AI Based Monitoring of Different Risk Levels in COVID-19 Context

COVID-19 was responsible for devastating social, economic, and political effects all over the world. Although the health authorities imposed restrictions provided relief and assisted with trying to return society to normal life, it is imperative to monitor people’s behavior and risk factors to keep virus transmission levels as low as possible. This article focuses on the application of deep learning algorithms to detect the presence of masks on people in public spaces (using RGB cameras), as well as the detection of the caruncle in the human eye area to make an accurate measurement of body temperature (using thermal cameras). For this task, synthetic data generation techniques were used to create hybrid datasets from public ones to train state-of-the-art algorithms, such as YOLOv5 object detector and a keypoint detector based on Resnet-50. For RGB mask detection, YOLOv5 achieved an average precision of 82.4%. For thermal masks, glasses, and caruncle detection, YOLOv5 and keypoint detector achieved an average precision of 96.65% and 78.7%, respectively. Moreover, RGB and thermal datasets were made publicly available.

Political Effects of Digital Transformation of Urban Governance (On the Example of Moscow)

The paper is devoted to the study of particular political effects of digitalization of urban governance in the Russian Federation. Based on the concept of «surveillance capitalism» and research on the digital transformation of public administration, the authors analyzes the structure and logic of functioning of the «smart city» model using the example of Moscow. Based on the material of street protests, the political effects of the use of digital infrastructure by the city authorities, in particular, camera systems with face recognition technologies, are examined. The study of the Russian situation correlates with the latest decisions of the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council and the European Union’s initiatives to control remote biometric recognition technologies.

Oil discoveries and political windfalls: Evidence on presidential support in Uganda

Oil discoveries, paired with delays in production, have created a new phenomenon: sustained post-discovery, pre-production periods. While research on the resource curse has debated the effects of oil on governance and conflict, less is known about the political effects of oil discoveries absent production. Using comprehensive electoral data from Uganda and a difference-in-difference design with heterogeneous effects, we show that oil discoveries increased electoral support for the incumbent chief executive in localities proximate to discoveries, even prior to production. Moreover, the biggest effects occurred in localities that were historically most electorally competitive. Overall, we show that the political effects of oil discoveries vary subnationally depending on local political context and prior to production, with important implications for understanding the roots of the political and conflict curses.

The Asymmetrical Effect of Polarization on Support for Independence: The Case of Catalonia

The article analyses the consequences of elite polarization at the mass level in the centre-periphery dimension. We analyse the rapid rise in support for independence in Catalonia, focusing on the role of party competition around the centre-periphery cleavage. We argue that mainstream actors’ adoption of centrifugal party strategies with respect to the national question produced a polarizing dynamic in the party system that eventually caused voters’ attitudes regarding the centre-periphery issue to harden. Indeed, we posit that this increase in mass polarization was a consequence of party agency that subsequently helped to drive attitudes regarding independence. To test this hypothesis, we measure centre-periphery polarization (as perceived by voters) by adopting two different perspectives—inter-party distances (horizontal polarization) and party-voter distances (vertical polarization)—and then run logistic regressions to explain support for independence. The findings show an asymmetrical effect on polarization. While the centrifugal strategy implemented by Catalan regionalist parties paved the way for a radicalization of voters on the Catalan nationalist side, among voters for non-regionalist parties, attitudes towards independence were initially less conditioned by this polarization. The results provide evidence of the political effects of elite polarization.

Refusing relocation: Urban street vendors and the problem of the neoliberal device

In 2010, the City of Dakar published its new master plan for a clean, competitive, modern city. This plan entailed the relocation of thousands of walking street vendors to free up traffic circulation and reduce the economic costs of congestion. Unlike previous relocations, this program required the political participation of vendor associations in the planning and design of a new commercial center. It also required the vendors to pay user charges: monthly payments for the use of the center and its utilities. Yet most Dakar's street vendors unequivocally refused to relocate, citing the building's poor location, bad design, and high price. Such user charges have become a contentious device with which governments across the world are financing the provision of public services. In this article, I analyze the politics of this device by tracing the linkages from Dakar's relocation program back to the political philosophies of prominent intellectuals commonly associated with “neoliberalism.” In doing so, I reveal how popular refusal is not beyond or opposed to a depoliticizing neoliberalism, but instead forms an integral part of neoliberal reflections on popular politics. I conclude by analyzing the political effects of this neoliberal device in Dakar: it introduced a new style of political engagement—consumption—through which individual vendors could dispute their relocation. And this individualized refusal to consume incited their representative associations to extend a popular mode of valuation—negotiation—into the calculation of the building's price.

To count or not to count? Insights from Kenya for global debates about enumerating ethnicity in national censuses

There is an impasse on the question of whether or not to enumerate identity groups in national censuses, given their potential to variously facilitate dominance and an emergence from marginalisation. In this paper, we theorise the impasse in Kenya as relating to a colonial history of the strategic use of ethnicity to divide and rule; a demographic makeup with both some large ethnic groups and many small ones; and the local social construction of ethnicity, which allows significant latitude for collapse, disaggregation and change of group identities. This case corrects the dominance of Europe and the Americas in census studies and offers insights for assessing the political stakes of counting, namely, the need to bring past and present into conversation; to consider the varied political effects of demography; and to consider the particular significance and meaning of ethnicity and race in context.

“Places you shouldn't go to”: (Im)mobility, violence and democracy in Brazil and South Africa

Pursuing the broader political effects of the relationship between violence, mobility, and inequality, the article describes some of the grounded political-economies (re)producing social inequalities in Brazil and South Africa, and a discontinuous experience of the urban space. This fragmented spatial experience is produced by the simultaneous operation of a discursive apparatus projecting a split ideal of “city”, and grounded social mechanics, in the intersection of values and power relations. In Johannesburg, South Africa, we’ve described the creation of Maboneng, a “urban development project”, to highlight the role of social mobility and growing class aspirations as powerful political vehicles for neoliberal markets reissuing old apartheid socio-spatial divisions. In Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, we’ve explored the relationship between the State and its margins to understand the production of the milícia as a violent anti-modern capitalist venture, aiming to control the circulation of people, capital and political support in the city.

Expatriate Workers and Its Repercussions on the Economy and Labor Market in Iraq After 2003

The demand for expatriate labor to Iraq increased after 2003 as a result of the openness that Iraq experienced, but this expatriate labor, which was requested at an increasing rate, has had economic, social, and political effects on the Iraqi economy in general, and the Iraqi labor market in particular. This is due to the high rates of unemployment, as most of these expatriate workers cause competition to local labor, and thus cause repercussions on the Iraqi economy as a whole, except for those expatriate workers coming with companies working in the oil sector. Iraq's GDP

Project-Think and the Fragmentation and Defragmentation of Civil Society in Egypt, Palestine, and Turkey

By drawing from authors’ fieldwork in Egypt, Palestine, and Turkey, this article critically examines perceptions of project-think among civic organizations in the Middle East. As a managerial rationality, project-think has four key components: (a) a prioritization of discrete needs and discrete groups, (b) an orientation toward funding, (c) a focus on short-term and measurable results, and (d) the positioning of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) as career ladders. Through unpacking these four components, we find that project-think is perceived to contribute to the fragmentation of civil society by fracturing social issues, dividing the NGO sector, isolating organizational energy, and complicating relations between groups. Simultaneously, we demonstrate that, civic actors use various strategies to circumvent the perceived impacts of fragmentation. By mapping these intertwined meanings and experiences of fragmentation and defragmentation, this study contributes to debates concerning the political effects of managerialism among civil society in the Global South.