3,763 research outputs found
The Good Drone: How Social Movements Democratize Surveillance
No full textHow small-scale drones, satellites, kites, and balloons are used by social movements for the greater good.Drones are famous for doing bad things: weaponized, they implement remote-control war; used for surveillance, they threaten civil liberties and violate privacy. In The Good Drone, Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick examines a different range of uses: the deployment of drones for the greater good. Choi-Fitzpatrick analyzes the way small-scale drones—as well as satellites, kites, and balloons—are used for a great many things, including documenting human rights abuses, estimating demonstration crowd size, supporting anti-poaching advocacy, and advancing climate change research. In fact, he finds, small drones are used disproportionately for good; nonviolent prosocial uses predominate.Choi-Fitzpatrick's broader point is that the use of technology by social movements goes beyond social media—and began before social media. From the barricades in Les Misérables to hacking attacks on corporate servers to the spread of #MeToo on Twitter, technology is used to raise awareness, but is also crucial in raising the cost of the status quo.New technology in the air changes politics on the ground, and raises provocative questions along the way. What is the nature and future of the camera, when it is taken out of human hands? How will our ideas about privacy evolve when the altitude of a penthouse suite no longer guarantees it? Working at the leading edge of an emerging technology, Choi-Fitzpatrick takes a broad view, suggesting social change efforts rely on technology in new and unexpected ways
Drones for Good: How to Bring Sociotechnical Thinking into the Classroom
No full textWhat in the world is a social scientist doing collaborating with an engineer, and an engineer with a sociologist, and together on a book about drones and sociotechnical thinking in the classroom? This book emerges from a frustration that disciplinary silos create few opportunities for students to engage with others beyond their chosen major. In this volume Hoople and Choi-Fitzpatrick introduce a sociotechnical approach to truly interdisciplinary education around the exciting topic of drones. The text, geared primarily at university faculty, provides a hands-on approach for engaging students in challenging conversations at the intersection of technology and society. Choi-Fitzpatrick and Hoople provide a turn key solution complete with detailed lesson plans, course assignments, and drone based case studies. They present a modular framework, describing how faculty might adopt their approach for any number of technologies and class configurations
From Rescue to Representation: A Human Rights Approach to the Contemporary Antislavery Movement
No full textCurrent efforts to end contemporary slavery represent a fourth wave of an Anglo-American abolitionist movement. Despite this historic precedent, there is little agreement on the nature of the problem. A review of current academic discourse, movement frames, and policy approaches suggests that six perspectives predominate: a prostitution approach focused on sexual exploitation of “women and girls”; a migration approach focused on the cross-border flow of migrants; a criminal justice approach focused on law and enforcement; a forced-labor approach emphasizing unfree labor; a slavery approach focused on trafficking in comparative-historical context; and a human rights approach centered on individual rights. This article discusses the strengths and weaknesses of each approach and advances an expanded version of the human rights approach
What Slave-holders Think
No full textDr. Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick is an Assistant Professor at the University of San Diego and University of Nottingham
Four hundred years after the introduction of chattel slavery in British North America, and a century and a half after the Emancipation Proclamation, slavery persists. Drawing on fifteen years of work in the antislavery movement, Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick takes an inside look at contemporary slavery and asks: How do contemporary slaveholders rationalize the subjugation of other human beings, and how do they respond when their power is threatened? More than a billion dollars have been spent on contemporary antislavery efforts, yet the practice persists. Why? Unpacking what slaveholders think about emancipation is critical for scholars and policy makers who want to understand the broader context, especially as seen by the powerful. Insight into those moments when the powerful either double down or back off provides a sobering counterbalance to scholarship on popular struggle.https://egrove.olemiss.edu/croft_spe/1003/thumbnail.jp
#Year400 Lecture Series Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick
No full texthttps://egrove.olemiss.edu/umsrg_news/1029/thumbnail.jp
To seek and save the lost: human trafficking and salvation schemas among American evangelicals
No full textAmerican evangelicals have a history of engagement in social issues in general and anti-slavery activism in particular. The last 10 years have seen an increase in both scholarly attention to evangelicalism and evangelical focus on contemporary forms of slavery. Extant literature on this engagement often lacks the voices of evangelicals themselves. This study begins to fill this gap through a qualitative exploration of how evangelical and mainline churchgoers conceptualize both the issue of human trafficking and possible solutions. I extend Michael Young’s recent work on the confessional schema motivating evangelical abolitionists in the 1830s. Through analysis of open-ended responses to vignettes in a survey administered in six congregations I find some early support for a contemporary salvation schema. It is this schema, I argue, that underpins evangelicals ’ framing of this issue, motivates their involvement in anti-slavery work, and specifies the scope of their critique. Whereas antebellum abolitionists thought of their work in national and structural terms contemporary advocates see individuals in need of rescue. The article provides an empirical sketch of the cultural underpinnings of contemporary evangelical social advocacy and a call for additional research
The Chromascope
No full text1913 yearbook for Austin College, published by the Senior Class of Austin College
The Chromascope
No full text1905 yearbook for Austin College, published by the Senior Class of Austin College
The Chromascope
No full text1912 yearbook for Austin College, published by the Senior Class of Austin College
What Slaveholders Think: How Contemporary Perpetrators Rationalize What They Do
No full textDrawing on fifteen years of work in the antislavery movement, Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick examines the systematic oppression of men, women, and children in rural India and asks: How do contemporary slaveholders rationalize the subjugation of other human beings, and how do they respond when their power is threatened? More than a billion dollars have been spent on antislavery efforts, yet the practice persists. Why? Unpacking what slaveholders think about emancipation is critical for scholars and policy makers who want to understand the broader context, especially as seen by the powerful. Insight into those moments when the powerful either double down or back off provides a sobering counterbalance to scholarship on popular struggle.Through frank and unprecedented conversations with slaveholders, Choi-Fitzpatrick reveals the condescending and paternalistic thought processes that blind them. While they understand they are exploiting workers' vulnerabilities, slaveholders also feel they are doing workers a favor, often taking pride in this relationship. And when the victims share this perspective, their emancipation is harder to secure, driving some in the antislavery movement to ask why slaves fear freedom. The answer, Choi-Fitzpatrick convincingly argues, lies in the power relationship. Whether slaveholders recoil at their past behavior or plot a return to power, Choi-Fitzpatrick zeroes in on the relational dynamics of their self-assessment, unpacking what happens next. Incorporating the experiences of such pivotal actors into antislavery research is an immensely important step toward crafting effective antislavery policies and intervention. It also contributes to scholarship on social change, social movements, and the realization of human rights
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