Tuesday, October 15, 2024

Call for Papers: The Business Association of Latin American Studies (BALAS) 2025: "Sustainable Business - Challenges & Opportunities for Latin America.

 


 

Delighted to pass along this call for papers for the Business Association of Latin American Studies (BALAS) 2025 Conference:

The Business Association of Latin American Studies - BALAS(https://balas.org/), the premier Latin American Business Research Community Hub founded in 1989, is thrilled to announce that the #BALAS2025 Annual Conference will be held in #CostaRica from April 8 to 11, 2025, hosted by INCAE Business School (https://incae.edu/en/). It includes a new Track: Corporate Governance in Latin/Ibero-America.
The conference theme is: "Sustainable Business - Challenges & Opportunities for Latin America."

Track: Corporate Governance in Latin/Ibero-America

This track covers corporate governance in Latin/Ibero-America, inviting diverse theoretical perspectives and disciplines for a holistic understanding. This track seeks to explain the effects of roles and attributes of the board of directors, board committees, CEO, Top Management Teams, and other actors and internal governance mechanisms, alongside the influence of diverse ownership structures, including family owners, private equity, cooperatives, non-profit organizations, state, institutional investors, and activist shareholders. The track also seeks to delve into the impact of external governance mechanisms like institutional rules and cultural norms, as well as the role of stakeholders in shaping enterprises' governance practices, including proxy advisors, audit firms, credit ratings, mergers & acquisitions. Additionally, the track invites a comparative analysis of enterprises' governance across different national contexts, considering the influence of transnational institutions and multi-level governance interactions in a globalizing economy.
Call for Papers Deadline: November 15, 2024.
Submission Guidelines and EasyChair Link: https://balas.org/guidelines2025

Details follow and may be accessed here.

Monday, October 14, 2024

Annual Conference: Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy

 

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I am delighted to share the program for the 2024 Annual Conference of the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy. It will be held at Florida International University (Miami, Florida), 18-20 October 2024. The conference will be co-sponsored by FIU’s Cuban Research Institute. During two-and-a-half days, scholars and professionals present papers and participate in roundtable discussions. Papers and their formal discussions and roundtable summaries are included in a volume of papers and proceedings. The conference is open to the general public.

The Preliminary Program follows below.

 


Thursday, October 10, 2024

International Journal for the Semiotics of Law Volume 37/6, a special issue on "Gender and Law Issues"

 


 The Editorial staff of the International Journal for the Semiotics of Law is thrilled to announce the release of Volume 37/6, a special issue on "Gender and Law Issues", guest edited by Alyane Almeida de Araujo and Sarah Marusek! The TOC follows below.

This issue was inspired by the rich discussions at the International Congress on “Combating Gender-Based Violence” held at the University of Lille on July 2023, sparking new insights and perspectives.

 

Discussion Draft Posted: "The Constitution of Fear and the Performance of Crisis: The Dialectical Mimetic Semiotics of the Constitutional State and the Signification of Preambular and Extraconstitutional Texts"

 

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I am delighted to circulate a rough discussion draft I have prepared in anticipation of its first presentation at a conference organized by the remarkable Martin Belov, Professor in Constitutional and Comparative Constitutional Law at the University of Sofia ‘St. Kliment Ohridski’, Faculty of Law. The event, Imaginaries of Crisis and Fear: Constitutional and International Law Perspectives, will be held in Sofia, Bulgaria 8-10 November.

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My contribution to that exciting event, and the circulated discussion draft, is entitled  The Constitution of Fear and the Performance of Crisis: The Dialectical Mimetic Semiotics of the Constitutional State and the Signification of Preambular and Extraconstitutional Texts. The object is to apply a semiotic lens to constitutional projects (generally): what happens if the constitutional object, its text, is approached as both a memory of the threat-fear-crisis-response-resolution trajectories that produced it, and as the stage and stage directions for mimetic performances of this initial dialectic in ways protective of the fundamental ideological principles that signifies the constitutional object. Interpretation then signifies (in its own right) both an affirmation of the generative act and an affirmation of the solidarity enhancing repeat performances relevant to current actors in time, place and space. Constitutions, in this sense are mimetic dialectical spaces defined by the ideological principles that give them form, and built to anticipate and channel the inevitable repetition of the threat-response the initial resolution of which was the constitution itself. In that context it is worth considering the clues that might be extracted from key extraconstitutional and preambular text. The focus is on the constitutional projects in the United States, China, Cuba, and Kosovo.

Here is the abstract (it needs to be shortened certainly but provides a perhaps useful synopsis of what is attempted):

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Abstract: Constitutions are studied as rational expressions of political calculus aligned in time, space, and place. But constitutional emergence from the womb of conflict are born in emotion—anger, vindication, joy, and faith in a shared future; and they never stray far There is a semiotics of constitutional emotion; and a connection between the semiotics of constitutive emotion and constitutional text—as norm and form. It is the state and profundity of that emotion, perhaps more than the calculus of rational governance, that propels a people to statehood, and statehood to take its particular form. The state of emotion must be maintained, honored, and performed, if it is to carry the state forward from the moment of its emergence, through the long period of time when the founding generation, and their emotional imaginaries are long dead, and the context in which that emotion was felt and understood become incomprehensible outside of its time. It is to the preservation of that emotional explosion, and its alignment with core constitutional text, that constitutions devote time and effort, usually in its preambular text, and sometimes in extraconstitutional documents with quasi-constitutional significance. If powerful enough, the emotive semiotic of constitutional explosion can affect not just its political community but those of other political communities looking for a way to rationalize and direct their own collective political emotion. The focus will be on the way that emotive context—a revolution to preserve traditional values; a communist revolution within a multi-state imperial power; and a revolution with a long fuse grounded in anti-colonialism and anti-imperialism. To those ends the essay first looks to a powerful instance of emotive semiotics, the U.S. Declaration of Independence (1776), and its reflection in the subtextual mimetic dialectics of threat and crisis and resolution in the U.S. federal Constitution (1789). It then considers its value as a template for the constitutionalization of separation in the 21st century through the lens of the preambular texts of the Chinese (1982) and Cuban (2019) constitutions. It then considers its transnationalization in the context of the Kosovo Declaration of Independence (2008). Both express anger driven clusters of emotion with constitutive effect but from very different starting and ending points. For the United States, the traditional form of popular solidarity and independence—grounded in fear, crisis and its resolution—and originating in and through popular action (even if elite directed). For Kosovo, the emerging form (at least for subaltern states)—also grounded in fear, crisis and resolution, but enveloped in a network of expectation and approval from more power and transnational actors.

 

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Contents:
1. Introduction.
2. American Constitutional Convulsions in the Search for the Structures of a More Perfect Union.
3. The Marxist-Leninist Variations: A Glimpse at China and Cuba and Foreign Corruption.
4. From the State to the Techno-Bureaucratization of Dialectics of Fear and Crisis: A Glimpse at Kosovo.
5. From Template to the Mimetic Constitutionalization of Fear/Crisis.

6. Conclusion.

The draft may be accessed here (SSRN); the Introduction follows below.

 

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Tuesday, October 08, 2024

From 高大伟 David Cowhig's Translation Blog: " 1958: Party’s “Rightist” Speech Collection After Hundred Flowers Campaign" 【高等学校右派言論选編 中共中国人民大学委員会社会主义思想敎育办公室】

Pix Credit here ("What I longed for has arrived")



The course of the development of  Chinese Marxist-Leninist theory, as well as of its application, has evolved in parallel with the development of China from one to another stage of its historical development.  One of the more interesting points of that parallel development, a junction point, was the so-called period of the Hundred Flowers campaign and its consequence, the Anti-Rightist campaigns that followed. Both resonate deeply to contemporary times, and each looked back not just to the Yanan Rectification of the 1940s but as far back as the great schism of 1927.

Some of the errors unearthed during the blooming of the hundred flowers were complied for the edification fo those permitted to profit from it in a book, Selected Rightist Speeches from Institutions of Higher Education published by the Office of Socialist Ideology Education, Communist Party Committee, Renmin University of China 【高等学校右派言論选編 中共中国人民大学委員会社会主义思想敎育办公室】 September 1958 First Printing.

Now David Cowhig has brought a partial translation of some of the material in that 1958 compilation in several postings to his blog-- 高大伟 David Cowhig's Translation Blog.


An online comrade alerted me to this book which is online at Marxists.org at 高等学校右派言論选編 in scanned PDF format. I did optical Chinese character recognition of the scanned PDF file using Wondershare PDF Element with excellent results and then converted the PDF into a Word document available here. There are a few places where the OCR did not get the correct Chinese character; there you can refer to the link at Marxists.org and rely on human optical character recognition — still a bit better. I corrected the Chinese text in a few places where the OCR missed the correct character.

Once I had the Word doc, I used ChatGPT 4o to get a quite respectable Chinese -> English translation.

The book is an 800 page long collection of criticisms that the Party put into the ‘rightist’ category. Many rightists were sent to labor camps and prisons for twenty-odd years until nearly all were exonerated, politically rehabilitated and returned to Chinese society in the late 1970s through the efforts of Hu Yaobang (see 1997 Dai Huang: Excerpts from “Hu Yaobang and the Rectification of Injustices”) and others. (here)
Cowhig has provided a translation of portions of the work:

Part I 1958: Party’s “Rightist” Speech Collection After Hundred Flowers Campaign

Party II 1958: Party's "Rightist" Speech Collection Aftre Hundred Flowers Campaign: On the People+s Democratic Dictatorship (the first 100 or so pages of the work). 

For student's of the history of the development of Chinese Marxist-Leninism and its trajectories, these sources provide a quite valuable window on a tumultuous time, and a pathways towards better understanding of the current stage of development of Chinese Marxist-Leninism.

Sunday, October 06, 2024

Thoughts for the Day; The Tragedy of Ἰφιγένεια ἐν Αὐλίδι (Iphigenia in Aulis) in Contemporary Times: An Anniversary Reflection,

 

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Today, as I think about the events of a year ago, and what came after, I am reminded of Euripides tragedy, Iphigenia in Aulis (Ἰφιγένεια ἐν Αὐλίδι) (c. 406 B.C.E.). The story is fairly straightforward--though it stands in the place of--and signifies--a number of other stories; stories of sacrifice. The story takes place in Aulis, where the Greek fleet, ready to set sail for Troy under the command of Menelaus, whose wife Helen is to be retrieved (having run off with Paris, Prince of Troy) and his brother Agamemnon, who, having angered the Goddess Demeter is now required to sacrifice his oldest daughter to appease the Goddess.  is prevented from doing so by the goddess Artemis. To that end Agamemnon brings Iphigenia and her mother Clytemnestra under false pretenses (to marry Achilles).  The play revolves around the falsity of the premises on which Iphigenia is brought, the continued resistance of Clytemnestra to the whole adventure, and ultimately the acquiescence of Iphigenia to be sacrificed to satisfy the desires of her father and Uncle, despite the promise of Achilles to help her.

Two passages stand out:

CLY. Listen, then, for I will unfold my story, and will no longer make use of riddles away from the purpose. In the first place, that I may first reproach thee with this—thou didst wed me unwilling, and obtain me by force, having slain Tantalus, my former husband, and having dashed[85] my infant living to the ground, having torn him by force from my breast. And the twin sons of Jove, my brothers, glorying in their steeds, made war [against thee] but my old father Tyndarus saved you, when you had become a suppliant, and thou again didst possess me as a wife. When I, being reconciled to thee in respect to thy person and home, thou wilt bear witness how blameless a wife I was, both modest in respect to affection, and enriching thy house, so that thou both going within and without thy doors wast blessed. And 'tis a rare prize for a man to obtain such a wife, but there is no lack of getting a bad spouse. And I bear thee this son, besides three virgins, of one of whom thou art cruelly going to deprive me. And if any one ask thee on what account thou wilt slay her, say, what will you answer? or must I needs make your plea, "that Menelaus may obtain Helen?" A pretty custom, forsooth, that children must pay the price of a bad woman. We gain the most hateful things at the hand of those dearest. Come, if thou wilt set out, leaving me at home, and then wilt be a long time absent, what sort of feelings dost think I shall experience, when I behold every seat empty of this child's presence, and every virgin chamber empty, but myself sit in tears alone, ever mourning her [in such strains as these:] "My child, thy father, who begat thee, hath destroyed thee, himself, no other, the slayer, by no other hand, leaving such a reward for [my care of] the house."[86] Since there wants but a little reason for me and my remaining daughters to give thee such a reception as you deserve to receive. Do not, by the Gods, either compel me to act evilly toward thee, nor do thou thyself be so. Ah well! thou wilt sacrifice thy daughter—what prayers wilt thou then utter? What good thing wilt thou crave for thyself, slaying thy child? An evil return, seeing, forsooth, thou hast disgracefully set out from home. But is it right that I should pray for thee any good thing? Verily we must believe the Gods are senseless, if we feel well disposed to murderers. But wilt thou, returning to Argos, embrace thy children? But 'tis not lawful for thee. Will any of your children look upon you, if thou offerest one of them for slaughter? Thus far have I proceeded in my argument. What! does it only behoove thee to carry about thy sceptre and marshal the army?—whose duty it were to speak a just speech among the Greeks: "Do ye desire, O Greeks, to sail against the land of the Phrygians? Cast lots, whose daughter needs must die"—for this would be on equal terms, but not that you should give thy daughter to the Greeks as a chosen victim. Or Menelaus, whose affair it was, ought to slay Hermione for her mother's sake. But now I, having cherished thy married life, shall be bereaved of my child, but she who has sinned, bearing her daughter under her care to Sparta, will be blest. As to these things, answer me if I say aught not rightly, but if I have spoken well, do not then slay thy child and mine, and thou wilt be wise.

 *       *       *

IPH. Mother, do thou hear my words, for I perceive that thou art vainly wrathful with thy husband, but it is not easy for us to struggle with things [almost] impossible. It is meet therefore to praise our friend for his willingness, but it behooves thee also to see that you be not an object of reproach to the army, and we profit nothing more, and he meet with calamity. But hear me, mother, thinking upon what has entered my mind. I have determined to die, and this I would fain do gloriously, I mean, by dismissing all ignoble thoughts. Come hither, mother, consider with me how well I speak. Greece, the greatest of cities, is now all looking upon me, and there rests in me both the passage of the ships and the destruction of Troy, and, for the women hereafter, if the barbarians do them aught of harm, to allow them no longer to carry them off from prosperous Greece, having avenged the destruction of Helen, whom Paris bore away.[92] All these things I dying shall redeem, and my renown, for that I have freed Greece, will be blessed. Moreover, it is not right that I should be too fond of life; for thou hast brought me forth for the common good of Greece, not for thyself only. But shall ten thousand men armed with bucklers, and ten thousand, oars in hand, their country being injured, dare to do some deed against the foes, and perish on behalf of Greece, while my life, being but one, shall hinder all these things? What manner of justice is this? Have we a word to answer? And let me come to this point: it is not meet that this man should come to strife with all the Greeks for the sake of a woman, nor lose his life. And one man, forsooth, is better than ten thousand women, that he should behold the light. But if Diana hath wished to receive my body, shall I, being mortal, become an opponent to the Goddess! But it can not be. I give my body for Greece. Sacrifice it, and sack Troy. For this for a long time will be my memorial, and this my children, my wedding, and my glory. But it is meet that Greeks should rule over barbarians, O mother, but not barbarians over Greeks, for the one is slavish, but the others are free.

These are worth contemplating  today; they resonate now in ways that are quite remarkable.  In some versions of the story of Iphigenia, Artemis substitutes a deer in place of the child and spirits her to one of her temples to serve as its priestess. (see here synopsis)  There is no Artemis and no deer in the contemporary versions of this drama. And that resonance ought to invite contemplation at this moment.  More than that I leave to the reader.


Saturday, October 05, 2024

Peter C. H. Chan and Wanqiang Wu, 'How to Evaluate Prosecutors? China’s Shift from “Line Appraisal” to “Case-Process Ratio”' (European Chinese Law Research Hub)

 

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The folks over at the European Chinese Law Research Hub (with thanks to Marianne von Blomberg, Editor ECLR Hub, Research Associate, Chair for Chinese Legal Culture, University of Cologne) have posted  a marvelous new essay authored by Peter C. H. Chan (Associate Professor at the City University of Hong Kong, School of Law) and Wanqiang Wu (PhD candidate at Shanghai Jiao Tong University), 'How to Evaluate Prosecutors? China’s Shift from “Line Appraisal” to “Case-Process Ratio”.' The paper From “Line Appraisal” to “Case-Process Ratio”: Will the New Case Quality Assessment System Facilitate the Changing Role of Chinese Prosecutor? was published in the Hong Kong Law Journal. A free draft is uploaded to SSRN.

The authors note: 

"On the whole, the “Case-Process Ratio” model is part of a larger wave of legal reforms in China, designed to modernize the prosecutorial system and align it with broader goals of national governance. These reforms include the integration of arrest approval and prosecution powers, the introduction of the plea leniency system, and efforts to enhance the standardization of legal processes. Together, these changes aim to create a more cohesive and effective legal system that can better respond to societal needs."
Of course, the issue of assessment of discretion based administrative systems is never easy.  It is mad harder where there is a policy shift about what metrics are to be emphasized and what may be emphsized less.  Added to that are the vagaries of the analytics that may or may not capture the intent written into policy or the premises of the idea manifestation of performance. In that respect one of the more interesting aspects of the work is the shift in emphasis that is evidenced by a shift in methodology.  Getting to the ideological basis for that shift adds a layer of profundity to the analysis as one charts the trajectories of fulfillment on the ground of the evolving New Era theoretical framework. One will look forward to the way that the 3rd Plenums emphasis on new quality development and innovation will affect these models going forward.

I am cross posting the essay below. The original ECLRH post may be accessed HERE. And as a plug for the marvelous work at the European Chinese Law Research Hub: if you have observations, analyses or pieces of research that are not publishable as a paper but should get out there, or want to spread event information, calls for papers or job openings, or have a paper forthcoming- do not hesitate to contact Marianne von Bloomberg.

 

Thursday, October 03, 2024

The China Quarterly Symposium Call for Participation "The Politics of Knowledge Production about China"

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Happy to pass along this quite interesting CfP (call for participation) being circulated by the China Quarterly on "The Politics of Knowledge Production about China".  It fellows below. 

On the Semiotics of Small Consumer Goods in Conflict: Coding Purpose and Purposing Codes in Legal or Other Regulatory Systems

 

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Humans have a penchant for organizing the world around them, including those portions of that world that they make. This has ancient roots, two of which are worth recalling here. The first emerges from out of Jewish-Greek templates, an illustration of which may be found not in the Biblical story of creation, but rather in the Biblical accounting of the delegation of dominion from the Divine source to humanity. The second emerges from a roughly similar time from out of the Dao, an illustration of which might be found in Guiguzi’s notion of intelligent naming.

To grunt in a way that others understand is to embrace the world view of those to whom one grunts.

Homer was able to construct (or imagine) a closed form because he had a clear idea of the agricultural and warrior culture of his own day. He knew his world, he knew its laws, causes, and effects. That is why he was able to give it form.. There is, however, another mode of artistic representation, one where we do not know the boundaries o what we wish to portray. . . We cannot provide a definition by essence and so, to be able to talk about it, to make it comprehensible or in some way perceivable, we list its properties. . . . (Humberto Eco, The Infinity of Lists (Alistair McEwen (trans); NY: Rizzoli, 2009), p. 15).

Cultures tied to the tradition of Abrahamic religions encounter this semiotic reality of signifying the world around the central figure of humanity under the leadership of God (Gen 2:118-19 (Adam naming all of the creatures brought before him by God), and lists. Lists are found throughout the Bible and provide a detailed description of historical connection, of pedigree, of the passage of time, and of the thing that is listed by reference to the quality the lists chronicle in common (eg, Gen 5:1-32 (the generations separating Adam from Noah and the first destruction of humanity). Guiguzi speaks of Ming (名)--of naming, of defining accurately, and of drawing distinctions, a concept that itself was closely though controversially tied to that of shi (实) of actuality, truth, or essence of the thing names (Guiguzi, Guiguzi: China’s First Treatise on Rhetoric: A Critical Translation and Commentary (Hui Wu (trans) (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2016), p. 156; 60 n. 26. (Xi Jinping's Semiotics of Marxism (名实) and the Coding Languages of Knowledge Platforms: Tian Xinming, "Do a good job in philosophy and social sciences as a fundamental principle: the inheritance and development of Marxism by General Secretary Xi Jinping's important expositions on philosophy and social sciences" [田心铭, 做好哲学社会科学工作的根本遵循——习近平总书记关于哲学社会科学重要论述对马克思主义的继承和发展])

From the impulses at the heart of these ancient sources, it might then be possible to glean two important elements that drive these organizational impulses. The first is to recast the world around the human in terms that are more relevant to the human experience—that is to put the human at the center of the human experience of the world. The second is to assert some sort of dominion of this ordered world which is rendered in and through the act of intelligent naming. To borrow from Noam Chomsky’s development of the possibility of understanding ( ‘What Can We Understand?,’ Noam Chomsky, What Kind of Creatures Are We? (Columbia University Press, 2016), pp. 27 et seq. and to invert Chomsky’s emphasis, human collectives categorize and name to develop the means for identifying and managing those problems which fall within human cognitive capacity, which can then be projected around the mysteries which do not—a cognitive extension of sorts (ibid., 27-28, borrowing from Charles Sanders Peirce’s semiotics of “abduction” and that “array of ‘admissible hypotheses’ that are the foundation of human scientific inquiry.” (Ibid., p. 28).  

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All of this is to suggest that the nature and limitations of human cognition—and more importantly its ambition to name and control the objects so named and (well) ordered within human cognitive spaces, plays a substantially perverse role in the constitution and all objects that human either recognize, choose to surround themselves with, or constitute as instruments. But that gets at things backwards. Humans believe they can constitute a thing by naming it (in the sense suggested above). Yet recent events continue to remind those humans (and their ambitious projects) that while such naming may provide some (false) sense of order, and an ordered universe with humans at the center, that ordering is only as good as the willingness of the human collectives to indulge a belief in the “truth” of those naming rituals, and the regulatory ordering structures human spend so much time building for themselves.

Less abstractly, perhaps, the human proclivity for vesting objects around them with function, purpose or a specific relationship to the human—and then to develop baroque and complex regulatory systems around that set of ordering diktats (in law, morals, science, and the like)—misperceives the relationship between the human and their objects. The relationship between the human and their objects is dialectical and inter-subjective rather than hierarchical. Each shapes the other through repeated and mimetic interactions that are affected both by the “meaning” assigned to objects and the use to which they put or which resists containment within the name given. The regulatory structures which are then used to manage their dialectics might be understood as ideologically political—as a dialectics of meaning making through lived experience in relation to and against the idea of that object.

There are all kinds of human objects and activities in which this dialectic can be observed in action. Traditionally the recognition and suppression of markets in (the consumption of) things or experiences has been at the heart of the constitution of human solidarity and collectivity for a long time. But it also apples to objects. Objects transfigured into sacred things—flags, vessels, or other objects—have traditionally occupied a central place in this sort of semiotic phenomenology (where the object, as signified, is transformed by the investment of acts of collective meaning into something else). These conscious transformations of physical objects into concrete manifestations of abstract concepts, or even of the physical manifestation of one thing is a basic element of the constitution of human collectivity through the arrangement of collective consciousness of what things “are”, how they “behave” and especially their “purpose” and “use.” This basic set of ordering premises then permit the unleashing of the collective titans of human social relations—rules, laws, and systems generally of disciplining collective behavior and perceptions—as moral, legal, social, political, and economic system premises, goals, and orienting baselines for assessing and managing inter-human behaviors.


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Recently, though, these fundamental rules of the operating systems of human relations around objects have appeared more urgently in the context of common household products—even the description of the objects around which the problematique is to be discussed suggests the power of naming in cabining fundamental premises about the “thing”, its “legitimate” or “expected” use and as well the consequences for “mis” use.

Indeed, the condition or meaning of ordinary household products has exploded in recent weeks.

Literally.

The recent episodes of exploding communications devices in Lebanon and surrounding areas, targeting primarily (though not necessarily exclusively) fighters loyal to the group Hezbollah and their support systems, have made unavoidable a confrontation with the dialectics of meaning (and utility) (reporting here, here, and here). With that confrontation, one is (again) faced with what (for the human collective) is perhaps the disagreeable realization (again) of the inevitability of the semiotic revaluation of the premises of phenomenological stability vested in and through objects and ensured by the human centered identity-regulatory structures built around those premises of (enforced) stability. 

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War appears to be the lubricant for this revaluation of the values of objects—the perception and consciousness of object tied to purpose enforced through collective meaning structures policed by regulatory mechanisms. But then, in virtually every stage of historical development of human collectivity, warfare has tended in usher in periods of violent change; phenomenological transformation figuratively at the point of a gun, but now, it seems, in proximity to any number of human made objects (small consumer goods in this case) repurposed to those ends. Yet that is the point—the oddity of these analytical stances is the idea of objective purpose, and the investment of a morality in “re”-purposing. An object is itself—in itself, for itself—even as it is (at least for the human) unconscious of itself. Its purpose, then, in relation to the human, is not in itself but in relation to the human. One than does not name the object and find its purpose. One instead names the object as an expression of its connection to the human. One does not control the object as much as one seeks to control the relationship of that object to the human toward certain ends, with respect to which the object is wholly indifferent. Again, with the human at the center, the discourse of objective purpose inverts the reality of the object of that discourse—it is not the object that is at the center of its objectivity, but rather the relationship of the human to the object that is at the core. The core of what? Of the perception of the thing, certainly (that is of the way in which humans might agree to see and understand a thing; of the morality of the relationship of the thing in the hands of the human as well.

 

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And thus the perversity of the human desire to manage through intelligent naming; or rather the dialectical balancing from this lust for control. The greater the desire to control of thing by vesting it with purpose built into the perception of the object, and then surrounding this perception-purpose with rules, the greater the likelihood of human vulnerability. Expectation of purpose makes vulnerable ; the greater the investment in purpose the greater the vulnerability when the elasticity f purpose is revealed or experienced. That certainly was the case with the communications devices in the Middle East; vulnerability was experienced as a physical manifestation when the phenomenology of purpose reveals the arbitrariness of the investment in a fixed purpose. The great strength of that project can as easily be turned to its greatest weakness. Objects have no purpose in themselves; even those made by or through human agency. Perception of a thing is an investment of the human in the thing. The range of human perception of a thing is finite and directed by and manifested as the limits and forms of human perception. But they do not affect the elasticity of “purpose” to which an object may be put, or not put. And yet purpose is necessary to reduce infinite elasticity to something that may be managed for the stability of human social relations—in whatever form appeals to the human collective in each stage of its development. And there the tension.

This is a tension that is made more acute in periods, like this one, of potentially substantial transformation, or revaluation of values in themselves and in the things around and touching on the human—the planet, its environment, and the things that form part of this environment, including the human thing and their artifacts. One might object that the meaning and signification of these transformations (at least theoretically) have been more or less well enough managed as a form of regulatory bathos, a low level legal issue of little consequence because of its reliance on the power of the perception of a thing. This has taken the form of an emerging law on mixed use objects, in sanctions regimes, and increasingly in the context of the revaluation of things within the premise universe of human rights at least as that is understood within their conventional international apparatus). Nonetheless its transformative semiotics cannot be ignored, if only because the distance between the conceptualization of the thing (purpose) and its regulatory structures appears increasing detached from the performance of purpose(es) in the face of law (and as a challenge to its relevance in the experiential realms of human social relations).

That challenge is not confined to the great perception smelters of war. The human body provides another venue for the transformation of objects, especially those made by and in the image of the human. Pharma now also serves as a leading force of phenomenological instability of the perception of a “reality” of objects (or at least in activating its dialectical dynamics). Ozempic is merely an easily recognizable example, one that is most potently read on the bodies of those who have sought personal physical transformation through the repurposing of a drug to better align the abstract sense of self with what stares at them from a mirror.


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And human collectives in the business of supplying objects in suppressed markets have been adept at repurposing objects. In the case of the transport of suppressed drug trade ordinary objects are repurposed for transport, the delivery of the suppressed consumable, and more generally the objects that are employed in the pathways to transactions. In all these cases the power of re-purposing comes from the intensity of the perception of purpose imposed on an object. Common household objects are a primary target because the strength of the perception, including with it, the perception that purpose transforms the object into something inevitably benign. The greater the strength of the belief in the purpose of an object the more effective and profound the effect of recasting of that purpose, or of the use of the purpose to other ends.


Indeed, it seems , nothing is any longer necessarily what it was. The signification of objects have been increasingly destabilized, and that destabilization may be reaching the point where the grounding of perception is more generally destabilized as well. That destabilization, in turn, represents a fundamental threat to the self-reflexive system of naming-meaning through which collective perception (from the collective self outward) of properly signified things which are allocated places within order reinforcing cognitive systems objects. That threat is not merely to behavior norms but also to the perception of objects in and as behaviors. That is, the importance of exploding objects, in this case, suggests a recasting of the cognition of things as well as the cognition of the human as the experience of the objects around which the human can be conceived and ordered. The threat is only augmented by the response that seeks to use the evaded legality to negate the signific realities that both defy and make it impossible to indulge the perception of a thing as a “particular thingness.”

It is thus more than pagers and communications devices that exploded in Lebanon and adjacent places in recent weeks; it is the stability of the basis of the human perception of itself in and in relation to things, including those made in the shadow of its own image. The response is likely to be self defeating—an intensification of the legalities of perception around an imposed signification of purpose. Those legalities in this context tend to mask  its underlying politics in ways that are increasingly exposed--for good or ill (here, here, and here). That is only likely to intensify the abandonment of that perception within the experiential realms of human perception and the behaviors they will enhance.


Wednesday, October 02, 2024

Video Recording of "AI Ethics in Practice – A Compass for Legal Innovation" (International Committee of the ABA Senior Lawyers Division (SLD) and the National Security Committee of the American Bar Association International Law Section (ILS))

 


 

On 28 August 2024 a joint meeting of the International Committee of the ABA Senior Lawyers Division (SLD) and the National Security Committee of the American Bar Association International Law Section (ILS) organized a session entitled "AI Ethics in Practice – A Compass for Legal Innovation."

In the rapidly evolving landscape of artificial intelligence, ethics serves as a guiding light, ensuring responsible innovation and safeguarding our legal systems. This webinar delves into the ethical dimensions of Generative AI (GAI), providing legal professionals with essential guidance to navigate ethical challenges and apply existing rules to emerging technologies.

As GAI becomes integral to daily life and legal proceedings, understanding its implications is crucial. This session offers insights into AI-generated evidence, emerging legal claims, and prepares legal professionals for the challenges ahead.

Explore the GRACED framework—Great Governance, Responsible Risk and Strategy, Authentic Augmentation, Co-Creation, Ethically Effective approaches, and Data-Driven decisions. Learn how to ensure transparency, accountability, and ethical integrity in AI development and deployment, manage AI risks, prioritize human rights and fairness, and build inclusive AI systems. We will also address ethical considerations for predictive analytics and optical surveillance, examining their impact on legal decision-making and the broader justice system. (HERE).

Featured Speakers:

Adriana Sanford: A global threats specialist, professor, and international TV commentator, recently recognized among the top Cybersecurity Woman of the World Edition for 2024.  She holds advanced law degrees from Georgetown University Law Center and Notre Dame Law School and is a member of the steering group of the National Security Committee of the ABA International Law Section. Sanford is also the recipient of the 2019 Cybersecurity Woman of the Year - Cybersecurity Woman Law & Privacy Professional of the Year Award.

Karen Worstell, MA, MS: With nearly four decades of experience in cybersecurity, Karen Worstell is renowned as a serial CISO for iconic brands and a Silicon Valley technology leader. She has held leadership roles as CISO at global institutions such as AT&T Wireless, Microsoft, and Russell Investments. Worstell pioneered cybersecurity initiatives at Boeing, has advised on national security for NIST and the U.S. Department of Commerce, and has served as a Palliative Care Fellow for the VA hospital.

Moderator:
Jonathan Meyer: Co-Chair of the National Security Committee at the American Bar Association's International Law Section, Vice Chair of the ABA Committee on Export Controls and Economic Sanctions, and Co-Chair of the International Committee of the ABA’s Senior Lawyers Division.


 
The video recording of the session may be accessed HERE