useful concepts

[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.

A

ambient awareness

archeology v. genealogy: useful distinction

asset manager capitalism

audiences v. publics: useful distinction

B

C

comprador city

D

distributed cognition

E

economic theology

ecosystem v. platform: useful distinction

Empire

epistemicide

F

G

Global South

H

human nature: useful definitions

I

incremental eviction

J

K

kinship belt

L

M

N

North/West

O

P

Q

R

racial capitalism

relational dispossessions and relational displacements

S

T

theory: useful definitions

U

V

W

X

Y

Z

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comprador city

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Global South

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North/West

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Empire

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racial capitalism

“[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 “

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ambient awareness

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distributed cognition

As defined by:

First encountered: David Graeber. Beyond the monastic self: Joint mind and the partial illusion of individuation.

Work on “distributed cognition,” the idea that in many circumstances, thinking takes place outside the individual head, going back to Edwin Hutchins’ analysis of how each member of a ship’s crew “offloads” different aspects of navigation to each other, and how they, together with the ship’s machinery, themselves form of a kind of larger cognitive machine. Yet with only a few exceptions (mainly by those extending Vygotsky’s 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.

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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] “the 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.”

“All poor localities in Metro Manila are connnected to each other and form a global homogenous social group.”

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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.

“San 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 – note the guard tower on the fencing.

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ecosystem v. platform: useful distinction

First encountered: Birch, K. and Cochrane, D.T., 2021. “Big tech: Four emerging forms of digital rentiership.”

“In this paper, we deliberately use the term ‘ecosystem’ – rather than ‘platform’ (Srnicek, 2016; Langley and Leyshon, 2017) – 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, Facebook’s 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.”

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economic theology

First encountered: Schwarzkopf, The Routledge Handbook of Economic Theology. 

“Economic theology is a mode of inquiry that understands the modern world as incompletely secularized and---more importantly perhaps---incompletely sacralized.”

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archeology v. genealogy: useful distinction

First encountered: Schwarzkopf, The Routledge Handbook of Economic Theology.

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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.

Graeber, D., and Wengrow, D. (2021). The Dawn of Everything. , pp. 21 - 22.

“...social theory always, necessarily, involves a bit of simplification. For instance, almost any human action might be said to ahve a political aspect, an economic aspect, a psycho-sexual aspect and so forth. Social theory is largely a game of make-believe in which we pretend, just for the sake of argument, that there’s just one thing going on: essentially, we reduce everything to a cartoon so as to be able to detect patterns that would otherwise be invisible. As a result, all real progress in social science has been rooted in the courage to say things that are, in the final analysis, slightly ridiculous: the work of Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, or Claude Levi-Strauss being only particularly salient cases in point. One must simplify the world to discover something new about it. The problem comes when, long after the discovery has been made, people continue to simplify.

“Hobbes and Rousseau told their contemporaries things that were startling, profound and opened new doors of the imagination. Now their ideas are just tired common sense. There’s nothing in them that justifies the continued simplification of human affairs. If social scientists today continue to reduce past generations to simplistic, two-dimensional caricatures, it is not so much to show us anything original, but just because they feel that’s what social scientists are expected to do so as to appear ‘scientific’. The actual result is to impoverish history - and as a consequence, to impoverish our sense of possibility.”

Chomsky, N., Roberts, I., and Watumull, J. (2023). The false promise of ChatGPT. NYT, 8 March.

Perversely, some machine learning enthusiasts seem to be proud that their creations can generate correct “scientific” predictions (say, about the motion of physical bodies) without making use of explanations (involving, say, Newton’s laws of motion and universal gravitation). But this kind of prediction, even when successful, is pseudoscience. While scientists certainly seek theories that have a high degree of empirical corroboration, as the philosopher Karl Popper noted, “we do not seek highly probable theories but explanations; that is to say, powerful and highly improbable theories.”

The theory that apples fall to earth because that is their natural place (Aristotle’s view) is possible, but it only invites further questions. (Why is earth their natural place?) The theory that apples fall to earth because mass bends space-time (Einstein’s view) is highly improbable, but it actually tells you why they fall. True intelligence is demonstrated in the ability to think and express improbable but insightful things.

David Graeber: Beyond the Monastic Self

An intellectual provocation, as we all know, usually consists of a statement that makes sense from a certain theoretical perspective that so clashes against received wisdom that it will inevitably spark a debate from which new richer understandings are likely to emerge. An example might be: poetry is an impoverished form of speech.

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human nature: useful definitions

Graeber, D., and Wengrow, D. (2021). The Dawn of Everything

Graeber, D., and Wengrow, D. (2021). The Dawn of Everything , p. 1.

“It is basically a theological debate. Essentially the question is: are humans innately good or innately evil? But if you think about it, the question, frame din these terms, makes very little sense. ‘Good’ and ‘evil’ are purely human concepts. It would never occur to anyone to argue about whether a fish, or a tree, were good or evil, because ‘good’ and ‘evil’ are concepts humans made up in order to compare ourselves with one another. It follows that arguing about whether humans are fundamentally good or evil makes about as much sense as arguing about whether humans are fundamentally fat or thin.”

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asset manager capitalism

First encountered:

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audiences v. publics: useful distinction

First encountered: Nicole Curato’s talk, “The spectacle of the strongman”, 21 October 2021.