This paper considers an emerging practice whereby citizen’s use of ubiquitous and domesticated technologies enable a parallel form of criminal justice. Here, weaponised visibility supersedes police intervention as an appropriate response. Digital vigilantism is a user-led violation of privacy that not only transcends online/offline distinctions but also complicates relations of visibility and control between police and the public. This paper develops a theoretically nuanced and empirically grounded understanding of digital vigilantism in order to advance a research agenda in this area (...) of study. In addition to literature on vigilantism and citizen-led violence, this paper draws from key works in surveillance as well as visibility studies, 914–934, 2010) in order to situate how digital media affordances and cultures inform both the moral and organisational dimensions of digital vigilantism. Digital vigilantism is a process where citizens are collectively offended by other citizen activity, and coordinate retaliation on mobile devices and social platforms. The offending acts range from mild breaches of social protocol to terrorist acts and participation in riots. The vigilantism includes, but is not limited to a ‘naming and shaming’ type of visibility, where the target’s home address, work details and other highly sensitive details are published on a public site, followed by online as well as embodied harassment. The visibility produced through digital vigilantism is unwanted, intense and enduring. Such campaigns also further a merging of digital and physical spaces through the reproduction of localised and nationalist identities on global digital platforms as an impetus for privacy violations and breaches of fundamental rights. (shrink)

in a nervous system of a given species. This chapter provides a critical perspective on the role of connectomes in neuroscientific practice and asks how the connectomic approach fits into a larger context in which network thinking permeates technology, infrastructure, social life, and the economy. In the first part of this chapter, we argue that, seen from the perspective of ongoing research, the notion of connectomes as “complete descriptions” is misguided. Our argument combines Rachel Ankeny’s analysis of neuroanatomical wiring diagrams (...) as “descriptive models” with Hans-Joerg Rheinberger’s notion of “epistemic objects,” i.e., targets of research that are still partially unknown. Combining these aspects we conclude that connectomes are constitutively epistemic objects: there just is no way to turn them into permanent and complete technical standards because the possibilities to map connection properties under different modeling assumptions are potentially inexhaustible. In the second part of the chapter, we use this understanding of connectomes as constitutively epistemic objects in order to critically assess the historical and political dimensions of current neuroscientific research. We argue that connectomics shows how the notion of the “brain as a network” has become the dominant metaphor of contemporary brain research. We further point out that this metaphor shares (potentially problematic) affinities to the form of contemporary “network societies.” We close by pointing out how the relation between connectomes and networks in society could be used in a more fruitful manner. (shrink)

This paper arises out of research on the New Zealand designer fashion industry. An unexpected success story, this export-oriented industry is dominated by women as designers, employees, wholesale and public relations agents, industry officials, fashion writers and editors, in addition to women holding more traditionally gendered roles as garment workers, tastemakers and consumers. Our analysis of the gendered globalization of the New Zealand fashion industry exposes a number of disconnections between women's positions in this industry and the literatures on globalization, (...) clothing and fashion. We argue that the New Zealand designer fashion industry not only embodies new ways of working associated with the movement of first world women into the labour force, but its very success is underpinned by these changes. Our conclusion is that more work is needed to explicate links between globalization and first world women's entry into the labour force. (shrink)

Using material from three qualitative studies into the social psychological processes surrounding uncertainty and change in organizations, this paper explores the insights gained from conceptualizing narratives as a bounded space that accommodates disruptions while providing safety in uncertain conditions. The empirical material illustrates how narratives are used to transmit permanence and collective knowledge while allowing for self-development and the managing of emotions. The use of narratives to make sense of change processes is particularly relevant in regard to the current widespread (...) use of digital technologies for communication and information sharing. The paper suggests that the fragmentation and plurivocality that new digital technologies bring to the workplace can be framed, contained and managed safely within collectively created narrative spaces. Cet article explore l’hypothèse que les récits sont un lieu qui permet aux membres d’un groupe d’effectuer un travail psychologique pour assimiler les perturbations de l’organisation. On s’appuie sur trois études qualitatives sur les processus psychosociologiques accompagnant l’incertitude et le changement dans les organizations. Le matériel empirique montre comment les récits sont utilisés pour assurer la continuité et transmettre la connaissance collective, tout en permettant le développement personnel et la gestion des émotions. L’utilisation de récits pour donner un sens aux processus de changement est particulièrement intéressante dans le contexte actuel d’un usage accru des Technologies de l’Information et de la Communication. On suggère que la fragmentation et la plurivocité que les nouvelles technologies numériques apportent dans le travail peuvent être encadrées, contenues et gérées de manière plus rassurante dans des espaces narratifs partagés. (shrink)

Despite the fact that the sociological notion ‘individualization’ contains the most heterogeneous phenomena, the article develops an interpretation of the fate of individualization in Western capitalism today. After having differentiated three different meanings of that notion with the help of Georg Simmel, the position is defended that the claims to individual self-realization, which have rapidly multiplied in the Western societies of thirty or forty years ago, have become so much a feature of the institutionalized expectations inherent in social reproduction that (...) the particular goals of such claims are lost and they are transmuted into a support of the system’s legitimacy. The result of this paradoxical reversal, where the processes which once promised an increase of qualitative freedom are henceforth altered into an ideology of de-institutionalization, is the emergence in individuals of a number of symptoms of inner emptiness, of feeling oneself to be superfluous, and of absence of purpose. (shrink)

Although U.S. colleges and universities continue to discuss creative ways to increase the number of African American collegians participating in study abroad, this research is limited when revealing the unique perspectives of African American collegians who have studied abroad. Traditionally an emphasis on program success has been placed on the quantity of study abroad participants rather than the quality of African American student support and engagement; the personal reflections through the lens of African American race and identity are often overlooked. (...) A series of culturally responsive, guided interviews were conducted with African American collegians from a variety of institutions across the United States, to learn their perspectives on their study abroad experiences. This research reveals that culturally responsive mentoring and guidance are valuable in helping African American collegians deconstruct or make sense out of their study abroad experiences, both during and upon reentry. Also, African American collegians use the method of finding "home abroad" as an important coping tool for support, social adjustment, and cultural validation. Combined, these findings suggest that African American collegians who have studied abroad benefit from culturally guided reflection and learning experiences in which their race and identity are taken into consideration. (shrink)

Within the social sciences the widespread impact of the social capital concept has prompted strong critique on the part of feminists, for it is a concept which appears to reinstate a version of social worlds which for the past thirty years or more feminist social scientists have sought to problematize and move beyond. Yet do these critiques go beyond the social capital paradigm? It is the contention of this article that they do not and in particular that such critiques fail (...) to problematize the association of women with collective social goods found in the social capital literature. It will be suggested further that this association relates to the use of a dualism of instrumentality versus freedom, whereby women are overwhelmingly associated with the latter. This article therefore delineates a gendered subtext operative within the social capital debates. Recognition of this subtext should lead feminists to disengage with the social capital concept, for this is a concept whose use will always trap women in the social-historical time of industrial society. (shrink)

This article focuses on the micro-level phenomena related to emergent ways of organizing. It explores how new ways of organizing might be enabled or inhibited through the networking activities and knowledge flows that organizational members engage in within a multinational business organization after the set-up of an innovative Internet business unit. The article considers innovation and networking as social practices mediated in this particular case study through knowledge-sharing activities. This perspective on innovation, networking, and knowledge leads to a conceptualization of (...) organizations that stresses their inherent complexity and their interactive and co-evolving nature with their environments. (shrink)