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The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences
... Contextual factors-elements within the urban environment that shape events, processes, or outcomes [35,36]-encompass historical, societal, and institutional dimensions such as social, cultural, or political conditions [37][38][39]. Their influence varies depending on situational specificity [40][41][42], underscoring the need for tailored analysis in urban research. Understanding contextual factors is crucial for analyzing how external conditions shape scientific explanations across disciplines and address contemporary societal challenges, as these factors inherently influence research outcomes and real-world applications. ...
... Twenty scholars, including six foundational thinkers from 1900 to 2000 (Dilthey, Russell, Gadamer, Kuhn, Foucault, and Tosh) [38,[43][44][45][46][47], and fourteen contemporary scholars from 2000 to 2024, have expanded the discourse on historical inquiry. ...
... Letters from A to D represent the sequence of data analysis. Source: the authors based on group of literature [11,12,23,38,39,[43][44][45][46][47]56,[68][69][70][71]. ...
This study presents the theoretical depth of urban research by proposing a four-stage contextual conceptual guide for integrating historical and societal contextual factors within the nexus of time and space. Addressing a critical gap in urban research, it focuses on early career researchers (ECRs), who often struggle to systematically incor-porate contextual dimensions into their academic writing, particularly in theoretical discussions. The first two stages establish a foundation through historical inquiry and thematic analysis. These two stages also reveal how context is conceptualized across disciplines and highlight its active role in shaping human knowledge. Stage one ex-amines the role of context in academic writing by analyzing six influential 20th-century thinkers (1900–2000). Stage two maps contemporary perspectives through a directed content analysis of 14 scholars (2000–2024) and six pivotal scholars in the social sciences. The third stage identified four interconnected factors that shape contextual interpretations: key concepts, context components, contextual factors, and thinkers’ contributions. These factors explain how context functions as an active and integral force for understanding texts, historical events, and linguistic phenomena. This stage also highlights four broader contextual factors: historical and societal contextual factors, conditions driving urban transformations, influential social dynamics, and inherent challenges that emerge from critical scholars’ analysis. The final stage operationalizes these insights into five fun-damental guidelines for embedding contextual factors into high-quality academic writ-ing, particularly in urban research. This calls for theorists to develop practical guidance for integrating context and text into academic writing by enhancing the theoretical depth, analytical consistency, and interdisciplinary collaboration.
... There is a well-established tradition of scholarship that has investigated the material, discursive, organizational and cultural influences on the formation of scientific systems and fields (e.g., Foucault, 1966Foucault, /2002Rheinberger, 1997;Knorr-Cetina, 1999;Kay, 2000). These studies offer a baseline of reasoning towards questions of how knowledge and cognition are dependent on cognitive, cultural, material and social environments. ...
... There is a well-established tradition of scholarship that has investigated the material, discursive, organizational and cultural influences on the formation of scientific systems and fields (e.g., Foucault, 1966Foucault, /2002Rheinberger, 1997;Knorr-Cetina, 1999;Kay, 2000). These studies offer a baseline of reasoning towards questions of how knowledge and cognition are dependent on cognitive, cultural, material and social environments. ...
... also Hacking, 2004;Rheinberger, 2010). Continuing in a tradition of archaeologies of knowledge (Foucault, 1966(Foucault, /2002(Foucault, , 1973(Foucault, /2003, media scholars have shown how forms of perception, cognition, and social forms are tied to different eras of technological media as well as the environment of conceptual-technical-organizational relations they yield (e.g., Crary, 1990;Kittler, 1999;Sterne, 2003). Consequently, just as much as media technologies are products of their time, any culture is also a product of the information systems employed to preserve its memory (cf. ...
This special issue stems from the panel “Semiotic Approaches to Research Cultures” that took place at the 4th conference of the International Association for Cognitive Semiotics (IACS), in 2022. Organized by Alin Olteanu, Phillip H. Roth, and Gabriele Gramelsberger, the panel aimed to investigate research cultures under semiotic and cognitive considerations. Research cultures is the driving notion of the international research center Käte Hamburger Kolleg: Cultures of Research (c:o/re), based at RWTH Aachen University, which studies how scientific practices and discourses are being transformed through the increasing complexity of research problems, science’s response to grand societal challenges like climate change and the computerization of research. Most speakers involved in this panel were, at the time, affiliated with this center, either as members or fellows. As such, that conference panel and this special issue reflect debates on representation, performativity, and interpretation in science, which took place at this research center over a couple of years.
... CDA identifies "discourses," historically situated social systems of thought that function broadly in society to produce material effects. (Foucault, 2003(Foucault, , 2010Hodges, Martimianakis, McNaughton, & Whitehead, 2014;Lemke, 2002;MacLeod et al., 2024;Mills, 2003) Colloquially, discourses might be described as invisible rules governing behaviours. Discourses produce material effects that can range from empowering certain voices to speak, to producing institutions, policies, practices, laws, and shifts in power relations that govern societal behaviours. ...
... Discourses produce material effects that can range from empowering certain voices to speak, to producing institutions, policies, practices, laws, and shifts in power relations that govern societal behaviours. (Foucault, 2002a(Foucault, , 2002bHodges et al., 2014;Lawlor & Nale, 2014;MacLeod et al., 2024) CDA involves mapping these systems of thought so that one can understand and describe these material effects. (Foucault, 1974(Foucault, , 2002bHodges et al., 2014;MacLeod et al., 2024). ...
... (Foucault, 2002a(Foucault, , 2002bHodges et al., 2014;Lawlor & Nale, 2014;MacLeod et al., 2024) CDA involves mapping these systems of thought so that one can understand and describe these material effects. (Foucault, 1974(Foucault, , 2002bHodges et al., 2014;MacLeod et al., 2024). As space was a key dimension of consideration in our study, we deployed Foucault's concept of spatiality, specifically "heterotopia" (Foucault & Foucault, 2009;Foucault & Miskowiec, 1986;Foucault, 1973a;Paul, 2017). ...
The COVID-19 pandemic triggered a global pivot to virtual care (VC) technologies. While there has been considerable academic work exploring the “how” of VC, few studies have explored the impact of this pivot, its unintended consequences, and its governing rationales. This study addresses this gap in relation to care, professional identity and the evolving requirements for health professions education. Collected over three years, data for this study included evaluation surveys (134), interviews (59), publicly-available documents (240), and academic articles (217). Interviews and surveys were conducted in the Toronto Academic Health Science Network (TAHSN) and in a European academic medical centre (Maastricht UMC). Criteria for academic literature were that they addressed the shift to VC and were published between 2019 and 2023. Foucault’s work, The Birth of the Clinic, his methodologies of Critical Discourse Analysis and his concept of spatiality, guided the analysis. Patients, clinicians and institutional leaders were appreciative of VC and the perceived improvements brought to care logistics, patient experience and efficiencies. Two discourses governed these sentiments—VC as a tool for both “service” and “managerialism.” Assessing changes in clinical practice, experience and professional identity, our analysis suggested that a new virtual clinical space was being produced, one in which rules and experiences were different from that of a classical clinic. We named this new space the “Mediverse”—a space of undiscovered complexity with material and unintended consequences on user experience. This study identifies a new framework in which to study and assess this new clinical space.
... The 'performance' was open to looking: structured actions and movements of the archaeologist operating the machine, following routine archaeological procedures, and the process visible through the window, unstructured and uncontrolled, by which water 'operated' the messy mass of soil. In the exhibition Geography of Looking, things in general, and archaeology in particular, were seen in a new light and in a different way, foregrounding the potential of art/archaeology to exhibit that what is entangled, manifested and which endures, the before-and-after image of archaeology in the light of underlying, unseen concepts, which made us see (and value things) differently (Foucault 1977). The flotation machine fulfilled and endured what was asked of it for the exhibition, while the other exhibited objects, such as the floated samples, newspapers, various publications displayed strategically as they are talking about property, landscape or animals, and paintings, were resting but communicating. ...
... This call to look without thinking at first seems impossible. For as to see is always to think, since what is seeable is always caught in the structures of thought that belong to historical/political contexts (Foucault 1970). However, for Wittgenstein, concepts and categories have unlimited potentiality and indefinite boundaries. ...
When a flotation machine, routinely employed at archaeological sites, was prominently featured in an art gallery, its significance did not simply change. This act and event both interrupted and opened the possibility for new forms of attention and different means of engagement with the flotation machine to emerge. This paper explores a collaboration between archaeology and art that took place in the exhibition Geography of Looking at the Ar/Ge Kunst in Bolzano, Italy. The collaboration among artist, archaeologist and curators led to the introduction of a flotation machine into the art space, initiating a dialogue about the perception, interpretation and disciplinary boundaries of archaeology. Entangled in artistic discursive practice and curated as such, the flotation machine unexpectedly became more ‘archaeological’. The implications of this collaboration on our understanding and framing of archaeological practice elicited a new question: When is archaeology? This question foregrounds the potential of archaeology to become more democratic, inclusive and responsive, and proposes a more collective and boundary crossing looking. The paper contributes to the growing discourse on contemporary archaeology and art, inviting their further collaborations and co-creations. What role is there for archaeology approaching the contemporary and is there a prospect for a deep and enduring looking into an alternative, otherwise world building?
... Mitchel se refiere aFOUCAULT, 1970. ...
Este artículo aborda las características de algunas imágenes institucionales mexicanas. Se explora el contexto teórico sobre la naturaleza representacional de las imágenes gráficas y cómo este puede servir para estudiar los conceptos de Imagen País, Imagen Nación e Imagen Estado, así como su comunicación visual en las Relaciones Internacionales. Se propone un modelo de análisis semántico de estos conceptos, apoyándose en ejemplos gráficos, y destacando cómo los diseñadores y productores de imágenes han utilizado recursos retóricos para crear imaginarios culturales mediante la proyección de determinadas imágenes identitarias.
... My consideration of anthropology's history through the lens of the present borrows from overlapping but not rigidly specified or conceptually articulated notions of historiography. These include Hayden White's (1973) 'modes of emplotment'; early genealogical approaches to history by Foucault (1970); Bakhtin's (1982) notion of chronotopes (cf. Bakhtin 1983;Bemong et al. 2010;Knauft 1996;Mageo and Knauft 2021); and what Raymond Williams (1977) termed the deeper 'structures of feeling' that inform the subjectivity of historical development and change. ...
In recent decades, anthropology has been characterized by an experiential turn that connects scholarship increasingly with practical application, on the one hand, and critical reflexivity, on the other. This article throws these trends into historical relief by synoptically considering past emphases in anthropology from the 1830s through the present. These prior developments contextualize recent trends vis-à-vis long-term patterns and permutations in the history of anthropology. In significant respects, current trends reprise in newly critical and reflexive ways aspects of anthropology that were prominent when it was first becoming a scholarly discipline in the mid-nineteenth century. Anthropology's present experiential turn is especially important as our field faces an increasingly uncertain future into the mid-twenty-first century, including dire challenges of funding for new anthropological research and teaching positions, and the risks of being deprofessionalized.
... This approach allowed us to examine how language use reflects political actors' perceived realities. In relevant cases, we supplemented this with Foucault's (1970) approach to power relation analysis, which examines how conventions, values, and rules shape political discourse. This combined methodology enabled us to map the positions and relationships of political actors by analyzing their use of language within the political context. ...
This study examines how members of Israel’s 24th Knesset perceive and define democracy, and how their political-ideological identities influence these understandings. Using qualitative analysis of public statements and social media posts from 72 Knesset members, the research reveals a strong correlation between MKs’ ideological-political identities and their framing of democracy. Liberals tended to emphasize substantive democratic values like pluralism and individual rights, while conservatives prioritized a populist notion of majority rule. Religious MKs often viewed democracy through a sectarian lens, subjugating it to Jewish religious principles. Non-Jewish MKs vacillated between liberal and populist stances. The study raises concerns about the depth of commitment to democratic principles among many elected officials and the potential implications for Israeli democracy. It highlights the tension between Israel’s Jewish and democratic identities and suggests that the political landscape is increasingly challenging the vision of Israel’s founders for a democratic state.
... S jedne strane, to je pitanje uspostavljanja moći i osvajanja neosvojenog prostora i utvrđivanja pozicije i autoriteta. Na neki način, to je vrsta prevođenja (deplacement, sensu Latur), jer se time ostvaruje karakterizacija, artikulacija i prevođenje nekog nalaza u sfere koje su razumljive posredstvom pripisanih atributa i oznaka (Foucault 1994). Korišćenje uspostavljenih i kodifikovanih naziva govori o procesima koji stoje iza materijala sa iskopavanja, o interpretacijama, merama i odabiru informacija koje su učestvovale u definisanju nalaza (Palavestra 2013). ...
The understanding of the ways in which institutions contribute, impede or divert the processes, and of the diverse aspirations and procedures of creating a formalized representation of the past, is intimately linked to the analysis of the practices of knowledge formation in the archaeological discipline. The case
study of the group of artefacts defined as a “ritual group” from the Neolithic site Medvednjak near Smederevska Palanka, presents diverse ways in which conventions and practices of archaeological research, along with the products of fieldwork, field documentation, reports and data, become highly relevant in
shaping the interpretation of the find and formation of archaeological knowledge.
Tracing the history of the find from Medvednjak, the paper explores various aspects of formation of the biography of the find, informed by the actor-network theory.
Key words: artefacts, archaeological data, actor-network theory, material culture, biography of objects, archaeological documentation
... I do not highlight dependent origination as an example of something entirely new. Adorno (1973), Rorty (1989), Foucault (1994)-each in their own way-criticized the idea of an "original" or "essential" self. I choose to employ dependent origination here primarily to analyze the portraits because it is a near concept to Tsering's lifeworld that I find resonates with how she speaks of herself. ...
This is an ethnographic portrait of Tsering, a Tibetan refugee who is seeking asylum in France under a false name, age, and marriage. The portrait is assembled and disassembled through employing three successive perspectives: first, second, and third persons. In sum, this multiple portrait challenges the notions of the relationship between selfhood and authenticity as Tsering asserts that her truest self is an inauthentic one, that comes into view when three factors emerge in dependence upon each other: being Tibetan, being a refugee, and being mutable. Tsering's articulation of her selfhood is compared to Buddhist notions of dependent origination in order to question when and how anthropologists of Tibet and the Himalayas utilize culturally derived explanatory frameworks such as "near concepts." Finally, Tsering and her daughters' concerns for the ethics of their inauthenticity are viewed in light of Buddhist arguments for the relationship between dependent origination and compassion. Abstract This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
... My critique is therefore pitched slightly above the "analytic architectures" to which researchers may freely appeal in pursuit of scientific credibility and professional success (Mayrl and Wilson 2020). But I do not aim so high as to dismiss all existing methodologies as reflections of an "episteme" that cuts across the entire discursive field and whose influence the researcher cannot hope to escape (Foucault 1970). Our methodologies enable and constrain, although different ones do so in different ways and thus harbor different implications in regard to the pursuit of empirically adequate causal models. ...
... Are they essential pieces of the one true account of the world? Foucault (1970) and Kuhn (1962) have challenged positive answers to these questions. Both agree that the world admits a variety of mutually incompatible theories because there is a gap between world and theory, which is bridged by means of what Foucault calls episteme and Kuhn calls paradigm. ...
In this paper, I argue against the prevalent tendency in theological discourse to frame the relationship between science and religion in monist terms. I define this approach and present evidence supporting a pluralist perspective, which emerges as a serious alternative. Importantly, a pluralist framing offers a robust rebuttal to critics of religion who leverage the remarkable progress made in the natural sciences to depict theology as stagnant.
The 200+ years of capitalist development has radically altered the entire Earth – especially increased atmospheric carbon dioxide that causes global warming. The prevailing global economic system will most likely place the world’s environment in danger, eventually posing a threat to humanity’s existence on the small Spaceship Earth. The most effective, moral, and rational solution would be “degrowth.” The degrowth movement aims to reshape society from its current trends of environmental damage, alienation, and inequality towards establishing communities that promote harmony, respect for the environment, and extension of local democracy by enabling labour to employ capital instead of capital employing labour. Degrowth would most likely entail adopting Buddhist economics suggested by E. F. Schumacher, the author of Small Is Beautiful (1973). Schumacher advocated for the world to adopt the Buddhist points of view regarding “the function of work,” “the pattern of consumption,” “the standard of living,” and “the use of natural resources.” We, the earthlings, need a bit of horse sense rather than highfalutin economic growth models. It is wrong to suppose that the human species has any special privilege to escape extinction. Degrowth or growth will soon be a life-or-death question for humanity.
Synthetic data is increasingly used as a substitute for real data due to ethical, legal, and logistical reasons. However, the rise of synthetic data also raises critical questions about its entanglement with the politics of classification and the reproduction of social norms and categories. This paper aims to problematize the use of synthetic data by examining how its production is intertwined with the maintenance of certain worldviews and classifications. We argue that synthetic data, like real data, is embedded with societal biases and power structures, leading to the reproduction of existing social inequalities. Through empirical examples, we demonstrate how synthetic data tends to highlight majority elements as the “normal” and minimize minority elements, and that the slight changes to the data structures that create synthetic data will also inevitably result in what we term “intersectional hallucinations.” These hallucinations are inherent to synthetic data and cannot be entirely eliminated without compromising the purpose of creating synthetic datasets. We contend that decisions about synthetic data involve determining which intersections are essential and which can be disregarded, a practice which will imbue these decisions with norms and values. Our study underscores the need for critical engagement with the mathematical and statistical choices in synthetic data production and advocates for careful consideration of the ontological and political implications of these choices during curatorial style production of synthetic structured data.
This concept paper introduces the Contextual Critical Historical Inquiry and Analysis (CCHIA) framework—a critical synthesis tool designed to advance historical contextual inquiry in urban studies. The study aims to develop a structured methodological framework that integrates historical and critical approaches to enhance the analysis of urban phenomena. To develop this framework, we employed a two-fold strategy, conducting a literature search of the social sciences and urban studies using databases including Google Scholar, Web of Science, JSTOR, and Scopus. First, we screened Google Scholar to identify relevant scholars and works published between 1883 and 2024. Second, a content analysis of 58 peer-reviewed articles (2000–2024) was then performed. The concept paper follows a five-stage, 26-step framework integrating four history-focused concepts—interpretive history, historical perspective, historical context, and historical contextualization—alongside three critical approaches: critical discourse analysis, comparative historical analysis, and critical urban theory. By synthesizing these elements, the suggested framework equips researchers to systematically decode the historical and societal forces shaping urban phenomena. CCHIA challenges traditional urban scholarship by leveraging interdisciplinary insights from the social sciences, addressing context as a theoretical perspective for understanding urban formation, and as a critical influence on academic writing. The contribution of CCHIA lies in linking historical analysis to contemporary urban challenges—enabling researchers to focus on previous literature analysis findings to address the current situation’s challenges. The CCHIA framework offers an adaptable toolkit for producing socially engaged and context-sensitive urban textbooks.
This chapter reconsiders the role subjectivity would play in the ontology of temporal differentiation. It does so by discussing how Heidegger’s “Da-sein” suggested a non-subjectivist notion of subjectivity. The elimination of subjective foundationalism from the concept of subjectivity does not entail the naturalistic and impersonalist dissolution of the subject. The theoretical tension was already visible in competing interpretations of Dasein’s role in Being and Time. According to Michel Henry, Dasein enables the world by projection [Entwurf], one of its existential constitutions [existenziale Verfassungen], but Dasein is also one being among others within this world—this forced Heidegger into a vicious circle. William Blattner puts emphasis on the first direction and understands Heidegger’s ontology simply as a “temporal idealism”—Dasein, by making possible temporality, becomes the necessary premise of being itself. Blattner thus criticizes Heidegger for not taking seriously the irreducible extendedness which “ordinary time” exhibits. While defending Heidegger, John Haugeland suggests that we distinguish between “Dasein” as an ontological structure and as individual beings, and he recommends that we limit the use of the word to the first sense; by contrast, I discern two distinct yet continuous characterizations of Dasein. Ontologically prior is “disclosedness” [Erschlossenheit] mentioned in Chap. 5, Division One of Being and Time: Dasein means a “t/here” [da] in contradistinction to its “elsewhere,” which is indispensable for the unfolding (temporal differentiation) of beings. Therefore, it is being [Sein] which, for its own manifestation, must call forth Da-sein. Ontologically derivative and secondary is reflexivity [Jemeinigkeit]: it matters for me to be my individuated self, not because I have some immutable essence, but precisely because I am appropriated and possessed by the unfolding of beings, thus becoming an irreplaceable “t/here” for it. In contrast to subjectivism, which presupposes the faculties of the subject on the basis of reflexive structures such as the cogito, the ontology of temporal differentiation turns reflexivity from an explanans into an explanandum, while the real explanans is the temporal differentiation of being via beings, which is realized through the “t/here” of Dasein alone.
Το παρόν κείμενο αναλύει την έννοια της διάταξης στο έργο του Κωνσταντινίδη, η οποία αν και φαίνεται αρχικά να αποτελεί μια επιμέρους έννοια της αρχιτεκτονικής του, με έναν ιδιαίτερο τρόπο, εμπεριέχει ταυτόχρονα κάτι που αφορά την ολότητά του. Αφού λοιπόν γίνει μια σύντομη αναφορά στην έννοια της διάταξης στην αρχιτεκτονική εν γένει, στη συνέχεια θα γίνει μια πιο διεξοδική ανάλυση του τρόπου που εμφανίζεται αυτή στο έργο του Κωνσταντινίδη με τρεις τρόπους: α) ως οργάνωση χώρων, β) ως κατασκευαστική λογική και y) ως κοινωνικές σχέσεις. Περαιτέρω θα γίνει μια αναφορά στην εκπαιδευτική σημασία που μπορεί να έχει η έννοια της διάταξης και, τέλος το κείμενο καταλήγει με τη διάταξη ως μια διαταγή, που μας έχει αφήσει κληρονομιά ο Κωνσταντινίδης.
This paper critiques the foundational assumption underpinning UK and EU regulations—including the GDPR, Online Safety Act, Digital Services Act, and Artificial Intelligence Act—that agency is a possessive attribute rooted in individual autonomy. Using YouTube and TikTok as case studies, it examines how advanced recommendation systems powered by deep neural networks, multi-armed bandits, and reinforcement learning blur the boundaries between user agency and platform influence. Drawing on feminist relational theory and Karen Barad’s concepts of intra-action and diffraction, the paper argues that contemporary platforms generate a distinct, relational form of agency that operates interstitially in the ‘in-between’ of user actions and algorithmic systems. This emergent directive power challenges existing law in the EU and UK concerning online safety, which position platforms as neutral tools rather than co-constitutive entities. The paper calls for a re-imagination of legal ontologies and for a shift from possessive agency to relational governance to address the complexities and risks posed by modern algorithmic assemblages.
This study is an attempt to bring the notion of the ‘semiotics of silence’ to the discussion of social movements’ agency and legitimization. By examining the semiotics and modalities of silence embedded in the landscape of Rabaa sit-in protests, as visualized in Getty Images photo gallery, this paper situates silence as an agentive presence. Drawing on Foucault’s heterotopia, Kurzon’s modalities of silence and Jaworski and Thurlow and Jaworski’s semiotics of silence, the analysis reveals how silence operates as a mode of defiance, alteration, and critique in social movements spaces. Whether it is imposed on or by the protestors (I/[you] must say anything), chosen (I should not say anything), strategically deployed (I will not say anything), silence agentively challenges hegemonic narratives. These modalities engage in a dialogic interplay with silence tropes, including metaphorization, non-interactive represented participants, disengaged viewers, as well as spatial inactivity. It is found that the Getty Images gallery itself serves as a heterotopia of representation. After instantiating the sit-in within the digital domain, it juxtaposes these transformed spatial and temporal realities. The photographs serve as a mediating tool to legitimize the protest, capturing both the heterotopic nature of the space and the silent, revolutionary disruptions of its rhythms.
Are some scholars more equal than others? Surely not. But some are more visible than others. What gives them this extra visibility? Of course, some (get to) write more and “better” than others. But why? Location is a significant factor, with scholars from the Global North often receiving more attention in terms of citations and reliance on their copyright-related research. This over-visibility cuts deep, invisibilizing scholars from other parts of the world and, more problematically, creating an epistemic framework. This framework knits an ideation/thinking pattern that supports certain ideas/reforms/arguments while suppressing, resisting, or discouraging others. While there are many known and unknown causes and effects of this phenomenon, this essay focuses on the history of IP teaching and research in the Global South, which, coupled with citation practices – or the “Citation Game”, as I call it –shape copyright discourses. To illustrate my claims, I problematize Art. 17 of the Berne Convention, which is typically interpreted as authorizing censorship. Using rules of interpretation, especially the provision’s history, I challenge the prevailing interpretation, which affirms the dominant “balance” discourse, and propose an alternative interpretation that empowers states to permit the dissemination of copyrighted work during emergencies such as pandemics. Grounded in Critical Legal Studies and TWAIL, this essay will help re-evaluate the history of copyright history and challenge the status quo of modern (international) legal thought.
This article examines the intersection of power relations and human management practices in modern organizations, utilizing a Foucauldian and psychopolitical framework. The objective is to explore how contemporary organizations employ psychological mechanisms, disciplinary techniques, and self-regulation strategies to influence employee behavior and professional identity. Unlike traditional hierarchical models of power, this study presents power as a relational and diffuse force embedded in organizational discourse, digital surveillance, and emotional governance. The research methodology involves documentary analysis of a range of materials, including academic literature, corporate policies, and case studies. This enables an exploration of how psychological discourse, performance evaluations, and corporate ideologies function as tools of control, shaping employee actions and identities. Findings suggest that modern organizations use subtle power mechanisms, such as emotional intelligence training and algorithmic management, to promote self-regulation and voluntary compliance with corporate expectations, rather than relying solely on coercion or direct authority. The study contributes to organizational studies, critical management theory, and industrial psychology by offering a comprehensive analysis of power in contemporary labor settings. It highlights how managerial control is internalized by employees, shaping their perceptions of autonomy and productivity. This research emphasizes the need for organizations to reconsider the ethical implications of surveillance, performance monitoring, and emotional labor management. Future research should explore alternative governance models and investigate how artificial intelligence and resistance strategies influence power dynamics in workplaces.
This article explores the Foucauldian analysis of the linkage between temporality and politics, addressing mainly two loci of Foucault’s production: the assessment of the post-WWII ordoliberal experience in The Birth of Biopolitics and the Iran reportage for “Corriere Della Sera”. The article emphasizes the relevance of Foucault’s assessment of ordoliberal Germany for contemporary studies on neoliberalism and inscribes Foucault in a wider tradition of thought on the relevance of history and temporality for the comprehension of political dynamics. In TBoB , Foucault offered a prescient analysis of neoliberal temporality and its de-politicizing effects. In his view, ordoliberal theorists and politicians sought to ground political legitimacy in the economy itself, giving birth to a political-economic “double circuit” which did away with history and made political consensus “permanent” and automatic. The connection between neoliberalism, the restructuring of state sovereignty, and temporality will be highlighted. Furthermore, by analyzing the almost-coeval Iranian reportages and the eulogy for Clavel, the article further investigates Foucault’s reflection on the link between temporality, politics, and subjectivation processes. If the analysis of ordoliberal temporality in TBoB describes a linkage between de-temporalization and depoliticization, the reportages will be highlighted as a possible “pars construens” – as a way to reinstate the possibility of political action through the appeal to different ways to experience temporality. The article concludes that Foucault’s sparse comments on temporality can be read as an attempt, albeit not fully developed, not only to envision the de-politicizing effects of marketization but also to envisage new, re-politicizing modes of experiencing temporality and history.
Even a cursory exploration of the international semiotics scene today reveals that the work of Julia Kristeva is underrepresented. The radical- ism of her texts is an abiding reason for the fact that Semeiotike remains stubbornly "inconvertible" (Nikolchina 2011) into mainstream semiotics. This essay elaborates two opposed philosophical temperaments and a series of functional dualisms, including signification vs. communication and quasi-sign vs. fully fledged sign, in connection with Kristeva's own dualism, the symbolic vs. the semiotic. The quasi-sign doctrine is just one example of how Kristevan dualisms make possible non-reductive existential and social commitments and afford a written textual method applicable across the board in general semiotics. The Kristevan methods of polylogue, narrativization, and auto-critique are highest-order humanities tools for regulating ideology at the level of the text; they also contribute to the inconvertibility of Kristeva's books as hermetic and seemingly incomprehensible artifacts. The interest of these methods is intractable to quantitative methods and non-describable by natural science. This is one reason we provide such an effective interdisciplinary framework in humanities research - as semiotics aligns more and more with the strug- gle to revitalize the problematic humanities, Kristeva remains/returns as a core theoretic coordinate.
This article rethinks conceptions of ‘the global’ by revisiting the problem of ‘the Anglobal’ [Vucetic, S. (2010). Anglobal governance? Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 23(3), 455–474] in the production of knowledge. It problematizes the essentialization of ‘the West’, ‘Europe’, and ‘the US’ as area-based centrisms in critical international relations (IR) and area studies
scholarship. We suggest that the ‘Anglosphere’ is an emerging centrism based on ever-changing perceptions of geography within the West and the ever-increasing dominance of the English language globally. While some scholars have addressed Anglosphere-centrism, they seldom contextualize
the Anglosphere’s relationship with more conventional Western centrisms. Our analysis draws from Global IR, the logic of provincialization, and evolution of other Western-region area studies discourses to question the Anglosphere’s absence. We contend that normalizing the Anglosphere as a valid analytical category allows for deeper engagement between IR, area studies, and other disciplines while enabling a more equitable exchange of
knowledge between the Anglosphere and other regional worlds.
The function of categories of the human sciences is a well-established field of scholarly inquiry, animated by debates over their capacity to reduce, exclude, determine, abstract, produce, loop, control, and/or restrain. This special issue takes an interdisciplinary perspective to investigate urgent questions about the ‘material force’ of categories as they operate in practice. Specifically, we emphasise the plasticity of categories and how their ambivalent boundaries can render their categorical forcefulness continuously operative. Categories morph and shift as they traverse different fields, re-articulating difference as they interact with divergent institutions and epistemic infrastructures. The five interdisciplinary articles in this issue explore the material force of categories across varied contexts, including the prison system, digital culture, legal frameworks, psychiatric diagnostics, and applied governmental research. In so doing, the special issue as a whole emphasises the capacious yet persistent nature of categorisation, revealing how, in multiple ways, categories can stabilise the management of people precisely through their inherent structures of contingency and ambivalence.
This paper aims to challenge interpretivism as an inadequate approach to legal hermeneutics, offering a novel response to the issue through the lens of mysticism. We will follow the premise, developed by thinkers from the traditional philosophical canon such as Derrida, Schmitt and Gadamer (among others), that every act of legal interpretation contains an apophatic dimension. However, we will delve deeper into this notion from the perspective of mysticism itself (rather than deconstructionism or hermeneutics). That is, we will approach interpretivism from a perspective different from the one usually found in the legal-philosophical canon—namely, mysticism—with the aim of understanding and illuminating some of its dimensions. Specifically, we will explore the mystical idea that, while recognizing the dynamic and vital nature of existence is essential, it is even more fundamental to orient existential vitality toward truth through an act of concentration and will. This will allow us to justify that the concept of “mystic order”, which we formulate and develop in this paper, is useful in addressing the challenges of juridical hermeneutics, as it combines conceptual rigor in approaching law (hence “order”) with the vitality, immeasurability, ineffability, and dynamism inherent in concrete reality (the “mystical” aspect).
This paper seeks to study the shift in representation of the Muslim body (within the context of War on Terror) from figuration of an embodied autonomous subjectivity to a disembodied one haunting through the remnants of its presence, via a close textual analysis of Ishtiyaq Shukri’s novels The Silent Minaret (2005) and I See You (2014). The paper seeks to explore the notions of power and resistance that inform Shukri’s concerns wherein spectrality operates both as a mode of resistance against surveillance mechanisms and as the culmination of the neo-colonial Empire’s necropolitics. It will particularly explore the implications of spectrality for bodies located within the neo-colonial epistemological project that reduces the status of the ‘othered subject’ to that of an object. Conceptualizing spectrality as the dominant mode of the post 9/11 novels, the paper engages with Derrida’s work on mourning in relation to specters which call attention to the anomaly that plagues the present and, in doing so, offers a new paradigm for an understanding of the post 9/11 Muslim experience.
If all the world is a stage (as the title of this series supposes), the stage of the 21st century must be a site of remarkable anxiety—at once global and splintered, intensely up-front and relentlessly mediatized, ever fragmenting the collective and seeking to build it anew. How can theater, an art of intimate presence, rethink its aesthetics and reassert its mission on such a stage? More specifically, how have American dramaturgies chosen to engage with our new millennium? Relying on a broad understanding of “dramaturgy” as a dynamic process, this book explores some of the inspiring trends and arresting innovations of contemporary theater in the US, investigating both playwriting and performance-making in order to delineate formal experiments, the imprint of socio- political themes, and new configurations in spectatorship. The chapters of the present volume delve into various aspects of theater-making, from courses in playwriting to controversies in casting or discussions about the democratic function of theater. The wide range of examples studied include development practices at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center, the work of experimental companies (Ping Chong + Company, The Industry, New York City Players), and many plays by contemporary authors (Clare Barron, Jackie Sibblies Drury, David Levine, Charles Mee, Dominique Morisseau, Sarah Ruhl, Andrew Schneider, Paula Vogel, Mac Wellman). Conversations with Young Jean Lee and Richard Maxwell add the playwright’s viewpoint to the prismatic perspective of the volume, which is dedicated to performances in the US but written from a decidedly international angle, thus implicitly querying what makes up the American identity of this rich body of work.
In this theoretical study the concept of the prototypical model of a discursive personality within the framework of the theory of values-based sociodiscourse is explored. The prototypical model, as conceived within this theory, represents a multidimensional structure that enables the analysis of values, roles, identity, and interpersonal interactions, all of which contribute to the formation of a personality in contemporary society. The model underscores the significance of values as guiding principles that shape an individual’s construal of the world. The prototypical model of a discursive personality within the theory of values-based sociodiscourse can be described as a conceptual framework where a discursive personality is shaped by multiple sociocultural factors. These factors include the types of discourse individuals engage in (everyday, institutional), their value orientations (such as belonging to a social group, love, esteem, and self-actualization), and social factors (social status, role, and gender). The social parameters play a crucial role in determining how individuals navigate and express their values through discourse. The framework also categorizes discursive personalities into participants, attractors, and creators, with each type exhibiting distinct verbal, non-verbal, and supra-verbal repertoires associated with each type of discursive personalities. A key aspect of the multifaceted prototypical model of a discursive personality is its integration within the sociocultural context. This dimension is visually depicted through the stance of a discursive personality and discursive practices as central elements within the sociocultural mechanism. The study offers definitions of discourse and a discursive personality within the theory of values-based sociodiscourse framework, providing a foundation for future research. Further investigations in this area could enhance our understanding of how values shape a discursive personality and his / her behavior across various social contexts.
China's national physical education and health curriculum policies are the regulatory and guiding policies for China's school physical education and health curriculum. The policies highlight physical education and health as of great significance in building a healthy China (健康中国) and a sports powerful nation (体育强国). Most academic commentary on these policies to date focused on the content and the application of teaching on student learning, but few have analysed the socio-political imperatives and how the policies construct young people's bodies in particular ways. Policy embodies contested meanings and values, privileging certain positions, whilst silencing others; it thus makes a 'problem' exist as a particular type of 'problem' that rationalises and legitimises the 'suggestions' proposed by the policy. According to Foucault, discourses are the socially produced forms of 'knowledge' that set limits upon what is possible to think, write, or speak about; it creates an epistemic 'reality'. In this sense, China's national physical education and health curriculum policies produce 'problems' with particular meanings that affect what gets done or not done, and how young people live their lives. In this article, we draw on Foucauldian concepts, particularly notions of 'discourse', 'problematisation' and 'governance', and adopt Bacchi's 'What's the Problem Represented to Be' approach to explore what is the specific kind of 'problematic' body of young people that are constructed and reflected in China's physical education and health curriculum policies. We argue that by representing the 'problem' of young people's bodies as poorly performing, the policy documents construct a sense that good-performance bodies in sports are desirable and capable of contributing to the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. Importantly, this prioritisation of the good-performance body in sports prioritises not only good motor abilities in sports competitions, but also the body's 'intrinsic' sports morality.
Regional circular economies represent a sustainable alternative to linear economic models and can increase self-sufficiency and value creation, especially in structurally weak regions. However, the establishment of such economic models is complex. Regional networks and cooperations are essential for establishing circular economic structures at the local level. Regional transformation processes and the sustainable development of circular economies are often approached from a business, economic, geographic, and sometimes legal and social science perspective. Educational perspectives, particularly organizational educational perspectives, are often missing. This chapter discusses the potential of organizational educational network consulting in establishing sustainable circular economies, starting from the typical problems of network governance. The article presents an already piloted approach of regional network consulting as an empirical case analysis. This demonstrates how the establishment of a regional circular economy can be designed through network development. By conducting a qualitative analysis that incorporates metaphors and images, the chapter explores how organizational educational interventions can effectively address and resolve the typical problems associated with regional network management.
Looking back at Foucault?s analytical tool-box and its relevance today, we take on the methodological dimensions and effects of archeology and genealogy. We start from the assumption that archeology and genealogy are two different but related analytical frameworks and registers of historical time. Archeology is a register in which what is said at one time remains in the modality of the archive. Genealogy is a register in which time emerges on the surface of events, on one hand remaining in the time of origin, and on the other branching out into the present day. In this paper, we argue that such an analytical approach has two key dimensions that make Foucault?s work distinctive and contemporary. Those dimensions are space and transformation, and not discontinuity. For Foucault, space is subject to historical transformation and allows time to become visible in the different registers of archeology and genealogy. The search for transformations-when it comes to archeology-led Foucault to analyze the depth of formation of the regularities of the articulable, while in terms of genealogy, it led him to the practices, power, and knowledge that become shaped on the surface of visibility of our history of the present. We see the entirety of this set of analytical procedures as Foucault?s painting, visual method, and that is why we use the metaphor of a canvas. Foucault?s main analytical and methodological contribution to the studies of philosophy, social sciences and humanities, in this sense, can be represented by the metaphor of dust compared to clouds-or rather, problematization and the analysis of singularities, compared to the search for core principles, generalizations, or transhistorical laws of society.
A little-noticed shift - potentially of great interest to socio-spatial theorists, human geographers and what might be termed ?spatial historians? - occurred in Foucault?s thinking from his work on ?madness? (Madness and Civilization, originally 1961) to that on ?badness? (Discipline and Punish, originally 1975). Whereas the former revolved chiefly around space as distance and barrier, enforcing exclusion-as-exile, the latter took more seriously space as a complex resource for organising, distributing and operating upon troublesome populations in the guise of inclusion-as-confinement. This article charts this big-picture shift in Foucault?s oeuvre, particularly pulling out what occurs in his now published/ translated lecture course The Punitive Society (delivered in 1973). Often regarded as little more than a prototype for Discipline and Punish, it is actually the case that The Punitive Society stages a switch from a stark-exclusionary reading of how society chases away its troublesome ?others? to a more nuanced-inclusionary reading of how society works on these ?others? with the goal of rendering them potentially acquiescent and useful. That the former reading was how Foucault initially envisaged his spatial history of prisons is itself revealing, but so too is what he says about harsher punitive and exclusionary logics still lying at the heart of inclusion-as-confinement.
The Hamas surprise attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, and the Israeli military response unleashed a catastrophic episode of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and exacerbated broader tensions in the region. This study compares Al Jazeera English (AJE) and BBC’s coverage of and discourse around key events in the early stages of the 2023 Israel–Gaza War. Using critical discourse analysis as an analytical framework, this study employs mixed methods to compare transitivity, intertextuality, and lexicalization as key discursive features in the two outlets’ coverage of the war. Counter to previous qualitative works, this study quantitatively reveals no variation between AJE and BBC’s use of active voice yet points to key qualitative differences in the discursive treatment of Palestinians and the reporting on death tolls. It further demonstrates drastic differences in the quoting patterns and negative lexicalization of the early phases of the war, with AJE taking a more balanced approach and BBC refraining from emphasizing accusations against Israel of committing “genocide”, “ethnic cleansing”, “terrorism”, and “war crimes”. The study concludes with a discussion of the implications of differential discourses around the Gaza War and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict in international media.
Publicamos la versión en español de este capítulo, un texto que apareció publicado originalmente en inglés como el capítulo cuatro de la siguiente referencia: Lemke, T. (2021). Material-Discursive Entanglements: Grasping the Concept of the Dispositive. En The Government of Things. Foucault and the New Materialisms. Nueva York: New York University Press. Agradecemos a la editorial y al autor que nos cedieron los derechos para la publicación y difusión de la versión en español.
This study explores how European botanical science, introduced by foreign missionaries, transformed the intellectual and environmental landscape of premodern China. By examining the transnational exchange of scientific ideas, the paper highlights the role of missionaries, particularly Jesuits and Protestants, in promoting Western botany within a highly sophisticated Chinese intellectual framework. Despite cultural barriers, missionaries sought to integrate a Christian understanding of nature into Chinese episteme, using botanical studies as a conduit for proselytization. The research focuses on key historical moments, including the Treaty of Nanking, which opened China to Western religious and scientific influences. Findings show that missionaries’ botanical studies, driven by both religious and scientific interests, contributed to cross-cultural intellectual collaboration, leading to ideological–environmental changes. The research reveals that botanical exchange was not limited to science but also intertwined with political, economic, and religious interests. Furthermore, the introduction of experimental science reshaped Chinese approaches to nature, blending European and Chinese intellect systems. Ultimately, this paper argues that foreign missionaries played a crucial role in shaping both modern Chinese botany and global episteme, illustrating how scientific ideas transcended cultural boundaries to create lasting environmental impacts.
This article argues that Gabriel Mascaro’s Boi neon (2015) challenges the longstanding division between human and nonhuman animals in the sertão, a landscape that has been a fixture of Brazilian cinema. Boi neon blurs that dichotomy by presenting a group of characters that form a gender-destabilizing, nontraditional nomadic family who mainly works for vaquejadas, a Brazilian rodeo held in an arid region undergoing accelerating industrialization. The film collapses the Western cultural hierarchy between humans and animals in a key scene where Galega, a female truck driver, wears a horse’s head mask during an erotic dance. According to the anthropologist David Le Breton, the face is the body region where the human condition acquires meaning and incarnates a person’s identity. For Le Breton, modifying a face is the equivalent of changing existence. By analyzing Galega’s performance in dialogue with Le Breton’s theory, this article explores how Boi neon disrupts the ontological division between human and nonhuman animals in the landscape of the sertão, which historically became a stereotyped idea of impoverished, savage land that has only existed to be tamed or destroyed in the name of progress. Additionally, the article claims that Mascaro’s film encourages viewers to recognize their own animality, challenging the speciesist view of humans as rational beings distinct from their animal nature.
This paper explores a variety of methodologies that offer ethnographic access to the kinds of "humanly organized sound" that typify urban acoustic spaces. The case studies draw from ongoing research on Sufi Muslim rituals in the Western Balkans (especially Kosovo), exploring ways in which sound articulates difference in cities (urban heterophony) and in so doing mediates notions of place. Three methodologies are put forward here: first, documentary sound studies, an attempt to bring together the kinds of media-rich practices of visual anthropology, acknowledging that academic prose has inherent limits in its ability to represent; second, media archaeology, a critical reappraisal of media archives (whether intentionally designated as archives or not) as repositories for audio and other materials-both physical and virtual-which simultaneously reflect and shape the priorities of the archive and its discursive practices; and, finally, aural flânerie, emphasizing passage through city spaces as a way of interrogating the boundaries and marginal spaces comprising the city. These ethnographic approaches offer a set of tools particularly suited to the socially enmeshed, collaborative realm of urban ethnomusicology, all the more so as technological developments raise questions about many of the basic premises of what constitutes fieldwork and ethnography in the past.
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