bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Performing Timespace Encounters: Reflecting on Sharing, Voice and Justice in Qualitative Research
Authors: Mavroudi Elizabeth
Published: January 2025

This chapter focuses on the justice of sharing voices and stories, using case studies from my qualitative research; this always partial and challenging process of storytelling is viewed through performative timespaces of encounter as a means to reflect on the potential for transformative research from the perspective of researchers and participants. The chapter discusses interviews as encounters through which voices can be shared, brought to a different audience and potentially be empowering. The chapter on performative storytelling through research encounters in timespace uses case study projects on my past research. This includes work on Palestinian and Greek diasporic identity and politics in Greece and Australia respectively, migrant women in Athens and immigration policy changes in the UK, as well as my recent project on young people’s identity and politics in the Greek, Jewish and Palestinian diasporas in England.
Reimagining Parliamentary Representation
Authors: Judge David
Published: January 2025

The starting premise of this chapter is that a reimagining of parliamentary representation requires a systemic view of representation. This invokes some notion of an interlocking of electoral modes with non-electoral modes of representation within a system of democratic parliamentarism. Analysis of current imaginings of this system leads to the identification of its key underpinning foundational principles: inclusion, equality, responsiveness and unity/collectivity. A reimagined UK parliament based on these principles should serve, therefore, as a key focal point of broader networks of representation. This requires a reimagining of the existing ‘electoral representative form’ through, for example, changing formal electoral institutions, institutionalising the interconnection of parliamentary and non-electoral modes of representation, and deploying new digital technologies to maximise the relationship between representatives and represented. In essence, the chapter concludes that a reimagination of parliamentary representation should be systemic in scope, cumulative in approach and expansive in its ambition.
Reimagining Parliamentary Procedure
Authors: Evans Paul
Published: January 2025

In this chapter parliamentary procedures are tested against the criteria of comprehensibility, resistance to executive capture, ability to engage the imagination of those inside and outside parliament, and success in conferring legitimacy on the outcomes of parliamentary decisions. As procedures have developed to give more and more control to the executive they have become less and less human. It concludes that (especially in the Commons) they no longer provide the space, either temporal, psychological or ritual, for effective deliberation which is demonstrably inclusive of the world beyond Westminster. The remedy proposed is to do more of the work of the Commons in the arena of the select committees, where time is less rationed, deliberation (rather than ritualised debate) is encouraged, and elected representatives engage openly with experts and the broader public. The committees should control the content of debate in the plenary, where procedure should reflect a more accessible way of doing business. Parliament must demonstrate a transformative influence on the executive, not assume that the private and occult processes behind the theatrical spectacle are sufficient to win the confidence of the electorate.
The Ethical Classroom
Authors: Piacentini Teresa
Published: January 2025

This chapter turns to the ethical implications and consequences of developing a critical pedagogy of migration in the political now. The chapter begins with a critical exploration of what ethics has come to mean in higher education and what this can mean when it translates to the classroom. It delves into the question of knowledge production as potentially doing epistemic violence and as a deep source of harm. It explores pedagogic ethics and questions surrounding the role of emotions, affect, problematizing safety, coping with conflict and pedagogies of discomfort. A key focus of the chapter is how we ethically manage and justify discomfort in the learning process. Within this framework, the ideas of active empathy and doing good harm are introduced and offered as a way to understand how discomfort stemming from tackling challenging topics is necessary for intellectual and ethical growth. Discomfort is therefore productive of positive change, and this chapter explores how we navigate this ethical landscape in our teaching practice. It emphasizes the transformative power of discomfort and the importance of fostering critical consciousness through an active empathy that urges us to move away from passive observance and a politics of declaration towards action-oriented responses.
Introduction: Everyone’s a Lurker
Authors: Sipley Gina
Published: January 2025

Beginning with an autoethnographic overview of the author’s personal lurking habits, this introductory chapter gives an overview of the research on lurking as a normal and participatory social media act.
Race and Reality: Towards a Social Aesthetics of Race
Authors: Thomas Michael L.
Published: January 2025

In this chapter, I draw upon the social aesthetics of Whitehead to argue for a social aesthetics of race. The social aesthetics of race draws on the aesthetic dimensions of social life in response to the function of race as a predatory abstraction, which bifurcates human societies between worlds of colour. These worlds realize themselves through the maintenance of hierarchical, segregated material conditions alongside an ideology of liberal universalist progressivism. This contradiction, I argue, generates forms of sensibility that ontologize the fundamental distinction between worlds and people as a necessary feature of our experience. Thus, our engagement with social aesthetics should work on cultivating forms of sensibility grounded in collective practices that draw upon these forms to identify their origins in lived experience, critique their ideological underpinnings and develop novel sociological ideals for the advancement of societies out of their colonial forms.
A New Taste for Life? Value Ecologies and the Aesthetics of the Outside
Authors: Savransky Martin
Published: January 2025

This chapter probes the idea that, amid planetary processes of anaesthetization, the task is not to save a modern notion of aesthetics whose general values have never prevented worlds from enduring the slow violence that have depleted much of the earth’s ability to make itself felt. The task might well be to gamble on what Félix Guattari called ‘a new aesthetic paradigm’, to step outside so as to affirm, in the outlaw edges of that which we have called and might still continue to call aesthetics, the possibility of becoming sensitive to the immanent creation of values elaborated in divergent practices of thinking and feeling that insist and persist amid the disaster. Values that might, just perhaps, inspire in us the thoughts, feelings and beliefs that may be required to cultivate speculative methodologies of life and death, unruly ways of inhabiting the earth otherwise.
To Err is More Than More-Than-Human: Patient Safety and the Aesthetics of a Never Event
Authors: Wilkie Alex
Published: January 2025

‘Never events’ are defined as serious instances of negligence that reoccur within the UK national healthcare service (NHS) and that are entirely avoidable due to mandatory national safety guidance. This chapter treats the term ‘never event’ as an invitation to consider an auto-ethnographic case of patient safety involving wrong-route intravenous administration of oral morphine in terms of generalized aesthetics and, drawing on A.N. Whitehead, its prehensions and negative prehensions. The chapter addresses two aspects of the never event. First, the adverse clinical incident involving the administration of oral morphine during emergency care and how positive and negative prehensions provide a way of understanding its aesthetic possibilities and realization. Second, how the incident was reported on and responded to as part of the hospital’s risk and governance procedures. Here, individuation of a ‘subject’ of a serious incident report shows how patients’ feeling and experience are routinely overlooked or removed as an aesthetic restructuring in order to enact medical accountability. The chapter concludes by proposing that clinical error is not simply the upshot of more-than-human socio-technical healthcare systems, but rather complex aesthetic events involving feelings and experiences that contribute to patient individuation and therefore outcomes, which are typically erased in practice.
Back to the Classroom: What Whitehead Took from Art, and What a New Aesthetic Paradigm Can Take from Whitehead
Authors: Gaskill Nicholas
Published: January 2025

This chapter argues that a new aesthetic paradigm requires a new paradigm of aesthetic education. I elaborate what this paradigm looks like in Whitehead’s work, starting with his educational writing and moving through his meditations on abstractions and ‘aesthetic significance’ in Modes of Thought (1968, first published 1938). Throughout, I show how Whitehead turned to aesthetics to combat what he saw as the primary intellectual evil of his age: the problem of disciplinary specialization, which he regarded as the institutional manifestation of the modern habit of letting nature bifurcate. Arguably, this problem is with us more than ever, with the added danger that many disciplines – those that fall short on research-based metrics – are in the process of being cut from the university entirely. Whitehead’s notion of aesthetic education, framed to address this threat but made ever harder to grasp because of it, forces us to ask: how can we justify and institute modes of thought that fall outside the ‘knowledge factory’ model of the modern research university?
The Philosophy of Power: A Critical Overview
Authors: Lynes Adam , Treadwell James , Bavin Kyla
Published: January 2025

In this chapter, we delve into the intricate realms of power, unravelling its philosophical underpinnings and multifaceted nature. Our exploration begins by questioning the very essence of power, probing its origins and manifestations across diverse landscapes. The chapter embarks on a journey through the annals of philosophical thought, drawing insights from classical philosophers to contemporary thinkers. From Hobbes’ notion of the ‘leviathan’ to Foucault’s examination of power structures, we navigate the rich tapestry of ideas that have shaped our understanding of power throughout history. As we traverse through various philosophical lenses, the chapter invites readers to reflect on their own relationship with power. Interweaving real-world examples and case studies, we bridge theory with practice, encouraging a nuanced understanding of power dynamics in contemporary society.
The Era of Corporate Giants
Authors: Lynes Adam , Treadwell James , Bavin Kyla
Published: January 2025

In the contemporary socio-economic landscape, the influence of corporations has burgeoned into a formidable force, reshaping the dynamics of power and governance. This chapter delves into the multifaceted dimensions of the growing influence of corporations, dissecting its impact on politics, society and the global economy. The exploration begins with an analysis of the historical trajectory that has led to the ascendancy of corporations, tracing their evolution from mere economic entities to powerful stakeholders with the ability to sway political decisions and societal norms. By examining key case studies and pivotal moments in corporate history, this chapter seeks to unravel the intricate interplay between governmental policies and corporate strategies that have propelled these entities into positions of unprecedented authority. Furthermore, the chapter explores the symbiotic relationship between corporations and political entities, shedding light on the mechanisms through which corporations leverage their economic clout to influence legislative agendas and regulatory frameworks. It investigates the implications of this synergy on democracy, probing the boundaries between corporate interests and public welfare.
Making a (Corporate) Killing
Authors: Lynes Adam , Treadwell James , Bavin Kyla
Published: January 2025

This chapter confronts the sobering reality of human costs associated with corporate activities, focusing on a number of diverse industries. It meticulously investigates the intricate web of global supply chains, exploring the often-hidden consequences that result in loss of life and human suffering. The initial section delves into why we often fail to recognise the harms that pervade the contemporary landscape and the all too common mistake of thinking that such incidents are due to a few ‘rotten apples’. The chapter then explores why such issues are more systemic than previously realised, with a deep-dive into the expansive and intricate world of iPhone production, fast fashion, fast food, sugary drinks and e-commerce, unravelling the human toll embedded in the manufacturing and labour processes. From the extraction of rare minerals to assembly line operations, the chapter meticulously examines the impact on workers, revealing instances of hazardous working conditions, exploitation and, tragically, deaths. Through in-depth case studies and investigative reports, the chapter aims to shed light on the complexities of corporate responsibility in a technologically driven era.
Housing Narratives for Post-Carbon Inclusive Societies
Authors: Horne Ralph , Nelson Anitra , Dorignon Louise
Published: January 2025

The climate emergency and COVID-19 have brought fresh urgency to both housing financialization and home as building blocks of societies. In westernized homeowner dominated societies, a seemingly eternal housing affordability crisis and gentrification are perennial features of policy agendas. In this context, prospects are assessed for the proliferation of inclusive housing in the post-carbon era, confronting the idea that homeownership is the only or best option, and that a growth model of economic development is the route to achieving this. The chapter forms a bridge between contemporary mainstream narratives of affordable housing and radical degrowth analyses of a prefigurative nature. Housing studies is reflected on as a diverse field, connecting normative ideas of housing as a three-part social construct – a commodity-cum-asset (homeownership, housing markets, investments and capital accumulation); housing with use values offering spaces (shelter) and services and comforts (such as climate control and locational convenience); and housing as ‘home’ where affective dimensions of dwellings connect to subjective meanings, emotions, memory and ontological security.
Still Breathing Unequally? Air Pollution and Post-Carbon Transition
Authors: Walker Gordon , Booker Douglas , Young Paul J.
Published: January 2025

Urban areas are concentrated spaces of fossil fuel burning, always contributing in some degree to both the damaging local effects of polluted urban air and the damaging consequences of accelerated global climate change. For this reason, there are clear and realizable synergies in acting across the domains of air quality governance and carbon governance simultaneously. However, inequalities and injustice already exist in both domains, and it remains an open question whether, in transitioning towards a post-carbon condition, such patterns of inequality will remain or diminish. Whether the apparent co-benefits of acting on carbon and urban air pollutants together will be shared in ways that are inclusive of all parts of urban society or skewed towards only some is also uncertain. In this chapter we consider various dimensions of these questions, focusing on how urban air, and those breathing it in, may fare as transitions unfold.
Cool Inclusion: Thermal Inequality in an Overheating Climate
Authors: Oppermann Elspeth , Walker Gordon , Cross Jamie
Published: January 2025

Climate change is making periods of extreme heat both more intense and more frequent in many places around the world. This chapter considers the interrelation between transitioning to a post-carbon condition and the need to simultaneously adapt to the growing threat from extreme heat. We conceptualize ‘keeping cool’ using the framework of the capabilities approach, before exploring how exclusion from cooling operates within low-income communities in the Global South. We argue that cool inclusion demands explicit attention to social justice, that it entails a fundamental recognition of the struggles involved in avoiding or coping with heat, and that it should be premised on the thermal autonomy to secure what cooling is most needed for. Strategies for cooling in a decarbonizing world must not assume blanket holding down of energy use, but rather engage in questions of justice in relation to populations routinely rendered invisible, illegal and impoverished, including in overarching transition discourses.
From an ‘Imperial Mode of Living’ to a ‘Caring Commons’
Authors: Nelson Anitra
Published: January 2025

This chapter briefly sketches a degrowth perspective revealing the challenge of inequities within global production for trade and flows of trade, and offers a Minority World analysis-cum-response of those implicated in an ‘imperial mode of living’ (Brand and Wissen, 2021[[AQ: a or b?]]). An Australian activist who tries to exchange this mode for a ‘solidarity mode of living’ (Brand and Wissen, 2021[[AQ: a or b?]]) is tracked, including their move to eco-collaborative housing (a key housing for degrowth strategy). Zürich’s ‘radical young housing cooperatives’ model is explored to demonstrate that accessible, affordable and ecologically sustainable best practice models of eco-collaborative housing incorporate aspects of an holistic, feminist, caring economy approach and have transformative potential to overturn the imperial mode of living, pointing towards a solidarity mode of living and caring commons. This discussion benefits from degrowth-aligned Majority World perspectives, engaging with degrowth discourses taking account of global dimensions of post-carbon inclusion.
Forewarned is Forearmed: The Hidden Curriculum of Working with Police Crime Data
Authors: Curtis-Ham Sophie , Tompson Lisa , Czarnomski Sarah
Published: January 2025

Police administrative data systems are an increasingly accessible and varied source of crime data. This chapter outlines the many human and technological intricacies of working with police crime data as a researcher – which are often learned as tricks of the trade over many years. To reveal this ‘hidden curriculum’, we draw from our experiences of working with and within police organizations in England and New Zealand researching crime and policing. We describe the potential for police data to be used in crime research, highlighting opportunities presented by previously underutilized sources. We then cover the pitfalls that researchers new to this area should be forewarned about when acquiring, cleaning, analysing and interpreting police crime data. These arise from the design of data-recording systems, (lack of) data completeness and accuracy, and the many pains – technical and bureaucratic – involved in accessing and understanding different data sources. Throughout we weave advice to circumvent the trials and tribulations that come with obtaining and using police crime data in research.
Self-Reported Data
Authors: Gutiérrez Raquel Bartolomé , Fernández-Molina Esther , Barberet Rosemary
Published: January 2025

One of the central concerns of criminology is how to measure crime. Precise measurement is a precondition for generating valid and reliable knowledge about crime. One of the main methodologies used to measure criminal behaviour is self-reported delinquency (SRD) studies. Although its use is extensive, it is necessary to know its advantages and limitations. In this chapter, we present a brief historical overview of its use in criminology and discuss some aspects that we consider especially relevant. First, we address the question of what information is obtained with SRD surveys about crime. Second, we review the accuracy of the self-report method for knowing the involvement in crime by offenders. Third, we summarize the research on more applied issues, such as forms of administration and the ethical behaviour of researchers who use SRD surveys. Finally, we emphasize the great impact of self-reported data in criminology.
Using Synthetic Crime Data to Understand Patterns of Police Undercounting at the Local Level
Authors: Brunton-Smith Ian , Buil-Gil David , Pina-Sánchez Jose , Cernat Alexandru , Moretti Angelo
Published: January 2025

It is widely known that police recorded crime data provides only a partial picture of the true extent of crimes, with surveys identifying a large number of ‘hidden’ victims. Often referred to as the dark figure of crime, this gap between police records and ‘true’ level of crime has been attributed to a range of influences, including an unwillingness for some victims to report their experiences to the police, coupled with selectivity in police recording practices and errors in the translation of police records into official statistics. Studies have also demonstrated the potentially severe implications of failing to account for these hidden crimes for the veracity of models of crime data. Comparing police records against victim surveys presents us with a potential framework to generate corrected model estimates. But to date we know little about the nature of under-reporting and recording at the local area level, with victim surveys generally only suitable for regional or broad police force-level comparisons. In this chapter we explore a novel solution to this problem, using a synthetic population dataset to examine the extent to which police recording practices vary systematically across England and Wales. Designed to match the UK population on basic demographics as measured by the census, and with each resident given a victimization profile derived from the Crime Survey for England and Wales, this synthetic population enables an examination of the extent of crime undercounting at a range of spatial scales.
The Limits of Deadly Force Databases for Studying Lethal Force by Police
Authors: Jenkins Bryce , Semple Tori , Bennell Craig
Published: January 2025

Although advocates have long been calling for comprehensive databases of deadly force by police, relatively little progress has been made. Given this, various bodies have stepped in to fill this gap (for example, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation). While these efforts have been useful in providing the public with important information about fatal police shootings, existing databases are limited in various ways, especially when used for research purposes. For example, they exclude most police shootings and present a relatively small, non-random sample of situations where an officer discharges their firearm. Evidence suggests that fatal police shootings are not evenly distributed across jurisdictions, but the likelihood of mortality is explained by a range of factors, such as proximity to trauma centres, which leads to geographic variations in fatal shootings. Despite these types of limitations, researchers use these databases to study and make statements about police shootings, including how various reform efforts have influenced lethal force by police. The chapter discusses some of the limitations associated with existing deadly force databases and describes their implications for use-of-force research. Recommendations are presented for researchers who choose to use these sorts of databases for research. In the final section of the chapter, calls for a concerted effort to develop more comprehensive use-of-force databases and describes what they should include. Capturing all police shootings regardless of outcome, would provide a better understanding of the number of times officers discharge their firearm, and also minimize the impact of other limitations that characterize current deadly force databases.
Measuring Intimate Partner Violence Using Different Data Sources: Reflections on a Global Shadow Pandemic
Authors: Morgan Anthony , Boxall Hayley
Published: January 2025

To avoid producing an incomplete or inaccurate impression of the problem they are trying to tackle, crime researchers are frequently discouraged from relying on single sources of data. Instead, they are encouraged to triangulate data sources, to bring different and sometimes disparate perspectives together to make informed decisions about how best to respond. Never has this been more important or apparent than with the current global pandemic and the so-called ‘shadow pandemic’ of intimate partner violence (IPV). There are now numerous studies published from around the world that have attempted to understand the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on IPV. These studies have drawn upon a wide variety of data sources, including police calls for service, incident and arrest data, hotline call data and community surveys. In this chapter, we examine the strengths and weaknesses of different data sources in attempting to measure and understand IPV during the pandemic, focusing specially on the Australian context. In doing so, we will demonstrate the importance of data triangulation and highlight lessons for the analysis, interpretation and presentation of data on complex crime problems to help policy makers and law enforcement.
Queering Kinship
Authors: Tao Han
Published: January 2025

This book examines the dynamic understandings and practices of same-sex intimacies, queer parenting, and queer family making in urban Guangdong, China. What does it mean for Chinese non-heterosexual people to go against existing state regulations and societal norms to form a desirable and legible queer family? Based on yearlong ethnographic fieldwork, this book explores the various tactics queer people employ to have children and to form queer or ‘rainbow’ families. It unpacks people’s experiences of cultivating, or losing, kinship relations through their negotiation with biological relatives, cultural conventions, and state legislations. It argues that non-heterosexual people’s tactics of forming and sustaining mutuality/jiban in their loving and parenting relationships both reproduce and transgress assumptions about ‘blood and biology’ and its centrality in the knowledge of kinship, in that way also blurring the symbolic distinctiveness of blood kin and queer relations. Through its analysis, the book offers a new ethnographic perspective for queer studies and the anthropology of kinship.
Queering Research: Ethnography, Positionality, and Ordinary ‘Queer’
Authors: Tao Han
Published: January 2025

This chapter elucidates the research methods and charts the progression throughout the ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Shenzhen and other urban areas of Guangdong, China from 2018 to 2021. It thoroughly addresses the methodological and ethical challenges encountered, along with strategies employed, encompassing participant recruitment and the delicate dynamics between researcher and subjects. This research seamlessly integrates participant observation and semi-structured interviews to provide a comprehensive understanding of everyday practices. Furthermore, the chapter delves into the intersection of the researcher’s personal background, multiple roles, and queer perspectives within the home field. It emphasizes a commitment to both the ethical principles of ethnographic research and the ethics of friendship. This chapter offers a timely ‘recipe’ for doing fieldwork in sensitive settings and contributes to the evolving discourse on innovative methodologies in social research, particularly within the realm of ‘queering’ research practices.
Queering Intimacy: ‘Just-as-Married’ Same-Sex Relationships
Authors: Tao Han
Published: January 2025

This chapter discusses queer intimate relationships within the shifting landscapes of role terms, love, dating culture, and modernity. It explores the evolving attitudes of non-heterosexual individuals towards same-sex relationships and the dynamic mobilization of seemingly gendered relationship modes. Investigating the strategies employed by queer couples to sustain cohabitating romantic relationships in a societal context where same-sex marriage is not yet recognized, the chapter highlights the centrality of creating an unbreakable concept of jiban/mutuality, a theme developed throughout the book. Drawing from detailed life histories, this chapter uncovers how economic capital and legal constraints shape queer subjects’ perceptions and practices of intimate love in urban China. It underscores how the economic and migrant-driven environments of Shenzhen and Guangzhou influence career and romantic opportunities, revealing the material foundations of loving relationships in the lives of Chinese queer individuals.
Emotions, Structure and Agency
Authors: Margies Nina
Published: January 2025

This chapter introduces the theoretical framework of the book which combines the sociology of emotions with 1) Bourdieu’s theory of practice and 2) Goffman’s interactional theory in order to see emotions as linking structural conditions to the agency of individuals. The former makes it possible to analyse the changed environment in post-crisis Spain with the metaphor of the game in which the field and its rules have changed, while the young people’s ways of seeing and moving in this game have not (yet). Key to understanding the resulting experiences and emotions is the concept of hysteresis that will help us to understand the mismatch between the changed environment and the young people’s ways of being and doing. In considering how the young people then interpreted and dealt with emotions of hysteresis, Goffman’s notions of frames (1974) and stages (1959) are used and combined with Hochschild’s concept of emotion work (1979). They are helpful in showing how people try to explain their experiences of mismatch and use emotion work to adjust.
Feeling Stuck: The Impasse
Authors: Margies Nina
Published: January 2025

Part I delves into the lived experience of hysteresis, that is, feelings of mismatch between the young people’s expectations of how their (working) life should be and their actual opportunities on a crisis-ridden labour market. This mismatch was a central structural condition for young people in post-crisis Spain and, as this part demonstrates, translated into a very particular set of emotions: emotions of hysteresis. This chapter starts by highlighting the devaluation of young people’s educational capital in the aftermath of the economic crisis and the sense of loss this produced. Young people experienced that their acquired educational titles did not lead to the expected conversion into economic capital, entitlements and recognition. They felt stuck. Being stuck, as the chapter then shows, takes on different forms and is presented as four types of impasse: being stuck in the provisional job, being stuck between temporary part-time jobs, being stuck in training loops and being stuck to the normative idea of standard employment.
Emotional Responses
Authors: Margies Nina
Published: January 2025

Central to both hysteresis and situations of impasse was the fact that their circumstances produced a very specific ‘structure of feeling’ (Williams 1977). Financial hardship produced anxiety over how to cover basic needs without financial dependence from parents. Lost promises about education paying off translated into uncertainty about young people’s chances to find work. Many felt losing in recognition and status; they feared declassing causing frustration and resentment. Finally, lost future prospects produced uncertainty and anxiety as young people didn’t know what decisions to make about an unknown future. What we will see in this chapter is that change was an embodied experience and the young people’s emotional responses were expressions of a way of being and doing that had difficulties fitting into and adapting to the changed circumstances after the crisis. The chapter ends by highlighting how emotions of hysteresis were indeed shared among the young people, but were differently oriented due to habitus and social class.
First Interlude: Doing Research From Within the Border Regime
Authors: Trauttmansdorff Paul
Published: January 2025

Between the book’s chapters, I provide three empirical vignettes, termed “Interludes”, with reflections, personal impressions of fieldwork, notes on methodology, or empirical challenges. They should offer the reader a firsthand account of doing research in the digital border regime. Illustrating concrete episodes of fieldwork, I find them particularly advantageous for conveying some of the important personal reflections that undergird the theoretical arguments in the book.
Remaking Whiteness
Authors: Montalva Barba Miguel
Published: January 2025

This chapter focuses on the (re)making of Whiteness and the White race as a place-bound identity. By focusing on residential housing histories, White interview participants outline how they settled into a heteronormative Whiteness with the arrival of their White children. Many of the participants had been involved in ways that were counter to traditional US values, and after their children arrived, they decided to follow traditional paths set for White upper- and middle-class people. The White parents end up using the figuration of the White child to hoard resources and to change the borough to enrich their children at the expense of everyone else.
Property in Contemporary Capitalism
Authors: Ireland Paddy
Published: January 2025

This book seeks to provide a new lens through which to see property and with which to evaluate property theory, examining both with reference to the empirical realities of property in contemporary capitalism, a society in which the ownership of intangibles, particularly revenue rights, has become central to wealth and power. It explores the historical emergence of modern ideas about the nature of property; the rise and growth of new intangible property forms; the nature of ‘investment’ and of property-as-capital; the nature of capitalism and the rise of so-called ‘rentierism’; the increasingly unequal distribution of wealth and its class (and gender and racial) dimensions; and the policy requirements of protecting property-as-capital, with a particular focus on the ‘new constitutionalism’ and derisking. Drawing on work from a wide range of different disciplines (history, anthropology, political economy and political science, as well as law), it argues that our current property system and the economic and moral ‘logic of process’ that it generates bear considerable responsibility for the current ‘polycrisis’ and that much theorising about property serves, sometimes deliberately, sometimes inadvertently, to legitimate and defend the property status quo. The book concludes by examining the contributions that the different conceptions of property currently vying for supremacy – thing-ownership, bundle of rights, social relation – can make to furthering our understanding of property in contemporary capitalist societies and by raising questions about how property (and, indeed, legal phenomena more generally) should be studied.
Profiting from the Efforts of Others
Authors: Ireland Paddy
Published: January 2025

This chapter looks at a second feature of ‘capital’, one identified by the US Supreme Court in the case of SEC v Howey (1946) when it held that an ‘investment’ is, for the purposes of federal securities law, ‘an investment of money … with profits to come solely from the efforts of others’. It looks at the different ways it is possible for the owners of capital (‘investors’) to benefit from the efforts of others, focusing on the ownership of key productive resources (tangible and intangible) and of revenue rights linked to such ownership (like corporate shares), and on the ownership of revenue rights derived from debt (private and public). It moves on to look at the empirical data on the distribution of wealth, looking at its gender and racial as well as class dimensions, and at the growing concentration of wealth in the hands of a small, uber-wealthy minority, with particular focus on the distribution of financial property.
Assessing Intersectionality’s Operationalization: Fields and Issues of Practice
Authors: Christoffersen Ashlee
Published: January 2025

This chapter situates the book within existing knowledge of intersectionality, and more specifically within knowledge of intersectionality’s operationalization. The latter is discussed in distinct and yet related fields of practice (public policy, social movements and the NGO sector), as well as key ‘issues in practice’ which are particularly relevant to the study of intersectionality in the NGO sector: representation, and coalition and solidarity. The chapter provides a rationale for the research, one motivation for which is that there is debate about what intersectionality is and means among scholars, suggesting that there is no one agreed meaning among practitioners either. Gaps in knowledge are identified, including intersectionality’s operationalization in the NGO sector, in the UK context, and how practitioners themselves understand intersectionality. Key debates within intersectionality studies are utilized to establish the parameters of how intersectionality is employed as a framework throughout the book.
Coalition: Solidarity and Intersectional Practice
Authors: Christoffersen Ashlee
Published: January 2025

This chapter examines a key issue to understanding and using intersectionality: coalition, within which relationship building and solidarity are also considered. This chapter asks, when applying intersectionality together, what do equality networks do, and how? How do competing concepts of intersectionality circulate, and with what effects for intersectional solidarity and intersectional justice? Barriers to coalition and solidarity are discussed, particularly engrained siloed thinking and attitudes; coalitions at work are examined, through analysis of network engagement on local equality strategies; and challenges and conflicts that emerge are analysed, specifically an example of conflicts about trans rights. The chapter shares lessons in terms of how intersectional political solidarity can be built, and the concepts of intersectionality that it requires; and what some of the limits to this are. The chapter argues that while coalition is a core part of intersectional practice, which concept of intersectionality is employed by both coalitions themselves and participants in them determines how successful they are at building relationships of solidarity to further intersectional justice.
Trajectories of Governance
Authors: García Pinzón Viviana
Published: January 2025

Urban violence in Latin America has reached unprecedented levels. While most existing scholarship on this is based on the experiences of large and megacities, small and mid-size cities have also been and are places of violence. There is, however, substantial variation between them. Based on an interdisciplinary perspective, this book engages in the study of the complex and variable interrelations between order and violence in peripheral cities of Colombia and El Salvador from a comparative, historical and multiscalar approach. The book develops an analytical framework – with the concept of trajectories of governance at their core – and introduces a typology to capture the diversity of local orders observed across the cases. The project advances the argument that the type of order is contingent on the entanglements between multiscalar processes and place-specific conditions. The interplay between these different aspects has a variety of impacts on those trajectories of governance: affecting, first, the dynamics of local citizenship and the capacity of local ecologies of governance to address citizens’ demands and manage conflict and, second, arrangements regarding the production and regulation of violence. Empirically, the book traces the trajectories of governance in four cities, building on more than a hundred interviews, focus groups and process-generated data. Taken together, the analytical framework and empirical analysis shed new light on the spatiotemporal connections and enabling conditions of different forms of violence in the region and on the dynamics of power and order-making in its contemporary cities.
The Modern History of Summary Justice Efficiency
Authors: Yates Shaun S.
Published: January 2025

This chapter explores the modern history of efficiency reform in the English and Welsh summary justice process. The chapter examines the impact of neoliberalism, New Public Management, and post-managerialism, along with the pivotal roles of New Labour, austerity measures and Conservative government policies. It highlights significant efficiency reforms, offering insights into how these changes have shaped the current state of the summary justice process. Of note are those policies that relate to cooperative case management, the early guilty plea scheme, live link technology, legal aid provisions, the amateurism/professional role of magistrates and, finally, the courts use of diversion. By providing this historical context, the chapter establishes a robust foundation for the study’s subsequent critical discussions.
The Rules of the Community Game
Authors: Lallement Michel
Published: January 2025

This chapter challenges the myth of freely organized, dispute-free communities. By focusing on the many rules that shape communal life, it starts by describing how things function at Twin Oaks (distribution of roles, communication, decision-making methods, and so on) and, secondarily, at Acorn. The chapter shows that the form of social regulation applied at Twin Oaks today still owes much to B.F. Skinner and his Walden Two. It also emphasizes that community life does not exclude conflict or deviance. On the contrary, they are immanent to it. The chapter concludes that communities are above all spaces of compromise between members.
Work: Utopia in Practice
Authors: Lallement Michel
Published: January 2025

This chapter presents the utopian origins of the work arrangements adopted at Twin Oaks and tests their implications in areas outside market control. It first shows that to bring their ideal of equality to life, the members of Twin Oaks drew inspiration from the writings of B.F. Skinner and, through him, from the seminal thinking of journalist and novelist Edward Bellamy (1850–1898). He then shows how the work organization adopted at Twin Oaks combines the principles of variety, freedom, and equality. Finally, a comparison with Acorn demonstrates the tension between freedom and equality in the implementation of community work.
The Flip Sides of Community Work
Authors: Lallement Michel
Published: January 2025

This chapter looks at the flip sides of community work. It illustrates, on the advantages side, the intrinsic rewards of community work and the possibilities for freedom in effectuating it are not always enough to mobilize the required labour. Extrinsic non-monetary rewards – the positive flip side of work – complete the range of expected benefits. But there is also a dark side of productive activities, which are not always as pleasant as utopian rhetoric might suggest. On this constraint side, peer pressure and threats are effective ways of limiting insufficient commitment to work, even when the job is not to a person’s liking. At Twin Oaks, communards who fail to meet their quotas fall into the ‘labour hole’.
Platforms and the Social Imaginary of Ordinary Life
Authors: del Nido Juan M.
Published: January 2025

How do universalizing discourses celebrating platforms’ empowerment, freedom, and self-reliance perpetuate themselves despite evidence challenging them? What kind of work is the notion of the platform doing to further, sustain, or reproduce that universalism? Drawing from ethnographic case studies, this chapter suggests this universalism persists because platforms are only a particularly literal, intense and absolute embodiment of a social imaginary that we have known for centuries, secular but mystical, premised on the exaltation of ordinary life. This ordinary life hinges on a moral order we understand intuitively and take as common sense, where it is rightful that each of us tends to their own needs as they see fit; where we extol the ways of knowing ordinary experience provides; and where popular choice is the seat of the ultimate, and ultimately only, legitimacy.
Voice Intelligence and the Future of Engagement Metrics on Commercial Platforms
Authors: Turow Joseph
Published: January 2025

The rise of voice-driven platforms and the marketing intelligence they provide points to a future of personalized biometric engagement that will reshape the ways marketers consider and interact with individuals. The aim of this chapter is to use the emergence of voice and intelligence marketing in the US to present concepts that help explore these concerns and their implications for the individual and society. I explore the approaches and justifications driving the understanding and enumeration of audiences in a new platform, smart speakers, within the US context on the basis of a comprehensive review of articles about voice technologies, smart speakers and new metrics of engagement to explore how these developments affect not just marketers but the media system and society at large.
Brokering Data Markets: The Agentive Power of App Builders at the Edge of Platforms
Authors: Otto Eva Iris
Published: January 2025

The mobile app economy is premised on the work of intermediaries like the Danish app agency Monocle, which build apps for and upon the frameworks of Big Tech platform companies while selling apps to local markets. Recently, the integration of advertising and user data into apps has further integrated Big Tech platform companies into the app economy. Analyses touching upon the relationship between intermediaries and platform companies tend to posit this relation as either symbiotic or exploitative, in both instances neglecting the agentive power of local app developers. This, however, glosses over the crucial work of brokerage that such intermediaries perform in liaising with and translating between different markets. This chapter shifts the perspective to the intermediaries and their role as triadic brokers as they navigate spaces of opaqueness, and highlights how companies such as Monocle give shape to software materialities and user-data entities when brokering between local markets and transnational economies dominated by multinational platform companies.
After the Attention Economy: A Postdigital Anthropology of the Future
Authors: Pedersen Morten Axel
Published: January 2025

In this afterword, I ask what comes after the attention economy. I revisit Lyotard’s concept of the postmodern to discuss and reinterpret the postdigital beyond mere historic periodization. On the basis of this framework, I ask what will replace the attention economies of large platforms as large language models are entering the scene.