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Rethinking fieldwork in critical algorithm research: slippery positionalities and generative vulnerabilities
No full textThis commentary proposes an approach to reflexivity in positionality in critical algorithms research that situates our ‘fieldwork’ at the intersection of the different sites where algorithmic practices materialize. Drawing from feminist epistemologies and transgender sensibilities, I suggest foregrounding researchers’ embodiment and vulnerability as a way to access and represent vulnerabilities, contradictions, textures and frictions present in the ‘field’, which algorithmic logic itself tends to erase. For that, I describe a speculative pre-fieldwork exercise based on my own position as migrant, transgender researcher, studying platform labour and preparing to start fieldwork in a potential hostile environment. Transgender and other border-dwelling identities are particularly attuned to the very fluid and contextual nature of our positionality and the co-constitutive aspect of our encounters with research participants and the social-political-affective economies in which our research unfolds. I argue that we approach the anticipation work around fieldwork anxiety, unpredictability and vulnerability generatively, and incorporate them as tactics for a more nuance and grounded approach to the study of algorithms as situated practice
Therapeutic aQompaniments: walking together in hypnotherapy – and ethnography
No full textDrawing on ethnographic data collected over 16 months of fieldwork with Indonesian hypnotherapists, this article investigates the suitability of different relationalities for providing therapeutic care. Clinical literature often advocates the merits of self‐hypnosis over hetero‐hypnosis, while anthropologists express skepticism regarding therapies that encourage individualized regimes of the self. Taking a less sweeping approach, this article develops the notion of “aQompaniment”—adapted from the liberation theology and activist concept of “accompaniment”—as a rubric under which to evaluate the provision of care and support. The rubric of aQompaniment encourages situated evaluations of whether hypnotherapeutic relations enable therapists and clients to successfully “walk together” toward their respective goals, encouraging nuanced judgments about what constitutes good care. Viewing psychotherapy as aQompaniment also affords new perspectives on the aQompaniment work that can be undertaken during ethnographic research
Conceptualizing technicization: the history of the medicalization of male circumcision
No full textHow does social actors’ engagement with the technical dimensions of world politics—from material infrastructures to modeling, engineering, bureaucracy, and discourses of expertise—bring about specific social configurations and political effects? To answer this research problem, International Relations scholars have growingly mobilized the idea of technicization to investigate the relationship between knowledge, governance, socio-political reproduction, and social change. However, despite this interest, technicization has been neither conceptualized nor theorized. I argue that this absence limits our understanding of how technicality affects world politics and leads to the literature taking depoliticization as the default interpretation. To address this issue, this article develops three conceptualizations of technicization by distinguishing between the theoretical traditions underpinning this idea across social sciences. I introduce to International Relations the concept of technicization as desociologization based on the Habermassian concepts of technique and practice, which I distinguish from technicization as depoliticization (Weberian) and technicization as disciplinarization (Foucauldian) most commonly encountered in the literature. I illustrate the utility of disentangling these approaches through the case study of the history of the medicalization of male circumcision and its use as a global health anti-HIV policy since 2007. Overall, this article lays solid theoretical foundations for a more structured conversation about knowledge- and discourse-related processes dealing with the technical dimensions of world politics and beyond
Planning a ‘sustainable city’ with hinterlands: the case of Yokohama City, Japan and its soft space planning to reach net-zero
No full textThis research paper draws on the re-scaling of urban studies, city–hinterland metabolic links and the emergence of soft space planning to analyse the case of Yokohama city and its collaboration initiative crossing municipal borders to ‘import’ clean electricity. Through the analysis, the paper interrogates how the urban sustainability idea, with the recognition of the roles played by spaces beyond city boundaries, is unfolding, with a particular focus on the negotiations taking place between a city and hinterlands. The objective also extends to revealing how the initiative reinterprets city–hinterland relationships. This research identified that the initiative was shaped based on the city's understanding of the issue, which allowed the city to have a dominant influence in the following negotiations to arrange the initiative's details. Through the investigation of those negotiations, evidence showed the presence of power asymmetries and the hinterlands’ vulnerability to ‘being used’ by a city and raised questions on the initiative's quality to deliver desirable outcomes. The paper discusses them as this initiative's weaknesses, which are also areas for future studies to investigate how the city–hinterland soft space approach could enhance urban sustainability
Anatomy of a lobby group: the National Hungarian Economic Society at the end of the 19th century
No full textThis study investigates the effectiveness of the National Hungarian Economic Society (NHES) in representing agricultural interests in late 19th-century Hungary. As Hungary's leading agricultural interest group, the NHES shifted its focus in 1879 toward representing sectoral interests, responding to increased international competition and tensions in international trade. By analysing parliamentary records and NHES publications, the study found that while the NHES actively lobbied for agricultural interests, it often struggled to achieve its objectives, particularly in high-profile cases. External factors, such as strong Austrian interests and limited state capacity of Hungary, contributed to these challenges. However, internal issues also hindered the organisation’s capacity for collective action. An analysis of NHES membership data revealed the organisation likely struggled to integrate a diverse membership, which included landholders and non-farmers with varied interests. Disproportionate representation, weak norm enforcement and favouritism in lobbying efforts further weakened the cohesion of the organisation. The NHES lacked a comprehensive strategy to counter free rider issues and foster greater cooperation among members. Consequently, both external constraints and internal fragmentation weakened the NHES’ ability to effectively represent the Hungarian agricultural sector
Towards an urban renaissance – the underrecognized legacy of John Prescott
No full textTackling the housing crisis and building 1.5 million homes in England is one of the milestones this Labour Government has set itself. There are plenty of lessons to be learned from how the previous Labour Government supported tenants, rescued decaying council housing and boosted the regeneration of England’s cities. Anne Power remembers John Prescott and his vision for and contribution to an urban renaissance
Online romance scams: who Nigeria and Ghana’s fraudsters are, how they operate, and why they do it
No full textLosing hearts and minds race, war, and empire in Singapore and Malaya, 1915–1960, by Kate Imy, Stanford, CA, Stanford University Press, 2024, 342pp., ISBN 9781503634626 (hbk, £108.00)
No full textThe green economy and the Global South
No full textThe idea of a “green economy” is one of the latest attempts to bridge the environment and development aims, with a focus on economic growth that makes it appealing to countries that still see a significant development gap to make up. Yet the green economy—most often studied in the Global North and made the target of explicit policy initiatives there, often with substantial public and private resources—also presents additional challenges for the diverse states and populations of the Global South. In this commentary, I sketch a research agenda on three questions that reflect those challenges: (1) To what extent are the promises of the green economy credible in the national conditions of the Global South? (2) Will the green economy reduce poverty and reach the poorest populations of the Global South? and (3) How do the green economy activities of the Global North reverberate in the Global South
Turkish cultural diplomacy toward China’s Turkic communities (1933–1949)
No full textDespite the availability of a modest body of research on Ottoman policies towards the Uyghurs and Türkiye’s post-1950 stance, the 1933–1949 interim period has been mostly overlooked. This study examines Türkiye’s cultural diplomacy towards China and the Uyghurs, a Turkic Muslim minority in northwest China, with a special focus on the 1933–1949 period, which corresponds to the crystallisation of Uyghur national identity through the Turkic Islamic Republic of East Turkestan (TIRET, 1933–1934) and the Second East Turkestan Republic (SETR, 1944–1949). This era saw Türkiye’s increased cultural involvement, driven by revolutionary changes under Atatürk and China’s political instability. In this article, we conduct a qualitative content analysis of declassified diplomatic archives, made available under Presidential Decree No. 11 (2018) to explore the evolution of Turkish cultural diplomacy. Before the conclusion of World War II, Turkish diplomacy primarily focused on understanding local cultural contexts, implementing educational reforms, facilitating student exchanges, promoting the Kemalist Revolution, and disseminating the new Turkish alphabet and cultural materials, which were positively received by Chinese authorities. Interestingly, China’s initiatives were crucial in sparking diplomatic relations. In the changing geopolitical environment of the post-war period, Turkish cultural diplomacy gradually shifted from emphasising the new Turkish alphabet and Kemalist ideals to incorporating Arabic and English materials, which was accompanied by a more cautious approach aimed at avoiding tensions with major international powers