Knowledge actors and the construction of new governing panoramas:The case of the European Commission’s DG Education and Culture

RESUMO: Este artigo aborda o tema da governança da educação na Europa. Esse espaço da política tem sido dominado por grandes interesses e organizações transnacionais, entre as quais se destacam a Organização para a Cooperação e Desenvolvimento Econômico (OCDE) e a Comissão Europeia (CE). Este artigo procura explorar e explicar quais são os efeitos constitutivos que as práticas sistemáticas de 'medição' e de estandardização têm na intensificação da convergência entre a Direção-Geral de Educação e Cultura da CE e a OCDE, a qual, por meio do PISA e de outros testes internacionais, tornou-se um ator influente na política educativa em uma escala global. O artigo pretende identificar os feitos do 'governo pelos números' nas interdependências criadas entre as duas organizações internacionais

The ethics of smart cities and urban science

Software-enabled technologies and urban big data have become essential to the functioning of cities. Consequently, urban operational governance and city services are becoming highly responsive to a form of data-driven urbanism that is the key mode of production for smart cities. At the heart of data-driven urbanism is a computational understanding of city systems that reduces urban life to logic and calculative rules and procedures, which is underpinned by an instrumental rationality and realist epistemology. This rationality and epistemology are informed by and sustains urban science and urban informatics, which seek to make cities more knowable and controllable. This paper examines the forms, practices and ethics of smart cities and urban science, paying particular attention to: instrumental rationality and realist epistemology; privacy, datafication, dataveillance and geosurveillance; and data uses, such as social sorting and anticipatory governance. It argues that smart city initiatives and urban science need to be re-cast in three ways: a re-orientation in how cities are conceived; a reconfiguring of the underlying epistemology to openly recognize the contingent and relational nature of urban systems, processes and science; and the adoption of ethical principles designed to realize benefits of smart cities and urban science while reducing pernicious effects.This article is part of the themed issue 'The ethical impact of data science'