Postdigital education in a biotech future

This paper explores a possible future of postdigital education in 2050 using the means of social science fiction. The first part of the paper introduces the shift from 20th century primacy of physics to 21st century primacy of biology with an accent to new postdigital–biodigital reconfigurations and challenges in and after the COVID-19 pandemic. The second part of the paper presents a fictional speech at the graduation ceremony of a fictional military academy in a fictional East Asian country in 2050. This fictional world is marked by global warfare and militarization, and addressed graduates are the first generation of artificially evolved graduates in human history. The third part of the paper interprets the fictional narrative, contextualizes it into educational challenges of today, and argues for a dialogical, humanistic conception of new postdigital education in a biotech future.

From resistance and control to normative orders: The Wire’s Cedric Daniels as an ethical bureaucrat

While the categories of control and resistance have provided important frames of reference to understand workplace relations, we argue that they offer a limited analytical range when investigating conduct in public institutions where work still has sizeable elements of discretion – despite the increasing demands of performance measurement that have been a central component of new public management. Here, we investigate the HBO series, The Wire, and situate it as a piece of social science fiction. By affording more attention to the different ‘codes’ of policework depicted on the show we develop a more pluralistic understanding of workplace conduct. In tracing out different normative orders that characterize these codes, we consider The Wire’s Cedric Daniels’ distinctive positioning in relation to performance measurement and the predominant normative order of ‘the numbers game’ and argue that he consistently displays the code of an ethical bureaucrat.

Utopia of S. Podolynsky and its echo in Ukrainian literature

The article deals with the connections between S. Podolynsky and Ukrainian literature, namely his artistic, educational and non-fiction works, scientific studies that testify to the philosophical principles of that era, create an additional explanatory context for the literary process, and the influence of the scientist's ideas on art literature. The object of study was mainly the texts of the thinker, such as “Steam machine” and “Human work and its relation to the distribution of energy.” The relevance of the study is seen in the need for a comprehensive understanding of the so-called populism, which in its individual samples went beyond provinciality and intellectual limitations, attesting to the art of the next era. The defining feature is the cultural and historical method established in Ukrainian literary studies. The novelty of intelligence is to shift the focus to little-known figures and marginal genres of Ukrainian literature. Interest in the figure of S. Podolynsky, what grew over time in a separate direction of research, dates back to the periods of national revival in the 20th century. Historians and economists wrote the most about him. However, physicians, physicists, biogeochemists, ecologists from Ukraine and abroad have gradually joined. The grows of the number of researchers and, in particular, the diversification of the subject of research with the involvement of all new areas of science is evidenced by the underestimated true scale of the personality of the Ukrainian thinker over the decades. We consider it necessary to focus, firstly, the genre specificity of the work “Steam machine” in the context of that day attracts attention, secondly, on the search for the echo of the ideas of this scientist in Ukrainian literature of the 19th and the first third of the 20th century. It is argued that the ideas of S. Podolynsky, in particular the autotrophy of mankind, as well as compositional and genre innovations could have influenced on the formation of scientific and social science fiction in Ukrainian literature. From our point of view, the proposed problem has the prospect of further elaboration, in particular the hypothesis about the connection between the futurological forecasts of S. Podolynsky and the ideological and artistic content of the short story by Panas Myrny “Dream” and V. Vynnychenko’s novel “Sun Machine”.

Social Science Fiction, an Interview with Ada Palmer

Fabio Rojas interviews historian and novelist Ada Palmer.

Surviving a zombie apocalypse: Leadership configurations in extreme contexts

What can the classic zombie movie, Day of the Dead, tell us about leadership? In our analysis of this film, we explore leadership behaviours in an extreme context – a zombie apocalypse where survivors face persistent existential threat. Extreme context research presents methodological challenges, particularly with regard to fieldwork. The use of films as proxy case studies is one way in which to overcome these problems, and for researchers working in an interpretivist perspective, ‘social science fiction’ is increasingly used as a source of inspiration and ideas. The contribution of our analysis concerns highlighting the role of leadership configurations in extreme contexts, an approach not previously addressed in this field, but one that has greater explanatory power than current perspectives. In Day of the Dead, we observe several different configurations – patterns of leadership styles and behaviours – emerging, shifting and overlapping across the phases of the narrative, each with radically different consequences for the group of survivors. These observations suggest a speculative theory of leadership configurations and their implications in extreme contexts, for exploring further, with other methods.

Crime Dramas as Social Science Fiction

Popular culture has always displayed a fascination with topics of criminological significance. Crime, deviance, and the agencies of their control have long been a staple concern of multiple entertainment industries, and nowhere is this more pronounced than in television. From classic serialized “whodunits,” to the countless police procedurals, right up to CSI and other investigative shows, the notions of good and bad, law and order, justice and retribution (to name but a few) have never been far away from television screens across the globe. However, in recent years, the quality—along with the availability—of television shows has undergone something of a transformation. From the somewhat kitsch roots of the genre, TV crime dramas such as The Sopranos, The Wire, and Boardwalk Empire are now widely recognized as existing at the very high end of cultural significance. Put simply, these shows and others like them have moved on—they currently demonstrate a standard of production and artistic merit that their forerunners simply could not. There are good reasons why the television medium transformation occurred how and when it did, yet they are not of great concern here. What does matter is the fact that, as the standard of TV crime dramas has improved, so too has the level of attention they have received from criminologists, sociologists, and other cultural theorists interested in crime and deviance. The evolution of criminology’s relationship with media representations has—just like the representations themselves—moved at an increased pace of late. The case has been made by some scholars that the days in which representations could be understood as existing somehow separately from peoples’ social worlds are now long gone; that the line between representation and reality is now irrecoverably blurred. As such, and crucially here, this has come to mean that representations can—and indeed should—be treated as sites of knowledge and meaning in and of themselves. That is, some crime dramas are now better understood as examples of social science fiction than they are as mere television shows. The results of these concomitant developments in both the standard of broadcast television and the attention it receives from criminologists have been significant for the broader field of cultural criminology. This is primarily the case because of the ways in which the study of crime dramas can free criminology from some of its intellectual constraints. That is, the study of crime dramas as social science fiction can take intellectual inquiries in directions that—for any one of a multitude of reasons—other forms of criminological investigation do not (or cannot) go. This is not to say that representations constitute a strictly alternative understanding of crime per se (and it is certainly not to say that they constitute a superior one), but rather that they should be understood as offering complementary knowledge of criminological subjects; and moreover, and importantly here, they have the realistic capacity to reshape and redirect on-going criminological debates in new and innovative ways.