This brief essay examines emergent spaces for politics and emergent political actors. The particular concern here is with types of politics that do not run through the formal political system, one with shrinking options for a growing number of US citizens and immigrants. Informal political actors and street-level politics in cities are major instances of this. US cities have a long history of street-level politics. The contents, the purposes, the mobilizers and the enactors of these politics have changed over time. (...) Today’s global cities are a very specific type of place because they bring together both the most globalized sectors of capital and the new transnational professionals, on the one hand, and a growing number of immigrants and native minoritized groups in a single, complex space. (shrink)

The central argument developed in this essay is that today we are seeing a proliferation of normative orders where once state normativity ruled and the dominant logic was toward producing a unitary normative framing. One synthesizing image we might use to capture these dynamics is that of a movement from centripetal nation-state articulation to a centrifugal multiplication of specialized assemblages. This multiplication in turn can lead to a sort of simplification of normative structures insofar as: these assemblages are partial and (...) often highly specialized formations centered in particular utilities and purposes. The valence of these particular utilities and purposes can range from the search for justice to narrow self-interest . While this is still a minor process in the larger scale of our geopolity, it signals the beginning of a multi-sited, though partial, disruption of its existing formal architecture. This raises questions about the future of crucial frameworks through which modern societies, economies, and polities have operated: the social contract of liberal states, social democracy as we have come to understand it, modern citizenship, and the formal mechanisms that render certain claims legitimate and others illegitimate in liberal democracies. These frameworks have held together complex interdependencies between rights and obligations, power and the law, wealth and poverty, allegiance and exit.Keywords: assemblages; normative; globalization; denationalization; centripetal; centrifugal; utilities; logics; liberal state; claims. (shrink)

This is a Time when stabilized meanings have become unstable. No meaning is permanently stable. But there are periods when they can acquire a certain stability. The current global age that took off in the 1980s has unsettled many of the major social, economic, and political meanings of the preceding Keynesian era in the West. My concern is particularly with some of the major categories we use in the social sciences—economy, polity, society, justice, inequality, state, globalization, and immigration. These are (...) all powerful categories that explain much about the realities they represent. Yet those realities are mutants—today’s concept of the economy dominated by finance and high tech is quite different from that of .. (shrink)

The response aims at detecting additional angles in Benhabib's problematic and adding some variables to its potential resolution. I examine two such variables. One concerns the rights-bearing subject. Benhabib addresses the tension between individual universal rights and sovereign self-determination by positing a modified Kantian `cosmopolitan federalism'. While I can support this thesis, I see a whole other reality in the making that offers additional kinds of resolutions as well as a repositioning of cosmopolitan federalism in a different field of forces. (...) Critical here is the incipient denationalizing of citizenship which is taking place inside the nation state, and hence is not predicated on post-national and transnational conditions for citizenship. Such resolutions are precluded in Benhabib's text because of the closure she projects onto the nation state. The second variable I discuss addresses precisely this question of the state today — that is to say, in a context of the ascendance of an international human rights regime and of globalization. Benhabib sees the national and the global as mutually exclusive. In my own research I see a process whereby global logics get partly constituted inside the nation state and the state apparatus itself, producing, again, an incipient denationalizing of what historically was constructed as national. This opens up possibilities for cosmopolitan federalism that Benhabib overlooks given her national—global binary. (shrink)

This article examines the architecture of public access and of private digital networks in order to establish in what ways they might be subject to regulation, alter the authority of the national state, and have positive or negative impacts on liberal democracy and on the political potential of civil society. Two of the key issues explored in this context are the meaning of regulation, which is likely to be quite different from our historically grounded understandings of state regulation, and, second, (...) the sharp and often overlooked differences between public access and private digital networks. (shrink)

This article examines the questions of Power and Discourse in this particular period and argues that we can go beyond the recognition of multiplicities in all domains and hence that we can work at producing a shared normative ground for at least some of these multiple critical positions. It does so by focusing on one particular issue, the need to produce a new narrative about the relation of the national state and the global economy. A more precise and critical appraisal (...) of this interaction signals the existence of new political openings both in and outside the formal political system, and of a new politics that could allow citizens to demand accountability from the new global actors. These new political openings and new politics entail the development of a normativity that engages the question of whose claims are legitimate in a context where the supposed neutrality of markets and technology are seen as obviating the need for normative approaches; and represent a critique of older political lineages centered exclusively in the national state that easily excluded many groups which never completely identified with the national state and its representation of the nation. One of the key tasks for intellectuals today is to dig out the inner architecture of power from under the new rational-technical discourses within which it is embedded. (shrink)

Moving on after September 11 will require more than just eliminating organized terrorist networks and providing humanitarian aid, crucial as these two interventions are. There is a much larger landscape of multiple devastations in the global south that the global north cannot escape. While socio-economic devastation may not cause terrorism directly, it does promote extreme responses, such as trafficking in people, and can facilitate recruitment of young people for terrorist activity, both random and organized. These multiple devastations need to be (...) addressed - by world and country leaders, by the supra-national system, by NGOs, by global civil society, by corporate economic actors. The article confines itself to the need for governments' action through new specialized multilateralisms and internationalisms. It argues that we can even make a narrow utilitarian case that it is in the global north's interest to address these issues. The particular cases through which the argument is developed are the growing hyper-indebtedness in the global south and the accumulation of contradictions in the immigration regime prevalent in the global north. Examining these is a way of dissecting the nature of the challenge and identifying specific governance deficits. (shrink)

Moving on after September 11 will require more than just eliminating organized terrorist networks and providing humanitarian aid, crucial as these two interventions are. There is a much larger landscape of multiple devastations in the global south that the global north cannot escape. While socio-economic devastation may not cause terrorism directly, it does promote extreme responses, such as trafficking in people, and can facilitate recruitment of young people for terrorist activity, both random and organized. These multiple devastations need to be (...) addressed - by world and country leaders, by the supra-national system, by NGOs, by global civil society, by corporate economic actors. The article confines itself to the need for governments' action through new specialized multilateralisms and internationalisms. It argues that we can even make a narrow utilitarian case that it is in the global north's interest to address these issues. The particular cases through which the argument is developed are the growing hyper-indebtedness in the global south and the accumulation of contradictions in the immigration regime prevalent in the global north. Examining these is a way of dissecting the nature of the challenge and identifying specific governance deficits. (shrink)

The global city is a new frontier zone. Deregulation, privatization, and new fiscal and monetary policies create the formal instruments to construct their equivalent of the old military “fort”. The city is also a strategic frontier zone for those who lack power, and allows the making of informal politics. At the same time the border is a mix of regimes, marked by protections and opportunities for corporations and high-level professionals, and implies confinement, capture and detention for migrants. The essay discusses (...) the transformation of the city in a frontier zone and analyses the separation between the capabilities entailed by territoriality and the geographic territory tout court. The analysis focuses on the effects of neoliberal policies that, far from making this a borderless world, have actually multiplied the bordered spaces that allow firms and markets to move across conventional borders. Cities are therefore one of the key sites where new neoliberal norms are made and where new identities emerge. (shrink)

The essay is framed by the proposition that cities are the frontier spaces for much of what is usually referred to as global governance challenges. It uses the case of asymmetric war to explore the contradictions that arise from this urbanizing — most significantly, the limits of superior military power when war moves to cities and the ways in which this makes powerlessness complex rather than elementary. The core of the paper focuses on Mumbai and Gaza as two sites that (...) help us understand the enormous variability of war once it gets urbanized, and thus the multiplicity of types of asymmetric war. The essay concludes with a discussion about larger patterns we can see through the cases examined here, such as the repositioning of territory, authority and rights. (shrink)

Sassen is Interested in what she terms “conceptually subterranean trends” that are for the most part invisible to current analytical methods but visible, or in her words, “legible,” to other, newer sorts of analytical tools that she herself is developing. She thus emphasizes suspension of accepted methods and development of certain “analytic tactics” that function, as she puts it, “before method.” What this means more specifically is that she is not so much analyzing the structures of existing institutions but (...) instead pursuing a more functional approach, that is, seeking to determine how they are assembled, dis-assembled, and re-assembled. Her focus is thus on the making of non-material conditions, that is, their .. (shrink)

A Dialogue between American pragmatists in the Deweyan tradition and Saskia Sassen is profitable in at least two ways. First, Sassen’s call for “analytic tactics” might be understood in terms of Dewey’s understanding of “soft method.” Second, Sassen is a model of the publicly engaged scholar, not only because she lives the work but also because she connects theory and empirical research in ways that are necessary if we are to follow the Deweyan call to philosophers (...) to address social problems rather than problems internal to philosophy. In her Coss Dialogue Lecture, Saskia Sassen argues for “analytic tactics,” tactics that work while we temporarily suspend method so that we might destabilize stable meanings. We .. (shrink)

Saskia Sassen is an authority in the field of globalization studies, and has published widely on the political, economic and social dimensions of globalization, migration, global cities and new technologies. This interview explores how her work can contribute to political philosophy. In her most recent book, Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages (2008), she undercuts the common understanding of the nation-state as fading away. She demonstrates how globalization to a large extent takes place inside national institutions, (...) thus transforming the nation-state from within rather than simply replacing it or hollowing it out. In this interview, Sassen comments on the role of philosophy in her work and the relationship between academia and politics, and discusses the growing distance between the state and the citizen, capitalism and the land grabs, and how the powerless can make history and the political. (shrink)

In the Work that she presented at the 40th Annual Meeting of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy, 7 March 2013, in Galloway, New Jersey, Sassen most tellingly began her keynote with a reflection on method. She spoke of “Before Method.” She spoke of the need to step back, and suspend our extant methods. Emergent social orders, or what she called, in her massive and transformational text Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages, the emergence of (...) new assemblages, requires that we rethink our old categories, or that we try to assess their usefulness or allow ourselves to countenance their obsolescence. The “before method,” and the invitation to step back, to bracket, or to .. (shrink)

The increased presence of medical AI in clinical use raises the ethical question which standard of explainability is required for an acceptable and responsible implementation of AI-based applications in medical contexts. In this paper, we elaborate on the emerging debate surrounding the standards of explainability for medical AI. For this, we first distinguish several goods explainability is usually considered to contribute to the use of AI in general, and medical AI in specific. Second, we propose to understand the value of (...) explainability relative to other available norms of explainable decision-making. Third, in pointing out that we usually accept heuristics and uses of bounded rationality for medical decision-making by physicians, we argue that the explainability of medical decisions should not be measured against an idealized diagnostic process, but according to practical considerations. We conclude, fourth, to resolve the issue of explainability-standards by relocating the issue to the AI’s certifiability and interpretability. (shrink)

New fetal therapies offer important prospects for improving health. However, having to consider both the fetus and the pregnant woman makes the risk–benefit analysis of fetal therapy trials challenging. Regulatory guidance is limited, and proposed ethical frameworks are overly restrictive or permissive. We propose a new ethical framework for fetal therapy research. First, we argue that considering only biomedical benefits fails to capture all relevant interests. Thus, we endorse expanding the considered benefits to include evidence-based psychosocial effects of fetal therapies. (...) Second, we reject the commonly proposed categorical risk and/or benefit thresholds for assessing fetal therapy research. Instead, we propose that the individual risks for the pregnant woman and the fetus should be justified by the benefits for them and the study’s social value. Studies that meet this overall proportionality criterion but have mildly unfavorable risk–benefit ratios for pregnant women and/or fetuses may be acceptable. (shrink)

This paper discusses different ways of formulating regulation that takes into account a responsibility towards future generations in environmental issues. A rights-based or human-rights based approach, based on notions of intergenerational equity, can be problematic on a conceptual level, and implementation of rights for future generations is challenging. An alternative approach is based on the assignment of duties to present generations rather than rights of future generations. This approach, which is often used in regulation concerning sustainability, uses goal regulation to (...) avoid conceptual problems with rights of future generations while it still provides the opportunity to safeguard their interests and needs. (shrink)

In this paper, we first classify different types of second opinions and evaluate the ethical and epistemological implications of providing those in a clinical context. Second, we discuss the issue of how artificial intelligent could replace the human cognitive labour of providing such second opinion and find that several AI reach the levels of accuracy and efficiency needed to clarify their use an urgent ethical issue. Third, we outline the normative conditions of how AI may be used as second opinion (...) in clinical processes, weighing the benefits of its efficiency against concerns of responsibility attribution. Fourth, we provide a ‘rule of disagreement’ that fulfils these conditions while retaining some of the benefits of expanding the use of AI-based decision support systems in clinical contexts. This is because the rule of disagreement proposes to use AI as much as possible, but retain the ability to use human second opinions to resolve disagreements between AI and physician-in-charge. Fifth, we discuss some counterarguments. (shrink)

Novice designers produced a sequence of sketches while inventing a logo for a novel brand of soft drink. The sketches were scored for the presence of specific objects, their local features and global composition. Self‐assessment scores for each sketch and art critics' scores for the end products were collected. It was investigated whether the design evolves in an essentially random fashion or according to an overall heuristic. The results indicated a macrostructure in the evolution of the design, characterized by two (...) stages. For the majority of participants, the first stage is marked by the introduction and modification of novel objects and their local and global aspects; the second stage is characterized by changes in their global composition. The minority that showed the better designs has a different strategy, in which most global changes were made in the beginning. Although participants did not consciously apply these strategies, their self‐assessment scores reflect the stages of the process. (shrink)

Novice designers produced a sequence of sketches while inventing a logo for a novel brand of soft drink. The sketches were scored for the presence of specific objects, their local features and global composition. Self‐assessment scores for each sketch and art critics' scores for the end products were collected. It was investigated whether the design evolves in an essentially random fashion or according to an overall heuristic. The results indicated a macrostructure in the evolution of the design, characterized by two (...) stages. For the majority of participants, the first stage is marked by the introduction and modification of novel objects and their local and global aspects; the second stage is characterized by changes in their global composition. The minority that showed the better designs has a different strategy, in which most global changes were made in the beginning. Although participants did not consciously apply these strategies, their self‐assessment scores reflect the stages of the process. (shrink)

There is a remedy available for many of our ailments: Psychopharmacology promises to alleviate unsatisfying memory, bad moods, and low self-esteem. Bioethicists have long discussed the ethical implications of enhancement interventions. However, they have not considered relevant evidence from psychology and economics. The growth in autonomy in many areas of life is publicized as progress for the individual. However, the broadening of areas at one’s disposal together with the increasing individualization of value systems leads to situations in which the range (...) of options asks too much of the individual. I scrutinize whether increased self-determination and unbound possibilities are really in a person’s best interests. Evidence from psychology and economics challenges the assumption that unlimited autonomy is best in all cases. The responsibility for autonomous self-formation that comes with possibilities provided by neuro-enhancement developments can be a burden. To guarantee quality of life I suggest a balance of beneficence, support, and respect for autonomy. (shrink)