ABSTRACT: In many ways the process of realizing urban developments in the UK today, with the emphasis on partnership working, community involvement and sustainability, is significantly different from the process as it operated during the post-war building boom. In other respects, however, there are some striking similarities. This paper looks at the same redevelopment area examined by Porter and Barber's (2006) article in City, but places it within its historical context. Through telling a story of redevelopment in Birmingham from the post-war reconstruction to the present, the significant shifts in governance arrangements—particularly refiguring the role of the local state—are highlighted. At the same time, however, significant continuities are found, in particular the desire to assemble large sites for 'comprehensive' redevelopment.

ABSTRACT: It is the contention of this article that a new subjectivity is taking shape in contemporary Western societies. This subjectivity is the effect of an ongoing transformation of power relations. Following Haggerty and Ericson, we call these emerging power relations 'surveillant assemblages.' These assemblages take shape against the background of a society with an ever-increasing emphasis on speed, flux, mobility, and flows. Taking the work of Michel Foucault on the disciplinary society as a point of departure, this article will set out to describe, following Gilles Deleuze and David Garland, the transformation of the current social order into a society of control. In light of such a transformation we will reassess the notion of flow that captures these changes. This article will, therefore, deal with the inherent connection of flow and (the society of) control. In such an analysis we leave the traditional view of control behind. That is, control as the opposite of flow. In the society that is taking shape, control has become an immanent part of flows. Or in short: there is no flow without control.

2nd Workshop
Beirut, Lebanon, 1 – 8 February 2009

BEIRUT: Walk its streets, visit its hip quarters, check the destroyed but completely resurrected city centre, talk to the armed soldiers at the street corners, listen to the old and not-so-old war stories from the cab driver, explore its old, new and upcoming neighborhoods. Only a few cities in the world offer so many layers of hidden meaning as Beirut does. In the public realm of this town there seems to be merely suggestion, projection and differences of opinion that somehow interact with peoples daily movements and actions.

Participate in the BEYROUTES guide project organized by Studio Beirut, Partizan Publik, Pearl and Archis. A project that enables you to go beyond an exotic visit to the people, buildings and places of Beirut, and to get engaged: in its past, present and future.To produce a guide that provokes to construct your own anecdotes, actions and architecture of the city.

Do you want to contribute in writing, drawing, research, photography or design:

Sign up now for the 2nd RESEARCH workshop at ranije[at]yahoo[dot]com.

Publisher's blurb:

In an age of proliferating media and news sources, who has the power to define reality? When the dominant media declared the existence of WMDs in Iraq, did that make it a fact? Today, the "Social web" (sometimes known as Web 2.0, groupware, or the participatory Web)—epitomized by blogs, viral videos, and YouTube—creates new pathways for truths to emerge and makes possible new tactics for media activism. In Digital Media and Democracy, leading scholars in media and communication studies, media activists, journalists, and artists explore the contradiction at the heart of the relationship between truth and power today: the fact that the radical democratization of knowledge and multiplication of sources and voices made possible by digital media coexists with the blatant falsification of information by political and corporate powers.

The book maps a new digital media landscape that features citizen journalism, The Daily Show, blogging, and alternative media. The contributors discuss broad questions of media and politics, offer nuanced analyses of change in journalism, and undertake detailed examinations of the use of Web-based media in shaping political and social movements. The chapters include not only essays by noted media scholars but also interviews with such journalists and media activists as Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!, Media Matters host Robert McChesney, and Hassan Ibrahim of Al Jazeera.

Boler's introduction is available as a free PDF here.

ABSTRACT: This article examines several Soviet initiatives to develop a national computer network as the technological basis for an automated information system for the management of the national economy in the 1960s-1970s. It explores the mechanism by which these proposals were circulated, debated, and revised in the maze of Party and government agencies. The article examines the role of different groups - cybernetics enthusiasts, mathematical economists, computer specialists, government bureaucrats, and liberal economists - in promoting, criticizing, and reshaping the concept of a national computer network. The author focuses on the political dimension of seemingly technical proposals, the relationship between information and power, and the transformative role of users of computer technology.

Abstract: Although great strides have been made toward forecasting state-level instability, little progress has been made toward the prediction of outbreaks of urban unrest. This article presents a method for the assessment of cities' vulnerability to large-scale urban unrest. Forty-five factors correlated with urban unrest are identified and weighted by an expert panel. Based on expert elicitation through an iterative Delphi exercise, the explicitly methodological discussion describes both the process and the resulting assessment framework. Results include a tool that will allow users to rank cities on their vulnerability to large-scale urban unrest.

In a letter dated November 1883, Paul Cambon, the resident minister of France's protectorate of Tunisia, confided to his wife that “if the Capitulations aren't suppressed, we'll find ourselves backed into a corner [nous voilà acculés].” These Capitulations—similar to legal arrangements prevailing in the Ottoman Empire, of which Tunisia had been a semiautonomous province until the French conquest in 1881—granted a number of legal immunities to foreign nationals and holders of foreign “patents of protection.” Why would the senior administrator of France's new protectorate worry about the legal status of nationals belonging to the rival states it had outmaneuvered to win Tunisia? After all, France had just signed a treaty promising to protect the Tunisian bey's dynasty in exchange for the right to “occupy all areas deemed necessary for the reestablishment of order and security of both borders and coastline." The treaty seemed to settle the question of which European state controlled Tunisia. Instead, I will argue, it marked the beginning of a new phase of imperial rivalry, as European powers found novel ways to compete for influence in the protectorate by exploiting fissures in the rule of law. In turn, individuals in Tunisia sought to exercise power over their everyday lives by doing the same, playing the protectorate's multiple jurisdictions off each other to settle quotidian social conflict. These two forms of power struggle did not merely overlap; they were intertwined. Local disputes—between the administration and taxpayers, creditors and debtors, or husbands and wives, among others—exposed and exacerbated divisions between European states.

Abstract

The publication of the "Danish cartoons" generated a continuing conflict between freedom of expression and religious tolerance. The article examines the history of cartoon satire, invoking past examples of racial and religious discrimination in cartoons while emphasizing the important role cartoonists have played in criticizing and checking the exercise of power. The legal implications of the "Danish cartoons" is analyzed through the lens of international human rights law, in particular the concepts of hate speech, racial discrimination and religious defamation. Finally the present movement in the UN towards "cartooning for peace" is promoted.

Terrorism acts as driver for diverse policies of pre-emption, prevention and prediction, including the substantial growth of surveillance. Frequently, terrorism is framed in terms of risk, with certain places,