Precarious encampments in hostile border zones: the methodological challenges of and possibilities for studying contingent camps

Area ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Hagan
Keyword(s):  
Methodological Challenges ◽  
Border Zones

Automated Border Control: Criminalizing the “Hidden Intent” of Migrant Embodiment

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Felicity Amaya Schaeffer
Keyword(s):  
Homeland Security ◽  
Racial Bias ◽  
Great Part ◽  
The Body ◽  
Industrial Complex ◽  
Border Control ◽  
Computer Engineering ◽  
Novel Technologies ◽  
Surveillance Technology ◽  
Border Zones

I argue that we are entering an automated era of border control that I label a border-biosecurity industrial complex. Funded in great part by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), scientific research and automated surveillance technologies promise the state innovative and supposedly unbiased solutions to the challenge of border control and security. This article spotlights a border surveillance technology called AVATAR (Automated Virtual Agent for Truth Assessment in Real-Time). Analyzing this technology, which was funded by the DHS and developed by faculty at the University of Arizona’s National Center for Border Security and Immigration (BORDERS), allows me to assess how the emphasis on novel technologies to detect terrorists unleashes the search for ubiquitous surveillance devices programmed to detect deviant behavioral and physiological movements. I offer a wider view of this technology-in-the-making by analyzing how university research in aerial defense, the psychology of deception, the life sciences, and computer engineering influences the development of surveillance devices and techniques. I explore how, during a posthuman era, automated technologies detect and racialize “suspect life” under the guise of scientific neutrality and supposedly free from human interference. Suspect life refers to the racial bias preprogrammed into algorithms that compute danger or risk into certain human movements and regions such as border zones. As these technologies turn the body into matter, they present biological life as a more scientifically verifiable truth than human verbal testimony, moving border control from the adjudication of law through the subjective interview to the automated body that speaks a truth more powerful than a complex story can tell.

Research on Serendipity: The Methodological Challenges of Time and Language

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lori McCay-Peet ◽  
Anabel Quan-Haase ◽  
Dagmar Kern ◽  
Peter Mutschke
Keyword(s):  
Work Task ◽  
Methodological Challenges

We explore the words academics (N = 26) in Germanyuse to describe unexpected and useful experienceswith information. We further report on the perceptionsof a portion of the participants’ experiences during anexploratory work task and a follow-up survey designedto capture reports of serendipity several days later.Nous explorons les mots que les universitaires (N =26) utilisent en Allemagne pour décrire desexpériences inattendues et utiles lors demanipulations d’information. Par ailleurs, nousrendons compte des perceptions d’une partie desexpériences des participants au cours d’une sessionde travaux exploratoires et une enquête de suiviconçue pour enregistrer les mentions de sérendipitéplusieurs jours plus tard.

The Science of Wisdom in a Polarized World: Knowns and Unknowns

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Igor Grossmann ◽  
Nic M. Weststrate ◽  
Monika Ardelt ◽  
Justin Peter Brienza ◽  
Mengxi Dong ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Problem Solving ◽  
Best Practices ◽  
Cognitive Sciences ◽  
Methodological Challenges ◽  
The Common ◽  
Empirical Approaches ◽  
And Training ◽  
Contextual Differences

Interest in wisdom in the cognitive sciences, psychology, and education has been paralleled by conceptual confusions about its nature and assessment. To clarify these issues and promote consensus in the field, wisdom researchers met in Toronto in July of 2019, resolving disputes through discussion. Guided by a survey of scientists who study wisdom-related constructs, we established a common wisdom model, observing that empirical approaches to wisdom converge on the morally-grounded application of metacognition to reasoning and problem-solving. After outlining the function of relevant metacognitive and moral processes, we critically evaluate existing empirical approaches to measurement and offer recommendations for best practices. In the subsequent sections, we use the common wisdom model to selectively review evidence about the role of individual differences for development and manifestation of wisdom, approaches to wisdom development and training, as well as cultural, subcultural, and social-contextual differences. We conclude by discussing wisdom’s conceptual overlap with a host of other constructs and outline unresolved conceptual and methodological challenges.

Doing Tricks

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rodrigo Borba
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Feminist Theory ◽  
Sex Work ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Sex Industry ◽  
Commercial Sex ◽  
Business Transaction ◽  
Methodological Challenges ◽  
Social Scientific

Sex work has long been of interest to a variety of fields, among them anthropology, sociology, public health, and feminist theory, to name but a few. However, with very few exceptions, sociolinguistics seems to have ignored the fact that commercial sex, as an intersubjective business transaction, is primarily negotiated in embodied linguistic interaction. By reviewing publications in distinct social scientific areas that directly or indirectly discuss the role of language in the sex industry, this chapter critically assesses the analytical affordances and methodological challenges for a sociolinguistics of sex work. It does so by discussing the “tricks” played by sex work, as a power-infused context of language use in which issues of agency (or lack thereof) are paramount, on sociolinguistic theory and methods. The chapter concludes that the study of language in commercial sex venues is sociolinguistically promising and epistemologically timely.

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