This document summarizes Santiago Castro-Gómez's analysis of the "invention of the other" through modern power structures. It discusses how the modern state project aimed to rationally control and direct human life through mechanisms like the social sciences and the formation of nation-states. This entailed "inventing" citizens by constructing identities through disciplinary mechanisms like constitutions, etiquette manuals, and grammar books. These excluded those who did not fit the modern subject profile, effectively "inventing" the other. While illuminating power/knowledge dynamics, the analysis does not fully connect these local processes to the global capitalist system, leaving an opening for a broader geopolitical perspective.
Public sphere and private sphere - masculinity and femininityRemigiuszRosicki
The sphere is a natural detenninant ofsocial ręiations, and thus shoulc1be an impor-tant category in the social scjences-Moreoveą a broader analysis should be conducted ovęr it. Discussions on sphere in the social sciences (in the narow meaning: sociology and politics) includę both the issue ofphysical sphere as wellas the concept ofsphere as an idea. In the political context it is attempted to connecl spherę with a descdption of politicalphenomena, power, violence, force, the sphere offreedom' ętc. It should be ob_ served that sphere as a public sphere is treatęd as a mętaphoI forpolitical participation, particulally in thę context of civil dghts. WŁat should be distinguished &om the ordi-nary sense ofpubiic sphęIe, the means sphere ofpublic access or spherc with specific fęatures usęful to society. In the |ust meaning ofthe public nature, which for oul con_ sidęrations is more impofiant' spherę would be recognized as a sphere ofparticipation, which means as a specialkind ofinteraction, plesęntations' and the legitimacy ofcol-lęctive oI indivicluai idełtity (of vadous typęs of particularities). It should bę noted that the specific undelstanding of politics and power should bę connected with the traditional recognition ofsphere, social spatial behavior, a deter_ mina[t of aggression or demographic description of society. It seems that you can draw a h1.pothesis that a spęcific type of description based among othęrs on the above-mentioned perspęctives strengthened specific Ępe of discourse in politics and power, whiclr has become one of thę factols lacilitating the ideological exclusion of certain social groups from public life, e'g' womęn. Depreciation ofwomen in social life by dehning the physical force and violence as an impońant lactol of tęrritofialism and tribalism, was thę basis for determining the practices and the mamęr ofthe discourse on the public Spttere as an area ofpolitical in-tęIaction' obviously' it was not the only factor limitirrg womęn's palticipation in the
Rethinking Michel Foucault: The Political Circle of Parrhesia and DemocracySydney Democracy Network
As part of SDN's seminar series, Professor Henrik Bang (University of Canberra) indicates perspectives on Michel Foucault that can inform our understanding of democracy.
Michel Foucault has become an exemplar in the disciplines of philosophy, sociology, history, linguistics and literary criticism. Ironically, he has never made much of an impact upon the political discipline, to which he first of all belongs, and in which he deserves a prominent position as one of the best political theorists and researchers of all time. In particular in his later strings of lectures from 1978 to 1984 he develops an empirical and normative approach to studying the political as governmentality.
Aidarbek Chalbaev and Bekbolot Zhaparov from International Relations Department of International Ataturk Alatoo University is talking about the Neo -Marxism history and theory of IR .Subject: History and Theory of International Relations Lecturer: Dr. Ibrahim Koncak
Edital nº 002 SELEÇÃO DE TUTOR (A) DE LÍNGUA PORTUGUESAIcaro Amorim
A EEFM Santo Amaro busca selecionar por meio deste edital um tutor (a) de Língua Portuguesa, ou seja, um estudante de graduação de Letras/Português ou Letras/Português e habilitações em Língua Estrangeira para atuar durante dois meses no segundo semestre deste ano, 2016.
Public sphere and private sphere - masculinity and femininityRemigiuszRosicki
The sphere is a natural detenninant ofsocial ręiations, and thus shoulc1be an impor-tant category in the social scjences-Moreoveą a broader analysis should be conducted ovęr it. Discussions on sphere in the social sciences (in the narow meaning: sociology and politics) includę both the issue ofphysical sphere as wellas the concept ofsphere as an idea. In the political context it is attempted to connecl spherę with a descdption of politicalphenomena, power, violence, force, the sphere offreedom' ętc. It should be ob_ served that sphere as a public sphere is treatęd as a mętaphoI forpolitical participation, particulally in thę context of civil dghts. WŁat should be distinguished &om the ordi-nary sense ofpubiic sphęIe, the means sphere ofpublic access or spherc with specific fęatures usęful to society. In the |ust meaning ofthe public nature, which for oul con_ sidęrations is more impofiant' spherę would be recognized as a sphere ofparticipation, which means as a specialkind ofinteraction, plesęntations' and the legitimacy ofcol-lęctive oI indivicluai idełtity (of vadous typęs of particularities). It should bę noted that the specific undelstanding of politics and power should bę connected with the traditional recognition ofsphere, social spatial behavior, a deter_ mina[t of aggression or demographic description of society. It seems that you can draw a h1.pothesis that a spęcific type of description based among othęrs on the above-mentioned perspęctives strengthened specific Ępe of discourse in politics and power, whiclr has become one of thę factols lacilitating the ideological exclusion of certain social groups from public life, e'g' womęn. Depreciation ofwomen in social life by dehning the physical force and violence as an impońant lactol of tęrritofialism and tribalism, was thę basis for determining the practices and the mamęr ofthe discourse on the public Spttere as an area ofpolitical in-tęIaction' obviously' it was not the only factor limitirrg womęn's palticipation in the
Rethinking Michel Foucault: The Political Circle of Parrhesia and DemocracySydney Democracy Network
As part of SDN's seminar series, Professor Henrik Bang (University of Canberra) indicates perspectives on Michel Foucault that can inform our understanding of democracy.
Michel Foucault has become an exemplar in the disciplines of philosophy, sociology, history, linguistics and literary criticism. Ironically, he has never made much of an impact upon the political discipline, to which he first of all belongs, and in which he deserves a prominent position as one of the best political theorists and researchers of all time. In particular in his later strings of lectures from 1978 to 1984 he develops an empirical and normative approach to studying the political as governmentality.
Aidarbek Chalbaev and Bekbolot Zhaparov from International Relations Department of International Ataturk Alatoo University is talking about the Neo -Marxism history and theory of IR .Subject: History and Theory of International Relations Lecturer: Dr. Ibrahim Koncak
Edital nº 002 SELEÇÃO DE TUTOR (A) DE LÍNGUA PORTUGUESAIcaro Amorim
A EEFM Santo Amaro busca selecionar por meio deste edital um tutor (a) de Língua Portuguesa, ou seja, um estudante de graduação de Letras/Português ou Letras/Português e habilitações em Língua Estrangeira para atuar durante dois meses no segundo semestre deste ano, 2016.
Building an online community: Hits & Misses while building TheRodinhoods!asha chaudhry
Building an online community is can be the most challenging, yet fulfilling job for a Community Manager! I'm sharing some learnings, hits & misses while building TheRodinhoods for 5 years!
1Anarchism Its Aims and PurposesAnarchism versus econ.docxaulasnilda
1
Anarchism: Its Aims and Purposes
Anarchism versus economic monopoly and state power; Forerunners of modern Anarchism; William Godwin and
his work on Political Justice; P.J. Proudhon and his ideas of political and economic decentralisation; Max Stirner's
work, The Ego and Its Own; M. Bakunin the Collectivist and founder of the Anarchist movement; P. Kropotkin the
exponent of Anarchist Communism and the philosophy of Mutual Aid; Anarchism and revolution; Anarchism a
synthesis of Socialism and Liberalism; Anarchism versus economic materialism and Dictatorship; Anarchism and
the state; Anarchism a tendency of history; Freedom and culture.
Anarchism is a definite intellectual current in the life of our times, whose adherents advocate the abolition of
economic monopolies and of all political and social coercive institutions within society. In place of the present
capitalistic economic order Anarchists would have a free association of all productive forces based upon co-
operative labour, which would have as its sole purpose the satisfying of the necessary requirements of every
member of society, and would no longer have in view the special interest of privileged minorities within the social
union. In place of the present state organisation with their lifeless machinery of political and bureaucratic
institutions Anarchists desire a federation of free communities which shall be bound to one another by their
common economic and social interest and shall arrange their affairs by mutual agreement and free contract.
Anyone who studies at all profoundly the economic and social development of the present social system will easily
recognise that these objectives do not spring from the Utopian ideas of a few imaginative innovators, but that they
are the logical outcome of a thorough examination of the present-day social maladjustments, which with every new
phase of the existing social conditions manifest themselves more plainly and more unwholesomely. Modern
onopoly, capitalism and the totalitarian state are merely the last terms in a development which could culminate in
no other results.
The portentous development of our present economic system, leading to a mighty accumulation of social wealth in
the hands of privileged minorities and to a continuous impoverishment of the great masses of the people, prepared
the way for the present political and social reaction. and befriended it in every way. It sacrificed the general interest
of human society to the private interest of individuals, and thus systematically undermined the relationship between
man and man. People forgot that industry is not an end in itself, but should only be a means to ensure to man his
material subsistence and to make accessible to him the blessings of a higher intellectual culture. Where industry is
everything and man is nothing begins the realm of a ruthless economic despotism whose workings are no less
disastrous than those of any political despotism. The two mutually augment o ...
The moment I saw him over the history of that humanity, it is well-known it problem that live the man, her victim femenine by part of the man and that of feminine same, away who unchain an serried of conduct antisocialism. The difficulty of the study of this phenomenon, it is debit principal mind at the changes and mutations of the man personality, at the constant evolution of his environment and of herself. The preoccupy before is who today in day, so much of the delinquency, the todehumanization and victimation them continue mostly grow, and that not those exist truthful mechanism of prevention and solution.
M a n u e l Castells Toward a Sociology of the Network Soc.docxsmile790243
M a n u e l Castells
Toward a Sociology of the Network Society
Manuel Castells
The Call to Sociology
The twenty-first century of the Common Era did not
necessarily have to usher in a new society. But it did.
People around the world feel the winds of multi-
dimensional social change without truly understanding
it, let alone feeling a grasp upon the process of change.
Thus the challenge to sociology, as the science of study
of society. More than ever society needs sociology, but
not just any kind of sociology. The sociology that people
need is not a normative meta-discipline instructing
them, from the authoritative towers of academia, about
what is to be done. It is even less a pseudo-sociology made
up of empty word games and intellectual narcissism,
expressed in terms deliberately incomprehensible for
anyone without access to a French-Greek dictionary.
Because we need to know, and because people need
to know, more than ever we need a sociology rooted
in its scientific endeavor. Of course, it must have the
specificity of its object of study, and thus of its theories
and methods, without mimicking the natural sciences
in a futile search for respectability. And it must have a
clear purpose of producing objective knowledge (yes!
there is such a thing, always in relative terms), brought
about by empirical observation, rigorous theorizing,
and unequivocal communication. Then we can argue
- and we will! - about the best way to proceed with
observation, theory building, and formal expression of
findings, depending on subject matter and methodo-
logical traditions. But without a consensus on sociology
as science - indeed, as a specific social science - we
sociologists will fail in our professional and intellectual
duty at a time when we are needed most. We are needed
because, individually and collectively, most people in
the world are lost about the meaning of the whirlwind
Source: Contemporary Sociology, 29, 5, September 2000:
693-9.
we are going through. So they need to know which
kind of society we are in, which kind of social processes
are emerging, what is structural, and what can be changed
through purposive social action. And we are needed
because without understanding, people, rightly, will
block change, and we may lose the extraordinary
potential of creativity embedded into the values and
technologies of the Information Age. We are needed
because as would-be scientists of society we are posi-
tioned better than anyone else to produce knowledge
about the new society, and to be credible - or at least
more credible than the futurologists and ideologues
that litter the interpretation of current historical
changes, let alone politicians always jumping on the
latest trendy word.
So, we are needed, but to do what? Well, to study the
processes of constitution, organization, and change of
a new society, probably starting with its social structure
- what I provisionally call the network societ ...
Topic of discussion Uptopian IdeasRequired Textbook curranalmeta
Topic of discussion :
Uptopian Ideas
Required Textbook:
Magstadt, T. M. (2017).
Understanding politics: Ideas, institutions, and issues
. Australia: Cengage Learning. 12th Edition.
Required Resources
Read/review the following resources for this activity:
Textbook: Chapter 3, 4; review Chapter 2 (Section: Ideologies and Politics in the United States)
Lesson
Additional scholarly sources you identify through your own research
.
Instructions:
Explain one of the perfect political systems of Plato, Aristotle, Bacon, Marx, or Skinner. Use evidence (cite sources) to support your response from assigned readings or lesson,
and
at least two outside scholarly source.
Lesson: Political Science Theories
Theories
After the fall of Rome, within Western civilizations, the Church ultimately became interwoven with the centralized power of the appointed kings and queens. But over time, philosophers, and then the people, wondered if this was the best way to organize a government. They began by questioning the Church's role in government, and ultimately expanded into an examination of the need for monarchies in general.
These thoughts began with the work of Niccolo Machiavelli in Italy in the 15th and 16th centuries. In The Prince, Machiavelli discusses the role of power in maintaining rule. Although not a direct link to democratic thought because he is advising a prince on how to keep his control over the people, his work was one of the first to hint at a need for a separation of church and state, which is a concept that still elicits controversy today.
Roughly a century later, Thomas Hobbes also questioned the role of the Church within the government. In writing Leviathan, Hobbes advocated the need for a large governmental structure (thus a leviathan) to rule over the people and he began to question the role of the Church in this process. Although a supporter of authoritarian governments, Hobbes was not a supporter of the Church's power within government. Outside of this premise, he is also known for coining the phrase "state of nature." This idea stems from his examination of what people look like without any government. He saw this state as very bleak, representing utter chaos and strife, because he theorized that without a strong ruling government to keep the peace, people would be at war with one another as they attempted to seize power from one another as a means of getting what they desired and as a way to avoid what they did not. However, in contrast to what he was proposing, by looking at humanity at its core, he introduced the idea of humanity as thinking for itself, which is the foundation of any democracy.
It was this concept that John Locke then built upon a few decades later by suggesting that the people move away from an all-oppressive ruler to a government based upon the rule of the citizens with a system of checks and balances,. Locke's ideas serve as the basis of much of the U.S. founding documents, such as th ...
Module 3 The Individual in Postmodern SocietyDiscussion Questio.docxroushhsiu
Module 3: The Individual in Postmodern Society
Discussion Question : Name two negative outcomes of low fertility rates? Would Malthus agree with these arguments
Learning Resources
What Is Postmodernism?
In module 2 we discussed how modern society grew out of rational design and organization. Modernist systems reject disorganization and chaos. They strongly support the power of the institution and institutionalized systems such as corporations, school systems, and the government overall. Because of a strong belief in the rationality and usefulness of the system, challenges to the modern system seem unreasonable and unacceptable. This is roughly where U.S. culture was in the middle of the twentieth century, until many challenges seemed quite reasonable and became more common in occurrence. Postmodernism not only approves of the disorganized or chaotic side of society, but embraces it (Klages, 2003).
Postmodernism recognizes that individual differences and personal self-expression are left out of the equation of the modern, rationalized system. Closed and narrow systems and rigidly defined roles were questioned in the mid-twentieth century, thus ushering in an era of postmodernism. The civil rights movement, the women's movement, the gay rights movement, and the environmental movement are examples of how postmodernism has become tied to social movements in the last half century. This module will explore postmodernism and social movement theory and how these factors have had an impact on the individual in the postmodern world.
Postmodernism, Subjective Reality, and Social Constructivism
One of the primary differences between modernism and postmodernism is how each movement defines truth. Modernity is based on the belief in universal truths, which are generally tested and proven scientifically or analytically. Postmodernism recognizes that truth is more likely based on individual perception and interpretation ("Postmodernism," 2005). Postmodernists see that there is no absolute truth; rather, truth depends on life experience and point of view. During the second half of the twentieth century, many new theories arose in sociology to challenge the classic perspectives of functionalism and conflict theory. One of these alternative perspectives defines reality more subjectively.
Subjective Reality and Social Constructivism
One of the main historical subtopics in sociological theory is the study of ideology, or the study of the conditions under which some, but not other, ideas come to be held as the authoritative basis for a given set of social relations. For example, as feminist theorists have studied the gender patterns of various societies, they have found that much of gender interaction is governed by the ideology of patriarchy (Lerner, 1986), or a cultural construct that has historically emphasized male dominance over and/or the ownership of property, women, children, and animals. Further, feminists have noted many of the sources or key ideas grou ...
Topic Political SystemsInstructionsExplain how conservatcurranalmeta
Topic: Political Systems
Instructions:
Explain how conservatism and socialism are incorporated in the US political system. Use evidence (cite sources) to support your response from assigned readings or online lessons,
and
at least one outside scholarly source.
Be sure to use examples.
Textbook:
Magstadt, T. (2017). Understanding Politics: Ideas, institutions, and issues (12th ed.). Boston, MA: Cengage.
Required Resources:
Read/review the following resources for this activity:
Textbook: Chapter 3, 4; review Chapter 2 (Section: Ideologies and Politics in the United States)
Lesson
Additional scholarly sources you identify through your own research
Lesson: Political Science Theories:
Theories
After the fall of Rome, within Western civilizations, the Church ultimately became interwoven with the centralized power of the appointed kings and queens. But over time, philosophers, and then the people, wondered if this was the best way to organize a government. They began by questioning the Church's role in government, and ultimately expanded into an examination of the need for monarchies in general.
These thoughts began with the work of Niccolo Machiavelli in Italy in the 15th and 16th centuries. In The Prince, Machiavelli discusses the role of power in maintaining rule. Although not a direct link to democratic thought because he is advising a prince on how to keep his control over the people, his work was one of the first to hint at a need for a separation of church and state, which is a concept that still elicits controversy today.
Roughly a century later, Thomas Hobbes also questioned the role of the Church within the government. In writing Leviathan, Hobbes advocated the need for a large governmental structure (thus a leviathan) to rule over the people and he began to question the role of the Church in this process. Although a supporter of authoritarian governments, Hobbes was not a supporter of the Church's power within government. Outside of this premise, he is also known for coining the phrase "state of nature." This idea stems from his examination of what people look like without any government. He saw this state as very bleak, representing utter chaos and strife, because he theorized that without a strong ruling government to keep the peace, people would be at war with one another as they attempted to seize power from one another as a means of getting what they desired and as a way to avoid what they did not. However, in contrast to what he was proposing, by looking at humanity at its core, he introduced the idea of humanity as thinking for itself, which is the foundation of any democracy.
It was this concept that John Locke then built upon a few decades later by suggesting that the people move away from an all-oppressive ruler to a government based upon the rule of the citizens with a system of checks and balances,. Locke's ideas serve as the basis of much of the U.S. founding documents, such as the Declaration ...
Government in Society The Conceptual and Historical ContextShababb Hussain
Government in Society
The Conceptual and Historical Context
for Understanding Government
If you were to import the geometrical method into practical life
you would do nothing more than if you set yourself to work at going mad
by means of reason and you would march straight ahead as though
desire, temerity, occasion, fortune did not rule in human affairs.
(Vico 2010, 113 [1710])
The dignifed burial of the dualistic Descartes forces us to address
the formidable explanatory challenge for a physicalistic theory of
human agency and a nondualistic cognitivism. (Bandura 2011, 4)
The totalitarianism throughout of the history of humanityFernando Alcoforado
Throughout history of mankind, those in power always used the repressive apparatus (police and justice) for the maintenance of the existing political and social order. Who holds the power of the state uses the repressive apparatus of the state for the benefit of the ruling class in the social sphere. They exert their domination over the whole of society not only by force but also by the use of ideology to keep the dominant economic system.
The Importance of Self-CareYou will select a minimum of 3 jour.docxcherry686017
The Importance of Self-Care
You will select a minimum of 3 journal articles discussing the importance of self-care for those in the helping professions (search terms like self-care and burnout in Academic Search Premiere). After locating your sources, you will create a PowerPoint presentation that could be used to educate professionals (and yourself) on self-care importance and practices. The PowerPoint presentation should include a title slide, at least ten slides of “body” and a slide including references, in current APA format. Sources should also be cited throughout the presentation, just as you would cite sources in a research paper.
This assignment is due by 11:59 p.m. (ET) on Monday of Module/Week 7.
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“[Power is] the possibility of imposing one’s will upon the behavior of other persons” (from Max Weber on Law in Economy and Society, p. 323)
“[N]o system of authority voluntarily limits itself to the appeal to material or affectual or ideal motives as a basis for guaranteeing its continuance. In addition every such system attempts to establish and to cultivate the belief in its `legitimacy.‘” (Weber, ‘Types of Authority’, p. 325).
What happens when cultivating this belief fails?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAaWvVFERVA&feature=channel_page
Announcements
Reading Analysis Assignment due!
Study guide for in-class test, Oct 23 (A) or 22 (B) will be posted on the course website (I’ll discuss this next week)
Test is as much about your ability to listen in lecture and take effective lecture notes as it is to effectively read these texts– taking good lecture notes requires you to engage in a process of thinking that will help you prepare for the test!
The test presupposes an understanding of the assigned Foundations readings
Lecture Outline
Today in the House of Social Science: the room of sociology– but first, history (from last week)
McNeil: mythistory or truth, myth and history
Tonnies: Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft
Context: rise of ‘market society’
Weber: Why study ‘bureaucracy’?
Attributes of Bureaucracy (both public and private)
Modernity and the rise of ‘modern bureaucracy’
Giddens and modern sociology: What is ‘modernity’?
3
Why ‘Mythistory’?
Historians must recognize the potential impact the ‘dominant ideology’ might have on them
“But what seems true to one historian will seem false to another, so one historian’s truth becomes another’s myth” (p. 2).
The old ‘scientific ideal’ of treating history as ‘collecting facts that are true’ is called into question.
Some facts and relationships emphasized by historians, while others are left out.
Truth, Myth, History…
The ‘histories’ we learn influence the way we look at our own society, and our place within it
To ‘outsiders’, these ‘stories’ may look like myths, but these ‘myths’ should not be dismissed as false or untrue
They are “shared tru ...
Epistemic Interaction - tuning interfaces to provide information for AI supportAlan Dix
Paper presented at SYNERGY workshop at AVI 2024, Genoa, Italy. 3rd June 2024
https://alandix.com/academic/papers/synergy2024-epistemic/
As machine learning integrates deeper into human-computer interactions, the concept of epistemic interaction emerges, aiming to refine these interactions to enhance system adaptability. This approach encourages minor, intentional adjustments in user behaviour to enrich the data available for system learning. This paper introduces epistemic interaction within the context of human-system communication, illustrating how deliberate interaction design can improve system understanding and adaptation. Through concrete examples, we demonstrate the potential of epistemic interaction to significantly advance human-computer interaction by leveraging intuitive human communication strategies to inform system design and functionality, offering a novel pathway for enriching user-system engagements.
Software Delivery At the Speed of AI: Inflectra Invests In AI-Powered QualityInflectra
In this insightful webinar, Inflectra explores how artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming software development and testing. Discover how AI-powered tools are revolutionizing every stage of the software development lifecycle (SDLC), from design and prototyping to testing, deployment, and monitoring.
Learn about:
• The Future of Testing: How AI is shifting testing towards verification, analysis, and higher-level skills, while reducing repetitive tasks.
• Test Automation: How AI-powered test case generation, optimization, and self-healing tests are making testing more efficient and effective.
• Visual Testing: Explore the emerging capabilities of AI in visual testing and how it's set to revolutionize UI verification.
• Inflectra's AI Solutions: See demonstrations of Inflectra's cutting-edge AI tools like the ChatGPT plugin and Azure Open AI platform, designed to streamline your testing process.
Whether you're a developer, tester, or QA professional, this webinar will give you valuable insights into how AI is shaping the future of software delivery.
Let's dive deeper into the world of ODC! Ricardo Alves (OutSystems) will join us to tell all about the new Data Fabric. After that, Sezen de Bruijn (OutSystems) will get into the details on how to best design a sturdy architecture within ODC.
Connector Corner: Automate dynamic content and events by pushing a buttonDianaGray10
Here is something new! In our next Connector Corner webinar, we will demonstrate how you can use a single workflow to:
Create a campaign using Mailchimp with merge tags/fields
Send an interactive Slack channel message (using buttons)
Have the message received by managers and peers along with a test email for review
But there’s more:
In a second workflow supporting the same use case, you’ll see:
Your campaign sent to target colleagues for approval
If the “Approve” button is clicked, a Jira/Zendesk ticket is created for the marketing design team
But—if the “Reject” button is pushed, colleagues will be alerted via Slack message
Join us to learn more about this new, human-in-the-loop capability, brought to you by Integration Service connectors.
And...
Speakers:
Akshay Agnihotri, Product Manager
Charlie Greenberg, Host
Transcript: Selling digital books in 2024: Insights from industry leaders - T...BookNet Canada
The publishing industry has been selling digital audiobooks and ebooks for over a decade and has found its groove. What’s changed? What has stayed the same? Where do we go from here? Join a group of leading sales peers from across the industry for a conversation about the lessons learned since the popularization of digital books, best practices, digital book supply chain management, and more.
Link to video recording: https://bnctechforum.ca/sessions/selling-digital-books-in-2024-insights-from-industry-leaders/
Presented by BookNet Canada on May 28, 2024, with support from the Department of Canadian Heritage.
GDG Cloud Southlake #33: Boule & Rebala: Effective AppSec in SDLC using Deplo...James Anderson
Effective Application Security in Software Delivery lifecycle using Deployment Firewall and DBOM
The modern software delivery process (or the CI/CD process) includes many tools, distributed teams, open-source code, and cloud platforms. Constant focus on speed to release software to market, along with the traditional slow and manual security checks has caused gaps in continuous security as an important piece in the software supply chain. Today organizations feel more susceptible to external and internal cyber threats due to the vast attack surface in their applications supply chain and the lack of end-to-end governance and risk management.
The software team must secure its software delivery process to avoid vulnerability and security breaches. This needs to be achieved with existing tool chains and without extensive rework of the delivery processes. This talk will present strategies and techniques for providing visibility into the true risk of the existing vulnerabilities, preventing the introduction of security issues in the software, resolving vulnerabilities in production environments quickly, and capturing the deployment bill of materials (DBOM).
Speakers:
Bob Boule
Robert Boule is a technology enthusiast with PASSION for technology and making things work along with a knack for helping others understand how things work. He comes with around 20 years of solution engineering experience in application security, software continuous delivery, and SaaS platforms. He is known for his dynamic presentations in CI/CD and application security integrated in software delivery lifecycle.
Gopinath Rebala
Gopinath Rebala is the CTO of OpsMx, where he has overall responsibility for the machine learning and data processing architectures for Secure Software Delivery. Gopi also has a strong connection with our customers, leading design and architecture for strategic implementations. Gopi is a frequent speaker and well-known leader in continuous delivery and integrating security into software delivery.
UiPath Test Automation using UiPath Test Suite series, part 3DianaGray10
Welcome to UiPath Test Automation using UiPath Test Suite series part 3. In this session, we will cover desktop automation along with UI automation.
Topics covered:
UI automation Introduction,
UI automation Sample
Desktop automation flow
Pradeep Chinnala, Senior Consultant Automation Developer @WonderBotz and UiPath MVP
Deepak Rai, Automation Practice Lead, Boundaryless Group and UiPath MVP
Essentials of Automations: Optimizing FME Workflows with ParametersSafe Software
Are you looking to streamline your workflows and boost your projects’ efficiency? Do you find yourself searching for ways to add flexibility and control over your FME workflows? If so, you’re in the right place.
Join us for an insightful dive into the world of FME parameters, a critical element in optimizing workflow efficiency. This webinar marks the beginning of our three-part “Essentials of Automation” series. This first webinar is designed to equip you with the knowledge and skills to utilize parameters effectively: enhancing the flexibility, maintainability, and user control of your FME projects.
Here’s what you’ll gain:
- Essentials of FME Parameters: Understand the pivotal role of parameters, including Reader/Writer, Transformer, User, and FME Flow categories. Discover how they are the key to unlocking automation and optimization within your workflows.
- Practical Applications in FME Form: Delve into key user parameter types including choice, connections, and file URLs. Allow users to control how a workflow runs, making your workflows more reusable. Learn to import values and deliver the best user experience for your workflows while enhancing accuracy.
- Optimization Strategies in FME Flow: Explore the creation and strategic deployment of parameters in FME Flow, including the use of deployment and geometry parameters, to maximize workflow efficiency.
- Pro Tips for Success: Gain insights on parameterizing connections and leveraging new features like Conditional Visibility for clarity and simplicity.
We’ll wrap up with a glimpse into future webinars, followed by a Q&A session to address your specific questions surrounding this topic.
Don’t miss this opportunity to elevate your FME expertise and drive your projects to new heights of efficiency.
Search and Society: Reimagining Information Access for Radical FuturesBhaskar Mitra
The field of Information retrieval (IR) is currently undergoing a transformative shift, at least partly due to the emerging applications of generative AI to information access. In this talk, we will deliberate on the sociotechnical implications of generative AI for information access. We will argue that there is both a critical necessity and an exciting opportunity for the IR community to re-center our research agendas on societal needs while dismantling the artificial separation between the work on fairness, accountability, transparency, and ethics in IR and the rest of IR research. Instead of adopting a reactionary strategy of trying to mitigate potential social harms from emerging technologies, the community should aim to proactively set the research agenda for the kinds of systems we should build inspired by diverse explicitly stated sociotechnical imaginaries. The sociotechnical imaginaries that underpin the design and development of information access technologies needs to be explicitly articulated, and we need to develop theories of change in context of these diverse perspectives. Our guiding future imaginaries must be informed by other academic fields, such as democratic theory and critical theory, and should be co-developed with social science scholars, legal scholars, civil rights and social justice activists, and artists, among others.
Key Trends Shaping the Future of Infrastructure.pdfCheryl Hung
Keynote at DIGIT West Expo, Glasgow on 29 May 2024.
Cheryl Hung, ochery.com
Sr Director, Infrastructure Ecosystem, Arm.
The key trends across hardware, cloud and open-source; exploring how these areas are likely to mature and develop over the short and long-term, and then considering how organisations can position themselves to adapt and thrive.
Kubernetes & AI - Beauty and the Beast !?! @KCD Istanbul 2024Tobias Schneck
As AI technology is pushing into IT I was wondering myself, as an “infrastructure container kubernetes guy”, how get this fancy AI technology get managed from an infrastructure operational view? Is it possible to apply our lovely cloud native principals as well? What benefit’s both technologies could bring to each other?
Let me take this questions and provide you a short journey through existing deployment models and use cases for AI software. On practical examples, we discuss what cloud/on-premise strategy we may need for applying it to our own infrastructure to get it to work from an enterprise perspective. I want to give an overview about infrastructure requirements and technologies, what could be beneficial or limiting your AI use cases in an enterprise environment. An interactive Demo will give you some insides, what approaches I got already working for real.
FIDO Alliance Osaka Seminar: Passkeys at Amazon.pdf
3[1][1].2castro gomez
1. The Social Sciences, Epistemic
Violence, and the Problem of the
“Invention of the Other”
Santiago Castro-Gómez
During the last two decades of the
twentieth century, postmodern philosophy and cultural studies developed
into important theoretical currents that impelled a strong critique, inside
and outside the academy, of the pathologies of Westernization. Their many
differences notwithstanding, both currents attribute these pathologies to the
exclusive, dualist character that modern power relations assume. Modernity
is an alterity-generating machine that, in the name of reason and humanism, excludes from its imaginary the hybridity, multiplicity, ambiguity, and
contingency of different forms of life. The current crisis of modernity is seen
by postmodern philosophy and cultural studies as a historic opportunity for
these long-repressed differences to emerge.
I hope to show here that the proclaimed “end” of modernity clearly
implies the crisis of a power mechanism that constructs the “other” by
means of a binary logic that represses difference. I also argue that this crisis
does not imply the weakening of the global structure within which this
mechanism operates. What I will refer to here as the “end of modernity” is
merely the crisis of a historical configuration of power in the framework of
the capitalist world-system, which nevertheless has taken on other forms
in times of globalization, without this implying the disappearance of that
world-system. I argue that the present global reorganization of the capitalist
economy depends on the production of differences. As a result, the celebratory affirmation of these differences, far from subverting the system, could
be contributing to its consolidation. I defend the claim that the challenge
now facing a critical theory of society is precisely to reveal what the crisis
N e p a n t l a : V i e w s f r o m S o u t h 3.2
Copyright 2002 by Duke University Press
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of the modern project consists of and to indicate the new configurations of
global power in what Jean-François Lyotard has called the “postmodern
condition.”
My strategy is first to interrogate the significance of what Jürgen Habermas has called the “project of modernity,” seeking to demonstrate the origins of two closely linked social phenomena: the formation of
nation-states and the consolidation of colonialism. Here I emphasize the
role played by techno-scientific knowledge, particularly knowledge that
emerges from the social sciences, in the consolidation of these phenomena.
Later I show that the “end of modernity” cannot be understood as the result
of an explosion of normative frameworks in which this project taxonomically operated, but, rather, as a new configuration of global power relations
that is based on the production of differences instead of on their repression.
I conclude with a brief reflection on the role of a critical theory of society
in times of globalization.
The Project of Governmentability
What do we mean when we speak of the “project of modernity”? Primarily
and generally, we refer to the Faustian drive to submit the entire world to
the absolute control of man under the steady guide of knowledge. The
German philosopher Hans Blumenberg (1973, pt. 2) has shown that, at a
conceptual level, this project required humanity’s elevation to the rank of
principal organizer of all things. To attain this power, mankind must fight a
war, one it will win only by knowing the enemy profoundly, deciphering its
most intimate secrets, so that its own tools may be used to make it submit
to human will. This is precisely the role of techno-scientific reason with
respect to nature. Ontological insecurity can only be eliminated insofar
as we increase our mechanisms of control over the magical or mysterious
forces of nature, especially over those aspects of it that cannot be reduced
to calculability. In this sense, Max Weber speaks of the rationalization of
the West as the process of “disenchanting” the world.
When we speak of modernity as a “project,” we are also principally
referring to the existence of a central instance from which the mechanisms
of control over the natural and social world are distributed and coordinated.
This primary instance is the state, guarantor of the rational organization of
human life. In this context, “rational organization” means that the processes
of disenchantment and demagicalization of the world to which Weber and
Blumenberg refer have begun to be regulated by the state’s guiding hand.
The state is understood as the sphere in which all societal interests reach
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a point of “synthesis,” that is, the locus which formulates collective goals
valid for everyone. This requires the application of “rational criteria” that
permit the state to channel the desires, interests, and emotions of citizens
toward its own goals. The modern state thus not only acquires a monopoly
on violence, but also uses it to rationally “direct” the activities of its citizens
in accordance with previously established scientific criteria.
The U.S. sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein (1991) has shown how
the social sciences became a fundamental part of this project of organization
and control over human life. The birth of the social sciences was not an
additive phenomenon to the framework of political organization defined
by the nation-state, it was constitutive of that framework. In order to govern
the social world, one first had to generate a platform from which it could be
scientifically observed.1 Without the aid of the social sciences, the modern
state would not be in a position to exercise control over people’s lives,
define long- and short-term collective goals, or construct and assign to its
citizens a cultural “identity.”2 The restructuring of the economy according
to the new demands of international capitalism, the redefinition of political
legitimacy, and even the identification of the specific character and values
of each nation all required a scientifically endorsed representation of how
social reality “functioned.” Governmental programs could only be realized
and executed on the basis of this information.
The taxonomies elaborated by the social sciences were thus not
limited to the development of an abstract system of rules called “science”—
as the founding fathers of sociology ideologically believed. Instead, these
taxonomies had practical consequences, for they legitimized the regulative
politics of the state. The practical matrix that led to the rise of the social
sciences was the need to “adjust” human life to the apparatus of production.
The social sciences teach us which “laws” govern economy, society, politics,
and history. For its own part, the state defines its governmental politics on
the basis of this scientifically legitimized normativity.
Now, this attempt to establish profiles of subjectivity coordinated
by the state entails a phenomenon that I call here the “invention of the
other.” By “invention,” I do not mean simply the way in which a certain
group of people abstractly represents itself to others; rather, I refer to the
mechanisms of power/knowledge from which those representations are
constructed. The problem of the “other” must be approached theoretically
not so much as the “concealment” of a preexisting cultural identity as from
a perspective that takes into account the process of material and symbolic
production that modern societies have been involved in since the beginning
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of the sixteenth century.3 I would like to illustrate this point by turning to
the work of the Venezuelan thinker Beatriz González Stephan, who has
studied the disciplinary mechanisms of power in the context of nineteenthcentury Latin America and the ways in which these constructions made
possible the “invention of the other.”
González Stephan identifies three disciplinary practices that
helped shape Latin American citizenship in the nineteenth century: constitutions, manuals of etiquette [urbanidad], and grammar manuals. Following the Uruguayan theorist Angel Rama, González Stephan observes that
these technologies of subjectification had a common denominator: their
legitimacy lay in writing. In the nineteenth century, writing was an exercise
that met the need to organize and institute the logic of “civilization.” It
anticipated the modernizing dream of the Creole elites. The written word
constructed laws and national identities, designed modernizing programs,
and organized the understanding of the world in terms of inclusion and exclusion. For this reason, nations’ foundational projects were carried out by
creating institutions legitimized by writing (schools, hospices, workshops,
prisons) and hegemonic discourses (maps, grammars, constitutions, manuals, treatises on hygiene) that regulated public conduct. These institutions
and texts established boundaries between people and assured them that
they existed either inside or outside of the limits defined by written legality
(González Stephan 1996).
The formation of the citizen as a “subject of law” is only possible
within the limits of the disciplinary structure and, in this case, within the
space of legality defined by the constitution. The juridico-political function
of constitutions is precisely to invent citizenship, in other words, to create
a field of homogenous identities that make the modern project of governmentability viable. For example, the Venezuelan constitution of 1839
declares that the only people eligible for citizenship are married males who
are older than twenty-five, literate, own property, and practice a profession
earning them no less than four hundred pesos a year (ibid., 32). The acquisition of citizenship is thus a sieve through which only those subjects who
fit the profile required for the project of modernity may pass: ones who are
male, white, head of household, Catholic, landowner, literate, and heterosexual. Those who do not meet these requirements (women, servants, the
insane, the illiterate, blacks, heretics, slaves, Indians, homosexuals, dissidents) are excluded from the “lettered city,” sealed off in a field of illegality,
and subject to punishment and therapy by the same laws that exclude them.
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But if the constitution formally defines a desirable type of modern
subjectivity, pedagogy is the great artisan of its materialization. Schools
become a space of enclosure that forms the type of subject called for by
the constitution’s “regulative ideals.” The purpose is to impose a discipline
on the mind and body that enables people to be “useful to the fatherland.”
Children’s behavior must be regulated and monitored, compelling them to
acquire knowledge, abilities, habits, values, cultural models, and lifestyles
that will allow them to assume a “productive” role in society. González
Stephan does not direct her attention to the school as an “institution of
seclusion,” however, but rather toward the disciplinary function of certain pedagogical technologies such as manuals of etiquette, especially the
famous one published by Manuel Antonio Carreño (1854). The manual
operates within the field of authority laid out by the book, with the purpose of ordering the subordination of human instinct, the control over the
body, and the domestication of any kind of sensibility considered “barbaric”
(González Stephan 1995). No manuals were written on how to be a good
peasant, a good Indian, a good black person, or a good gaucho, since all of
these human types were seen as barbaric. Instead, manuals were written on
how to be a “good citizen” so as to become part of the civitas, the legal space
inhabited by the epistemological, moral, and aesthetic subjects that modernity requires. For this reason, the Carreño manual warns that “without the
observation of these rules, more or less perfect according to the degree of
civilization in each country[,] . . . there will be no way to cultivate sociability,
which is the principle of communities’ conservation and progress and of all
well-ordered societies’ existence” (quoted in ibid., 436; González Stephan’s
emphasis).
The manuals of etiquette became a new bible that would teach citizens proper behavior in the most diverse situations of life, for each person’s
degree of success in the civitas terrena, or the material reign of civilization,
depended on his or her faithful obedience of norms. “Entrance” into the
banquet of modernity required compliance with the normative prescription
that distinguished members of the new Latin American urban class that
began to emerge during the second half of the nineteenth century. The “we”
that the etiquette manuals refer to, then, is the same class of bourgeois citizens whom the republican constitutions address: citizens who know how
to speak, eat, use silverware, blow their nose, deal with servants, and behave
themselves in society. These subjects are perfectly familiar with “the theater
of etiquette, the rigidity of appearance, the mask of contention” (González
Stephan 1995, 439). In this sense, González Stephan’s observations agree
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with those of Max Weber and Norbert Elias, for whom the formation of
the modern subject went hand in hand with the requirement of self-control
and the repression of instincts, the goal being to make social difference
more visible. The “process of civilization” implies an increase of the threshold of shame, for it was necessary to clearly distinguish oneself from all of
the social classes that did not pertain to the arena of civitas which Latin
American intellectuals like Domingo Faustino Sarmiento identified as the
paradigm of modernity. “Civility” and “civic education” thus operated as
pedagogical taxonomies that separated dress coats from ponchos, neatness
from filth, the capital from the provinces, the republic from the colony,
civilization from barbarism.
Within this taxonomic process, grammar manuals also played a
foundational role. In particular, González Stephan mentions Andrés Bello’s
Gramática de la lengua castellana destinada al uso de los americanos [Grammar of the Castilian language destined for American use] published in
1847. The project of the construction of the nation required the stabilization of language so that laws could be properly implemented and commercial transactions facilitated. A direct relationship exists, therefore, between
language and citizenship, between grammar manuals and manuals of etiquette: the purpose in all of these cases is to create the Homo economicus, or
the patriarchal subject charged with promoting and carrying out the modernization of the republic. From the normativity of the written word, the
Latin American grammar manuals sought to establish a culture of “buen
decir” (formal speech) so as to avoid “the vices of popular speech” and the
coarse barbarisms of the masses (González Stephan 1996, 29). We are thus
faced with a disciplinary practice that reflects the contradictions that would
eventually tear apart the project of modernity: establishing the conditions
for “liberty” and “order” implies the subjection of instincts, the suppression
of spontaneity, and the control over differences. To be civilized, to enter
into modernity, to become Colombian, Brazilian, or Venezuelan citizens,
individuals not only had to behave properly and know how to read and
write, but they also had to make their language fit a series of norms. The
submission to order and the norm leads the individual to substitute the
heterogeneous, spontaneous vital flow for a continuum that is arbitrarily
constituted from the written word.
It is thus clear that the two processes indicated by González
Stephan, the invention of citizenship and the invention of the other, are
genetically related. The creation of the modern citizen in Latin America entailed the generation of a reverse image from which this identity
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could assess and affirm itself as such. The construction of the imaginary
of “civilization” required the production of its counterpart: the imaginary
of “barbarism.” In both cases, more is at stake than just abstract representation. These imaginaries have a concrete materiality, in the sense that
they are bound to abstract systems of disciplinary nature such as schools,
law, the state, prisons, hospitals, and the social sciences. It is precisely this
link between knowledge and discipline that permits us to speak, following
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, of the project of modernity as an exercise in
“epistemic violence.”
Although González Stephan indicates that all of these disciplinary
mechanisms strove to create the profile of Homo economicus in Latin America, her genealogical analysis, inspired by the microphysics of power analyzed by Michel Foucault, does not permit an understanding of how these
processes are linked to the dynamic of capitalism’s constitution as worldsystem. In order to conceptualize this problem, a methodological turn is
necessary: the genealogy of power-knowledge, as developed by Foucault,
must be broadened into the sphere of longue durée macrostructures (as analyzed by Fernand Braudel and Immanuel Wallerstein) so we can visualize
the problem of the “invention of the other” from a geopolitical perspective.
To this end, it would be useful to examine how postcolonial theories have
approached this problem.
The Coloniality of Power, or, the “Other Face” of Modernity
One of the most important contributions of postcolonial theories to the
current restructuring of the social sciences is their demonstration that the
rise of nation-states in Europe and the Americas from the seventeenth to
the nineteenth centuries was not an autonomous process, but rather one
with a structural counterpart: the consolidation of European colonialism
abroad. The social sciences’ persistent negation of this link between modernity and colonialism has been one of the clearest signs of their conceptual
limitations. Permeated from the beginning with a European imaginary, the
social sciences projected the idea of an aseptic and self-generating Europe,
historically formed without any contact with other cultures (see Blaut 1993).
Rationalization—in a Weberian sense—would thus have resulted from the
attribution of qualities inherent to Western societies (the “passage” from
tradition to modernity) and not from Europe’s colonial interaction with
America, Asia, and Africa since 1492.4 From this perspective, the experience of colonialism seems to be completely irrelevant to an understanding
of the phenomenon of modernity and the rise of the social sciences. For
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Africans, Asians, and Latin Americans, this means that colonialism did
not primarily represent destruction and plunder but, above all, the start of
the tortuous, inevitable road to development and modernization. This is
the colonial imaginary that traditionally has been reproduced by the social
sciences and by philosophy on both sides of the Atlantic.
Nevertheless, postcolonial theories have shown that any inventory
of modernity which does not take into account the impact of the colonial
experience on the formation of properly modern power relations is not only
incomplete, but also ideological. For this type of disciplinary power, which,
according to Foucault, characterizes societies and modern institutions, was
generated precisely at the center of a web of power/knowledge marked by
coloniality. Coloniality should not be confused with colonialism. While colonialism refers to a historical period (which, in the case of Latin America,
ended in 1824), coloniality references a technology of power that persists
today, founded on the “knowledge of the other.” Coloniality is not modernity’s “past” but its “other face.” The category of “coloniality of power,”
suggested by Peruvian sociologist Aníbal Quijano (1999), refers precisely
to this situation.
In Quijano’s opinion, colonial depredation is legitimized by an
imaginary that establishes incommensurable differences between the colonizer and the colonized. Here, notions of “race” and “culture” operate
as a taxonomic construction that generates opposing identities. The colonized thus appears as the “other of reason,” which justifies the use of
disciplinary power by the colonizer. Wickedness, barbarism, and incontinence are “identitarian” markers of the colonized, while goodness, civilization, and rationality pertain to the colonizer. Both identities are related
through exteriority and are mutually exclusive. Any communication between them cannot take place in the sphere of culture—since their codes
are incommensurable—but only in the sphere of the Realpolitik dictated by
colonial power. A “just” politics would be one that, through the implementation of juridical and disciplinary mechanisms, attempts to “normalize”
the other by completely Westernizing him or her.
The concept of the “coloniality of power” broadens and corrects
the Foucauldian concept of “disciplinary power” by demonstrating that
the panoptic constructions erected by the modern state are inscribed in a
wider structure of power/knowledge. This global structure is configured
by the colonial relation between center and periphery that is at the root
of European expansion. As Enrique Dussel has shown, this structure is
created during the “first modernity,” which corresponds to the hegemony
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of Spain over the Atlantic circuit (see Dussel’s contribution to this issue of
Nepantla). The concept of disciplinary power Foucault works with refers to
the “second modernity,” or the period of state biopolitics in the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries, and can be understood as a “modality” of the
coloniality of power.
We can thus state that modernity is a project of governing the
social world which emerged in the sixteenth century. Its constructions of
power/knowledge are anchored in a double coloniality: one directed inward
by European and American nation-states in their effort to establish homogenous identities through politics of subjectification, the other directed
outward by the hegemonic powers of the modern/colonial world-system in
their attempt to ensure the flow of primary materials from the periphery
to the center. Both processes are part of the same structural dynamic.
My thesis is that the social sciences developed in this space of modern/colonial power and in the ideological knowledges it generated. From
this perspective, the social sciences did not produce an “epistemological
rupture” (in an Althusserian sense) with respect to ideology. Instead, the
colonial imaginary permeated the entire conceptual system of the social
sciences from their inception.5 In this sense, the majority of seventeenthand eighteenth-century social theorists (Hobbes, Bossuet, Turgot, Condorcet) agreed that the “human species” slowly emerged from ignorance
and crossed different “stages” of perfection until finally reaching the “coming of age” that modern European societies had achieved (see Meek 1981).
The empirical referent employed by this heuristic model to define the first
“stage,” the lowest on the scale of human development, is that of American
indigenous societies as described by European travelers, chroniclers, and
navigators since the sixteenth century. The characteristics of this first stage
are savagery, barbarism, and the total absence of art, science, and writing.
“In the beginning all was America,” that is, all was superstition, primitivism, the struggle of all against all, the “state of nature.” The final stage
of human progress, already achieved by European societies, is constructed
instead as the absolute “other” of the first and as its reverse image. In this
stage reign civility, the state of law, the cultivation of science, and the arts.
Here, man has reached a state of “enlightenment” in which, according to
Kant, he is capable of self-government and the autonomous use of reason.
Europe has blazed the path to civilization that all nations of the planet must
take.
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It is not difficult to see how the conceptual apparatus that emerged
with the social sciences in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is sustained by a colonial imaginary of ideological character. Binary concepts
like barbarism and civilization, tradition and modernity, community and
society, science and myth, infancy and maturity, organic solidarity and mechanical solidarity, and poverty and development, among many others, have
fully permeated the analytic models of the social sciences. The imaginary of
progress, according to which all societies evolve in time following universal
laws inherent to nature or the human spirit, appears as an ideological product constructed from the mechanism of modern/colonial power. The social
sciences function structurally as an “ideological apparatus” that internally
sanctioned the exclusion and disciplining of those who did not conform to
the profiles of subjectivity that the state needed to implement its politics of
modernization. Externally, the social sciences legitimized the international
division of labor and the inequality of the terms of interchange and commerce between the center and the periphery, that is, the enormous social
and economic benefits that European powers obtained through domination of their colonies. The production of alterity within and the production
of alterity without were part of the same construct of power. Coloniality
of power and coloniality of knowledge were situated in the same genetic
matrix.
From Disciplinary Power to Libidinal Power
I would like to conclude this essay by analyzing the transformations capitalism undergoes once the end of the project of modernity is consolidated,
and the consequences these transformations may have on the social sciences
and a critical theory of society.
I have conceptualized modernity as a series of practices oriented
toward the rational control of human life. Among these practices are the
institutionalization of the social sciences, the capitalist organization of the
economy, the colonial expansion of Europe, and, above all, the juridicoterritorial configuration of nation-states. We have also seen that modernity
is a “project” because the rational control over human life is exercised from
within and without through a primary instance, which is the nation-state.
But what do we refer to when we speak of the end of the project of modernity? We can begin by responding in the following manner: Modernity no
longer operates as a “project” insofar as the social is configured by instances
that escape the control of the nation-state. Or, in other words, the project
of modernity reaches its “end” when the nation-state loses the capacity to
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organize people’s social and material lives. It is then that we may properly
speak of globalization.
Although the project of modernity always had a tendency toward
the “worldness” (Mignolo 2000) of human action, I believe that what today
is called “globalization” is a sui generis phenomenon, since it brings with
it a qualitative change in the global mechanisms of power. I would like
to illustrate the difference between modernity and globalization using the
concepts of embedding and disembedding developed by Anthony Giddens:
while modernity disembeds social relations from their traditional contexts
and reembeds them in posttraditional spheres of action coordinated by the
state, globalization disembeds social relations from their national contexts
and reembeds them in postmodern spheres of action that are no longer
coordinated by any particular instance.
From this perspective, I maintain that globalization is not a “project,” because governmentability no longer needs an “Archimedian point,”
that is, a central instance that regulates the mechanisms of social control.6
We can even speak of a “governmentability without government” to indicate the spectral, nebulous character, at times imperceptible but effective for
this very reason, that power assumes in times of globalization. Subjection
to the world-system is no longer assured through the control over time and
body exercised by institutions like factories or schools but, rather, by the
production of symbolic property and its irresistible seduction of the consumer’s imaginary. The libidinal power of postmodernity attempts to shape
individuals’ total psychology in such a way that each may reflexively construct his or her own subjectivity without having to oppose the system. On
the contrary, the system itself offers the resources that permit the differential
construction of the Selbst. Whatever lifestyle one chooses, whatever project
of self-invention or act of autobiographical writing, there is always an offer
on the market and an “expert system” that guarantees its trustworthiness.7
Far from repressing differences, as did the disciplinary power of modernity,
the libidinal power of postmodernity stimulates and produces them.
We have also noted that within the framework of the modern
project, the social sciences basically functioned as alterity-producing mechanisms. This was due to the fact that the accumulation of capital required
the creation of a “subject” profile that would easily adapt to the demands of
production: white, male, married, heterosexual, disciplined, hardworking,
self-controlled. As Foucault has shown, human sciences contributed to the
creation of this profile insofar as their object of knowledge was constructed
through institutional practices of confinement and sequestration. Prisons,
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hospitals, asylums, schools, factories, and colonial societies were laboratories from which the social sciences recovered, through its reverse image, the
ideal of “man” that would impel and sustain the processes of capital’s accumulation. This image of “rational man” was obtained counterfactually, by
studying the “others of reason”: the insane, Indians, blacks, social misfits,
prisoners, homosexuals, the poor. To construct the profile of subjectivity
required by the modern project, therefore, all these differences had to be
suppressed.
Nevertheless, if my argument up to this point is plausible, in the
moment at which the accumulation of capital no longer demands the suppression but rather the production of differences, the structural link between
the social sciences and the new mechanisms of power should also change.
The social sciences and humanities must undergo a “paradigm shift” allowing them to adjust to the systemic requirements of global capital. The case
of Lyotard seems to me symptomatic. He lucidly affirms that the metanarrative of the humanization of humanity has entered into crisis, but he
simultaneously proclaims the birth of a new legitimizing narrative: the
coexistence of different “language games.” Each language game defines its
own rules, which no longer need to be sanctioned by a higher court of
reason. Neither Descartes’s epistemological hero nor Kant’s moral hero
continues to function as a transcendental instance that defines the universal
rules by which all players should play, irrespective of the diversity of the
games in which they participate. For Lyotard, in the “postmodern condition” it is the players themselves who construct the rules of the game they
wish to play in. There are no previously defined rules (Lyotard 1990 [1979]).
The problem with Lyotard is not that he has announced the end
of a project that, in Habermas’s (1990, 32–54) opinion, is still “inconclusive.” Instead, the problem stems from the new narrative that Lyotard
proposes. To affirm that previously defined rules no longer exist is to render invisible—that is, to mask—the world-system that produces differences
based on rules defined for all of the globe’s players. Let me be clear: the
death of the world-system’s metanarratives of legitimation does not mean
the death of the world-system itself! Rather, it entails a change in the power
relations within the world-system, which generates new narratives of legitimation such as the one proposed by Lyotard. The strategy of legitimation is
different, however: no longer a set of metanarratives that reveal the system,
ideologically projecting it onto an epistemological, historical, and moral
macrosubject, it consists, rather, of micronarratives that leave the system
outside of representation; that is, they make it invisible.
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Castro-Gómez . The “Invention of the Other”
Something similar occurs within so-called cultural studies, one of
the most innovative paradigms in the humanities and social sciences toward the close of the twentieth century.8 Of course, cultural studies have
contributed to the loosening of disciplinary boundaries whose rigidity was
converting our departments of social sciences and humanities into a handful of incommensurable “epistemological fiefdoms.” The transdisciplinary
vocation of cultural studies has been extremely healthy for some academic
institutions that, in Latin America at least, had become accustomed to
“guarding and administering” the canon of every discipline.9 It is in this
context that the Gulbenkian Commission report shows how cultural studies have begun to build bridges between the three great islands among
which modernity distributed scientific knowledge (Wallerstein et al. 1996,
64–66).
Nevertheless, the problem lies not so much in the inscription of
cultural studies into the university sphere, nor even in the type of theoretical
questions cultural studies provoke or the methodologies they utilize, as in
their use of these methodologies and in their responses to these questions. It
is evident, for example, that the spread of the culture industry throughout
the world has called into question the separation between high and low
culture, which thinkers from the “critical” tradition like Max Horkheimer
and Theodor Adorno were still bound to, as were our great Latin American “men of letters,” with their conservative, elitist tradition. But within
this interchange between high culture and popular culture enabled by the
mass media, within the planetary negotiation of symbolic property, cultural studies have seemed to see only a liberating explosion of differences.
Urban mass culture and the new forms of social perception generated by
information technologies are viewed as spaces of democratic emancipation,
and even as a locus of hybridization and resistance before the imperatives
of the market. Faced with this diagnostic, one begins to wonder if cultural
studies have mortgaged their critical potential to the commodity fetishism
of symbolic property.
As in Lyotard’s case, the world-system remains the great absent
object in the representation offered us by cultural studies. It is as if merely
naming “totality” had become taboo for contemporary social sciences and
philosophy, just as in Judaism it was a sin to name or represent God. The
“permitted” topics—which today enjoy academic prestige—are the fragmentation of the subject, the hybridization of life-forms, the articulation
of differences, and the disenchantment with metanarratives. The use of
categories like “class,” “periphery,” or “world-system,” which propose to
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encompass heuristically a multiplicity of specific situations of gender, ethnicity, race, background, or sexual orientation, marks one as “essentialist,”
as behaving in a “politically incorrect” manner, or at least as having fallen
under the spell of metanarratives. These reproaches are sometimes justified,
but perhaps there is an alternative.
I consider that the great challenge for the social sciences consists
in learning how to name totality (with its persistent colonial face) without
falling into the essentialism and universalism of metanarratives. The task
of a critical theory of society is, then, to make visible the new mechanisms
of colonial production of differences in times of globalization. In the Latin
American case, the major challenge is to “decolonize” the social sciences
and philosophy. Although this is not a new agenda for us, our goal today is
to disengage ourselves from a whole series of binary categories (colonizer
versus colonized, center versus periphery, Europe versus Latin America,
development versus underdevelopment, oppressor versus oppressed, etc.)
that dependency theories and liberation philosophies worked with in the
past. We must understand that it is no longer possible to conceptualize new
configurations of power using this theoretical tool.10 From this perspective,
the new agendas of postcolonial studies could revitalize the tradition of
critical theory in our field (Castro-Gómez, Guardiola-Rivera, and Millán
de Benavides 1999).
Translated by
Desirée A. Martín
Notes
1. As Anthony Giddens demonstrates clearly, the social sciences are “reflexive systems,”
since their function is to observe the social world within which they themselves are produced. See Giddens 1999 [1991], 23.
2. I have addressed the problem of cultural identity as a construct of the state in CastroGómez 1999.
3. For this reason, I prefer to use the category “invention” instead of Argentine philosopher Enrique Dussel (1992)’s “encubrimiento” (covering over or concealing).
4. Recall that Max Weber wonders, at the beginning of The Protestant Ethic (1992 [1904],
13), by “what combination of circumstances the fact should be attributed that
in Western civilization, and in Western civilization only, cultural phenomena
have appeared which (as we like to think) lie in a line of development having
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Castro-Gómez . The “Invention of the Other”
universal significance and value.” This question guides his entire theory of
rationalization.
5. A genealogy of the social sciences should show that the ideological imaginary that
penetrated the social sciences originated in the first phase of consolidation
of the modern/colonial world-system, that is, in the period of Spanish hegemony.
6. The materiality of globalization is no longer constituted by the disciplinary institutions of the nation-state, but rather by corporations that recognize neither
territories nor borders. This implies the configuration of a new framework
of legality, that is, a new form of the exercise of power and authority, such
as the production of new punitive mechanisms (a global police) that would
guarantee the accumulation of capital and the resolution of conflicts. The
wars in the Persian Gulf and Kosovo are good examples of the “new world
order” emerging after the Cold War and as a consequence of the “end” of
the project of modernity. See Hardt and Negri 2000; and Castro-Gómez and
Mendieta 1998.
7. I take the concept of “trust” deposited in expert systems from Giddens (1999 [1991],
84).
8. For an introduction to Anglo-Saxon cultural studies, see Agger 1992. For the case
of cultural studies in Latin America, the best introduction is still Rowe and
Schelling 1993 [1991].
9. Here we need to understand the different political significance that cultural studies
have had in North American and Latin American universities. While cultural
studies in the United States have become a convenient vehicle for rapid
academic “careerism” in a structurally flexible atmosphere, in Latin America
they have served to combat the frustrating ossification and parochialism of
university structures.
10. For a critique of the binary categories that Latin American thinking engaged with
during the twentieth century, see Castro-Gómez 1996.
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