Although successive generations of digital technology have become increasingly powerful in the past 20 years, digital democracy has yet to realize its potential for deliberative transformation. The undemocratic exploitation of massive social media systems continued this trend, but it only worsened an existing problem of modern democracies, which were already struggling to develop deliberative infrastructure independent of digital technologies. There have been many creative conceptions of civic tech, but implementation has lagged behind innovation. This article argues for implementing one (...) such vision of digital democracy through the establishment of a public corporation. Modeled on the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in the United States, this entity would foster the creation of new digital technology by providing a stable source of funding to nonprofit technologists, interest groups, civic organizations, government, researchers, private companies, and the public. Funded entities would produce and maintain software infrastructure for public benefit. The concluding sections identify what circumstances might create and sustain such an entity. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Anchors of Democracy: A New Division of Powers, Representation, Sense of Limits by Rocco PezzimentiAdam CarringtonPEZZIMENTI, Rocco. The Anchors of Democracy: A New Division of Powers, Representation, Sense of Limits. Herefordshire, U.K.: Gracewing, 2021. 207 pp. Paper, $22.00Rocco Pezzimenti's The Anchors of Democracy: A New Division of Powers, Representation, Sense of Limits is an ambitious book. A professor at LUMSA, Rome, he seeks to consider anew the (...) nature, structure, and purposes of democracy as well as the society in which this form of government best operates. He sees this task as needed because, he argues, contemporary democracies face new challenges that threaten their legitimacy and their capacity to fulfill their just and needed purposes. He notes that democracies are not "infallible," either morally or in their ability to maintain themselves, and thus need conscious understanding and prudent maintenance.The subtitle establishes the three main themes by which he diagnoses and addresses democracy's trials. Pezzimenti orders his argument most through the lens of limits. While present in all spheres and regimes, popular government in particular partakes of limitation, since "mutual limitation... is the basis of our democracies." Limits for Pezzimenti stem from distinct elements of a society competing for finite power ordered toward action. Many of our political and social problems, both past and present, stem from denying limitations or misordering their interactions. The presentism that tempts democracy must be tempered by the limits the past places on it. Institutions are one helpful means for this interaction, which helps guard against a "utopianism which wants to solve everything immediately, deceiving itself that it can perform miracles." Law itself involves limits, placing boundaries on the action of private persons and public entities. So does pluralism and "polyarchy," whereby we recognize the limits particular persons and communities place on politics' universalism as well as how politics restrains these other elements from descending into intolerant, selfish particularity. Important to this point is Pezzimenti's discussion of sovereignty, which must not be reduced to a mere question of who rules and where but to the question of rightly pursuing a common good respectful of individual rights. True freedom inheres in the proper cohering of these elements.Pezzimenti turns to the distribution of powers within a community as part of the discussion of limits. He argues that "the traditional tripartition, theorized by Polybius and on to Montesquieu, today appears certainly insufficient." To define all political power as legislative, executive, and judicial, then to distribute them among competing institutions, does not fully account for the contemporary political landscape. Moreover, those [End Page 361] "classic" powers themselves need to be rethought to meet today's concerns. Legislative power must account for claims that its representative systems either are oligarchic in practice or lead to crass populism, and that they fail to account for group identities as opposed to class ones. The executive must evolve in pursuit of a better "efficiency and efficacy"—including speed of response to problems—that requires a better relationship with the modern bureaucracy, which he describes as "the other face of the executive." The judicial power must focus on a renewed impartiality, especially in relation to the additional powers Pezzimenti thinks need to be named and then tamed. The new powers that he says we must recognize include the press, mass media, technology, and more. Here, Pezzimenti categorizes as powers the functions of government (making, enforcing, and adjudication of the law) alongside avenues or means for exercising political influence, if not outright control. These other forces have distorted democracy's needed limits partly because law and custom have not adequately accounted for their evolving role in power.These issues lead to the last challenge, that of representation. The problem of representation threatens democracy's legitimacy, since this form of government is grounded more than any other in the idea that "power must be the expression of the community." Yet even here the issue of limits orders the discussion. The unaccounted-for new powers described above remove too many limitations either on crass populism or encroaching rule of elites. The former can abuse individual rights, which he says "are not negotiable," based on oppressive whims... (shrink)

Since 2008 I have been closely following the conceptual/performance/video work of Daniel Peltz. Gently rendered through media installation, ethnographic, and performance strategies, Peltz’s work reverently and warmly engages the inner workings of social systems, leaving elegant rips and tears in any given socio/cultural quilt. He engages readymades (of social and media constructions) and uses what are identified as interruptionist/interventionist strategies to disrupt parts of an existing social system, thus allowing for something other to emerge. Like the stereoscope that (...) requires two identical images to create an illusion of a three-dimensional image, Peltz sometimes visualizes two separate elements to create an object or moment that requires space and depth to focus on its varied layers. They say your brain has to process and make meaningful sense out of all that visual information before it can accept the illusion. I say your brain has to do a similar thing when looking and seeing the divine, magical, and faithful (social) art making of Daniel Peltz. Daniel Peltz is Associate Professor of Film/Animation/Video at RISD. He divides his time between Rhode Island and Sweden and is currently at work on an exhibition at Botkyrka Konsthall, Stockholm opening February 2013 and a new project to be included in the IASKA: Spaced Biennial (Australia) in 2014. This interview took place on Skype and is part one of a two-part interview. Feliz Lucia Molina: Are you in Providence, RI? Daniel Peltz: I’m at my house in Providence. I’ve been back for six days teaching winter session at RISD and doing this workshop series—these investors’ drum circles with a group of wealth managers. a client of the firm, 2013, photo Shirin Adhami FLM: The wealth managers were all drumming together? DP: They were all drumming in response to the performance of their retirement portfolios. FLM: Is this part of the “Unrealized Gain/Loss” piece? DP: Yes, it’s part of a show I’m working on in Sweden. I can show you because it was just today. I’ll show you some of this. Lets see—share screen [click, click, click]. This is the room. I’ve been using the camera system that’s already installed in the conference rooms to record them. So the video is being recorded directly by the wealth management office’s tech staff. These are the people I worked with in the last workshop. This conference table is less wondrous. They’ve been learning to drum in response to their retirement portfolios. I started by bringing in my little bit of wealth for them to propose a management strategy, I came to the follow-up meeting with a counter proposal, which was this workshop. So they agreed to do this series of workshops instead of managing my wealth. FLM: Does everybody in the room manage your wealth? That’s kind of a lot of people. DP: That woman in the back there and Craig —they handle new client business. So when you come there with your wealth, they sit down with you and suggest to you how they would manage it. They’re very nice, responsible people. FLM: And where is this? DP: This is in Providence and the one I was showing you is in Waltham, where I was today. Then I’m going to Newport for the last one on Friday. So I will have done four of them. This is the group in Waltham that I just played with today. I played directly with the two groups in Providence and I’m working with an ethnomusicologist at Brown, Asha Tamarisa, who is facilitating the last two. She’s helped develop the workshop in terms of figuring out how to train a group to do this and thinking about the compositional challenges of working in response to retirement portfolio data. FLM: Screensharing helps me to figure out tiny bits here and there about the project. DP: I might even be able to play you a little of the audio I’ve also been working with a group of professional percussionists on what will become a quarterly public investors’ drum circle event. Their stuff was really nice, but I want you to hear what we sounded like in the workshops. They’ve all been recorded by the a/v system in the offices. We use a simple structure where the drummer investors interpret the sensation of gain or loss as embellishments to a base heartbeat rhythm. The group holds the heartbeat and, as each person experiences gain or loss, they embellish that rhythm. "Screensharing helps me to figure out tiny bits here and there about the project" FLM: Is the process all very spontaneous? DP: Its actually quite structured. We produce a custom stock ticker that shows the performance of their collective portfolios. In advance of the workshop each participant submits assets in their retirement portfolio. Then we make a stock ticker that shows the real-time performance of their assets so that they can respond to almost live data. FLM: Are they reading the stock ticker projected up on the screen in the room? Do people drum in correspondence to the visual live data of the performance of their assets? DP: Exactly. They’re looking at the stock ticker as opposed to each other, so it’s a slightly shifted drum circle. They’re looking at the ticker but they’re listening to each other—that’s what we’re practicing. For example, NVO—the price is 172.08 but it’s down -1.16 and as that moves across the screen, the person who’s retirement is invested in that asset starts to embellish when that arrow first appears, based on their experience of loss. They stop when it exits the screen and return to the heartbeat. You could have one ticker for each retirement portfolio, but the way the workshop is constructed is that we just isolate one asset from each person’s portfolio so that everyone in the group is represented in a single ticker. So they’re drumming and looking at the ticker, but they’re hearing each other experience gain and loss. We’ve removed direct visual engagement from the social structure of a drum circle but the oral engagement is still there. FLM: So they had their own sound interpretation of gain and loss? DP: Yeah and that part is quite spontaneous as you were saying. In some of the preparatory exercises we’ve been working to give the participants more strategies for interpreting the sensations of gain and loss. We’re trying to develop their capacity to embellish a heartbeat or base rhythm but I’m not invested in having a melodious result. I’m quite curious about what this kind of structure will result in without any desire for a particular result. FLM: For context, can you talk about the project you did a couple years ago in Bali, “Unrealized Gain/Loss” in relation to this current wealth management project? DP: The workshops I’ve been doing use a similar strategy to the other components in this project. It started in Indonesia on my sabbatical and I was really trying to understand where I was physically and where I was being on sabbatical—this kind of strange jubilee structure where every seventh year you’re supposed to renew your self. And it was around the time of the global financial crisis. I was on sabbatical for the global financial crisis. I remember watching my father, in particular, respond to the financial crisis by monitoring his retirement portfolio and trying to make sense of it. I realized on a visit to their home that he checked his retirement portfolio every single day and I was really struck by that because in some way our parents are mysteries to us as children, especially their moods. We know how important their moods are but we don’t know what governs them. And somehow it was like I’d figured it out, it’s the performance of the DOW! So I think there was something in that. Then I was in Indonesia and I had been drawn there by an interest in their highly ritualized Hindu culture, where so much of life is driven by a ceremonial calendar. I was interested in Bali as this predominantly Hindu pocket within a predominantly Islamic country and life there being organized by this ritual calendar functioning as a kind of resistance to the dominant global religion of free-market capitalism. So I started to explore that correlation between the ways in which this culture that I was living in was sort of “living for the afterlife” and this idea within certain segments of American society of “living for the afterwork life”. The idea that your wellbeing in the “afterwork life” is tied to forces that are unseen and largely beyond your control has strong similarities to many religious understandings of the universe. So I started to explore that and the crafts and materials that were around me were primarily Batik and percussion. Percussion is a huge part of daily life in Bali. These gamelan troupes were everywhere. And I also happened to be there for Nyepi, the day of silence, which is preceded by a very elaborate procession and construction of demonic statues. These were the things that were around me and I started studying Batik with one of the Batik artists there and also started a conversation with two master Batik artists, one who is American and her Indonesian husband. I developed these patterns that were based on symbols from the performance of my retirement portfolio and worked with the batik artists to produce two sarongs. d. peltz - 2012 In producing the designs, I treated the performance of my retirement portfolio since my arrival at RISD [7 years] as a significant interval and then I looked at the ways in which decisions are made within retirement portfolios as having an extension outwards from the individual assets that underlie the retirement portfolio, which are kind of like the base elements of the retirement world. Then there’s the allocation of your assets, which is a global way of understanding an individual according to typologies, which are often referred to in terms of risk—this notion of a ‘risk profile’. What type of ‘person’ you are is determined by your attitude towards risk, or potentiality, and I found that to be a really fascinating way of understanding the universe. I remember looking at the tabs in my retirement portfolio and finding this one for viewing ‘Unrealized Gain/Loss’ and that’s often how I work—is just going through the Cambridge Parking Code, for example, and finding this section of the code that was called ‘Crossing Non-Signalized Locations’ and just feeling “I can’t do any better than that,” you know? That’s what I was talking about in terms of ready-mades that exist in the social sphere. So I found that tab, actually, a long time ago, and I pulled it out of a journal when I was there [in Bali] working on these pieces and I wound up making these two sarongs and later on a series of porcelain vessels for holding one’s unrealized gains and losses. At the time, I knew that I wanted a performance to come out of them, but I wasn’t sure what it was. I was inspired very much by this sort of thing: Pulls out a TIAA-CREF brochure with a man in a suit seated at a table. This guy is probably an actor, and [the brochure] says “TIAA-Cref announces “Individual counseling sessions at the Rhode Island School of Design. Individual counseling sessions at no additional cost to you. You can discuss your personal financial situation with an experienced TIAA consultant on a confidential basis. We are available to help you discuss how to achieve your financial goals by investing in financial solutions such as mutual funds, brokerage, life insurance, and annuities...etc....What retirement benefits best fits your situation?” Often I encounter this and I think O.K., this is one way to prepare for the after-work life and it seems inadequate to me. But, I also find it really inspiring. I really like the visual language of it. I kind of want to be that man. I’d like to see if I could maybe buy his clothes. FLM: What it is about the man on the brochure that interests you? DP: He’s offering personalized objective advice and a detailed evaluation of everything you need to know and do. Who wouldn’t want that? But he’s also something of a contemporary priest or priestess, mediating between the unseen all-powerful universe of global capitalism and the common worker. So I started off developing Unrealized Gain/Loss directly from the charts that represent the performance of my retirement portfolio. Then I came home and I wanted to use those. I had this word in my journal “unrealized gain/loss vessel.” I had this notion of vessels that would contain unrealized gains and losses. That felt really important to me that they would have somewhere to go. I had been thinking a lot about altars and making offerings—that somehow this really fickle, massive, difficult-to-comprehend-universe of the financial world—that somehow it might be nice if you could making an offering to it. [In Bali] they made such beautiful elaborate offerings. So I studied offering making as well with one of the women there and she taught me some of the standard forms created by folding leaves and the significance of the floral arrangements. I started working in clay and then moved to porcelain and I made these unrealized gain/loss vessels. I made a few of them, they have holes on either side that you can’t get your fingers in. But something can go in there and something can go out of there. It’s a nice size for putting on an altar. Then I got this commission from Artists in Context who was interested in my doing something for this project “Artists Perspectives for the Nation” project. I proposed initiating these investors’ drum circles as a new public performance form. I’m interested in bringing together those two symbols—the symbol of the djembe and the drum circle. unrealized gain/loss vessel - d.peltz - 2012 FLM: I can imagine the public digital stock ticker performing like a soft fleeting stream of information, a kind of (meaningless) illusory comfort blanket. DP: In some way you have to understand its relevance outside of the obvious, right? Because the obvious is illogical. Nobody is actually using that data to day trade, for example. People aren’t sitting there with their computers watching the market data in Times Square or setting up an outdoor office and being like “OK it’s up 3 points or it’s up 1.56, trade! Ok now buy, Ok now sell!” That would be a kind of a nice performance, actually. But actual day traders would want more up to date data than that. To understand what that data is doing is really important. And that’s something I’ve realized—that I’m interested in a particular kind of data visualization, which is not about what data can tell people, but what data can tell people who are visualizing it. For example, in the Cambridge Project “Crossing Non-Signalized Locations” I was interested in the 10,000 excuses archive of data recording five years worth of excuses for why people thought they shouldn’t have received their parking ticket. I was not interested in making that excuse wall so that the public could see and understand this data. Inevitably the data will be seen by others but I was really interested in what the action of visualizing the data told those who were visualizing it. The parking attendants themselves were writing those excuses on the wall—I was interested in what that kind action of writing the excuses on the wall told them about the data. Similarly, I’m interested in designing a way to allow people to pass this data from the unseen universe of the market, through their own bodies, which happens through the merging of the drum and the stock ticker. I’m interested in those two also as symbols; the drum as this symbol of the earth, the body and a pagan counterculture, and the stock ticker referring to the ethereal world of global markets—bringing those two together and making them dependent. I’m often drawn to conceptual propositions that I become invested in testing in a sincere way—at first they often they sound humorous to others, but I have to remember that there is humor in them. I don’t sit around and laugh about these things. I stop finding them funny at all. I’m interested in the proposition that we could know something about the after-work life by drumming in response to our retirement portfolio. So then I become really interested in how to craft that into a viable performance form for myself and others. FLM: The aspect of using sound in “Unrealized Gain/Loss” as a way of embodying the information to the asset holder is really intriguing—using sound as a means of embodying the asset data. Was sound a medium that made sense to use immediately or were you considering other means of attempting to embody it? DP: Well I do use other mediums within the project like textile, ceramic, and batik patterns. I was first drawn to the history of Batik patterns as a socio-economic stratification system and the vessels as a way of embodying or manifesting this data of unrealized gain and loss. My first approach was to work with meditation actually—a meditation workshop with my colleagues. I was going to offer this “Unrealized Gain/Loss” workshop where you would explore the sensations of gain and loss by adapting the way yogi-nidra brings you into contact with your physical surroundings and stretches your perception. FLM: At Naropa University there are/were business & compassion workshops—a sort of mash-up of business and compassion and how compassion could be incorporated into a business model. This process and engagement of “embodying data” also has to do with “Participatory Democracy and the Future of Karaoke” you created at the DNC in Denver in 2008. DP: That kind of appropriation and instrumentalization of spiritual practice could be disturbing and thus compelling as a strategy. For various reasons, I’ve come to be drawn to both the form of a quarterly public performance and the established performance form of a drum circle. Its something I’ve seen myself do before, that is to mess up a really good functional social system like a drum circle or karaoke. I remember I was developing language for the karaoke project and started calling it “Participatory Democracy and the Future of Karaoke” and one of my assistants on the project, who’s an incredible artist, said, “but don’t you think the future of karaoke is guitar hero?” and I realized that maybe he thought I was trying to improve the form. I’m just trying to get people to have this shifted embodied experience, I need to craft the performance context so that they can do that. In the case of the karaoke project, for example, what did I need in order to be able to do this [a person to stand up in front of a bar and deliver a karaoke speech]? I realized that the body is very vulnerable so I built a podium so that the speaker can feel secure enough to do this, otherwise you couldn’t get to this state achieved by passing these speeches through the body. Then I was, like, well you need to be able to practice the lyrics because you don’t know all the “songs” by heart, which became an insert to the massive track books carried by most karaoke VJs. And then sometimes the crowd in the bar isn’t there with me, so I needed to extract the voice of the crowd cheering from the original venue and I needed the local audience to cheer if they wanted to. I’m interested in both where the form succeeds and fails. In particular, one of the most interesting things is this auditory gap between the space where you are, the reduced scale of applause in your own little bar, and this grand scale of applause at the convention center where the speech was originally delivered. FLM: How did the concept of “Participatory Democracy Karaoke” come about and why did you use karaoke as a means of engaging what was happening at the DNC in 2008? DP: I was looking at a lot of different readymade media infrastructures within the city at the time. I was interested in the emergency broadcast systems and I developed a proposal to repurpose that system and karaoke became an important symbol because it was this populist form that was already engaged in exploring the sensation of celebrity but also visualizing the gap between ourselves and those with more power and influence. So it had this readymade capacity to play with power and celebrity and I felt like the Obama presidential campaign, the first one in particular, had some very curious overlaps with this culture of celebrity. Obama of course rose to power partly based on his oratory abilities and I was interested in how karaoke as a vehicle was so adept at offering people all that was left of authentic expression in a political speech. Managing a politician and constructing their identity is such a developed practice that it becomes, kind of automatically, a metaphor for the way that our own identities are constructed. Of course the Obama campaign was very hip and savvy and deploying this notion of grassroots. It was really pioneering in its use of social media and this deployment of notions of populism. I was interested at that time in the capacity of karaoke to track speech patterns, precise tempos of anyone’s delivery, and that to me was a way of thinking about what might be left of the authentic self. I was interested in karaoke’s capacity to extract that authentic component and offer it to others. So not just to stand up and be them, but to [literally] pass their speech patterns through your own body. A long time ago, it started to strike me as odd that one would make media at all. It struck me as a kind of un-contemporary way of going about making art in an age of media overflow. That logic extended into my thinking on delivery devices and installation as well. Why would one buy a screen or even set one up when there are so many out there? And the way in which these media displays function in karaoke bars and bars in general is very interesting to me. I’m drawn to this passive consumption of media where your primary social interaction is with the bartender or a few other individuals but these screens are around you and your attention is shifting back and forth between these spaces. So much political rhetoric is spoken to a half-listening audience. I was interested in what was happening in the slippage and that karaoke was a kind of slippage amplifier. So if you put people in a bar and they are delivering a Kucinich speech and Kucinich comes up on a screen then your getting a sound bite of Kucinich and an image of Kucinich and your friend is talking to you— FLM: A kind of magic takes place in that incongruency between sound and image and the karaoke participant who’s relaying the speech-text at the same time. DP: Exactly and there’s some kind of truth in that experience of reality. FLM: Yeah, there’s something uncanny about seeing the body close-up like that as though it can’t lie to you in that moment or context. It’s a weird moment of luminous clarity. The work you’ve done and all of what you’re saying about karaoke is so very interesting to me. Growing up, my dad and uncles sang karaoke a lot (and still do) and being first-generation Filipino American is a different cultural subtext entirely. I’m also seeing it from the position of witnessing family members who are carriers of these stories and songs. And seeing them cherish these Tony Bennett, Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley songs so much, I also see how their bodies are literal vessels of popular music that signifies something greater—it signifies their cultural and socioeconomic place in the world. The way that they cherish these American 1950s and 1960s pop songs is similar to having a certain kind of reverence for their spiritual faith or Catholicism. It’s a similar kind of care, focus, and attention exerted in karaoke and Catholicism—that these two structures and systems give something to focus on. Setsuko, Seiji and Hitoshi in Obama, Japan as Obama in Indiana — d. peltz — 2008 DP: Sure there something about the relationship we have to our candidate or the way we go about choosing a candidate, which is very similar to a deity or idol. I learned a lot about karaoke culture through this project. I’d never done karaoke. I’d never been interested in it as a form and then I travelled to Japan as part of the project when I made “Setsuko, Seiji and Hitoshi in Obama, Japan as Barack Obama in Indiana” and it was quite fascinating because my image of karaoke had always been this very public forum in a karaoke bar and then I discovered there’s this whole other world of karaoke where people even go on their own, they go and rent a room or cubicle and sing, or they go on a date—just the two of them go and sit in a room and do karaoke together. FLM: I’m interested in issues that take place within or as a result of specific karaoke culture(s). In the Philippines within the last several years there’s been occurring the “My Way Killings” phenomenon. Apparently baklas or gay men are employed by karaoke establishments to help “smooth over conflicts over karaoke singing”—these social forms of conduct, or lack thereof that arise out of the infrastructures of this social sport. In this one rural part of the Philippines there’s a village karaoke machine that the whole village shares—the Aeta indigenous people have an appointed “keeper” of the karaoke machine. I also see karaoke as a proxy to the confessional box in Catholicism where one goes to pour out their sins (minus the penance and redemption). The karaoke machine enables one to literally sing out whatever’s going on internally, but through highly saturated popular song lyrics. While karaoke is a public and social sport, it can also be a private one. Karaoke is a means of communion with each other. DP: Right, this preference for this kind of mediated communication. In Japan I was trying to organize people to work on this project and I was talking about throwing a party and they were like, well, we have to rent a karaoke machine because what else are we going to do? And I think its kind of serving that function of surrogacy—emotional surrogacy. FLM: And karaoke tools can be read as ritual tools—the magic mic that holds everything. There’s got to be some overlap at some point—between religious ceremony and devotion to the karaoke machine. DP: The way I designed the piece was so that it could slip right on top of the ready-made karaoke infrastructure. There was a flat-packed podium and it was made of a single sheet of plywood with no fasteners that slotted into itself. Those were sent out to a network of karaoke bars that I invited to become “karaoke convention centers.” The local VJs downloaded our custom-made, speech-extracted tracks that were designed to play on their existing equipment. In this sense the piece is a permanent installation. If you go to Denver today, some of the VJs still have the tracks in their library of offerings, the Ramones and Romney. It was this notion of re-purposing readymade infrastructure to create a distributable populist form. Obama was coming and the convention was in the Pepsi Center and 30,000 people were coming including 10,000 journalists. The impetus behind the larger art project that commissioned international artists to make works in Denver, was that local people weren’t going to have much access to this convention. It was like an invasion, the city was being descended upon, but if you lived a block away from the site, you had the same access as people in Zimbabwe&mash;30 second media bits excerpted from the speeches. So it seemed to me that the fundamental gesture was how do I take that signal, which was travelling out of the convention center, and create a local interruption? FLM: Is that what you mean by ‘intervention’? The term is frequently used to help describe your work. DP: It depends on the day. Around that karaoke project I had a conversation with Krzysztof Wodiczko and he was proposing that maybe rather than intervention, we should consider the word interruption. Because intervention is kind of an overused term in the field of art and it has militaristic and therapeutic associations outside of the art context. Fundamentally, the idea of intervening speaks to the readymade social world as your primary material. So it’s basically suggesting a kind of subtractive process, which gets back to this question: what is the role of the contemporary media artist in a world that’s so saturated with media? You can’t work additively in a saturated field. If you want to make a visible mark you have to work subtractively. That’s what intervention is about to me, just another way of saying “to work subtractively.” FLM: So the interventions or interruptions aren’t necessarily adding or subtracting, but are they putting orange cones there? What are they doing exactly? DP: I think you’re right about that, they’re not really subtracting. They’re adding to the scope of possibility. I’ve been thinking (with this exhibition I’m mounting next month) about the work as explorations and expansions of social possibility. Maybe it’s more insertion. I started calling the pieces ‘insertions’ that I was making in Rejmyre—a small town in Sweden where I’ve been working for six years now. My favorite site to install there is the tourist bureau. I started calling the video pieces that I made for the tourist bureau, video insertions. This idea that you’re inserting something into the readymade media infrastructure of the world resonates with me. Insertion leverages a context, creating a possibility that the inserted object might be naturalized in the process — that someone can encounter my video in Rejmyre as tourist information. And then all of a sudden tourist information can include some American guy prostrating through town and it can include really bad relationship advice. Maybe insertion is a better word. tourist information – d. peltz 2009-present  . (shrink)

This article explores the role of the university in the demise of democracy. In a country which was once seen as the world’s leading democracy, albeit one in which the democracy was harnessed to the requisite constraints of a republic, almost half of the population believe that the last two elections were stolen, and Presidents Trump and Biden were not legitimate. Democracies in Western Europe are equally factious. What prevails now in the West is a general inability for voters (...) to be able to put aside personal differences and accept defeat at the ballot box. The willingness to accept defeat and be able to trust your political opponents not to destroy the institutions of the nation is the prerequisite for the preservation of a democratic system. The dominant factions which face each other with unmitigated suspicion can broadly be classified as the tertiary educated urban professional classes who are allied with globalist and corporate “leaders,” and the more regionally based and non-professional classes. More specifically, I focus on the class interests of the pedagogical classes, particularly those employed in the tertiary sector and the media (loosely construed as the class which makes a living from crafting, monitoring and disseminating ideas); the technocratic character of that class; the metaphysical ideas that have propelled the empowerment of that class and its importance as educators; the ideological consensuses that have triumphed in the academy in the twentieth century; and how the ideology of emancipation that has been forged in universities, and the managerial revolution that has enabled the corporatization of the university, have contributed to the demise of democracy. (shrink)

Purpose The purpose of this study is to investigate Libyan journalists’ perspectives regarding the media laws Articles 37,132, 38 and 46, which address media freedom in the new Libyan Constitution of 2017. Design/methodology/approach Focus group discussions were done with 35 Libyan journalists, 12 of them from the Constitution Committee, while 23 of them reported the update of the constitution in the Libyan Parliament. Findings The results of the study indicated that there were media laws articles that did (...) not conform to the international laws and United Nations treaties, which the Libyan Parliament committee approved. Another finding from the journalists was the Constitution should provide and guarantee press freedom, while media laws articles approved to put a paragraph about “censorship” in the press and media as a tool to silence government opposition. In addition, journalists indicated future constitution should redraft Article 38 to conform with Article 19 of the “International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights,” to support the “principles of freedom of expression and information” without control. Moreover, Article 46 needs to be changed and linked to the “provisions of international law on the right of information access” to improve the access and dissemination of information in the media. Practical implications Redrafting the constitution articles in the future can be summarised as follows: First, the Libyan Constitution should provide and guarantee press freedom without any censorship and include clear articles to protect journalists in conflict zones. Second, Articles 37,132 and 38, about “freedom of information and publication,” need to be redrafted to link with Article 19 of the “International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights,” to support the principles of freedom of expression and information, and the use of this right must not be subject to prior control. Third, Article 46 needs to be changed and linked to the provisions of “International law on the Right of Access to Information” to improve access and dissemination of information in the media to protect confidentiality sources. The most important articles should be implemented because after the Arab Spring revolutions, there was a transitional period in societies and a change in the constitutions of Tunisia and Egypt. They developed legal articles about media freedom so that Libya resembles other Arab countries. From that point, the journalists recommended that all information should be protected from government interference to ensure transparency, combat corruption and protect independent journalists. These articles will open the way to add more development articles to media freedom rules in the Journalists’ Syndicate. Fourth, there are also various types of threats encountered by journalists in their work. In pursuit of their right and freedom of expression, they recommended that Libya must establish an independent self-regulatory media that are free from political and economic influence. Fifth, journalists need licenses for them to work through the syndicate. The new syndicate should play an active role to safeguard the rights of journalists, activists and media entities to carry out their work and end the self-censorship. Sixth, the constitution should also add articles to end the impunity and change the articles in the penal code. Overall, the journalists covering the conflict and war are encountering threats, violence and imprisonment. As a result, Libyan journalists must seek new legislation to defend independent journalism and freedom of expression in their deeply divided country. In addition, they need to have a strong central authority to defend journalists and journalism in wartime, where journalists are regularly threatened, abducted and sometimes killed. Also, the Libyan Journalists Syndicate should stress the importance of the media’s self-regulation to guarantee their rights to freedom of expression, grant their readers’ respect and minimise government’s interference. Finally, they need to develop new laws to grant media freedom from regulations and restrictions, as well as defend and promote democracy, the citizens’ right to be informed, as well as their right to discuss and disseminate information. There is also the need to implement articles in the constitution, articles about the protection of political speech, which would be specific enough to differentiate between what is legally permitted and what may be ethically offensive. Originality/value This study will help the new Libyan parliament after the legislative elections on 24 December 2021 to amend the media laws articles in the constitution. (shrink)

The vertiginous rise of right-wing populism, especially in its “nationalist, xenophobic and conservative form”, and some “racist, anti-Semitic, homophobic and sexist” drifts associated with this phenomenon – whether real or perceived as such – make the mainstream media play a double role. On the one hand, the mainstream media reflect the struggle for political hegemony between different vested interests; on the other hand, they engage in the fight against right-wing populism blasting both right-wing populist candidates and their (...) voters or supporters. Many mainstream journalists ask citizens to realize a “sanitary cordon”, a “wall” or a “republican front” to block far-right populism and preserve liberal democracy. Moreover, they urge people to be wary of all attempts to “dediabolize” or “normalize” some tokens of right-wing populism. The main idea of this article is that right-wing populism is more harmless than is generally believed and, if excessive, negative media coverage doesn’t baffle but feed it. Populism is essentially a latent side effect of liberal democracy. Populism rises and becomes obtrusive only if a significant part of society perceives a regime of illiberal majoritarianism instead of one of liberal democracy. Right-wing populists are chiefly frustrated “ci-devants” who feel dispossessed of their past, identity, properties, qualities, privileges or titles. Inasmuch as the causes of collective frustration are many and varied (e.g. the real or just perceived corruption of the elites, the “system”, the deep state, the relocation of jobs, immigration, national sovereignty, national identity, communitarianism, radical Islamism, the status of some traditional institutions, some chapters of official history, etc.), there will always be right-wing populists, whether they are self-declared or covert. By adopting David G. Hackett’s thesis that the media are “agents of hegemony”, we applied the critical analysis of discourse to a set of 346 media articles in order to reveal the discursive sources of power, domination, inequality and partiality. The articles appeared in The New York Times and Le Monde during the period 2016-2017, at the time when the presidential elections took place in the United States and France. The articles were selected according to the occurrence of the keywords “Donald Trump” – “populism” and “Marine Le Pen” – “populisme” within the titles. The analysis of these articles reveals a divisive discursive structure that correspond to a real political cleavage in society. It is true that populism presents a “Manichean outlook”, in which there are only friends and foes” and no compromise is possible. It is also true that mainstream media reinforce this Manichean perspective on society and make populists feel marginalized and politically disempowered. The mainstream media may appease right-wing populism if they treat its followers as legitimate and equal political actors. For this, they have to give up the narrative structures that underscore insurmountable divergences and irreconcilable interests. In a liberal democracy, mass media should chiefly play the role of mediator. They may not aim to defeat or re-educate certain categories of citizens just because they advocate “wrong” political solutions. (shrink)

PurposeThe purpose of this paper selected by ICIL 2019 committee in Rome is to demonstrate the current importance of the internet in the protection of democracy in developting countries.Design/methodology/approachIt is intended to make a comparison with the growing and current phenomenon of Brazilian disinformation with other contemporary phenomena related to new technologies through literature review methodology.FindingsThe Brazilian elections in 2018 represent an authentic model in a post-Cambridge Analytical phase where the myth of the sanctity of data has been broken. The (...) big influence of the algorithmic revolution on democracies in Latin America has never been more evident. The misuse of algorithms created an artificial environment that does not put us in contact with different realities; the consequences of this conjuncture have the deepest impacts, especially in countries that rely on a deficient educational system.Social implicationsBesides that, the broad use of zero-rating on the internet delivery in developing countries is also considered a factor of fake news dissemination. The information bubbles promote political polarization to the detriment of diversity – and the diversity is par excellence one of the pillars of democracy.Originality/valueThe research about the impact that the phenomenon of disinformation has on underdeveloped countries, it is essential to analyze the new role of the legislator in the elaboration of hypercomplex laws with multi-stakeholder interests that respect the essential core of digital human rights as the freedom of expression online. (shrink)

Most studies of research integrity in the general media focus on the coverage of specific cases of misconduct. This paper tries to provide a more general, long-term perspective by analysing media discourse about research integrity and related themes in the Italian and United Kingdom daily press from 2000 to 2016. The results, based on a corpus of 853 articles, show that media coverage largely mirrors debates about integrity and misconduct. In fact, salient themes in the news (...) include the importance to overcome the so-called “rotten apple” paradigm; the key role of public trust in science; and the need to address flaws in the peer-review system. (shrink)

Freedom of expression is a fundamental part of living in a free and open society and, above all, a basic need of every human being and a requirement to attain happiness. Its absence has relevant consequences, not only for individuals but also for the whole social community. This might explain why freedom of expression was, along with other freedoms (conscience and religion; thought, belief, opinion, including that of the press and other media of communication; peaceful assembly; and association), (...) at the core of liberal constitutionalism, and constitutes, since the Second World War, an essential element of constitutional democracies. In a democracy, people should be allowed to express themselves to others freely. The paper, which is divided into five sections, points out that states are obliged to protect the exercise of that freedom not only because its very purpose is the common good and welfare of society but also because it is a requirement of any constitutional democracy. Otherwise, when people cannot express themselves, perhaps out of fear (not from ‘war’ but from different kinds of social pressure or ‘violence’ exerted by some lobbies, mass media, or governmental policies that are at odds with respect for the plurality of opinions), vulnerability arises. This weakens not only those individuals that are not allowed to express their thoughts but also those who do not dare to do it – or even not to think for themselves – under certain environmental pressures (exerted by states, international organizations, social media, or financial groups, lobbies, etc.). In the end, the decline of freedom of expression makes most people more vulnerable and jeopardizes the whole democratic system. (shrink)

Mark S. Cladis pinpoints the origins of contemporary notions of the public and private and their relationship to religion in the work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. His thesis cuts across many fields and issues-philosophy of religion, women's studies, democratic theory, modern European history, American culture, social justice, privacy laws, and notions of solitude and community-and wholly reconsiders the political, cultural, and legal nature of modernity in relation to religion. Turning to Rousseau's Garden, its inhabitants, the Solitaires, and the question of (...) restoration and redemption that preoccupied much of Rousseau's thought, Cladis examines how Rousseau addressed the tension between the joys and moral obligations of social engagement and the desire for solitude. He was caught between two possibilities: active involvement in the creation of an enlightened and humane society or extrication from social entanglements in favor of cultivating a spiritual interior life. Yet Rousseau did not view this conflict as a desperate division. Rather, for him it was a moral struggle to be endured by those who had fallen from the Garden. For this edition Cladis has added a substantive introduction that discusses the role of religion in contemporary democratic societies, particularly in American public life. Cladis proposes four models of thinking about religion in public and champions what he calls spiritual democracy-a dynamic, culturally specific, and progressive democracy. Cladis argues that spiritual democracy refers not only to a society's legal codes and principles but also to its democratic culture and symbols and its daily practices and institutions. It encompasses the nation's character, diverse identities, and a distinctivel exchange between the nation's public vision and citizens' complex, private lives. (shrink)

The legal system affects behavior not just directly, by imposing sanctions, but also indirectly, by producing information on how people behave. For example, internal company documents exposed during litigation will help third parties assess whether they trust a company and want to keep doing business with it. The law therefore affects behavior by shaping reputations. Drawing on economics, communications, and a nascent multidisciplinary literature on reputation, Roy Shapira highlights how reputation works, and how information from the courtroom affects the court (...) of public opinion, with a particular emphasis on the role of the media. By fleshing out interactions between law and reputation, Shapira corrects common misperceptions about the ability of market forces to discipline corporate behavior and adds to timely, ongoing debates such as the desirability of heightened pleading standards or mandatory arbitration clauses. Law and Reputation should interest any scholar who invokes notions of market discipline in their work. (shrink)

Dok novinar i društveni teoretičar Walter Lippmann sredinom dvadesetih godina prošlog stoljeća upozorava kako ne postoji suvereni i informirani građanin kao element odlučivanja u predstavničkoj demokraciji, dakle da ne postoji niti javnost kao konzistentna i trajna društvena kategorija, već da je ona ‘fantom’, filozof John Dewey mu odgovara kako javnost nije ‘fantomska’, već je u svojevrsnoj ‘pomrčini’, a da se demokratske procese može osnažiti jačanjem lokalne zajednice i drugačijom ulogom medija, koji će kvalitetnom obradom i medijskim plasmanom znanstvenih otkrića i (...) društvenih istraživanja vratiti građaninu i javnosti mjesto i ulogu koji mu u demokratskoj tradiciji pripadaju. Problem na koji je Lippmann među prvima upozorio nije razriješen niti do danas, a Deweyjeve sugestije mogu u novom kontekstu pripomoći njegovom razrješavanju.While Walter Lippmann in 1920’s warns that there is no such thing as sovereign and omnicompetent citizen in representative democracy, which also means that there is nothing like consistent and durable public , John Dewey replies that public is not a phantom but it’s ‘in eclipse’. He suggests that democratic processes can be strengthened by strengthening local community and by different role of the media. Media can reestablish the role and function of citizen and public as they are settled in democratic tradition by different and better publishing results of scientific and social researches. Problem that Lippmann pointed out is still not resolved, but some suggestions Dewey gave – in a new context – can be of help. (shrink)

In light of the importance of culture for the autonomy, sense of identity, and self-respect of individuals, cultural minorities have a right that their cultures flourish. Since cultural minorities are frequently in a disadvantaged position in the cultural market-place, a commitment to equality implies that the state ought to take steps to assist these minorities in preserving their cultures. This Article examines the ways the mass media can assist cultural minorities in preserving their cultures. For instance, when the (...) class='Hi'>media present contents that relate to the cultures of minorities, individual members of the minority group are exposed to their culture; media designated for cultural groups facilitate dialogue between group members, thus enabling the cultural group to determine which parts of its culture to retain and which parts to change. With that said, contemporary media frequently provide insufficient cultural contents due to the influence of commercial operational logic. This Article examines why the motivation for profit leads to under-production of cultural materials for minorities and to insufficient inclusion of cultural minorities in the public discourse. It is argued that the inequality caused by the media—which provide minorities with too little of the cultural contents so pertinent to the realization of their right to culture—merits corrective intervention. The Article examines possible forms of State intervention with the media on behalf of cultural minorities, taking into consideration that such intervention is a sensitive issue, since it has ramifications concerning the scope of the freedom of the press. Accordingly, it is argued that the State ought to be permitted to create legislation which intervenes, mainly by means of subsidies and structural regulation, to improve the manner in which the media fulfill their roles in a multicultural democracy. In contrast, there should be sparse use of conditionality in the issue of licenses for media operators. (shrink)

Rarely in the short history of liberal-democratic government has a primer on basic liberal-democratic values and institutions been more needed than now. Popular discontent, even anger, with democratic governments has grown steadily over the past twenty years. And not since the 1930s have citizens and their elected officials been so baffled about their respective roles in the maintenance of both democratic governments and liberal economies. This book attempts to address this growing need. Especially written as a primer for courses in (...) Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE), it has introductory chapters on all three main disciplines. It also has chapters on the rule of law and on three important public-policy areas: Corruption, Climate, and Civil Society. Individual topics discussed include free and fair elections, populism, responsible government, republican and Westminster systems of government, regulated free markets, the Great Recession of 2008, globalization, greenwashing, identity politics, academic freedom, utilitarianism, social contract theory, positive and negative liberty, and the good life. Historically informed, The Ethics and Economics of Liberal Democracies: Foundations for PPE is sure to be of interest to students who are interested in public-policy work, as well as those who are interested in both the theory and practice of democratic government. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 30.2 (2006) 410-423 MuseSearchJournalsThis JournalContents[Access article in PDF]Reading Our Way To Democracy? Literature and Public EthicsSimon Stow The College of William and Mary"I believe," wrote Franz Kafka, "that we should only read those books that bite and sting us. If a book we are reading does not rouse us with a blow to the head, then why read it?" 1 Almost all of us who (...) read books for a living and/or pleasure have undoubtedly experienced that most delightfully troubling of phenomena: a novel that forces us to think differently about the world and the way that we live. In recent years, literature's capacity to generate in its readers "a rigorous scrutiny of everything they believe in and live by" 2 —what Stanley Fish calls its "dialectical" potential—has drawn the attention of a number of liberal-democratic theorists, most notably Martha Nussbaum and Richard Rorty. By "liberal-democratic" is meant here, of course, that system of government with popular rule, regular elections, a commitment to individual rights and the rule of law; one that draws on a tradition of political thought that includes the work of John Locke, John Stuart Mill and John Rawls. Although their exact formulations of the claim differ in important ways, Nussbaum and Rorty are united in the belief that reading can enhance the practice of liberal-democracy by expanding the moral imaginations of a citizenry. Such an expansion will, they believe, promote the values of tolerance, respect for other viewpoints, and a recognition of the contingency of one's own perspective, in short, the values of civil society. Whilst there is undoubtedly something intuitively appealing about their claim, there is much that is philosophically and politically problematic about their respective formulations of it. Both seem to rest for example upon an implausible theory of the impact of literature upon its readers, and an illiberal tendency to treat reader-citizens as means and not as ends. Attempting to capture what is of value [End Page 410] whilst jettisoning what is problematic, I will briefly set out their claims; identify the difficulties within them; and offer an account of how their project might be operationalized in a way that is both more philosophically plausible and more politically consistent with liberalism. My aim will not be to offer another detailed account of the connection between literature and democracy—not least because I believe that the current accounts are overly deterministic—but rather to suggest some ways in which we might nevertheless build upon the current work to capture the potential benefits of reading for liberal-democratic societies.Although Martha Nussbaum and Richard Rorty hold quite different views about the proper role of literature in philosophy—Nussbaum believes that literature is merely a valuable addition to philosophical Reason traditionally conceived, whereas for the postfoundational Rorty, the literariness goes all the way down—both suggest that reading will promote two values that they regard as essential to liberal-democratic practice. Following Rorty we might label these values contingency and solidarity. 3 Contingency arises from the recognition that even one's most deeply held beliefs are always only a perspective. It is connected to civility in that it serves, Nussbaum and Rorty believe, to undermine the vehemence of individual claims. Although this claim about the partiality of individual perspectives sounds dangerously postmodern for thinker such as Nussbaum—Rorty, who calls his political philosophy "postmodernist bourgeois liberalism," 4 has no such qualms—there are limits to this insight in her thought. Nussbaum is simply concerned to show that an excessive and over-confident reliance on philosophical Reason is likely to generate an incomplete understanding of a given situation. For this reason, she suggests, "storytelling and literary imagining are not opposed to... but can provide essential ingredients in a rational argument." 5 She argues, for example, that Hard Times by Charles Dickens will alert its readers—in particular "the person brought up solely on economic texts" who "has not been encouraged to think of workers (or indeed anybody else) as fully human... (shrink)

The main argument of this paper is that the legal regulation of lobbying is an important factor for disciplining/curbing the undue (illicit) influence of different interest groups on the political-making process, especially in countries with post-communist and nonconsolidated democracies such as Albania. In three decades of political and economic transition from a one-party communist system to a democratic one and towards a market economy, the democratization of Albania has faced various problems, which have often led to a loss of (...) class='Hi'>public confidence in the political class and apathy of citizens towards the political system. In many cases, this has come as a result of the perception or even the disclosure by the media and the public of corruption scandals, political clientelism, or undue influences in the decision-making processes in Albania. Surely, it can be said that political scandals of trading or exercising illicit influences on public officials can affect, as numerous cases have shown, every democratic political system in the world. However, they are more likely to occur in new democracies (post-communist) countries that face weak state structures and a legal environment that is not yet well consolidated and where a culture of informality exists alongside written rules and laws. For this purpose, that of disciplining and controlling the influences that specific interests exert on the decision-making process of governments, legislatures, or other regulatory agencies, a good part of European countries have considered undertaking legal regulatory initiatives for lobbying activity in their environments. (shrink)

The article is devoted to the consideration of the issue of influential modifications of the genre system of modern mass media. It has been established that the mass media are one of the main means of communication for the wide audience. The meaning of the words "modification", "mass media", "mobile journalism", "new media" has been studied. The article notes that "new media" appeared in the 60s of the XX century. The main characteristics of the (...) class='Hi'>media are presented. It is noted that the most common examples of mass media are television, radio, newspapers, magazines, social media, digital media, the Internet. The textbooks and publications of domestic and foreign scientists, which raise the issue of influential modifications of the genre system of modern mass media are highlighted. It was found that the first media were newspaper, telegraph, radio, television. The study of the main types of media is emphasized: traditional media, print media, electronic broadcasting media, external media, transit media and new media. It is noted that new media is a reconceptualization of traditional media. The aspect of media in the role of a social institution has been studied. It was noted about the significant impact of digitalization on the global media system. The significant influence of the use of the Internet in the political life of the United States is given as an illustrative example. The use of the "video story" technology as one of the strategies for holding the attention of the reader or listener is considered. The focus is on the interactive storytelling made possible by digital media and provides advantages for interactive television and cinema, as well as helping to create virtual and mixed reality in games, contributing to the emergence of new forms of voice games. (shrink)

In light of a history of an unethical news media system used by the state as an instrument of oppression, media ethics in South Africa is intended to uphold the foundational tenets of journalism and play a pivotal role in addressing issues of diversity, equity, and social justice. Most recently, the 2021 Inquiry into Media Ethics and Credibility report instructed media watchdogs, such as the South African Press Council, to track data concerning ethical breaches (...) based on the potential that such data can contribute to transparency and accountability. This study examines the trends in ethical issues raised in rulings by the South African Press Council (PCSA) over the period 2018–2022. Our analysis found that most of the South African news media publications registered with PCSA have a good track record when it comes to upholding ethical standards. However, a few publications have a disproportionate share of the complaints against them. (shrink)

Mauro Dorato charts pressing debates within the philosophy of science that centre around scientific expertise, access to knowledge, consensus, debate, and decision-making. This English-language translation of Disinformazione Scientifica e Democrazia argues that the advancement of science depends on an exponential process of specialization, accompanied by the creation of technical languages that are less and less accessible to the general public. Dorato reveals how such a process must align with representative forms of democracies, in which knowledge and decision-making ought to (...) aim at the society's general interest. Given the importance of the principle of competence, however, the role of experts as mediators of knowledge threatens the citizens' autonomy of choice. Consequently, the risk of technocratic regimes calls for new ways to increase literacy about science and its philosophical and probabilistic foundations. Stressing the conceptual conflict between pluralism and conformism, Science and Representative Democracyreveals the obstacles to the functioning of both science and democracy. (shrink)

The revolt against expertise is a novel aspect of a larger and longer-standing discontent with the power of managerial elites within modern democracies. In the United States, scientific expertise is contested adversarially on the model of a public trial. In broadcast media, expert disagreement proceeds via staged debates with opposing sides (generally representing extremes of more complex debates) arguing scientific questions bearing on public policy. By the mid-20th century many observers agreed that this broadcast format had transformed (...) the active ‘public’ – the target audience of these debates – into a passive ‘mass society’ that could listen to or view them, but had few or no means, outside of electoral politics, to engage with them. Two recent developments have challenged the traditional approach to public debates of scientific expertise, and challenged that expertise itself. The first is the rapid privatization of science since about 1980, changing public perception of scientists from disinterested servants of truth to spokespersons for government or economic interests. The second (since about 2007) is the combination of the universality of smartphones and direct access to internet discussion platforms not controlled by managerial elites, which have transformed the mute ‘mass’ into a highly vocal assortment of selforganizing publics (like those imagined in classical democratic theory) demanding to be heard directly on scientific questions. The matter of who now is a scientific expert, for whom, and under what circumstances, is a pressing question for historians, philosophers, and sociologists of science. (shrink)

Declaration of independence became a reference point of a new historical epoch - epoch of free, sovereign development of Uzbekistan. Our country from first days of independent development, under direction of President I.A. Karimov, has headed for refusal of a heritage of a command control system, having started to construction of bases of a democratic legal society with the socially-focused market economy. For achievement of these purposes own model of updating and progress which essential features are the selective approach to (...) experience of the developed countries and the account of specificity and features of centuries-oldevolution of national statehood is involved. In Republic of Uzbekistan process of democratization and modernization of a society became stage-by-stage, with a stress on maintenance of deep understanding of an essence of democracy, in view of sociopolitical traditions and features of national mentality. The heritage of sociopolitical culture of our society has acted original “Means”. By means of which modern values and principles of democracy were brought home to people, their perception and understanding was facilitated. Psychological features of national character, such as tolerance, the aggravated feeling of validity, equality before the law, etc. were especially effectively used. It is known, that the basic directions of democratic transformations and formation of a civil society are defined depending on real needs and opportunities of their realization. We have a precise comprehension of that the major condition of formation of a democratic society is strengthening a role and value in a life of a society of not state and public institutes. In Uzbekistan this process goes by practical realization of the concept “From the strong state - to a strong society”. It is a question of stage-by-stage and gradual reduction of a role of the state structures in the decision of social and economic questions and about transfers of these functions to public organizations. Gradually we go to that participation of the state in economic sphere and a field of activity of managing structures, first of all, a private sector - decreases. In parallel the problem of creation of favorable conditions for realization of publiccontrol on the basis of corresponding motivation - public interests is solved. (shrink)

New settings for communication are being built, having, at one side, great corporations of television, radio, press and on line media, and at the other side the role of the independent / alternative press, understood as not bound to a private, public or state enterprise or to some economic group. It takes gradually shape the constitution of the opposition between the traditional media and the independent / alternative press, having as a material base (...) the new technologies of information. How can the new technology of information associated to the new settings of press freedom and the phenomenon of the contradiction of public opinion in the era of internet accomplish the mediation of the opinion in a globalized society? Or still, starting from the presupposition of the press freedom, how to guarantee that the society solves the contradiction of the public opinion? The phenomenon of the public opinion is contradicting because it has in itself, at the same time, the universality of constitutional principles of Law and Ethics, together with the peculiarity of the citizens’ rights and concerns. This contradiction finds its solution by means of the mediation of the freedom of the press itself within a frame of democratic legality. This is the power of the contradiction: to put into effect the dialectic tension between the opposed poles of the universal and the particular in the press freedom, avowing the right of every citizen to express publicly his opinion. This is Hegel’s theory of public opinion: the press freedom and the parliament, as a politic space, are privileged spheres of the mediation of the contradictory phenomenon of the public opinion. Keywords: Press freedom; public opinion; press; citizen journalists. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Democracy and Music Education: Liberalism, Ethics, and the Politics of PracticeHeidi WesterlundPaul G. Woodford, Democracy and Music Education: Liberalism, Ethics, and the Politics of Practice ( Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2005)Paul G. Woodford's Democracy and Music Education needs to be warmly welcomed in the field of philosophy of music education. It contributes to the discussion centering on ethics and music education—a discussion that after multiculturalism, pluralism, praxialism, (...) and other recent "isms" still awaits its appearance in a stronger sense. Woodford writes that the aim of the book is to enhance democratic ends by inviting music educators to contribute "to wider intellectual and political conversations about the nature and significance of music in our lives and those of our children."1Woodford borrows ideas from many thinkers creating an interesting synthesis and lines of thought throughout the book. His main resource in developing a liberalist music education is, however, along the ideas of the American pragmatist and educational philosopher, John Dewey. Woodford's choice is well thought out. Dewey deserves to be redeemed and recognized in music education, not the least because of various distorted interpretations of his views that have commonly been accepted in the profession in the past. Woodford argues that the music appreciation movement, which aimed at developing good musical taste equally in all children, has not in any particular way been a Deweyan democratic movement. Music educators have not acknowledged their role as agents in the [End Page 235] transformation of school and society. Instead, he states, they have continued to subscribe to the older aesthetic and utilitarian rationales and yet neither approach prepares students "to question and challenge authority and thereby to transform musical society."2It is noteworthy that Woodford does not elaborate on Dewey's central concept, experience, but unexpectedly draws upon concepts such as abstract reason or the autonomous individual to reconstruct music education. Critical conversation becomes celebrated against performance-oriented music education. The book leaves open the discussion between utilitarian and aesthetic rationales and carefully avoids Dewey's notion of the aesthetic and experimentation, which could have brought new angles in understanding his notion of democracy and its relation to the social and musical.3 Woodford tries to maintain a middle ground in the North American philosophical battlefield of music education stating that music educators "should listen more closely to one another while avoiding extremes."4 His critique targets critical theorists, radical feminist writers, and modernist as well as postmodernist ideas, while Woodford himself seeks a middle way between laissez-faire and elitist or autocratic concepts of music education.As a whole, Woodford's conceptual toolkit for promoting ethical aspects in music education are less akin to Dewey's thoughts and more to the Greek philosophers and their notions of virtues. Woodford writes, "democracy depends on the existence of good faith and generosity of spirit, of character and love for one's fellow men and women."5 These virtues are "the glue that can bind us together as society."6 How is this achieved in music education? Teaching love becomes a practical problem: explaining love requires it to be modelled and experienced, Woodford writes. However, he leaves this cornerstone of his conceptual scheme to rest on the notion of intellectual conversation.Allow me to explain briefly in what way Dewey's philosophical project differs from the Greek philosophical ethos and why abstract reason and intellectual conversation are not central concepts in Dewey's pragmatism (this does not mean that they cannot be celebrated as Woodford has done). For Dewey, the virtue of love signifies devotion, interest, and courage since genuine interest challenges us to overcome the obstacles that stand in the way.7 Interest and devotion are not just attitudes or intellectual modes in the sense of mental states, but linked to doings and active transactions with and in the environment. Interest is co-extensive with action and devotion with dedication to shared projects. This devotion to shared doings and their significance is the socially inclusive ethical side that Dewey brought to the individualistic humanistic theory of self-realization and to the theory of experience. The vision of humanistic self-realization, as has been presented in... (shrink)

Automation, artificial intelligence, and biotechnology have become topics of increasing interest in both academia as well as in popular media. The goal of this article is to establish which issues are the most pressing, and what are the underlying causes of the rise of robots. I demonstrate that fears of automation are well supported by current trends of automation as well as the inherent tendency within a capitalist system to automate at the expense of workers and working wages. Additionally, (...) I point to what appears to be a potential evolutionary divide between what Yuval Noah Harari calls the “god” class and the “useless” class. Finally, I discuss how the new role of information as the world’s most valued commodity can either exacerbate this coming divide or liberate society. I present the case that in order to diminish the negative effects we must move beyond the present capitalist economic system, towards one in which economic democracy and the free flow of information thrives. (shrink)

This well‐researched book will be of immense value to the person who will someday write the full story of broadcast regulation in the United States. That story still needs to be written; although in this book the facts are all presented, the story behind the facts is not.Well, actually, not quite all the facts are here either. For example, similar problems tackled in other countries such as Canada, even before the United States began looking into them, aren't even mentioned. True, (...) the title of the book specifies that it is limited to the United States, but to understand the regulations presented we should certainly have some knowledge of how others had attacked the same problem.More important, Hugh Slotten totally ignores the personalities of the people involved. This is a tremendously important consideration, for to understand what happened we must know something about the motives of the people who made the decisions, and since many of the motives were hidden under layers of varying complexity and political beliefs we would like to know something about the personalities of the players. Someone at the Johns Hopkins Press evidently noticed the problem, but the only attempt at fixing it was to lie blatantly on the bookjacket: “His [Slotten's] discussion of the early years of radio examines powerful personalities—including navy secretary Josephus Daniels and commerce secretary Herbert Hoover.” But there is no discussion at all of the personalities of these men. Daniels is mentioned in only two sentences, neither of which touches on him as a person, and although Hoover occurs in several more, nothing of his “personality” is thrown in.Lee De Forest is another example. On page 4 he is identified as the inventor of the audion . On page 61 we read of his “invention” [sic] of that device. Why the quotation marks around “invention”? Did he or didn't he invent it? Actually, there is a good story to be told about that, but you won't read it here. De Forest played an active role in the regulation controversies, and this role is made clear in the book. But precisely because of this, wouldn't it be interesting to know that De Forest was arrested and went to trial for crooked stock manipulation in connection with the audion? The only hint at such activities is Slotten's statement that De Forest was a “maverick.” Wouldn't that one word make you want to know more about him, if only to evaluate his quoted remarks on governmental interference and regulations?Other matters of interest are passed by, as when on page 48 we read: “Decisions about who should receive licenses … could … be based on such qualitative issues as the character of broadcasts … and the educational benefits.” What a can of worms this opens up! Or should open up. Is the government going to censor broadcasting by denying licenses to stations that publicize alternative methods of government, such as communism? How about religious or ethnic controversies: will these be deemed “educational” or subversive? Is the government, through its licensing powers, going to let the public hear only what it wants it to hear, à la Goebbels and Germany? Well, we'll never know, for this particular can is not opened by the author; after this one mention, the subject is never broached again.In summary, if you are actively researching this field, Slotten's book is a must for you. But the full story of radio and television regulation in the United States is still to be written. (shrink)

In recent years, artificial intelligence has been deployed by online platforms to prevent the upload of allegedly illegal content or to remove unwarranted expressions. These systems are trained to spot objectionable content and to remove it, block it, or filter it out before it is even uploaded. Artificial intelligence filters offer a robust approach to content moderation which is shaping the public sphere. This dramatic shift in norm setting and law enforcement is potentially game-changing for democracy. Artificial intelligence filters (...) carry censorial power, which could bypass traditional checks and balances secured by law. Their opaque and dynamic nature creates barriers to oversight, and conceals critical value choices and tradeoffs. Currently, we lack adequate tools to hold them accountable. This paper seeks to address this gap by introducing an adversarial procedure— – Contesting Algorithms. It proposes to deliberately introduce friction into the dominant removal systems governed by artificial intelligence. Algorithmic content moderation often seeks to optimize a single goal, such as removing copyright-infringing materials or blocking hate speech, while other values in the public interest, such as fair use or free speech, are often neglected. Contesting algorithms introduce an adversarial design which reflects conflicting values, and thereby may offer a check on dominant removal systems. Facilitating an adversarial intervention may promote democratic principles by keeping society in the loop. An adversarial public artificial intelligence system could enhance dynamic transparency, facilitate an alternative public articulation of social values using machine learning systems, and restore societal power to deliberate and determine social tradeoffs. (shrink)

In newly emerging democracies, succeeding governments have numerous policy tasks for the purpose of developing the free market and the democratic process. In such legal systems, policy-oriented views of law, which regard law as a policy tool for diminishing public problems, seem descriptively pertinent and prescriptively helpful. This is also the case in mature democratic legal systems, where the public problems faced by governments become more and more complex. Policy-directional views of law do not necessarily imply that law (...) is a value-neutral means that can serve any possible political ends. It is widely recognized among legal theorists and practitioners, with notable exceptions represented by exclusive legal positivists, that the law involves moral values, including justice and liberty. In the present essay, I focus on one version of policy-oriented views of law that is based on the fundamental ideals of justice and interest. By sketching out this version, I attempt to shed new light on some concepts and issues in jurisprudence. To begin, I articulate the concept of justice and identify the difficulties that interest-based conceptions of justice encounter, by referring to some classical works. I also make a distinction between different conceptions of interest. Next, the two basic concepts in law — rights and liberty — are explained in terms of justice and interest. Efficiency, which has been largely neglected in traditional jurisprudence notwithstanding its practical significance, is also briefly discussed. Then, I turn to exploring the implications that the law-as-policy theory grounded on justice and interest might have for the foundations of two legal domains: criminal law and laws governing political participation. Some allegations and objections against this theory are described, and responses to them are given. The essay concludes by noting the questions that remain open in this theory. (shrink)

Publication date: 22 December 2020 Source: International Letters of Social and Humanistic Sciences Vol. 89 Author: Dhikru Adewale Yagboyaju, Antonia Taiye Simbine Party system and the administration of political parties are critical factors in determining the direction of politics and democracy. Three political parties contested at the inception of Nigeria’s Fourth Republic in 1999, but the number increased to more than 91 as at 2019. This paper raises fundamental questions as to whose interest – public or private interest of (...) promoters and financiers - these parties serve, and whether the increase in the number of political parties has significantly entrenched democratic values in the country? These questions are compelling because of several events in political party operations in the 20 years of the Fourth Republic. These include controversial and vexatious party primaries preceding every major election, often leading to protracted and distractive litigations and rampant political defections. Unregulated use of money has, in particular, restrained ample participation by women and youths, while violence is almost becoming a norm and permanent characteristic of the electoral and political system. The paper draws data from secondary documentary sources for its conceptual and theoretical contents. Primary data are generated from events analyses by the authors as observers at party conventions and other meetings for the selection of candidates for political offices as well as during general elections. This is complimented by content analyses of relevant documents including electoral laws, court and law reports, and reports by special committees such as the Electoral Reform Committee. A combination of the ecological approach and conspiratorial theory is deployed for the paper’s analytic frame. (shrink)

Education stands at the intersection of Noam Chomsky's two lives as scholar and social critic: As a linguist he is keenly interested in how children acquire language, and as a political activist he views the education system as an important lever of social change. Chomsky on Democracy and Education gathers for the first time his impressive range of writings on these subjects, some previously unpublished and not readily available to the general public. Raised in a progressive school where his (...) father was principal, Chomsky outlines a philosophy of education steeped in the liberal tradition of John Dewey, more concerned with cultivating responsible citizens than feeding children facts. The goal of education, Chomsky argues, is to produce free human beings whose values are not accumulation and domination, but rather free association on terms of equality. Spanning issues of language, power, policy and method, this collection includes seminal theoretical works like Language and Freedom , a social analysis of the role of schools and universities in the American polity, and specific critiques of language instruction in America's classrooms today, along with new interviews conducted by Carlos Otero that serve to encapsulate Chomsky's views. Engaging and incisive, Chomsky on Democracy and Education makes accessible the key insights that have earned Chomsky such a committed following. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In establishing National Bioethics Organisations (NBOs), liberal democracies seek to acknowledge the diversity of strongly held ethical positions and the imperative to engage in public debate about important bioethical decisions. NBOs are typically given a range of responsibilities, including contributing to and stimulating public debate; providing expert opinion on relevant issues for policy deliberations; and developing public policy. The state is now found to have an interest in areas previously thought to be a matter of individual (...) choice. NBOs can provide one way of opening up public debate to allow the diversity of views to be heard in a manner that is well‐informed, articulate and responsive to both expert and ‘lay’ public views. We draw on debates in political theory about democratic decision‐making and on the policy making roles of some key NBOs. We are particularly interested in examining the capacity of NBOs to meet the democratic ideal of effective participation by the public, or citizenry, especially by those who are directly affected by the policies, in the development of effective public policy. We provide a basic framework for policy development involving NBOs that can begin to meet this ideal, a process of ‘contested deliberation’. (shrink)

Are federal prosecutions of non-federal officials for corruption likely to improve non-federal government? This essay suggests that such prosecutions can undermine the distinctive style of democracy at the state and local level, an effect that can be harmful to democracy in America overall. This conclusion rests on a larger argument about the different nature of federal and non-federal democracy in the United States. To insure that each official maintains impartial loyalty to values defined by a single, popularly accountable policymaker, the (...) federal system of bureaucratic populism strictly separates the officials’ public and private interests, through various devices such as civil service protection for executive officials, Article III life tenure, and fixed salary for federal judges, specialized training for federal officers, and conflict-of-interest rules that bar federal officers from acting when their judgment could be compromised by private interests. By contrast, participatory populism rejects this separation of the public and private spheres, instead mixing professional and lay decision-making by using thousands of part-time, under-paid executive and legislative officers who are expected to have substantial private interests in the communities that they represent. The essay argues that each style of democracy has mutually exclusive advantages and disadvantages. However, enforcement of federal anticorruption law against non-federal democracies can undermine their system of mingled private and public interests, reducing the degree to which such governments can provide laypersons with opportunities for political activity. As an illustration of the overextension of federal criminal law, I examine the First Circuit’s interpretation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 1341 and 1346, the federal mail fraud statute in United States v. Sawyer. Sawyer comes dangerously close to declaring that any undisclosed state or local officer’s conflict of interest constitutes a violation of § 1346 when it involves the U.S. mails. I argue that this view of § 1346 is an error. Participatory populism requires that private and public tasks be closely mingled in ways that bureaucratic populism forbids. Undoubtedly, this mixture of public and private creates a risk that public office will be used for private gain. However, it also avoids some of the bureaucratic sclerosis and lack of lay participation that can be endemic to the more centralized federal tradition. In conclusion, I suggest that federal prosecutors ought to content themselves with using § 1346 to enforce already-existing state criminal conflict-of-interest rules, for the sake of preserving a place in our federal regime for participatory populism. (shrink)

When should a surveillance system that is used in preventive policing sacrifice the privacy of citizens to prevent criminality? What should be the impact of individual moral expectations when a social media platform designs an algorithm? To what degree can we use technology-driven deception in dementia care practices? And can we create a moral compass for a dashboard society? Over the last decade, the impact of technological innovation has been unprecedented. It has profoundly changed the way we participate and (...) interact in society. It has also led to new moral challenges. Not only because of the technology itself, but also because this technology is used in the context of a globalised world with a more prominent role for the private sector. This can result in moral confusion: individuals who alternately assume the role of citizen and consumer feel unable to influence the design of technology that has a strong impact on their core values. Sustaining this moral confusion is in nobody's long-term interest. In this book, we propose to overcome this moral confusion by using a bottom-up design approach that incubates ethics when constructing new technologies. This book is composed of four parts. In the first part we focus on how to integrate moral decisions and morality in the design process of new technology. In the second part we assess how moral design relates to related discourse, including business ethics, law and policy. In the third part of this book various case studies are highlighted that focus on particular moral design issues at the crossroads of technological innovation in the public and private sector. In the last part we look ahead and discuss what the future might look like if we use moral design as a central approach in creating new technology. This book is relevant for IT and engineering professionals, business leaders and policymakers with innovation in their portfolios, and students of (applied) science who are interested in the moral design of technology. The chapters are written by experts and leading researchers in an attractive, accessible and practical writing style. Each chapter offers colourful examples and challenges the reader to critically think through moral decision-making and the design of innovation"--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

This article investigates the role of television on the structure and organization of political parties in the post – communist Albania. The existing literature on political parties links the structure of mass parties with the written press, and the structure of electoral- professional and cartel parties with the increasing influence of television. The mass party is based on the principle of membership. Among many tasks that members had to carry out, the dissemination of party’s declarations, statements, opinions and (...) ideology, through the distribution of party press is one of the most important. The studies on political parties have observed the emergence of the catch-all, electoral-professional and cartel party, in which the party leaders have substituted the membership organizational network with television, and thus minimized the role of intermediate party organs. In difference from their counterparts in Western Europe, in the new established democracies of post-communist countries, political parties were born in a period characterized by a modern and developed media which was accessible to everyone. Therefore, the immediate access to modern means of communication has distanced the parties from the society since the early phases of their inceptions, without giving them the opportunity and necessity to organize territorially. This article analysed the techniques that have used the Albanian political parties to communicate with their electorate, concluding that in the moment of their creation, television could not serve to the opposition parties as a means of information. That is why they had to rely heavily on the written press and their membership. The opening of some broadcasting channels, after 2000, made possible the access on modern techniques of communication, leading to a minor role of the press and membership. As a result we could say that at the early phase of democratic process, the political parties in Albania shared features of the mass party with a strong territorial penetration, features that started to fade out when television gained a more prominent role in the organization of electoral campaigns by influencing thus a more contemporary western alike model of party organization. (shrink)

Media in Question sets the agenda for a revitalized debate on the hybrid communicative practices that constitute the postmodern media landscape: practices that cross the boundaries between fact and fiction, information and entertainment, public knowledge, and popular culture. In this challenging and provocative collection, the individual contributors rethink key issuesùthe meaning of the public interest, the quality of media performance, and deregulation. In the process they raise questions rarely addressed in normative media theories, for (...) example, the ethics of sports reporting, the moral reasoning in popular culture, and the required professional standards for infotainment genres such as reality television and gossip journalism. Accessible and wide-ranging, The Media in Question will be essential reading for students in mass communication and political communication studies. (shrink)

Throughout Iran’s modern history, control of the public sphere has remained in the hands of the state. With virtually no trace of a civil society, public opinion has played only a minimal role in influencing state affairs. The 1979 Islamic revolution could be viewed as a break in this historical trend, but public opinion retreated into the background once the clerics solidified their power -- and then kept it by invoking religious orthodoxy to deflect any challenges. (...) Thus, it should have been no surprise that the press revolution, which began in the late 1990s as Mohammad Khatami came to power, collapsed a few years later. While an array of newspapers and journals are still published in Iran today, the persecution of leading editors and publishers with pro-reform sympathies has successfully cleared the field of any real threat to the status quo.The early theorists of the reform movement that came to be identified with President Khatami saw a free and independent press as a vital part of an Islamic Repub lic. For centuries, they argued, the state had used its control over the media -- first the publication of books, then newspapers and finally radio and television -- to push society toward the rulers’ desired ends. In contrast, the reformers saw a free press as the best way to foster open debate and political and social pluralism, unleashing forces that would allow society at large to determine its own fate. In other words, there could be no pre-determined end, shaped by fiat. Their chosen weapon in the battle for a civil society was the newspaper, a medium with a rich history in Iran of social and political activism. Persian newspapers, particularly those published abroad and smuggled into Iran in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, had been responsible for remarkable changes in the political landscape. They introduced liberal social and political ideas from Europe and provided readers with a new, simplified language in which to debate such notions. Most important of all, the early press helped create the very idea of society as a political actor in its own right. Within months of Khatami’s move to the Presidential Palace, his new appointees in the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance unleashed a “press revolution.” They quickly streamlined the issuing of publication licenses; countered Iran’s traditional centralism by encouraging the rise of local and provincial newspapers; eased the financial hardships of independent publishers; and sought protection under the existing Press Law for controversial editors and commentators facing the hostility of the ruling clerics. The result was a wave of entrepreneurial and journalistic creativity unmatched since the Constitutional Revolution of 1906-1911.By the spring of 2000, the hard-line clerics had had enough. They used their almost complete control of the public space to shut the door on the “press revolution” and to drive their critics, including many learned clerics, back into private dissent. Dozens of newspapers were closed and prominent journalists were prosecuted, most for violating so-called Islamic norms; anything like public discourse was forced back into the shadows. The ease with which the clerical establishment crushed the free press reflected the basic weaknesses and miscalculations of the reform movement. The senior theologians had established themselves as far back as the Constitutional Revolution as the final arbiters of freedom of expression under Islam. Without a wholesale re-evaluation of the role of the clergy and the very concept of freedom in a religious system of government, this power was destined to go unchecked. The reformers had also put too much emphasis on a free press, in the absence of any other real building blocks of civil society. Newspapers were expected to play the roles of political parties, of independent think tanks and, in the case of Jameah and Tous, of exemplars of social, political and economic independence. It was a burden the Iranian press was simply unable to carry. (shrink)

In _Fairfax Media Publications Pty Ltd v Voller_ (‘_Voller_’) the Australian High Court held that media companies maintaining Facebook comment pages could be liable for the defamatory posts of commenters on those sites. The decision focussed entirely on whether, by maintaining the Facebook page, the companies had ‘published’ the statements of commenters. Hearings on other aspects of the tort litigation continue. This paper considers the implications of the tort of defamation on public participation on political will formation (...) where, as is increasingly the case, the participation occurs virtually. Australian law has already tackled the law of defamation as a threat to freedom of political communication; _Voller_ continues the jurisprudence by considering whether hosting an online forum for debate amounts to publication. The more recent High Court judgment in _Google LLC v Defteros_ demonstrated the necessity of the law to align the ‘acts’ necessary to found legal action with the new environment of automated search engines. The troubled intersection of dematerialised practices of political and cultural discourse and jurisdictionally bound laws of defamation challenges participatory governance as tribes form and dissolve and shift between geographical interests. Defamation in Australia is a tort of strict liability; and, absenting applicable defences, any participation in communication is sufficient to make that participant a publisher and a party to the defamation. The online environment stretches words across geographical and jurisdictional boundaries, but it also stretches and contorts concepts of fault and responsibility. Participatory digital cultural practices integrating users in the creation of cultural heritage simultaneously draw participants into transgressions, both cultural and legal, which are amplified by the medium. Questions of collective guilt, ‘shades’ of moral responsibility and disproportionality between blameworthiness and legal liability challenge laws formulated for the printing press but now deployed in the online environment. In this way the digitized participatory environment presents deep challenges to law and legal systems, which are chained to geography. This paper considers the concept of innocent publication in the context of the digitized participatory environment and the way in which the virtual experience is dissolving concepts of geographically defined jurisdictions. (shrink)

Sartre and the Media is the first book to offer a systematic account of Sartre's involvement in press publications and radio and television broadcasting in postwar France. Sartre's awareness of the growing power of the media to shape and influence public opinion was the motivating force underlying his interventions in the press from Combat and Le Figaro in 1944-45 to La Cause du Peuple, J'Accuse and Liberation in 1970-74, and in the French state-controlled radio (...) and television network from the 'Tribune des Temps Modernes' radio series of 1947 to the aborted 'Antenne 2' television history series of 1974-75. Focused principally on the nature of relations between intellectuals and the media, this book will appeal to those interested in the issues of freedom of expression and censorship in contemporary France. (shrink)

The most widely debated conception of democracy in recent years is deliberative democracy--the idea that citizens or their representatives owe each other mutually acceptable reasons for the laws they enact. Two prominent voices in the ongoing discussion are Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson. In Why Deliberative Democracy?, they move the debate forward beyond their influential book, Democracy and Disagreement.What exactly is deliberative democracy? Why is it more defensible than its rivals? By offering clear answers to these timely questions, Gutmann and (...) Thompson illuminate the theory and practice of justifying public policies in contemporary democracies. They not only develop their theory of deliberative democracy in new directions but also apply it to new practical problems. They discuss bioethics, health care, truth commissions, educational policy, and decisions to declare war. In "What Deliberative Democracy Means," which opens this collection of essays, they provide the most accessible exposition of deliberative democracy to date. They show how deliberative democracy should play an important role even in the debates about military intervention abroad.Why Deliberative Democracy? contributes to our understanding of how democratic citizens and their representatives can make justifiable decisions for their society in the face of the fundamental disagreements that are inevitable in diverse societies. Gutmann and Thompson provide a balanced and fair-minded approach that will benefit anyone intent on giving reason and reciprocity a more prominent place in politics than power and special interests. (shrink)

The internet is a major part of our lives today. This applies to politics as well, and accordingly, the question of whether it is possible to realize democracy on the internet has arisen. Using the arguments of Hannah Arendt, the paper aims to determine what online democracy should look like. It is argued that the internet's decentralized structure is advantageous because it facilitates the implementation of the Arendtian system of political councils. Due to the character of online political platforms – (...) mainly social media – these political councils should ideally revolve around shared issues that simultaneously create the common world on the internet. At the same time, clear rules need to be laid down for the functioning of these online political councils. Based on Arendt's arguments, it is claimed in the paper that these rules include the principles of mutual promises and covenants on the issues themselves. It is also argued that because Arendt emphasizes the role of appearing in the public sphere, the process of authentication – that is, verifying that there is a concrete person with a physical body behind each online account that wants to actively participate in a particular online political council – is required. (shrink)

Multi-stakeholder initiatives (MSIs)—private governance mechanisms involving firms, civil society organizations, and other actors deliberating to set rules, such as standards or codes of conduct, with which firms comply voluntarily—have become important tools for governing global business activities and the social and environmental consequences of these activities. Yet, this growth is paralleled with concerns about MSIs’ deliberative capacity, including the limited inclusion of some marginalized stakeholders, bias toward corporate interests, and, ultimately, ineffectiveness in their role as regulators. In this article, (...) we conceptualize MSIs as deliberative systems to open the black box of the different elements that make up the MSI polity and better understand how their deliberative capacity hinges on problems in different elements. On the basis of this conceptualization, we examine how deliberative mini-publics—forums in which a randomly selected group of individuals from a particular population engage in learning and facilitated deliberations about a topic—can improve the deliberative capacity of MSIs. (shrink)

Without mass media, openness and accountability are impossible in contemporary democracies. Nevertheless, mass media can hinder political transparency as well as help it. Politicians and political operatives can simulate the political virtues of transparency through rhetorical and media manipulation. Television tends to convert coverage of law and politics into forms of entertainment for mass consumption, and television serves as fertile ground for a self‐proliferating culture of scandal. Given the limited time available for broadcast and the limited attention (...) of audiences, stories about political strategy, political infighting, political scandal and the private lives of politicians tend to crowd out less entertaining stories about substantive policy questions. Political life begins to conform increasingly to the image of politics portrayed on television. Through a quasi‐Darwinian process, media events, scandals, and other forms of politics‐as‐entertainment eventually dominate and weed out other forms of political information and public discussion, transforming the very meaning of public discourse. In this way the goals of political transparency can be defeated by what appear to be its central mechanisms: proliferating information, holding political officials accountable for their actions, and uncovering secrets. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Radical Democracy:John Dewey and Angela Y. Davis on Pluralism and PrisonsAmanda Dubrulein 2013, the multiculturalism act marked its 25th anniversary; at the same time, the Office of the Correctional Investigator (OCI) was celebrating its 40th anniversary (Elizabeth qtd. in Eng 2–3) The OCI was created in response to the prison riot in Kingston Penitentiary that occurred in 1971. Yet, 40 years after, prisons in Canada still face "overcrowding, the (...) shortage of professional staff, programming cuts, the confinement in the institution of a number of people who did not require maximum security confinement, too much time spent in cells, a lack of adequate channels to deal with complaints" (Elizabeth qtd. in Eng 3). The "Annual Report on the Operation of the Canadian Multiculturalism Act 2019–20" (subtitled "Building a Better Canada Through Diversity") lists four principal objectives of the Canadian Multiculturalism Act: "the retaining and fostering of identity …, overcoming barriers to participation …, promoting exchanges, and language acquisition" (Canadian Heritage 10; emphasis added). One can then see that there is a marked disconnect between the ideals of plurality and participation that Canada supposedly rests on and the practices of the systems it maintains.Drawing on John Dewey's conception of democracy and Angela Davis's critique of the prison industrial complex, I aim to show that a state cannot truly be pluralistic or participatory while continuing to engage in carceral practices. To do so, I will first explicate Dewey's conception of democracy,1 then I will lay out the contemporary problems surrounding incarceration in Canada, and, finally, I will end with a discussion of abolition as a constructive practice.Discussions of democracy often center on the mechanisms of voting. We have formed the habit of believing that democracies will carry on as long as citizens perform rote political duties (Dewey, "Creative Democracy" 225). Yet, as Dewey saw and as we continue to see, a healthy democracy cannot [End Page 40] be maintained through rote action alone. Instead, it requires "conscious and resolute effort" because democracy is not a mere political system ("Creative Democracy" 224). Instead, as Dewey phrases it, it is a "way of life" and therefore has moral implications. A democracy cannot flourish where there is no community (Dewey, "Creative Democracy" 225). This is accomplished through dialogue and debate with others and the recognition of the transactional nature of associated living. The purpose of a state is to supply the "right conditions" so that every person can lead their life and flourish in their own capacity (Dewey, "Creative Democracy" 227).The public is composed of individuals who act and associate with each other; every individual is "subject to all kinds of social influences which determine what they can think of, plan and choose" (Dewey, The Public 115). Yet when people come together and discuss their wants and needs, new ideas are tested, and new beliefs are formed. This creates an unsettling of current modes and processes of political action (Dewey, The Public 103).2 Thus, Dewey argues that one of the main tasks required for maintaining (and reclaiming) democracy is the constant "discovering [of] means by which a scattered, mobile, and manifold public may so recognize itself as to define and express its interests" (The Public 174). For this to occur, the creation and recognition of community is central. For Dewey, community is not merely "physical and organic" (though it often is this), it is also "moral … emotional, [and] intellectual" (The Public 177–78). For the individual, who becomes a part of this association, democracy involves the responsibility of sharing with others the "capacity in forming and directing the activities of the groups to which one belongs and in participating according to the need in the values which the group sustains" (Dewey, The Public 175). For the group, democracy "demands liberation of the potentialities of [its] members" to flourish "in harmony with the interests and goods which are common" (Dewey, The Public 175). The flourishing of the group can only come about when we, as individuals, recognize the worth and potential of those around us and our capacity, when combined to direct the community, as a community.Thus, critique plays an important role in democracies: we... (shrink)

A stable democracy requires a shared identity and political culture. Its citizens need to identify as one common demos lest it fracture and balkanise into separate political communities. This in turn necessitates some common communication network for political messages to be transmitted, understood and evaluated by citizens. Hence, what demarcates one demos from another are the means of communication connecting the citizens of those demoi, allowing them to debate and persuade each other on the proper conduct of government and on (...) issues of common interest. For the ancient Athenians, their public sphere was the agora (marketplace); for the Federalists in the American colonies, the newspaper; for us today, it is the Internet. Until now, the physical nature of these communication networks has resulted in a trade-off between the reach of political messages (the numeric and geographic composition of the demos who receive political messages and may participate in the public sphere) and the ability to target the content of a message on that network towards individual citizens. One-to-one interpersonal conversation in the agora was highly targeted but could reach only as far as a voice could carry. The speakers and audience were well known to each other through personal interaction. As the printing press and later television allowed for greater and greater reach, the content of these messages became more generic as the speakers became more distant from their audience. The wider the audience grew, the less a message could be targeted at a particular audience segment without alienating others. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Political Affections: Civic Participation and Moral Theology by Joshua HordernMichael P. JaycoxPolitical Affections: Civic Participation and Moral Theology By Joshua Hordern NEW YORK: OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2013. 312 PP. $125.00Hordern asks his reader to consider that the decline of participatory democracy in Western societies may be ameliorated by a renewed appreciation of the role of emotions in politics. Creatively retrieving many elements of the Augustinian tradition, (...) he argues that the “evaluative intentionality” of emotions is an imperfect type of moral insight whereby human beings both participate in and conform themselves to the created “order of value” (40, 77). Although the power of sin profoundly destabilizes human inclinations, emotions can become stable moral guides through a process of “intersubjective verification” (81). Hordern claims that the epistemological capacities of socially stabilized emotions are substantial enough to enable the community to “participate in and evaluate the goods with which institutional practices are concerned, recognize the authority of those who promote the proper ends of those goods, and initiate common political reflection and deliberation” (142).Bringing these insights to bear upon his own political context, Hordern claims the “resentment,” “alienation,” and “disillusionment” that some British citizens feel toward the cosmopolitan project of the European Union stands as [End Page 213] evidence that “law which is not primarily rooted in the locality which it governs will run the risk of opposing the affections of the people” (22, 23, 242). Working from the premise that “local loves are the fertile soil in which more wide-ranging loves may grow,” Hordern champions “the politically beneficial possibilities of a limited ethnocentricity,” by which he means that emotions shared in smaller communities and within nation-states motivate citizens to attend to the common good most effectively (224, 240).Anticipating the objections to this proposal, Hordern assures his reader that the influence of Christianity upon democratic processes minimizes the negative effects of ethnocentric nationalism, such as the oppression of socially vulnerable groups. Insofar as Christian emotions participate uniquely in the transcendent order of values, the participation of this community in the temporal order would “disturb, renew, or correct patterns of social trust” (271) and provide “a critical standpoint whereby affections in all institutions may be described and assessed” (164).This reviewer shares some of Hordern’s general premises regarding the intelligence of emotions and their motivational potential in public life. By way of evaluation, however, I find three significant problems with his argument. First, although Hordern grasps Martha Nussbaum’s emotion theory quite well, he habitually mischaracterizes the more central aspects of her moral thought in order to prop up his somewhat more conservative agenda. For example, he accuses her of denying the existence of a “stable moral order” and of endorsing an individualistic concept of agency (98). These inferences fail to account for the highly social and essentialist vision of human flourishing that provides the normative content of her capability theory and her feminist ethic.Second, he offers some weak arguments as he develops his account of emotional stabilization. For example, he alleges that virtue cannot stabilize emotion because it is a form of “epistemological self-dependence” that “tends to block repentant attentiveness,” but this assertion is grounded in his antecedent concern to discredit Aristotelian habituation as a moral theory (110, 101). As he develops his own alternative proposal about intersubjective verification by appeals to “the power of memory,” he glosses over significant counterarguments concerning the “contested” nature of social memories of historical events (110, 115).Third, Hordern does not propose any universal norms of justice capable of checking the authority of particular civil governments. For example, he seems dismissive about the moral dangers of emotionally motivated nationalism, the gravity of which he attempts to minimize by emphasizing the critical aspect of Christian political participation. (The historical record of fascism in Europe would hardly support such a claim.) Nevertheless, he presumes a tacit normative point of reference every time he offers a political judgment. For example, he claims that civil authority should caution “against overreaching [End Page 214] itself in pride,” but this is to beg the question of what the interventionist role of governments should be vis-à-vis systemic injustice (198).Political... (shrink)

Citizens of Western democracies have long believed that the media should serve as watchdogs. Many feel one of the media’s most important watchdog duties is environmental reporting. As human progress has undoubtedly caused significant changes in the ecosystem, citizens have increasingly depended on the media to inform us about possible ill effects thereof. Though critics from both right and left have reservations about the actual fulfillment of this role by the press, most uphold environmental reporting (...) in principle. Hence, environmental journalism is growing in stature and respect. Even so, the work of Jacques Ellul puts forth an analysis of the watchdog function of the press that challenges key tenets of the liberal democratic presuppositions of our technological society. His analysis, which is of neither the right nor the left, raises questions that anyone who thinks seriously about the media and the environment should ponder, even those who ultimately disagree with Ellul’s position. (shrink)

continent. 2.1 (2012): 40–43. Lance Olsen is a professor of Writing and Literature at the University of Utah, Chair of the FC2 Board of directors, and, most importantly, author or editor of over twenty books of and about innovative literature. He is one of the true champions of prose as a viable contemporary art form. He has just published Architectures of Possibility (written with Trevor Dodge), a book that—as Olsen's works often do—exceeds the usual boundaries of its genre as it (...) explores his interests in narrative theory and pedagogy. The book is a kind of “anti-textbook;” a performative polemic against the stale, conservative and monolithic conception of the literary that so often dominates institutional discourse around creative writing. The following interview takes the occasion of AoP's publication as a chance to speak with Olsen about the book itself as well as to engage with larger, unanswerable, questions about the futures and intersections of literature and education. —Ben Segal INTERVIEW: 1) First, I want to start before the beginning, with the title. I’m really fascinated by the concept it conjures. Can you say something about innovative/experimental/(choose your adjective) literature in relation to both ideas around architecture and possibility? Innovative or experimental are tremendously fraught adjectives, needless to say. But for the purposes of my book, they modify a fiction concerned with the questions: What is fiction? What can it do, and how, and why? Now, of course, what looks “innovative” or “experimental” to one at 17 may not be what looks “innovative” or “experimental” to one at 27 or 57, and what looks “innovative” or “experimental” in 1812 may not be what looks “innovative” or “experimental” in 2012. A certain existential and historical perspectivism is always at work. But I think it’s fair to say that innovative and experimental usually refer to a narrativity that includes a self-reflective awareness of and engagement with theoretical inquiry, concerns, and obsessions, as well as a sense of being in conversation with fiction across space and time. One can't create challenging writing in a vacuum; it has to challenge in relation to something. So contemporary writers interested in the subject are not only in pursuit of the innovative, but are also always-already writing subsequent to it—writing, that is, in its long wake. Architectures of Possibility conceives of creativity as a possibility space, a locale just outside our comfort zones where we can and should take multiple chances in order to imagine in new ways, explore fresh strategies for finding and cultivating ideas, re-view what it is we’re doing and why, better understand what Samuel Beckett meant when he wrote: “Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” It reminds us that there are other ways of narrating our worlds and ourselves than those we have inherited from the entertainment industry, the government, academia, previous writing, and so on. 2) AoP seems to be directed at several audiences (and purposes) simultaneously. What I mean is that it seems at times a polemic in favor of innovative literature, at other times a creative writing textbook, and still other times a guide to the network of publishers, journals, and programs that make up the current world of non-mainstream literary art in the U.S. In my mind, Architectures is a theorized anti-textbook about writing. Most textbooks on the subject (think of Janet Burroway’s Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft , taught in most creative-writing classroom across the country) orchestrate how to construct conventional stories. They instruct from a place of power how to generate familiar stories that are repeated so often that many of us begin to take them as the primary model for narrativity, if not unconsciously as a kind of truth. The result, as Brian Kiteley points out in 3 A.M. Epiphany (one of the only other alternative textbooks about innovative writing around, by the way, and a tremendous repository of exercises), is merely competent texts. Architectures problematizes that gesture by outlining what conventional narrativity looks like, urging writers to think about its ideology of form as well as content, and invites them to imagine writing, not as a set of relatively stable conventions, but, rather, as a possibility space where everything can and should be thought, tried, challenged. It thereby rhymes with Roland Barthes’s definition of literature: the question minus the answer—which is to say Architectures poses complications to the act of writing rather than solutions. 3) One of the most notable things about the book is the use of interviews. This is also one of the reasons that I think the book works so well for a variety of audiences—that anyone with even a passing interest in the state and future of literature will have an interest in your conversation with people like Ben Marcus, Samuel Delany, and Lydia Davis. I was hoping you could just talk a little about how you chose these subjects to interview, how you edited the interview material, and which answers you received struck you the most. Experimentalism , like realism , wants to appear in the plural. The idea of gathering more than forty interviews (with the help of my awesome collaborator, Trevor Dodge, himself a fine innovative author) represents an attempt to suggest that: the wide, rich, exciting opportunities inherent in the term. There are interviews with younger writers, elder statesmen in the field, publishers, editors, hypermedia artists, comic book makers, and so on: Joe Wenderoth, Carole Maso, Scott McCloud, Nick Montfort, Kathy Acker, et al. Trevor and I decided to do flash interviews: short, concentrated Q&As, each focusing on a particular troubling of writing. We only lightly edited the results to match the manuscript’s overall style, and every interview arrived as a surprise housing several unexpected insights. Three brief examples: Michael Mejia, when asked about what he dreads when setting about writing: “Dread is an interesting word here. I associate it less with loathing or aversion, I suppose, than with a kind of productive fear. Do I dread a project’s failure? Sure, who doesn’t? Who wants to waste time on something that comes to nothing, or is unreadable? But then, what do these terms mean, and who or what defines a work as a ‘failure,’ as ‘waste,’ as ‘unreadable’? Should a work actually try to interrogate and exceed these conceptual limitations? My tendency is to write into dread in order to reveal to myself, as much as to any reader that may come after, the varied complacencies that make other, mostly more conventional writings, readable. It’s at the frontier between readability (security) and unreadability (terror) that I want to live creatively.” Carole Maso, when asked what she’d like a sentence to accomplish: “I think a sentence can if allowed carry emotional and intellectual states as they flee, as they come and go, an escaping essence difficult to hold in other ways. In this way I think the sentence can work as a phrase of music does, sounding something large and elusive in us. Alternatively it can provide sometimes a stability, an essence, a moment of being. Unlike music the sentence also of course carries language with all its potential for meaning making and memory traces and association with it as well. I probably love the accretion of sentences most—those patterns, that shimmer, that resonance.” Shelley Jackson, when asked what is innovative about the innovative: “The purpose of the innovative is, I think, to wake us up. We are not quite alive, most of the time; we occupy a sort of cartoon version of our lives, its lines made smooth by repetition. Writing can open the seams in that world, reintroduce us to the real lives that we have forgotten. Maybe all good writing is innovative in some sense, in that it shows or tells or makes you feel something you never felt before—something for which you have no cartoon ready.” 4) You talk a little about N. Katherine Hayles’s concept of Media Specific Analysis and propose the supplemental notion of Medium Specific Generation—basically taking Hayles and applying her thought from the perspective of the writer. I’ve been trying to develop somewhat related theoretical frameworks, so I was really excited to come upon this section of the book. I’m wondering if you can talk a little more about this idea and, in general, about the potentials that you see as being opened up by writers engaging with and exploiting different media as literary platforms? “Lulled into somnolence by five hundred years of print,” Hayles urges in her (at least for me) transformative 2004 essay, “Print is Flat, Code is Deep,” “literary analysis should awaken to the importance of media-specific analysis, a mode of critical attention which recognizes that all texts are instantiated and that the nature of the medium in which they are instantiated matters.” She goes on to argue critics should learn to become more attuned to the materiality of the medium under investigation—which is to say a story isn’t a story isn’t a story. Rather, the “same” story remediated through film is intrinsically different from that story remediated through conventionally printed books is intrinsically different from that story remediated through hypermedia. “Materiality,” Hayles goes on, “is reconceptualized as the interplay between a text’s physical characteristics and its signifying strategies, a move that entwines instantiation and signification at the outset.” My point in Architectures is simply to emphasize Media Specific Generation: the idea that when writing you should be cognizant, not only of the thematics of the text you are working on, and, as it were, the internal components of its narrativity (character, language, plot, etc.), but also of the material embodiment those components take, and, perhaps more important, the material embodiment those components can take. The idea that the way texts matter matters isn’t something usually addressed in any significant way in creative-writing classrooms and textbooks. It may almost go without saying such experimentation with typography, layout, and white space has a long tradition—certainly one that tracks back at least as far as Guillaume Apollinaire’s early twentieth-century Calligrammes , Laurence Sterne’s textually ribald eighteenth-century Tristram Shandy , although one could arguably plot a hypothetical trajectory that reaches to ancient Greek romances like Achilles Tatius’ second-century Leucippe and Clitophon . Experiments into atomic materiality and digital immateriality bracket the definition of “book” at the same time they highlight Michael Martone’s prediction of its present future as increasingly viral, collaborative, and ephemeral. Or, as Matthew Battles points out: the future of the “book” has already arrived, and it is “ethereal and networked” rather than “an immutable brick.”While conventional writing and reading practices are conceptualized as private, individual, relatively fixed experiences, many of the new forms indicate that writing and reading—from production through dissemination—are rapidly becoming public, collective, incrementally unfixed experiences. That strikes me as an astonishing set of opportunities for a writer to investigate. 5) Another concept you elaborate in AoP is that of limit texts, basically texts that, once you read them, change what you imagine as the shape/horizon/potential of literature. You provide a fantastic reading list of limit texts at the end of AoP. I was hoping you could talk about a few of them in terms of how they specifically operate as limit texts for you—how they expand your understanding of what literature could be or do. Karl Jaspers coined the word Grenzsituationen (border/limit situations) to describe existential moments accompanied by anxiety in which the human mind is forced to confront the restrictions of its existing forms—moments that make us abandon, fleetingly, the securities of our limitedness and enter new realms of self-consciousness. Death, for example. Limit texts are a variety of disturbance that carries various elements of narrativity to their brink so the reader can never quite imagine them in the same terms again. Once you’ve taken one down from the shelf, you’ll never be able to put it back up again. They won’t leave you alone. They will continue to work on your imagination long after you’ve read them. Simply by being in the world, they ask us to embrace difficulty, freedom, radical skepticism. One of the most important for me is Samuel Beckett’s The Unnamable . Instead of establishing conventional setting and building traditional character, from its first words it unsettles both: “Where now? Who now? When now?” That first trio of question marks broadcasts the thematics of the writing (“novel” may be too strong a word) that will follow: it is all about a voice (or, perhaps, voices, about the grammatical mistake of the first-person pronoun), a consciousness (maybe, again, too strong a word), often genderless, removed from place and chronology and socioeconomic reality, hovering in a state of perpetual aporia. All it knows is what it doesn’t know, and its not-knowing is blackly, sardonically comic. The Unnamable is the embodiment of an unreliable narrator—a subject position that can’t trust itself, let alone be trusted by a reader. It contradicts, takes back, digresses, undoes what it just did, forgets, lies, hallucinates gloriously. The language is abstract, disembodied, devoid of sensory data, grayish rather than painterly in texture. Without knowing this passage is from a novel, a reader might well conclude s/he were reading a patch of (anti-)Cartesian philosophy. It might be helpful to conceive of what Beckett is doing as post-genre writing, then, or perhaps what Raymond Federman referred to as critifiction—a mode that blurs conventional distinctions between theory and narrative. In completely different register, and much more recently, Anne Carson’s Nox blew me away. It takes the form of an elegy for her older brother, whom she didn’t know well and who died unexpectedly while on the run from the law in Europe. The thing itself arrives in a box that simulates a thick book, as well as the brother’s textual coffin. Open it, and inside you discover, not a codex, but an accordioned series of “pages” that folds out into an arrangement that suggests an ancient scroll (Carson is, perhaps illuminatingly, a professor of classics) made up of shards of her brother’s letters, old photographs, tickets, Carson’s observations, Catullus’ poem 101 (the one addressed to the Roman poet’s dead brother, a doubling of Carson’s situation), and extensive dictionary entries on all the words that compose that poem. The aggregate produces a collage about the impossibilities of aggregates, the impossibilities of understanding fully, of capturing absences in language. At times Nox feels less an example of what most readers consider a book than something closer to a three-dimensional work of assemblage art. It’s a beautiful mechanism for contemplating Media Specific Analysis, for urging us all to be more extreme. 6) Finally, I want to talk a little about pedagogy and institutions. I’m less interested in questions like “Are MFA programs good for writers?” than in questions about how your role as teacher informs your understanding of literature and your writing practice. I’m also very curious about your take on how commercially marginal literary art is largely patronized by large state institutions and at the same time often imagines itself as a critical and even possibly revolutionary practice. How have your own positions within universities and university-affiliated organizations shaped your thinking about them and about innovative literature? I can imagine in many ways it might make you even more critical. And (I know, another ‘and’...) how does AoP (especially given its relation to Rebel Yell , your previous text on creative writing) reflect your personal history and experience as a teacher and member of communities that are largely defined by institutions? In the classroom, I try to generate the pedagogical field I would have liked to have inhabited as a student, but didn’t. Roland Barthes has a lovely line about this: “We need to substitute for the magisterial [classroom] space of the past (the word delivered by the master from the pulpit above with the audience below, the flock, the sheep, the herd)—a less upright, less Euclidean space where no one, neither teacher nor students, would ever be in his final place.” Easier said than done, of course, but an important life project for all who think of themselves as educators. My own classroom, my own writing, and Architectures of Possibility itself attempt to create the sort of possibility space where, as I mentioned at the outset of our interview, everything should be thought, tried, challenged; where everything rhymes with Roland Barthes’s definition of literature: the question minus the answer. I’m not sure I could write what I’m writing now without the conversations I have almost daily with my students, the conversations they have with each other, the conversations we all have with the texts we study. Especially in light of the paradigm shift over the last, say, quarter century from academia as intellectual exploration to academia as McDonaldized trade school, the irony isn’t lost on me concerning the discrepancy between the safe harbor innovative authors find there and the cultural critiques those authors launch through their writing and pedagogical work. In 2001, I quit my full professorship at one institution precisely because of my disappointment over what had happened to the learning environment there. I had no intentions of reentering the field. In 2007, however, the University of Utah approached me, and I found myself in an environment much more hospitable to the sort of work I want to do—teaching experimental narrative theory and practice. It isn’t by any means a simple irony. One could easily argue innovative writing and pedagogy represents the trace of the paradigm Barthes suggests, and that trace is tremendously productive in all kinds of ways. Innovative writing has never and will never change the world in any large, macrocosmic way. But we’ve all had our lives changed, one by one, by an encounter with a difficult, rich, resonant piece of prose, poetry, music, art, you name it. We’ve all had our lives changed at the ahistorical, microcosmic moment by a class we’ve taken, a teacher we’ve studied with, to such an extent that we became, quite literally, different people. I just came across a stunning set of sentences from Derrida on the topic: “What is education? The death of the parents.” That’s what we’re all up to in the innovative, be it in written texts or the texts we call our classrooms or the texts we call our politics: trying to disrupt what both can and can’t be disrupted, trying to undo what both can and can’t be undone, continuously. (shrink)

continent. 1.4 (2011): 253—278. A Sense of French Politics Politics itself is not the exercise of power or struggle for power. Politics is first of all the configuration of a space as political, the framing of a specific sphere of experience, the setting of objects posed as "common" and of subjects to whom the capacity is recognized to designate these objects and discuss about them.(1) On April 14, 2011, France implemented its controversial ban of the niqab and burqa , commonly (...) referred to as the Islamic veil, in public places. On the coattails of the 2004 prohibition of religious artifacts, including the less concealing hijab or Islamic headscarves, in schools, the veil ban sparked equal outrage across both political and theological spectra, and many on both sides of the debate were quick to inquire about enforcement. As Steven Erlanger reports, “The police do not have the authority under the law to remove full veils, only to fine or require citizenship lessons for those who violate the new law.”(2) While the legal and social implications of this interdiction are ripe for study, the reprisals for breaking the law, notably compulsory citizenship classes, illuminate the strategic governmentality underlying the French government's targeting of the Muslim community, particularly those elements it considers affiliated with fundamentalist factions and/or terrorist organizations, if only through fashion—an integral component of French citizenship. Indeed, in allowing the (fashion) police to mandate instructional courses in citizenship for offenders, France implies that any Muslim choosing to wear the niqab or burqa , perhaps even for those who are already citizens, must not be aware of the subtle nuances of dress indicative of the French citizenry within public space. Furthermore, the degree of instruction requisite to citizenship, which clearly can and must be updated as the state sees fit, cements the imagined relation between citizens and states within the discourses on the veil ban. As Sharma contends, “Concepts of citizenship are the ideological glue that bonds the nation to the state. Citizenship provides the legal framework through which the state performs its role as ruler for the nation.”(3) Speaking for/as the state, French President Nicolas Sarkozy declared in a 2009 presentation before members of the government and other citizens that the burqa “is not welcome on the territory of France.”(4) Although there is nothing unique, especially recently, about a nation-state taking extreme measures to guard itself against what it deems to be threats to its sovereignty, the way in which the ongoing discourses on hijab have (d)evolved, which coincide with recent pronouncements by governmental leaders in Germany, Britain, and France that policies of multiculturalism have “failed,”(5) points toward nationalist reterritorializations, which is also to say physical and ideological re-appropriations, of public space within democratic milieux, which remain predicated upon the mediation of spaces. As Panagia deduces from Rancière, “Democracy […] is not an institutional form of government […], but an appearance whose visibilities and audibilites arise out of the dissonant blur of the everyday.”(6) Ultimately, the veil ban represents a calculated move to regulate the every day, which is to say the micropolitics of, that which is visible and invisible within French society, which makes it nothing short of a struggle to manage (the sensation of) bodies. Re-situating the political within the context of sense, Rancière argues that the fundamental essence of politics lies within the distinction between consensus and dissensus , and whereas most consider politics proper as fundamentally concerned with the fluid operations of the state— consensus , Rancière actually locates the political within events that disrupt the normative sensory order of things— dissensus . He explains, “Politics revolves around what is seen and what can be said about it, around who has the ability to see and the talent to speak, around the properties of spaces and the possibilities of time.”(7) This reformulation of politics centers on agency and, albeit perhaps unintended, representationality and offers a useful formulation for spatializing the discourses surrounding the Islamic veil, which are mired within seemingly senseless policies and practices of objectification. Instituting a normative “regime of visibility,” the French veil ban encapsulates the political economy of agency, now both mediated and representational, under the rule of nationalist governmentalities in increasingly transnational contexts.(8) Adjudicating presence within public space signals a concern with the sensory aspects of agency itself—what Rancière terms the “distribution of the sensible,” which is “a matrix that defines a set of relations between sense and sense: that is, between a form of sensory experience and an interpretation which makes sense of it.”(9) To be concerned with sense is to focus upon the body, and this somatic repositioning of the (fashionable) citizen within the territory of the state augurs the resurgence of nationalist bio-politics within Europe, since, as Hage explicates, “Nationalism, before being an explicit practice or a mode of classification, is a state of the body. It is a way of imagining one's position within the nation and what one can aspire to as a national.”(10) The French government's attempt to make (bodily) sense of public space for its citizens by and through policies aimed against a burqa-clad Muslim minority, which might only apply to “less then 400 to fewer than 2,000” women(11), reveals the necessary, yet mercurial, transmutation of public space into national space through bio-political strategies of sense-making, which, as Hage observes, denotes that “nationalists perceive themselves as spatial managers.”(12) At the center of this concern over public space is the equally contentious dimension of governing female Islamic identity, which has become one of the main critiques levied against Islam from outsiders who view the veil in its various forms as a clear sign of the religion's actual and symbolic violence against women, even if such critiques remain ensconced within nationalist discourses. As Halim and Meyers argue, “Although Western news media may focus their coverage of Muslim women on the debate over whether and the extent to which the veil may by oppressive to the women who wear it, they have exhibited little interest in the physical oppression of violence against women in Islamic countries.”(13) While it falls outside of the scope of this analysis to arbitrate all of the dimensions of this debate, understanding some of the issues related to female identity and hijab within public space are crucial to this study. As these topics are extraordinarily complex, even and perhaps especially within the Muslim community, it is necessary to provide some context concerning the value, purpose, and meaning of the Islamic veil, which has a rich and arduous history. The Art of the Veil At present, there are only two countries, Iran and Saudi Arabia, that require women to wear hijab , which is a decidedly problematic term and concept whose locus is itself caught within a struggle of sensation. Noting the strategic reterritorialization of the term, Berger explains: The choice of the name, hijab , now widely adopted to designate the “Islamic veil,” it itself interesting, although the semantic shift it operates is not directly commented upon by its users. Although the design (both the cut and the symbolic function) of the hijab and the Iranian chador are indeed the same, as opposed, for instance, to the traditional Algerian haik , the word hijab has come to replace the term chador popularized by the Iranian revolution, as a properly Arabic (hence Koranic) designation. This discursive shift points to the successful reclaiming of the national revolution in Iran by a transnational pan-Islamic movement, whose language of reference can only be Koranic Arabic.(14) While the hijab is certainly a point of contention within various countries dealing with immigrant Islamic populations (of which France has the largest in Europe as part of its colonial legacy in Algeria), it is clear that the veil is a historically contextualized artifact of Muslim identity with a variety of manifestations, even as forces outside of and within Islam seek to codify its actual and symbolic value. Ultimately, the varieties of hijab , including the full-faced burqa and niqab , are complex assemblages of meaning that speak to the multitudinous flows of Islamic identities over time and space. As Gökariksel and McLarney observe, “Wearing a certain style of veil may simultaneously be a disciplinary practice crucial to the cultivation of piety (Mahmood 2005; Gokariksel 2009) and a gendered performance of social distinction in terms of class, taste, and urbanity (White 1999; Navaro-Yashin 2002; Gokariksel and Secor 2009) or of ethnicity and race (Dwyer 1999).”(15) The ideological marketplace from which the varieties of hijab ebb and flow serves both as a reflection of the ever-present materiality and dynamic functionality of spiritual economies, which are derivative of the equally ubiquitous flows of transnational capital driving agency and representationality within our historical moment. Keeping these dual, yet deeply interconnected, capital ecologies as the site of exploration for how the veil is represented within public space, one might begin to sense what lurks behind such veiled agendas. Examining the symbolic and representational nature of the Islamic “veil” in its various forms, this project situates the decidedly political contestations of public space at stake in the French ban alongside recent condemnations of multiculturalism as calculated efforts to re-distribute the sensible so as to valorize national identity within increasingly transnational and globalized socio-economic spaces, which collapse exchange values between distinct, yet interwoven, economies of (cultural/material/spiritual) capital. As the discourses on the veil rely upon representational imag(in)ings, it seems fitting to explore the political economy and art of the veil through the phenomenon of street art, which, much like hijab , is a complex assemblage of meaning of sensation mired in representationality and capital exchange. As street artists have taken up hijab in various forms, the movement offers a lens with which to situate critical responses to the veil debate across both spiritual and material economies. Situating this street art both aesthetically and historically, Lewisohn explains, “'Street art' is a sub-genre of graffiti writing and owes much to its predecessor. Though there is a good deal of crossover between the genres, they are distinct and separate in their own right.”(16) Evolving out of the graffiti explosion of the late 1970's and 1980's, street art broke the unspoken rules of the artistic underground by challenging and re-examining one's sensory experience of art in public space by experimenting with both content and form in ways that harken back to the Situationist International, which as a collective challenged one's experience of urban space through various media and experiential phenomena. Again, Lewisohn observes, “It's important to note street art's break with the tradition of the tag, and its focus on visual symbols that embrace a much wider range of media than graffiti writers would use.”(17) From stencils to prints and murals to one-liners, street artists developed a reputation for critical social and political commentary, and while it is certainly the case that not all street art is intentionally political, in challenging the normative “regime of visibility,” as Rancière puts it, of public space, street artists—even if unconsciously—call into question the common sensory experience of the politics underlying the formation of (nationalist) space.(18) Indeed, Rancière refers to the partisan sensory managers as “police,” who ultimately forge “the rules governing the circulation of appearances, of their visibility and audibility, and the proper distribution of bodies therein.”(19) As such, one can sense that street art's relationship with the police is tenous for a variety of reasons. Writing about his own experience as a street artist, Shepard Fairey observes, “With street art, there's no committee deciding whether I can put my work up on the street, there's no censorship, and I have total freedom of expression, and that concept of freedom is expressed just by using the street as a medium.”(20) As Fairey and other street artists demonstrate, the medium, to paraphrase Marshall McLuhan, is the most glaring aspect of street art's message, and even as it now finds itself in galleries and usurped by private collectors, the ethos of the movement remains relavent to politics as it is, first and foremost, concerned with the configuration and experience of space. Just as examining the punishments for breaking the veil ban can map the terrain of French politics, a representational genealogy of street artist's deployment of hijab and female Muslim identity can assist in mining the depths of public space as a site of bio-political control and contestation in light of recent events in France and the rising tide of anti-multiculturalist rhetoric across Europe, even though the Islamic presence there is radically heterogenous. Using the work of Shepard Fairey, Princess Hijab, br1, and Banksy, this paper sets out to answer a number of key questions concerning the deployment of hijab, and female Islamic identity in particular, within street art as a movement now integral to and critical of the economies of exchange underlying global capitalism, which as a force of influence cannot be underestimated as a driver in the resurgence of nationalist biopolitical governmentalities. Although there exists a litany of artists to choose from, the aforementioned quartet of designers integrate hijab into their work in a seminal and critical fashion, and all have been working with the veil in some way prior to the French ban, which grants some additional context to their usage of it as a symbol in regards to the breakdown of multiculturalism across Europe, even if unconsciously. Although each artist depicts various amalgamations of hijab in their respective corpus, they share common tropes that raise significant questions concerning the veil debate, namely: what are the conditions of possibility for hijab to become a marker of Islamic identity within public space? How can we make sense of the representational topologies within street art's utilization of the hijab and female Islamic identity in light of the French ban? How might these aesthetic imag(in)ings simultaneously inhabit and combat normative discourses concerning hijab , multiculturalism, female Islamic identity, and public space? With these considerations as a backdrop, it is first necessary to outline more fully the hijab as a representative marker of female Islamic identity. The (Veiled) Writing on the Wall

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This book combines the insights of a seasoned journalist with those of an expert on philsophical ethics to provide a penetrating and comprehensive guide to the ethics of news reporting. It is essential reading for anyone interested in the role the press plays in influencing social, economic, and political choices in modern society. Drawing on a wealth of real-life cases, The Virtuous Journalist melds for the first time a conceptual analysis of the critical moral problems in journalism with (...) a solid understanding of the constraints and possibilities faced by the print and electronic media. The authors are not First Amendment absolutists but believe nonetheless that, in a democracy, the media should be subjected to minimal legal restraint. They also argue that freedom from legal restraint requires increased moral responsibility. Among the specific topics treated in the book are notions of morality and fairness, journalistic competence, standards of objectivity and accuracy, avoiding bias, avoiding harm, notions of public service, and maintaining public trust. Specific cases discussed include the controversy surrounding the CBS documentary "The Uncounted Enemy" and recent reporting on the AIDS epidemic. (shrink)

The article, authored by Ukrainian and Polish social researchers, analyses normative approaches towards understanding models of democracy and their relation to civic space. Despite the existence of multiple models of democracy, they can largely be reduced to two main forms: direct and representative democracy.Deliberative democracy is posited as a third form, which, according to some scientists, combines elements of representative, direct, and participatory democracy. The analysis is based on the assessment of democracy and civic space in Ukraine, utilising data from (...) six applied international social studies, as well as the evaluation of the modern characteristics of some components of Ukrainian civic space. According to the rating of CIVICUS Monitor, Ukraine has been classified in the category of countries where the civic space is «obstructed» from 2019 to the present time (Autumn 2023). Currently, the advancement of civic space in Ukraine towards more favourable forms of freedom of association, peaceful assembly, and expression of opinion in the country are threatened by several factors simultaneously, with the dominant role being Russia's full-scale war against Ukraine.During the martial law and in the post-war context of Ukraine, civil society acts as an indispensable ally of the authorities in the process of democratic reconstruction. Civil society organizations (CSOs) represent a wide range of social interests, ensuring that the voices of different groups and segments of thepopulation are heard and taken into account. Their broad base allows them to bridge the gap between government and citizens, helping to build trust and ensuring transparency. CSOs have a proven track record of institutional monitoring, which is a critical factor in preserving and strengthening democratic values in a post-conflict environment.The article also uses the results of the authors' previous and current academic research*, as well as the results of twenty years of advocacy and analytical work as public experts in Ukraine and Europe. ==== *Remark. The Ukrainian author relies on the results of her own previous and current academic research within the H. Skovoroda Institute of Philosophy of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and analytical studies as a public expert, and the research of the Polish co-author was supported by the National Science Center (research project 2019/33/B/HS5/02648). (shrink)