#scientization

[quasi-normalcy]

So, in science & technology studies, one of the words we throw around is "scientization," the act of making something into a science. And, you know, a lot of this is good, or at least neutral: the scientization of medicine; the scientization of cosmology; it means that a field has gotten more rigourous and definitive than it used to be.

But in politics, what scientization often means is that something that should be a policy issue is kicked over to scientists as a means of naturalizing or normalizing it, exempting it from normal political debate, or avoiding responsibility for unpopular decisions. "Oh, we needed to bomb this place because our models said it would end the war faster"; "Oh, we needed to privatize this service because our economists said it would save us money"; etc. And a lot of the debate in the field of science policy is given over to the question of when is it legitimate to kick something over to scientists, and in what contexts, because it's often kind of arbitrary. Like, I think that anyone who takes climate change seriously believes that science needs to inform the response to it, but you can build whatever assumptions you want to into your models, and the math will gobble them up indifferently; and Western liberal governments have overwhelmingly chosen to imagine scenarios where we can just keep doing capitalism because magical new "carbon capture" technologies will probably be invented down the line, and cap-and-trade will probably work perfectly, and anything that might be lost due to climate change can be straightforwardly assigned a monetary value and compensated, and refugees from desertification and rising sea levels will probably just not exist and so on. [Obligatory reminder that Climate Change is way worse than pretty much anyone in mainstream politics is willing to admit]

And anyways, I think that a special case of this "scientization-as-political-bullshit" phenomenon is at play in the field of polling. Like, consider Kamala Harris's entire campaign (or if you prefer, practically any neoliberal politician's campaign anywhere in the world since 2008 or so). This was a campaign where seemingly every decision was kicked over to pollsters. Can't call conservatives weirdos--you might offend moderates! Can't call on Israel to stop bombing Gaza--you might offend moderates! Can't stand up for transgender rights--you might offend moderates! Can't call for single-payer healthcare--you might offend moderates! And so on, and so forth. In every case, it's trying to do politics without being political, and it's doing so by embedding a bunch of incredibly insidious assumptions into models and then calling it science! Like, maybe "moderate" voters would get on board with a ceasefire, or trans rights, or single-payer healthcare, if a prominent politician with a billion-dollar war chest to get her message out fucking tried to make a case for it! Like, remember when the overwhelming majority of Americans opposed gay marriage? I do! I wonder why that changed? Or, for that matter, why courting moderates--as all of these models seem to assume--should necessarily be a higher priority than inspiring disenchanted voting-age adults to turn out at all?

And I worry I'm making this sound like innocent incompetence--it's not. This was done very specifically and very intentionally to foreclose upon discussion of progressive priorities while saying that you're being scientific; while saying that you are, ridiculously, being apolitical when a running a political campaign. And now we have these useless, disingenuous assholes patting themselves on the back and saying that this campaign was never winnable! Because the "SCIENCE" says so!

And meanwhile, you have Donald Trump--idiot nazi bastard thug child of a demon and a swine Donald Trump, cursed be his name--bowling through the political scene like a bull in a china shop, utterly indifferent to all of these fancy-schmancy mathematical models and too stupid to understand them...and winning enormously! Making his own coalition. Because thick as he may be, ignorant as he may be, incurious as he may be, he at least knows one single solitary thing that the Democrats don't: Politics isn't science; it's magic. And you don't get anywhere in magic without the will to power.

[transmutationisms]

Do you think you're the second coming of e e cummings?

Transformism and environmentalist theories of biological change were always consequential for more than just the ‘species question.’ Tracing environmentalist medical and hygienic thought in French colonial endeavors and the development of scientized notions about human ‘races’ over the nineteenth century makes clear that the legacy of Lamarckism also lies in French colonial and imperial endeavors, and the scientific rhetoric invoked to justify and facilitate them. Efforts within France, such as architectural and urban design efforts intended to alter people’s habits and physiology, or the ‘internal colonialism’ discussed in Chapter 1 above, were outgrowths of the same biopolitical efforts to alter the nation’s subjects and economically exploit them. Indeed, colonial expansion generally did not represent an exceptional economic logic or political policy; rather, and in large part aided by notions of racial hierarchy and white European supremacy, peripheral colonial policies tended to operate on the same principles as internal and domestic policies—though often with a greater public tolerance for open brutality. Similarly, as I have shown in this chapter, French colonial expansion and domestic policies—such as efforts to control the urban poor or to encourage reproduction among wealthy families—often influenced one another, and both drew justifications from a shared pool of medical and biological theories that included Lamarckian transformist principles.

[choiceofgames]

The Daring Mermaid Expedition

"The Daring Mermaid Expedition." Take a scientifically inaccurate romp in pirate-infested waters! Will you prove to the Royal German Marinological Society that mermaids really exist?

https://www.choiceofgames.com/daring-mermaid-expedition/

You are an up-and-coming researcher, tasked with proving the existence of mermaids in order to be admitted to the exclusive Royal German Marinological Society. With a member of the Society as your patron, you’ll brave pirate attacks and dubious academics to fight your way to Broken Shell Island and scientize the mythical mermaid kingdom. Play as a vengeful mermaid-hater, dispassionate scientist, or soft-hearted daydreamer. Or just chuck it all and embrace piracy on the crew of the infamous Lucy Smokeheart herself!

Will you join the illustrious ranks of the Society, or wind up in prison for scientific fraud? Spend the rest of your life living underwater, or be devoured by carnivorous fish-people?

You’re on a mermaid expedition—it’s time to sink or swim.

"The Daring Mermaid Expedition" is an interactive fantasy novel by Andrea Phillips, where your choices control the story. It's entirely text-based—71,000 words and hundreds of choices long, without graphics or sound effects—and fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination.

[virtualmemoriespodcast]

Episode 550 - Ron Rosenbaum

With the release of IN DEFENSE OF LOVE: An Argument (Doubleday), Ron Rosenbaum offers up a series of essays to save love from scientizers, extremists, the jaded, and anyone else who doubts whether Amor Vincit Omnia. We get into why love needs a defense and how it's not reducible to chemical surges on an fMRI scan, the overwhelming emotion of Linda Ronstadt's Long Long Time, the beauty of Philip Larkin's poem An Arundel Tomb and why Larkin may have been embarrassed by the honesty of its last line ("What will survive of us is love."), and the ways bullshit science can lead people ridiculously astray. We talk about seeing Tolstoy in the light of his late novellas, in which he puts forth an extinction agenda and wants to end human reproduction, the first and last times Ron fell in love, why he included a closing chapter on his own experiences of love & regret, whether dangerous passion outweighs a moderate marriage, and whether one can write about human nature without having a fully human nature. Plus, we talk about Ron's writing career, his arrival during the late days of magazines' golden age, how he discovered his superpower of close reading, why America's greatest love poems come from country music, and a lot more. Follow Ron on Twitter and listen to our 2013 and 2014 conversations • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal and via our Substack

Check out the new episode of The Virtual Memories Show

[paulemeteora]

The Sunday ritual, the turkey in parchment.

The facade, which was also the roof, wich was also the facade, which was the roof, sweats vapor. This was the sign of gatherings.

Steven der Bergspieler turns on his camera.

Sitting around the table in a solemn attitude

Truman, the amibitious

Jean-Marie, the unflaggable, already back in France but digitally present thanks to the remote Zoom aquarium.

Dalaï Lama, the unshakable

Albert, the patriot

"The first is an idiot and the second is a bastard. They are, however, complementary as two figures of nihilism, two figures of the will to power."[1]

"Sometimes such an assembly has been called the Furious Army, or the Herlathing, or Herlewin’s Army, or Hellequin’s Army."[2]

Albert : "We need to occupy the position of the quasi objects in order to […] avoid becoming an ‘uprooted, acculturated, Americanized, scientized, technologized Westerner, a Spock-like mutant,’ we must bring the network of human and non human, the entire assemblage, including these hybrids, or quasi objects, into symmetry. This injunction presides over The Emergence, and I hope to occupy multiple quasi objectival positions."[3] 

Jean-Marie : "You knew that I reap where I have not sowed, and gather where I have not winnowed?"[4] 

Truman : Immigrant eat pets.

Dalaï Lama : « … »

"They preferred to wait for a comfortable revolution that, so they were told, would come as an ‘event’."[5]

Satisfied and licking their lips, once the air was impregnated with the salty moisture of their sweat dripping down the walls, which were also the facade, which were also the walls but also the facade (a sign that it was now time to leave), the four men, their bellies swollen from their grand speeches - except for the Dalai Lama - , lined up one behind the other to exit the barbaric temple. They retraced the path they had taken to come, slipping and crawling through the chimney until they reached the facade, which was also the roof, which was also the facade, but also the roof.

Steven der Bergspieler turns off his camera.

[1] Deleuze, Cinema 2 The Time Image

[2] Hutton, The Witch A History of Fear From Ancient Ronald

[3] Blacklock, The Emergence of the Fourth Dimension

[4] Zizek, Less Than Nothing

[5] Sloterdijk, You Must Change Your Life

[fatehbaz]

“They could take you out for coffee and call it consultation!” [...]

Canada has been applauded for its co-management arrangements in recently established national parks [...]. First Nations were evicted from the earliest parks such as Banff and Jasper in a process of colonial territorialization that facilitated a “wilderness” model of park management and made space for capitalist enterprises like sport hunting and tourism. In Jasper National Park today, private tourism development proposals trigger a duty to consult with nations whose Aboriginal or Treaty rights may be impacted by development. [...] Jasper’s approach to reconciliation and consultation reproduces and further entrenches unequal colonial-capitalist power dynamics, relying on antipolitical strategies to produce the appearance of inclusion and to naturalize the park’s ultimate decision-making authority in First Nations’ traditional territory. [...]

A reconciliatory politics that imagines colonial injustices as occurring in the past does nothing to confront the ongoing alienation of Indigenous peoples from their lands, so that their territories remain available [...]. National parks in Canada were, as they have been elsewhere, early tools that facilitated colonial injustices and many today [...] help to maintain the neo-colonial present. [...] National parks enclosed [...] natural territories and removed First Nations whose land-based lifeways were an impediment to the colonial-capitalist project [...]. Displacement and/or exclusion has long been associated with protected area establishment, and in the current era of neoliberal governance, it is often associated with lucrative nature-based business ventures [...]. This has led many scholars to argue that conservation enclosures (and colonialism more broadly) are processes of primitive accumulation and/or accumulation by dispossession [...]. National parks have long been critiqued as playgrounds for [...], while First peoples who rely on those areas [...] were deemed antithetical to conservation. [...]

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Jasper, as one of the early southern parks, follows the southern history of exclusion. Jasper Forest Park was established in 1907 (and became Jasper Park in 1909), at which point the Metis families [...] in the park were suddenly declared “squatters” on park land. [...] Many nations, “including Cree, Stoney, Shuswap, Objibwe, several groups of Metis, Sekani, Carrier [...] consider the valley a part of their abiding heritage [...].”

The earliest national parks in Canada were developed in the Western provinces of Alberta and British Columbia, followed by the expansion of the system into eastern Canada and the northern Territories [...]. Importantly, the experiences of First Nations with park establishment vary starkly between southern and northern parks [...]. In the name of “conservation,” countless nations were forcefully evicted from the earlier southern parks [...]. By contrast, more recent parks established in the northern Territories have been established in varying degrees of partnership with First Nations because Parks Canada has had to deal with comprehensive land claims.

These comanagement arrangements have given Parks Canada international recognition as a “leader” in Aboriginal relations [...]. Some argue that these steps mark a significant improvement in a parks system historically based on the Yellowstone model of fortress-style wilderness conservation that precluded Aboriginal habitation [...]. However, critics points out that “comanagement” is very loosely defined, “it can range from as little as receiving information from the government, to fulfilling an advisory role of the government, to being delegated legislative authority, and finally to assuming co-jurisdiction of resource with government [...].” Comanagement has also been roundly critiqued for reinforcing colonial power relations and constraining First Nations in decision-making because most comanagement boards have advisory status only, while statutory power always rests with the Crown [...]

Further, most comanagement boards aim only to integrate Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) more effectively into existing science-based decision-making processes, not to reconfigure decision-making power [...]. Often TEK can be cooptated or “scientized” by non-Indigenous decision-makers [...], or is simply discarded if it conflicts with scientific evidence that is presumed to be superior [...].

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Jasper is the second most touristed park in Canada behind Banff [...]. Certain associated Parks Canada trends can be understood within the context of the neoliberalization of conservation [...], including a rescaling of governance to include local and non-local actors as wells as what appears to be increased collaboration and friendliness toward commercial operators and private development. Two recent controversial private development projects within the park were Brewster Travel’s Glacier Skywalk and Maligne Tours’ hotel proposal. [...].

Jasper has been making strides toward “reconciliation” with Indigenous nations who were evicted from the park upon its establishment. There are three main components to the outreach program. The first is showcasing Indigenous culture and history throughout the park. [...] [Parks Canada] management took a grave misstep and erected a totem pole of the Haida Nation who reside on the West coast of British Columbia. [...] “It’s sort of like having Scottish highland dancers in Paris. That could have been done better, but they were trying,” said the respondent from Stoney Nakoda Nation. The second component is negotiating terms of park access and use. [...] The idea that First Nations need to negotiate for free access to their own territories is itself unjust. [...] It is also problematic to conceive of “reconciliation” as forgiveness for an event that occurred in the past.

The function of state apologies and other symbolic mechanisms of reconciliation is to construct egregious conduct as being bounded to a particular spatio-temporal settinig to (re)produce and maintain the “common sense” legitimacy of the state, so that hegemony is not overtly threatened [...].

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When nations are only involved in the late stages of the [development project] approval process, management is largely interested in relevant TEK or knowledge of sites of cultural importance in the area that either need to be avoided or could be incorporated into the tourist attraction. Similar to the totem pole gesture, First Nations’ cultural symbols and practices continue to be coopted into the tourist imaginary of Jasper National Park while their political and physical presence is erased. This is a very particular kind of inclusionary politics, where non-threatening aspects of First Nations’ cultures are celebrated to give Jasper the appearance of doing due diligence. However, Parks Canada only officially recognizes expert driven science in decision-making, so often important Indigenous input [...] or even TEK that calls into question [settler scientific institutions] is discarded. [...] The worldview treating nature as a playground managed separately from humans through science-based calculation has displaced alternative understandings of human/non-human interrelationships [...]. These selectively inclusionary politics allow Parks Canada to appear benevolent without giving up any decision-making power over contested territories. Indigenous input is coopted to facilitate their ongoing alienation from their lands and further capitalist accumulations through corporate-government partnerships. Management tries to satisfy the duty to consult through mechanisms designed to work within existing management structures, not to question those structures themselves.

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Megan Youdelis. “‘They could take you out for coffee and call it consultation!”: The colonial antipolitics of Indigenous consultation in Jasper National Park.” Environment and Planning A. 2016.

[johnborthwick]

Students nowadays seem to want to “place” precisely, to locate precisely, everything about a writer’s work: what he is, what has made him or her what they are, and so on. It seems to me that to imprison it is to deny something very essential about writing. Rather the same thing has taken place in nature, or natural history—the mania to place everything in a precise species or subspecies, to discover exactly how it works, all the rest. I am opposed to the scientization of nature, the reducing of it all to species, ecological distributions, biochemical mechanisms, and so on. I feel this very strongly about writing and writers too. The world wants us caged, in one place, behind bars; it is very important we stay free.

The Art of Fiction No. 109

[mehrauli]

Secularized and “scientized” religion appears inherent to modern anti-systemic critique and collective action—the West’s attempt to save itself from its impoverished materialism through an enchantment “newly reconfigured.” The world did not have to be “disenchanted” before modern antiauthoritarianism could occur, it had to be reenchanted: rejection of material exploitation, “materialist values,” and materialist philosophy appear as three sides of the same coin.

Occult Features of Anarchism, With Attention to the Conspiracy of Kings and the Conspiracy of the Peoples

[izumines-blog]

Kagura Iro Artifact (神楽色アーティファクト) - Album Information + Tracklist

Kagura Iro Artifact / 神楽色アーティファクト (*Dance-Colored Artifact) is Mafumafu’s 5th solo album after a year when he released “Ashita Iro World End”. Kagura Iro Artifact will be released two days prior his birthday, October 16, 2019!

In regards to the album translation, “Kagura” is literally a type of Shinto dance (and music), and according to Wikipedia, “Kagura” translates to “god-entertainment.”

More below!

The two photos above are the album covers for the limited editions of Kagura Iro Artifact. Left is Limited Edition A, while right is Limited Edition B. Below is  the album cover of the regular edition of the album.

Artist: (Miwasiba)

Crossfade [NND] [YT]

Tracklist: 01. Shinobi no Susume (An Encouragement of a Ninja) [NND] [YT] vocals, song composition, arrangement: Mafumafu

02. Jikai Program (Self-Destruction Program) vocals, song composition, arrangement: Mafumafu

03. Sacrifice [NND] [YT] vocals, song composition, arrangement: Mafumafu

04. Jigsaw Puzzle [NND] [YT] vocals, song composition, arrangement: Mafumafu

05. Malfunction vocals, song composition, arrangement: Mafumafu

06. Oborozuki (Hazy Moon) [NND] [YT] vocals, song composition, arrangement: Mafumafu

07. Super Nuko ni Narenkatta (I Couldn’t Become a Super Cat Afterall) [NND] [YT] vocals, song composition, arrangement: Mafumafu

08. Onna no Ko ni Naritai (I Want to be a Girl) vocals: Mafumafu composition: Mafumafu, MONACA arrangement: MONACA

09. Ugokazuru Koto Yama no Gotoshi (Motionless Like a Mountain) vocals, song composition, arrangement: Mafumafu

10. Kimi no Kureta Asterism (The Asterism You Gave Me) vocals, song composition: Mafumafu arrangement: Sasaki Yuu

11. Rewrite the Saga vocals, song composition, arrangement: Mafumafu

12. Manju Shage (Red Spider Lily) [NND] [YT] vocals, song composition: Mafumafu arrangement: Sasaki Yuu

13. Tousenbo (Keep Out) [NND] [YT] vocals, song composition, arrangement: Mafumafu

14. Kairai no Shinzou (Marionette’s Heart) vocals, song composition, arrangement: Mafumafu

15. Haikyo no Kuni no Alice (Alice of the Ruin of a Country) [NND] [YT] vocals, song composition, arrangement: Mafumafu

16. Umareta Imi Nado Nakatta. (Being Born is Meaningless.) [NND] [YT] vocals, song composition, arrangement: Mafumafu

17. Art wo Kagaku suru (I Scientize Art) vocals, song composition, arrangement: Mafumafu

18. Sore wa Koi no Owari (The End of that Love) [YT] vocals, song composition, arrangement: Mafumafu

19. Haikei, Sakura Maichiru kono Hi ni (Sincerely, On This Day The Cherry Blossoms Fall and Sway) [NND] [YT] vocals, song composition, arrangement: Mafumafu

20. Asaki Yumemishi (Having a Dream of Asaki*) vocals, song composition, arrangement: Mafumafu *check footnote

——————————————

RELEASE DATE: OCTOBER 16, 2019

LIMITED EDITION A price: ¥2500 + tax contains: CD + DVD A

DVD CONTENTS

Music Videos

“Sore wa Koi no Owari”

Live MV

MV making (behind the scenes)

“Kimi no Kureta Asterism”

Animated

Live Videos

“I’m a Shut-In but I Want to do a LIVE! ~Ashita Iro World End Release Commemorative Performance~ @ Makuhari Messe Kokusai Halls 9-11

“Rinne Tensei”

“Futari Bocchi”

“We are Shut-Ins but We Want to do a Festival! ~World Domination I @ MetLife Dome~”

“Manju Shage”

“Shinobi no Susume”

SEALED TOKUTENS/BONUSES

Raffle entry for Mafumafu’s “Fan Meeting & Hi-Touch Event”

Available from October 15 (Tue) 6 PM JST to October 20 (Sun) 11:59 PM JST

Artist photo card (one photo will be chosen at random from 6 photos)

Fastest, high priority raffle serial number for the “I’m a Shut-In but I Want to do a LIVE! ~Super Mafumafu World 2020 @ Tokyo Dome~”

Available from October 15 (Tue) 6 PM JST to November 5 (Tue) 11:59 PM JST

LIMITED EDITION B price: ¥2500 + tax contains: CD + DVD B

DVD CONTENTS

Mafumafu’s Solo Kyoto Trip (90 minutes) (narration: Uchiyama Kouki)

Sailing

Rickshaw

Trying food at Arashiyama

Wagashi making

Ninja training

Rice on the riverbed

Moment of the hotel

SEALED TOKUTENS/BONUSES

Raffle entry for Mafumafu’s “Fan Meeting & Hi-Touch Event”

Available from October 15 (Tue) 6 PM JST to October 20 (Sun) 11:59 PM JST

Artist photo card (one photo will be chosen at random from 6 photos)

Fastest, high priority raffle serial number for the “I’m a Shut-In but I Want to do a LIVE! ~Super Mafumafu World 2020 @ Tokyo Dome~”

Available from October 15 (Tue) 6 PM JST to November 5 (Tue) 11:59 PM JST

—————————————

IN-STORE BONUSES (Limited Editions ONLY) & links: * LE A - Limited Edition A ; LE B - Limited Edition B ; RE - Regular Edition

Animate (LE A) (LE B) (RE) (DVD preview) DVD (ver. A): “I’m a Shut-In but I Want to Travel! Extra Compilation ~Finally in America! MafuSaka’s Fun Foreign Life - FIRST PART~” Featuring: Mafumafu, Tonari no Sakata

Amazon (LE A) (LE B) (RE) (DVD preview) DVD (ver. B): “I’m a Shut-In but I Want to Travel! Extra Compilation ~Finally in America! MafuSaka’s Fun Foreign Life - LAST PART~” Featuring: Mafumafu, Tonari no Sakata

TOWER RECORDS (LE A) (LE B) (RE) (preview) B2 Poster (real-life)

TSUTAYA (LE A) (LE B) (RE) (preview) Clear files

HMV (LE A) (LE B) (RE) (preview) Can badge (illustrated) (1 will be randomly chosen out of 6)

Toranoana (LE A) (LE B) (RE) (preview) links are not yet available Signed post card set (1 set has 3 pieces)

Local stores (in Japan only) (preview) Sticker

If you want the tokutens/bonuses of other stores, you can check CDJapan (proxy)! There are additional charges since CDJapan is a proxy, but very reliable! I personally have used CDJapan to order Mafumafu’s albums before.

——————————————

* Asaki Yumemishi - I’m not exactly sure if “Asaki” has a translation, but here I deemed it as if “Asaki” is a person since “yumemishi” translates to “having a dream (of)” someone.

Source - Kagura Iro Artifact official website

[tanadrin]

A couple of other disconnected thoughts on immigration and racism generally:

1) You know how every generation of immigrants in American history gets stereotyped as lazy and ignorant and brutish? Compare those with similar stereotypes of the European poor. There’s a reason for the similarity: the US has often drawn on immigration from specifically rural regions to build up its population, starting with the rural parts of Britain in the 1600s and 1700s. But this isn’t either a happenstance feature, or something that the US has succeeded in despite of: the US economy has been (less so now, because it’s less agrarian, but its rural economy still is) structured around needing vast amounts of poor immigrant labor, preferably with limited options so as to restrain their economic and social mobility once they arrive.

This is something that Sarah Taber has, citing the work of historians on the subject, explicated at length on her podcast; it was this need that drove the US portion of the slave trade (similar mechanics even more annihilatory of human life and joy were at work on Caribbean sugar plantations), and in the US as in so many other places in history, the creation of an us-them divide between poor rural whites and slaves--later sharecroppers and poor rural blacks--served to keep this system metastable despite the frequent outbreaks of violence and, before the civil war, the fear of a slave rebellion.

The US has always needed huge amounts of immigrant labor, because it has tended to rely on terribly inefficient farming methods ill-suited to the terrain; it has always despised that immigrant labor, treated it as fearful and destructive to the social order, and, when those fears don’t come to pass, and the sources of immigration shift, rearranged the social hierarchy to put new immigrants at the bottom. I think it’s hard to argue that this is a premeditated process; I don’t think the agrarian elite of the country ever met in smoky rooms and said, “Hey, let’s vilify the Mexicans next.” I think it’s an opportunistic combination of antipatterns and perverse economic incentives and failure modes common to the human race, but, crucially, it doesn’t have to be this way. Even more crucially, not just morally and politically, but economically this is a bad system. It’s stable, sort of, because transitioning away from it requires a combination of social, political, and economic changes that are in few of the politically powerful class’s short-term interests, but in the long term it could make the country a much nicer place to live.

2) An assumption that a lot of anti-immigrant arguments of the form “they’ll change the culture/vote in policies you don’t like/implement sharia law” make is that politics and economic circumstance flows from culture, rather than the reverse. Poor countries with bad social arrangements are the result of culture, or are kept that way as a result of culture, and not vice-versa; this has to be true, or you’d expect that once immigrants came to the US (or a similar country) you wouldn’t have to worry about them assimilating to the local white majority’s liberal and democratic values.

(you might, looking at a Trump rally, conclude that a rural supporter of an antidemocratic authoritarian would be just as at home in the US as in Eritrea or w/e, but let’s set that aside for the moment)

Aside from the fact that’s not borne out at all by the data (all the data, in fact, points to economic circumstances shaping culture!), it’s such a weird idea to advance in this day and age, especially if you claim to be an empiricist! It’s the inheritance not of social science but of romantic nationalism, 19th century ideas about national spirit and the historic destiny of races, where politics and economics and history were seen as extensions of metaphysics, not as areas of inquiry tractable to scientific study! Oh, sure, there were some ill-fated attempts like phrenology to try to ex post facto tack on a scientific justification to some of the more modest claims, but even beyond the fact they were scientifically bankrupt endeavors, full of confirmation bias and shifting goalposts, they were trying to formalize and scientize the study of values, not to study human behavior in the abstract. And modern studies of “““human biodiversity” never manage anything better: they try to make intelligence sound like a bloodless and empirical concept (and maybe it can be!), but by starting with the hypothesis that dysfunctional societies might arise due to innate biological differences (& choosing intelligence as your measure of those differences) you’re already hopelessly muddling ethical/moral action with intelligence with political organization. It’s an epistemological mess.

For example: why might there not be humans that are less smart than average, but also significantly more prosocial, a la (the popular conception of) bonobos? Humans that are smarter, but less sociable and less likely to form urban societies? All the correlates are tied together--intelligence, prosociality, economic success--in a way they certainly very often are not in individuals, and the result is hypothesis that, in good evo-psych fashion, pretend to be carefully dispassionate and rigorous while actually smuggling in a whole cartload of assumptions for the unwary reader, and which conveniently permit the political scientist to ignore the last few thousand years or so of history, as though even if these hypotheses were true the magnitude of the effect of these differences is so vast as to swamp every other material circumstance of human life.

3) Following on from that: any attempt to biologically theorize about intelligence must account at minimum for the fact that traits which are highly adaptive (like intelligence) are extremely constrained (if intelligence is a big advantage for humans, which it seems to be, you shouldn’t get human populations that vary much in intelligence! They should get outcompeted well before the historical era); and, much more importantly, there are subregions of Africa more genetically diverse than the rest of the planet put together--so there should be massive differences in outcomes depending on which population you’re looking at just within one continent. Yet I never seem to encounter race science types who even manage to, like, try to form a basic genetic taxonomy to work with. It’s all “east Asians this” and “sub saharan Africans that.”

[96thdayofrage]

Sexuality and Slavery: Reclaiming Intimate Histories in the Americas, co-edited by Daina Ramey Berry and Leslie M. Harris, is a provocative book that contains groundbreaking research. Examining new paradigms for understanding sexuality and intimate relationships in the colonial Americas, the authors challenge existing assumptions and confront the shortcomings of typical approaches used in historical scholarship. Their work encourages the reader to consider how the history of sexuality within slavery is an obvious and glaring hole in the literature, which belies the difficult work of recovering these stories in the archival record. Sexuality and Slavery is a significant contribution as it provides a new approach for analyzing the private lives of enslaved people. The introduction by co-editors Berry and Harris illuminates some of these challenges, including the ways in which perceptions of historical sexuality are tempered by present-day understandings of gender and sexuality. They note the difficulty in “creating respectful portrayals” of enslaved peoples’ sexuality “without reinscribing exploitation” or replicating stereotypes that have developed over time (4). The book includes a Foreword by Catherine Clinton, the editorial introduction, and ten chapters that are arranged roughly chronologically. The book has an Atlantic world focus with chapters exploring West Africa, the Caribbean, South America, and the United States.

In the book’s concluding chapter, Jim Downs reminds readers about the innovative work contained in the volume and the unique methodological approaches each scholar uses to uncover such histories. Not only are these historians seeking to discover evidence within the archive, they are fighting against the dominant efforts in the field to “scientize history,” as he puts it – the shift away from storytelling toward empirical evidence (p. 198). Through examples of contemporary fiction, poetry, and fine art, Downs encourages historians to step away from STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) ) and toward artistry to not only provide stronger scholarship, but to appeal more to the public. However, he seems to ignore the work being done by historians who are already telling stories and incorporating contemporary art into their methods of presenting the history of slavery to wider audiences. Despite this possible oversight, Downs provides a strong conclusion to the book and echoes the call by co-editors Berry and Harris for readers to “engage your emotions, and…to approach your work with respect and care” (5).

Downs’s call for historians to think about archival sources through the eyes of artists raises questions about the historical profession’s rigidity in only accepting written documents as valid sources. What would happen if one of the writers in this book examined the late eighteenth century paintings of Caribbean subjects by Italian artist Agostino Brunias through the lens of sexuality and slavery? And, as a material culture scholar, I must ask, what about objects? Surely we could further understand the history of women’s medicine and the exploitation of Black women by J. Marion Sims through the development of gynecological tools. How many enslaved women’s sexual organs were maimed as he sought to perfect his speculum or determine the correct gauge of silver wire to use for suturing?

Trevor Burnard’s contribution does take an empirical approach to studying sexuality and slavery through the compilation of a dataset of monetary valuations assigned to enslaved men and women in estate inventories in Jamaica from the late seventeenth through most of the eighteenth centuries. Burnard finds that, contradictory to the heavy labor performed by women (and in the near complete ignoring of their reproductive labor potential), enslaved men were consistently valued higher than women. And the difference between these valuations by gender increased over time. He ultimately concludes that the investment in patriarchal structures by white planters in Jamaica and their assumptions about male dominance in free and enslaved communities caused them to assign monetary values to enslaved people based on emotion through their fear of unrest amongst the slave community, rather than through empirically and economically sound methods.

[climatephile]

1.30 Reflections

overall themes:

Politicization of science and scientization of politics. 

^ is a double edged sword. If scientists advocate, the science is put in question. If scientists don’t advocate, the science is still put into question.

Everything is advocacy / anything can be advocacy. Anyone can be an advocate. At the end of the day, everyone is an advocate. 

Scientists are not a collective. Composed of real individual people.

We explored what responsible advocacy can be, and what advocacy is. Advocacy is not limited to a discipline, or a set of actions, or a set of mediums. We live in an era where anyone can be an advocate, and their reach is greater than ever. Not only are we advocates to the people we speak to, we are advocates to anyone who follows us whether actively or passively. Attention is a currency, and we live in an age where attention is accessible. If everything is advocacy, how can we hold ourselves accountable to be better advocates? Is silence unethical? Immoral? 

But what exactly can the role of scientists be in climate change advocacy? Is there an inherent difference between science and advocacy? Do scientists not advocate for the research they conduct? If they, the creators and authors and testers and analyzers don’t, who will? Who can? And how can we hold media accountable in responsibly sharing science and addressing scientists (as individuals and teams, not as a nebulous collective)?

A narrative I want to explore more is the pressure and tension scientists face in having their work shared with larger audiences. To spread the science to broad audiences, they must be relevant. To be relevant to the public, they must be responsible for work that is of great interest. Or, the science must be controversial enough to gain traction. Does that diminish the credibility of the science? Does it have to? I don’t think it necessarily does, but it is a risk. 

[birmintrix]

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[hourlywritingprompts]

Writing prompt of the hour: scientize

[fatehbaz]

“Rather than the actual survival of plants or animals, the goal of this forestry was focused on preventing the exhaustion of resource extraction. [...] Trees have turned into carbon reserves that are to be protected from any form of Indigenous, domestic [...] usage”: Tree plantations, imperialism, the “value” of a forest, commodifying ecology through financialized concepts like “ecosystem services”.

-------

From No Net Loss [of the 1980s] to profiting from bioassets and local livelihood, what is emerging appears to be a new green space race. Nations and companies are competing to appropriate the last piece of available “untapped” forest that can provide the most amount of “environmental services.” A green space race to designate space itself as a protected zone. Eco-utilities and forest bonds are some of the instruments that are boosting the neoliberal quantification of space embedded in that process and determining how to classify and demarcate it. [...] As facts were not enough, subjective valuation of nature started playing a more ambiguous active role, malleable enough to different economic interests. There are many ways of valuing, but [...] the moment “natural variety” appeared (the fact that species are different and contribute differently to the ecological balance of a habitat), the gradients of environmental importance to biodiversity easily became a commodity that could be compared, exchanged, lost, gained, depleted, restored, quantified, and scientized; allowing metaphors such as “balance of nature” to disguise poor understandings of ecology.

-------

Before current quantifications that assign figures and formulae to plants, their value was extracted in a more direct way. When British Empire forestry was first established as a disciplinary practice in India, formalizing the right of the state over “nature,” it proscribed private interests and initiated a new system of forest management based on a logic of utilitarian preservation.

Rather than the actual survival of plants or animals, the goal of this forestry was focused on preventing the exhaustion of resource extraction. Using the universal goodness of plants to prevent Indigenous peoples from living off the forest for the sake of the “environment,” Empire forestry eventually masqueraded a form of biopolitical control, limiting access to the forest for its original dwellers. Furthermore, the extraction of commodities from every single tree (timber, rubber, or pharmaceutical substances) has been used as a form of ecocracy throughout history: controlling space and people through the conservation of ecology. This conservation paradigm implied that the ruling class could keep extracting material resources from trees without exhausting the forest. [...]

A century later, the failed attempts to develop mechanisms for long lasting and sustainable material extraction have brought forth financial quantification as a new theory and practice of conservation.

-------

This circulation of greening capital to mitigate architectural development is indebted to George H.W. Bush’s No Net Loss policy, passed in the 1980s. According to No Net Loss, any development that destroys natural habitats (especially wetlands, streams or vernal pools) has to be recouped by the restoration of an “equivalent” landscape elsewhere. The net amount of biodiversity is meant to remain “the same” in terms of surface, quality, or quantity. For each acre of lost wetland, for instance, there should be at least one acre created or restored. This one-for-one logic becomes perverse when the idea of preservation gets thrown into the mix: a developer can destroy a forest for the construction of a condominium on site A and pay a third-party entity owning an equivalent amount of trees on site B to preserve them. [...]

In the same decade that No Net Loss emerged as a form of circulating financial value through the environment based on entirely unscientific calculations of return, concepts of “biodiversity” and “sustainable development” also appeared in the literature and practice of financial ecology. In the 1980s [many] biologists shifted from providing facts about the natural world (already social constructions themselves) to start speaking of nature’s “values.”

-------

The extraction of value from trees does not imply subtraction of physical matter (sap, bark, leaves, roots, or oil extracts), but rather precisely by keeping all that materiality intact and in place. Trees have turned into carbon reserves that are to be protected from any form of Indigenous, domestic [...] usage, so that they keep acting as fixed carbon sinks. Contemporary struggles in Niassa, Mozambique against the neocolonial logic of “afforestation projects” reflect similar uprisings in early twentieth century India, where forests are being “preserved” to offset air pollution in cities of the global North. [...]

In this case, what is conserved is not just trees to improve air quality in the city, but also its real estate capital flows. Humans and other-than-humans thus become financial victims of conservation. Trees that provide environmental services for offsetting purposes could, as has happened in places like India or Mozambique, be prioritized over aesthetic, health, or ecological concerns.

-------

Text by: Daniel Fernandez Pascual and Alon Schwabe. “The Offsetted.” e-flux. November 2013. [Bold emphasis and italicized first paragraph/heading added by me.]

[diaspora9ja]

“The Scientists Made Me Do It” – The Science, Policy And Politics Of COVID-19 – Food, Drugs, Healthcare, Life Sciences

Canada: “The Scientists Made Me Do It” – The Science, Coverage And Politics Of COVID-19

16 December 2020

Gowling WLG

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One of many enduring myths of regulatory apply is that science and coverage can and ought to be separated. We see this fiction enjoying out day-after-day on the information as we get our day by day COVID-19 briefings. Is it any marvel the general public is confused about who’s making choices and whether or not choices are based mostly on science or on the foundation of non-science issues? In fact, it’s each and that is the best way it’s imagined to be. Science, coverage and politics can’t be separated: they’re inextricably intertwined.

Scientists usually resent politicians or their senior advisers for daring to query their science recommendation, for politicizing their “impartial” science with non-science issues. The delusion is that every one choices have to be solely “evidence-based” however this complete idea is flawed. It’s the reliable and needed function of elected politicians to take the science-based threat evaluation after which perform the policy-based threat administration operate by weighing the social, political, financial, authorized, moral and environmental components in order to reach on the applicable regulatory resolution.

And even the danger assessments are replete with non-science issues. As Covello and Merkhofer have clearly proven: “in apply, assumptions which have coverage implications enter into threat evaluation at just about each stage of the method. The concept of a threat evaluation that’s free, or practically free, of coverage issues is past the realm of chance.” Students such Harvard’s Sheila Jasanoff have way back proven that “research of scientific advising go away in tatters the notion that it’s attainable, in apply, to limit the advisory apply to technical points or that the subjective values of scientists are irrelevant to resolution making.” That is very true for public coverage points the place the science is unsure and competing with so many different value-laden components. We frequently have what Henrik and Jamieson have described as “the imprimatur of science being smuggled into deliberations that truly take care of values and politics.” That scientists ought to gown up their science recommendation as pure “impartial” science is comprehensible. As Roger Paelkhe has identified, “for these with scientific experience, it consequently makes excellent sense to wage political battles via science as a result of it essentially confers to scientists a privileged place in political debate.”

And if the science is so impartial, the general public wonders, how do you clarify duelling scientists? As I write this, the Declaration of a very esteemed group of scientists is being described by an equally esteemed group as “a harmful fallacy unsupported by scientific proof.”

Politicians and their senior officers are sometimes pleased to preserve this confusion and blurring of accountability, pleased to disguise behind the parable that they’re simply slavishly following the recommendation of their specialists. Simply as we’ve heard a lot in regards to the worry of politicization of science, we now have what I’ve referred to as the “scientization” of politics. I as soon as had a Minister confronted with a tricky resolution that was his to make below the statute, say to me (with apologies to the American comic Flip Wilson) “Ron, I do not need to be seen as making the choice. I simply need to have the ability to say ‘It isn’t my fault, the scientists made me do it…the scientists made me do it’.”

What ought to be the appropriate stage of PCBs in farmed salmon? What ought to be the suitable mixture of guidelines to stop the importation of BSE into Canada? What’s the proper regulatory regime for the approval of genetically-modified traits in seeds? What’s the secure stage of BPA in water bottles? How ought to the extent of salt in processed meals merchandise be regulated? Ought to it proceed to be unlawful to promote uncooked milk? What ought to be the mandatory guidelines for the storage of high-level nuclear waste? These are only a few examples of the form of science-based public coverage points with which I used to be instantly concerned within the final 30 years both as a regulator or a lawyer appearing for a regulated social gathering. In all these circumstances, the science was related however not determinative. And, curiously, in all these circumstances the events argued that the essential query was one among science: if solely we might get the science proper, the general public coverage reply would comply with. If solely the world have been that straightforward.

My meals science college students appear genuinely unaware that science-based well being threat assessments are replete with coverage issues, that in the true world of regulatory apply you can not separate science, insurance policies and politics — but, as we have seen so usually on this the 12 months of COVID-19, a lot of our public discourse is dominated by the quaint Utopian view that they can, and will, be strictly separated.

Initially revealed by Meals in Canada

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