Livre bilingue publié avec le soutien financier de l’Organisation internationale de la Francophonie
Pour accéder au livre en version html, cliquez ici Pour télécharger le PDF, cliquez ici (à venir). Pour commander la version imprimée au prix de 29 $ CAD ou de 29 euros (pour l’Europe), écrire à info@editionscienceetbiencommun.org
Acheter un livre, c’est nous soutenir et permettre à ceux et celles qui ne peuvent l’acheter de le lire en libre accès.
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Comment, au nom de la justice cognitive, préserver et valoriser les savoirs patrimoniaux et les langues des peuples autochtones du monde entier, souvent méconnus et ignorés ? La proposition de la chercheuse nigérienne Zeïnabou Assoumi Sow est de mettre en lumière un genre très populaire de la littérature orale peule : le conte. Ce livre est ainsi composé de 18 contes, présentés en langue peule et en français, recueillis auprès des Peuls Gaawooɓe, derniers pasteurs nomades de l’ouest du Niger. Ces contes sont accompagnés d’un guide de lecture puisant dans l’univers culturel de ce peuple sahélien, en particulier dans les représentations et la symbolique du bovidé et d’autres animaux.
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Noy, dow innde kiite potinol hakkeeji nder tewto anndal, reenirta, darjina ɗee annde tawaangaaje e ɗemle wurooje ɗe duuniyaaru fuu, ɓuri hewde ɗe anndaaka, ɗe caanaaka? Jiiɗe lugginɗinoowo annde mo Niijer Zeynabu Aasumi Soo ngoni watta nder yaynaare iri oo anndaaɗo sanne mo filla annde pillaaka mo fulɓe : taalol. Dewtere ndee ndelle no kawri taali 18, kokkaaɗi he fulfulde e he faransiire, keɓaaɗi to fulɓe Gaawooɓe, keddiiɓe nder egga hoɗaaɓe gorgal Niijer. Taali ɗin ɗowtiraama tinndinirde jannde ƴoogunde nder weeyo finaa-tawaa mo ngool lenyol ngol saahel, ɓurde fuu no nagge e kulle ɗeya nji’iretee e ko ɗe coomi.
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ISBN version imprimée : 978-2-924661-99-4 ISBN PDF : 978-2-924661-97-0 ISBN ePub : 978-2-925128-03-8
DOI : à venir 250 pages Couverture réalisée par Kate McDonnell, photographie de Patrick Delmas à Diffa Date de publication : Janvier 2021
Décoloniser les sciences sociales. Descolonizar las ciencias sociales.
Six textes d’Orlando Fals Borda, choisis et traduits sous la direction de Liliana Diaz (Université Laval) et Baptiste Godrie (CREMIS et Université de Montréal)
Pour accéder au livre en version html, cliquez ici
Pour télécharger le PDF, cliquez ici (à venir).
Pour commander la version imprimée au prix de 29 $ CAD ou de 29 euros (pour l’Europe), écrire à info@editionscienceetbiencommun.org
Acheter un livre, c’est nous soutenir et permettre à ceux et celles qui ne peuvent l’acheter de le lire en libre accès.
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Seis textos de Orlando Fals Borda, seleccionados y traducidos bajo la dirección de Liliana Diaz y Baptiste Godrie
Comprar un libro significa apoyarnos y permitir que aquellos que no pueden comprarlo lo lean en acceso libre.
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Avec Paulo Freire, Orlando Fals Borda (1925-2008), est l’un des pères fondateurs des approches décoloniales latino-américaines en sciences sociales. Pourtant, alors que le premier est une figure familière du paysage des sciences sociales francophones, le second est quasiment inconnu. Cette anthologie francophone, la première à ce jour, propose cinq textes, publiés entre 1968 et 2003, en plus d’une conférence inédite prononcée en 1966. Elle vise à présenter la proposition épistémologique de Fals Borda d’une science latino-américaine émancipée des cadres théoriques européens et nord-américains, et orientée vers la production partagée des connaissances entre universitaires et mouvements sociaux pour favoriser la transformation de la société vers une plus grande justice sociale. Chaque texte est présenté dans sa version espagnole originale et dans sa traduction française, avec une brève mise en contexte permettant de situer celui-ci dans l’œuvre de l’auteur. Une introduction présente la thématique de l’anthologie et la trajectoire intellectuelle de Fals Borda.
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Junto con Paulo Freire, Orlando Fals Borda (1925-2008) fue uno de los padresfundadores de los enfoques descoloniales latinoamericanos en las ciencias sociales. Sinembargo, mientras que el primero es una figura familiar en el panorama francés de lasciencias sociales, el segundo es casi desconocido. Esta antología francófona, la primera hasta la fecha, ofrece cinco textos publicados entre 1968 y 2003, además de una conferencia inédita realizada en 1966. Su objetivo es presentar la propuesta epistemológica de Fals Borda de una ciencia latinoamericana emancipada de los marcos teóricos europeo y norteamericano, y orientada a la producción de conocimientos compartida entre los académicos y los movimientossociales para promover la transformación de la sociedad hacia una mayor justicia social. Cada texto se presenta en su versión original en español y en su traducción al francés, conuna breve contextualización que permite ubicarlo en el trabajo del autor. Una introducción presenta el tema de la antología y la trayectoria intelectual de Fals Borda.
ISBN version imprimée / edición impresa : 978-2-924661-99-4
ISBN PDF : 978-2-924661-97-0
ISBN ePub : 978-2-925128-03-8
DOI : à venir
238 pages
Couverture réalisée par Kate McDonnell, photographie tirée de ce documentaire sur Youtube : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfaZNTrfSNQ
Date de publication : septembre 2020
DOI : pronto
230 páginas
Portada dirigida por Kate McDonnell, fotografía de este documental en Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfaZNTrfSNQ
Fecha de publicación: septiembre de 2020
Climate Chaos. Making Art and Politics on a Dying Planet Neala Schleuning Formulates an anarchist aesthetics exploring what art can mean in and do in the Anthropocene Kant sought to contain the ancient fear and terror of the natural world in his concept of the sublime. He argued that with human reason we could safely confront an uncontrolled and powerful … Continue reading →
‘This remarkable collection is the first major portrait and assessment of the social and technical relationalities that constitute the ecology of big data in India today. Equally remarkably, the authors represent the first generation of scholars of digital media who speak through an Indian lens while being totally conversant with the cutting edge of global scholarship on big data.’ — Arjun Appadurai, Goddard Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication, New York University
‘Wide-ranging and incisive, Lives of Data is essential reading for those who wish to understand the seductions and contingencies of being or becoming data-driven.’ — Lisa Gitelman, author, Paper Knowledge and editor, ‘Raw Data’ Is an Oxymoron
Lives of Data maps the historical and emergent dynamics of big data, computing, and society in India. Data infrastructures are now more global than ever before. In much of the world, new sociotechnical possibilities of big data and artificial intelligence are unfolding under the long shadows cast by infra/structural inequalities, colonialism, modernization, and national sovereignty. This book offers critical vantage points for looking at big data and its shadows, as they play out in uneven encounters of machinic and cultural relationalities of data in India’s socio-politically disparate and diverse contexts.
Lives of Data emerged from research projects and workshops at the Sarai programme, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies. It brings together fifteen interdisciplinary scholars and practitioners to set up a collaborative research agenda on computational cultures. The essays offer wide-ranging analyses of media and techno-scientific trajectories of data analytics, disruptive formations of digital economy, and the grounded practices of data-driven governance in India. Encompassing history, anthropology, science and technology studies (STS), media studies, civic technology, data science, digital humanities, and journalism, the essays open up possibilities for a truly situated global and sociotechnically specific understanding of the many lives of data.
Lives of Data is edited by Sandeep Mertia. He is a PhD candidate at the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication and Urban Doctoral Fellow at New York University and he is an ICT engineer by training, and former Research Associate at The Sarai Programme, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi.
As we come to the end of this year, it is with great pride that we look back at the many exciting things that have happened here at OBP in 2020!
From great new open access titles, to innovative publications, new series and exciting projects, this has been a remarkable year for us.
Keep reading to find out more about all we have been doing this year!
Announcements
Proud to be in SE's top 100
COPIM project update
Open Access Books Network
Global usage statistics
Books, libraries and content
New OA publications
Our 2020 OA series
New Library Members
Interviews and videos
New blog posts
People
Our team members
Our volunteers
What our authors say about us
This year we have been listed once again among the top 100 social enterprises in the NatWest SE100! This award celebrates the growth, impact and resilience of social ventures in the UK by recognising the most impressive 100 social enterprises of the year. You can read more about this here.
The COPIM (Community-led Open Publication Infrastructures for Monographs) project, in which OBP has a key role, has made great strides in its first year, with highlights including the creation of an Open Dissemination System, called Thoth, to improve the discoverability of Open Access books, and a new business model, called Opening the Future, which is being put into practice with the Central European University Press, along with a wealth of scoping reports and workshop interviews that have informed the work of the project on multiple fronts. A detailed summary of COPIM's first year is available here.
Our major outreach project this year has been the development of the Open Access Books Network, which began life last year at the ElPub conference. This year Lucy Barnes and Agata Morka, in collaboration with Tom Mosterd at OAPEN, have developed a group on Humanities Commons as a focal point for the Network (including discussion boards, a blog, a community event calendar and a repository of documents on OA books) and held a number of online events.
If you are not already a member, we warmly invite you to join the group!
Our Open Access titles are available on a number of different platforms, and readers have multiple ways of accessing them. Collecting and collating usage statistics for our books is challenging, and clearly any data reported will be at the lower end of ‘true’ usage, as we are unable to obtain data from all platforms.
However, here at OBP we bring you one more year our global report on readership organised by continent, country and platform. As always, we have collected book-level usage data from the following sources: OBP’s Free Online PDF Reader; OBP’s Free HTML Reader; free ebook downloads from OBP; Google Play; and visitors to our titles hosted on Google Books, OpenEdition, WorldReader, OAPEN and the Classics Library. To find out more about the data we have been collecting and how the process of retrieving this information works, please visit our page on how we collect our readership statistics.
This 2020, when the access to OER was key to most institutions, academics, researchers and users everywhere, we welcomed readers from 234 different countries, states and territories (15 countries more than in 2019!), confirming that our titles have worldwide reach. The United States, United Kingdom, India, Phillipines and Canada are on the top 5 this year, followed by Germany, Australia, South Africa, France, Italy and China. We look forward to having an even bigger global impact in the years ahead.
In our percentage of readership by continent, Europe is in first place with 35.4% of our total readership, followed by North America with a 30.8% and Asia with a 20.6% (2.6% more accesses than the ones registered for this continent in 2019). We have also noticed an increase of a 1.8% in the accesses from Oceania since 2019 as well as in the ones from South America that have grown a 1.4% in comparison with the data collected for 2019.
Finally, we're happy to report that 60% of the total readership we receive comes trough our own website, followed by other platforms to which we distribute our Open Access titles such as Google Books, OAPEN, Open Edition and Worldreader.
Thank you so much for accessing, reading and sharing our titles. It is thanks to the support shown by our readers, our member libraries and our authors that we can keep working towards a fairer publishing landscape!
This year we have published a total of 37 books, which exceeds any previous year! We have not only released fantastic new titles both from first-time and returning authors but also four new textbooks and a number of enhanced editions of previously published books.
This year we have published a total of 37 books, which exceeds any previous year! We have not only released fantastic new titles both from first-time and returning authors but also four new textbooks and a number of enhanced editions of previously published books.
Creative Multilingualism: A Manifesto Katrin Kohl, Rajinder Dudrah, Andrew Gosler, Suzanne Graham, Martin Maiden, Wen-chin Ouyang and Matthew Reynolds (eds.)
In 2020, we have announced a number of new series all of which are open for proposals, so feel free to get in touch if you or someone you know is interested in submitting a proposal!
Cambridge Semitic Language and Cultures is a new book series in collaboration with the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Cambridge. This series includes philological and linguistic studies of Semitic languages, editions of Semitic texts and works relating to the cultures of Semitic-speaking peoples. Titles in the series will cover all periods, traditions and methodological approaches to the field. The editorial board comprises Geoffrey Khan, Aaron Hornkohl, and Esther-Miriam Wagner.
The Global Qur'an is a new book series that looks at Muslim engagement with the Qur’an in a global perspective. We publish studies that focus on the translation and interpretation of the Qur’an or on the social, cultural, pedagogical, aesthetic, and devotional place of the Qur’an in Muslim societies worldwide. We particularly encourage comparative studies, investigations of transregional dynamics, and interactions between local and global contexts. Contributions from scholars outside Western Europe and North America are especially welcome.
This book series publishes high-quality monographs, edited volumes, handbooks and formally innovative books which explore the relationships between mathematics education and society. The series advances scholarship in mathematics education by bringing multiple disciplinary perspectives to the study of contemporary predicaments of the cultural, social, political, economic and ethical contexts of mathematics education in a range of different contexts around the globe.
Global Communications is a new book series that looks beyond national borders to examine current transformations in public communication, journalism and media. Books in this series will focus on the role of communication in the context of global ecological, social, political, economic, and technological challenges in order to help us understand the rapidly changing media environment. We encourage comparative studies but we also welcome single case studies, especially if they focus on regions other than Western Europe and North America, which have received the bulk of scholarly attention until now.
A textbook in ethics designed primarily for students should have four main focal points: exposing students to normative moral theories, the history of ethics and ethicists, the nature and major contents of applied ethics, and exposing students to the analysis of moral terms and questions of moral validation in meta-ethics. However, what is currently available in this regard are texts that provide a one-sided and narrow narrative of these focal points: the Western narrative. As it is becoming more obvious in academic philosophy such hegemony of knowledge in any area of philosophy is not only a fraud and disservice to humanity – deliberately or non-deliberately – but also results in the poverty of knowledge. This book is a bold attempt to remedy this and provide a comprehensive and broad perspective of ethics to undergraduate students.
The Medieval Text Consortium is an association of leading scholars aimed at making works of medieval philosophy available to a wide audience. Our goal is to publish peer-reviewed texts across all of Western thought between antiquity and modernity, both in their original languages and in English translation.
Since January 2020, 39 libraries from all around the world have joined our membership scheme and in so doing they have supported our Open Access publications and helped us in our quest towards making academic research available to everyone, everywhere in the world. We wholeheartedly thank all the institutions who have decided to become a member as well as those who have renewed their membership from previous years - the support we receive from libraries is vital to help us continue our work!
These are the libraries that joined our membership scheme in 2020:
University of Graz Gothenburg University University of Jyväskylä University of Adelaide University of Arizona McMaster University Tilburg University Canterbury Christ Church University TU Berlin Rollins College Harvard University Open Universiteit Nederlands University of Kentucky The University of British Columbia Library University of Central Lancashire University of Eastern Finland Liverpool John Moores University York St John University University of Salford Queensland University of Technology Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin Mount Royal University George Washington University The National Library of Finland UiT The Arctic University of Norway La Universidad Latinoamericana de Ciencia y Tecnología University of Bielefeld Royal Danish Library Georg-August-Universität Göttingen Prifysgol Bangor University Heinrich-Heine-University (HHU) of Dusseldorf Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Bonn Middlesex University Universitetet i Agder Catholic University of Zimbabwe African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) Johns Hopkins University York University
You can find the full list of current members here and the list of benefits here. Free membership for libraries in Economically Developing Countries. If you are a librarian at a university or library in a such a country, and would be interested in receiving more information on how to become a member, please contact us at libraries@openbookpublishers.com
Lucy Barnes is responsible for copy-editing, proof-reading and indexing. She undertakes outreach work for OBP (speaking at universities, conducting webinars, writing blogs and articles, presenting at conferences and recording podcasts) and for the COPIM project. She is a lead member of the Open Access Books Network. She is also (slowly) completing her PhD at the University of Cambridge, studying nineteenth-century theatrical adaptations of novels and poetry.
Editors
Adèle Kreager is undertaking a PhD in Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic at the University of Cambridge, studying identity and transformations (corporal and mental) in Norse literature. Her research interests include the mobility and agency of ‘inanimate’ objects in Old Norse and Old English literature; landscape as text; and the legibility of bodies in the medieval imagination.
Melissa Purkiss holds a PhD in Medieval and Modern Languages from the University of Oxford, where she completed her thesis on French and Russian influence in the works of the émigré writer Gaito Gazdanov and lectured on nineteenth- and twentieth-century Russian literature. She is responsible for editorial and production tasks at OBP.
Book Production, Digital Product Development and Illustration Manager
Luca Baffa received an MLitt in Publishing Studies in 2013 from the University of Stirling. He is responsible for producing the various editions of our titles, including typesetting and generating the files for print and digital editions.
Book Production, Digital Product Development and Illustration
Bianca Gualandi received an MA in Digital Humanities in 2013 from King's College London. She develops digital publishing workflows for us, and specialises in print and digital book production. Bianca works independently and assists OBP on selected projects.
Francesca Giovannetti received an MA in Digital Humanities from King's College London in 2015. She specialises in print and digital book production, digital scholarly editing and digital text technologies. Francesca works independently and assists OBP on selected projects.
Cover Designer
Anna Gatti, a free-lance artist and photographer, currently studying towards a BA in History, Politics and Economics at UCL, University of London.
Software Development
Javier Arias is a software engineer developing open source software at OBP. He is currently leading the development of Thoth, the Open Dissemination System funded by the COPIM project. He has previously worked on the HIRMEOS project, the open usage metrics collection system that powers our readership stats, funded by Horizon 2020, the EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation. He is undertaking an MSc in Software Engineering at the University of Oxford.
Ross Higman is a software engineer working on the Open Dissemination System for the COPIM project. He has previously developed software for telecommunications networking and air pollution modelling, and worked as an editorial assistant. He holds an MPhil in Linguistics from the University of Cambridge.
Marketing and Library Relations
Laura Rodríguez holds an MPhil in Medieval Literature at the University of Cambridge. Her research interests include medieval pastoral care, women's studies, religious history, and cycle drama. Laura is in charge of marketing, library relations and distribution.
European Co-ordinator for Open Access Books
Agata Morka holds a PhD in Architectural History from the University of Washington, where she completed her dissertation on contemporary French train stations. For the past nine years she has been working with OA books. She is responsible for coordinating efforts between two European projects focusing on OA monographs: the OPERAS-P and the COPIM projects. She is a lead member of the Open Access Books Network.
At OBP, we offer direct training placements in all aspects of Open Access publishing, free of charge. We provide placements to individuals, as part of university courses such as the MSt in Creative Writing at the University of Oxford, and to other Open Access publishers such as UGA Editions and Firenze University Press. However, we also welcome volunteers of different levels of skill and experience who want to work with us either at our Cambridge office or remotely.
This 2020 we have had the pleasure of working along some great volunteers and we would like to take this opportunity to thank them for all their help and hard work - we strongly appreciated their support and assistance!
Jung Ying Mach Christopher Hubbard Domenic Rotundo Tabitha Bardsley Tamara Prieto Anna Mullock Marie Hawkins Sarah Jay Yinuo Meng Hannah Godfrey Laken Brooks Natalie Ansell Ravita Luther Rosalyn Sword
If you or someone you know would like to have the opportunity to try a range of key publishing aspects, including marketing, editorial and text-formatting tasks in a non-corporate environment, please contact Alessandra Tosi.
You have a wonderful staff at OBP: everyone I've dealt with has been supportive, friendly, efficient, and helpful. You all have managed to make what could be a nerve wracking experience into a remarkably pleasant and stress-free one. It's been a real treat working with you.
OBP turns out beautiful volumes, beautiful with respect to both typography and illustrations. And it works swiftly. Production takes place in maximum consultation and cooperation with the author. I have found the editors knowledgeable, skillful, and forbearing. And finally, working with Roger Paulin has been a privilege and a gift. In effect, OBP has offered invaluable support to my efforts.
—Flora Kimmich, independent scholar and translator of Maria Stuart
On behalf of the Creative Multilingualism Team, I should like to thank you very much indeed for all your expertise, advice, flexibility, responsiveness and hard work on our volume! We’re delighted with it. It constitutes an ideal embodiment of our 4-year research project, and we’re enormously grateful to you for having enabled us to bring it to fruition in this beautiful form.
In the last 50 years, academic publishing has been invaded by for-profit businesses. Academics donate their research and their refereeing services to these companies, who then lock up the research and sell it back to the academy at prices that are usually high and sometimes stratospheric. Appalled by this invasion, in the mid-2000s I was a member of a group of economic theorists that founded an Open Access journal, Theoretical Economics, and I served as the editor of that journal for several years. I remain devoted to the principle that academic research should be freely available, and am delighted that Open Book Publishers has published Models in Microeconomic Theory.
I'm convinced that open access is the future of academic publishing. I hadn't expected that the process would be as disciplined or that the product would be as elegant. I wish all my previous books had been published this way.
“Dopamine is the metaphor of our age,” says Geert Lovink in ‘Sad by Design’ (2019). We seek instant gratification. Online shopping fulfills our wildest and most superficial desires in a few clicks. Not only by buying (useless) stuff, but also in finding attention, likes, and, when we are completely overstimulated, in finding peace with mindfulness, yoga, or completely ‘off the Wi-Fi grid’ in nature. Disrupt and Reflect examines the economies behind the internet where our short-term needs are constantly being triggered and our impulse control is constantly being tested.
Disrupt and Reflect is a web project that is alternately extremely over-stimulating and very calming. It is a collection of creative and critical reflections in which, at different tempos, the viewer becomes part of the mechanisms of acceleration and stillness as they are currently occurring in our digital society. The online project consists of talks and artist presentations, accompanied by video interviews with the participants. Disrupt & Reflect is a collaborative project with the research track Post-Digital Cultures at Fontys University of Applied Sciences.
When everyone is always connected, disconnection and quietness is a scarcity. Less distraction, less incentives, more human attention. Of course, ‘less of more’ also makes money: technologies that regulate your internet use, Wi-Fi-free cafes, technology-free retreats and spas; the web is full of solutions for those suffering an information overload. The burnout industry is booming. Click – click – click – I just bought another self-help guide that promises a better, more efficient version of me. Digital detox has become a mainstream sales strategy where human contact is considered a luxury item. And due to COVID-19 we have all become screenagers, we have all experienced moments of digital fatigue, and a lack of real human touch and dopamine shots. Have a monetized hug by watching ‘~Cozy~ Hugs & Kisses ASMR ’ (633.998 views) on YouTube.
For this project we commissioned artists and theorists to critically and creatively reflect on how these apparently opposite modes of ‘overdrive’ and ‘nothingness’ behind the internet and digital technologies work. Their contributions are accompanied with random roulette interviews. How can we create a more nuanced understanding of the overwhelming influence of digital technology and the human capacity to deal with it in a healthy way? How can we come up with smart solutions that do not continuously take our self-discipline to the test? How can we escape the attention economy?
What we hear about climate change is influenced by science, politics, the media, and NGOs—but what about local communities, where its effects might arguably be observed most clearly, not least during the past year, when we have all travelled far less? Global Warming in Local Discourses: How Communities around the World Make Sense of Climate Changeexamines an impressive range of case studies from across the globe, granting great insight into the processes by which we make sense of climate change, and challenging certain expectations or assumptions. In taking a multi-pronged approach to this topic, we gain a varied perspective on the means by which climate change and its effects are transmitted and interpreted in local communities.
The first chapter, “We are Climate Change: Climate Debates Between Transnational and Local Discourses” (Michael Brüggemann and Simone Rödder), includes a concise description of what you will find in this thought-provoking book: “Local discourses around the world draw on multiple resources to make sense of a ‘travelling idea’ such as climate change, including direct experiences of extreme weather, mediated reports, educational NGO activities, and pre-existing values and belief systems.” Chapter One discusses the link between humans (society) and ‘nature’, including anthropogenic global warming (how the physical environment influences social realities), which affects how people perceive their physical surroundings and live (which, in turn, impacts the climate). The question of whyit is important to study how local communities make sense of climate change is also answered: “Interpretations of climate change, such as those that stress individual and collective efficacy (the belief that ‘we can make a difference’), may motivate people to change their lifestyles and, more importantly, mobilize political action, while feelings of fear and shock may overwhelm, paralyze actions or lead to risk denial (O'Neill and Nicholson-Cole 2009; Feldman and Hart 2015).” The chapter considers key factors, such as transnational and local discourses or scientific and other ways of sense-making. Three dimensions of climate change discourse are also examined: “patterns of communicationrelated to climate change”; “patterns of interpretationabout climate change that emerge from the different flows of communication”; and “entanglement of meaningsoriginating at the local or transnational level including how the scientific and other framings of climate change speak to each other.”
In Chapter Two, “The Case of ‘Costa del Nuuk’: Greenlanders Make Sense of Global Climate Change”, Freja C. Eriksen analyzes social representations theory and the views (mostly ignored by the media) of fifteen Greenlanders on the subject of climate change, taking into account their media exposure and personal experiences. Findings show that these individuals do not self-identify as victims of climate change, contrary to what is largely represented in the media (e.g. through frequent images of meltingicebergs). There is also a more positive outlook for a warmer Greenland, including possible political independence and development, and media coverage is criticized by both young and old. ‘Professional background’ influenced whether the interviewees emphasized potential economic benefits (e.g. ice melt: greater accessibility to oil, gas, mining, and hydrocarbon development) or environmental risks of climate change. Older people were less likely to believe that climate change is anthropogenic, and more likely to believe that climate change is exaggerated by the media. On the other hand, the younger interviewees felt that the media underestimates anthropogenic global warming. In closing this chapter, Eriksen explains how sense-making (of climate change) involves six factors: natural/unnatural, certainty/uncertainty, self/other, local/global, positive/negative, and environment/economy, and concludes that personal experience played a critical role.
In Chapter Three, “Communication and Knowledge Transfer on Climate Change in the Philippines”, Thomas Friedrich uses multi-method ethnography to investigate the views of residents of the island of Palawan (which often experiences extreme weather) about the fact that it is ‘carbon negative’. Personal experiences, pre-existing knowledge of nature, and cultural practices—such as strong environmentalism—are examined. This chapter explores the top-down direction of communicating the idea of climate change: “from global IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] knowledge via networks of media and politics to local people with diverse cultural backgrounds and epistemologies” (Brüggemann and Rödder); the contrast between knowledge and meaning of climate change is also considered. The notion of climate change as a “travelling idea” is analyzed, and it is revealed that local educational theatre productions link natural disasters to immoral environmental actions. In Palawan, therefore, climate change is viewed as being real, but this strong environmentalism is due to “pre-existing beliefs, values, and practices” (Brüggemann and Rödder). Sense-making “is a multi-layered process, in which discourses and narratives, cultural models of human-environment relationships, interpersonal communications, personal experiences, and other sources of information (including the media) play a decisive role in how climate change is eventually comprehended and communicated” (Friedrich).
In Chapter Four, “Sense-Making of COP 21 among Rural and City Residents: The Role of Space in Media Reception”, authors Imke Hoppe, Fenja De Silva-Schmidt, Michael Brüggemann, and Dorothee Arlt delve into views regarding the COP 21 climate summit, which ultimately led to the 2015 Paris Agreement. Participants in the study came from both urban (Hamburg) and rural (Otterndorf) locations in Northern Germany. The chapter examines “how space, both as a physical and a social context, influences interpretations of climate change, with a focus on the role media reception plays in the process” (Brüggemann and Rödder). Focus groups, media diaries, and an online panel survey were used; in both locations, media use (local media was criticized by participants) and climate change interpretations were comparable. Personal concern over climate change was higher among rural participants, who were worried about the coastal protection and the future possibility of floods. This study showed that “the longer an individual lives in a place and the more connected he or she feels to it, the more relevant spatial factors become for her or his experience of climate change” (Brüggemann and Rödder). This makes much logical sense, and might indicate that long-term residents of a place will make a greater effort to combat climate change. This idea is certainly echoed by a recent poll (conducted by Opinium in the United Kingdom), whose findings suggest that, contrary to popular belief that millennials are more active in their practical response to climate change than their elders, in fact half of those over 55 shop locally, buy fewer clothes, and make an effort to avoid single-use plastics, whilst just a quarter of those aged between 18 and 34 do the same.
In Chapter Five, “What Does Climate Change Mean to Us, the Maasai? How Climate Change Discourse is Translated in Maasailand, Northern Tanzania”, Sara de Wit, through a multi-sited fourteen-month research project, “studies the ways in which climate change discourse is translated, communicated and received in a rural village in Northern Tanzania, exploring how villagers who have no experience with Western life and whose culture is shaped by religion translate the story of climate change” (Brüggemann and Rödder). Climate change information, which is acquired via mass media (such as the local radio station), NGOs, and the Christian church, conflicts with the culture and religion of the Maasai. For instance, an educational movie clip (Climate Conscious Program), created by a few NGOs, shows that drought is caused by anthropogenic climate change, whereas the Maasai believe that God is responsible for droughts and rain. The people distrust scientists and are unwilling to talk about the future (since they believe that only God knows the future). The Maasai consequently believe that what is viewed as climate change is simply the “normal conditions of life” (Brüggemann and Rödder).
In Chapter Six, “Living on the Frontier: Laypeople’s Perceptions and Communication of Climate Change in the Coastal Region of Bangladesh”, Shameem Mahmud considers the principal sources of information on climate change for the local community, and examines “how it understands climate change in the context of constant exposure to regional geo-hazards such as tropical cyclones, floods, salinity in the water and soil, storms, and coastal erosion” (Brüggemann and Rödder). Interviews of thirty-eight citizens (over half of whom were literate) revealed that they received climate change information from radio, television, NGOs (of which there are 250 in the region), and local leaders. Their processes of sense-making followed two key patterns: the “regional geo-hazard pattern” and “weather and seasonal variance” (which involves personal experiences of changing weather). Interviewees accept that climate change has some responsibility for local problems, such as increased salinity or rising tidal surges, but they also saw local causes, including shrimp aquaculture, as a source of increased salinization.
In the volume’s final chapter, “Extreme Weather Events and Local Impacts of Climate Change: The Scientific Perspective”, Friederike E. L. Otto explains present local climate changes and probable future ones, including newly-advanced research (and limitations) on the connection between extreme weather and climate change: “The chapter translates the question of links between climate change and extreme weather into the scientific language [using world-wide data] of changing probabilities” (Brüggemann and Rödder). The impact of media and public debates on climate science is also conveyed: increased public attention to climate change has led to further development of climate-change science (such as greater methods for estimating changing hazards), as well as a greater volume of critical examinations of scientific studies. Otto discusses attribution science, the effects of a warming climate, and the fact that “a heightened understanding of regional changes in individual types of extreme weather events facilitates preparation for all types of extreme weather.”
For those interested in climate science and how the wide array of information sources (media, politics, NGOs, and science) impact people's opinions and understanding of climate change, and indeed the means by which the idea itself ‘travels’ between global and local contexts, this insightful book will be a great asset.
Here’s a conversation starter: “What do you do?” “I research conspiracy theories.” This response is usually met with varied forms of excitement and curiosity: “Oh, sick, I love conspiracy theories!”, “Like what, 9/11? You know, I think it was an inside job”, “You know, I think this corona stuff is made up by [insert global superpower/anti-Semitic trope/alien conspiracy] to control us!!!1”.
Let’s get straight, I understand that “good”, or at least legitimized, knowledge is not a neutral notion. I also understand that conspiracy theories are, in the end, alternative ways of processing information in an increasingly networked age, “a way of making links in the combined sense of discovering as well as creating”[1]
It might be comforting to think that the shadowy figures that populate the more unpleasant corners of the internet, as well as your aunt on Facebook, are cretins who genuinely believe the narratives they spout to their audience of galaxy brains. It helps recalibrate our own position as sane, thinking, intelligent citizens and identifies a scapegoat in a nebulous uneducated, media-illiterate class that seemingly dispenses with science and logic.
What some of these conspiracists understand better than most is that this game is not one of winning people’s minds, but their hearts. All clichés aside, appealing to users’ logic with sound arguments and facts simply doesn’t do the trick anymore. You have to be able to generate clicks.
Why Are Conspiracy Theorists So Obsessed with Collagen?
Much like all entrepreneurs, conspiracy theorists need an actual product to sell, something that can finance their efforts to propagate arcane stories about “evil lizard people” and the like. And while they do traffic in conspiracies, they often must find other things to capitalize, especially in a precarious platform landscape, where demonetization and deplatforming are lurking around the corner.
Rebecca Lewis has previously pointed out that political content creators use tactics linked to lifestyle influencers, and build their brand identity, connect with their audience, and market their (political) ideas in similar ways[2]. It’s not merely the shadowy Algorithm, which radicalizes the masses, but the networked potential and influence dynamics of the platform itself, as well as the ability it affords to capitalize on extant demand.
It isn’t especially surprising that a number of lifestyle and wellness influencers have also realized this and begun repackaging and seamlessly integrating QAnon and pro-Trump hashtags into their saccharine Insta-aesthetics. The alternative wellness industry (think essential oils and healing crystals), already suspicious of pharmaceutical companies and mainstream talking points around health and dieting, serves as an ideal mouthpiece for such content.
The “Live Laugh Love” aesthetics of QAnon.
Who said makeup tutorials and QAnon propaganda didn’t go together?
It makes sense that conspiracy theories become more insidious when they linger behind more “wholesome” aesthetics or commendable causes, like wellness and spirituality. Take Maryam Henein, for instance: the director of an award-winning documentary Vanishing of the Bees, about bee preservation, is also a prolific COVID-19 conspiracy peddler.
This is also the case when it comes to the supposed anti-establishment cadence of conspiracism. In the Netherlands, a plethora of influencers and celebrities have parroted the talking points of conspiracy group Viruswaarheid, calling on people to: “get the government back under control”. Viruswaarheid has also received support from the right-wing FvD’s embattled leader Thierry Baudet.
Critiquing Critique
This is the caveat of basing one’s politics around resisting a loosely defined status quo. Georgio Agamben’s op-eds from earlier this year excoriating the state of exception imposed by governments and the belief that COVID-19 was no more serious a threat than the common flu curiously mirror the theories emerging from more reactionary corners of the web. Indeed, refusal to comply with the imposed measures is often framed in terms of resisting authority.
Back in 2004, Bruno Latour [Author disclaimer: As a grad student in an STS-heavy media studies program, I am legally obliged to quote Latour] wrote that the spirit of critical thinking and healthy doubt has been deformed by conspiracists[3]. Inhabiting an increasingly complex networked landscape, and grappling with the lessening importance of our decisions, also means that we are primed to look for connections and eager to make sense of things[4]. Conspiracy theorists might be the most eager of all.
I do consider myself a person with decent critical thinking abilities, but I also find myself torn between the imperative to question constructs like objectivity [Author disclaimer: As a grad student in the humanities, I am also legally obliged to reject grand narratives] and my contempt for simplistic explanations for complex, systemic issues. Conspiracy theories, for all their convolutedness, are the latter, as they generally are mutations of preexisting fears, anxieties, and moral panics, things which easily lend themselves to appropriation by conspiracy theorists. As Marc Tuters and Peter Knight explain in The Conversation, “[c]onspiracy theorists usually have a complete worldview, through which they interpret new information and events, to fit their existing theory”.
Despite what Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum recently diagnosed as “conspiracy without the theory”, conspiracy supporters, including corona-deniers, often instrumentalize scientism just as often as their opponents do, albeit in different ways, likely because they are aware of its authoritative appeal. Despite their apparent critique of the “status quo”, many of these conspiracists still invoke authority in order to consolidate their credibility, from citing “experts” to masquerading as experts themselves.
What makes this penchant for critique, as well as the appeal to authority, even more interesting is its pairing with faith and religiously inflected spirituality. Born-again Christian and Q interpreter Praying Medic, whose real name is David Hayes, embodies this apparent contradiction. A prolific author of books about spiritual healing, he has more recently veered into Q and Covid-19 conspiracy territory[5].
Apocalyptic language and skepticism seem to not go well together, but they might actually explain how conspiratorial narratives like QAnon have managed to mobilize and sustain such a diverse following, uniting 4chan denizens following digital “crumbs” with mommy bloggers fearing for the safety of their children.
Teh Internet Is Serious Business
Researchers conducting work at the intersections of online subcultures, trolling, and bigotry have pointed out that ambivalence is a feature of this volatile landscape. This landscape bears more of a resemblance to the anarchic and playful cyberspace of the 90s than the post-2010s platformized web, where the offline and online are increasingly converging around the performance of a stable, quantifiable, and datafied identity. Anonymous image boards have cultivated a reputation as spaces where meaning is produced through the carnivalesque performance of identity (via linguistic signifiers rather than other conventional identity markers) and the mockery of all things serious. This ludic spirit has in more recent years been transformed into, well, a cesspool of bigotry; and, in the face of the supposed political dominance of technocratic liberalism, the memetic turn of the 2010s can be understood as a reactionary attempt towards “metapolitics”, the (ironically) Gramscian project of transposing politics in the domain of culture.
All of this has been widely discussed and written about, of course, but it bears repeating. For the past five or so years, journalists and commentators have been caught up in the vortex of the reactionary right and its discontents—fringe internet fora and the conspiracy theories that these have spawned—often while lacking the conceptual tools to discuss these phenomena. To explain that irony and ambivalence are fundamental features of these discourses is not to take them lightly, but is crucial in order to understand them.
And now the million-dollar question: what happens when there’s money to be made?
(Former?) alt-right darling, Laura Southern, was recently the subject of a profile in The Atlantic, which, besides painting a rather grim (with a dash of Schadenfreude) image of the way this political space treats its women, has also confirmed the suspicion of many: genuine belief in extreme ideas isn’t actually a prerequisite to publicly espouse them. In fact, we might argue that being a woman, a person of color, an LGBTQI+ individual with reactionary ideas offers an easier pathway to attention and therefore speaking engagements, and monetization opportunities; take a look at Milo Yiannopoulos (before his dramatic fall from alt-right grace).
If these reactionary ideas can easily be combined with latent societal fears and anxieties—the perfect raw material for the creation and dissemination of conspiracy theories—,well, even better!
But weren’t conspiracy theories supposed to be fringe, marginal, and decidedly unmainstream?
The Platformization of Conspiracy Production(?)
We are arguably living through an era in which leisure is being absorbed by the neoliberal imperative of productivity. Before the “influencer’ was a venerable career path, she was an average person mediating between companies and audiences in a more or less hobbyistic manner. As the perception of the influencer is becoming increasingly imbued with inflections of celebrity, and conventional professions burdened with demands of self-branding, we are now observing figures like the journalist-as-influencer, the academic-as-influencer, the meme producer (or poacher)-as-influencer. Why not, then, the conspiracy theorist as influencer?
It is indeed a bit surprising that the figures which emerged from the murky waters of anonymous imageboard culture are building their profiles as (soooort of) legitimate entrepreneurs. Pizzagate, QAnon, and the Epstein-didn’t-kill-himself narrative were initially based on the anonymous crowdsourcing and crumb-collection of 4chan. Here a marked separation of the “real” from the online is encouraged, and the entrepreneurial spirit cultivated by mainstream platforms becomes a target of ridicule. But conspiracy entrepreneurs, like Dustin Nemos, who was recently interviewed by CBS News as one of the “leaders” of QAnon (itself an oxymoron, if we look at the non-hierarchical vernacular spaces from which QAnon originates), not only denounce anonymity but also, by monetizing their content, the ostensibly idealistic premises that are still venerated in these domains.
Like so many other things, including sociality, labor, and cultural production, it is unsurprising that the dissemination of conspiracies might also become subsumed into the logic of what Anne Helmond has called platformization, or the “rise of the platform as the dominant infrastructural and economic model of the social web”[6].
As we are beginning to see with other kinds of celebrity, the more “established”, old-school conspiracy entrepreneurs, like David Icke (who has been banned from Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter), are increasingly being replaced by a new crop of conspiracy influencers, who have found a precarious home on YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram (as well as alt-right-friendly platforms, like Bitchute). While their viewership is generally smaller than that of the alt-right celebrities Lewis writes about, they mimic their techniques of influence, having established an alternative (facts?) media ecology, where conventional influencer practices, such as collaborations, brand deals, promotional codes, subscriptions, memberships, and merchandise, provide opportunities for the monetization of controversial content. What is sold, beyond snake oil, is an overarching lifestyle.
Of course, these creators, whether it’s the “old-school” Q interpreters or the pastel-tinted lifestyle bloggers, are aware of the dangers of deplatforming, which is why their branding takes on the added urgency of having to adapt to perceived censorship, introducing new hashtags, as well as grammatical and spelling mistakes in an effort to obfuscate the true meaning behind their hashtags and posts.
If we assume that these millennial and Gen Z conspiracy entrepreneurs do not, literally and figuratively, buy what they sell, is it only profit that motivates their peddling of outlandish theories and dicey remedies? What about the ludic, mischievous essence that undergirds the spaces where such theories often circulate? Of course, monetization and name-making betray this. And QAnon buffs having a meltdown about their supreme leader failing to sweep this election implies that not everything is a joke, after all.
Joe M, noted Q influencer, handling Trump’s loss extremely well.
On the other hand, the dissemination of misinformation is facilitated by hordes of bots, meme factories[7] or digital armies[8], all of which indicate a standardization and a certain professionalization, in line with what we’ve been seeing in other forms of invisible, “free”, and immaterial labor performed online. Platforms are now more intensely cracking down on disinformation, but this response has only come after influencers on Instagram and YouTube amassed thousands of followers by posting conspiracist content.
Does this signal the capitulation of previously untouched grounds to the logics of platformization, professionalization, and expropriation of collectively produced vernacular creativity? And if so, does this mean that the last major frontier of the playful, irreverent, and unmonetizable “old internet” is a white supremacist-infested swamp?
There is something profoundly depressing about that.
References
[1]Jodi Dean. Aliens in America: Conspiracy Cultures from Outerspace to Cyberspace. Cornell University Press, 1998, p. 143.
[5]The “medic” in his moniker might imply medical training and incur a legitimacy, particularly regarding his coronavirus-related videos, but Hayes is actually a paramedic.
[8]Estrella Gualda Caballero. “Social network analysis, social big data and conspiracy theories”. Routledge Handbook of Conspiracy Theories, Routledge, 2020, pp. 135-147.
It is estimated that between 490,000 and 520,000 Jews served in the Soviet Red Army during the Second World War. Indeed, the USSR’s highest military honour – ‘Hero of the Soviet Union’ – was awarded to 154 Jews over the course of the War.1While many of these soldiers may have been motivated initially to fight against the destruction of the Jews by the Nazis and to combat anti-Semitism, it soon became apparent that Germany was not the only place that harboured such attitudes. Anti-Semitism persisted at all levels of the Soviet Union. From1943 in particular, as the tide of war shifted, many soldiers perceived a clear change in policy whereby Jews were discriminated against in awards and recognition and new draftees were more likely to be anti-Semitic.2This conflict of interests; namely fighting against Nazism while experiencing rampant anti-Semitism in the country they were fighting for, made many such Jewish soldiers experience of war – and sense of victory – a tainted one.
Despite such a large amount of Jewish soldiers – and such an abundance of Second World War novels – the experience of Jews fighting in the Red Army against the Nazis is one that is rarely seen in literature and popular media. Mendl Mann’s The Fall of Berlin is one such rare example.
The Fall of Berlin is an autobiographical look at the Second World War from the perspective of a Jewish soldier. Menakhem Isaacovich, a Polish Jew, flees the Germans and finds refuge in the Soviet Union.The book follows Menakhem as he fights in Stalin’s Red Army, inspired both to defend the country that has taken him in and to seek revenge on the Germans destroying his homeland of Poland and exterminating the Jews. The third book in a trilogy, The Fall of Berlin focuses on Menakhem’s dilemma regarding where it is that he will settle as the end of the War comes within sight. He knows that he cannot stay in the USSR after experiencing rampant anti-Semitism at the hands of its population, but he also cannot return home to Poland as his entire family has perished in the Holocaust.
Mann’s The Fall of Berlindetails the anti-Semitism that Menakhem faces at the front. “Dirty Jews”, “draft-dodgers” and “I do not talk to Jews” are all such examples of the hostility and antagonism directed towards the Jewish community by various characters throughout the novel. While the impact of such incessant anti-Semitic rhetoric upon the reader is at times distressing and uncomfortable, it is an important reminder of the prejudice faced by so many during the Second World War. Not only is the perspective of a Jewish solider fighting in the Red Army a unique one, but it is also an insightful and painful one.
Mendl Mann himself was born in Plonsk, Poland, in 1916. A keen poet and artist, he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts before joining the Red Army in 1941, after being forced to leave Poland following the German invasion. During his time as a soldier, Mann witnessed the siege of Moscow and the occupation of Berlin, as well as helping to create various propaganda materials for the USSR’s war effort. It was Mann’s experience as a solider that informed this trilogy of war novels. A Yiddish language enthusiast, he was heavily involved in the literary movement to keep Yiddish alive, and his two prior books – At the Gates of Moscow and At the Vistula – were originally written in Yiddish before being translated into various languages. Despite this, The Fall of Berlin was never translated into English – until now. Maurice Wolfthal’s vivid and skilful translation truly brings Mann’s tale to life, examining the experience of war in an original and compelling way.
1 Arad, Yitzhak, In the Shadow of the Red Banner: Soviet Jews in the War Against Nazi Germany (Jerusalem, 2010) p. 24.
2 Gitelman, Zvi, Why They Fought: What Soviet Jewish Saw and How it is Remembered (University of Michigan, 2011)p. 1.
Mendl Mann’s 'The Fall of Berlin', translated and with an introduction by Maurice Wolfthal, is an Open Access title available to read and download for free or to purchase in paperback, hardback and various eBook formats here.
Autrice : Zeïnabou Assoumi Sow
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