ALBERT

Description: Rethinking fiscal and monetary policy in an economic environment of high debt and low interest rates. Policy makers in advanced economies find themselves in an unusual fiscal environment: debt ratios are historically high, and—once the fight against inflation is won—real interest rates will likely be very low again. This combination calls for a rethinking of the role of fiscal and monetary policy—and this is just what Olivier Blanchard proposes in Fiscal Policy under Low Interest Rates. There is a wide set of opinions about the direction that fiscal policy should take. Some, pointing to the high debt levels, make debt reduction an absolute priority. Others, pointing to the low interest rates, are less worried; they suggest that there is still fiscal space, and, if justified, further increases in debt should not be ruled out. Blanchard argues that low interest rates decrease not only the fiscal costs of debt but also the welfare costs of debt. At the same time, he shows how low rates decrease the room to maneuver in monetary policy—and thus increase the benefits of using fiscal policy, including deficits and debt, for macroeconomic stabilization. In short, low rates imply lower costs and higher benefits of debt. Having sketched what optimal policy looks like, Blanchard considers three examples of fiscal policy in action: fiscal consolidation in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis, the large increase in debt in Japan, and the current US fiscal and monetary policy mix. His conclusions hold practical implications for economic and fiscal policy makers, bankers, and politicians around the world.

Description: Understanding the embedded and disembedded, material and immaterial, territorialized and deterritorialized natures of digital work. Many jobs today can be done from anywhere. Digital technology and widespread internet connectivity allow almost anyone, anywhere, to connect to anyone else to communicate and exchange files, data, video, and audio. In other words, work can be deterritorialized at a planetary scale. This book examines the implications for both work and workers when work is commodified and traded beyond local labor markets. Going beyond the usual “world is flat” globalization discourse, contributors look at both the transformation of work itself and the wider systems, networks, and processes that enable digital work in a planetary market, offering both empirical and theoretical perspectives. The contributors—leading scholars and experts from a range of disciplines—touch on a variety of issues, including content moderation, autonomous vehicles, and voice assistants. They first look at the new experience of work, finding that, despite its planetary connections, labor remains geographically sticky and embedded in distinct contexts. They go on to consider how planetary networks of work can be mapped and problematized, discuss the productive multiplicity and interdisciplinarity of thinking about digital work and its networks, and, finally, imagine how planetary work could be regulated. Contributors Sana Ahmad, Payal Arora, Janine Berg, Antonio A. Casilli, Julie Chen, Christina Colclough, Fabian Ferrari, Mark Graham, Andreas Hackl, Matthew Hockenberry, Hannah Johnston, Martin Krzywdzinski, Johan Lindquist, Joana Moll, Brett Neilson, Usha Raman, Jara Rocha, Jathan Sadowski, Florian A. Schmidt, Cheryll Ruth Soriano, Nick Srnicek, James Steinhoff, Jara Rocha, JS Tan, Paola Tubaro, Moira Weigel, Lin Zhang

Description: Las tradiciones, en contextos de fragilidades geopolíticas, se han visto afectadas por prácticas aculturizantes. Estas, unidas al consumismo y al mercantilismo, pasan, de manera silenciosa, a la trastienda del imperio monocultural. Con la Declaratoria del Patrimonio Inmaterial realizada en la convención de París, en 2003, y ratificada por Ecuador en 2005, se crea una mayor conciencia sobre la importancia de salvaguardar la memoria social, patrimonio colectivo de los pueblos. El presente texto documenta la participación ciudadana en esa tarea de cuidar saberes y prácticas que son parte de la vida cotidiana de las comunidades, ciudades, pueblos y colectivos; por tanto, parte del patrimonio inmaterial y legado cultural para las presentes y futuras generaciones.

Description: An exploration of how design might be led by marginalized communities, dismantle structural inequality, and advance collective liberation and ecological survival. What is the relationship between design, power, and social justice? “Design justice” is an approach to design that is led by marginalized communities and that aims explicitly to challenge, rather than reproduce, structural inequalities. It has emerged from a growing community of designers in various fields who work closely with social movements and community-based organizations around the world. This book explores the theory and practice of design justice, demonstrates how universalist design principles and practices erase certain groups of people—specifically, those who are intersectionally disadvantaged or multiply burdened under the matrix of domination (white supremacist heteropatriarchy, ableism, capitalism, and settler colonialism)—and invites readers to “build a better world, a world where many worlds fit; linked worlds of collective liberation and ecological sustainability.” Along the way, the book documents a multitude of real-world community-led design practices, each grounded in a particular social movement. Design Justice goes beyond recent calls for design for good, user-centered design, and employment diversity in the technology and design professions; it connects design to larger struggles for collective liberation and ecological survival.

Description: A systematic assessment of the impact of public access to computers and the Internet, with findings from developing countries in South America, Asia, and Africa. Shared public access to computers and the Internet in developing countries is often hailed as an effective, low-cost way to share the benefits of digital technology. Yet research on the economic and social effects of public access to computers is lacking. This volume offers the first systematic assessment of the impact of shared public access in the developing world, with findings from ten countries in South America, Asia, and Africa. It provides evidence that the benefits of diversified participation in digital society go beyond providing access to technology. Public access venues—most often Internet cafés in cities and state-run telecenters in rural areas—are places for learning, sharing, working, empowerment and finding opportunities. The book documents the impact of public access on individuals, on society and networks, and on women. Chapters report findings and examine policy implications of research on such topics as users' perceptions of the benefits of Internet café use in Jordan; ICT job training in Rwanda; understanding user motivations and risk factors for overuse and Internet addiction in China; the effect of technology use on social inclusion among low-income urban youth in Argentina; productive uses of technologies by grassroots organizations in Peru; use of technology by migrant ethnic minority Burmese women in Thailand to maintain ties with their culture and their family and friends; and women's limited access to the most ubiquitous type of venue, cybercafés, in practically all countries studied—and quite severely in some places, e.g. Uttar Pradesh, India. Contributing Editors Erwin A. Alampay, Roxana Barrantes Cáceres, Hernan Galperin, Abiodun Jagun, George Sciadas, Ramata Molo Thioune, Kentaro Toyama Chapter authors Ali Farhan AbuSeileek, Carolina Aguerre, Oluwasefunmi 'Tale Arogundade, Nor Aziah Alias, Sebastián Benítez Larghi, Jorge Bossio, Juan Fernando Bossio, Marina Laura Calamari, Nikos Dacanay, Jean Damascène Mazimpaka, Laurent Aristide Eyinga Eyinga, Mary Luz Feranil, Ariel Fontecoba, Omar Fraihat, Martin S. Hagger, Jianbin Hao, Sulaiman Hashim, Izaham Shah Ismail, Haziah Jamaludin, Xuemei Jiang, Laura León, Guoxin Li, Balwant Singh Mehta, Nidhi Mehta, Marina Moguillansky, Marhaini Mohd Noor, Avis Momeni, Théodomir Mugiraneza, Jimena Orchuela, Patricia Peña Miranda, Alejandra Phillippi, Jimena Ponce de León, Ghaleb Rabab'ah, Saif Addeen AlRababah, Wei Shang, Ryan V. Silverio, Sylvie Siyam Siwe, Efenita M. Taqueban, Olga Balbine Tsafack Nguekeng, Xiaoguang Yang

Description: A study of Internet blocking and filtering around the world: analyses by leading researchers and survey results that document filtering practices in dozens of countries. Many countries around the world block or filter Internet content, denying access to information that they deem too sensitive for ordinary citizens—most often about politics, but sometimes relating to sexuality, culture, or religion. Access Denied documents and analyzes Internet filtering practices in more than three dozen countries, offering the first rigorously conducted study of an accelerating trend. Internet filtering takes place in more than three dozen states worldwide, including many countries in Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa. Related Internet content-control mechanisms are also in place in Canada, the United States and a cluster of countries in Europe. Drawing on a just-completed survey of global Internet filtering undertaken by the OpenNet Initiative (a collaboration of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, the Oxford Internet Institute at Oxford University, and the University of Cambridge) and relying on work by regional experts and an extensive network of researchers, Access Denied examines the political, legal, social, and cultural contexts of Internet filtering in these states from a variety of perspectives. Chapters discuss the mechanisms and politics of Internet filtering, the strengths and limitations of the technology that powers it, the relevance of international law, ethical considerations for corporations that supply states with the tools for blocking and filtering, and the implications of Internet filtering for activist communities that increasingly rely on Internet technologies for communicating their missions. Reports on Internet content regulation in forty different countries follow, with each two-page country profile outlining the types of content blocked by category and documenting key findings. Contributors Ross Anderson, Malcolm Birdling, Ronald Deibert, Robert Faris, Vesselina Haralampieva [as per Rob Faris], Steven Murdoch, Helmi Noman, John Palfrey, Rafal Rohozinski, Mary Rundle, Nart Villeneuve, Stephanie Wang, Jonathan Zittrain

Description: An investigation of the causes and consequences of the strange, ambivalent, and increasingly central role of infrastructure repair in modern life. Infrastructures—communication, food, transportation, energy, and information—are all around us, and their enduring function and influence depend on the constant work of repair. In this book, Christopher Henke and Benjamin Sims explore the causes and consequences of the strange, ambivalent, and increasingly central role of infrastructure repair in modern life. Henke and Sims offer examples, from local to global, to investigate not only the role of repair in maintaining infrastructures themselves but also the social and political orders that are created and sustained through them. Repair can encompass not only the kind of work we most commonly associate with the term but also any set of practices aimed at restoring a sense of normalcy or credibility to the places and institutions we inhabit in everyday life. From cases as diverse as the repair of building systems on a university campus, a conflict over retrofitting a bridge while protecting murals painted on it, and the global challenge posed by climate change, Henke and Sims assemble a range of examples to illustrate key conceptual points about the role of repair. They show that repair is an essential if often overlooked aspect of understanding the broader impact and politics of infrastructures. Understanding repair helps us better understand infrastructures and the scope of their influence on our lives.

Description: Experts explore current theory and practice in the application of digitally enabled open networked social models to international development. The emergence of open networked models made possible by digital technology has the potential to transform international development. Open network structures allow people to come together to share information, organize, and collaborate. Open development harnesses this power, to create new organizational forms and improve people's lives; it is not only an agenda for research and practice but also a statement about how to approach international development. In this volume, experts explore a variety of applications of openness, addressing challenges as well as opportunities. Open development requires new theoretical tools that focus on real world problems, consider a variety of solutions, and recognize the complexity of local contexts. After exploring the new theoretical terrain, the book describes a range of cases in which open models address such specific development issues as biotechnology research, improving education, and access to scholarly publications. Contributors then examine tensions between open models and existing structures, including struggles over privacy, intellectual property, and implementation. Finally, contributors offer broader conceptual perspectives, considering processes of social construction, knowledge management, and the role of individual intent in the development and outcomes of social models. Contributors Carla Bonina, Ineke Buskens, Leslie Chan, Abdallah Daar, Jeremy de Beer, Mark Graham, Eve Gray, Anita Gurumurthy, Havard Haarstad, Blane Harvey, Myra Khan, Melissa Loudon, Aaron K. Martin, Hassan Masum, Chidi Oguamanam, Katherine M. A. Reilly, Ulrike Rivett, Karl Schroeder, Parminder Jeet Singh, Matthew L. Smith, Marshall S. Smith Copublished with the International Development Research Centre of Canada (IDRC)

Description: An examination of nanotechnology as a lens through which to study contemporary democracy in both theory and practice. In Democratic Experiments, Brice Laurent discusses the challenges that emerging technologies create for democracy today. He focuses on nanotechnology and its attendant problems, proposing nanotechnology as a lens through which to understand contemporary democracy in both theory and practice. Arguing that democracy is at stake where nanotechnology is defined as a problem, Laurent examines the sites where nanotechnology is discussed and debated by scientists, policymakers, and citizens. It is at these sites where the joint production of nanotechnology and the democratic order can be observed. Focusing on the United States, France, and Europe, and various international organizations, Laurent analyzes representations of nanotechnology in science museums, collective discussions in participatory settings, the making of categories such as “nanomaterials” or responsible innovation” in standardization and regulatory arenas, and initiatives undertaken by social movements. He contrasts American debates, in which the concern for public objectivity is central, with the French “state experiment,” the European goal of harmonization, and the international concern with a global market. In France, public debate proceeded in response to public protest and encountered a radical critique of technological development; the United States experimented with an innovative approach to technology assessment. The European regulatory approach results in lengthy debates over political integration; the United States relies on the adversarial functioning of federal agencies. Because nanotechnology is a domain where concerns over anticipation and participation are pervasive, Laurent argues, nanotechnology—and science and technology studies more generally—provides a relevant focus for a renewed analysis of democracy.

Description: How the NSF became an important yet controversial patron for the social sciences, influencing debates over their scientific status and social relevance. In the early Cold War years, the U.S. government established the National Science Foundation (NSF), a civilian agency that soon became widely known for its dedication to supporting first-rate science. The agency's 1950 enabling legislation made no mention of the social sciences, although it included a vague reference to “other sciences.” Nevertheless, as Mark Solovey shows in this book, the NSF also soon became a major—albeit controversial—source of public funding for them. Solovey's analysis underscores the long-term impact of early developments, when the NSF embraced a “scientistic” strategy wherein the natural sciences represented the gold standard, and created a social science program limited to “hard-core” studies. Along the way, Solovey shows how the NSF's efforts to support scholarship, advanced training, and educational programs were shaped by landmark scientific and political developments, including McCarthyism, Sputnik, reform liberalism during the 1960s, and a newly energized conservative movement during the 1970s and 1980s. Finally, he assesses the NSF's relevance in a “post-truth” era, questions the legacy of its scientistic strategy, and calls for a separate social science agency—a National Social Science Foundation. Solovey's study of the battles over public funding is crucial for understanding the recent history of the social sciences as well as ongoing debates over their scientific status and social value.