Le déplacement, l’humanitarisme et le business de l’anthropologie

Les métaphores de submersion et de « flux » sont souvent appliquées dans la sphère publique aux phénomènes de déplacement et de migration, mais il y aussi des « vagues » et des « marées » d’acteurs humanitaires, de « bénévoles » et de chercheurs qui se concentrent maintenant sur les réfugiés. Les interventions humanitaires, sécuritaires et anthropologiques dans la « crise des réfugiés » européenne de 2015-2016 s’inscrivent souvent dans une logique commune d’urgence et de crise. Les principaux problèmes et pièges des tendances anthropologiques actuelles dans l’étude des déplacements aux portes de l’Europe sont liés aux dimensions business du travail anthropologique. Le business de l’anthropologie renforce le régime européen de gestion des réfugiés, qui fait des transfrontaliers des cibles policières, d’intervention et d’étude.Metaphors using “flooding” and “flows” are often applied in the public sphere to describe the phenomena of displacement and migration. There are also “waves” and “tides” of humanitarian actors, “volunteers”, and researchers focusing on refugees. To “deal with” the 2015-16 European refugee crisis, there are humanitarian interventions, security interventions and anthropological interventions. They often operate based on an emergency logic. In current anthropological trends in the study of displacements on the doorstep of Europe, key issues and main pitfalls are mainly linked to the business dimensions of anthropological work. The business of anthropology strenghtens indeed the European refugee regime, which makes of border-crossing people living targets for police, intervention, and study

Philia and phagia: Thinking with Stimmungswechsel through the refugee crisis in Greece

Comment on Borneman, John, and Parvis Ghassem-Fachandi. 2017. “The concept of Stimmung: From indifference to xenophobia in Germany’s refugee crisis.” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 7 (3): 105–135

Cultural Representativeness in the Principles of AI

Artificial intelligence (AI) applications have reached a wide range of domains and have raised concerns over fairness, accountability, transparency, and ethics. For example, social media platforms face challenges from Congress over data privacy and facial recognition software have been racially biased. Accordingly, society is actively establishing principles to govern the development and application of AI technologies; examples include General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). But, as AI innovation disseminates across cultural and political boundaries, how do societies in different cultures perceive these high-level AI principles? What are the acceptable ground rules for global AI governance? This project seeks to answer these by studying the interactions between cultural norms, the public opinion of AI, and the AI research community. To understand how key AI principles resonate amongst different cultures, we will study knowledge production and dissemination. Our approach is informed by the studies in comparative philosophy, which contrast moral traditions developed along relatively isolated cultural and regional lines. We will combine data science, qualitative studies, and mixed-methods approach to analyze micro- and macroscopic data. This project will build synergy among distinct disciplines represented by the team, including Philosophy and Ethics, Data and Information Sciences, Psychology, and Anthropology