RE-THINKING RACIALIZATION

This paper seeks to scrutinize the most recent definition of racialization, as proposed by Adam Hochman, and interrogate its utility as a productive analytic for social scientists. Due to theoretical conflations between race and racism, and analytical conflations of groupness and category, racialization functions as a tautological descriptive rather than an agenda-setting theoretical framework for scholars studying race. The most recent definition of the concept cannot, and does not try to, account for a mechanism for the process of racialization. Such an accounting is a necessary component of any conceptualization that aims to help identify the origins of racialization. Second, in the absence of locating an agent or mechanism, the concept is tautologized: racialization, with an inability to locate a mechanism, offers itself up as the mechanism. Third, this tautologizing leads to a profound conflation of racialization offered as both a descriptive and a causal concept. Not only does this conflation halt the analytic capacity of the term as it applies to social scientific uses, but this conflation proves harmful for the anti-realist agenda as proposed by Hochman. By conflating analyses of causality with description, the latest definition of racialization unknowingly countersigns a uniquely American ideological conception of race; that is, the latest definition allows a description of the appearance of race to stand in for an explanation for race.

Protectors without Prerogative: The Challenge of Military Defense against Information Warfare

This article considers the unique threat of information warfare and the challenges posed to defense establishments in democratic states that are typically legally limited in their ability to operate in domestic affairs. This author argues that military strategy on information warfare must be informed by understanding the systems of social and political function being targeted by foreign adversaries. Looking to theories of political communication, the author locates such understanding in describing democracies as information systems whose functionality resides in the countervailing operation of key social forces. Defense establishments would do well to develop greater analytic capacity for prediction of attack based on such societal—rather than strategic—factors and incorporate these predictions into efforts to shape adversary behavior in cyberspace, the primary medium via which information warfare is prosecuted today.

Computational Intelligence in Energy Generation

As economies become increasingly complex, so do their associated energy generation systems. Therefore, engineers and decision makers in this sector are spurred to seek out state-of-the-art approaches to deal with this rapid increase in system complexity. An effective strategy to deal with this scenario is to employ computational intelligence (CI) methods. CI supplements the heuristics used by the engineer—enhancing the cumulative analytic capacity to effectively resolve complicated scenarios. CI could be split to two classes: predictive modeling and optimization. In this chapter, past applications of CI in energy generation are discussed. The sectors presented here are renewable energy systems, distributed generation, nuclear power plants, coal power, and gas-fueled plants.

Affectivity

This chapter demonstrates the analytic capacity of the enactive approach developed throughout the book. The author draws once again on Merleau-Ponty, as well as recent additions to his work by the neuroscientist Francisco Varela and the cultural theorist Mark Hansen, in order to explore how listeners’ fundamental capacity to both affect and be affected by musical sounds in essence generates lived musical time. The chapter explores the consequences of this process with an analysis of time and eternity in Louis Andriessen’s monumental work De Tijd (1979–81). The author illustrates how Andriessen creates the conditions of opportunity for the enactment of multiple temporalities, leading to the possibility of experiencing “chronal anxiety.”

Where Impact Measurement Meets Evaluation

In 2016, the American Evaluation Association cosponsored a conference themed “impact convergence” with Social Value International, an international organization focusing on impact measurement in the context of social investment. These meetings spurred interest in the intersection between evaluation and impact measurement. We organized this forum in the spirit of continuing the conversation about common and unique challenges along with potential solutions that each community might further explore. We invited members of both organizations whose work situate them at the nexus of evaluation and impact measurement to contribute thought pieces on the demand for meaningful data and evidence, the need for analytic capacity, and measurement challenges—contemporary issues at the heart of both fields. Contributors highlight the need for crossing disciplinary boundaries and propose strategies for arriving at this end goal. Solutions include creating space for meaningful discourse, representing diverse stakeholder perspectives, building intersectional communities of practice, and leveraging evaluative thinking.