1,721,127 research outputs found
La frontera como método. O la multiplicación del trabajo
No full textTraduzione spagnola di Border as Method, or, the Multiplication of Labor (2013
El Estado de la Globalización Capitalista
No full textE' la traduzione spagnola del nostro articolo, The State of Capitalist Globalization, in «Viewpoint Magazine», 4 (2014): http://viewpointmag.com/2014/09/04/the-state-of-capitalist-globalization
Postfazione
No full textLa postfazione discute il rapporto tra logistica, dimensione globale e le trasformazioni della forma stat
Capital operations : data and waste
No full textBorders are indispensable to capital’s formatting of the world. As social institutions, borders not only mediate relations of capital and state but also establish boundaries, limits, interfaces and zones that register the profound transformations effected by capital’s operations across and beyond existing territorial demarcations. The town of Tseung Kwan O in the New Territories of the Hong Kong Special Autonomous Region (SAR) is a site that bundles and multiplies these changes and variations. This restless spatial reorganization is most evident in the borders that separate its data centre cluster, waste dump and the nearby LOHAS Park real estate development. Tseung Kwan O hosts one of the largest commercial data centre clusters in the world. Located on reclaimed land close to undersea cable landings and linked to digital infrastructures that support financial trading on the opposite shores of Hong Kong Island, the site is a crucial gateway and switch-point between the mainland Chinese and global data environments. Tseung Kwan O is also the site of one of Hong Kong’s main waste dumps, the South East New Territories (SENT) Landfill. Close to capacity and under pressure from population density and land prices, the dump abuts the data centre cluster in the Tseung Kwan O Industrial Estate. This complex of spatial and infrastructural relations creates a series of borders that both crisscross the area and extend beyond it. To conceive of Tseung Kwan O as a borderland is to probe divisions between East and West, liberalism and state
capitalism, data and waste
On the block train : rethinking block technologies on the YuXinOu express
No full textA special kind of freight train connects China to Europe: the YuXinOu express. Contrasting blockchain technologies with the YuXinOu block train, this article examines how the concept and technolegal operation of the block intersects with the geopolitics of China’s Belt and Road Initiative
In the Factory of Modernity: Capital, State, Empire.
Full text linkThe essay tackles the intertwining of State and capital as powers that dominate modernity, locating on a global scale right from the start. This intertwining intersects inevitably the history of empire, which, rather than just being the precedent of the State, represents a composite form of layered sovereignties and multifaceted juridical spaces. The concept of the State that emerges from the essay moves away from the broadly meant Weberian conception, which is prevailing in contemporary literature. In contrast with the Weberian definition, indeed, the territoriality of the State is unsettled and altered both by the swaying of its borders and by the emergence of new territorial formations inside and across the borders. The global view on the State complicates its relationship with the nation and the idea of the monopoly of the legislative production and legitimate physical strength. The result is a much more fragmented and movable image of the history of modern State
Inside and outside the tent : climate change politics at the 2009 United Nations climate change conference
No full textWithout doubt there are aspects of climate change that transcend the realm of human politics. The interaction of glacial and carbon cycles, the previous history of the planet’s warming and cooling, the unfolding of the effects of present climate change over a period much longer than usually considered in historical and political terms—all point to processes and timescales that are difficult for humans to visualize or understand. Combined with the recognition that human beings today act as a geophysical force, these considerations suggest a scenario that reaches beyond questions of human justice or experience. The recent work of Dipesh Chakrabarty (2009, 2012) has been exemplary in exploring these dynamics and suggesting why climate politics, whether articulated as policy or in activist registers, seems perpetually to fall short of the challenges it confronts. This chapter is more modest in its aims. It explores a prominent instance of such shortfalling and probes its implications for changing systems of global governance, the cultural politics of climate change and the role of the museum sector in negotiating such governance and politics
How data centres produce topologies of territory and labour
No full textWhen people hear the term data centre architectures, they are likely to conjure images of large non-descript box buildings or perhaps of converted manufacturing
warehouses. Far less likely will they consider the more opaque and hidden interior network architectures that connect machines inside data centres, even though these topologies are, operationally, much more influential. The great allure of data centres is that their network architectures allow actors that operate within them to extend their activities territorially by establishing
links with distant client machines. In doing so, data centres change the relationship these actors have with labour forces. To understand the client footprint produced by data centres as a form of territory is to treat these
facilities not only as digital infrastructures but also as political institutions that influence the wielding of power across wide geographical vistas. By paying analytical attention to the forms of power produced and sustained by data centre operations, we seek to extend the debate concerning
the rising importance of these facilities in order to consider their implications for labour forces, workers and political struggle
From flows of culture to the circuits of logistics : borders, regions, labour in transit
Full text linkIn Transit Labour: Circuits, Regions, Borders. No. 2 (Dec. 2010). When jurisdiction can no longer be aligned with territory and governance does not necessarily assume liberalism, there is a need to rethink the relations between labour, mobility and space. Bringing together researchers from different parts of the world to discuss and pursue various paths of investigation and collaboration, the Shanghai Transit Labour Research Platform moved between online and offline worlds. Sometimes sequestered in seminar spaces and at other times negotiating the city and the regulatory environment, the participants drifted toward a collective enunciation. We could say this was about the production of new kinds of labouring subjectivities that build connections between domains which are at once becoming more irreconcilable and more indistinct: life and work, public and private, political and economic, natural and cultural
Data farms sonification : an experiment in data modelling and spatial audio
No full textThe Data Farms sonification took the form of an immersive spatial audio application intended for use on a mobile device with headphones. Four or five users would carry their devices into an installation setting defined by a central marker. As they moved around this space, their locations would generate sonic ‘events’ based on real data and the probabilities of these events occurring in actual data centres. By default, these events were not visually depicted so that users could take an exploratory approach, however they could choose to display on their devices a text transcript describing the triggered events
- …
