies, such as Amazon, Google, and Facebook. International relations (IR) scholars increasingly seek to reflect on the relationships between Big Tech, capitalism, and institutionalized politics, and they engage with the practices of algorithmic governance and platformization that shape and are shaped by Big Tech. This collective discussion advances these emerging debates by approaching Big Tech transversally, meaning that we problematize Big Tech as an object of study and raise a range of fundamental questions about its politics. The contributions demonstrate how a transversal perspective that cuts across sociomaterial, institutional, and disciplinary boundaries and framings opens up the study of the politics of Big Tech. The discussion brings to the fore perspectives on the ontologies of Big Tech, the politics of the aesthetics and credibility of Big Tech and rethinks the concepts of legitimacy and responsibility. The article thereby provides several inroads for how IR and international political sociology can leverage their analytical engagement with Big Tech and nurture imaginaries of alternative and subversive technopolitical futures.","PeriodicalId":47361,"journal":{"name":"International Political Sociology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2023-01-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47815843","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article explores the limitations of the oft-used biopolitical frameworks of interpreting the regulatory emergency measures that have been enacted worldwide in the face of the spreading pandemic of COVID-19. Not only have the state responses to coronavirus often been beset by manner of “biopolitical failures,” it is also the Foucauldian emphasis on the top-down formation and application of immunity that produces a view of health security that is much too narrow. In proposing an alternative framework, the article draws from the spherology of Peter Sloterdijk and suggests a transition from bio- to a distinctly sphero-political theory of immunity that is capable of integrating the ontological synergies that exist between human bodies, spaces, and atmospheres. More specifically, the spheropolitics of coronavirus are discussed in relation to the security dispositif of the household and examined through the case of the Czech Republic.
{"title":"Security beyond Biopolitics: The Spheropolitics, Co-Immunity, and Atmospheres of the Coronavirus Pandemic","authors":"Jaroslav Weinfurter","doi":"10.1093/ips/olad003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ips/olad003","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article explores the limitations of the oft-used biopolitical frameworks of interpreting the regulatory emergency measures that have been enacted worldwide in the face of the spreading pandemic of COVID-19. Not only have the state responses to coronavirus often been beset by manner of “biopolitical failures,” it is also the Foucauldian emphasis on the top-down formation and application of immunity that produces a view of health security that is much too narrow. In proposing an alternative framework, the article draws from the spherology of Peter Sloterdijk and suggests a transition from bio- to a distinctly sphero-political theory of immunity that is capable of integrating the ontological synergies that exist between human bodies, spaces, and atmospheres. More specifically, the spheropolitics of coronavirus are discussed in relation to the security dispositif of the household and examined through the case of the Czech Republic.","PeriodicalId":47361,"journal":{"name":"International Political Sociology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2023-01-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46776720","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The UK Prevent strategy is strongly criticized: accused of racism, human rights violations, and demonization of the (Muslim) other. Outlining an original interpretation of these problems, the article draws on political theory to identify parallels between this controversy and Stanley Cavell's critique of John Rawls’ Theory of Justice. Although aiming to avoid violence, Rawls limited the “conversation of justice” in advance such that a democratic community could be deemed above reproach. Cavell claimed that this situation is detrimental in that it leaves the resentful other with no outlet to voice their grievance(s). The article argues that Prevent is problematic because it assumes the same premise as Rawls. Prevent restricts engagement between its participants through the requirement to adhere to “British values,” which excludes sectors of the UK population a priori and undermines the very democracy that Prevent purports to defend. The article rejects the Prevent strategy on these grounds. It then proposes an alternative model for counter-radicalization based on a Cavellian theorization of democracy as “Emersonian conversation”—comprising the virtues of listening, responsiveness, and a willingness to change on all sides. The article argues that Emersonian conversation provides a more effective basis for future UK counter-radicalization policy.
{"title":"Above Reproach: Rawls, Cavell, and Emersonian Conversation as a New Model for Democratic Counter-Radicalisation Policy","authors":"M. Bentley, Clare Woodford","doi":"10.1093/ips/olad001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ips/olad001","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The UK Prevent strategy is strongly criticized: accused of racism, human rights violations, and demonization of the (Muslim) other. Outlining an original interpretation of these problems, the article draws on political theory to identify parallels between this controversy and Stanley Cavell's critique of John Rawls’ Theory of Justice. Although aiming to avoid violence, Rawls limited the “conversation of justice” in advance such that a democratic community could be deemed above reproach. Cavell claimed that this situation is detrimental in that it leaves the resentful other with no outlet to voice their grievance(s). The article argues that Prevent is problematic because it assumes the same premise as Rawls. Prevent restricts engagement between its participants through the requirement to adhere to “British values,” which excludes sectors of the UK population a priori and undermines the very democracy that Prevent purports to defend. The article rejects the Prevent strategy on these grounds. It then proposes an alternative model for counter-radicalization based on a Cavellian theorization of democracy as “Emersonian conversation”—comprising the virtues of listening, responsiveness, and a willingness to change on all sides. The article argues that Emersonian conversation provides a more effective basis for future UK counter-radicalization policy.","PeriodicalId":47361,"journal":{"name":"International Political Sociology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2023-01-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44061909","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
During the past decades, militaries have increasingly used force against civilians and armed adversaries in operational settings other than war. Theories about legitimacy for the use of military force often focus on macro variables such as international law, government policy, and structural political contingencies. The strength of such theories in explaining military violence during conventional wars notwithstanding, this article argues that they fail to explain the legitimization of the use of force in situations that cannot be categorized as “classic” warfare, where institutional and international norms seem to fade, rational calculations become unclear, and governments often do not hold themselves accountable for soldiers’ violent behavior. When such conflicts linger, they often develop into situations in which sovereignty is fragmented and statehood is limited in ways that further undermine institutional legitimacy. Using the accounts of Israeli soldiers deployed in the occupied Palestinian territories in the last two decades, this article broadens the analytical perspective on military violence's legitimacy by depicting its micromechanisms and local factors. In doing so, it identifies three clusters of factors: emotions, space and time, and informal organizational culture. We posit that, during intense friction between soldiers and civilians in the context of prolonged occupation, the structural variables and formal powers that typically dictate the use of force give way to more fluctuating dynamics that shape the patterns of military violence and, ultimately, influence its legitimacy.
{"title":"Liquid Legitimacy: Lessons on Military Violence from the Israeli Occupation in the West Bank","authors":"Nir Gazit, E. Grassiani","doi":"10.1093/ips/olac022","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ips/olac022","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 During the past decades, militaries have increasingly used force against civilians and armed adversaries in operational settings other than war. Theories about legitimacy for the use of military force often focus on macro variables such as international law, government policy, and structural political contingencies. The strength of such theories in explaining military violence during conventional wars notwithstanding, this article argues that they fail to explain the legitimization of the use of force in situations that cannot be categorized as “classic” warfare, where institutional and international norms seem to fade, rational calculations become unclear, and governments often do not hold themselves accountable for soldiers’ violent behavior. When such conflicts linger, they often develop into situations in which sovereignty is fragmented and statehood is limited in ways that further undermine institutional legitimacy. Using the accounts of Israeli soldiers deployed in the occupied Palestinian territories in the last two decades, this article broadens the analytical perspective on military violence's legitimacy by depicting its micromechanisms and local factors. In doing so, it identifies three clusters of factors: emotions, space and time, and informal organizational culture. We posit that, during intense friction between soldiers and civilians in the context of prolonged occupation, the structural variables and formal powers that typically dictate the use of force give way to more fluctuating dynamics that shape the patterns of military violence and, ultimately, influence its legitimacy.","PeriodicalId":47361,"journal":{"name":"International Political Sociology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2023-01-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47462434","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Scholars consider the translatability and efficacy of “western” LGBT politics as they diffuse, but pay little attention to the role of its histories and cultures as geo-temporal phenomena. Focusing on Pride events, this article demonstrates how such oversights inhibit a full account of the widely diverse impacts of similar actions in different places. We explore the ways in which Pride events, as a mode of activism, go global and integrate in vastly different contexts: Serbia and Uganda. Paying particular attention to acts of violence and the instrumentalization of Pride as geopolitical, we argue that divergent outcomes connect to the diffusion of Pride as creative of geo-temporal dislocations of politics and history. Incorporating the concept of extraversion, we demonstrate that the intertwining of the domestic and international facilitates the transformation of politics in terms of foreseen outcomes and unintended consequences. Overall, we propose a framework that advances an understanding of homophobic and homophilic politics as instrumentalizations of geo-temporal dislocations that underpin the global fight for LGBT rights. As a challenge to the progress narrative nearly intrinsic to western international relations, this approach is useful to explore processes that shape other types of transnational politics, such as democracy, climate change, and peace movements.
{"title":"The Dislocation of LGBT Politics: Pride, Globalization, and Geo-Temporality in Uganda and Serbia","authors":"Koen Slootmaeckers, Michael J. Bosia","doi":"10.1093/ips/olad004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ips/olad004","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Scholars consider the translatability and efficacy of “western” LGBT politics as they diffuse, but pay little attention to the role of its histories and cultures as geo-temporal phenomena. Focusing on Pride events, this article demonstrates how such oversights inhibit a full account of the widely diverse impacts of similar actions in different places. We explore the ways in which Pride events, as a mode of activism, go global and integrate in vastly different contexts: Serbia and Uganda. Paying particular attention to acts of violence and the instrumentalization of Pride as geopolitical, we argue that divergent outcomes connect to the diffusion of Pride as creative of geo-temporal dislocations of politics and history. Incorporating the concept of extraversion, we demonstrate that the intertwining of the domestic and international facilitates the transformation of politics in terms of foreseen outcomes and unintended consequences. Overall, we propose a framework that advances an understanding of homophobic and homophilic politics as instrumentalizations of geo-temporal dislocations that underpin the global fight for LGBT rights. As a challenge to the progress narrative nearly intrinsic to western international relations, this approach is useful to explore processes that shape other types of transnational politics, such as democracy, climate change, and peace movements.","PeriodicalId":47361,"journal":{"name":"International Political Sociology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2023-01-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46874626","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Theorists of border externalization have portrayed aid in border control cooperation as a bargaining chip that the European Union uses to “buy” the cooperation of countries of “origin” and “transit.” More recent scholarship, instead, has depicted aid as a rent that Southern actors try to extract from Northern donors by capitalizing on the presence of foreign, “undesirable” populations within their own borders. Both explanations overlook the manifold ways countries of “origin” and “transit” maneuver aid in diplomatic relations over border control, thus failing to conceptualize aid beyond the incentive/rent binary. This paper analyses the implementation of three aid-funded projects in the field of migration in Morocco. Building on postcolonial international relations and organizational sociology, I argue that countries of “origin” and “transit” do not always welcome aid in the field of migration with open hands. Rather, they decide to cooperate (or not) with Global North donors and their subcontracting partners depending on how specific aid-funded projects fit into their broader domestic and international foreign policy strategy. I identify a three-tiered typology of engagement (facilitation, negotiation, and obstruction) to argue that aid rather works as a terrain where countries of “origin” and “transit” display, contest, and renegotiate diplomatic relations with Northern partners in situations of power asymmetry.
{"title":"Terrain of Contestation: Complicating the Role of Aid in Border Diplomacy between Europe and Morocco","authors":"Lorena Gazzotti","doi":"10.1093/ips/olac021","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ips/olac021","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Theorists of border externalization have portrayed aid in border control cooperation as a bargaining chip that the European Union uses to “buy” the cooperation of countries of “origin” and “transit.” More recent scholarship, instead, has depicted aid as a rent that Southern actors try to extract from Northern donors by capitalizing on the presence of foreign, “undesirable” populations within their own borders. Both explanations overlook the manifold ways countries of “origin” and “transit” maneuver aid in diplomatic relations over border control, thus failing to conceptualize aid beyond the incentive/rent binary. This paper analyses the implementation of three aid-funded projects in the field of migration in Morocco. Building on postcolonial international relations and organizational sociology, I argue that countries of “origin” and “transit” do not always welcome aid in the field of migration with open hands. Rather, they decide to cooperate (or not) with Global North donors and their subcontracting partners depending on how specific aid-funded projects fit into their broader domestic and international foreign policy strategy. I identify a three-tiered typology of engagement (facilitation, negotiation, and obstruction) to argue that aid rather works as a terrain where countries of “origin” and “transit” display, contest, and renegotiate diplomatic relations with Northern partners in situations of power asymmetry.","PeriodicalId":47361,"journal":{"name":"International Political Sociology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49235771","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper contributes to debates on the growing appeal of right-wing populism by combining a focus on visuality, narratives, and emotions. We argue that right-wing populists’ claims extend to establishing alternative emotion norms that collectivize feelings and their expression, and are conveyed in visual narratives. The emotional range covered by these norms transcends emotions usually associated with right-wing populism such as fear or humiliation. By employing seemingly inoffensive modes of presentation, emotional responses including indignation, compassion, and schadenfreude can be used as narrative bait for hitherto uninterested audiences. Following from that, emotion norms, such as exclusive forms of sympathy and humor, can be established. We illustrate our argument in three short case studies from Austria, France, and Italy. The conceptual and methodological insights are particularly relevant for those interested in the power of emotions, different modes of visual storytelling in world politics, and the performative effects of right-wing populist practices and narratives in politics.
{"title":"It Just Feels Right. Visuality and Emotion Norms in Right-Wing Populist Storytelling","authors":"Freistein Katja, Gadinger Frank, Unrau Christine","doi":"10.1093/ips/olac017","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ips/olac017","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This paper contributes to debates on the growing appeal of right-wing populism by combining a focus on visuality, narratives, and emotions. We argue that right-wing populists’ claims extend to establishing alternative emotion norms that collectivize feelings and their expression, and are conveyed in visual narratives. The emotional range covered by these norms transcends emotions usually associated with right-wing populism such as fear or humiliation. By employing seemingly inoffensive modes of presentation, emotional responses including indignation, compassion, and schadenfreude can be used as narrative bait for hitherto uninterested audiences. Following from that, emotion norms, such as exclusive forms of sympathy and humor, can be established. We illustrate our argument in three short case studies from Austria, France, and Italy. The conceptual and methodological insights are particularly relevant for those interested in the power of emotions, different modes of visual storytelling in world politics, and the performative effects of right-wing populist practices and narratives in politics.","PeriodicalId":47361,"journal":{"name":"International Political Sociology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2022-10-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48563936","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article theorizes connected memory, or in other words how people remember each other's memories, through the connected histories of territorial partition in different contexts. It claims that social memories can travel beyond their original context, pushing beyond efforts to understand supranational “mnemonic communities,” or to understand cosmopolitan memory as a thin memory community encompassing all humanity. It builds on the idea of “connected histories,” arguing that existing approaches to social memory in world politics either neglect connections across national and regional boundaries or scale up the national model to the global level. The article uses the history of territorial partitions as an illustration of three types of connected memory: sympathetic, vicarious, and modular. Partition has often been studied in comparative or aggregative ways, ruling out the possibility that partitions affect each other. But from the partitions of Poland to the breakup of the Ottoman Empire, to Ireland, Palestine, and India, partitions have often been events remembered beyond the national context and in the plural. Such memories have, in turn, altered the imaginable possibilities of the future, for example, by providing precedents for or warnings about future partitions.
{"title":"Connected Memories: The International Politics of Partition, from Poland to India","authors":"Kerry Goettlich","doi":"10.1093/ips/olac016","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ips/olac016","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article theorizes connected memory, or in other words how people remember each other's memories, through the connected histories of territorial partition in different contexts. It claims that social memories can travel beyond their original context, pushing beyond efforts to understand supranational “mnemonic communities,” or to understand cosmopolitan memory as a thin memory community encompassing all humanity. It builds on the idea of “connected histories,” arguing that existing approaches to social memory in world politics either neglect connections across national and regional boundaries or scale up the national model to the global level. The article uses the history of territorial partitions as an illustration of three types of connected memory: sympathetic, vicarious, and modular. Partition has often been studied in comparative or aggregative ways, ruling out the possibility that partitions affect each other. But from the partitions of Poland to the breakup of the Ottoman Empire, to Ireland, Palestine, and India, partitions have often been events remembered beyond the national context and in the plural. Such memories have, in turn, altered the imaginable possibilities of the future, for example, by providing precedents for or warnings about future partitions.","PeriodicalId":47361,"journal":{"name":"International Political Sociology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2022-10-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42032504","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Walking is a nearly universal activity, even given the many contrivances invented to avoid it, yet it is widely absent from the sedentarist disciplines of politics and international relations. This absence is perhaps not surprising, given that so much political thought and practice are deeply tethered to the inventions of the boot and the chair that remove walking from our view, as Tim Ingold has observed. Yet, given the significance of events such as forced death marches as parts of war and genocide; formative collective walks such as Gandhi's march to the sea, the Long March in China, or the Selma to Montgomery marches; or the everyday politics of walking in global cities, such absence might be mistaken. This article suggests instead that walking be understood as integral to the operation of internationality. In particular, it argues that walking is part of a mobile field of power and agency that generates, stabilizes, and unsettles internationality in equal parts. The article diagrams some key conceptual nodes of walking and political power, and then traces their operation in the case of the Long Walk of the Navajo.
{"title":"Walking the International","authors":"R. Youatt","doi":"10.1093/ips/olac018","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ips/olac018","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Walking is a nearly universal activity, even given the many contrivances invented to avoid it, yet it is widely absent from the sedentarist disciplines of politics and international relations. This absence is perhaps not surprising, given that so much political thought and practice are deeply tethered to the inventions of the boot and the chair that remove walking from our view, as Tim Ingold has observed. Yet, given the significance of events such as forced death marches as parts of war and genocide; formative collective walks such as Gandhi's march to the sea, the Long March in China, or the Selma to Montgomery marches; or the everyday politics of walking in global cities, such absence might be mistaken. This article suggests instead that walking be understood as integral to the operation of internationality. In particular, it argues that walking is part of a mobile field of power and agency that generates, stabilizes, and unsettles internationality in equal parts. The article diagrams some key conceptual nodes of walking and political power, and then traces their operation in the case of the Long Walk of the Navajo.","PeriodicalId":47361,"journal":{"name":"International Political Sociology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2022-10-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43407750","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The idea of measurement (of bodies and identities) is a guiding principle of globalized surveillance in the War on Terror. Nevertheless, this inherently scientific notion is so naturalized in public and academic discourse that its meaning and implications are left undiscussed. This paper builds on quantum theory to present an immanent critique of measurement in surveillance. Foregrounding surveillance's transdisciplinary conceptual foundations, it argues that a notion of identity measurement centered on ambiguity and embodiment, rather than fixity and abstraction, reshapes the scope for political action and opens new avenues for critique. I suggest that a lack of critical engagement with the concept of measurement accounts for Surveillance Studies’ and International Political Sociology's difficulty in exploring the relation between the material–affective dimension of surveillance and its identity-fixing function. Challenging unquestioned notions of measurement in social science, quantum theory highlights the interconnected importance of ambiguity and embodiment in processes of identity measurement. Through the case of airport security, I illustrate how quantum measurement departs from recent critical accounts of surveillance—concerned with the fixity of unambiguous identities and the digital abstraction of bodies—and foregrounds the ambiguity of affect to postulate new forms of agency and resistance to the politics of surveillance.
{"title":"Subjects of Quantum Measurement: Surveillance and Affect in the War on Terror","authors":"Italo Brandimarte","doi":"10.1093/ips/olac012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ips/olac012","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The idea of measurement (of bodies and identities) is a guiding principle of globalized surveillance in the War on Terror. Nevertheless, this inherently scientific notion is so naturalized in public and academic discourse that its meaning and implications are left undiscussed. This paper builds on quantum theory to present an immanent critique of measurement in surveillance. Foregrounding surveillance's transdisciplinary conceptual foundations, it argues that a notion of identity measurement centered on ambiguity and embodiment, rather than fixity and abstraction, reshapes the scope for political action and opens new avenues for critique. I suggest that a lack of critical engagement with the concept of measurement accounts for Surveillance Studies’ and International Political Sociology's difficulty in exploring the relation between the material–affective dimension of surveillance and its identity-fixing function. Challenging unquestioned notions of measurement in social science, quantum theory highlights the interconnected importance of ambiguity and embodiment in processes of identity measurement. Through the case of airport security, I illustrate how quantum measurement departs from recent critical accounts of surveillance—concerned with the fixity of unambiguous identities and the digital abstraction of bodies—and foregrounds the ambiguity of affect to postulate new forms of agency and resistance to the politics of surveillance.","PeriodicalId":47361,"journal":{"name":"International Political Sociology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2022-08-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41667942","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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