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A realistic economics may take as some of its empirical content the institutions of an economy. In neo-classical economics, in contradistinction, it is the choices of individuals that constitute the empirical content of theory. Institutions and choices, however, belong to two different orders of fact, according to the conceptual framework developed in this book. Choices belong to the ex post order of facts, and institutions belong to the ex ante order of facts. The former are mere records of past events, whereas the latter have to do with structure and causation. Economic theory presents preferences as if they were in the nature of ex ante facts, giving rise to choices, but in the absence of observing preferences, it infers them from the choices. Accordingly, the empirical content of economics are in the nature of ex post facts. Preferences are ex ante facts to the operating individual, but to the observing theorist, they are in the domain of ex post facts. This book shows how a confusion between ex post and ex ante facts has manifested itself in micro-economics.

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How Technology Discourses Quantify, Extract and Legitimize Inequalities

We are often expected to trust technologies, and how they are used, even if we have good reason not to. There is no room to mistrust.

Exploring relations between trust and mistrust in the context of data, AI and technology at large, this book defines a process of ‘trustification’ used by governments, corporations, researchers and the media to legitimise exploitation and increase inequalities.

Aimed at social scientists, computer scientists and public policy, the book aptly reveals how trust is operationalised and converted into a metric in order to extract legitimacy from populations and support the furthering of technology to manage society.

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The Construction of Publics in Datafied Democracies

EPDF and EPUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence

This book addresses new challenges to the formation of publics in datafied democracies. It proposes a fresh, complex and nuanced approach to understand ‘datapublics’, by considering datafication and public formation in the context of audience, journalism and infrastructure studies.

The tightly woven chapters shed new light on how platforms, algorithms and their data infrastructure are embedded in journalistic values, discourses and practices, opening up new conditions for publics to display agency, mobilise and achieve legitimacy.

This is a seminal contribution to the debates about the future of media, journalism and civic practices.

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Why States Fail to Act Decisively
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Why do international actors, including powerful states, often fail to develop clear foreign policies and instead adopt indecisive, ‘muddling-through’ approaches?

This book develops a concept and a theory of reluctance in world politics. Applying it to the study of regional crisis management by leading powers, it finds that reluctance emerges when governments fail to devise clear foreign policy preferences and face competing international pressures.

The study of reluctance in world politics sheds new light on some of the most pressing problems of our time, from weak crisis management to cooperation deficits in global governance.

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Rethinking Labour in Society and the Economy
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Today’s economics offers us a far too narrow perspective on the role that paid work plays in our lives, as individuals and as a society.

This book examines the urgent workplace challenges we’re facing today, from automation to AI and climate change, with an interdisciplinary and historical analysis that challenges and broadens the scope of existing economic literature. Exploring the current economic proposals to address these issues, it advocates for a more egalitarian and sustainable future that builds workers’ protections into the very fabric of our economic systems.

This is a resounding call for greater economic social justice and equality at work and a valuable resource for social scientists from fields like heterodox economics, business and sociology.

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Critique and Alternatives in the Urban Cultural Economy

A buoyant, creative economy can be seen as the saviour of many cities, but behind such ‘urban makeovers’ lie serious problems such as widening inequalities, job precarity, gentrification and environmental issues. In light of the pandemic and climate crisis, how well are city economies, based largely on culture, nightlife and tourism, meeting basic societal needs?

Blending lively case studies of alternative cultural practices and spaces with broader theoretical debates, this book explores the opportunities for a more just and sustainable urban future.

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Understanding Surveillance and Making a Difference

Information matters to us. Whether recorded, recoded or unregistered – information co-shapes our present and our becoming.

This book advances new views on information and surveillance practices. Starting with a methodology for studying the liveliness of information, Kaufmann provides four empirical examples of making information matter: association, conversion, secrecy and speculation. In so doing, she presents an original and comprehensive argument about the materiality of information and invites us to investigate, and to reflect about what matters.

This is a go-to text for scholars and professionals working in the fields of surveillance, data studies and the digitization of specific societal sectors.

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COVID-19, Digital Justice and the Politics of Refusal

How can we achieve digital justice in the age of COVID-19? This book explores how the pandemic has transformed our use and perception of digital technologies in various settings. It also examines the right to resist or reject these technologies and the politics of refusal in different contexts and scenarios. The book offers a timely and original analysis of the new realities and challenges of digital technologies, paving the way for a post-COVID-19 future.

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The Digital-Molecular Convergence
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A wave of innovation driven by the convergence of digital and molecular technologies is transforming food production and ways of eating in the US, Western Europe and Australasia. This book explores a range of contemporary agri-food issues, such as the digitalisation of farm production, aka Precision Agriculture, farmer independence, gene editing, alternative proteins and the rise of app-based home food deliveries.

This is the first book to provide a systemic analysis of technological innovation and its socio-economic consequences in modern food systems, including the ‘hollowing out’ of rural communities and pronounced industrial concentration. The food system is under growing public pressure to respond to global climate change, but this book finds little evidence of transition to sustainable low-carbon trajectories.

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Debating Moral Realism
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Bringing together eminent International Relations (IR) scholars from China and the West, this book examines moral realism from a range of different perspectives. Through its analyses, it verifies the robustness of moral realism in IR theory.

The first section of the book is written by Chinese scholars and dedicated to debates about how moral realism relates to traditional schools of IR theory. The latter portion, provided by Western contributors, critically investigates both the universal and practical values of moral realism. Finally, Yan Xuetong concludes by responding constructively to all criticisms and further exploring the nature and characteristics of interstate leadership in moral realism.

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