A glossary of useful concepts.
Keep reading if you would like to see an alphabetical list of entries, or
keep scrolling if you would like to see the compilation of this glossary in process, in reverse chronological order.

tannertan36
I'd rather be in outer space đž
Mike Driver

Discoholic đȘ©

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ojovivo

titsay
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romaâ
i don't do bad sauce passes
Cosimo Galluzzi
Peter Solarz

No title available
Lint Roller? I Barely Know Her

No title available
Not today Justin
tumblr dot com

PR's Tumblrdome
AnasAbdin
One Nice Bug Per Day
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Egypt

seen from Malaysia
seen from Spain

seen from United States

seen from Australia
seen from Syria

seen from Syria

seen from Syria
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seen from United States
seen from United States

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seen from Canada
@usefulconcepts
A glossary of useful concepts.
Keep reading if you would like to see an alphabetical list of entries, or
keep scrolling if you would like to see the compilation of this glossary in process, in reverse chronological order.
comprador city
Global South
North/West
Empire
racial capitalism
â[capital] can only accumulate by producing and moving through relations of severe inequality among human groups." Therefore, for capitalism to survive, it must exploit and prey upon the "unequal differentiation of human value â
ambient awareness
distributed cognition
As defined by:
First encountered: David Graeber. Beyond the monastic self: Joint mind and the partial illusion of individuation.
Work on âdistributed cognition,â the idea that in many circumstances, thinking takes place outside the individual head, going back to Edwin Hutchinsâ analysis of how each member of a shipâs crew âoffloadsâ different aspects of navigation to each other, and how they, together with the shipâs machinery, themselves form of a kind of larger cognitive machine. Yet with only a few exceptions (mainly by those extending Vygotskyâs insights in the field of education), the field has tended to concentrate increasingly on the technological aspect: in our reliance (and therefore trust) in machines as extensions of ourselves rather than our reliance on each other.
kinship belt
As defined by: Nakanishi, T. (2006) Hidden Community Development among the Urban Poor: Informal Settlers in Metro Manila, Policy and Society, 25:4, 37-61
[Our hypothesis is] âthe urban poor in Metro Manila, despite appearing segmented and dispersed, are connected by wide and thin networks and share a kind of common culture. Everyday life in the urban locality, which is based on village endogamy, is assumed to be a type of  complicated and unconscious local social networking, as suggested by Jacobs and Scott (Jacobs 1961; Scott 1998). Such local networks can work across Metro Manila by means of  the chains of  dyad relationships  in  the  kinship-matrimonial  networks  created  by  homogamy;  in other words, the inter-marriages among the poor are induced by the logic in the poverty paradox explained above. The narrow sphere of  marriage determined by poverty and social exclusion will increase propinquital homogamy, namely, inter-marriages among the residents in the neighborhood who belong to almost the  same  income  bracket  and  reside  in  different  but  nearby  localities. This process will promote the formation of  weak social relationships, and thus create subconscious, unorganised, but vast social networks among the urban poor. We term these networks kinship belts.â
âAll poor localities in Metro Manila are connnected to each other and form a global homogenous social group.â
incremental eviction
As defined by: Recio, R.D. and Dovey, K. (2021). Forced Eviction by Another Name: Neoliberal Urban Development in Manila, Planning Theory & Practice.
âSan Roque residents who own houses in the settlement are offered a small compensation package plus relocation into public rental housing if they will demolish their house, remove all the materials and vacate the site. [...] the community has become pock-marked with vacant sites wherever this eviction practice has succeeded. Vacant sites are often fenced and flood-lit at night to prevent re-encroachment, and the ring of security on all entrances to the settlement is designed to paralyze all new construction, enforced by private security â note the guard tower on the fencing.
ecosystem v. platform: useful distinction
First encountered: Birch, K. and Cochrane, D.T., 2021. âBig tech: Four emerging forms of digital rentiership.â
âIn this paper, we deliberately use the term âecosystemâ â rather than âplatformâ (Srnicek, 2016; Langley and Leyshon, 2017) â to represent this range of activities and practices as a specific conceptual recognition that Big Tech firms are not just, or even primarily, digital platforms. Ecosystems are heterogenous assemblages of technical devices, platforms, users, developers, payment systems, etc. as well as legal contracts, rights, claims, standards, etc. (Doctorow, 2020; Pistor, 2020). In other words, they are techno-economic in character, co-constructed with socio-legal orders (Pistor, 2019). For example, Facebookâs ecosystem is both a digital platform and the rules for that platform, as well as the users and the metrics used to measure and value their actions (e.g. likes, messages, comments, views, etc.), and a growing array of other integrated products (e.g. WhatsApp, Oculus). The term ecosystem also reflects the way that Big Tech firms understand their own operations, as illustrated by statements in their financial reports and in earnings calls with investors (Birch et al., 2021). Using this terminology has important implications for an STS analysis of Big Tech.â
economic theology
First encountered: Schwarzkopf, The Routledge Handbook of Economic Theology.Â
âEconomic theology is a mode of inquiry that understands the modern world as incompletely secularized and---more importantly perhaps---incompletely sacralized.â
archeology v. genealogy: useful distinction
First encountered: Schwarzkopf, The Routledge Handbook of Economic Theology.
theory: useful definitions
Graeber, D., and Wengrow, D. (2021). The Dawn of Everything.
Chomsky, N., Roberts, I., and Watumull, J. (2023). The false promise of ChatGPT. NYT, 8 March.
human nature: useful definitions
Graeber, D., and Wengrow, D. (2021). The Dawn of Everything
asset manager capitalism
First encountered:
audiences v. publics: useful distinction
First encountered: Nicole Curatoâs talk, âThe spectacle of the strongmanâ, 21 October 2021.