PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to argue that in spite of the widely optimistic held view on the effect of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in promoting the “knowledge society” in Europe and economic development elsewhere, evidence suggests that ICT's could be strengthening labour duality world wide.Design/methodology/approachThe paper addresses these issues by presenting a brief assessment of the “Washington Consensus” and the emergence of ICTs in terms of trade, growth and inequality in different regions of our planet. The paper (...) also describes the effects of globalisation and ICTs on European economies. Finally, the paper presents the key finding and raises some policy implications to exploit ICT potentialities to ensure welfare systems in advanced economies and development in emerging countries.FindingsThe lack of sufficient institutional mechanism of distribution in developing economies is not only making it more difficult for economic growth to translate into development but it is also favouring relocations of production, pressures to deregulate employment, control salaries and social expenditure in Europe. This feeds complex processes of social segmentation world wide. To meet this challenge Europe has no choice but to opt for the development of avant‐garde sectors. However, measures linked to the development of the knowledge society may not be sufficient to maintain our welfare states in the current context of globalisation. Europe must play a more internationally active role in the design of another model of globalisation that would encompass social policies at a global scale as one of its pillars.Originality/valueThere are very few studies of ICTs' role in the relationship between openness‐growth‐development‐inequality. What are ICTs responsible for? What are ICTs' effects on development and welfare state sustainability? (shrink)

This article is a preliminary attempt to map EU research policy from a feminist perspective hitherto absent. The framing and management of national and international research policy have reflected the priorities of an entrenched masculinist scientific elite. Despite the critical role of quantified data in policy analysis and formation, international research labour force statistics remain ungendered. Feminist approaches have been integral to the third wave of epistemological criticism of science this century, claiming that systematic knowledge of the natural, as well (...) as the social world, is socially shaped and thus could be reshaped in ways friendlier to the diversity of women. Such criticism has generated opposition on the part of the scientific elite. The state funding of research is shrinking, while industrial research expands. Women's place within this restructuring research labour market may even be deteriorating, yet feminism still addresses its demands to a retreating science/state relation. Sustained pressure from women's studies researchers and women natural scientists and engineers for a fairer share of the research pie has, in the light of the Amsterdam Treaty, led to Europe introducing gender into research policy. The policy dimension of 'Quality of Life' to enhance 'trust', offers possibilities for feminist intervention. Changing the gender and ethnic composition of the research labour force so that it more adequately reflects the diversity of Europeans enhances Quality of Life. Trust requires that we build on the diverse experiences of European countries in strengthening democratic participation in socially shaping science and technology. (shrink)

This article examines the conventional Rehnist interpretation of active labor market policy in Sweden during the period from the war to the early 1970s and asks how it relates to the basic principles of evidence-based social science research.It is shown that the interpretation is misleading, reproducing and communicating material, stories, and images that were supplied bysome of the leading Swedish actors rather than producing an analysis based on the empirical examination of actual developments.The conclusion of the article offers suggestions for (...) an alternative evidencebased interpretation of the Swedish case. (shrink)

Africa is undergoing considerable political, economic and labor market reforms. In this context, education and training stands literally at a crossroads. In the past, it has been oriented toward mass production emphasizing numbers and quantities rather than skills and quality. The primary clientele of the universities were the state organs, local governments, state-controlled cooperatives, commissions and mass organizations. The universities, though frequently in conflict with the state, were very much part of the predominant bureaucratic command economies. As part of the (...) command system the market had to go to them; they did not have to reach out to the market. The current economic crisis and its subsequent reforms have turned the wheel of fortune against the state and the universities. Financial and employment cuts cannot sustain the traditional levels and practices of employment in the public sector. As the roles of the state and the private sector change, the mission, orientation and future of the universities, university staff and their graduates cannot afford to remain what they used to be. This raises the question of the extent to which the university education system of any country in the region is ready for change? The present study undertakes to identify the mechanisms for reducing state regulation of the university curricula and increasing the acceptability, relevance, reliability and dynamism of university education to the market and nonmarket, thereby increasing the capability of university graduates to be more readily employable in various sectors and, where not directly employable, to be able to employ themselves in profitable and sustainable activities. (shrink)

In the years that have passed since publication of the Club of Rome's seminal report "Limits to Growth," the issues raised in terms of development, resource use and the environment have become ever more pressing. The potential of advances in science and technology to affect all aspects of life, including development, was then little understood. Today's unparalleled burst in scientific and technological creativity has given new options and opportunities to the world economic system. Central to this process is a series (...) of concepts which includes the scientification of technology, by which technology is increasingly generated and developed on scientific bases, the breaking down of interdisciplinary barriers and mankind's new found capacity literally to invent resources, leading to the emergence of whole categories of new materials. These changes make possible a new approach to economic growth, relying on decentralization and flexibility and the selection of technology mixes best suited to different socio-economic and cultural contexts. In parallel, the key importance above all of the information technologies is producing a dematerialization of goods, a trend exemplified by the shift from product oriented to function oriented industries. The new technologies of the 1980s are cross-fertilizing and self-disseminative. They are creating an exceptional number of innovative options in processes, products, services, organization and markets. Mature industrial sectors can undergo a process of rejuvenation to recover competitiveness by the grafting of advanced technologies onto traditional activities. The results are already evident in industrialized countries, such as Italy. The flexibility offered by the new technologies offers perhaps our best hope for a solution to the widening gap between rich and poor nations, contrary to the belief that identifies in advances in science and technology the seeds of a process of polarization dividing the world. The countries of the United States, Japan and Western Europe--the so-called Triad Power--dominate the emerging technologies and their applications. In fact, given the pace of today's technological revolution, developing countries are effectively excluded from active participation in the process of technological change. New technologies are not "off the peg," they have to be learned and controlled, to be introduced into an existing flexible system possessing trained manpower and an adequate capital base. Introduction into the Third World, where these essential conditions are frequently lacking, will not be a painless process. Technology transfer without adaptation is likely to have undesirable cultural and societal disadvantages. North and South are simultaneously experiencing radically different processes of evolution: the former, through restructuring and innovation; the latter, through the drive for more quantitative growth. Continuing stress on quantitative growth carries with it the risk that other goals--environmental quality, even the eradication of poverty--may suffer. Here lies the possibility that unless economic patterns change, today's imbalance between the haves and the have nots may be perpetuated or even consolidated. The countries of the North individually all face problems in addressing these issues. The international banking system is hamstrung with the problems of Third World debt. Primary producers no longer command high prices for their raw materials on world markets and so this source of development funding is also drying up. The need is therefore for a global approach. In each Third World situation, specific needs and requirements must be identified to be tackled via technology blending, whereby a mix of emerging and traditional technologies is selected to raise the quality of output to the levels now demanded by a sophisticated world economy. Another important area is that of energy, together with the worsening environmental and even climatic effects of energy policies. The need is for a long term strategic view to marshall the contribution new technologies can make to improving the lot of mankind in full respect for his environment. Technological change also implies societal change. In labor markets, labor mismatch creates pockets of employment which are difficult to eradicate. Yet, overall, the hope is that expanding economic horizons will create unlimited opportunities for new jobs and new skills. The key is education and training. A feed and feedback mechanism between education and the economy represents an intangible investment in the future. Economic growth, technological innovation, development of culture and society, have always moved together with synergism. Current changes are not so much just physical as conceptual. We are passing from a mechanical (or mechanistic) society to one that can be termed cybernetic. Causality, sequentiality and hierarchy are giving way to a functional interdependence at a systems level. Greater participation will produce more opportunities for self-fulfillment. As old social equilibria collapse, management of social change can be seen to be as important as management of technological change. The technological revolution has deep roots in Western culture. It is a liberating force that can lead to greater cultural enrichment. By understanding the changes now underway, we can ensure that the new pattern of society that emerges from exploitation of the new technologies retains man at its center and so benefits the whole of humanity. (shrink)

The post-communist revolutions of 1989 triggered parallel transformation in the ideological landscape on both sides of the former Iron Curtain. The geo-political opening after the end of the Cold War made global integration a highly salient factor in political mobilization, opting out to replace the capital-versus-labor dynamics of conflict that had shaped the ideological families of Europe during the 20th century. This has resulted in splitting the traditional constituencies of the Left and the Right and reorganizing them along new fault-lines: (...) those shaped by attitudes to globalization and EU enlargement (in the West) and by attitudes to EU accession and global economic competition (in the East). Thus, an ideational convergence between East and West is taking place in Europe, radically altering the structure of political competition in the early 21st century. As the new political cleavage cuts across, rather than runs along, the left—right ideological continuum, it is eroding the societal alliances that had supported the post-war European Social Model. The emerging structure of political competition enables substantive changes in the European Social Model in the direction of deepening labor commodification, thus defeating the emancipatory potential that earlier labor-market policies had contained. (shrink)

Resumo O artigo trata da análise crítica de Jürgen Habermas a respeito das consequências do modelo neoliberal de integração global via mercado, em especial o desequilíbrio entre política e mercado, o fim do compromisso com o Estado social e o déficit democrático no nível transnacional. Para o filósofo alemão, a concepção neoliberal de sociedade desestatizada do capitalismo global atinge o nexo entre Estado nacional, democracia e justiça social, marginalizando o Estado e a política, em favor da privatização dos serviços públicos (...) e sendo insensível às questões de justiça social, aos custos sociais do crescente aumento da pobreza, desigualdade e exclusão social, mesmo em países abastados da Europa e América do Norte. Ao deslocar o fiador da integração social para além das fronteiras nacionais, o capitalismo global foge ao controle estatal e esvazia o poder dos Estados nacionais, em termos de substância democrática e de política social, e gera um déficit de legitimação, ao transferir competências nacionais para agências ou organismos transnacionais, cuja legitimação não deriva da sociedade civil ou de uma esfera pública politicamente constituída. Em contrapartida, Habermas defende um poder democrático capaz de domesticar politicamente o mercado globalizado, reconstruir a democracia estatal-social num nível transnacional, em vista de uma ordem socialmente mais equilibrada, e compensar o déficit social e de legitimação democrática, no âmbito transnacional. Depois de recapitular alguns problemas que se solucionaram nas formas de Estado nacional, o artigo descreve como a globalização econômica afeta a soberania cultural, econômica, administrativa e jurídica, política, social e trabalhista dos Estados nacionais, e quais as possibilidades de reenquadrar politicamente os mercados, estendendo a democracia estatal para além das fronteiras nacionais. Com isso, quer-se mostrar que a obra de Habermas não é cega para a relação democracia-capitalismo, para os efeitos colaterais da “colonização da política pela economia”, para a influência corrosiva da economia capitalista na despolitização da esfera pública e da política.The article presents Jürgen Habermas critical analysis of the consequences of the neoliberal model of global market integration, in particular the imbalance between politics and market, the end of the commitment to the welfare state and the democratic deficit at the transnational level. For the German philosopher, the neoliberal conception of the privatized society of global capitalism undermine the nexus between national state, democracy and social justice, marginalizing the state and politics in favour of privatization of public services and being insensitive to questions of social justice, the costs increasing poverty, inequality and social exclusion, even in wealthy countries in Europe and North America. Moving the guarantor of social integration across national borders, global capitalism is beyond the state control and exhaust the power of national states in terms of democratic substance and social policy and creates a legitimacy deficit by transferring national powers to agencies or transnational corporations whose legitimacy does not derive from civil society or from a politically constituted public sphere. In contrast, Habermas advocates a democratic power able to politically neutralize the global market, rebuild the welfare-state democracy in a transnational level in view of a more socially balanced order, and compensate the social deficit and democratic legitimacy in the transnational order. After reviewing some problems that have been solved in national state forms, the article describes how economic globalization affects the cultural, economic, administrative, juridical, political, social and labor sovereignty of the national states, and what are the possibilities of politically reframing markets, extending welfare-estate democracy beyond national borders. In this way, we want to show that Habermas’ work is not blind to the relation between democracy and capitalism, to the collateral effects of the “colonization of politics by the economy”, to the corrosive influence of the capitalist economy on the depoliticization of the public sphere and politics. (shrink)

The different experience of unemployment and of poverty in the two main Western economic systems (roughly, Europe and the US) demonstrates that a simple economic approach to these problems does not exist. In this paper I deal with the question of the impact of technological change on productive activities, employment and income distribution.The main idea is the following: technological progress may lead to an impoverishment of the disadvantaged people in a free-market society, as a consequence of their inability to adjust (...) their skills to the new requirements of the labour market. By contrast, a just society, grounded on moral principles, recognizes that the distributive criterion has to take into account not only individual contributions to production, but also the relative needs of the individuals. In that context, everyone should be better off after a technological change, since it is fair that everyone gains some advantage from a generalized improvement in the productive conditions of society. A policy that adopts this perspective should provide an effective guard against the danger of social exclusion that strikes modern societies. (shrink)

Nick Dyer-Witheford and Greig de Peuter. Games of Empire: Global Capitalism and Video Games . Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 2009. 320pp. pbk. $19.95 ISBN-13: 978-0816666119. In Games of Empire , Nick Dyer-Witheford and Greig de Peuter expand an earlier study of “the video game industry as an aspect of an emerging postindustrial, post-Fordist capitalism” (xxix) to argue that videogames are “exemplary media of Empire” (xxix). Their notion of “Empire” is based on Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s Empire (2000), which (...) characterizes the contemporary world order as a decentralized system of global economic, political, and economic power that transcends national boundaries. In the view of the authors, Hardt and Negri’s account sets itself apart from other analyses of international politics by offering a “comprehensive account of conditions of work, forms of subjectivity, and types of struggle in contemporary capital” (xx). Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter thus divide Games of Empire into three sections to reflect each of these aspects of Empire ’s argument, seeing their work as the first account to explore “virtual games within a system of global ownership, privatized property, coercive class relations, military operations, and radical struggle” (xxix). Books in the University of Minnesota Press’s Electronic Mediations series “explore the humanistic and social implications” of new technologies that spark “significant changes in society and culture, politics and economics, thinking and being.” That’s an abstract goal, and one that Games of Empire surely meets. Yet at times it can be difficult to understand exactly which specific intervention this book seeks to make. It is unclear whether the authors of Games of Empire see their work as an indictment of game scholars’ lack of attention to political economy, or whether it’s a work of political theory hoping to show that other disciplines should be paying more attention to the production and play of videogames. Because Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter don’t directly criticize previous political critiques of gaming—such as Edward Castronova’s exploration of the “porous membrane” allowing two-way traffic between virtual economies and those of the real world, or Alexander Galloway’s unraveling of control protocols in algorithmic design, or Ian Bogost’s idea of political procedural rhetoric—they sometimes leave the reader wondering how to situate the book in the broader discourse on games and politics, either separately or together. Thus, Games of Empire might best be seen as an introduction to the writings of Hardt and Negri for game players and designers, rather than as a text for communicating the basic concepts of game studies and design. It is neither a truly new theory of games or digital media, nor is it a new theory of Empire—and that’s not a criticism. It is instead an introduction to Empire through popular culture, as Zizek does for Lacan in Looking Awry . If one were teaching an introductory course on contemporary political theory, this book would offer obvious inroads into Negri and Hardt’s thinking for a number of reasons. Despite its radical ideological bent, the book isn’t off-putting to readers who don’t necessarily share the authors’ politics. It synthesizes complex ideas from difficult thinkers like Marx, Foucault, and Guattari while integrating modifications and critiques of Empire theory itself. And although the book is dense, sometimes feeling longer than it actually is (just over 200 pages), Games of Empire maintains a breezy readability by tightly coupling core concepts of Empire theory to well-known games and widely-publicized conflicts within the videogame industry. The first section of the book focuses on immaterial labor, the accumulation of “cognitive capital,” and the global process of manufacturing videogame consoles. It is significant for the authors that videogames began as hacker experiments within research institutes of the military industrial complex, programmed on stolen time, before becoming a commodity (7). This is the first in a string of examples showing how creative dissidence and conflict fuel the continuing evolution of Empire’s control. Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter explain that the videogame industry now constitutes an international production apparatus dominating both creative work in developed nations and manual labor in developing ones. Because game industries in the United States, Western Europe, and Japan are predominately non-unionized, they serve as an exemplary system for analyzing how global capital exploits contemporary intellectual work—including an excellent analysis of the “EA Spouse” scandal of 2004. On the side of the consumer, the authors argue that rabid “console races” that drive the industry forward from a technological perspective serve to structure gamer identity and combat piracy; later in the book, these machines offer a window into the worlds of Congolese coltan mining and electronic waste (222-224). In the second section, Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter move on to deep case studies of individual games to show how the most popular game genres embed imperial assumptions about conflict, exchange, and urban life. First they argue that military training games such as Full Spectrum Warrior —co-developed by university researchers, industry developers, and military contractors—contribute to the “banalization” of war, a subjective state wherein perpetual preparedness for war is accepted as a part of everyday life (100). Chapter five covers Michel Foucalt’s notion of “biopower,” the extension of capital accumulation to life itself. The authors argue that virtual worlds such as World of Warcraft , which take market capitalism as a given and force players into essentialist roles and racial antagonisms, are organized to maximize control and profit (often on the backs of virtual currency “farmers” in China and southeast Asia). Finally, they criticize the naïve assumption that humor and cynicism in the popular sandbox game franchise Grand Theft Auto offer any remedy to its racialized, violent content. Instead, such games indulge and normalize the fantasy of getting rich at any cost by keeping the realities of contemporary urban life and corporate greed at a safe distance (181). Part three of Games of Empire focuses on “games of multitude,” a preliminary attempt to escape from Empire’s order through alternate modes of videogame development and play. Multitude is defined dialectically, as “the engine and the enemy” of Empire (187). This is the most important, yet also most contradictory section of the text. It lays bare the process by which Empire and its media feed our creative and intellectual development to overabundance. At a certain point, the force of the multitude reaches such a level that it threatens the stability of Empire; however, instead of following Hardt and Negri’s utopian assumptions about the radical potential of the multitude, the authors here follow Paolo Virno’s warning that Empire is “very good at adopting apparently iconoclastic practices and utopian ideas as management techniques and revenue sources” (188). At every turn, advances in player configurative power provide new sources of revenue and advertising angles for the game industry. A disappointing shortcoming of these latter pages is the lack of truly new examples for radical resistance within game development. Instead, it turns out that the radical left seems satisfied with the same mild successes that the left-of-center also has celebrated: artist’s mods, virtual world activism, and critical counterplay within strategy- and wargames. Having been frequently cited by many authors before Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter, this idea of subversion or resistance through play feels tired and unpersuasive. It is unclear if the authors believe it is possible to embrace game design itself as a way of pursuing what they call “exodus” from Empire, or if an all-too-fashionable subversion is the only workable strategy. While the book does explore how the earliest independent game studios were eventually subverted and incorporated into the game industry proper, it doesn’t affirm or critique more recent non-commercial, DIY game development projects such as Klik-of-the-Month Club and Ludum Dare. Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter’s analysis of so-called “tactical games,” including the editorial works of La Molleindustria, leads to an even more ambivalent take on the contemporary design ecology. At the conclusion of his essay on “Countergaming,” Galloway asserts that avant-garde videogame artists “should create new grammars of action […] should create alternative algorithms” (Galloway 125). Yet Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter characterize works such as McDonald’s Video Game and Oiligarchy as didactic, suggesting that the role of radical political games might be “limited to that of agitprop” (199). They are concerned that games like those of Molleindustria rigidly structure the activities of their players in order to prove a point. Yet, despite their repeated assertion that the equation of greater interactivity with democratic digital liberation is flawed, the authors see potential in policy simulators that “allow players to edit or tweak” (202) their parameters in response to what Bogost has called simulation fever , the simultaneous drive toward and fear of simulation (Bogost 108). The possibility of practicing radical design is bucked, and early attempts at critical game development like those of Molleindustria’s seem to be relegated to the status of exceptions that prove the rule for player-centered exodus. Overall, there is one glaring question Games of Empire leaves unanswered: how exactly are videogames the “exemplary media” of Empire, and what are the implications of videogames being exemplary in this way? Presumably Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter want to avoid essentialist claims, so they’re not keen on following Wark’s desire to mark “the game’s difference from [legacy media] as something that speaks to changes in the overall structure of social and technical relations” (Wark 225). It is also unclear how the production apparatuses, labor standards, and subjectivizing processes involved in the creation and use of other any other kind of digital media would fail to justify their equally exemplary status. Even the book’s concluding paragraph holds that virtual games “are one molecular component of this undecidable collective mutation” (Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter 229) of intellect, labor, and daily life. In the end, the authors seem to back away from their focus on games as exemplary to bring their work in line with broader theories of the gradual digitization of the everyday, in line with Galloway and Manovich. Despite these flaws, there is an undeniable elegance to Games of Empire ’s contrasting of gaming’s overwhelmingly imperial content with its multitudinous form . And its ambivalence about the potential of independent or political game development might be seen by scholars of Empire as a strength rather than a weakness, an acceptance that every new expression of multitude offers another opportunity for the expansion of Empire. The book also functions as a strong, all-encompassing call to greater responsibility on the part of mainstream game developers to be more conscious of the ideologies they embed in their work, of the way their intellectual property is used and manipulated by those who employ them, and of the material impact their industry has on the world at large. For players it offers a toolbox of concepts for radical examinations of their own play activities, asking them to be more cognizant of the consequences of their consumption of digital media and the ways in which their virtual lives interface with the real. REFERENCES Bogost, Ian. Unit Operations: An Approach to Videogame Criticism . Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2006. Castranova, Edward. Synthetic Worlds: The Business and Culture of Online Games . Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press, 2006. Dyer-Witheford, Nick and de Peuter, Greig. Games of Empire: Global Capitalism and Video Games . Minneapolis, Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2009. Galloway, Alexander. Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture . Minneapolis, Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2006). Wark, McKenzie. Gamer Theory . Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007. (shrink)

This article examines the transformation of the labor market under the influence of informatization of society. It is noted that in the conditions of globalization and informatization of the nowadays a post-industrial society has been formed, in which information is a determining factor of production. New opportunities and challenges of the labor market in the conditions of information society development are analyzed. The informatization of society changes the conditions, nature and forms of work. Extensive digitalization, the use of cloud technologies (...) and artificial intelligence systems are displacing traditional forms of employment towards teleworking, which makes workers more mobile and able to optimize working hours. It is established that the spread of technology increases the efficiency of the recruitment and searching job processes. Informatization of society contributes to the creation of a digital labor market, which forms the demand and supply of information and computer technology workers. In the context of informatization of society, the labor market is characterized by an imbalance between supply and demand of labor due to structural changes in the economy. Among the challenges of the labor market are rising unemployment in the raw materials industries, robotics and automation of routine manual labor. The digitalization of the economy leads to the need to adjust government regulation of business and provide social guarantees for employees. It is noted that the informatization of society provides more benefits to the labor market than obstacles. Solving the problems it raises, promotes progress and economic development. (shrink)

continent. 1.1 (2011): 22-25. The Author gratefully acknowledges the financial support of CAPES (Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento do Ensino Superior), Brazil. From the multifarious subdivisions of semiotics, be they naturalistic or culturalistic, the realm of semiotics of value is a ?eld that is getting more and more attention these days. Our entire political and economic systems are based upon structures of symbolic representation that many times seem not only to embody monetary value but also to determine it. The connection between monetary (...) and linguistic exchanges is self-evident: the former requires the latter and develops in direct relation to it. Creative experimentation and design of digital systems of value exchange are blossoming on the web. Dr. Gilson Schwartz, an economist turned media theorist and professor at the University of São Paulo, adopted the concept of Iconomics, originally created by Michael Kaplan, an author concerned with the linguistics of economic value. Empowering local communities and unlocking new levels of value creation and representation via digital technologies are the main goals of Dr. Schwartz’s projects, aiming at the re-designing of our relationship to the economic value of imagination and the social control of property. Schwartz is Assistant Professor at the School of Communication and Arts of the University of São Paulo, a former Chief Economist at BankBoston, Brazil and Advisor to the President of the National Social and Economic Development Bank (BNDES). FURTHER READING: Kaplan, Michael. “Iconomics: The Rhetoric of Speculation.” Public Culture . 15.3 (2003): 477-493. Renata Lemos-Morais: You have recently produced and directed a short documentary about Creative Currencies in Latin America. Could you tell us a bit about its process and its findings? Gilson Schwartz: The “Creative Currencies” project is a work-in-progress platform which unfolds as an action research agenda connected both to the production of audiovisual content and the development of social currency software. The initiative dates back to 2003 when I led an experimental project supported by the Presidency of Brazil. At that time, we issued paper currency in a small, touristic village in the Northeast Region which stimulated local cultural projects. But it was only in 2009 that the Central Bank of Brazil acknowledged “social currencies” as a legitimate economic agenda, calling for more debate at the I Financial Inclusion Forum. This year, the monetary authorities organized a second forum that also opened the room to discussions on mobile payment systems and new perspectives on poverty alleviation via State subsidies. The Ministry of Culture funded the “Creative Currencies” project in 2009-2010 and our next stage in this discovery process is to be supported by the National Social and Economic Development Bank (BNDES). In short, there is genuine interest among public officials in different areas and public funding for social currencies is on the rise in Brazil. However, after all these years we are still at a very early stage of research and practice. Some of the most successful initiatives (such as Banco Palmas) actually evolved out of local monetary creation to become correspondent banking operations for commercial banks and other financial groups. After eight years of price stability and social inclusion, Brazil stands out as a major opportunity for social experimentation, even the Grameen Bank is now entering the Brazilian market and many NGOs are geared towards different forms of entrepreneurialism in the base of the pyramid, riding solidarity economic models, microfinance and microcredit for local development. It is yet to be seen, however, whether these developments are just one more stage of “bankarization”, that is to say, an extension of regular banking services or actually a new form of social and symbolic self-determination at the local level. So far, the Central Bank of Brazil is open to new forms of credit and local finance as long as they are strictly territorial and very close to barter among the poor. In other words, whether the process of monetary creation could be made to fit an open source paradigm is yet to be seen. Community banking and social currencies might as well end up as just another channel for access to and use of banking services. The “Creative Currencies” project aims at promoting the discussion of more fundamental issues, such as the limits of central banking, the prospects for local financial development and the possibility of creating and managing financial icons as cultural assets. The purpose of this project is to produce short documentaries that will bear testimony to this evolving regulatory framework while inducing more discussion about the fundamental iconomic issues concealed in the process of money and wealth creation. RLM: What new potential is there in applying digital technologies to currency creation? GS: Globalization is a result of the virtualization of money, that is, the overcoming of illusions such as the “gold standard”. Money is an icon created by institutions, not on supposedly natural or material foundations but out of political and financial interests. The “dollar standard” is an outstanding evidence of this phenomenon and Kaplan´s paper, the first to use the expression “iconomics”, insists on the rhetoric and semiotic effects associated to a supposedly scientific model of money creation and management. This is a fundamental change that was perceived and discussed much before the digitalization of the world by unorthodox economists such as John Maynard Keynes since the early 20th century. The digitalization of global financial flows accelerated this immateriality and the creation of the Euro was yet another evidence of the political foundations of currencies. The banking establishment, however, is keen on the idea that scientific formulae hold the key to sound money creation. Keynesianism has been repeatedly associated to “inflationism” while the supposedly sound monetary policies of the Orthodoxy serve well the political and financial interests of a technocratic elite. Corporate media also serve this fictitious depiction of the monetary process despite the cyclical bust of monetary rules and financial regulations. The internet, however, has created numerous opportunities for the disintermediation in industries such as film, music and commodities. There is no reason to doubt that the financial industry can also be transformed by Peer-to-Peer (P2P) infrastructures. Money is media as well. Credit is but confidence. Once people realize that the distributed computing power of networks can also be the platform to weave new monetary and credit operations, there is room for grassroots emancipation out of the established owners of monetary institutions. So far, however, there has been a privatization of monetary management and there is not a clear path or model for the emergent (P2P) property democratization that is inherent to the internet. Digital assets, however, clearly have an inherent potential to escape central control and proprietary regulatory frameworks. RLM: How are social networks transforming the ways in which we exchange value? Do you believe that online influence and reputation might be translated into a new kind of currency? GS: The foundation for social currencies as envisaged by solidarity economics is the territory. Authorities are willing to concede local monetary creation as long as it is restricted to poor neighborhoods, as a proxy to barter. In this relevant but limited context, reputation, personal knowledge and informal ties form the matrix of local or “proximity” finance which are expected to keep credit and leverage to a sustainable level. Anything beyond that should and would lead to an integration of local finance into the established banking system. However, inasmuch as the internet promotes virtual territories and reputation is now subject to all sorts of digital manipulation and stardom becomes an everyday cultural process among teenagers and elders alike, the territorial “foundation” is substituted for more complex patterns of solidarity, cooperation and exchange that reach beyond the physical territory and even the “human.” Digital assets embody knowledge, technology, cultural and educational values that are exchanged at a global scale beyond the control of democratic States (Chinese-like intervention is the exception, not the rule). Hacktivism is unstoppable and so is monetary hacktivism. Especially in the Third World, mobile communications fast became conveyors of money transfers and other appropriation strategies. Banking and telecom sectors already battle for the control of these emerging markets and, as a matter of fact, have so far contributed to the containment of these processes. Governments serve these moguls and have usually adopted a wait-and-see attitude. If open source hardware and grassroots social movements combine to challenge these proprietary battles, then social networks may evolve into new forms of social capital and thus form the ground on which to design and implement social currencies. The global financial crisis, as well as the dollar demise, are an event of such a proportion that social networks may open the path for emancipator subjects to seize the opportunity. RLM: What are some of the social experiments that you think are revolutionizing the way in which value is exchanged? GS: There is a broad evolution of economic systems towards the valuation of intangible assets such as knowledge, reputation and sustainability. There are many examples of local as well as global events that call the traditional systems of exchange into question, from carbon credits to educational bonuses, digital barter frameworks and locally based solidarity and fair trade networks. These emerging examples, no matter how different in nature or scale, represent a challenge to the traditional value creation schemes and theories which are based on use and exchange value, supply and demand. This is not to say that utility and labour or scarcity are to be totally dismissed, but there is now an emerging perception that value is also a function of behavioral codes, symbolic patterns and the energy of institutional frameworks. The plasticity of digital platforms is relevant insofar as intellectual property becomes the central source of value creation. But when you discuss the property rights of public goods such as the environment or basic social rights (of minorities or localities), then a new paradigm seems to emerge. RLM: Are gaming and online storytelling digital practices that might have an impact on the way new currencies are created and developed? GS: “Play money” has been one of the early and most intriguing phenomena associated to the diffusion of virtual worlds. These virtual currencies have also been prone to “boom and bust” dynamics, speculation and pure theft (Second Life scams were common and led to “intervention” by the owners of the game). Storytelling is a major source of value, that is, the value of attention and the markets for audience. There are plenty of private monies created and managed by corporate entertainment groups, telecom operators (via mobile virtual network operators) and marketing frameworks. The casino economy, as already depicted by Keynes and other unorthodox economists, is always storytelling about future states of the world, confidence building and leverage of animal spirits. The novelty of current events is not the fictitious nature of any form of capital, but the potential for digital democratization of controls over the imaginary nature of value creation. But this is just a potential, a possibility, a figment that more often than not is appropriated by centralized and opaque private powers. The game industry is a testbed for new connections between storytelling and money creation. RLM: Monetary value was originally connected to the scarcity of precious metals, such as gold. Our entire monetary system seems therefore to function according to a logic of scarcity. Do you believe it is possible to reverse this logic into a logic of abundance? GS: The gold standard was a fiction itself, the “scarcity” is always produced by institutions that regulate confidence and access to credit. The key issue is not to fabricate abundance, but to question the institutions which produce scarcity out of any standard, gold or whatever. Central banks are at the service of private banks in the creation and management of scarcity. RLM: The promise that nanotechnology holds for our future is one of radical abundance (or so say transhumanists). The possibility of creating any kind of material substance through nanoengineering seems each day more feasible. What would this possibility entail in terms of systems of value exchange? GS: Nanotechnology, environmental concerns and grassroots appropriation of distributed knowledge are the frontiers of a new horizon of energy creation and management. Social groups in charge of managing scarcity for the sake of wealth and power concentration must be held accountable for the destruction of our future. Once this key political conundrum is accounted for, new systems of value exchange and even a non-mercantile society will come into existence. Revolutionary theorists such as Marx envisaged transformation via the extreme clash of contradictions between capital and labour. This approach has never led to a change in the systemic logic of scarcity for the sake of social control. We are once again facing the threshold of large scale societal change, but the outcome of the current crisis should come from our imagination, not from yet another paradox of abundance and scarcity. As long as we remain attached to the materiality of value, the illusion of freedom will but reinforce the massive manipulation of necessity. RLM: What do you think is the role of crowdfunding in this context? GS: Crowdsourcing as well as crowdfunding are examples of the peer to peer opportunities that come along with distributed computer power. However, the power structure behind wealth and scarcity creation may or may not be changed by crowd management. But it should not be taken at face value, so to speak. The stock market of course is an early form of crowdfunding without calling into question the proprietary framework of the companies offering their investment projects to the market. Any market is a form of crowdsourcing, that is to say, of distributed forms of supply and demand matchmaking. The wealth of networks, however, depends on the contractual ecosystem, the institutional framework, the channeling of social imagination, not on the purely quantitative distribution of bids and offers. I see economics as supply, demand and code. Once you have access to the code, once openness becomes part of the game, then there is a chance of crowd behavior becoming collective intelligence and sustainable imagination. RLM: Is the development of digital currencies headed towards a pluralistic ecology in which many micro currency systems co-exist, or is it penetrating the mainstream monetary system? If it is affecting the mainstream financial system, what would be its effect in the long-term? GS: The same issue is at stake both at local and global levels. The global system is, as a matter of fact, an unstable ecosystem of “micro currencies” whereas the dollar has so far exerted an overwhelming influence. Local currencies and private monies coexist with national currencies only to the extent that the Central Bank admits, for instance, that grassroots monetary emissions remain territorial and strictly connected to poverty. However, the question of how new developments in digital technologies and nanotechnologies might alter not only our current monetary systems but also our understanding of value in itself, is still an open question. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to present some of the findings (which were reported on more extensively in earlier work) regarding the visibility of gender issues in the literature on selected information and communication technologies (ICTs) with a view to make predictions about potential ethical issues that the application of these ICTs may bring about in the future. On the basis of the analysis of around 100 published sources, which dealt with various aspects of selected ICTs, conclusions have been (...) drawn regarding gender issues and concerns that the applications of these ICTs may cause. The authors' analysis is theoretically informed by critical discourse analysis (CDA) which assumes that texts, both written and spoken, as well as other forms of symbolic representations, are indicative of social practices. Of particular methodological relevance was the survey of methods of text and discourse analysis presented in Titscher et al and especially the application of keyword search as a way to measure the prominence of each investigated method. This approach to literature surveying proved very useful in selecting analytic material: only those published sources on the selected four ICTs have been included in the survey, for which the analysis of keywords, abstracts and indexes of terms indicated authors' interest in gender issues. Findings - First, ICTs such as affective computing, ambient intelligence, and artificial intelligence, have been found to have the potential of positively affecting gender power relations and thus positively affecting gender balance in the areas of labour market related to ICT across EU countries and worldwide. Second, more research on the relationship between gender and ICT design, application and representation is needed, so as to enhance a better understanding of ethical issues resulting from unequal participation of women and men in all aspects of ICT production and implementation, which in itself is an ethical dilemma with which both the ICT business and legislators have to grapple. The paper offers insight into the relationship between the level of attention devoted to particular ICTs by ICT researchers, as evidenced in the reviewed literature, and the likelihood of the application of a particular ICT in the future, which is looked at and assessed from a gender perspective. (shrink)

Digital technologies are radically transforming our work environments and demand for skills, with certain jobs being automated away and others demanding mastery of new digital techniques. This global challenge of rapidly changing skill requirements due to task automation overwhelms workers. The digital skill gap widens further as technological and social transformation outpaces national education systems and precise skill requirements for mastering emerging technologies, such as Artificial Intelligence, remain opaque. Online labour platforms could help us to understand this grand challenge of (...) reskilling en masse. Online labour platforms build a globally integrated market that mediates between millions of buyers and sellers of remotely deliverable cognitive work. This commentary argues that, over the last decade, online labour platforms have become the ‘laboratories’ of skill rebundling; the combination of skills from different occupational domains. Online labour platform data allows us to establish a new taxonomy on the individual complementarity of skills. For policy makers, education providers and recruiters, a continuous analysis of complementary reskilling trajectories enables automated, individual and far-sighted suggestions on the value of learning a new skill in a future of technological disruption. (shrink)

Drawing on theories of institutional evolution, this article contends that despite the centrality of occupationally based social insurance in postwar Korea and Taiwan, the welfare state has in fact deepened considerably. The analysis is structured around three distinct eras of social policy reform in Korea and Taiwan: the developmental state, democratic transition, and postindustrialism. The authors contend that during each of these eras, the institutional purposes of social policy were altered to meet certain socioeconomic objectives. New institutional purposes were grafted (...) onto the prevailing social insurance model, changing the outcomes of social policy. The developmental state era was productivist in purpose, democratic reform during the 1980s reoriented social insurance toward universalist and redistributive principles, and the post-1997 era refocused social insurance to meet the imperatives of flexible labor markets, demographic shifts, and economic globalization. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on maintaining employment in the sector of small and medium-sized enterprises, which is crucial for the functioning of the economy. However, in an economic crisis, the changes in the area of employment of workers often become the foremost way of adapting to declining financial resources, which are the result of reduction of interest in the offer of the organisation by the customers. These actions had proven to be particularly evident in the case of global financial and economic (...) crisis, which also affected the Polish economy after 2008. The chapter suggests that the layoffs lead to rise in unemployment. Thus, there is a need to promote the outplacement, which is, a technique oriented on responsible dismissals in order to support a smooth transition of laid-off workers to new workplaces. In this way, both employees and companies increase their chances of maintaining competencies and better adapt to market competition requirements. This chapter explores the characteristics of the labour market policy in Poland, main features of the outplacement in the context of the crisis, examples of the outplacement implementation, plans for further development of the outplacement, and conclusions including directions for further research. (shrink)

A series of decisions covering agriculture as well as industrial and regional policy fundamentally affect the very own interests of the dependently employed. For some years, the trade unions of all European countries have been on the defensive, undergoing a legitimation crisis. The improvement of the social charter and of the rights of the European Parliament are not sufficient to overcome this crisis and to secure a human, social, ecological and democratic future. For this reason, the order of the day (...) must not only be a socially and ecologically compatible design for technology, but a socially and ecologically oriented one. There is certainly an enormous quantity of accompanying research within the European Community, but it is doubtful in how far this research takes into account the requirements of the majority of the population. (shrink)

The paper discusses legal implications of the expansion of practical uses of mathematics in social life. Taking as a starting point the omnipresence of mathematical infrastructures underlying policies, technology and markets, the paper proceeds by attending to relevant materials offered by general philosophy, legal philosophy, and the history and philosophy of mathematics. The paper suggests that the modern transformation of mathematics and its practical applications have spurred the emergence of multiple useful technologies and forms of social interaction but have impoverished (...) access to meanings originating in the lifeworld. The paper also argues that, as part of devices of interest aggregation and expert networks, mathematical infrastructures can be scrutinized by a revised form of legal practice that subjects them to legal critique and reconstruction in order to overcome conditions that have eroded the moral self-awareness of individuals and communities and their existential meanings. (shrink)

The paper discusses legal implications of the expansion of practical uses of mathematics in social life. Taking as a starting point the omnipresence of mathematical infrastructures underlying policies, technology and markets, the paper proceeds by attending to relevant materials offered by general philosophy, legal philosophy, and the history and philosophy of mathematics. The paper suggests that the modern transformation of mathematics and its practical applications have spurred the emergence of multiple useful technologies and forms of social interaction but have impoverished (...) access to meanings originating in the lifeworld. The paper also argues that, as part of devices of interest aggregation and expert networks, mathematical infrastructures can be scrutinized by a revised form of legal practice that subjects them to legal critique and reconstruction in order to overcome conditions that have eroded the moral self-awareness of individuals and communities and their existential meanings. (shrink)

The world economy, already launched toward the globalization of markets, is strenuously searching for nonrenewable natural resources, to exploit in the productive processes to satisfy the demands of a world population in continuous growth. In such a context ecological taxation can contribute to the resolution of environmental problems, stimulating the entrepreneurs to appraise opportunities, not only environmental but also economical, that spring from the introduction of innovations of sustainable processes. With this in mind this article has proceeded with an evolutionary (...) adaptation of the environmental curve of Kuznets, through a three-dimensional re-elaboration inserting as a third variable the sustainable technological component and showing how this can represent a valid tool of environmental politics for the attainment of an acceptable level of pollution for society in developed countries. Therefore, the objective of public governance is to favor research in the field of sustainable technology and to induce, even through the introduction of environmental taxation and facilitations, enterprises to use productive eco-compatible processes with the purpose of improving the general level of the quality of life in harmony with the concept of sustainable development. (shrink)

On 11 March 2020, the World Health Organization declared a pandemic of the COVID-19 coronavirus disease that was first recognized in China in late 2019. Among the primary effects caused by the pandemic, there was the dissemination of health preventive measures such as physical distancing, travel restrictions, self-isolation, quarantines, and facility closures. This includes the global disruption of socio-economic systems including the postponement or cancellation of various public events (e.g., sporting, cultural, or religious), supply shortages and fears of the same, (...) schools and universities closure, evacuation of foreign citizens, a rise of unemployment, changes in the international aid schemes, misinformation, and incidents of discrimination toward people affected by or suspected of having the COVID-19 disease. The pandemic has brought to the fore unpreparedness in critical areas that require attention, amid prospects and challenges. Moreover, considerable reorganization efforts are required with implications for assets, resources, norms, and value systems. COVID-19 is challenging the concept of globalization and stimulating responses at the levels of local and regional socio-economic systems that lead to the mobilization of assets that have been unrecognized earlier on, such as various forms of economic capital, social capital, cultural capital, human capital, and creative capital. For example, through digital channels, local groups are forming to create schemes of support for physical and mental wellbeing. These emerging exchanges lead to various social and technological innovations by building on skills and assets that are less important in the free-market economy, such as empathy, skills for crafts, making and fixing; locally grown microgreens; and micromanufacturing. Isolation and local living are also making it much harder to ignore the civic responsibilities towards communities, meant as individuals, vulnerable groups, and local businesses. Whilst the pandemic is limiting physical participation, this challenging time is uncovering alternative ways of mutual support, which may create long-term benefits for socio-economic systems, including environmental and biodiversity protection, reduction of the air pollution, and climate action. The pandemic’s threat to public health will hopefully be overcome with implications for disruption for an extended period that we are unable to forecast at this stage. It is key to focus on studies recognizing the activities and interventions leading to the recovery of socio-economic systems after the pandemic. Reflecting and planning on how societies and economies will go back to “business as usual” requires new forms of communication and cooperation, imaginative design thinking, new styles of management, as well as new tools and forms of participation in various public policies. Many questions related to the care of the vulnerable, economic restart, and the risk of future pandemics, to mention but a few, are already occupying the academic, scientific, experts, and activist communities, who have started to imagine the “new normal.”. (shrink)

In the article, the problem of formation of innovation potential of the labor motivation of employees of the social production economic sphere, determining their innovative activity is studied. The importance of positive work motivation of employees increases dramatically in terms of the Fourth industrial revolution. It is connected with the formation in the social production sphere of the sixth technological structure and innovative economy of the 21st century. The author justifies the problem decision of innovative potential formation of labor motivation (...) on the basis of complex application of the principles of the study of social philosophy, sociology, social anthropology and social psychology. The principles of system analysis based on the dialectics of the objective and subjective sides of social activity in the system of social production are applied as well. According to the author opinion, work motivation is a system of dialectically interrelated internal and external motives of human activities that forms the personal conscious program of action, which should lead to the satisfaction of vital needs. In accordance with the hierarchy of needs by A. Maslow, the need for self-actualization is crucial in the system of needs of the socialized individual. In the process of realization of this need, the formation of innovative potential of motivational activity takes place and transformation of the comprehending human homo sapiens into producing human - homo faber. Studying the formation process of labor motivation of socialized individuals in the main historical stages of development of social production: Antiquity, the middle ages, and industrial civilization, the author concludes that the origins of the innovative component of motivation are in Ancient Greece. It is the characteristic only of the free labor of free people aimed at maximum realization of their natural potential in their activities in order to achieve success not only for themselves, but also for the good and prosperity of their cities-policies. However, innovation potential of labor motivation of socialized individuals became fully realized only at the stage of post-industrial development of the technogenic civilization. With the beginning of the Fourth industrial revolution, when science becomes a direct productive force, the demand for innovators that together form the human capital of the innovation economy dramatically increases. Social value of this capital is determined by the innovative component of labor motivation of employees of all spheres of social production. The priority in the formation of motivation should belong to the state and implemented through the combined efforts of government, business and civil society on the basis of balance of rights and obligations of all actors of the labor market. (shrink)

Although the prison was originally conceived for the noble purpose of rehabilitating criminal offenders, critics from its very inception worried that the prison was an inherently criminogenic institution, reinforcing the criminal behaviors of its occupants. In this article I focus on an indirect mechanism, elaborating and empirically testing the impact of a prison record/experience on ex-inmates' labor market outcomes, by which ex-inmates will face significantly higher risks of recidivism and hence future prison spells, especially when they are released into weaker (...) labor markets. Specifically, I specify and test a version of the "secondary labor market hypothesis." Because most ex-inmates were mired in secondary jobs prior to their incarceration, I consider the impact of a prison record/experience on their chances of "moving up" to good jobs with higher pay, steadier hours, and greater mobility. In the conclusion I draw out the somber implications of my labor market analyses by examining trends in recidivism rates and their social costs. The evidence suggests that the War on Drugs policies have trapped an increasing number of more marginal drug offenders in the revolving door of recidivism, conventionally defined. It also highlights a new and quantitatively important recidivism risk for released prisoners, the revocation of parole on technical violations. To break out of this vicious cycle, my analysis shows, would demand vast direct government interventions in the labor market. As a more modest first step, I consider policy innovations like drug courts that place marginal drug offenders in treatment programs rather than prison. In illustrating and elaborating my arguments, I focus on the War on Drug policies and on marginal drug offenders. My reasons are several. First, the War on Drugs constituted a true social experiment, an exogenous shift in criminal justice policy that is best understood as a "moral" panic, precipitated in part by the tragic but transitory episode of lethal gun violence in the social regulation of the crack trade. Second, the War on Drugs policies were quantitatively important in instituting the regime of mass incarceration. And finally, these policies indiscriminately incarcerated marginal, not just more serious, offenders. (shrink)

The conducive economy challenges both the conceptual foundations and the practices of present-day economies. In the Netherlands, a few initiatives during the 1980s and early 1990s looked promising, in particular, as these initiatives focused on work quality as one major precondition for reducing disability and enhancing labor participation. Prospects are less bright today. Ever larger slices of governmental monetary, financial, economic, and social policies become market oriented, as distinct from conducivity oriented. The instrument of the covenant, nonetheless, may prove worthwhile (...) in further promoting the banner of work quality. (shrink)

Recently, economic studies on labor market developments have indicated that there is a potential threat of technological mass unemployment. Both smart robotics and information technology may perform a broad range of tasks that today are fulfilled by human labor. This development could lead to vast inequalities. Proponents of an unconditional basic income have, therefore, employed this scenario to argue for their cause. In this chapter, the author argues that, although a basic income might be a valid answer to the challenge (...) of technological unemployment, it fails to account for some ethical problems specific to future expectations of mass unemployment. The author introduces the proposal of an unconditional basic capital and shows how it can address these problems adequately and avoid objections against a basic income. However, the basic capital proposal cannot replace all redistributive social policies. It has to be interpreted as a supplement to either a basic income or more traditional redistributive policies. (shrink)

Social Responsibility (SA) 8000 registration/certification is a response by the business community to address consumer and investor perceptions of the importance of emerging global social issues such as child labor, worker rights, discrimination, compensation, etc. As more U.S. and European firms outsource production to less developed nations, social, environmental, and reputational issues have become more important. SA8000 is a series of behavioral standards that represents a comprehensive, and potentially global, corporate social responsibility registration system that provides a standard of socially (...) responsible treatment of workers. This paper explores how SA8000 adoption may impact a firm's marketing activities. (shrink)

This paper aims to examine the role that the various vehicles of marketing communications can play with respect to communicating, publicising and highlighting organisational CSR policies to its various stakeholders. It will further endeavour to evaluate the impact of such communications on an organisation's corporate reputation and brand image. The proliferation of unsubstantiated ethical claims and so-called 'green washing' by some companies has resulted in increasing consumer cynicism and mistrust. This has made the task of communicating with, and more importantly (...) convincing, an organisation's stakeholders vis-à-vis its CSR credentials even more difficult. This paper argues that marketing communications tools can play a major role in conveying a company's CSR messages and communicating a more socially responsible image. (shrink)

The term “globalization” was popularized by Marshall McLuhan in War and Peace in the Global Village. In the book, McLuhan described how the global media shaped current events surrounding the Vietnam War [1] and also predicted how modern information and communication technologies would accelerate world progress through trade and knowledge development. Globalization now refers to a broad range of issues regarding the movement of goods and services through trade liberalization, and the movement of people through migration. Much has also been (...) written on the global effects of environmental degradation, population growth, and economic disparities. In addition, the pace of scientific development has accelerated, with both negative and positive implications for global health. Concerns for national health transcend borders, with a need for shared human security and an enhanced role for international cooperation and development [2]. These issues have significant bioethical implications, and thus a renewed academic focus on the ethical dimensions of public health is needed. Future developments in science and health policy also require a firm grounding in bioethical principles. These core principles include beneficence; nonmaleficence ; respect for persons and human dignity ; and attention to equity and social justice. According to the World Health Organization [3], global ethical approaches should monitor and update ethical norms for research, as necessary; anticipate ethical implications of advances in science and technology for health; apply internationally accepted codes of ethics; ensure that agreed standards guide future work on the human genome; and ensure that quality in health systems and services is assessed and promoted. (shrink)

This paper aims to examine the role(s) that the various vehicles of marketing communications can play with respect to communicating, publicising and highlighting organisational CSR policies to its various stakeholders. It will further endeavour to evaluate the impact of such communications on an organisation's corporate reputation and brand image. The proliferation of unsubstantiated ethical claims and so-called 'green washing' by some companies has resulted in increasing consumer cynicism and mistrust. This has made the task of communicating with, and more importantly (...) convincing, an organisation's stakeholders vis-à-vis its CSR credentials even more difficult. This paper argues that marketing communications tools can play a major role in conveying a company's CSR messages and communicating a more socially responsible image. (shrink)

This paper seeks to examine the relationship and the interaction between institutions, policy and the labour market in the light of the ideas of the first generation of institutional economists, who, in contrast to neoclassicals, conceived of the economy as a nexus of institutions, underlining, therefore, the significant role of institutional and non-market factors in the functioning of an economic system. They also criticised those who define (economic) welfare only in terms of efficiency and satisfaction of consumer interests; institutionalists instead (...) focus on issues related to justice, human self-development and labourers' welfare. In addition, early institutionalists paid considerable attention to the institutional framework of the labour market. In particular, the first generation of institutional economists highlighted the importance of institutions and other non-market parameters in determining the level of wages and employment (e.g. the role of the bargaining power of workers and employers). Furthermore, they made substantial contributions towards the field of labour policy and they were pioneers in the formulation of economic and social policy. Specifically, various modern institutions and labour market policies, such as unemployment benefits, industrial training and active employment policies, were implemented in the US, during the first decades of the 20th century, after the recommendation of the institutional labour economists. Therefore, their ideas, besides being interesting from a historical point of view, may also be useful in today's analysis of workers' problems and the functioning of modern labour markets. (shrink)

One of numerous definitions of globalization describes it as a dynamic process whereby the social structures of modernity, such as capitalism, bureaucracy, high technology, and philosophy of rationalism and liberalism are spread the world over. Indeed, in that sense, liberalism has in general prevailed as the authoritative policy framework in present-day globalization. Most governments have promoted neoliberal policies toward globalization, as well as influential multilateral agencies have continually linked globalization with liberalization. Champions of neoliberal globalization have also abounded in commercial (...) circles, particularly in the financial markets and among managers of transborder firms. Business associations and business-oriented mass media have likewise figured as bastions of neoliberalism which has overall ranked as policy orthodoxy in respect of globalization. Generally speaking, neoliberal ideas recently gained widespread unquestioned acceptance as “common sense”. On the other hand, neoliberalism as a sort of philosophical, political and economic theory known as libertarianism, which has generally prevailed as theoretical approach in contemporary globalization, does not have much in common with the ideal of liberal democracy of well-ordered society, which arises from quite different ideas, aspects and dimensions of liberal philosophy. Social philosophy of liberalism, developed by Kant, Hayek, Dworkin and Rawls, has promoted the idea of modern liberal democracy which is generally based on the rule of law, protection of human and civil rights, ideas of equality and justice as fairness. In that sense “affirmative action” programmes in favour of the least advantaged groups are fully consonant with a general liberal philosophy that protects individual rights. Economic and cultural globalization should be accompanied by a clear conceptual analysis and a normative requirement of a globalization of responsibility in order to protect the global future of humankind. A democratic control as well as the rule of law in our globalized world is necessary, too. Central tasks of global policy to prevent global chaos as a consequence of uncontrolled globalization include, among other things, a legalized international order with a sort of global democratic governance. Concerning the improvement of global democracy and global rule of law the genuine question is: who can realize a policy of global governance in our divided world? (shrink)

This article describes the fight of transnational civic networks to influence business development strategies and counter the threats to environmental and labor rights posed by the construction and exploitation of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline in Transcaucasia. The article starts by discussing the role of civil society in the global struggle for sustainable development. Then a brief overview of the geopolitical significance of the Transcaucasian-Caspian region in today’s oil and gas markets is presented. The case study looks at how the (...) actions of international and domestic nongovernmental organizations influenced the BTC’s main shareholder and operator company, British Petroleum, as well as host countries’ governments, to switch to more environmentally cognizant and socially responsive practices. The article discusses internationalization of civil society networks in response to the looming environmental crisis in the region, using the BTC case as an illustration. The article concludes by generalizing from this particular case study to the broader issue of transnational civic activism as a risk-mitigating factor in the world dominated by industry-related threats presented by globalization of the extractive technologies. (shrink)

From a legal-philosophical point of view, The Redress of Law presents a critical analysis of a number of related doctrinal fields: constitutional, labour and EU Law. Focusing on the organisation and protection of work, this book asks what it means to protect work as an essential aspect of human flourishing. This is an ambitious and highly sophisticated intervention in contemporary academic and political debates around a set of critically important questions connected to processes of globalisation and market integration. The author (...) redefines the nature of legal and political thought in an age in which market rationality has exceeded its classic domain and has come to pervade the organization of social and political life. This restatement of critical legal theory is intended to defend the concept of constitutionalism and suggest new ways to deploy the law strategically. (shrink)

Many argue that transgenic technology will have wide-ranging implications for farmers in developing nations. A key concern is that competencies may be destroyed by predominantly foreign multinational transgenic technologies, exacerbating problems of social exclusion in the case of subsistence farmers. Conversely, those that fail to adopt the technology may become uncompetitive, particularly in commodity-based export markets. Drawing on interview data conducted in Brazil and supporting data collected in North America, Europe and China, we found that the impact of transgenic technology (...) varies. It has less impact on farmers that adapt the products to their crop systems and environment, and greater negative implications for less formally educated subsistence farmers in consequence of both complexity and compatibility. Earlier attempts at industrializing agriculture through technological innovation led to vastly improved agricultural output and exports, but the benefits of productivity was not equitably distributed [D. Lee: 2005, American Journal of Agricultural Economics 87, 1325-1334], nor was it designed to meet specific local environmental and socioeconomic farmer conditions, exacerbating social exclusion. Multinationals attempting to introduce transgenic technology without considering the broader social and ethical implications will invite resistance. We discuss the implications for policy makers, multinationals and small-scale farmers. (shrink)

Globalization has been one of the most hotly contested phenomena of the past two decades. It has been a primary attractor of books, articles, and heated debate, just as postmodernism was the most fashionable and debated topic of the 1980s. A wide and diverse range of social theorists have argued that today's world is organized by accelerating globalization, which is strengthening the dominance of a world capitalist economic system, supplanting the primacy of the nation-state by transnational corporations and organizations, and (...) eroding local cultures and traditions through a global culture. Contemporary theorists from a wide range of political and theoretical positions are converging on the position that globalization is a distinguishing trend of the present moment, but there are hot debates concerning its nature, effects, and future.2 Moreover, advocates of a postmodern break in history argue that developments in transnational capitalism are producing a new global historical configuration of post- Fordism, or postmodernism as an emergent cultural logic of capitalism (Harvey 1989; Soja 1989; Jameson 1991; and Gottdiener 1995). Others define the emergent global economy and culture as a "network society" grounded in new communications and information technology (Castells 1996, 1997, and 1998). For its defenders, globalization marks the triumph of capitalism and its market economy (see apologists such as Fukuyama 1992 and Friedman 1999 who perceive this process as positive), while its critics portray globalization as negative (see, for example, Mander and Goldsmith 1996; Eisenstein 1998; and Robins and Webster 1999). Some theorists see the emergence of a new transnational ruling elite and the universalization of consumerism (Sklair 2001), while others stress global fragmentation of “the clash of civilizations” (Huntington 1996). Driving “post” discourses into novel realms of theory and politics, Hardt and Negri (2000) present the emergence of “Empire” as producing evolving forms of sovereignty, economy, culture, and political struggle that unleash an unforeseeable and unpredictable flow of novelties, surprises, and upheavals. Discourses of globalization initially were polarized into pro or con celebrations or attacks.. (shrink)

This book explores a timely topic for philosophers, social scientists, and policy makers concerning ethical theory, social policy, and modern work. It offers international perspectives and comparative analysis that will appeal to academic and policy audiences around the world.

In an era of digital revolution, artificial intelligence, big data and augmented reality, technology has shifted from being a tool of communication to a primary medium of experience and sociality. Some of the most basic human capacities are increasingly being outsourced to machines and we increasingly experience and interpret the world through digital interfaces, with machines becoming ever more ‘social’ beings. Social interaction and human perception are being reshaped in unprecedented ways. This book explores this technologisation of the social and (...) the attendant penetration of permanent liminality into those aspects of the lifeworld where individuals had previously sought some kind of stability and meaning. Through a historical and anthropological examination of this phenomenon, it problematises the underlying logic of limitless technological expansion and our increasing inability to imagine either ourselves or our world in other than technological terms. Drawing on a variety of concepts from political anthropology, including liminality, the trickster, imitation, schismogenesis, participation, and the void, it interrogates the contemporary technological revolution in a manner that will be of interest to sociologists, social and anthropological theorists and scholars of science and technology studies with interests in the digital transformation of social life. -/- Table of Contents -/- Introduction: The Technologisation of the Social: A 21st-Century Megamachine? Paul O’Connor -/- 1. Communication as Theatricalisation: Self-Presentation in the Digital Age Arpad Szakolczai -/- 2. Parasites of the Social: Digital Disruptions of the Labour Market Tom Boland -/- 3. Possessed by Technology: The Metastasis of Absence Agnes Horvath -/- 4. Technologisation of the Social: Symbiosis, Parasitism, or Predation? Daniel Gati -/- 5. J'accuse Zéro: The Technology of Zero and the Making of a Personal Void Ray Griffin -/- 6. Digital Affordances and the Liminal Stephen Turner -/- 7. The Smart Womb: Digital Technologies and the Maze of Trickster Politics Marius Ion Benta -/- 8. Brave New Industry? The Dark Side of Dematerialisation and Industry 4.0 Thomas S.J. Smith -/- 9. ‘What Have You Caught?’: Nannycams and Hidden Cameras as Normalised Surveillance of the Intimate Janos Mark Szakolczai -/- 10. Coercive Visibility: Discipline in the Digital Public Arena Paul O’Connor -/- Conclusion: Is There a Way Out of the Technologisation of the Social? Marius Ion Benta. (shrink)

Recent technological developments in automation threaten to eliminate the jobs of millions of workers in the near future, raising worrisome questions about how to satisfy their welfare. One proposal for addressing this issue is to provide all citizens with a “universal basic income” (UBI) that ensures everyone with a social minimum. The aim is to give all individuals an unrestricted cash grant that provides them with an income that does not depend on status, wealth, or employment. The question this paper (...) explores is whether UBI can replace work in the age of automation. Work has financial and non-pecuniary benefits that provide individuals with an income, as well as self-realization, self-respect, and community. While the provision of UBI will supplement the financial benefits of work, the question remains whether such a grant can replace these non-pecuniary benefits. The first section outlines the benefits and burdens of work. The second section considers the effects of technology on work in the context of automation. The third section examines the arguments for UBI that make it a philosophically attractive alternative to traditional welfare policies. Finally, the last section evaluates whether the benefits of UBI can replace the loss of work in terms of its non-pecuniary benefits. (shrink)

Prior to its election to office in 2007, the Australian Labor Party announced a commitment to introduce Trade Training Centres (TTCs) into all Australian secondary schools as an initiative of its Education Revolution. TTCs were proposed as a key element of Federal Labor's education and training policy that aimed to manage future risks to Australia's competitiveness in the emerging global economy and to support school-to-employment transitions for young people. This analysis adopts a governmentality framework to conceptualise the Federal Government's introduction (...) of TTCs alternatively as a key strategy for nationalising social investment politics in Australia. The paper draws on recent Australian policy documents to argue that TTCs are social technologies that work to open up social spaces in and around schools for governing relationships between schools and other community stakeholders, particularly businesses and families. The paper concludes by examining policy implications, including those of social justice, for promoting school community partnerships through TTCs. (shrink)

In this contribution, we argue that critical theories of the public sphere (in Habermas, but also in Negt and Kluge as well as Fraser) leave out the socially central field of labour and labour-political disputes, and that a reactualization and refocusing becomes necessary: We define the dynamics of globalization, commodification and digitalization as sequences of a renewed structural transformation of both social self-understanding and gainful employment. With the help of a multi-level model of labour-political publics and counter-publics, class mobilizations can (...) be examined with a public-theoretical lens and important moments of labour-political disputes can also be reflected on their communicative conditions. This is exemplified by two vignettes. (shrink)

Globalization offers a comprehensive framework for addressing prospects for the peaceful evolution of people and societies in the Third Millennium, Global markets, trade and communications, along with science and technology, now drive social, economic, and political development, modernization, and cultural change. Globalization thus holds great promise of extending economic prosperity throughout the world. Paradoxically, globalization can also deepen the divisions between rich and poor nations, contribute to the revolution of rising expectations in the Third World, and exacerbate frustrations caused by (...) the accelerated pace of socio-economic and political development and cultural change. The contemporary resurgence of religion reflects crisis of modemity--the loss of traditional anchoring of social, cultural, and ethical mores, self- and group identification and meaning. The key to a peaceful, democratic globalization is a successful modernization strategy which seeks to reconcile and conjoin the best elements of modernity and tradition, the individual and community, freedom and order, secularism and religion, democracy and authority. (shrink)

The post-Westphalian Nation State developed by becoming more and more an Information Society. However, in so doing, it progressively made itself less and less the main information agent, because one of the main forces that made the Nation State possible and then predominant, as a historical driving force in human politics, namely Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), is also what is now making it less central, in the social, political and economic life of humanity across the world. ICTs enable and (...) promote the agile, temporary and timely aggregation, disaggregation and re-aggregation of distributed groups around shared interests across old, rigid boundaries represented by social classes, political parties, ethnicity, language barriers, physical and geographical barriers, and so forth. Similar novelties call for a serious exercise in conceptual re-engineering. This paper argues for the need to understand how the new informational multiagent systems may be designed in such a way as to take full advantage of the socio-political progress made so far, while being able to deal successfully with the new global challenges (from the environment to the financial markets) that are undermining the legacy of that very progress. (shrink)

This article studies the chronic and acute anomic social impacts of the development of market societies in Europe over the past few decades. Focusing on the firm but linking micro and macro levels, it argues that the passage from the welfare state to disembedded markets and neoliberal governance has generated individual and collective anomie by depriving social actors of agency and voice while caging them in the disciplinary constraints of an ideal competition society. Promoted by public and private governors animated (...) by visions of managerial omnipotence, this reconfiguration has hollowed out the cluster of rights that was the basis of democratic and social citizenship in Europe. The article discusses the manifestations of anomie, stressing the violence flowing from the radical uncertainty to which atomized employees and more broadly citizens are facing in the reification of collective goals, which have been reduced to participation in market society. Drawing on the classical literature (Durkheim, Parsons, Merton) but expanding upon it, the article examines exit solutions, at the individual and collective levels, involving violence against the self (suicide) and others (mobbing, xenophobia, fascism), and concludes that Europe seems to be heading towards a protracted period of danger-laden chronic and acute anomie. (shrink)

Since the late 1990s, the dynamics of welfare reform in Taiwan have gradually shifted to tackling new social risks emerging from economic globalization and labor market changes. This article analyzes these structural changes and the relevant institutional features of the labor market. The rise of atypical work has generated wide concern regarding its low wage income and insufficient social protection, triggering debates about which policy measures can effectively tackle the problem of the working poor. Drawing on the quantitative data from (...) a social quality survey conducted by the Social Policy Research Center in National Taiwan University (NTUSPRC) in 2009, our analysis explores the social exclusion differences between regular and atypical workers for their objective and subjective experiences. The objective experiences include current financial situations, negative events, living conditions and political activities of the workers, whereas the subjective experiences refer to their feelings in family position, welfare assessment, discrimination, and autonomy. Our analysis helps explain the effects of work status on the degrees of social exclusion, both in the private and public spheres. The social exclusion experiences of working conditions shed light on social quality in Asia. (shrink)

A vacuum is arising in the social policy of advanced countries. It is due to the fact that both of the currently dominant bases for social policy, market-oriented policy, and its presumed antagonist, welfare state policy, have the same and an insufficiently broad production value model at their core. The solution is to create a true new alternative, work quality policy, based on a re-understanding of work organization and the alternative forms of value it can create. Understanding work organization’s consequences (...) can help resolve current dilemmas relating to (a) economic growth based on low production cost instead of skill development, (b) hidden costs of work intensity and job insecurity, (c) true service sector productivity, and (d) current fragility of democratic institutions. (shrink)

This article examines an omission in the study of discretionary time that bears on proposals currently being evaluated in this part of political philosophy. Specifically, this is the tendency in many jobs for work time to bleed into what is meant to be protected or discretionary time. I refer to this phenomenon as the relative proximity of labour and capital, which has become more prevalent in the labour market due to increased use of mobile communications technology. Ignored by the literature (...) is the fact that whether a job exhibits a high degree of proximity of labour and capital will influence workers' access to their discretionary time entitlements, including policies such as workplace flexibility and the four-day week. To account for this, I provide a descriptive and normative account of the proximity of labour and capital, in response to which I propose a remedial policy that provides workers with greater autonomy over how and when they take up their discretionary time entitlements. (shrink)

Purpose. Institutionalism is gaining strength as a dominant point of view on the world. Its philosophical basis is the postulate of the uncertainty of the development, which comes to replace the neoclassical certainty characteristic of industrial society. The postulate of uncertainty is closely connected with the idea of subjectivization and individualization of post-industrial society. All these were very important components of the new paradigm, although they do not exhaust the problem. In the heart of postmodernism is a mass identity as (...) a spiritual substance, while the more recently mass of people to realize themselves as natural and social beings. Person has absolute freedom in the acceptance and rejection of culture and civilization; it is pluralistic in their actions and in their consciousness. It is the subject of history and it should be creative, fluent mastering all the achievements of culture. Methodology. The dialogue system of the Postmodern, which is the basis of human communication with another person, human with society is a model of convergent formation of the world community and world economy. The same model of rationalism and adequate industrial society is a monologue, which is easily builds a bridge to violence, even if it is carried out in the name of the man behind him and the pathos of the exaltation of man as the bearer of unlimited creation possibilities. However, it is very important not just to modify rationalism, and to understand the origins of civilization. Scientific novelty. The postmodern era begins is not easy. Modern defending, using all their reserves: public thirst for justice, the priority of rationality, monologist public agencies and politicians in contrast to the dialogic postmodern imperative modality in the spiritual existence of man instead the freedom. Finally, the world of the story is set a trap – the anthropological paradigm of the globalization ideology formation. In this paradigm, people see materialistic rational measure of space and society building, i.e. the natural and social being, not a spiritual person. All this was evident in the course of transformation in Ukraine. Its main weakness is obvious. This narrows the field of mass participation in the market or by the adopted symbolism, the field of subjectivity. The population is invited to wait and endure, i.e. plays the role of the object of political and economic manipulation. Even more unacceptable monopolization of subjectivity government, for which everything is regarded as a subject of state regulation. Conclusions. For civilization of cardinal feature is the treatment of the person as the subject of history. The need for the development of civilization to increase the degree of subjectivity in an economy where people can express themselves freely and responsibly through a system of private property relations: economic entity is the subject of property. Policy enhancing the role of human rights and the development of the principle of subjectivity means deepening the democratic foundations of the state structure. In the social sphere the subjectivity is expressed in the individualization of the social existence of man and the personification of public relations and it is implemented through the mechanisms of liberal institutions. It seems that the civilizational unity of the economy, democratic state and liberal society has the value of a scientific paradigm. Whatever the great cultural peaks of the postmodern, the main processes of a new society formed at its foot: in the area of formation of public consciousness and public preferences with the mass participation of the individual in the economy, in the field of state-building and the formation of social institutions on the principles of Amateur participation. (shrink)

Purpose. Institutionalism is gaining strength as a dominant point of view on the world. Its philosophical basis is the postulate of the uncertainty of the development, which comes to replace the neoclassical certainty characteristic of industrial society. The postulate of uncertainty is closely connected with the idea of subjectivization and individualization of post-industrial society. All these were very important components of the new paradigm, although they do not exhaust the problem. In the heart of postmodernism is a mass identity as (...) a spiritual substance, while the more recently mass of people to realize themselves as natural and social beings. Person has absolute freedom in the acceptance and rejection of culture and civilization; it is pluralistic in their actions and in their consciousness. It is the subject of history and it should be creative, fluent mastering all the achievements of culture. Methodology. The dialogue system of the Postmodern, which is the basis of human communication with another person, human with society is a model of convergent formation of the world community and world economy. The same model of rationalism and adequate industrial society is a monologue, which is easily builds a bridge to violence, even if it is carried out in the name of the man behind him and the pathos of the exaltation of man as the bearer of unlimited creation possibilities. However, it is very important not just to modify rationalism, and to understand the origins of civilization. Scientific novelty. The postmodern era begins is not easy. Modern defending, using all their reserves: public thirst for justice, the priority of rationality, monologist public agencies and politicians in contrast to the dialogic postmodern imperative modality in the spiritual existence of man instead the freedom. Finally, the world of the story is set a trap – the anthropological paradigm of the globalization ideology formation. In this paradigm, people see materialistic rational measure of space and society building, i.e. the natural and social being, not a spiritual person. All this was evident in the course of transformation in Ukraine. Its main weakness is obvious. This narrows the field of mass participation in the market or by the adopted symbolism, the field of subjectivity. The population is invited to wait and endure, i.e. plays the role of the object of political and economic manipulation. Even more unacceptable monopolization of subjectivity government, for which everything is regarded as a subject of state regulation. Conclusions. For civilization of cardinal feature is the treatment of the person as the subject of history. The need for the development of civilization to increase the degree of subjectivity in an economy where people can express themselves freely and responsibly through a system of private property relations: economic entity is the subject of property. Policy enhancing the role of human rights and the development of the principle of subjectivity means deepening the democratic foundations of the state structure. In the social sphere the subjectivity is expressed in the individualization of the social existence of man and the personification of public relations and it is implemented through the mechanisms of liberal institutions. It seems that the civilizational unity of the economy, democratic state and liberal society has the value of a scientific paradigm. Whatever the great cultural peaks of the postmodern, the main processes of a new society formed at its foot: in the area of formation of public consciousness and public preferences with the mass participation of the individual in the economy, in the field of state-building and the formation of social institutions on the principles of Amateur participation. (shrink)

At first thought, iteration seems banal. It is about repeating the existing; nothing is changing. But this special issue shows that, in an era obsessed with the new, it is often the repetition of the old that creates social change. Iteration fosters persuasion. It affords opportunities for critical and creative engagement with meaning, values and knowledge. It invites collaboration, though its apparent simplicity often belies a tremendous amount of individual and collective labour involved in the practices of iteration. Through its (...) repetition of the existing, however, iteration also can be a mechanism for reproducing the status quo. Its pervasiveness and banality naturalises power, and its mimetic qualities shrink spaces for critical distance and care. The editors of this special issue have brought together a delightful and fascinating diversity of articles focussed on iteration in cultural production in the digital age. We hop across geographies to examine lockdown diaries, artists’ books, socialist memes, fake news, the design of social media platforms and artificial intelligence, activism, film, social media forum moderation, news website reader comments and more. Iterating through the collection as a whole, across its many disciplines, is a commitment to theorising through empirical evidence, to explaining with critique, and to providing pathways to praxis. These characteristics of this special issue, and the many concepts and arguments it puts forward, make this collection of work exceptionally rich material for seeing iteration and how it shapes the world we live in today, as well as the world we want it to be. In this preface, I take a media sociology approach to show how iteration can be usefully understood as collaborative communication for change. I see this understanding of iteration, whose ascendancy is related to the ascendancy of computer science, as baked into the form of communication technologies—and thus as shaping the kinds of iteration that are possible when we use these technologies. This understanding also prompts us to focus on the connection between iteration and social change. To explore how this works, I analytically slow down the practice of iteration to show that it is a communication practice of transmission. That transmission practice is itself constituted of cognate communication practices—the reception, evaluation and production of knowledge—in which visibility and persuasion are key. In the latter parts of the preface, I illustrate this through the example of witnessing as iteration, as the high-stakes nature of witnessing make it a canary in the coalmine, more generally, for mediated communication in the digital age. I show how breaking the witnessing practice down into its various parts allows us to see how power enters and inflects who and what are iterated, when—and who and what are not. Thinking critically with iteration and against unequal power relations, the praxis this preface suggests is one—much in line with the rest of this special issue—of explaining how iteration might move the grassroots towards their goals. (shrink)