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I will give a detailed description of how model can be used to understand the symptoms of dementia as described by other researchers in particular the concepts of wandering and withdrawal. This will show how Fairbairn’s theory can be related to the experience of those with dementia.
Building upon Max Weber’s insightful critique of the capitalist spirit as causing ‘unprecedented inner loneliness’, this article traces the trajectory of a fraught subjectivity over the course of a socioeconomic order from the Protestant Reformation to the present. Beginning with the premise that this socioeconomic order has a long history of both inviting and foreclosing upon the capacity to have an inner life, the general argument is pursued that grappling with one’s separateness, as well as the separateness of the object, gives rise to an inevitable sense of loneliness. This psychoanalytically informed sense of loneliness is juxtaposed with the gnawing loneliness that seems to haunt neoliberal subjectivity, revealing how the former might provide an imperfect but still viable antidote to our increasing inability to sit quietly by ourselves. Particular focus is given to re-evaluating Winnicott’s notion of the capacity to be alone in light of cultivating a separate self. The article concludes with some tentative thoughts on what suffering a separate self might entail, including suffering one’s inevitable loneliness.
In Western academic spaces, more and more stakeholders are claiming commitments to ‘decolonisation’. Yet in environments shaped by rankings, impact factors, citation numbers and third-party funding figures, what claims to be decolonial scholarship can easily end up being as extractive and violent as the subject it is claiming to confront. In this article, we reflect on attempts to decolonise both the discipline and practice of ‘development’, especially with regard to knowledge ‘production’ in this academic disciplinary space. We are doing this from a particular situatedness that is itself contradictory, as we are both facilitators of an EU-funded network focused on ‘Decolonising Development’ and of Convivial Thinking, a non-institutional, transnational web-based collective. We argue that imperial forms of knowing and making sense of the world are deeply entrenched in the structures of higher education, both shaping and limiting the ways in which what we call ‘development’ is researched, taught and practised. By reflecting on instances of academic activism and institutional pushback in both aforementioned networks, we show how institutional violence limits scholarly imaginations in ways that make sure academic or dominant knowledge structures are not radically challenged, thereby making claims of decolonisation purely performative. Despite this, we also point to concrete openings in both networks where undoing the entanglements of decolonising narratives, ‘development’ and the imperatives of scholarship – and thereby dismantling the master’s house that sustains it – seems within reach.
This chapter summarizes the uses of surveillance technologies in migration, border management and humanitarian aid, to explain contemporary capitalism’s mainstream approach to migration and the motivations behind the investments of tech companies.
Given the far-reaching effects of these technologies, it is evident they will soon have consequences for humanity as a whole. Migrants, asylum seekers and refugees have much weaker legal status than those of citizens, and states claim the authority to control those who cross their borders by invoking their sovereign rights. The fields of border and national security are more secretive, face less scrutiny and leak less information, and societies take a less sympathetic approach to migrants and foreigners. This allows tech companies, along with military and financial firms and security bureaucracies, to do as they please on the global stage, and implement the most speculative AI or blockchain projects.
Digital identity projects are related to supporting migrants and refugees and contributing to their financial and social integration. Despite mostly positive approaches (with or without reservations), when digital identity initiatives are evaluated from the perspective of the manifestation of surveillance capitalism in migration management, many examples demonstrate corporate agenda-setting and new hegemonic discourses.
Smart border and digital identity applications do not contradict but complement one another. If the main issue in the use of surveillance technologies in border and migration management is data collection and extraction, smart border applications function, through data analysis, to decide who is allowed to cross the border and, after crossing the border, how far they are allowed to go. A digital identity, on the other hand, is where such data is stored, and thus very valuable for both states and private companies for financial inclusion and tracking purposes.
The author gives a detailed exposition of Fairbairn’s structural model of the self, showing how it develops from the initial stage of infantile dependency, through the transitional stage which is concerned with the abandonment of infantile dependence to the stage of mature dependence where the defences of the transitional stage are given up, and one can relate to others realistically. He gives a detailed description of how Fairbairn’s model can be used to understand the symptoms of dementia as described by other researchers.
Surveillance technologies developed in migration and border management can spread to other fields and affect an entire society. Suppose the lie detectors piloted on borders are successful and they meet no significant opposition from society, then we should not be surprised to see lie detectors in workplaces or in police stations in the near future. This, in turn, would mean new mechanisms of oppression in society at large.
When it comes to social issues, advanced statistics can be manipulated in favour of the powerful, with probable options being presented as inevitable or actual. This encourages an approach that perceives such situations as neutral and objective, magnifying the algorithm and obscuring the structural factors. This can cause serious problems in migration and border management.
Big data analysis has exciting potential in migration and border management and humanitarian emergencies. Inferences made from data sets allow us to analyse the basic characteristics and dynamics of mass movements and make predictions about the future.
This chapter discusses how private companies’ dominance over big data analysis should be questioned more vigorously. Companies that collect and analyse data have better capacity than states and UN agencies to monitor and direct ‘transient’ people. Strong legal protections do not exist regarding privacy and consent in many countries on migration routes.
Because of active national and international use of smartphones, social media and mobile banking, companies have become the biggest collectors and analysts of data. As most of these companies rely on the business model of surveillance capitalism, this provides invaluable resources to capitalism for the surveillance, manipulation and steering of people in a given direction.
In addition to discussing the consequences of capitalist policies in migration; this chapter demonstrates how surveillance technologies in this field provide valuable data on the trajectory of capitalism.
A large number of companies and states invest in these fields, but further debate is needed on motivations besides profit maximization, such as how alliances are formed, which actors set the agenda, and how capitalists use the outcomes. This is related to the process by which surveillance technologies provide global capitalism with immense power to reshape and reposition the global proletariat.
At a time when large masses of people move quickly, these technologies make it possible to identify migrants before they even arrive at the border, analyse their data, decide on whether to allow them entry, and closely monitor those allowed in. This process of selection and the interests of capitalism in shaping the labour market constitute the essence of the issue.
Many technological solutions that stand out within migration and border management fall within the scope of the tech product package known as ‘smart borders’. These ‘solutions’ make it possible to control activities beyond physical borders and to detect and prevent migration, through such tools as AI algorithms, drones, facial recognition, biometrics, satellite images, sensors and mobile phone and social media data analyses.
Both the USA and EU have hired private companies to militarize their borders with advanced surveillance technologies. Public funding is not being used to ensure the rights of migrants or to resolve economic and political problems, but to support companies in the development of new and deadly technologies.
The most significant producers of smart border applications are military companies. Those who produce the weapons and bombs that force refugees to flee their countries are the same companies that produce the tools for detecting those people in border areas.
