Digital Commons Network^™

From Retaliation To Restoration: Evaluating Norwegian Prison Rehabilitation Models For United States Integration, Lucas I. Abbott

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This study evaluates the viability of implementing Norwegian rehabilitative frameworks within the American prison system by gathering the perspectives of formerly incarcerated men in the United States. Using a qualitative phenomenological design, the research sought to understand how American offenders perceive Norwegian normalization techniques, such as single-occupancy rooms, humane architectural environments, respectful inmate-officer relationships, and their potential to promote rehabilitation and reduce recidivism. Fifteen participants who had served a minimum of three weeks in correctional institutions completed open-ended questionnaires analyzed through conceptual content analysis. Findings revealed strong support for individualized rooms, normalized environments, and increased positive human interaction as transformative …

Livestreaming A Doitocracy: Platform-Jumping Participatory Practices In Modular Synthesis Gear Cultures, Eliot Bates

Publications and Research

Earth Modular Society (EMS) is a cross-platform community dedicated to live hardware modular synthesis, with their primary efforts going into a 24/7 modular “radio station” that livestreams on Twitch and YouTube, and a supporting Discord chat server. Although part of the broader modular synthesis gear culture (a large-scale social formation that coalesces around specific classes of fetishized technical objects), EMS represents a new development in gear cultures as it foregrounds live performance and minimizes the accrual of status via conspicuous consumption. The normative governance structures of platform-specific gear culture communities preclude all but one or a handful of users from …

Beyond Beltway And Bible Belt: Re-Imagining The Democratic Party And The American Left, Ben Agger

Fast Capitalism

No abstract provided.

Niebuhr's America, Charles Lemert

Fast Capitalism

No abstract provided.

Homegrown Democracy, Homegrown Democrats, Norman K. Denzin

Fast Capitalism

No abstract provided.

Remembering Derrida, Robert J. Antonio

Fast Capitalism

No abstract provided.

Valuable Objects And Their Differentiation In Social Space And Time, Emmanuel Smikun

Fast Capitalism

No abstract provided.

E-Mail: Connections, Contexts, And Another Space, Terry Caesar

Fast Capitalism

No abstract provided.

The Mobile Phone In Everyday Life, Hannah Rippin

Fast Capitalism

This paper explores how ordinary people use their mobile phones [cell phones in the U.S. and Canada] to interact in everyday life. These people are virtual selves, but the impact of their mobiles is very real. Mobile phone technology, more than any other, has the ability to envelop its users in a sphere of perpetual contact and instant access, touching every aspect of their daily lives.

The virtual self is connected to the world by information technologies that invade not only the home and office but the psyche. This can either trap or liberate people… By virtual self, I am …

Timescapes Of The Network Society, Robert Hassan

Fast Capitalism

Since the late ‘70s, the mutually reinforcing interaction between neoliberal economics and the revolution in information and communication technologies (ICTs) has transformed the world in many ways. “Globalization” is what we have come to call this process, and many aspects of its profound effect have been analyzed from a range of perspectives (e.g. Appadurai 1990; Robertson 1993; Omahe 1993; Waters 1995; Bauman 1998; Steger 2003). This paper discusses a central element of this change through globalization that has so far received relatively little attention—our relationship with time and how this is changing, in turn, the nature of power and politics. …

Speed: Through, Across, And In — The Landscapes Of Capital, Robert Goldman, Stephen Papson, Noah Kersey

Fast Capitalism

No abstract provided.

About The Authors, Fast Capitalism Editorial Team

Fast Capitalism

No abstract provided.

Full Issue, Fast Capitalism Editorial Team

Fast Capitalism

No abstract provided.

C. Wright Mills: A New Left For A New Day, Charles Lemert

Fast Capitalism

Thomas Paine, during a crucial moment in the American war against its colonizers, said famously: “These are times that try men’s souls.” Many think, I among them, that these too are times that try men’s souls. At such a time, one must look back for clues as to what to think and do. One from not that long ago who lends us wisdom of a sort is C. Wright Mills, who in the 1950s, tried to make sense of America’s changing culture. However, a bad heart killed him in 1962, just after he wrote of the possibility of a New …

The Right-Wing’S Dirty War Against History And Education: Beyond The Politics Of Disappearance, Henry A. Giroux

Fast Capitalism

The past haunts the present moment because it increasingly offers terrifying narratives and images of what Walter Benjamin once called “a catastrophe that keeps piling ruin upon ruin.”1 The catastrophe to which Benjamin refers is the ghost of fascism and its irrepressible ability to reappear in different forms at certain moments in history. At the present time, memory and catastrophe have merged as past images that flash before us, signaling danger and suggesting that the current era is a “state of emergency” that is no longer “the exception but the rule.”2

Full Issue, Fast Capitalism Editorial Team

Fast Capitalism

No abstract provided.

Fighting For Justice In The Neoliberal University: The Promise Of Reflexive And Flexible Solidarity, Timothy Gibson, Bethany Letiecq

Fast Capitalism

In the neoliberal university, faculty are encouraged to build strong connections in virtually every way except one: as workers. In this paper, we will discuss our experiences as leaders of the XXX chapter of the American Association of University Professors, with a focus on our campaign to build across-campus labor coalition connecting faculty, students, staff, and contract workers in the struggle for economic and social justice. We will begin by examining the constellation of structural forces and professional hierarchies that amplify labor exploitation on campus, subvert shared governance and academic freedom, and cultivate a campus culture of disconnection, competition, and …

Full Issue, Fast Capitalism Editorial Team

Fast Capitalism

No abstract provided.

“Rise Of The Resistance” And The Demise Of Social Being: The Autolysis Of Subjectivity In The Twenty-First Century, Reha Kadakal

Fast Capitalism

Structural transformations in the 21st century necessitate radical rethinking of the category of subject that underlie the notions of autonomy, agency and individuality. This paper depicts an onto-genetic transformation of the subject— its autolysis—in the historical present by building on representations and the mediation of categories of social life. The paper first delineates the notion of representation as a central element of critical ontology as a form of social theory by building on Hegel and Durkheim. It then draws on a recent product from the culture industry, namely The Disneyland theme-park ride called “Rise of the Resistance,” which involves a …

Downloading Is Killing Music: Napster And The Recording Industry’S Piracy Panic Narrative, David M. Arditi

Fast Capitalism

Beginning in the late 1990s and the arrival of the file-sharing program Napster, the recording industry used a “piracy panic narrative” in an attempt not only to prevent file-sharing, but also, to change the basic parameters of copyright law. In this piracy panic narrative, major record labels and their representative trade associations made the argument that file-sharing is piracy, piracy is stealing, and this stealing hurts recording artists. In this paper, I argue that the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) used this narrative in the United States to change public opinion on file-sharing with the ultimate goal of changing …

Metallica, Napster And The Transformation Of Subcultural Capital, Justin Patch

Fast Capitalism

On June 1, 1999, Napster went live, ushering in profound changes in the music industry and consumer behavior. The new software popularized peer-to-peer (p2p) file sharing, which enabled those running the software to search and download files from the hard drives of other PCs on the system. Within months, there were millions of songs available for download from computers around the world. In April, on the heels of a law suit by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), Metallica became the first artist to sue Napster for copyright infringement, a lawsuit that, combined with the RIAA suit and another …

Independent Music After Metallica V. Napster, Inc.: Seeking Liberation In The Music Streaming Simulacrum, Lukas Szrot

Fast Capitalism

In this brief paper, I note the ways in which being a musician has changed in the aftermath of the digital downloading and file-sharing developed by Napster pioneer Shawn Fanning, through the lens of the music streaming simulacrum—my term for what has unfolded since. I contrast the present environment with the potential that emerged with this technology. I theorize the music streaming simulacrum as opaque, flat, and hegemonic—a parody of both industry and culture that incomprehensible by a single human being, militates against deeper connectivity between artist and listener, and exerts outsized power over human behavior and decision-making in a …

Convenience Begets Capitalism, Jörgen Behrendtz

Fast Capitalism

This is a short polemical piece, and does not have an abstract as such.

A Capitalist Stranglehold On “Artificial Intelligence”: A Gallop Through Piracy, Privacy Invasion, Lock-In And A Fever Dream Of Democratisation, Aidan Cornelius-Bell

Fast Capitalism

In this paper, I discuss the emergence of personal computing, the rise of platform-controlled smartphones and tablets, and the recent surge in artificial intelligence technologies. I explore how these technological advancements have often been shaped by the interests of capital, with recent trends towards increased platform lock-in, control, and exploitation of users (workers). I argue that without a strong push for open-source, democratised AI, these technologies risk being used to further the globalised colonial capitalist project. I highlight the potential for open-source hardware and software to counter the proprietary and un-hackable future of AI, offering a radical alternative that empowers …

The Artificiality Of Digital Scarcity: Contradictions Between Code, Law, Norms, And Value(S), Anthony Jack Knowles

Fast Capitalism

The rise and fall of Napster represented a major turning point in the history of the internet as it simultaneously paved the way for peer-to-peer filesharing as well as ushered in a backlash from incumbent media companies backed by an army of lawyers. This essay grapples with the ramifications of this struggle against filesharing and piracy that forever changed the internet. Much of how and why the internet is structured as it is can be explained through recognizing that this contradictory state of affairs is due to the inherent properties of the internet and digital files when "forced" to fit …

Napster's Mediations, Gavin Mueller

Fast Capitalism

While Napster has often been understood as a force for disintermediation, this essay examines three possible levels that Napster could be theorized as engaged in mediation: the level of protocol, the level of interface, and the level of culture. Each has implications for how we understand the politics of Napster, and peer-to-peer more generally.

Inciting Infringement And Innovation: From Napster To Now - The Dialectic Of Law And Technology, Matthew David

Fast Capitalism

The original Napster had only a short life, but what it set in motion has lasted and been significant. From 1999 to 2001(2) the Napster platform offered the first widely known and widely adopted music file-sharing download service; combining internet distribution and MP3 file-compression with its own central server acting to enable user uploading and downloading of music. Whilst Napster was shut down for ‘contributory infringement’ on the grounds that its central server directly facilitated copyright infringing downloading, its closure on these grounds saw the rise of fully peer-to-peer (P2P) services such as Kazaa. When P2P uploaders were targeted for …

Napster "Freedom" At Northeastern University: A Distanced Ethnography, Marcus Breen

Fast Capitalism

This article offers a critical first hand account, from an academic at Northeastern University after Napster's creator Sean Fanniong left the campus in 1999. Reflecting on the impact of Fanning on the campus, drawing on the history of community computer innovation in Boston as a means of activism, the article identifies through Marx, the way monopoly capitalism destroyed Napster's capacity for free music culture. The impact of Intellectual Property law in shutting down digital innovations such as Napster, is considered for the impact it had on the ideals of the liberal university in the United States.

Introduction: Napster At 25, David M. Arditi

Fast Capitalism

Author Biography

David M. Arditi, University of Texas Arlington

Associate Professor of Sociology

Director - Center for Theory

Classroom To Campus: A Qualitative Case Study Of Exemplary First-Year Seminar Instructors In Student Transitions At A Louisiana University, Brianna J. Doucet

Doctoral Dissertations

This qualitative case study examined how exemplary first-year seminar (FYS) instructors design and implement pedagogical strategies that support students’ transitions into higher education through the lens of Schlossberg’s (1981) Transition Theory. Conducted at a public university in Louisiana, the study explored how university-identified, award-winning instructors foster academic, social, and emotional adjustment among first-year students, a critical priority amid the impending enrollment cliff and the growing need to retain enrolled students. Using semi-structured interviews and thematic analysis, findings revealed exemplary instructors design intentional, relational, and reflective learning environments. They view transition as a shared institutional process, model adaptability and lifelong learning, …