Theory, Knowledge and Science Commons^™

The General Artificial Intellect, Ramon S. Diab

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In passages of Marx’s Grundrisse known as the Fragment on Machines, Marx suggested that advanced capitalist development leads to the production of autonomous machines that replace labour-power in the direct production process. Autonomist Marxist interpretations of this text have emphasized that the proliferation of immaterial labour is the historical condition that is leading to a crisis in the measure of value based on labour-time and that will lead to a future communist mode of production. Further, Mario Tronti posited that as capitalist development unfolds, it subsumes both the state and society, a concept known as the ‘social factory thesis’. …

Product Categories As Judgment Devices: The Moral Awakening Of The Investment Industry, Diane-Laure Arjalies

Business Publications

Product categories are more than classification devices that organize markets; when reflecting market actors' purposes, they are also judgment devices. Taking stock of the literature on product categories and drawing on the distinction between the faculties of knowing and judging, we elaborate a framework that accounts for how and why market actors include or exclude normative attributes in a product category definition. Based on a field study of the development of Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) funds in France, we describe the phases and conditions of a judgment framework for category definition, for both established and nascent categories. We discuss implications …

Ideology Over Evidence? The Place Of Values Within The Safe Streets And Communities Act, Alyssa Holden

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In the context of Canadian policymaking, the alleged ‘punitive turn’ demonstrated by the Harper government from 2006-2015 was extraordinary. Under this turn, punitiveness coincided with a rejection of empirical evidence (Kelly and Puddister, 2017; Doob and Webster, 2015 2016; Marshall, 2015; Newell, 2013 Mallea, 2010). The controversial bill, the Safe Streets and Communities Act, has been regarded as one of the most poignant examples of this rhetoric (Marshall, 2015; Newell, 2013). This thesis investigated the role of evidence and penal populism in policymaking through a content analysis of the legislative debates of the SSCA. Drawing on a neo-Weberian framework this …

The Politics Of Wounds, Jonathan Nash

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

What configuration of strategies and discourses enable the white male and settler body politic to render itself as simultaneously wounded and invulnerable? I contextualize this question by reading the discursive continuities between Euro-America’s War on Terror post-9/11 and Algeria’s War for Independence. By interrogating political-philosophical responses to September 11, 2001 beside American rhetoric of a wounded nation, I argue that white nationalism, as a mode of settler colonialism, appropriates the discourses of political wounding to imagine and legitimize a narrative of white hurt and white victimhood; in effect, reproducing and hardening the borders of the nation-state. Additionally, by turning to …

No Justice Without Narratives:Transition, Justice And The Khmer Rouge Trials, Tallyn Gray Dr

Transitional Justice Review

The article addresses the relationship between the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) and the supposed constituents of that transitional justice institution. The article sets out to offer a sociological methodology that TJ mechanism could contemplate in the process of enabling victims/witnesses to narrate justice and transition in their own terms and using Cambodia as a case study. It offers a theoretical and methodological approach to be reflected upon by transitional justice scholars and practitioners, which may enable a more victim-centered attitude in practical interactions with atrocity survivors ( not a cure-all policy solution ). My own research …

Knowledge Translation And The Governance Of Health Research In Canada: A Critical Discourse Analysis, Kathleen S. Ellis

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Knowledge translation (KT) is a dominant discourse in the governance of health research in Canada. I critically examine the KT discourse of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), Canada’s major health research funder. Informed by a governmentality perspective, I explore how the KT discourse operates to shape the directions of health research and the activities of health researchers using critical discourse analysis with a sample of publicly available CIHR documents.

This KT discourse is constructed through three rationales: a “gap” between knowledge creation and its application; financial and health care accountabilities for public investment in health research; and, the …

Manufacturing Legitimacy: A Critical Theory Of Election News Coverage, Gabriel N. Elias

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

To what degree does instrumental reason influence election news coverage? Using Habermas's understanding of system/life-world as a heuristic, I map the rationalization process of political communication. This illuminates the institutional logics at play in the field of politics and the field of journalism, and the way the social dynamics between them enable the framing of political life as a strategic game. This understanding is then contextualized within an analysis of the media frames that informed the Canadian federal election of 2011. I find that news coverage does tend to focus on political strategy; but this is not wholly at the …

Biopolitics Of Climate Change: Carbon Commodities, Environmental Profanations, And The Lost Innocence Of Use-Value, Emanuele Leonardi

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The analytical core of this study is the historical development of the relationship between nature and the capitalist mode of production. In particular, we aim at shedding light on the process through which the “grammar” of ecological crisis (and consequently of its possible solutions) turned into an exclusively economic one. In addressing this issue we discuss the successive problematisations of the environment that took place since the emergence of biopolitical governmentality (late Eighteenth century). Following Foucault's intuition, and supplementing it with aspects of Marxist analysis, we argue for a profound transformation – based on a crucial leap of abstraction – …