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This volume explores activism, research and critique in the age of digital subjects and objects and Big Data capitalism after a digital turn said to have radically transformed our political futures. Optimists assert that the ‘digital’ promises: new forms of community and ways of knowing and sensing, innovation, participatory culture, networked activism, and distributed democracy. Pessimists argue that digital technologies have extended domination via new forms of control, networked authoritarianism and exploitation, dehumanization and the surveillance society. Leading international scholars present varied interdisciplinary assessments of such claims – in theory and via dialogue – and of the digital’s impact on society and the potentials, pitfalls, limits and ideologies, of digital activism. They reflect on whether computational social science, digital humanities and ubiquitous datafication lead to digital positivism that threatens critical research or lead to new horizons in theory and society.
Book Details
London is one of the world’s most popular destinations and visitors contribute approximately £14.9 billion of expenditure to the city every year; its tourism and events sectors are growing and over the last few years the capital has received more visitors than ever before. This book analyses how London is developing through the expansion of tourism and events into new urban spaces. It outlines how parts of London not previously regarded as tourist territory are now subject to the visitor gaze with tourism spreading to peripheral, suburban and residential areas. The book explores these trends and shows how urban destinations expand highlighting the growing significance of tourism and events in global cities.
Feminist theories and Science and Technology Studies (STS) may enrich a critique of finance capital as the author argues that a critical political economic approach to communication can help in understanding financial markets. Working with case histories of tulipmania, microcredit, Wall Street reporting and the role of ‘screens’, Bubbles and Machines argues that rather than calling financial crises human-made or inevitable they should be recognised as technological.
