The document discusses different frameworks for understanding uneven geographical development within capitalism. It summarizes four main approaches:
1) Historicist/diffusionist interpretations see development spreading gradually from advanced to less developed areas.
2) Constructivist arguments focus on how exploitation and imperial/colonial practices have underdeveloped certain regions to benefit the powerful.
3) Environmental determinist explanations attribute development patterns to environmental factors.
4) Geopolitical perspectives view development through the lens of nation states pursuing their own self-interest in the global arena through alliances, trade policies, etc.
The document explores these frameworks to provide context for analyzing uneven development and its implications for Bangladesh in particular.
Marxist view, Neo- Marxist view, Modernization, Dependency theory, world system theory, Post development theory, Sustainable development, Human development theory
Patriotic stupidity and globalization (2)GRAZIA TANTA
SUMMARY
3 – Globalization exists and will not turn back
4 – How to clearly see, today, patriotism
5 – Nationalism is a self-interested invention. Heretical notes on the Portuguese case
Marxist view, Neo- Marxist view, Modernization, Dependency theory, world system theory, Post development theory, Sustainable development, Human development theory
Patriotic stupidity and globalization (2)GRAZIA TANTA
SUMMARY
3 – Globalization exists and will not turn back
4 – How to clearly see, today, patriotism
5 – Nationalism is a self-interested invention. Heretical notes on the Portuguese case
Current governance principles and practices are misaligned with the realities of the modern world. Striking this ‘right fit’ between knowledge, resources, processes and outcomes in complex environments where different groups have something to contribute towards shared outcomes – even while pursuing their own objectives – this is what we call intelligent governance.
As you read these words there is a group of people shaping how global humanity will think about the economy for the next few decades. No, there’s not a conspiracy theory unfolding here. What I am referring to is the United Nations process for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG)—where a course is being set for the next fifteen years of intergovernmental coordination for our economic system. This process has been quietly unfolding in the background for several years and will come to completion this fall in New York City.
I am a language researcher who cares about the future of humanity. And I share concern about the risks associated with globalization that currently threaten our collective future—climate disruption, soil depletion, widespread inequality and poverty, regional conflict, rigged financial systems, and more—the very same risks that concern many of the people involved in the SDG process. My primary responsibility at TheRules.org is to study cultural patterns of understanding and unpack their significance. This includes the use of frame analysis where I closely scrutinize the words used to think and talk about important issues.
Frame analysis is the study of mental models for human understanding. The concepts we have in our minds are structured in ways that can be systematically explored to reveal implicit assumptions, logical inferences, value judgments, and moral sentiments. An example relevant to the SDG process is the diversity of mental representations for poverty.
Poverty can be conceptualized as a disease that spreads like an epidemic, a prison to be liberated from, the condition of being incomplete or broken, a magical number measured in some predefined way, and more. We might talk about poverty eradication (treat it like a disease) or as a war (battle with and defeat it). Each meaning brings its own basic assumptions, constraining what poverty is understood to be about and how to deal with it.
Importantly, these meanings can be incorrect, inadequate, and problematic yet still be widely used. Poverty can be treated as merely a part of the natural world, for instance, which conceals the history of poverty creation throughout the last few hundred years where it came into being as a core feature of economic development.
When I looked at the language used to talk about the SDGs I was struck by how much hidden meaning can be found there. The analysis that follows is based on written text for the proposed sustainable development goals. It reveals a great deal about the faulty assumptions that remain uncritically accepted in the process. These assumptions jeopardize the entire effort by leaving out many of the structural factors that create poverty and directly contribute to ecological devastation.
No credible use of the word sustainable would perform in this way. In the following pages I make the case that the SDG process is fundamentally compromised and carries within it the seeds of its own
International Journal of Humanities and Social Science Invention (IJHSSI)inventionjournals
is an international journal intended for professionals and researchers in all fields of Humanities and Social Science. IJHSSI publishes research articles and reviews within the whole field Humanities and Social Science, new teaching methods, assessment, validation and the impact of new technologies and it will continue to provide information on the latest trends and developments in this ever-expanding subject. The publications of papers are selected through double peer reviewed to ensure originality, relevance, and readability. The articles published in our journal can be accessed online.
The continuum of land rights has matured as a concept and is now widely accepted among a number of
international agencies, the development community and some national governments. It has developed
independently of a critical examination in terms of the vast array of established development theories,
property theories and metaphors. The critical examination is needed if the concept is going to facilitate
the vigorous debate necessary to improve land tenure security in ways which accommodate the
numerous ideological positions on land and development. This document starts the process. It examines
the continuum of land rights in terms of a sample of development theories and property theories that
dominate the development agenda, and in terms of a sample of theories and metaphors which are
opposite to them, and it outlines how they apply and can be used for the continuum.
Current governance principles and practices are misaligned with the realities of the modern world. Striking this ‘right fit’ between knowledge, resources, processes and outcomes in complex environments where different groups have something to contribute towards shared outcomes – even while pursuing their own objectives – this is what we call intelligent governance.
As you read these words there is a group of people shaping how global humanity will think about the economy for the next few decades. No, there’s not a conspiracy theory unfolding here. What I am referring to is the United Nations process for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG)—where a course is being set for the next fifteen years of intergovernmental coordination for our economic system. This process has been quietly unfolding in the background for several years and will come to completion this fall in New York City.
I am a language researcher who cares about the future of humanity. And I share concern about the risks associated with globalization that currently threaten our collective future—climate disruption, soil depletion, widespread inequality and poverty, regional conflict, rigged financial systems, and more—the very same risks that concern many of the people involved in the SDG process. My primary responsibility at TheRules.org is to study cultural patterns of understanding and unpack their significance. This includes the use of frame analysis where I closely scrutinize the words used to think and talk about important issues.
Frame analysis is the study of mental models for human understanding. The concepts we have in our minds are structured in ways that can be systematically explored to reveal implicit assumptions, logical inferences, value judgments, and moral sentiments. An example relevant to the SDG process is the diversity of mental representations for poverty.
Poverty can be conceptualized as a disease that spreads like an epidemic, a prison to be liberated from, the condition of being incomplete or broken, a magical number measured in some predefined way, and more. We might talk about poverty eradication (treat it like a disease) or as a war (battle with and defeat it). Each meaning brings its own basic assumptions, constraining what poverty is understood to be about and how to deal with it.
Importantly, these meanings can be incorrect, inadequate, and problematic yet still be widely used. Poverty can be treated as merely a part of the natural world, for instance, which conceals the history of poverty creation throughout the last few hundred years where it came into being as a core feature of economic development.
When I looked at the language used to talk about the SDGs I was struck by how much hidden meaning can be found there. The analysis that follows is based on written text for the proposed sustainable development goals. It reveals a great deal about the faulty assumptions that remain uncritically accepted in the process. These assumptions jeopardize the entire effort by leaving out many of the structural factors that create poverty and directly contribute to ecological devastation.
No credible use of the word sustainable would perform in this way. In the following pages I make the case that the SDG process is fundamentally compromised and carries within it the seeds of its own
International Journal of Humanities and Social Science Invention (IJHSSI)inventionjournals
is an international journal intended for professionals and researchers in all fields of Humanities and Social Science. IJHSSI publishes research articles and reviews within the whole field Humanities and Social Science, new teaching methods, assessment, validation and the impact of new technologies and it will continue to provide information on the latest trends and developments in this ever-expanding subject. The publications of papers are selected through double peer reviewed to ensure originality, relevance, and readability. The articles published in our journal can be accessed online.
The continuum of land rights has matured as a concept and is now widely accepted among a number of
international agencies, the development community and some national governments. It has developed
independently of a critical examination in terms of the vast array of established development theories,
property theories and metaphors. The critical examination is needed if the concept is going to facilitate
the vigorous debate necessary to improve land tenure security in ways which accommodate the
numerous ideological positions on land and development. This document starts the process. It examines
the continuum of land rights in terms of a sample of development theories and property theories that
dominate the development agenda, and in terms of a sample of theories and metaphors which are
opposite to them, and it outlines how they apply and can be used for the continuum.
Op donderdag 19 november hebben wij in samenwerking met BlackIP en Barracuda een presentatie georganiseerd van de Barracuda Message Archiver. Tijdens de duidelijke presentatie, die in handen was van Joeri van Hoof van Barracuda Networks, kwamen de eigenschappen en voordelen aan bod van dit mail archiveringssysteem.
When did the British Empire happen?
In the 16th century, England started to conquer territories and started to become powerful. After the Second World War, England lost almost all of the territories that they had and as part of a larger de colonization movement by European powers, most of the territories of the British Empire were granted independence, ending with the handover of Hong Kong to China in 1997. 14 territories remain under British sovereignty, the British Overseas Territories. After independence, many former British colonies joined the Commonwealth of Nations, a free association of independent states. 16 Commonwealth Nations share their head of state, Queen Elizabeth II, as Commonwealth realms.
Britain was a little country with a big idea: to expand and become really powerful.
How big was the British Empire?
At first the growth of the British Empire was for the competition for resources and markets which existed over a period of centuries between England and it continental rivals (Spain, France and Holland). After the wars against Dutch, French, and Spanish countries they managed to conquered eastern coast of North America, Caribbean and Africa. The excuse they used to conquer Africa was based in Darwin’s theory of the evolution, they thought black people were less important and with less rights than the white people so they could use them as slaves, it was a racist ideal.
Then, they claim Canada, the Caribbean and most importantly, the East Coast of America. After a while, the Americans declared the independence, they discovered Australia, they claimed it and also decided to claim India too, and India and the Caribbean were the countries that Britain was more interested to conquer.
The British Empire started to be weak after lose one of the most important battles, the Japanese saw that weakness and they attack them, the British Empire lost against Japan and most of the territories get their independence, so the British Empire was nearly disappeared.
Curiosities
When the British Empire was powerful, it was said that “the sun never sets on the British Empire”. That was because the British Empire was extended all across the world and the sun was always shining on, at least one of the territories.
Tea is from India
Sugar is from the Caribbean
Cotton was picked by slaves in America.
Taylor & Francis, Ltd. is collaborating with JSTOR to digiti.docxtarifarmarie
Taylor & Francis, Ltd. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Review of International Political
Economy.
http://www.jstor.org
Social Movements for Global Capitalism: The Transnational Capitalist Class in Action
Author(s): Leslie Sklair
Source: Review of International Political Economy, Vol. 4, No. 3, The Direction of Contemporary
Capitalism (Autumn, 1997), pp. 514-538
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4177237
Accessed: 16-11-2015 20:19 UTC
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/
info/about/policies/terms.jsp
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content
in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship.
For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]
This content downloaded from 131.94.186.22 on Mon, 16 Nov 2015 20:19:16 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=taylorfrancis
http://www.jstor.org/stable/4177237
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
Reviewv of International Political Economy 4:3 Autumn 1997: 514-538
Social movements for global
capitalism: the transnational capitalist
class in action
Leslie Sklair
London School of Economics and Poilitical Science
ABSTRACT
The thesis that 'Capitalism does not just happen' is argued with reference
to Gramsci, hegemony and the critique of state centrism. This involves a
critique of the assumption that ruling classes rule effortlessly, and raises
the issue: Does globalization increase the pressures on ruling classes to
deliver? Global system theory is outlined in terms of transnational
practices in the economic, political, and culture and ideology spheres
and the characteristic institutional forms of these, the transnational
corporation, transnational capitalist class and the culture-ideology of
consumerism. The transnational capitalist class is organized in four over-
lapping fractions: TNC executives, globalizing bureaucrats, politicians and
professionals, consumerist elites (merchants and media). Social movements
for global capitalism and elite social movement organizations (ESMOs) are
analysed. Each of the four fractions of the TCC has its own distinctive
organizations, some of which take on social movement-like characteristics.
KEYWORDS
Globalization; capitalism; class; Gramsci; social movements; TNC.
I CAPITALISM DOES NOT JUST HAPPEN
The focus of social movement research, old and new, has always and
quite properly been on anti-establishment, deviant and revolutionary
movements o.
1NICANOR PERLAS PREFACE At the end of the 20th ce.docxtarifarmarie
1
NICANOR PERLAS
PREFACE
At the end of the 20th century, news of a watershed event flashed around the world. The global
media reported the dramatic details of an unusual confrontation to hundreds of millions of
listeners and readers. Some immediately saw that the event was a global social earthquake of the
highest magnitude. Others understood only gradually that the foundations of the world’s social
life had been shaken. Afterwards, important national and international gatherings would pay
homage to the event, justifying their own visions, programs and activities in light of it.1 The
event continues to haunt those responsible for the most powerful version of materialistic
modernity that has ever expressed itself on this planet. This historic event is now known as the
"Battle of Seattle."
Participants of the World Trade Organization (WTO) summit had arrived in Seattle confident to
the point of complacency. Arriving along with them, however, were 50,000 demonstrators from
all over the world and all walks of life, ready to offer well-organized, articulate resistance. By
the waning moments of the last day of the WTO summit, as economic and government leaders
from 135 countries tried desperately, and in vain to hammer out a new trade agreement, an
unforgettable lesson had been etched in the psyches of the participants of the battle and the
journalists who covered it.
The lesson was this: the fate of the world would no longer be determined by a bi-polar power
struggle between business or the private sector2 (especially large transnational corporations) and
the governments of nation states. The WTO had reflected this bi-polar power structure to its very
core. Now, a third global force had emerged with elemental strength to contest the monopoly of
the two other powers (economics and politics) over the fate of the earth. The third force was
global civil society.
In Seattle, global civil society used cultural power to counterpoise principled cultural values
against the narrow profit motive and economic power of many in the private sector and the
control motive and political power of most government agencies. The outcome of the WTO talks
was thus determined by civil society’s advocacy for such fundamental values as freedom, justice,
democracy, respect for nature, spirituality, fair trade, and human rights—especially the rights of
indigenous peoples and minorities.
The Battle of Seattle is the latest and most prominent expression of an ongoing global struggle
that has become more and more visible in the past several years. The Battle of Seattle was about
globalization and the global powers that are contending to shape it. The outcome of this struggle
will determine how globalization will unfold on the earth in the coming decades of the 21st
century.
1 See the proceedings of the meetings of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last
January, U.N. .
CIVIC EDUCATION AND IT’S IMPERATIVE TOWARDS NATION BUILDING: THE NIGERIAN EXA...John1Lorcan
Most countries of the world today originated as a result of the activities of colonialists and imperialists
who merged previously independent nations together for the sole reason of domination and exploitation.
Following the end of colonial era and the resulting freedom of previously colonized people, many countries
have been struggling to live together as the nation which their erstwhile colonial masters made them. This
has often resulted to conflicts and crises, the worst of it being the Rwandan genocide of 1994. Due to these
incidences, social researchers have intensified efforts in designing programs that will facilitate the very act
of nation-building/or prevent a devastating effect that may result from a failure thereof. This paper,
therefore, attempts to suggest Civic Education as one of the models that can help facilitate nation-building
project especially in countries affected by the effects of colonization. The work employed the normative
method of philosophy, while also not leaving behind the evaluative and analytical side of the method.
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 ...
Part I Studying nonprofit organizationsThe study of nonprofit.docxdanhaley45372
Part I: Studying nonprofit organizations
The study of nonprofit, third sector, or voluntary organizations is a fairly recent development in the history of the social sciences. What has become one of the most dynamic and interdisciplinary fields of the social sciences today began to gather momentum more than three decades ago. At the same time, the field is rooted in long-standing intellectual and disciplinary approaches that seek to come to terms with the complexity and vast variety of nonprofit organizations and related forms and phenomena. After considering this chapter, the reader should:
■ have an understanding of the wide range of institutions, organizations, and types of activities that come under the label of the nonprofit sector;
■ be able to identify key intellectual traditions of nonprofit sector research;
■ have a sense of the major factors that influenced the field and that contributed to its development; and
■ be able to navigate through the book’s various parts and chapters in terms of specific content and their thematic connections. Some of the key concepts introduced in this chapter are:
THE EMERGENCE OF THE NONPROFIT SECTOR IN THE US While the concept of civil society as such is not common currency in the US, there is nonetheless a deep-seated cultural understanding that civil society finds its clearest expression in this country. Indeed a strong political as well as cultural current running through American history and contemporary society sees the US as an ongoing “experiment” in civility, community, democracy, and self-governance. Not only the country as a whole, but cities, such as New York, Chicago, Miami, and Los Angeles in particular, regard themselves as the “social laboratories” of modern urban life: they are among the most diverse in the world in ethnic, religious, and social terms, with large portions of immigrant populations, small local government, and high levels of community organizing and individualism. A strong expression of this cultural self-understanding is that the US, in all its imperfections and injustices, is nonetheless regarded as the embodiment of human political progress. This ideological current assumes at times mythical dimensions, perhaps because it is so closely linked to, and rests on, major symbols of US political history. In countless political speeches as well as in popular culture frequent references are made to highly symbolic events and documents that provide deep roots of legitimacy to both nonprofit organizations and the notion of self-organization. Among the most prominent of such cultural-political icons:
Charity, i.e. individual benevolence and caring, is a value and practice found in all major world cultures and religions. It is one of the “fi ve pillars” of Islam, and central to Christian and Jewish religious teaching and practice as well. In many countries, including the US, the notion of charity includes relief of poverty, helping the sick, disabled, and elderly, supporting.
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 ...
Race, Class, and Law in a Capitalist Democracy: A Poster Flowchartelegantbrain
A "poster flowchart" that explains the relationship between race, class, and law in capitalist democracies--such as the United States. Includes a timeline of the racialization of United States from the colonial period to the present, and a chart of the United States military industrial complex.
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.
"Impact of front-end architecture on development cost", Viktor TurskyiFwdays
I have heard many times that architecture is not important for the front-end. Also, many times I have seen how developers implement features on the front-end just following the standard rules for a framework and think that this is enough to successfully launch the project, and then the project fails. How to prevent this and what approach to choose? I have launched dozens of complex projects and during the talk we will analyze which approaches have worked for me and which have not.
JMeter webinar - integration with InfluxDB and GrafanaRTTS
Watch this recorded webinar about real-time monitoring of application performance. See how to integrate Apache JMeter, the open-source leader in performance testing, with InfluxDB, the open-source time-series database, and Grafana, the open-source analytics and visualization application.
In this webinar, we will review the benefits of leveraging InfluxDB and Grafana when executing load tests and demonstrate how these tools are used to visualize performance metrics.
Length: 30 minutes
Session Overview
-------------------------------------------
During this webinar, we will cover the following topics while demonstrating the integrations of JMeter, InfluxDB and Grafana:
- What out-of-the-box solutions are available for real-time monitoring JMeter tests?
- What are the benefits of integrating InfluxDB and Grafana into the load testing stack?
- Which features are provided by Grafana?
- Demonstration of InfluxDB and Grafana using a practice web application
To view the webinar recording, go to:
https://www.rttsweb.com/jmeter-integration-webinar
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.
Neuro-symbolic is not enough, we need neuro-*semantic*Frank van Harmelen
Neuro-symbolic (NeSy) AI is on the rise. However, simply machine learning on just any symbolic structure is not sufficient to really harvest the gains of NeSy. These will only be gained when the symbolic structures have an actual semantics. I give an operational definition of semantics as “predictable inference”.
All of this illustrated with link prediction over knowledge graphs, but the argument is general.
LF Energy Webinar: Electrical Grid Modelling and Simulation Through PowSyBl -...DanBrown980551
Do you want to learn how to model and simulate an electrical network from scratch in under an hour?
Then welcome to this PowSyBl workshop, hosted by Rte, the French Transmission System Operator (TSO)!
During the webinar, you will discover the PowSyBl ecosystem as well as handle and study an electrical network through an interactive Python notebook.
PowSyBl is an open source project hosted by LF Energy, which offers a comprehensive set of features for electrical grid modelling and simulation. Among other advanced features, PowSyBl provides:
- A fully editable and extendable library for grid component modelling;
- Visualization tools to display your network;
- Grid simulation tools, such as power flows, security analyses (with or without remedial actions) and sensitivity analyses;
The framework is mostly written in Java, with a Python binding so that Python developers can access PowSyBl functionalities as well.
What you will learn during the webinar:
- For beginners: discover PowSyBl's functionalities through a quick general presentation and the notebook, without needing any expert coding skills;
- For advanced developers: master the skills to efficiently apply PowSyBl functionalities to your real-world scenarios.
GraphRAG is All You need? LLM & Knowledge GraphGuy Korland
Guy Korland, CEO and Co-founder of FalkorDB, will review two articles on the integration of language models with knowledge graphs.
1. Unifying Large Language Models and Knowledge Graphs: A Roadmap.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.08302
2. Microsoft Research's GraphRAG paper and a review paper on various uses of knowledge graphs:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/blog/graphrag-unlocking-llm-discovery-on-narrative-private-data/
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.
UiPath Test Automation using UiPath Test Suite series, part 4DianaGray10
Welcome to UiPath Test Automation using UiPath Test Suite series part 4. In this session, we will cover Test Manager overview along with SAP heatmap.
The UiPath Test Manager overview with SAP heatmap webinar offers a concise yet comprehensive exploration of the role of a Test Manager within SAP environments, coupled with the utilization of heatmaps for effective testing strategies.
Participants will gain insights into the responsibilities, challenges, and best practices associated with test management in SAP projects. Additionally, the webinar delves into the significance of heatmaps as a visual aid for identifying testing priorities, areas of risk, and resource allocation within SAP landscapes. Through this session, attendees can expect to enhance their understanding of test management principles while learning practical approaches to optimize testing processes in SAP environments using heatmap visualization techniques
What will you get from this session?
1. Insights into SAP testing best practices
2. Heatmap utilization for testing
3. Optimization of testing processes
4. Demo
Topics covered:
Execution from the test manager
Orchestrator execution result
Defect reporting
SAP heatmap example with demo
Speaker:
Deepak Rai, Automation Practice Lead, Boundaryless Group and UiPath MVP
PHP Frameworks: I want to break free (IPC Berlin 2024)Ralf Eggert
In this presentation, we examine the challenges and limitations of relying too heavily on PHP frameworks in web development. We discuss the history of PHP and its frameworks to understand how this dependence has evolved. The focus will be on providing concrete tips and strategies to reduce reliance on these frameworks, based on real-world examples and practical considerations. The goal is to equip developers with the skills and knowledge to create more flexible and future-proof web applications. We'll explore the importance of maintaining autonomy in a rapidly changing tech landscape and how to make informed decisions in PHP development.
This talk is aimed at encouraging a more independent approach to using PHP frameworks, moving towards a more flexible and future-proof approach to PHP development.
DevOps and Testing slides at DASA ConnectKari Kakkonen
My and Rik Marselis slides at 30.5.2024 DASA Connect conference. We discuss about what is testing, then what is agile testing and finally what is Testing in DevOps. Finally we had lovely workshop with the participants trying to find out different ways to think about quality and testing in different parts of the DevOps infinity loop.
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.
1. Chapter 1
Towards a geopolitics of [intervention space] in
development theory and practice: locating
communication resistance in rural and urban Bangladesh
through human behavior and use of technology
As a means to ground my research and my eventual fieldwork I will attempt to briefly cover the
methodology of my approach and the literature I will be drawing from in this unfolding process. I hope to
use this foundation to discuss particular definitions and dimensions of development theory, the discourse
of neoliberal capitalism (and itʼs genealogy in a history of colonialism and imperialism) in the development
of underdevelopment and itʼs implication in emerging paradigms of core and peripheralization between so
called global North and South. This theoretical framework will then be used in application to a particular
context, that of the development of Bangladesh out of Partition and later in the revolution for
independence during 1971, which led to the eventual liberalization of the Bangladeshi economy through
successive military dictatorships and an invasion of NGOs modeled on a legitimization found in the aid
economy of disaster and “crisis” reconstruction so prevalent after the revolution and during the
establishment of the new Bangladeshi state.
From this point of departure I hope to extrapolate from these structures, theories, and histories as
a way to open a space to discuss the potential of design, communication and architecture. In this day and
age, I intend to affect a profound inversion of power relationships in development and/or simultaneously
to expand the inventory of opportunities available to the rural poor or otherwise disadvantaged persons so
that they may use such technologies towards their own means of creating and maintaining a livelihood of
basic necessities. As well as but not limited to, community empowerment through the physical occupation
of such hypothetical spaces. In other words theorizing the creation—> emergence of an alternative
intervention space that must retain a set of core values and awarenesses for survival: freedom and
accessibility to information [information-democracy], an understanding and critique of “standard” or
“complacent” development theories by recognizing the inherent racism of the neoliberal states and
institutions [most prominent being the United States, the IMF, England, and the World Bank]. In the
structure that capitalism has condoned for ʻdevelopmentʼ, through itʼs twists and turns in history and
relationships it has implied. In turn these values (and relationships) beg the utilization and further
abstraction of existing technologies, that through the processes of globalization, have reached nearly all
corners of the world. Hence they have enabled the ability to engineer instrumental collapses of
time/space in and through time i.e. ICTʼs Information Communication Technologies (cellular phones,
wireless, and of course, the internet); all of which can potentially be seen in the light of a digital
resistance to physical realities through the engendering of submerged networks or subjugated
knowledges to affirm identities / presence and participate in a global network of bodies, ideas, and/or
movements. In conclusion, the purpose and intention behind this project is to develop a new standard of
participation, as the model instead of the outcome in development, participation as the only true ground
on which specific projects can facilitate the process of social change and freedom can take root.
2. Theoretical Framework: The Development Project
“creation of a dynamic world economy in which the peoples of every nation will be able to realize their
potentialities in peace... and enjoy, increasingly, the fruits of material progress on an earth infinitely
blessed with natural riches. This is the indispensable cornerstone of freedom and security. All else must
be built upon this. For freedom of opportunity is the foundation for all other freedoms.
Henry Morgenthau
Bretton Woods conference president
The earth has urbanized even faster than originally predicted by the Club of Rome in its notoriously
Malthusian 1972 report Limits to Growth. In 1950 there were 86 cities in the world with a population of
more than one million; today there are 400, and by 2015 there will be at least 550. Cities, indeed, have
absorbed nearly two-thirds of the global population explosion since 1950, and are currently growing by a
million babies and migrants each week.
Mike Davis, “Planet of Slums” 2006
In order to understand the development project of the twenty-first century, one must first look at
the historical context of development during the antecedent five hundred years (or more) of colonial
expansion to understand the cultural, social, racial, economic, political and geographical conflicts and
conflations that have given rise to current uneven distribution of wealth, power and resources. It is not the
intent of this essay, however, to give “history” of these processes. Instead, I will be attempting to give
academic backing and credence to the outline I made in the introduction; this will not even scratch the
surface of literature concerned with the subject of development, nor will it profess to have a familiarity with
the massive body of work on this subject. I will be exercising my own discretion as to what I include in this
literature review but more importantly what I do not. I will be approaching [development] as a discourse
within itself, as a form of property and knowledge (power) that is used by the ruling classes to justify
vectoral extraction and exploitation. The majority of development literature in circulation appears to be
produced by the twin dinosaurs of International development, the United Nations and the World Bank (not
excluding the networks of subsidiary organizations such as NGOs). “There is no shortage of articles,
books, seminars papers and even theses on NGOs. However there are at least to aspects of this
research literature which I feel need to be closely looked at. First of all, much of the NGO research is
predominately donor driven and led. Clarke (1995) has made this general point and further argument that
this dominance has meant that research has tended to focus, form an almost exclusively functionalist
perspective, on the socio-economic functions of NGOs, while overlooking other dimensions such as their
political functions. Secondly, much of the NGO research generally follows a programmatic focused line of
enquiry. There is therefore a plethora of material evaluating particular programmatic or projects carried
out by NGOs and these are either used as frameworks or references for wider studies and research.
3. Perhaps the most serious implication of these two points is that a body of literature emerges which is
“product oriented” rather than “process oriented” (Devine PhD, Chp 4). While this formulaic production of
knowledge, which Joe Devine identifies, is important for scholars attempting to stay on top of current
statistics of global inequality or case studies of worsening conditions in international refugee camps, the
movement of displaced persons, internal or otherwise, or migratory populations leaving Africa, South
America, the Middle East, or South Asia; their primary purpose is not to challenge the current
development model, simply they record and regurgitate the crisis of the present. This is a crisis that
emerged sometime between the social movements of 1968 and the collapse of Soviet Union as the last
alternative to Capitalism, it has been combusted in the inferno of progress and used to propel capitalist
society to itʼs existential extremes. These were the years of Thatcherism in Great Britain and Reagan
ruled the White House, together they proclaimed a simultaneous “end of history” and the emergence of
Capitalism as the only true global economic system. For these reason I have chosen to focus on the
alternative views of international development literature, those that recognize the plurality of difference
required for the substantiation of a post-colonial project of development and that rely on an ecology of
knowledges rather than a narrow monoculture of technico-scientific knowledge. As Franz Hinkelammert is
quoted “we live in a time of conservative utopias whose utopian character resides in its radical denial of
alternatives to present-day reality.” 1
Mercantilism was in essence the economic policy of colonialism. The practical application of the
theory was that colonized countries would develop economies in primary products (i.e. raw materials,
agriculture, mining). The colonized countries shipped those products to the colonizers; these commodities
were there converted into secondary commodities (i.e. textiles, metals, machinery, technology). These
commodities in turn were sold back to the colonies at an inflated price which provided for the extraction of
profit.
• First, the colonial division of labor left a legacy of “resource bondage” embedded in Third World
social structures. There, trading classes of landowners and merchants, enriched by primary
goods exports, favored this historical relationship. And of course, the First World still needed to
import raw materials and agriculture goods and to market their industrial products.
• Second, as newly independent states sought to industrialize, they purchased First World
technology, for which they paid with loans or foreign exchange earned from primary exports.
1'The World Social Forum: Towards a Counter-Hegemonic Globalization' B de Sousa Santos -
Globalizing Resistance: The State of Struggle, 2004
4. •Third, nation-states formed within an international framework, including the normative, legal, and
financial relationships of the United Nations (UN) and the Bretton Woods institutions, which
integrated states into universal political-economic practices. 2
The pursuit of national economic growth on a global scale requires international supports, both
material and political-legal; it can be seen as a distinct process in the movement of Modernism which
determined to create the universal supra-structure capable of regulating a global system of exchange.
Henry Morgenthauʼs words at the Bretton Woods (embodied in League of Nations after WW1) meetings
reflect some of this sentiment that later became so popular during the 1960s and 1970s in the
“Development Decades”. Social and economic paradigms of the West were undergoing massive
revolution and restructuring. Liberalism and the universalist doctrine of superiority were undergoing a
mutation: this metamorphosis become known as globalization. Through discourse this mutation has also
become known as a change from the universalist politics of modernism to the “non-politics” 3 of post-
modernism. Under these two sign-systems processes (globalization and post-modernism) emerges a new
conservative economic model which eventually to become know as neo-liberalism. Not until later was this
term, neo-liberalism re-appropriated by the Left to re-signify a critique of international free-trade
agreements, beginning with the General Agreement on Trades and Tariffs (GATT 1948-1994) and later
seen in the economic policies of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA 1994-present) and
international development agendas of the World Trade Organization, the World Bank and IMF [SAPs or
Structural Adjustment Policies]. “Aid and trade relationships often followed well-worn paths between ex-
colonial states and their postcolonial regions. Superimposed on these historic relationships were the new
relations embodied in the Bretton Woods institutions and the political, military, and economic relationships
of the new capitalist superpower, the United States, as it sought to contain the rival Soviet empire”. ²
“There is nothing new, of course, about uneven geographical development within capitalism or,
for that matter, within any other mode of production. There are, moreover, several overlapping ways of
thinking about it.” In David Harveyʼs 2006 book Spaces of Global Capitalism ⁴ he presents an essay titled
“Notes towards a theory of uneven geographical development”. He draws on a wealth of resources and
authors to discuss what he tentatively puts forth as the beginnings of a unified theory of capitalism and
the uneven development, not only within economics, but also seen in the forces of societies, cultures,
territories, neighborhoods, or turfs coming into proximity frictions and conflicts over interests or values.
2Philip McMichael, Development and Social Change: A Global Perspective, 3rd ed. (Pine Forge Press,
Sage Publications Ltd., 2004).
3By non-politics of post-modernism I am inferring both a political movement towards the concealing of
power relationships related to either cold war development or in business with the rise of globalized
corporatism. As well the Situationist vision of a society of the spectacle seen emerging around this time
with television and advertising—a whole industry build around manufacturing truth in order to sell
products. It is a loose connotative term that I am using to describe a vast cultural & aesthetic movement.
5. Harvey first presents the four following arguments or interpretations of geographical development in order
to incorporate their logics before rebuilding them. I have added my own commentary after Harveyʼs
paragraphs to locate his vast simplification of historical theory within my own work. Number 1) describes
the dominate belief that Capitalism (money) will “trickle down” and that the poor farmer in Bangladesh will
eventually accrue the same privileges as the billionaire families in New York or Washington. Number 2)
can be seen as the Marxist or dependency theory critique of the first. It approaches the structure of the
world economic paradigm and attempts to show that exploitation lies in the structure and historical
privilege of colonialism; it cannot be idealized in the “pull yourself up by your boot straps” version of
Capitalist individualism and agency. “Underdeveloped” countries are underdeveloped because of the
structure imposed by the developed ones through history. Number 3) understands the environmentalist
critique as yet another form of superior knowledge which can be imposed from above and which, more
often than not, bases itʼs argument on the essentialist truth that nature is boundless and that which
matters most, is the efficiency with which a person, or persons in the case of nations, can extract those
resources from a geographic or territorial region. Expand that notion today and you get vastly efficient
market models based on aid and development. Let alone the nation states entangled in this
Number 4) Geopolitics could broadly be seen as Realpolitik : “as the principle on which nations act, in
their foreign policies, driven by their own interests and not by altruism, friendship, idealism or solidarity
considerations, power has a decisive role in international relations.” It is the everyday lives of politicians
trying (and failing like Obama) to make their little change amongst the vast constellation of historical
power dynamics both infra-national and extra-national (if we consider the United States and the CIA in
particular) in the forming and deforming of the coherency of [Nation] and in itʼs necessary representation
of politics to the masses. It can of course be seen in the politics of development which is not only a war
over resources and the means of production but also a war on the meaning of meaning itself.
1) “Historicist 4 / diffusionist 5 interpretations treat the political economic development of the advanced
capitalist countries (the West) as the engine of capitalism that entrains all other territories, cultures and
places into paths of economic, political, institutional and intellectual progress.” I believe that this
conception of reality can be seen embodied in the western economic tradition and additionally in the
evolution of cultural anthropology and cultural geography from a western perspective in general. It is
essentialist and functionalist at the same time. In particular it could be attributed to a wide range of
racist movements ranging from slavery to the movement of Zionism in Israel, from the emergence of
biopolitics in the nineteenth century (reducing the body to itʼs constituent parts) to the commodification
4 “Historicism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicist.
5“Trans-cultural diffusion - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-
cultural_diffusion.
6. of biodiversity in the twenty-first century by multinational corporations (an objectification of nature
sanctified within the legal-scientific structure of intellectual property).
2) “Constructivist arguments focus on the “development of underdevelopment.” The exploitative practices
of capitalism backed by the political, military and geographical activities of the most powerful nation
states engaging in imperialist, colonial or neo-colonial exploitation of territories and whole populations
and their cultures lie at the root of the uneven geographical development. Differential patterns of
exploitation (of populations, resources, lands) result. Indigenous strengths and cultural specificities are
to be undermined or destroyed by these forces over large tracts of the globe” In this kind of discourse,
the exploitative and destructive practices are inevitably cast in a negative light. Movements for
autonomy (such as de-linking from the global economy) and national liberation coupled with a refusal
to engage in certain kinds of environmental transformation are seen as progressive forms of
resistance (paraphrasing). Understanding the operation of these differential patterns of exploitation in
the landscape of Bangladesh will be a primary facet of my experiential work. I hope to utilize visual
elements to spatialize these patterns of exploitation (i.e. photographs, maps, graphical information
systems (GIS) on the local stage of Bangladesh in order to view the uneven elements of everyday life.
3) “Environmentalist explanations go back at least to Montesquieu and Rousseau. Though their
reputation became sullied by association with racism and doctrines of (usually) European cultural
superiorities, the thread of argument that attributed development differences to underlying
environmental conditions that never disappeared. In recent years, under the pressure of many “green”
arguments regarding natural limits, environmental capacities and differential exposure to health
problems and diseases.” I will later explore the exploitation of these terms “green” and “sustainable” in
order to problematize the shifting role and legitimization NGOs have used as a modus operandi.
4) “Geopolitical interpretations see uneven geographical development as an unpredictable outcome of
political and social struggles between territorially organized powers operating at a variety of scales.
These powers can be organized as states or blocs of states but struggles also occur between regions,
cities, communities, local neighborhoods, turfs, etc... More recent versions drop the crude social
Darwinism and concentrate on the play of power politics (military, political, economic) and competition
between territorially based organizations for wealth, power, resources and qualities of life on the global
stage... Accidents of history (localized social movements, cultural norms, political shifts, revolutions)
and geography (resources, human capital, prior investments) can all play a role in defining the forms
of struggle as well as their outcomes.” In this light, the truly ironic term none-governmental
organization (NGO) seems to lose its protective guise as nonpartisan and can been viewed in their
correct place, as seriously entrenched within this ʻplay of power politicsʼ on an international scale. The
geopolitical perspective also opens a massive unregulated space for discussion, one that emerges
from ʻaccidents of historyʼ from below or from within social movements that have the potential to
change the course of both development and naturalization globally.
7. Where in the world can we find these theories coming into real practice? I would argue that you
can find them acted out in everyday life all around us. “Almost everything we now eat and drink, wear and
use, listen to and hear, watch and learn comes to us in commodity form and is shaped by divisions of
labor, the pursuit of product niches and the general evolution of discourses and ideologies that embody
the precepts of capitalism... Under such circumstances the body becomes “an accumulation strategy” and
we all of us live our lives under the sign of that condition”. The first step towards accepting the statement
that “another world is possible” is a step that recognizes that the current crisis in capitalism as nothing
new, that in fact capitalism from itʼs inception has evolved according to a number of irresolvable
contradictions first hypothesized by Marx and/or Engels and their students.
[ “if we try to define the common denominator of Marxists then i would say labour theory of value, which is
not observable because of the abstract nature of labour as is encompassed in the commodity; but
commonly we talk about the drive to maximize profits, the production for the purpose of selling, we talk of
fetishism of commodity, we talk of recurring crisis which can emerge from the falling rate of profit, or from
over-production, inability of the system to maintain equilibrium. the constant conflict between the classes,
the intensification of labour(when made possible, and especially at times of crisis” (Noam Bahat, email)
the global becomes local and the local becomes global — one in the same
resulting in dramatic unbalances racism, commodification, exploitation of resources... ]
If I were to look at one contemporary social movement that embodied an epistemology of
counter-hegemonic globalization it would undoubtably reside in the yearly meetings of the World Social
Forum and the people that constitute itʼs open network of organizations, movements and causes.
Boaventura de Sousa Santos is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Coimbra (Portugal). In a
recent article published 2004 he approaches the World Social Forum (WSF) as a critical utopia, an
epistemology of the South, and as emergent politics. “The WSF is a set of initiatives — of transnational
exchange among social movements, NGOs and their practices and knowledge of local, national or global
social struggles against the forms of exclusion and inclusion, discrimination and equality, universalism
and particularism, cultural imposition and relativism, that have been brought about or made possible by
the current phase of capitalism known as neoliberal globalization. The utopian dimension of the WSF
consists in claim the existence of alternatives to neoliberal globalization”. In this sense, the utopia of the
WSF asserts itself more as negativity (the definition of what it critiques) than as positivity (the definition of
that to which it aspires). Neoliberal globalization is presided over and produced by technico-scientific
knowledge, and owes its hegemony to an active denial and discrediting of all rival knowledges, by
suggesting that they are not comparable, as to efficiency and coherence, to the scientific nature of market
8. laws. “Faced with rival knowledges, hegemonic scientific knowledge either turns them into raw material...
or rejects them on the basis of their falsity of inefficiency in the light of the hegemonic criteria of truth and
efficiency. Confronted with this situation the epistemological alternative proposed by the WSF is that there
is no global social justice without global cognitive justice” 6 (their emphasis). Or in other words, an
ontology of personal or subjective truths as opposed to the acquisition or imposition of objectified
knowledges. Santos outlines the epistemological operation carried out by the WSF which consists of two
processes that they designate as sociology of absences and sociology of emergences. Quoting Santos7
I distinguish five logics or modes of production of non-existence. The first derives from the
monoculture of knowledge. It turns modern science and high culture into the sole criteria of truth and
aesthetic quality, respectively. All that is not recognized or legitimated by the canon is declared non-
existent. Non-existence appears in this case in the form of ignorance or lack of culture.
Let me step back here and explain a bit of what I mean by a production of non-existence in Bangladesh. I
see at opposite ends of a spectrum, the people of Bangladesh (especially those at the bottom of the
economic ladder, the extremely poor); and the wealth donor from an affluent country in the West. Just
think for a moment about the (cultural, social, and economic) disconnection in perspectives between
these two hypothetical persons. Now apply that relationship to what we already know about the kinds of
development and knowledge/power that will flow as a result of this hypothetical relationship. First of all
there is a split between two parallel political bodies, the state government of Bangladesh and the NGOs
combined with international economic institutions. Drawing from Chapters 1, 2, 3, and 4 of Joe Devines
PhD thesis One Foot in Each Boat. The Macro Politics and Micro Sociology of NGOs in Bangladesh
(2000) to back up my argument; I would put forth the following statement: that each of the half-spheres of
political reproduction in Bangladesh (the nation-state and the international aid actors) which form an often
incoherent whole, are in fact two parts of the same process. On the one hand the production of the
imaginary community seen in the populist nationalism of Bangladesh (without regard for the historical /
multicultural geography of the region), and on the other hand a production of social life (through services
offered predominately by NGOs) and a hierarchy according to ones access to aid. A literal right to life
(survival) produced by geopolitical forces (localized globalisms) and in accordance to the time-space
6 First, if the objectivity of science does not imply neutrality, science and technology may as well be put at
the service of counter-hegemonic practices. The second point is more polemical because it confronts the
hegemonic concepts of truth and efficiency directly. The epistemological denunciation that the WSF
engages in consists of showing that the concepts of rationality and efficiency presiding over hegemonic
technico-scientific knowledge are too restrictive. They cannot capture the richness and diversity of the
social experience of the world, and specially that they discriminate against practices of resistance and
production of counter-hegemonic alternatives.
7'The World Social Forum: Towards a Counter-Hegemonic Globalization' B de Sousa Santos -
Globalizing Resistance: The State of Struggle, 2004
9. disconnection between the privileged aesthetic, the cultural bias or explicit racism, or more commonly a
simple ignorance of the significants of money in todays world and where it goes. These gifts of aid come
inevitably in the form of letters asking for money (I got one recently) and perhaps more significantly,
intwined in the economic contracts for development that get woven into foreign polices, corporate
conglomerations and standards, or through the market (often blindly invested) in hedge funds or through
moneylenders and banks. Here we can return to our donor / agent of development relationship and
theorize that it is because of this relationship (this unequal right to power) that the person in Bangladesh
is produced as non-existent in a real way. “Under neo-liberalism, the criterion is the market. The total
market becomes a perfect institution. Its utopian character resides in the promise that its total application
cancels out all utopias. What distinguishes conservative utopias such as the market from critical utopias is
the fact that they identify themselves with present-day reality and discover their utopian dimension in the
radicalization or complete fulfillment of the present. Moreover, if there is unemployment and social
exclusion, if there is starvation and death in the periphery of the world system, that is not the
consequence of the deficiencies or limits of the laws of the market; it results rather from the fact that such
laws have not yet been fully applied (or in the fact that the knowledge we have of globalization is much
less global than globalization itself). The horizon of conservative utopias is thus a closed horizon, an end
to history”. (Santos 2). Now we continue by quoting the remaining nine monoculture vs. ecologies
identified by Santos.
The second logic resides in the monoculture of linear time, the idea that time is linear and that
ahead of time precedes the core countries of the world system. This logic produces non-existence by
describing as ʻbackwardʼ (pre-modern, under-developed, etc.) whatever is asymmetrical vis-à-vis
whatever is declared ʻforwardʼ. The third logic is the monoculture of classification, based on the
naturalization of differences. It consists of distributing populations according to categories that naturalize
hierarchies. Racial and sexual classifications are the most salient manifestations of this logic, with racial
classification as one of the one most deeply reconstructed by capitalism.
The fourth logic of production of non-existence is the logic of the dominant scale: the monoculture
of the universal and the global. Globalization privileges entities or realities that widen their scope to the
whole globe, thus earning the prerogative to designate rival entities as local. Non-existence is produced
under the form of the particular and the local. The entities or realities defined as particular or local are
captured in scales that render them incapable of being credible alternatives to what exists globally and
universally.
Finally, the fifth logic is that of productivity. It resides in the monoculture of criteria of capitalist
productivity and efficiency, which privileges growth through market forces. This criterion applies both to
nature and to human labour. Non-existence is produced in the form of non-productiveness. Applied to
10. nature, non-productiveness is sterility; applied to labour, “discardable populations”, laziness, professional
disqualification, lack of skills.
There are thus five principal social forms of non-existence produced by hegemonic epistemology
and rationality: the ignorant, the residual, the inferior, the local and the non-productive. The realities to
which they give shape are present only as obstacle vis-à-vis the realities deemed relevant, be they
scientific, advanced, superior, global, or productive realities. They are what exist under irretrievably
disqualified forms of existing. To be made present, these absences need to be constructed as alternatives
to hegemonic experience, to have their credibility discussed and argued for and their relations taken as
object of political dispute. The sociology of absences therefore creates the conditions to enlarge the field
of credible experiences. The enlargement of the world occurs not only because the field of credible
experiences is widened but also because the possibilities of social experimentation in the future are
increased.
The sociology of absence proceeds by confronting each one of the modes of production of
absence mentioned above and by replacing monocultures by ecologies. I therefore identify and propose
five ecologies : the ecology of knowledges, which confronts the logic of the monoculture of scientific
knowledge with the identification of other knowledge and criteria of rigor that operate credibly in social
practices. The central idea is that there is no ignorance or knowledge in general. All ignorance is ignorant
of certain knowledge, and all knowledge is the overcoming of a particular ignorance. In this domain, the
sociology of absences aims to substitute an ecology of knowledges for the monoculture of scientific
knowledge.
Second, the ecology of temporalities, which questions the monoculture of linear time with the idea
that linear time is only one among many conceptions of time and that, if we take the world as our unit of
analysis, it is not even the most commonly adopted. Linear time was adopted by western modernity, but it
never erased, not even in the West, other conceptions of time such as circular time, cyclical time, the
doctrine of the eternal return, and still others that are not adequately grasped by the images of the arrow
of time. In this domain, the sociology of absences aims to free social practices from their status as
residuum, devolving to them their own temporality and thus the possibility of autonomous development. In
this way, the activity of the African or Asian peasant becomes contemporaneous of the activity of the hi-
tech farmer in the USA or the activity of the World Bank executive; it becomes another form of
contemporaneity.
The ecology of recognition, thirdly, opposes the monoculture of classification. It confronts the
colonial mentality of race and unequal sexuality; it looks for a new articulation between the principles of
equality and difference, thus allowing for the possibility of equal differences — an ecology of differences
comprised of mutual recognition. The differences that remain when hierarchy vanishes become a
powerful denunciation of the differences that hierarchy reclaims in order not to vanish.
11. The ecology of trans-scale confronts the logic of global scale by recuperating what in the local is
not the result of hegemonic globalization. The local that has been integrated in hegemonic globalization is
what I designate as localized globalism, that is, the specific impact of hegemonic globalization on the
local. The de-globalization of the local and its eventual counter-hegemonic re-globalization broadens the
diversity of social practices by offering alternatives to localized globalisms. The sociology of absences
requires in this domain, the use of cartographic imagination, to deal with cognitive maps that operate
simultaneously with different scales, namely to identify local / global articulations.
The ecology of productivity, finally, consists in recuperating and valorizing alternative systems of
production, popular economic organizations, workersʼ co-operatives, self managed enterprises, solidarity
economy, etc., which have been hidden or discredited by the capitalist orthodoxy of productivity. This is
perhaps the most controversial domain of the sociology of absences, for it confronts directly both the
paradigm of development and infinite economic growth and the logic of the primacy of the objectives of
accumulation over the objectives of distribution that sustain global capitalism.
I hope that these short definitions have at least outlined a field of knowledge that I could begin to call my
own as I progress in my argument towards defining my own conception of uneven geographical
development and a sociology of absences in relation to my research in rural Bangladesh. David Harvey
and Sousa Santos possess the epistemological ability to span whole schools of thought in a few
paragraphs, summarizing their arguments. I chose them for this reason, but will now leave their theories
behind, for fear of losing my readers in theoretical justification, and begin looking at the Bangladesh case
and itʼs particularism's.