Book Review: The Ethics of Attention in an Age of Distraction: Why You Need to Get Out of Your Own Head

The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction by Matthew Crawford. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, April 2015. Most of us think of distraction as a mere annoyance— a mild humming in the background while you work, a fly landing on your book while you read. We do not usually think of it carrying the weight of a serious moral problem. In his new book, The World Beyond Your Head, Matthew Crawford argues that our inability to pay attention does carry such moral weight, and he argues this precisely because it dissolves our individuality and our freedom

Enhancing Infrastructure Resilience Under Conditions of Incomplete Knowledge of Interdependencies

Today’s infrastructures — such as road, rail, gas, electricity and ICT — are highly interdependent, and may best be viewed as multi-infrastructure systems. A key challenge in seeking to enhance the resilience of multi-infrastructure systems in practice relates to the fact that many interdependencies may be unknown to the operators of these infrastructures. How can we foster infrastructure resilience lacking complete knowledge of interdependencies? In addressing this question, we conceptualize the situation of a hypothetical infrastructure operator faced with incomplete knowledge of the interdependencies to which his infrastructure is exposed. Using a computer model which explicitly represents failure propagations and cascades within a multi-infrastructure system, we seek to identify robust investment strategies on the part of the operator to enhance infrastructure resilience. Our results show that a strategy of constructing redundant interdependencies may be the most robust option for a financially constrained infrastructure operator. These results are specific to the infrastructure configuration tested. However, the developed model may be tailored to the conditions of real-world infrastructure operators faced with a similar dilemma, ultimately helping to foster resilient infrastructures in an uncertain world

Transmission Capacity as a Common-Pool Resource: The Case of Gas Interconnector Capacity

We investigated the very real problem of congestion at gas interconnectors. Instead of suggesting further incremental change to the European regulation in force to remedy congestion problems, we took a step back and consider gas interconnectors as a Common-Pool Resource (CPR). We suggest to wait and see what institutions the shippers let emerge to govern and manage interconnector capacity. To explore this idea, we developed a model to simulate the possible emergence of institutions that would coordinate the shippers and help overcome congestion. We simulate 40 shippers at the Dutch and Belgian interconnectors and allow them to autonomously book capacity. Agents can learn over time to improve their behaviour and coordinate with each other to collectively define a new institution in the system. The main simulator indicators are the observed booking behaviour, agent profits and emerging institutions. We present and discuss preliminary results from a set of simulation runs

Quel pouvoir attractif de l'Islam rigoriste ?

LES CAHIERS DE MODOP, n°2, Les attentats de l’année 2015 vus sous l’angle de la transformation de conflit.Nous avons tendance à ne voir Daech qu’au travers de son pouvoir destructeur, qui a frappé la France au coeur le 13 novembre dernier. Pourtant si nous voulons comprendre pourquoi des jeunes français s’engagent dans cette voie, il faut s’intéresser au pouvoir d’attraction de l’Islam radical qui mobilise bien au-delà des groupes violents. Ce courant rigoriste de l’Islam ouvre des perspectives, en donnant une place aux Français qui ont du mal à en trouver une dans la société aujourd’hui

Quel pouvoir attractif de l'Islam rigoriste ?

LES CAHIERS DE MODOP, n°2, Les attentats de l’année 2015 vus sous l’angle de la transformation de conflit.Nous avons tendance à ne voir Daech qu’au travers de son pouvoir destructeur, qui a frappé la France au coeur le 13 novembre dernier. Pourtant si nous voulons comprendre pourquoi des jeunes français s’engagent dans cette voie, il faut s’intéresser au pouvoir d’attraction de l’Islam radical qui mobilise bien au-delà des groupes violents. Ce courant rigoriste de l’Islam ouvre des perspectives, en donnant une place aux Français qui ont du mal à en trouver une dans la société aujourd’hui

Stratégies de légitimation et autoritarisme au Zimbabwe : Comment Mugabe investit le symbolique pour légitimer le recours à la violence depuis l'année 2000

Article non publiéThis article aims to analyze the legitimisation strategies of the party of Robert Mugabe, the Zanu-pf, in contemporary Zimbabwe. The four répertoires on which the party draws to legitimize its rule are directly linked to the liberation struggle: the war fought for independence, the importance attributed to land, the perpetuated threat of the West's neo-imperialist aspirations and an exclusive approach to national identity. By continuing to evoke the historic struggle, the ruling party creates a symbolic continuity and legitimises its military approach to the exercise of power. The party leadership presents itself as a protection against an enemy that is still very present in people's minds.Stratégies de légitimation et autoritarisme au Zimbabwe : comment Mugabe investit le symbolique pour légitimer le recours à la violence depuis l'année 2000 Claske Dijkema Résumé Cet article se propose d'analyser les stratégies de légitimation du parti de Robert Mugabe, le Zanu-pf, dans le Zimbabwe contemporain. Les quatre répertoires dans lesquels le parti puise sa légitimité encore aujourd'hui sont directement issus de la lutte armée de libération : la guerre pour l'indépendance, l'importance attribuée à la terre, la menace perpétuelle des aspirations néo-impérialistes de l'Occident et une approche restrictive de l'identité nationale. En ne cessant d'évoquer cette lutte qui a conduit le Zanu-pf au pouvoir, celui-ci instaure une continuité symbolique et légitime des modalités militaires de l'exercice du pouvoir. Le leadership du parti se présente comme la protection contre un ennemi qui reste toujours présent dans les esprits

What is urban about urban violence in France? Violence in marginalised neighbourhoods as body politics

In France, urban violence is associated with juvenile violence that concerns certain, marginalized, spaces of the city and specific, racialized, city dwellers. It has the specificity, in comparison to British and American contexts, that the term is used in reference to anti-institutional violence: what is called 'urban violence' in France is termed 'race riots' at the other side of the Atlantic. This contribution approaches urban violence, which in this context mainly means setting objects on fire and thereby provoking police intervention and altercation, as a form of self-defense by the subaltern. Youth turn the hypervisibilisation of urban violence by mainstream media into a means to publicize their anger. They choose fire as a means of public address, not because of their incapacity to speak but because of their refusal of interlocution. The riots that took place in Grenoble in 2010 serve as empirical grounding of this argument

Claiming space, when Muslim women of marginalised social housing neighbourhoods declare themselves citizens

After the attacks against Charlie Hebdo in January 2015, the slogan "I am Charlie " ( Je suis Charlie ) spread all over the world through social media and was everywhere on banners during the demonstration that followed nationwide, in which 400,000 people participated (Houllier-Guibert, 2016). Islamophobia or generalised anti-Muslim feelings increased concerningly in this period (Beaman, 2021), a rift was formed between, on the one hand, Republican France ("us") and, on the other hand, Muslims ("them") and the marginalised areas they were associated with (Niang, 2019). " Charlie " came to be synonymous with freedom, equality, democracy, and laïcité , while those that were opposed to Charlie were associated with obscurantism, barbarism and violence. As a result, Muslims in France could not make themselves heard. Spivak's expression that subalterns cannot speak resonates therefore very strongly with the quote above