Rasa Smite: Creative Networks: In the Rearview Mirror of Eastern European History (2011/2012)

“Creative Networks explores the dawn of the Internet culture in the age of network society from the perspective of Eastern Europe. From a theoretical angle the networks are introduced and interpreted as complex socio-technical systems. The author analyzes the development of these networked self-organized formations starting off with ‘virtual communities’ of ‘creative networks’, which emerged during the early phase of the Internet, up to the phenomena of today’s online ‘social networks’. Along with the translocal case studies of Nettime, Syndicate, Faces and Xchange networks (as well as with the other important facets of the 1990s network culture in Europe), the author studies also local community networking case of alternative and digital culture that evolved around E-Lab in the 1990s in Latvia. By focusing primarily on the network culture of 1990s, this study reflects those changes in the social structure of today’s society that are occurring under the process of socio-technical transformation.

The book is based on a dissertation by Rasa Smite, with the title Creative Network Communities and was defended in Riga Stradins University, February 2011.”

First published in Latvian in Riga: RIXC and Liepaja: LiepU MPLab, 2011.

Translated by Linda Vebere
Publisher Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam 2012
Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial No Derivative Works 3.0 Netherlands License
ISBN 9789081857505
160 pages

Review: Piibe Piirma (Baltic Screen Media Review, 2014).

Publisher

PDF (updated on 2023-9-27)

Jeffrey Jerome Cohen (ed.): Animal, Vegetable, Mineral: Ethics and Objects (2012)

Animal, Mineral, Vegetable examines what happens when we cease to assume that only humans exert agency. Through a careful examination of medieval, early modern and contemporary lifeworlds, these essays collectively argue against ecological anthropocentricity. Sheep, wolves, camels, flowers, chairs, magnets, landscapes, refuse and gems are more than mere objects. They act; they withdraw; they make demands; they connect within lively networks that might foster a new humanism, or that might proceed with indifference towards human affairs. Through what ethics do we respond to these activities and forces? To what futures do these creatures and objects invite us, especially when they appear within the texts and cultures of the “distant” past?

Contents: Jeffrey J. Cohen (George Washington University): “Introduction: All Things” – Karl Steel (Brooklyn College): “With the World, or Bound to Face the Sky: The Postures of the Wolf-Child of Hesse” – Sharon Kinoshita (University of California, Santa Cruz): “Animals and the Medieval Culture of Empire” – Peggy McCracken (University of Michigan): “The Floral and the Human” – Kellie Robertson (University of Wisconsin-Madison): “Exemplary Rocks” – Valerie Allen (John Jay College of Criminal Justice): “Mineral Virtue” – Eileen Joy (Southern Illinois University Edwardsville): “You Are Here: A Manifesto” – Julian Yates (University of Delaware): “Sheep Tracks: Multi-Species Impressions” – Julia Reinhard Lupton (University of California, Irvine): “The Renaissance Res Publica of Things” – Jane Bennett (Johns Hopkins University): “Powers of the Hoard: Further Notes on Material Agency”

Response essays: Lowell Duckert, “Speaking Stones, John Muir, and a Slower (Non)humanities” – Nedda Mehdizadeh, “‘Ruinous Monument’: Transporting Objects in Herbert’s Persepolis” – Jonathan Gil Harris, “Animal, Vegetable, Mineral: Twenty Questions”

Publisher Oliphaunt Books, Washington, DC, an imprint of punctum books, May 2012
ISBN 0615625355, 9780615625355
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommerical-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License
310 pages

publisher
google books

PDF (updated on 2013-10-12)

Christopher Kullenberg: The Quantification of Society: A Study of a Swedish Research Institute and Survey-based Social Science (2012)

This thesis is concerned with the contemporary history of quantitative surveys in Sweden. The core epistemic practice of constructing surveys is examined empirically through a case study of the SOM Institute (Samhälle, Opinion, Medier) at University of Gothenburg. The SOM Institute has performed surveys in Sweden since 1986. However, the methodology of quantitative surveys with representative sampling techniques dates back to the 1940s. A central theme in this theses is to follow how these methods and techniques have been made to work under different historical circumstances.

Theoretically, this thesis relies on concepts that are derived from classical Actor-Network Theory (ANT) and then further developed. This conceptual tool-box is then utilized to select moments in the history of surveys that are of special importance for understanding how Swedish society has been quantified.

Special attention is drawn to how the accuracy of surveys is established through mutual reinforcement with previous data. By closely studying how the SOM Institute conducted their first postal surveys in the 1980s, the relation and importance of other, contemporary surveys is emphasized. Moreover, the creation of a state-science interface is described by going back in time to the 1950s and the creation of the first academic surveys. This was also the moment in history when random samples were established. Here, the impact of the creation of the welfare state and the role of science in this political project is discussed and related to the expansion of the social sciences.

To further understand the border between academic science and pollster research, a controversy that took place during the elections of 1985 is studied. The controversy was ignited because pollster data predicted that the conservative party (Moderaterna) would win the elections. However, this turned out to be false. What followed was a debate concerning both the accuracy of different methodologies and the political bias of different surveys. Academic scientists succeeded in creating a position that guaranteed value-free social science, which later would have an impact on the future of social scientific investigations.

The dissertation concludes that the way social phenomena are quantified today, must be understood in a historical context that includes the epistemic practice of social scientists. The creation of large-scale quantitative surveys not only presupposes certain aspects of modern society, it also transforms these societies.

Keywords: Quantification, survey, SOM Institute, social science, epistemic practice, Actor-Network Theory, welfare state, center of calculation.

Dissertation thesis
Department of Philosophy, Linguistics, and Theory of Science, University of Gothenburg
ISBN 978-91-628-8458-1
Kopimi
225 pages

author

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