Human-technology relations in an age of surveillance capitalism. Towards an anthropological theory of the dialectic between analogue and digital humanity

What can anthropology contribute to the current debates about the negative effects of social media on people? Starting from a critique of anthropological work that sees human subjectivity and culture as ontologically unaffected by social media use, I propose that human engagement with these digital technologies produces significant ontological transformations that deserve more attention. I develop my analysis in dialogue with Boellstorff’s ontology of the digital, Nardi’s theorisation of virtuality and affordances, and Zuboff’s formulation of surveillance capitalism, and I use empirical illustrations from the Cambridge Analytica data scandal to highlight key theoretical junctures. My main contribution is an outline of an anthropological theory of the dialectic between what I call analogue humanity and digital humanity. The two are mutually constituted but ontologically distinct. In the current political economy of digitalisation, tech companies are driving a process of increasing substitution of analogue humanity and forms of life with digital ones, as part of their quest for accurate prediction and social engineering of all aspects of human behaviour. While an anti-technology stance is neither practicable nor desirable, anthropologists need to think about how analogue humanity can be preserved and nurtured so that it can avoid ontological extinction.publishedVersio

Could Cambridge Analytica Have Delivered Donald Trump’s 2016 Presidential Victory? An Anthropologist’s Look at Big Data and Political Campaigning

I first provide some context about Cambridge Analytica’s (ca) activities, linking them to ca parent company, scl Group, which specialised in “public relations” campaigns around the world across multiple sectors (from politics to defence and development), with the explicit aim of behavioural change. I then analyse in more detail the claims made by mathematician and machine learning scholar David Sumpter, who dismisses the possibility that ca might have successfully deployed internet psychographics (e.g. online personality profiling) in the winning 2016 Trump presidential campaign in the US. I critique his arguments, pointing at the need to focus on the bigger picture and on the totality of ca methods, rather than analysing psychographics in isolation. This is followed by a section where I use ca whistleblower Christopher Wylie’s 2019 memoir to show the important role that in-depth qualitative research and methods akin ethnographic immersion might have played in building ca big data capabilities. I provide an angle on big data that sees it as complementary, rather than in opposition to, human insight that comes from qualitative immersion in the social realities targeted by ca. The concluding section discusses additional questions that should be explored to gain a deeper understanding of how big data is changing political campaigning, with an emphasis on the important contribution that anthropology can make to these crucial debates.publishedVersionPaid Open Acces

Some notes towards a human economy approach

The diverse research activities carried out in the Human Economy Project focus on the economic practices that people on the ground perform in their everyday life, and the interactions between these actions and larger-scale political and economic structures and institutions. This article provides some partial reflections on what we mean by ‘human economy’. It will discuss some aspects of this approach that have influenced project members, including an ethnographic orientation, historical analysis and comparison across cases. Human economy research often cuts across geographic and theoretical scales. Many project members aim to move beyond the analytical distinction between local and global, and towards a conceptualisation of the economy as a Maussian ‘total social fact’. Finally, the knowledge produced within the project has the potential to help individuals and social groups in building a better world for all who live in it.http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rasa20hb2017Anthropology and Archaeolog

Fatigue behaviour and residual service life of existing masonry arch bridges

The conservation and safety assessment of old masonry arch bridges represent nowadays a research field of considerable interest. Most of them are testimonies of the past with a significant historical and cultural value, and represent nowadays a large part of the transport infrastructures serving strategic link for roads and railways networks. In many cases their masonry primary elements are already deteriorated due to weather conditions and to the effects of cyclic traffic loads that are increased in both the frequency and the intensity with respect to the past. Even if the ultimate load is not reached, the cumulated damage along with the localised deterioration can reach levels not acceptable leading the entire structure out of service. This paper is addressed to the fatigue assessment of old masonry arch bridges with particular attention to the residual service life evaluation of the arch elements. Unlike of metals and metallic structures, little informations are available to date on the fatigue behaviour of masonry elements, also confirmed by the fact that there are no specific guidelines for assessing the fatigue limit and the residual life. The paper at first shows a critical review of the damage models for the fatigue performance assessment of masonry arch bridges. Then, an application to a case study is presented, where also the influence of intradosal C-FRP reinforcement on the residual service life and the ultimate capacity is discussed

Is there a Scandinavian model for MOOCs? Understanding the MOOC phenomenon in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden

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Implementing Digital Transformations in Higher Education Following COVID-19: A Norwegian Case Study

Drawing on the theory and conceptualizations of organizational readiness for change and taking a more critical approach to organizational readiness that takes seriously actors’ different and sometimes conflicting understandings of change and digital transformation processes, this chapter explores the implementation of digital tools and systems in Norwegian higher education (HE) prior to and following the outbreak of the COVID-19 global health pandemic. The analysis focuses on the challenges and bottlenecks associated with digital implementation in a complex environment by focusing on contextual and situational factors. The chapter investigates ongoing developments in Norwegian HE in the context of dynamics across the Nordic region, illuminating the micro-level practices, experiences, and responses to digital transformation of university actors at multiple levels in a Norwegian university selected as the main case study.publishedVersio

The Rise of EdTech Platforms in Higher Education : Mapping Themes from Emerging Critical Literature

There is growing criticism of Big Tech platforms across different sectors of society. There is also increasing scepticism towards seemingly wholesale digitalisation of higher education (HE), largely enabled by platform firms, that followed COVID-19-related emergency online teaching. However, there is a scarcity of critical studies of the multiple, interconnected ways in which HE is affected by the rise of educational technology (EdTech) platforms and their providers. The goal of this chapter is to provide an extensive thematic review of the emerging body of work that takes a critical perspective, and particularly of work that highlights political economy dimensions of ongoing HE platformisation. We identify nine key, interrelated themes in the literature that may also signal structural shifts in HE related to rising platforms and providers. We note two meta-themes, platformisation and learnification, and seven sub-themes: datafication, assetisation, modularisation, crowdification, and peer-to-peering (under the meta-theme platformisation); and unbundling, and skillisation & short-circuiting (under the meta-theme learnification). Finally, we discuss the implications of our review, and propose a critical approach to EdTech provision, considering both negative aspects of ongoing platformisation and the need to preserve the public mission of HE in different contexts.publishedVersionPeer reviewe