This introduction to the special issue on data and agency argues that datafication should not only be understood as the process of collecting and analysing data about Internet users, but also as feeding such data back to users, enabling them to orient themselves in the world. It is important that debates about data power recognise that data is also generated, collected and analysed by alternative actors, enhancing rather than undermining the agency of the public. Developing this argument, we first make (...) clear why and how the question of agency should be central to our engagement with data. Subsequently, we discuss how this question has been operationalized in the five contributions to this special issue, which empirically open up the study of alternative forms of datafication. Building on these contributions, we conclude that as data acquire new power, it is vital to explore the space for citizen agency in relation to data structures and to examine the practices of data work, as well as the people involved in these practices. (shrink)

The article contributes to creating an outline of the significant postwar theoretical approaches that examine the role, purpose, and significance of architecture in war and war crimes. Starting from the Clausewitz thesis that?war is not autonomous?, this paper attempts to reveal?the blood that has dried in the codes?, politics hidden behind the four walls of architecture. From the concepts of Brutality in Stone, Warchitecture or Forensic Architecture, through the lenses of architecture, the article exposes war, politics, and ideologies that shape (...) and drive architecture by reimagining and repurposing it both in its primary, functional and cultural, representative sense. A shift from?the era of the witness? to the decade of evidence promotes architecture and its remains to the level of science, global governing, and law. The connection of timely-distanced emancipatory practices influenced by Holocaust studies establishes a discursive field for architecture as a performative rather than representative practice. The theoretical frame of the postwar landscape as second nature is crucial for discussing the role of architecture in the Holocaust. Furthermore, it stresses the work of Herscher and Weizman as a contribution to the critique of the depoliticized processes of resolution of the contemporary war crimes and post-conflict reconciliation. Architecture as a societal practice could potentially have a central position in memory and knowledge production, as well as the production of a counter-public sphere. (shrink)

An exploration of the connections between law, science, and truth, this paper argues that ‘truth’ is an evolving, rather than fixed, concept. It is a human creation, and the processes, or standards, by which it has been evaluated have changed over time. Currently knowledge production is anchored in the natural sciences but reproduced and validated by philosophical rationalisation. There are two problems with this technique of knowledge verification (or ‘veridiction’). First, the natural sciences are not, in fact, practiced according to (...) their ideal forms; and second, the Queen of Sciences, physics, underwent two fundamental paradigm shifts in the early nineteenth century. General relativity and quantum theory entered the scene, sending ripples throughout science, and the social sciences. These changes too have been slowly absorbed by philosophy, giving rise in part to the postmodernist and deconstructivist movements. I chart this gradual evolution of truth and knowledge production in physics and in law and analyse the resistance it has faced from both classical law and classical physics. Finally I argue that this resistance could be overcome, if legal theory, and especially legal positivism, would embrace a more accurate and up-to-date understanding of the science it purports to examine and emulate. (shrink)