scholarly journals The dark side of the Empire: Roman expansionism between object agency and predatory regime

Antiquity ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 94 (378) ◽  
pp. 1630-1639 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manuel Fernández-Götz ◽  
Dominik Maschek ◽  
Nico Roymans
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Rural Communities ◽  
Dark Side ◽  
Imperial Rome ◽  
Ethical Implications ◽  
Object Agency

This debate piece offers a critique of some recent ‘new materialist’ approaches and their application to Roman expansionism, particularly those positing that the study of ‘Romanisation’ should be about ‘understanding objects in motion’—a perspective that carries important political and ethical implications. Here, the authors introduce the alternative notion of a ‘predatory’ political economy for conceptualising Late Republican and Early Imperial Rome. The aim is to illuminate the darker sides of Roman expansionism in order to produce more balanced and inclusive accounts. Two cases studies—the archaeology of the Roman conquest and of rural communities—illustrate the potential of such a perspective.

Who is pulling the strings in the platform economy? Accounting for the dark and unexpected sides of algorithmic control

Organization ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 135050842097452
Author(s):  
Edouard Pignot
Keyword(s):  
Digital Control ◽  
Central Place ◽  
Dark Side ◽  
Theoretical Contribution ◽  
Ethical Implications ◽  
Labour Process ◽  
Structuralist Theory ◽  
Ideological Fantasy ◽  
Platform Economy ◽  
The Way

This paper aims to address the dark side perspective on digital control and surveillance by emphasizing the affective grip of ideological control, namely the process that silently ensures the subjugation of digital labour, and which keeps the ‘unexpectedness’ of algorithmic practices at bay: that is, the propensity of users to contest digital prescriptions. In particular, the theoretical contribution of this paper is to combine Labour Process with psychoanalytically-informed, post-structuralist theory, in order to connect to, and further our understanding of, how and why digital workers assent to, or oppose, the interpellations of algorithmic ideology at work. To illustrate the operation of affective control in the Platform Economy, the emblematic example of ride-hailing platforms, such as Uber, and their algorithmic management, is revisited. Thus, the empirical section describes the way drivers are glued to the algorithm (e.g. for one more fare, or for the next surge pricing) in a way that prevents them, although not always, from considering genuine resistance to management. Finally, the paper discusses the central place of ideological fantasy and cynical enjoyment in the Platform Economy, as well as the ethical implications of the study.

Understanding the medium of exchange1

2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Austin Hestdalen
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Media Ecology ◽  
Economic Conditions ◽  
Ecological Constraints ◽  
Ethical Implications ◽  
Intellectual Inquiry ◽  
Adequate Response ◽  
Economic Paradigm ◽  
Ecological Consideration ◽  
Historical Moment

In the wake of scandals at Cambridge Analytica/Facebook and Sinclair Broadcasting Group, the ethical implications of a digital economy for thought, word and deed come to the fore in political economy. Such questions require media ecological consideration for grounding ethics in the communicative domain between self, other and world. This theoretical exploration parses the historical intersections of studies in media ecology and political economy in an effort to understand both the medium of exchange and the ethical principle or techno-economic paradigm inherent to that medium. Media ecology is necessary for cultivating the ethical ground of political economy and reflectively engaging the implications of a hypermodern techno-economic paradigm for everyday communicative life. Further, media ecological constraints will be understood as perpetuating particular political and economic conditions in terms of the sensorial equilibrium of a noetic economy and the psychodynamics of human culture. After analysing the ethical demands of changing media ecologies, implications for the fields of political economy and media ecology in this hypermodern moment are presented. This exploration is offered as an initial foray into understanding the productive tensions of these two particular fields of intellectual inquiry and providing an adequate response to the questions of digital economics in this current historical moment.

The Dark Side of Gemeinschaft: Criminality within Rural Communities

2004 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 7-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elaine Barclay ◽  
Joseph F Donnermeyer ◽  
Patrick C Jobes
Keyword(s):  
Rural Communities ◽  
Dark Side

scholarly journals People in Villages: Micro-level Studies in Political Economy

1978 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 129-149 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert H. Bates
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Rural Communities ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
Peasant Communities ◽  
Ethical Evaluations ◽  
Micro Level ◽  
External Forces

Recent micro-level studies of rural communities in the developing areas address themselves to three basic issues: (1) What are the major external forces that determine the welfare of persons residing in rural areas? (2) How do peasants respond to these forces? (3) What ethical evaluations are to be made of the outcome of the encounter between peasant communities and the forces intruding upon them from their environment? By addressing these questions, and by formulating and utilizing explicit models of peasant behavior, these studies provide a coherent approach to the study of the developing areas.

scholarly journals The Necropolice Economy: Mapping Biopolitical Priorities and Human Expendability in the Time of COVID-19

Societies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 2
Author(s):  
Mark Howard
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
World Market ◽  
State Violence ◽  
Dark Side ◽  
Risk And Uncertainty ◽  
Capitalist System ◽  
The World

Necropolitics centers on the dark side of biopolitics, but if we are to take seriously Jacques Ranciere’s reassignment of ‘politics’ and ‘police,’ then what is revealed by necropolitical analysis is not simply the capacity to ‘make and let die’, but also the policing of a contingent order sustained by necropolitics. I describe this process as the necropolice-economy, and in this paper demonstrate its contours with reference to the COVID-19 pandemic which, I argue, has revealed the expendability of particular populations under conditions of risk and uncertainty. My analysis proceeds in three parts. First, I present the thesis of necropolice economy, arguing that the capitalist system has historically produced not simply a political economy, but a policed economy that induces a necropolitics of dispensability for unproductive or replaceable populations. Second, I develop this thesis by examining the relegation of society in relation to the economy amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. Third, I argue that the inability of states to be decisive in the pandemic reveals that the sovereign prerogative to decide on the exception is constrained by capitalist forces. This suggests that the world market is itself a sovereign force, though it is one that remains ever dependent on state violence. To conclude, I ask whether we can channel the trauma of death made visible into processes of memorialization that might catalyze revolutionary action, rather than accelerating the evolution of our necropolice economy into its next capitalist guise—I ask, provocatively, whether an emancipatory necropolitics might yet result from the contemporary moment.

Potential Employees' Ethical Perceptions of Active Monitoring: The Dark Side of Data Analytics

2016 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 107-124 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Holt ◽  
Bradley Lang ◽  
Steve G. Sutton
Keyword(s):  
Data Availability ◽  
Dark Side ◽  
Monitoring Systems ◽  
Willingness To Accept ◽  
Ethical Perceptions ◽  
Active Monitoring ◽  
Ethical Implications ◽  
Level Of Satisfaction ◽  
Improved Performance ◽  
The Impact

ABSTRACT Employees are increasingly monitored through integrated, data analytic-driven continuous (i.e., active) monitoring systems that analyze a wealth of data concerning their behaviors and actions. While use of these active monitoring systems has been advocated for improved performance measurement, increased productivity, and reduced costs, discussion has generally ignored the ethical implications of such monitoring as well as the impact on employees' morale and views of the organization. This study investigates these issues through application of contractarian ethics in the experimental examination of employees' beliefs and intentions based on organizational monitoring practices. In the first experiment, the level of monitoring and pay are varied to understand potential employees' perspectives on organizational ethics, willingness to accept a job with an organization, and their likely job satisfaction. While pay may sway willingness to accept a job and even the level of satisfaction, pay does not affect potential employees' ethical perceptions of the organization. Under high monitoring situations, potential employees consistently rate the ethics of the organization as poor. In a second experiment, four justifications that the literature suggests employers may provide for using employee monitoring are found to have no effect on employees' views about the organization in a high monitoring environment. Data Availability: Please contact the authors.

Exploring the dark side: Ethical implications of information technologies. Sponsored by SIG IFP, TIS, MED, ED

2005 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 474-474
Author(s):  
Theodore Allan Morris ◽  
Victor Rosenberg ◽  
Thomas J. Froehlich ◽  
Robert Guthrie ◽  
Martha M. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Information Technologies ◽  
Dark Side ◽  
Ethical Implications

On Self-Driving Cars as a Technological Sublime

2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 153-173 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia M. Hildebrand ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Visual Rhetoric ◽  
Dark Side ◽  
Ethical Challenges ◽  
Potential Harm ◽  
Ethical Implications ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
Technological Sublime ◽  
Light Side ◽  
Self Driving Cars ◽  
Political Economic

Driverless automobility presents a “technological sublime” (Marx 1964; Nye 1994, 1997) encompassing both promises and perils. The light side of the emerging transportation future lies, for instance, in the newly gained freedom from driving. The dark side of this sublime includes ethical challenges and potential harm resulting from the required socio-technical transformations of mobility. This article explores contemporary visions for the self-driving car future through the lens of the sublime and some of its theoretical variations, such as the natural (Kant 1965), technological (Marx 1964; Nye 1994, 1997), electrical (Carey and Quirk 1989), and digital (Mosco 2005) sublime. Nissan’s IDS Concept preview clip (2015) and the Chevrolet FNR trailer (2015) serve as examples for this analysis, which aims to demythologize the visual rhetoric of the depicted awe-inspiring self-driving systems. The sublime’s inherent dialectic of inducing both pleasure and displeasure is removed in the corporate utopian visions in favor of an exalting partnership between human and machine. This strategy succeeds by setting the mobility future in the context of controlled parameters such as the trustworthy communicative vehicle, the vital and independent protagonists, and the harmless and unharmed environment. Recognizing such recurring strategies and identifying the controlled parameters which allow the sublime object to electrify, not terrify, is key for a sensible engagement with such imagined futures and their social, cultural, political, economic, environmental, and ethical implications. Such premediations (Grusin 2010) of awe-inspiring technological formations and the underlying logics ask to be unpacked toward decision making that considers all potential facets of the sublime future.

scholarly journals Posthumanism, New Humanism and Beyond

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-7
Author(s):  
Guillermo Díaz de Liaño ◽  
Manuel Fernández-Götz
Keyword(s):  
Philosophical Anthropology ◽  
New Materialism ◽  
Social Critique ◽  
Valuable Alternative ◽  
New Humanism ◽  
Ethical Implications ◽  
Societal Challenges ◽  
Ontological Turn ◽  
Empty Signifier ◽  
Object Agency

In this paper, we analyse some of the issues associated with the posthumanist rejection of Humanism. First, we discuss some of the possibilities and challenges that New Materialism and the Ontological Turn have brought into archaeology in terms of understanding past ontologies and decolonizing archaeological thought. Then, focusing on the concept of agency, we reflect on how its use by some posthumanist authors risks turning it into an empty signifier, which can have ethical implications and limit archaeology's potential for social critique. The concept of things’ effectancy is presented as a valuable alternative to previous conceptualizations of ‘object agency’. While we acknowledge the heuristic potential of many posthumanist proposals, we believe that humanist perspectives should not be rejected altogether. Instead of creating rigid divides, we argue that elements of New Humanism, as recently defined by philosophical anthropology, can hold value when facing current societal challenges.

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