Thoughts about a General Theory of Influence in a DIME/PMESII/ASCOP/IRC2 Model

The leading question of this paper is: “How would influence warfare (“iWar”) work and how can we simulate it?” The paper discusses foundational aspects of a theory and model of influence warfare by discussing a framework built along the DIME/PMESII/ASCOP dimension forming a prism with three axes. The DIME concept groups the many instruments of power a nation state can muster into four categories: Diplomacy, Information, Military and Economy. PMESII describes the operational environment in six domains: Political, Military, Economic, Social, Information and Infrastructure. ASCOPE is used in counter insurgency (COIN) environments to analyze the cultural and human environment (aka the “human terrain”) and encompasses Areas, Structures, Capabilities, Organization, People and Events. In addition, the model reflects about aspects of information collection requirements (ICR) and information capabilities requirements (ICR) - hence DIME/PMESII/ASCOP/ICR2. This model was developed from an influence wargame that was conducted in October 2018. This paper introduces basic methodical questions around model building in general and puts a special focus on building a framework for the problem space of influence/information/hybrid warfare takes its shape in. The article tries to describe mechanisms and principles in the information/influence space using cross discipline terminology (e.g. physics, chemistry and literature). On a more advanced level this article contributes to the Human, Social, Culture, Behavior (HSCB) models and community. One goal is to establish an academic, multinational and whole of government influence wargamer community. This paper introduces the idea of the perception field understood as a molecule of a story or narrative that influences an observer. This molecule can be drawn as a selection of vectors that can be built inside the DIME/PMESII/ASCOP prism. Each vector can be influenced by a shielding or shaping action. These ideas were explored in this influence wargame

The vulnerable subject

Academic freedom is formally supported but often challenged, through activities like no-platforming and through a sentiment of sensitivity and an understanding that ideas can be harmful. This development is discussed here as a reflection of the rise of the ‘vulnerable subject.’ This paper demonstrates the growing importance of vulnerability as the central human characteristic in (post) modern times and with reference to law and justice practices explains the ‘collapse of the harm principle.’ Developed through Frank Furedi’s theory of diminished subjectivity we will demonstrate the extent to which the vulnerable subject has been institutionalised and adopted as a new (fragmented) norm. Within the framework of diminished subjectivity, the inner logic of vulnerability has a spiralling dynamic—once adopted as a norm, the vulnerable subject’s answer to the question ‘vulnerable to what?’ constantly expands, drawing in ever more areas of life, behaviour, relationships as well as words and ideas into a regulatory framework. Concerns about overcriminalisation are understood here to be a product of this vulnerable subject, something that cannot be resolved at the level of law but must relate to the wider cultural and political sense of human progress and a defence of the robust liberal subject in society

Society seen through the prism of space: outline of a theory of society and space

Two questions challenge the student of space and society above all others: will new technologies change the spatial basis of society ? And if so, will this have an impact on society itself ? For the urbanist, these two questions crystallise into one: what will the future of cities have to do with their past ? Too often these questions are dealt with as though they were only matters of technology. But they are much more than that. They are deep and difficult questions about the interdependence of technology, space and society that we do not yet have the theoretical apparatus to answer. We know that previous �revolutions� in technology such as agriculture, urbanism and industrialisation associated radical changes in space with no less radical changes in social institutions. But we do not know how far these linkages were contingent or necessary. We do not, in short, have a theory of society and space adequate to account for where we are now, and therefore we have no reasonable theoretical base for speculating about the future. In this paper, I suggest that a major reason for this theoretical deficit is that most previous attempts to build a theory of society and space have looked at society and tried to find space in its output. The result has been that the constructive role of space in creating and and sustaining society has not been brought to the fore, or if it has, only in a way which is too general to permit the detailed specification of mechanisms. In this paper I try to reverse the normal order of things this by looking first at space and trying the discern society through space: by looking at society through the prism of space. Through this I try to define key mechanisms linking space to society and then use these to suggest how the questions about the future of cities and societies might be better defined

Narrativization of Religious Conversion Experience in the Environment of Evangelical Protestantism in Ukraine

In the context of this article and in the perspective of interpretational approach we have considered possibilities of sociological analysis of a religious conversion. Based on examples of Evangelical Protestantism communities functioning on the territory of Ukraine the author analyzes peculiarities of building and structuring conversion narratives, a strategy of representation of the religious experience, linguistic means and tools used in this process. A religious conversion is considered as a particular discursive practice or a religious communication related to producing a narrative, which on the one hand reflects changes occurring to a person who passed through a conversion experience, and on the other hand the narrative itself preconditions such changes by means of adaptation of a canonic language of the religious group. Conversion cases considered by the author allow making a conclusion about existence of steady communicative conversion models at the level of Evangelical Protestantism which determinative distinction is reconstruction of the biographical experience in compliance with the “plot” predetermined by a canonic discourse of the considered communities

Blame and the Messengers: Journalism as a Puritan Prism for Cultural Policies in Britain

This study proposes that legacies of Puritanism are reflected in the way journalists cover a range of events and processes. The consequences are ambiguous: sometimes they may be harmful, other times they are laudable. Media coverage of the death of Peter Connelly (Baby P) in 2007 is chosen as an example of the social production of cultures of guilt and blame. In particular, journalists’ productive efforts perform significant and active roles in colouring public responses to events. Thereby journalists may reflect in their secularised ethics the hidden influences of nineteenth-century Evangelical traditions and earlier Calvinist ones. Following the analysis of Weber, the paper argues that media approaches to rationality also reflect an impress of lingering Puritan structures of thought. The argument contrasts journalism with the Bohemian writing traditions, which were perhaps suffocated by more urgent Calvinistic approaches alongside the development of industrial capitalism. The paper concludes that newsroom practices and values amount to implicit or covert cultural policies of their own

Menorah Review (No. 12, Winter, 1988)

Recovering Scripture -- Jewish and Secular Bioethics -- The Republic of Moses -- Book Briefings -- Forthcomin