Civil Society as an Agent of Change

The covid-19 crisis is the tip of an iceberg. In actual fact, the crisis goes much deeper. It comprises a crisis of democracy, of the nation state, and of capitalism. We are in the middle of an iconic turn and face challenges of an unprecedented scale. It seems inconceivable to tackle any of these challenges without involving societal actors wherever they are. Civil society has proven to be an important agent of change, and has a lot to bring to the table. Yet, knowledge of civil society is underdeveloped, and the state and the private sector hesitate to introduce a level playing field that would enable civil society to act in the sense that Habermas (and others) describe as deliberative democracy to mean the participative process needed to move an agenda by debate prior to taking decisions.

feminist data ethics of care for machine learning: The what, why, who and how

This article conceptualises and provides a roadmap for operationalising a feminist data ethics of care framework for the subfield of artificial intelligence (‘AI’) known as ‘machine learning’. After outlining the principles and praxis that comprise our framework, and then using it to evaluate the current state of mainstream AI ethics content, we argue that this literature tends to be overly abstract and founded on a heteropatriarchal world view. We contend that because most AI ethics content fails to equitably and explicitly assign responsibility to actors in the machine learning economy, there is a risk of implicitly reinforcing the status quo of gender power relations and other substantive inequalities, which in turn contributes to the significant gap between AI ethics principles and applied AI ethics more broadly. We argue that our feminist data ethics of care framework can help to fill this gap by paying particular attention to both the ‘who’ and the ‘how’, as well as by outlining a range of methods, approaches, and best practices that societal actors can use now to make interventions into the machine learning economy. Critically, a feminist data ethics of care is unlikely to be achieved in this context, and beyond, unless all stakeholders, including women, men, non-binary and transgender people, take responsibility for this much needed work.

Trine Villumsen Berling, Ulrik Pram Gad, Karen Lund Petersen and Ole Wæver: Translations of Security: A Framework for the Study of Unwanted Futures

This book scrutinizes how contemporary practices of security have come to rely on many different translations of security, risk, and danger. Institutions of national security policies are currently undergoing radical conceptual and organisational changes, and this book presents a novel approach for how to study and politically address the new situation. Complex and uncertain threat environments, such as terrorism, climate change, and the global financial crisis, have paved the way for new forms of security governance that have profoundly transformed the ways in which threats are handled today. Crucially, there is a decentralisation of the management of security, which is increasingly handled by a broad set of societal actors that previously were not considered powerful in the conduct of security affairs. This transformation of security knowledge and management changes the meaning of traditional concepts and practices, and calls for investigation into the many meanings of security implied when contemporary societies manage radical dangers, risks, and threats. It is necessary to study both what these meanings are and how they developed from the security practices of the past. Addressing this knowledge gap, the book asks how different ideas about threats, risk, and dangers meet in the current practices of security, broadly understood, and with what political consequences. This book will be of interest to students of critical security studies, anthropology, risk studies, science and technology studies and International Relations.

Uprooting Deeper Causes of Belgium's Lack of Pandemic Preparedness in the Covid-19 Crisis

The challenge of the Coronavirus Pandemic Preparedness project was to explore gaps in the way Belgium addressed the COVID-19 pandemic as a path forward for learning how to be better prepared in the probable event of a future pandemic. A pandemic is more than just a health crisis; well-intentioned efforts to contain an epidemic resulted in mental health problems, an economic downturn and the impairment of learning, among other issues. To understand a complex or "wicked" problem, such as a pandemic, we deployed a transdisciplinary approach, engaging experts and stakeholders from a variety of fields. At the end of March 2021, we organised an online co-creation workshop on behalf of the transdisciplinary research team at the Institute for the Future (1), inviting societal actors to participate in a multilevel brainstorming discussion. The purpose of the workshop was to identify deeper causes underlying the gaps in Belgian pandemic preparedness, building upon earlier work of the research team. We engaged stakeholders from different sectors of society in interactive exercises to verify and challenge the work of the research team. As a result, our team unearthed plausible missing elements within the deeper causes underlying the Belgian lack of preparedness for the pandemic. The majority of gaps identified by the stake holders could be traced to deeper causes interwoven in our society's fabric. Some key areas where improvement was suggested were greater political willingness to tackle more complex problems, an expansion of transdisciplinary knowledge and education across our institutions and trust-building among citizens, government and the scientific community. Our findings are summarised and presented in a short video output. These findings can be taken up to formulate future objectives for pandemic preparedness in Belgium. This can in turn serve to create a more resilient and sustain- able society.

Pentecostal Theology, Identity Politics, and Racialized Xenophobia: Claiming A New Social Order

Applying the methodological lens of ethnographic theology, the article argues that grounded Pentecostal theologies participate in reimagining a new social order, particularly in relation to racialized xenophobia. This argument is made in the specific context of two Pentecostal churches in Johannesburg, South Africa, both led and frequented by people who have come to Johannesburg from other parts of the African continent. The argument is outlined by unpacking three theological themes prominent in the collected ethnographic data: positive confession, Word-centred ecclesiology, and Christlike lifestyle. Taken together, these themes highlight a social conscience that other societal actors would do well to take seriously when considering combatting xenophobia. Overall, the article challenges the scholarly emphasis on Pentecostal theologies as uninterested in life-affirming structural change, building on Nimi Wariboko’s formulation of blackness, chosenness, and Nigerian Pentecostalism ‘that reads against the existing social order’ within the particular context of xenophobia in urban South Africa.

Crime Prevention Based on the Strategic Mapping of Living Conditions

This paper presents a theoretically and methodologically grounded GIS-based model for the measurement and mapping of an index of living conditions in urban residential areas across Sweden. Further, the model is compared and evaluated using the Swedish Police’s assessment of crime-exposed areas. The results indicate that the geographically measured vulnerable living conditions overlap to a large extent with the areas assessed to be crime-exposed by the Swedish Police. Over 61% of the police-defined crime-exposed areas are characterized by vulnerable living conditions. The results also show that this overlap is not perfect and that there are vulnerable areas that are not included in the police’s assessment of crime-exposed areas, but which are nonetheless characterized by vulnerable living conditions that could negatively affect the development of crime. It is also proposed that the model and the mapped index of living conditions can provide a more well-grounded scientific basis for the police’s assessment work. As a first step, the Swedish police have implemented the model and the mapped index in the work process employed in their annual identification of crime-exposed or at-risk areas. In addition to assisting the police, the model and the mapped index could also be used to support other societal actors working with vulnerable areas.

Conclusions

The conclusions reflect on the level of reflexivity present in the interplay between the different actors, the value of reflexive governance for the effective enforcement and promotion of equality and non-discrimination law, and the role it can play in preventing backsliding and creating resilience. Different actors have internalized to different degrees the various elements of reflexivity. Some of these elements could not unfold their full potential as their use has only been half-hearted (like the use of benchmarks without the simultaneous use of indicators in monitoring) or processes have been interrupted halfway (like not pursuing monitoring after accession). The conclusions advocate for a shift from an intergovernmental approach to a triangular constellation of equal partnership involving state authorities, EU institutions, and transnational/national societal actors. It underlines the importance of the empowerment and equal participation of local stakeholders. This enhances mutual social learning in the processes of socialization and internalization, and contributes to the prevention of backsliding. They further plead for understanding monitoring as dynamic norm contestation in which the three actors involved critically engage with the norms under consideration. As such, it helps to deconstruct own preference-formations and is a possibility to learn from successes and failures in a cooperative and recursive process. Monitoring understood in this way needs to be permanent and should not only take place in the pre-accession phase but should include all Member States. It concludes that reflexive governance is an approach which well reflects all the above proposed shifts of focus and of understanding.

Companies Committed to Responsible AI: From Principles towards Implementation and Regulation?

The term ‘responsible AI’ has been coined to denote AI that is fair and non-biased, transparent and explainable, secure and safe, privacy-proof, accountable, and to the benefit of mankind. Since 2016, a great many organizations have pledged allegiance to such principles. Amongst them are 24 AI companies that did so by posting a commitment of the kind on their website and/or by joining the ‘Partnership on AI’. By means of a comprehensive web search, two questions are addressed by this study: (1) Did the signatory companies actually try to implement these principles in practice, and if so, how? (2) What are their views on the role of other societal actors in steering AI towards the stated principles (the issue of regulation)? It is concluded that some three of the largest amongst them have carried out valuable steps towards implementation, in particular by developing and open sourcing new software tools. To them, charges of mere ‘ethics washing’ do not apply. Moreover, some 10 companies from both the USA and Europe have publicly endorsed the position that apart from self-regulation, AI is in urgent need of governmental regulation. They mostly advocate focussing regulation on high-risk applications of AI, a policy which to them represents the sensible middle course between laissez-faire on the one hand and outright bans on technologies on the other. The future shaping of standards, ethical codes, and laws as a result of these regulatory efforts remains, of course, to be determined.

Supplying Compliance with Trade Rules

Trade agreements have become politicized because of public concerns that trade rules constrain regulatory decisions. How much international obligations constrain state behavior, however, is contested in the International Relations literature. This book seeks to explain whether, why, and how jurisdictions comply with inconvenient international obligations. It does so through detailed process tracing of European Union policies found incompatible with World Trade Organization rules: its ban on hormone-treated beef, its banana trade regime, its moratorium on the approval of genetically modified crops, its sugar export subsidies, and its anti-dumping duties on bed linen from India. It uses the adverse rulings as the “treatment” in a “natural experiment,” contrasting the policy-relevant politics before and after each ruling. The case studies are supplemented by a qualitative comparative analysis of all EU policies found to contravene WTO rules that had to be changed by the end of 2019. The book contributes to debates on the impact of international institutions, on the effectiveness of the WTO, and on the nature of the EU as an international actor. It argues that the preferences of policy makers (the “supply” of policy change) matter more than demands from societal actors in determining whether compliance occurs. It also argues that while policy change in response to adverse WTO rulings is the norm (good news for trade), WTO members do resist obligations that would compromise cherished policy objectives (good news for legitimacy). This volume contends that the EU’s compliance performance is like that of most WTO members; it is not a unique international actor.