scholarly journals Data Colonialism: Rethinking Big Data’s Relation to the Contemporary Subject

2018 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 336-349 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nick Couldry ◽  
Ulises A. Mejias
Keyword(s):  
Social Order ◽  
Data Stream ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Social Discrimination ◽  
Social Data ◽  
For Profit ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Form ◽  
New Social Order

We are often told that data are the new oil. But unlike oil, data are not a substance found in nature. It must be appropriated. The capture and processing of social data unfolds through a process we call data relations, which ensures the “natural” conversion of daily life into a data stream. The result is nothing less than a new social order, based on continuous tracking, and offering unprecedented new opportunities for social discrimination and behavioral influence. We propose that this process is best understood through the history of colonialism. Thus, data relations enact a new form of data colonialism, normalizing the exploitation of human beings through data, just as historic colonialism appropriated territory and resources and ruled subjects for profit. Data colonialism paves the way for a new stage of capitalism whose outlines we only glimpse: the capitalization of life without limit.

Scriptural Battlefields: The Old Testament, Legal Culture, and the Polemics of the Spanish New World Empire, 1492–1821

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra ◽  
Adrian Masters
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Social Order ◽  
New World ◽  
Legal Culture ◽  
Spanish Empire ◽  
Correct Interpretation ◽  
Group Status ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Social Order

Scholars have barely begun to explore the role of the Old Testament in the history of the Spanish New World. And yet this text was central for the Empire’s legal thought, playing a role in its legislation, adjudication, and understandings of group status. Institutions like the Council of the Indies, the Inquisition, and the monarchy itself invited countless parallels to ancient Hebrew justice. Scripture influenced how subjects understood and valued imperial space as well as theories about Paradise or King Solomon’s mines of Ophir. Scripture shaped debates about the nature of the New World past, the legitimacy of the conquest, and the questions of mining, taxation, and other major issues. In the world of privilege and status, conquerors and pessimists could depict the New World and its peoples as the antithesis of Israel and the Israelites, while activists, patriots, and women flipped the script with aplomb. In the readings of Indians, American-born Spaniards, nuns, and others, the correct interpretation of the Old Testament justified a new social order where these groups’ supposed demerits were in reality their virtues. Indeed, vassals and royal officials’ interpretations of the Old Testament are as diverse as the Spanish Empire itself. Scripture even outlasted the Empire. As republicans defeated royalists in the nineteenth century, divergent readings of the book, variously supporting the Israelite monarchy or the Hebrew republic, had their day on the battlefield itself.

‘Morals can not be drawn from facts but guidance may be’: the early life of W.D. Hamilton's theory of inclusive fitness

2015 ◽  
Vol 48 (4) ◽  
pp. 543-563 ◽  
Author(s):  
SARAH A. SWENSON
Keyword(s):  
Social Order ◽  
Inclusive Fitness ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Political ◽  
Selfish Gene ◽  
New Synthesis ◽  
Sociopolitical Context ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
New Social Order

AbstractW.D. Hamilton's theory of inclusive fitness saw the evolution of altruism from the point of view of the gene. It was at heart a theory of limits, redefining altruistic behaviours as ultimately selfish. This theory inspired two controversial texts published almost in tandem, E.O. Wilson's Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (1975) and Richard Dawkins's The Selfish Gene (1976). When Wilson and Dawkins were attacked for their evolutionary interpretations of human societies, they claimed a distinction between reporting what is and declaring what ought to be. Can the history of sociobiological theories be so easily separated from its sociopolitical context? This paper draws upon unpublished materials from the 1960s and early 1970s and documents some of the ways in which Hamilton saw his research as contributing to contemporary concerns. It pays special attention to the 1969 Man and Beast Smithsonian Institution symposium in order to explore the extent to which Hamilton intended his theory to be merely descriptive versus prescriptive. From this, we may see that Hamilton was deeply concerned about the political chaos he perceived in the world around him, and hoped to arrive at a level of self-understanding through science that could inform a new social order.

Anniversary Address

1944 ◽  
Vol 24 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 85-93 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alfred Clapham
Keyword(s):  
Social Order ◽  
Human History ◽  
Profound Change ◽  
Melting Pot ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Creation ◽  
New Social Order ◽  
Victorian Age

The past year has witnessed a profound change in the fortunes and prospects of the national cause; growing hope has been exchanged for the certainty of victory and ‘how long?’ is the only question yet unanswered. To some of us who have passed an appreciable portion of our lives in the Victorian age, the shattering of the old security, the reversal of the old standards, and the casting of the old society into the melting-pot, may seem too catastrophic a series of changes to have been suitably experienced in one lifetime. Yet to those with a lively historic sense it must afford a certain bitter satisfaction, to have lived in and outlived the most momentous age in the history of mankind and to have been spectators of, or participators in, the grimmest drama of human history. It should furthermore be a stimulus to further effort that we may before long have an opportunity of assisting in the restoration of all that was best in the old life and in the creation of the new social order which will we hope, in time, soften or efface the memories of five purgatorial years.

scholarly journals Melampaui Kedirian Identitas Batak Melalui Ritual dan Sejarah Masyarakatnya Atas Inspirasi Levinas

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 174-189
Author(s):  
Maria Anggreini Grace Kelly Habeahan ◽  
Ruth Florescia Simanjuntak ◽  
Rustono Farady Marta
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Social Reality ◽  
Original Condition ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Social Construct ◽  
Interpretive Paradigm ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Individual

This study aims to determine the identity and selfhood of each Batak community towards the messages conveyed by their ancestors to be applied in the daily life of the Batak community. The research uses an interpretive paradigm, which views social reality as something dynamic, processed and full of subjective meaning. Social reality is nothing but a social construct. The author describes the Batak community's construction of the philosophy passed down from their ancestors in the life of individual relations with their groups. Qualitative research leads to the original condition the subject is in. The results of this study have revealed that every dialogue that is displayed has the identity of the Batak tribe that has been created due to infinite things that can transcend human beings and continue to be carried out across generations. This belief is repeated from each generation to be applied to their descendants for every ancestral message, traditional rituals, and history of the Batak community to give identity to selfhood as an individual of the Batak tribe. The conclusion is to find things that are not visible, that do not exist in this program to explain the identity of the Batak people. What transcends the individual into what does not exist is an identity for Batak society. The principle of living with the Batak philosophy, and the consequences of not doing it, is the reason every individual is trapped in having to carry out a culture like it or not as Batak society.

scholarly journals AN IMPERATIVE NEED FOR A NEW SOCIAL ORDER IN MICROFINANCE COMMUNITY - TOWARDS USHERING IN A RESILIENT ECO-SYSTEM IN THE BATTLE AGAINST CORONA PANDEMIC

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (8) ◽  
pp. 107-123
Author(s):  
Ali Saleh Alshebami ◽  
V. Rengarajan
Keyword(s):  
Social Order ◽  
Preventive Measures ◽  
Secondary Data ◽  
Face Mask ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Physical Capability ◽  
Demand And Supply ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Last Mile ◽  
New Social Order

The battle against corona does not confine to only economic resurgence by supplying microcredit to the poor clients in both demand and supply sides of microfinance sector but how to protect them from the offense of the corona in the health perspectives. In other words, imperatively it is warranted that the survival of human beings in the pandemic in the Microfinance sector merits attention on priority in the revival package.  It is therefore surmised that in the process of ushering in a new social order with a resilient ecology in the Microfinance sector, there is a dilemma in awarding priority either for economic revival through the flow of microcredit for releasing financial stress or human survival with the resilient physical capability in the process of recovery from the pandemic. The study, based on secondary data, concludes that Microfinance actors need to consider that economic revival bundle should not confine with a fresh dose of microcredit alone and recovery of it collectively or individually in Microfinance sector without synchronizing a social-oriented bundle in the micro-financial package towards nurturing on health care awareness and for the obedience of obligatory preventive measures namely social distancing, Face mask, washing hands by the poor clients in the last mile. Any assumption on this issue is dangerous. The latter that guarantees the basic survival of the customers from the Corona pandemic, should precede the former one or get integrated simultaneously with it to generate a resilient ecosystem from interdisciplinary perspectives. Otherwise, another Microfinance crisis is forthcoming.

A History of the Gendarmerie in Niger

2020 ◽  
pp. 19-40
Author(s):  
Mirco Göpfert
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social Order ◽  
National Language ◽  
Subsistence Farmers ◽  
History Of ◽  
French Colonial ◽  
Normative Order ◽  
Rural Police ◽  
Rural Niger ◽  
New Social Order

This chapter traces the history of the Nigerien gendarmerie. The gendarmes and their colonial predecessors—the tirailleurs, méharistes, gardes de cercle, and colonial gendarmes—have always worked in vast rural Niger, populated almost exclusively by subsistence farmers and pastoralists. Since the early twentieth century, these “strangers” have disciplined the rural population, managed the French colonial, later Nigerien national territory, spread French as the national language, established bureaucratic procedures, and imposed French colonial, then Nigerien national law. They have been advancing into a sphere they perceived as an “institutional vacuum” open to legitimate intrusion and in need of a new social order. Working between the known and the unknown, the familiar and the unfamiliar, rural police forces tried to make society legible to govern it and turn a social hieroglyph into an administratively more convenient format of numbers and texts. At the same time, they attempted to impose a normative order on what they perceive as a savage and chaotic illegitimate sphere. The gendarmes have been pushing this frontier ever since; yet it cannot be crossed—it is the bureaucratic horizon that moves with them.

scholarly journals Fleeting gestures and changing styles of greeting: researching daily life in British towns in the long eighteenth century

Urban History ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Penelope J. Corfield
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Clear Signal ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Form ◽  
Many Sources ◽  
Long Eighteenth Century ◽  
Different Sources

Abstract Researching the history of daily greetings is challenging, because references are casual and scattered through many sources. Nonetheless, some broad trends are apparent. In eighteenth-century Britain, the old tradition of deep bowing and curtseying was slowly attenuating into a brisker touching of the cap or head (for men) and a quick bob (for women). Yet that transition was not the whole story. Simultaneously, a new form of urban greeting, in the form of the handshake, was emerging. The strengths and weaknesses of many different sources are here assessed, including novels, plays, letters, diaries, etiquette books, travelogues and legal depositions, as well as artwork. Strategies for analysis are identified, with a warning against generalizing from single references in single sources. Finally, the emergence of the handshake among the middle class in Britain's eighteenth-century towns gives a clear signal that socio-cultural change does not invariably start at the ‘top’ and ‘trickle down’.

Per una storia della paranoia

2009 ◽  
pp. 109-141
Author(s):  
German E. Berrios
Keyword(s):  
Social Order ◽  
Social Response ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Historical Method ◽  
Target Behaviour ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Unrest ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
Cambridge School

- This article is about the historiography of paranoia, that is, the historical method that should be used to write on the origins of "paranoia". It illustrates the historical approach developed by the Cambridge school (see Berrios, 1996). According to the latter, the history of paranoia consists in the hermeneutic analysis of those narratives constructed by Western societies to deal with that subset of human beings who express persistent, exaggerated (and occasionally overbearing) self-referential beliefs, and often enough carry a personality to match. The latest of such narratives (and still predominating today) emerged during the 19th century and was the first fully to medicalize its target behaviour. Constructed in a period when the social order was being threatened by intense political unrest, the paranoia narrative should best be seen as the expression of a collective social response to such threat resulting from the convergence of an ancient word (paranoia), a relatively new concept (self-referentiality) and a set of behaviours (selected in terms of their oddity and nuisance value).

scholarly journals Conceptualizing Artificial Intelligence through Alternate NEO-Planetary Models in the Science Fiction of Dan Simmons

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (12) ◽  
pp. 3218-3221
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Mechanical Efficiency ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Technological Competence ◽  
Scientific Innovation ◽  
Machine Interface ◽  
The Mind ◽  
New Social Order

The technological competence of a nation is confirmed by the number of successful space expeditions. Science Fiction from the early 1900s has dealt with the idea of living in conceptual spaces. This paper deals with select works of Dan Simmons including four prize-winning Science Fiction novels which are usually referred to as the Hyperion (1989), The Fall of Hyperion (1989), Endymion (1996), The Rise of Endymion (1989). In modern Techno-Fiction, the mind of the man and the scientific innovation of the machine have been harmoniously brought into existence as Cyborgs through Artificial Intelligence. The life expectancy and the available technical manifestations would seem scarce to get into a feasible interface of enhanced human beings and mechanical efficiency to accelerate the voyage into an anticipated future. This study further examines the ways in which the incredible complexity of the Cybernetic self has been portrayed in the works of Simmons. The principle aim of this proposed paper is to understand the context of the technological forces unbridled in the man-machine interface and how it has been constitutive of bringing up a new social order. It further analyses how symbolic, social spaces can be experienced adversely by multiple Man-Machine synthesis - mutant beings and clones during the planetary invasions. It is unnatural of a Cyborg to think politically or materialistically, as the functioning would be predominantly based on the commands received from its Artificial Intelligence led consciousness. Moreover, Cybernetics would be an exploration into the formidable secrets, the realm of decrypting ciphers and interpreting codes and cryptograms. Furthermore, embracing the possibilities without a foresight into the Man-Machine synthesis, might lead the whole humanity into a catastrophe depicted by Simmons.

“Society Is a Simple and Beautiful Science”

2021 ◽  
pp. 34-75
Author(s):  
Mark A. Allison
Keyword(s):  
Social Order ◽  
Focal Point ◽  
Great Difficulty ◽  
The Political ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
William Hazlitt ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Political Left ◽  
New Social Order ◽  
The Church

This chapter investigates British socialism’s symbolic birth: Robert Owen’s unveiling of his plan for an entirely new social order in the summer of 1817. Although Owen has been canonized as a stalwart of the political left, his proposals baffled and enraged partisans across the ideological spectrum. Commentators had great difficulty deciding whether his “Plan” was radical or reactionary—or even if it was “political” at all. Using the vitriolic debates that consumed the Plan as a focal point (and drawing on contemporary commentators as varied as William Hazlitt, Thomas Malthus, and George Cruikshank), this chapter undertakes a revisionary interpretation of Owenite socialism that uncovers its latent aesthetic core. Owen and his followers have long been associated with utilitarian indifference, if not downright vulgarian insensitivity, to the arts. However, Owen’s very ambition to govern citizens without recourse to the state or the Church rests upon an aesthetic substratum. This chapter demonstrates that the curriculum Owen designed to produce human beings who would not require “politics” to produce consensus relies upon extensive training in the musical arts to inculcate the principle of universal harmony. The final part of this chapter locates the origins of British anti-socialist rhetoric at the juncture of Malthusian political economy and anti-Jacobin polemic.

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