Part of
The objective of this book is to outline how a radically democratic politics can be reinvigorated in theory and practice through the use of the internet. The author argues that politics in its proper sense can be distinguished from anti-politics by analyzing the configuration of public space, subjectivity, participation, and conflict. Each of these terrains can be configured in a more or less political manner, though the contemporary status quo heavily skews them towards anti-political configuration.
Using this understanding of what exactly politics entails, this book considers how the internet can both help and hinder efforts to move each area in a more political direction. By explicitly interpreting contemporary theories of the political in terms of the internet, this analysis avoids the twin traps of both technological determinism and technological cynicism.
Raising awareness of what the word ‘politics’ means, the author develops theoretical work by Arendt, Rancière, Žižek and Mouffe to present a clear and coherent view of how in theory, politics can be digitized and alternatively how the internet can be deployed in the service of trulydemocratic politics.
Book Details
Will be part of the Critical Digital and Social Media Studies series
Not since Marx identified the manufacturing plants of Manchester as the blueprint for the new capitalist society has there been a deeper transformation of the fundamentals of our social life. As capitalism faces a series of structural crises, a new social, political and economic dynamic is emerging: peer-to-peer. This book asks what is peer-to-peer (P2P)? Why is it so important to building a commons-centric future? And how could this happen? Using a political economy framework this book discusses various cases exemplifying P2P commons-orientated value models. This book aims to critically intervene through proposals for a commons transition strategy. In this way it illustrates how state, market and civil society can build more inclusive and sustainable institutions.
The Blitz Companion offers a unique overview of a century of aerial warfare, its impact on cities and the people who lived in them. It tells the story of aerial warfare from the earliest bombing raids and premonitions through to the NATO bombings during the Balkan Wars of the 1990s, and subsequent bombings in the aftermath of 9/11. The book focuses on air raids precautions, evacuation and preparations for total war, and resilience, both of citizens and of cities. The legacies of air raids, from reconstruction to commemoration, are also discussed. Uniquely accessible, comparative and broad in scope this book draws key conclusions about civilian experience in the twentieth century.
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.
