The person of the category: the pricing of risk and the politics of classification in insurance and credit

In recent years, scholars in the social sciences and humanities have turned their attention to how the rise of digital technologies is reshaping political life in contemporary society. Here, we analyze this issue by distinguishing between two classification technologies typical of pre-digital and digital eras that differently constitute the relationship between individuals and groups. In class-based systems, characteristic of the pre-digital era, one’s status as an individual is gained through membership in a group in which salient social identities are shared in common with other group members. In attribute-based systems, characteristic of the digital era, one’s status as an individual is determined by virtue of possession of a set of attributes that need not be shared with others. We argue that differences between these two types of classification technologies have important implications for how persons attach (or fail to attach) to groups, and therefore what kinds of political mobilization are possible. We illustrate this argument by examining contention over the use of gender as a variable in the pricing of risk in insurance and credit – two markets in which individuals directly encounter class-based and attribute-based systems of classification, respectively.

     

Disability and the promises of technology: Technology, subjectivity and embodiment within an order of the normal

The topic of this article is the promises of technology for disabled people. The starting point is that disabled is not something one is but something one becomes, and, further, that disability is enacted and ordered in situated and quite specific ways. The question, then, is how people become, and are made, disabled - and, in particular, what role technologies and other material arrangements play in enabling and or disabling interactions. Drawing on a study of the uses of new technologies in the lives of disabled people in Norway, and recent work in disability studies as well as social studies of science and technology, this article explores precisely what positions and capacities are enabled; how these are made possible in practice; the specific configuration of subjectivity, embodiment and disability that emerges; and the limits to this mode of ordering disability and its technologies. The argument is that in this context the mobilization of new technologies works to build an order of the normal and turn disabled people into competent normal subjects. However, this strategy based on compensation achieves its goals only at a very high price: by continuing to reproduce boundaries between abled and disabled, and normal and deviant, which constitute some people as disabled in the first place. There are thus limits to normalization. And so, notwithstanding their generative and transformative power, technologies working within an order of the normal are implicated in the (re)production of the asymmetries that they and it seek to undo.     

A situated understanding of digital technologies in social movements. Media ecology and media practice approaches

Abstract

The article tackles two main aspects related to the interaction between social movements and digital technologies. First, it reflects on the need to include and combine different theoretical approaches in social movement studies so as to construct more meaningful understanding of how social movement actors deals with digital technologies and with what outcomes in societies. In particular, the article argues that media ecology and media practice approaches serve well to reach this objective as: they recognize the complex multi-faceted array of media technologies, professions and contents with which social movement actors interact; they historicize the use of media technologies in social movements; and they highlight the agency of social movement actors in relation to media technologies while avoiding a media-centric approach to the subject matter. Second, this article employs a media practice perspective to explore two interrelated trends in contemporary societies that the articles in this special issue deal with: the personalization and individualization of politics, and the role of the grassroots in political mobilizations.     

Antipolitics and Counterpolitics in Nepal’s Civil Society: The Case of Nepal’s Citizens’ Movement

This article considers the relationship of civil society to the domain of the political from the actors’ perspectives. It explores the attempt by a citizens’ movement (CMDP) in Nepal to construct new political realities in the context of the autocratic regime of king Gyanendra and then during the democratic transition. This was, paradoxically, to be achieved through the construction of an apolitical space. Theoretically, this production of apoliticality by civil society actors shows that civil society is not only implicated in the expansion of what is understood as ‘political’ but also in setting its boundaries. The broader aims of the article are to contribute to the ethnography of civil society and to add to current understandings of the relationship of actually existing civil societies to the political domain. Practically, it argues that debates over whether civil society is or is not political in the Nepal case and normative positions within development circles that it should not be political are misconceived since civil society is a site for the production of both politicality and apoliticality.     

Local press meets transnational activism: news dynamics in an anti‐WTO protest

Transnational protests often involve a cross‐cultural encounter between “foreign” protesters and the local media and public, whose repertoires of contentious practices and discourses may differ. Examining how transnational and local actors interact in these events is one way to understand the significance and impact of transnational activism. At the same time, local media coverage of transnational protests can also be analyzed as such a cross‐cultural encounter. Following these premises, this article examines Hong Kong media coverage of the transnational protests during the World Trade Organization's 6th Ministerial Conference, which was held in the city in December 2005. The analysis focuses particularly on how this non‐routine news event provided the conditions for a more reflective interactive dynamics between the protesters and journalists, which contributed to emergence of media discourses negotiating and redefining the existing cultural understanding of protest actions. However, the case study also shows the limits regarding how far the redefinition and negotiation can go. Theoretical implications of the analysis are discussed.     

The Effect of Social Class on the Adjudication of Criminal Cases: Class-linked Behavior Tendencies,Common Sense,and the Interpretive Procedures of Court-appointed Defense Attorneys

This article addresses some important issues concerning the effect of social class on criminal case outcomes. Although the findings reported here support Donald Black's (1989) argument that a defendant's relative social class effects the quantity of law applied to a criminal case, they also indicate that this influence occurs through actors' interpretive procedures. Specifically, one group of court-appointed defense attorneys link behavior tendencies to court actors characterized as different social class types. These behavior tendencies are expressed through the grammar and rhetoric of “common sense”—a knowledge system which is evoked throughout all types of judicial proceedings. The attorneys' expectations of court actors shape their behavior such that lower-class defendants are likely to endure a greater quantity of law. The article concludes with some suggestions on how researchers might reconsider studying the effect of social class on criminal case outcomes.     

Converging technologies in the Italian daily press 2002–2006: preliminary results of an ongoing research project

The article introduces the preliminary results of an ongoing research project aiming to explore how the promises of NBIC to improve and cure the human mind and body are portrayed and what themes and actors the coverage makes salient in the public discourse. Focusing on the Italian daily press in the period 2002–2006, news stories about the two application areas of converging technologies related to brain enhancement and human–machine interfaces are examined here. Preliminary findings show an overwhelmingly positive coverage and a hegemonic position of natural and life scientists and medical doctors in the media discourse on converging technologies.     

What is Real in the Age of Virtual Reality?“Retraining” Frame Analysis for a Technological World

How do social actors determine what is really happening and what is not? This distinction, analyzed in such depth by Erving Goffman in Frame Analysis, now requires further analysis as technologies such as virtual reality become ever more affordable and available, transforming many aspects of everyday life and, inevitably, the definition of the “real” experience itself. This article considers the ways that experience is generated and organized in modern social life, arguing that a “refraining” of frame analysis and a “reconceptualization” of reality itself is necessary to help us understand the ways in which social worlds involving highly sophisticated technologies are created and endowed with meaning by actors, as well as the subtle, long-term effects of such technologies.     

Facing up to Facebook: how digital activism,independent regulation,and mass media foiled a neoliberal threat to net neutrality

This study traces how Facebook-promoted internet.org/Free Basics, despite initial acclaim, was eventually rejected in India – and how net neutrality came to be codified in the process. Topic modeling of articles (N?=?1752) published over two-and-a-half years in 100 media outlets pinpoints the critical junctures in time at which the public discourse changed its trajectory. Critical discourse analysis of different phases of the discourse then identifies the causal factors and contingent conditions that produced the new policy. The study advances an understanding of technologies as social constructs and technological change as a social process, shaped by the dynamic interaction of a complex array of social actors coming together at critical junctures. It also draws attention to how discourse, produced by social actors in contingent conditions, recursively shapes the dominant ideology and structures these interactions. In addition, the study demonstrates how algorithmic and interpretive research techniques can be combined for longitudinal analysis of textual data sets.     

‘We feel the responsibility that you shirk’: movement institutionalization,the politics of responsibility and the case of the Swedish environmental movement

This article provides directions for advancing the conceptualization of the relationship between social movements and institutionalization, based on a case study of the Swedish environmental movement strategies. We argue that the concepts of (de)responsibilization and (de)politicization provide tools for an improved analysis of the dynamics of how social movements interact both with established political institutions and corporations in a new context. The introduction of new regulatory frameworks in environmental politics has shaped interaction between social movements and the state in new ways, involving neoliberal responsibilization, meaning active involvement by civil society and business in political responsibilities previously associated with state agencies – a development involving an increasing emphasis on market mechanisms. We argue that this has involved a de-politicization of environmental issues in the sense that it engages political actors in a moral discourse and a technocratic practice that suppresses the (potential) articulation of social conflict through consensus building. However, we also show how movement actors resist the discourse that encourages them to take on certain responsibilities, thus engaging in a politics of responsibility. Empirically, we demonstrate how the changing strategies of the Swedish environmental movement in the 2000s need to be understood in relation to the following processes, indicating that the Swedish case has a general relevance for an understanding of the contemporary environmental movement globally: (1) the transformation of the Swedish model of welfare capitalism under the influence of neoliberal discourse; (2) international environmental policy developments, most importantly the emergence of climate change as a dominant issue globally.     

Developmental Dynamics in Nonprofit-Sector Federations

This article explores developmental processes in community-based issue domains and the effects of such processes on the federated referent organizations (FROs) that emerge to address problematic issues. Such organizations mobilize resources and serve as focal points for collective strategies. FROs encounter developmental tensions as they oscillate between adaptation to their environments and construction of new contexts. The way these tensions are resolved suggests three possible response scenarios: reorientation, replacement, or demise. Likely conditions for each scenario are explored. A case study of a federation of over 200 nonprofit organizations in a metropolitan region in the United States is used to illustrate the argument, and implications for similar types of organizations are indicated.     

Making Sense of Social Change: Observing Collective Action in Networked Cultures

This article presents an overview of rising trends in the study of networked interactions conveyed by social media technologies and the emergence of new meanings associated with social change. In recent years, a healthy amount of studies has focused on ICT uses within collective action, considering social media tools to have become crucial components of many transnational movements and social change projects. Crossing boundaries between social movements theories, political science, and communication studies, literature suggests that ‘online activism’ and increasingly networked interactions may have transformed the meanings and definitions associated with ‘collective action’ and ‘social change’. To make sense of these meanings, we identify three approaches used by scholars, which focus on (i) the actual networking of actors, (ii) the diffusion of new repertoires and frames through networks, and (iii) making sense of new meanings conveyed within networked cultures. We conclude by suggesting the need for more comprehensive research to better observe and make sense of how's actors define collective action and how they use social media tools when striving to convey social change.     

Between rebellion and uprising intersecting networks and discursive strategies in rebel controlled Syria

ABSTRACT

In the article I explore how, at the individual level, participation in multiple networks opens up questions regarding the classification of social activism. The central contention is that as mobilization networks increasingly intersect, explicit discursive designations of activism (being ‘political’ or ‘nonpolitical, social’) by individual activists becomes more prevalent. I substantiate this argument with an in-depth exploration of the Syrian uprising. I show that as two distinct networks─one that emerged around nonviolent activism, another that emerged around a violent uprising─increasingly intersected, activists began to use specific discursive strategies. On the one side, a strategy emerged that emphasized the nonpolitical nature of mobilization, distancing activism discursively from intersecting networks. On the other side, a strategy emerged of politicizing collective identities, thereby bridging discursively various mobilization networks. The article thereby adds to existing studies on the intersection between network structure and individual activism. The analysis builds on more than a hundred primary sources from various rebel groups and relevant local actors in addition to thirty interviews with relevant players among activist, rebel and public services organizations.     

Digitalization as “an Agent of Social Change” in a Supermarket Chain: Applying Blumer's Theory of Industrialization in Contemporary Society

In this article I pursue Blumer's argument in Industrialization as an Agent of Social Change that social changes are the consequence of people's interpretation of technology. By examining oral history interviews with managers and other staff of the British supermarket chain Tesco I explore the relationship between “digitalization” and the organization of the business. The analysis reveals how the interviewees interpreted emerging computing technologies, and how the deployment of these technologies in the business impacted the material and ecological arrangement and the distribution of knowledge in the company. The article ends with a discussion of the relevance of Blumer's framework for contemporary studies of “digitalization” and social change.     

Scientists,the Media,and the Public Communication of Science

The relationship between scientists and journalists has evolved in recent years with the advent of numerous sociocultural changes and drastic shifts within the media ecosystem. Media professionals have traditionally been the gatekeepers of scientific information, but new media technologies grant scientists more power than ever before to be proactive about their public communication. In this article, I provide an overview of the science–media relationship and scientists as public communicators. Specifically, I recount the relationship that has traditionally existed between scientists and media professionals, explain how this relationship has evolved over recent years, and highlight what I believe are some of the most salient and exciting areas for future research examining scientists' efforts to engage with the public.     

The story about theater organizations, the public's approval, and the actors' identity formation in Nordic disability theater

Nordic disability theater is a relatively new and interesting field of disability research. In this article, the authors provide an overview of the field of disability theater in a Nordic context. The article is based on a comparative analysis from 3 research projects conducted in Sweden and Norway. The projects used qualitative methods and were analyzed from different theoretical perspectives. Interviews were conducted at 4 different disability theaters involving actors with hearing impairments, intellectual disabilities, physical disabilities, and mental disabilities. The aim of this article is to illustrate how the organizational settings reflect different goals and aims at the political and artistic levels. The authors will also address the relationship between the theaters and the public opinion and media. Finally, they will illustrate in what way organization, recognition, and public approval play an important role for the actors' identity formation and sense of belonging.     

Overcoming Uncertainty: Agency,Stance, and the Rise of Collective Action in Times of Crisis

This article examines how grassroots actors initiate and engage in collective action to transcend dramatic situations of large-scale societal crisis. Merging strands of sociolinguistic scholarship with social movement theory, the concepts of stance and stance-taking are presented to reveal how individuals collectively exert their agency during episodes of macrostructural instability and uncertainty. Stance is defined as the agentive and solidaristic position taken up by a group of actors to navigate and overcome moments of social rupture. Stance-taking is the situational ensemble of discursive, organizational, and dramaturgical practice through which stances are developed and deployed. Analysis of the social construction of stance promotes multidimensional understandings of how social movements intensify and expand under conditions of crisis. To illustrate the analytical purchase of these concepts, the study describes the stance-taking practices that fueled the rise of mass public protests in Buenos Aires, Argentina, at the height of a national crisis in 2001.     

Privacy as a Common Good in the Digital World

This article seeks to broaden our understanding of online privacy in three ways: first, by drawing out the differences between the physical world and the digital world as those differences affect privacy; second, by exploring how the concept of the 'commons' might help us to understand social and economic relationships in cyberspace; and third, by analysing two contrasting views of privacy: privacy as a private or individual good and privacy as a common good. In order to analyse similarities and differences in privacy in the physical world and the online world, each is assessed in three ways: the obvious level of privacy available; the possibility of modifying that level of privacy to create or choose more or less privacy for oneself; and the degree to which the, prior or contemporaneous, privacy decisions of others affect the amount of privacy that is available to all. Applying an analysis based on the 'tragedy of the commons', the article concludes that at least part of cyberspace can be conceived as a 'commons' and that personal information flows could be considered a 'common pool resource' within that commons. Based on the likely calculations that individuals and organizations will make about collection and uses of personal information, the article next evaluates what would be the most effective policy approach to ensure that the common pool resource of personal information is not overused and degraded. The article concludes that a policy approach of providing individuals with a private means, either through property rights or some means of redressing their grievances, is unlikely to provide an effective means of protecting the common pool resource of personal information. A policy approach that acknowledges the common good basis of privacy and views personal information as a common pool resource provides an alternative view of the policy problems and offers suggestions in terms of rules and institutions that may be effective in addressing those problems.     

Through a Glass,Darkly: The Dynamics of Fan‐Celebrity Encounters

Mass media influence interaction in important ways: fans of serial television use mass media to incorporate the fictional and the extraordinary into their real, ordinary, everyday lives. Using ethnographic and interview data, this article examines the activities through which certain fans seek face‐to‐face encounters with the celebrities they admire and how this intersection of the ordinary with the extraordinary creates problems of interpretation that fans attempt to solve. Fans make and take advantage of opportunities for prestaged encounters at official public appearances by their favorite actors. Some fans may also encounter their favorite celebrities by chance in the course of their daily rounds in “celebrity sightings,” or unstaged encounters. Certain fans, however, actively pursue actors, deliberately seeking them out and creating fan‐staged encounters. These efforts produce a distinctive interactional tension in which pursuing fans recognize the similarities between their behavior and that of “celebrity stalkers” and attempt to differentiate themselves from the stalkers celebrities fear. This article analyzes these interactions as a step toward a theory of fan‐celebrity interaction.