Opening up the black box: citizen group strategies for engaging grassroots activism in the twenty-first century

As Benjamin Selwyn points out in his sharp and thoughtful The Struggle for Development, capital-centered development deepens exploitation. Selwyn powerfully challenges the capitalist road to further immiseration for the majority of the world's population, opening up an important discussion regarding what is to be done in the twenty-first century. An alternative form of development, led by the laboring classes, is not only necessary but possible. Above all, "labouring-class movements and struggles against capitalist exploitation can be, and are, developmental in and of themselves."

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Introduction

Gaming Sexism ◽

10.18574/nyu/9781479838523.003.0001 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 1-22

Author(s):

Amanda C. Cote

Keyword(s):

Video Games ◽

First Century ◽

Video Gaming ◽

Mobile Games ◽

Theoretical Concepts ◽

Early Twenty ◽

Twenty First Century ◽

The One ◽

Opening Up ◽

Key Questions

Video games in the early twenty-first century face a deep contradiction. On the one hand, the spread of casual, social, and mobile games has led researchers, journalists, and players to believe that video gaming is opening up to previously marginalized audiences, especially women. At the same time, game culture has seen significant incidents of sexism and misogyny. The introduction outlines this contradiction and lays out the book’s key questions. First, how and why do these contradictory narratives coexist? Second, what impact does this have on marginalized game audiences, specifically women, as they try to enter game culture and spaces? And finally, what are the impacts of this struggle, and what can be learned from women’s strategies for managing their presence in a masculinized, often exclusionary space? The chapter also addresses the main theoretical concepts that undergird the book’s argument, including gender, hegemony, and feminism/postfeminism.

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Conclusion

Laughing to Keep from Dying ◽

10.5622/illinois/9780252043390.003.0006 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 151-164

Author(s):

Danielle Fuentes Morgan

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

African American ◽

Black Identity ◽

First Century ◽

Saturday Night ◽

Stand Up Comedy ◽

Twenty First Century ◽

Saturday Night Live ◽

Opening Up

The book concludes with Dave Chappelle and his return to the stand-up comedy stage and Saturday Night Live. It examines a burgeoning sense of African American satire in the twenty-first century as focused not necessarily on inspiring easy laughter but instead on opening up space for Black selfhood. A post-“post-racial” United States demands that our satirists offer productive ways to express Black identity in a world that seems increasingly self-satirizing. This conclusion underscores the idea of kaleidoscopic Blackness and the variety of valid ways of autonomously choosing to express Black identity in the twenty-first century.

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An intimate appearance: Black Box Production in the twenty-first century

Scene ◽

10.1386/scene.1.2.207_1 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 1 (2) ◽

pp. 207-215

Author(s):

Rachel Kinsman Steck

Keyword(s):

Black Box ◽

First Century ◽

Twenty First Century

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From black box to glocalised player? Corporate personality in the twenty-first century and the scope of law’s regulatory reach

Northern Ireland Legal Quarterly ◽

10.53386/nilq.v62i4.429 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 62 (4) ◽

pp. 433-449

Author(s):

Gary Wilson

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

Black Box ◽

First Century ◽

Karl Polanyi ◽

Institutional Legitimacy ◽

Economic Paradigm ◽

The Social ◽

Twenty First Century ◽

Current Financial Crisis ◽

Corporate Personality

This article seeks to investigate the evolving notion of corporate personality from the nineteenth century to the present and the scope for the regulatory effect of law thereon especially in terms of the ongoing management of the relationship between the economic and the social spheres. Utilising the work of the economic historian Karl Polanyi on the rise of the self-regulating market in the nineteenth century, it will suggest that the most appropriate image underlying the dominant legal conception of the company in the twentieth century was that of a black box by which the company was largely isolated from its broader social and political environment as a result of the complex interaction of legal and economic discourses surrounding the emergence of a distinct market-based economic sphere. In the light of the current financial crisis, and even more pertinently against the backdrop of the risk of potentially irreversible environmental degradation, many of the fundamentals of the market-based economic paradigm are presently being called into question. Accordingly, it will be argued, drawing upon Polanyi’s notion of the double movement read in the light of Ulrich Beck’s account of reflexive modernity, that the black box model of the company is increasingly perceived as inappropriate for the twenty-first century and that to attain greater institutional legitimacy there is pressure for the legal conception of corporate personality to be reconfigured as that of a glocalised player open to its environment. The article will conclude by examining the scope of law’s regulatory power to construct such a holistic corporate personality capable of commanding such institutional legitimacy, with particular reference to the significance of s. 172 Companies Act 2006.

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Procedural Architecture Matters

10.37419/lr.v1.i3.5 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 1 (3) ◽

pp. 615-679

Author(s):

J. Brad Bernthal

Keyword(s):

Innovation Policy ◽

The United States ◽

Black Box ◽

Federal Communications Commission ◽

First Century ◽

Policy Performance ◽

Communications Industry ◽

Independent Expert ◽

Twenty First Century ◽

Architecture Analysis

This Article examines the puzzle of whether today’s Federal Communications Commission (“FCC” or the “Agency”) is institutionally suited to craft telecommunications innovation policy and, if not, what changes are needed to better equip the Agency to respond to twenty-first century realities. Evaluation of FCC innovation policy performance is stubbornly difficult. Some criticize the FCC as a brake on innovation yet, under the FCC’s oversight, the United States’ communications industry has become an innovative engine propelling the overall economy more than ever before. It is difficult to untangle whether the FCC deserves credit for helping usher in today’s communications age, whether the FCC deserves blame for hamstringing innovation, or both. New tools are needed to address this puzzle. This Article develops such a tool, the procedural architecture analysis. A detail-rich examination of the FCC’s procedural architecture—viz., the Agency’s formal and informal procedures, resources, and institutional norms—reveals systemic FCC leanings that are in tension with oft-stated innovation objectives. The Article cracks the black box problem, whereby much Agency decision-making is not readily observable, by studying a key yet understudied input: the advocacy of those who practice in front of the FCC. Procedural architecture analysis reveals surprising gaps between administrative process theory’s ideals and FCC realities. Moreover, it underscores crucial reforms needed to enable the FCC to act faster, marshal independent expert resources that it conspicuously lacks, and broadly fulfill its twenty-first century imperative to facilitate telecommunications innovation.

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Digital Failures in Twenty-First-Century Abolitionist Ethnography

Social Analysis ◽

10.3167/sa.2020.650108 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 65 (1) ◽

pp. 123-132

Author(s):

Jason Bartholomew Scott

Keyword(s):

Social Media ◽

First Century ◽

Grassroots Organizations ◽

Grassroots Activism ◽

Government Institutions ◽

Internal Politics ◽

Twenty First Century ◽

Use Of Social Media ◽

Lasting Influence ◽

Insight Into

In an era when grassroots activism is defined by the use of social media, the democratic potentials of the Internet are constantly confronted by a shifting set of practical and political obstacles. Organizations seeking to abolish violent policing, for example, use social media to mobilize widespread support, but can fail to solidify lasting influence within government institutions. Similarly, twenty-first-century ethnographers have gained the ability to interact with grassroots organizations over social media, but often fail to gain insight into a movement’s internal politics or day-to-day struggles. This article focuses on the challenges of anti-violence activists in Brazilian favelas following the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics. The author explores how ethnographers can create a sense of continuity out of digital failure.

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