Centre for Metropolitan History Annual Report 2003-4

The Centre produces a short report each year covering its activities. This is the report for 1 August 2003 - 31 July 2004

Newsletter Networks in the Feminist History and Archives Movement

This article examines how networks have been critical to the construction of feminist histories. The author examines the publication Matrices: A Lesbian/Feminist Research Newsletter (1977–1996), to argue that a feminist network mode can be traced through the examination of small-scale print newsletters that draw on the language and function of networks. Publications such as Matrices emerge into wide production and circulation in the 1970s alongside feminist community archives, and newsletters and archives work together as interconnected social movement technologies. Newsletters enabled activist-researchers writing feminist histories to share difficult-to-access information, resources, and primary sources via photocopying and other modes of print reproduction.  Looking from the present, the author examines how network thinking has been a feature of feminist activism and knowledge production since before the Internet, suggesting that publications such as Matrices are part of a longer history of networked communications media in feminist contexts

Communicating moral legitimacy in controversial industries: the trade in human tissue

Globally active companies are involved in the discursive construction of moral legitimacy. Establishing normative conformance is problematic given the plurality of norms and values worldwide, and is particularly difficult for companies operating in morally controversial industries. In this paper, we investigate how organizations publicly legitimize the trade of human tissue for private profit when this practice runs counter to deep-seated and widespread moral beliefs. To do so, we use inductive, qualitative methods to analyze the website discourse of three types of organizations that trade in human tissue and are associated with different degrees of moral controversy with respect to tissue procurement and use. Our analysis reveals an object-oriented approach to moral legitimizing centered on the human tissue as a morally disputed good. We find that the website discourse translates human tissue into technology, constructs normative meaning around a dominant instrumental value associated with human-tissue-as-technology, and reproduces and stabilizes this meaning by six discursive mechanisms that amplify and anchor it. Moreover, the use of amplifying and anchoring discourse was greater in organizations associated with greater controversy. The results are consistent with an object-oriented sociality

PREDON Scientific Data Preservation 2014

LPSC14037Scientific data collected with modern sensors or dedicated detectors exceed very often the perimeter of the initial scientific design. These data are obtained more and more frequently with large material and human efforts. A large class of scientific experiments are in fact unique because of their large scale, with very small chances to be repeated and to superseded by new experiments in the same domain: for instance high energy physics and astrophysics experiments involve multi-annual developments and a simple duplication of efforts in order to reproduce old data is simply not affordable. Other scientific experiments are in fact unique by nature: earth science, medical sciences etc. since the collected data is "time-stamped" and thereby non-reproducible by new experiments or observations. In addition, scientific data collection increased dramatically in the recent years, participating to the so-called "data deluge" and inviting for common reflection in the context of "big data" investigations. The new knowledge obtained using these data should be preserved long term such that the access and the re-use are made possible and lead to an enhancement of the initial investment. Data observatories, based on open access policies and coupled with multi-disciplinary techniques for indexing and mining may lead to truly new paradigms in science. It is therefore of outmost importance to pursue a coherent and vigorous approach to preserve the scientific data at long term. The preservation remains nevertheless a challenge due to the complexity of the data structure, the fragility of the custom-made software environments as well as the lack of rigorous approaches in workflows and algorithms. To address this challenge, the PREDON project has been initiated in France in 2012 within the MASTODONS program: a Big Data scientific challenge, initiated and supported by the Interdisciplinary Mission of the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS). PREDON is a study group formed by researchers from different disciplines and institutes. Several meetings and workshops lead to a rich exchange in ideas, paradigms and methods. The present document includes contributions of the participants to the PREDON Study Group, as well as invited papers, related to the scientific case, methodology and technology. This document should be read as a "facts finding" resource pointing to a concrete and significant scientific interest for long term research data preservation, as well as to cutting edge methods and technologies to achieve this goal. A sustained, coherent and long term action in the area of scientific data preservation would be highly beneficial

Western Institution Building:The War, Hayek’s Cosmos and the WTO

Despite the shortcomings of Hayek’s spontaneous order, there is a positive side, perhaps even a positive feedback. Hayek left us with a “what if” question and returns us to that initial opening of Pandora’s Box, or perhaps the initial onset of neo-realism, neo-liberalism, developmentalism, globalism, transnationalism and other concepts, precepts and adjectives justifying institution building by bargaining and military force. In terms of new world order, institution building by necessity requires fundamental changes in governmental structures in non-Western cultures and nation-states such as China, Afghanistan and Iraq. Such changes are being prompted by means of political, economic and military powers of the U.S. and other developed nation-states, and international intergovernmental organizations dominated by developed nation-states such as the World Trade Organization. However arguably well intended there remains the question of what will eventually result from the introduction of Western institutions into non-Western cultures and developing countries. This article explores F. A. Hayek’s discourse concerning taxis and cosmos (Kosmos), in terms of institution building. This article addresses why China presents an instance of institution building by bargaining, while countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan offer instances of institution building by military force, then directs emphasis toward institutional and constitutional reform, and an evolution of Western law in non-Western cultures and developing nation- states such as China, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Although Hayek may have had contrary intentions, his discourse on taxis and cosmos (Kosmos), and spontaneous order, nonetheless, challenges a modern Western world to rethink its priorities and policies, and perhaps even foundational ideologies, especially in the realm of rebuilding non-Western cultures and developing countries.Western, Institution building, F. A. Hayek, War, WTO, Cosmos, constitutions, laws, international, politics, economics, military, force, neo-realism, neo-liberalism, developmentalism, globalism, transnationalism

Reading Mediated Identities: Auto/biographical Agency in the Material Book, Museum Space, Social Media Platforms, and Archives

Ph.D