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This paper examines the lived experiences and ethical dilemmas of investors and staff in London's digital music startup culture. Startups often rely on what I term 'imagined metrics' to attract investment and to measure the efficacy of their technologies. However, this stands in stark contrast to the qualitative ways music is understood within these organisations and subsequently experienced via the technologies they build. Drawing on ethnographic observations alongside interview data, I suggest that these metrics have few true believers. Instead, critiques of imagined metrics and their susceptibility to exaggeration and misrepresentation are ubiquitous. This culture of scepticism is not incidental: it is a crucial pathway through which otherwise volatile startup culture is normalised. Investors, founders and staff often publicly acknowledge the unreliability of the numbers with which they work, even as metrics continue to underpin the decision-making process. Metrics thus do not require true belief to secure their effects. Yet, against this backdrop, processes of quantification increasingly shape digital music consumption. Resisting the classic equation of quantification with Weberian rationalisation, this study instead shows that metrics are imbued with emotions and interpretive narratives that extend well beyond the older trust in numbers (Porter [1995]. Trust in Numbers: The Pursuit of Objectivity in Science and Public Life. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is the first article in English of Rosenstock-Huessy'sFull Count of the Times, the second volume of hisSociology. The vastness and diversity of Rosenstock-Huessy's corpus, plus the associative manner of his writing, makes any systematic analysis of his work very difficult. Yet he explicitly stated in his Sociology that he did have a system. In this paper I clarify why his work is devoted to theFull Count of the Times. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper investigates René Girard's contribution to the theological debate on the meaning of the cross. The first section sets the scene and formulates the problem of the cross. It does this by introducing the problems connected to the dominant interpretation of the cross, the so-called ‘Anselmian’ model, which understands the cross in terms of satisfaction and substitution. The second section explores the interpretation of the cross before Anselm. It examines the so-called Christus Victor motif. The merits and shortcomings of this motif are explored and the question is raised of whether Christus Victor can answer the problem of the cross for today's world. The final and largest section of this paper rehabilitates the Christus Victor motif with the help of Girard. In this way, the paper shows that Girard fits into contemporary theological debates and that he matters for theology because his anthropological insights contribute to solving intra-theological problems, like the problem of the cross. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper is a reading of Hōrōki (1928-30) by Hayashi Fumiko (1903-1951). The analysis demonstrates how the marginal status of the female protagonist is used as a literary device to create a challenging gendered critique of Japanese urban culture in the early 20th century. The paper discusses how the work reflects concepts of a 'hybrid' national identity as defined by Homi Bhabha, and highlights the links between gender and national identity using the concept of the exotic in relation to Alcoff's concept of gender as positionality. It focuses in particular on the structure of the work, bringing out the idea that by using a disjointed narrative and a fragmented telling of the self, Hayashi Fumiko evokes ideas of the self in relation to the nation that are both unstable and destabilising, thus creating a revolutionary and anarchistic view of Japanese culture; the fluidity and hybridity of the nation are reflected in the fluid and hybrid nature of the work itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The discourse of 'flow' and 'circulation' has a great deal of currency in globalisation study, and is utterly naturalised in many works. Without entering into arguments about the extent of globalisation as a force and a structure in the world, this paper resists the notion that 'flow' is the only or best way to characterise whatever globalising effects we live with. Instead, we propose the ancient figure of translation, which entails a notion of halt in the transit it produces. Taking as a case study the Kransky Sisters' 'World Tour to New Caledonia' to appear at the 'Festival "Femmes Funk"' in 2002, we demonstrate the role of both interlingual and cultural translation, construed as exercises involving stops, in enabling the successful performance of a cultural crossing of the Coral Sea. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two contrasting visions of ideological discourse populate sociological treatments of culture. In the work of the British social theorist Margaret Archer, we find a conception of ideological discourse as essentially dialectical and reliant on logically compelling argument. In American sociology of culture, conversely, we find an implicit understanding of ideological discourse as a 'performative' mode of discourse built around emotionally resonant symbols, image, and metaphors. If we take either of these categorical conceptualisations of ideological discourse seriously, then the only discourses which can qualify as ideological are those discourses which are either fully metaphorical or entirely dialectical. In fact, many ideological discourses make use of imagery and metaphors and at the same time feature propositions meant to be interpreted as part of a logically compelling argument. As the paper demonstrates through a detailed examination of the discourses produced by the American technocrats of the 1920s and 1930s, elaborate ideological productions often include both metaphorical propositions and logically compelling argument. Moreover, metaphorical constructions and literal propositions often function as complements in effective ideological discourses. This is especially true when the discourses are addressed to knowledgeable and economically privileged audiences, such as the 'new class' of the pre-depression United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay serves as an introduction to the Special Issue entitled 'Culture & Technics: The Politics of Simondon's Du Mode'. This issue follows the pivotal and important translation of Gilbert Simodon's supplementary dissertation, On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects, which offers a rich and layered approach to technics which, through his other works, we see integrated into an entire philosophical approach. This Issue seeks to consider how we might read Simondon today in what is a completely transformed technical epoch from his own, faced with new technological and global challenges. After briefly introducing, first, some comments on Simondon's account of the process of disparation, this essay will make some observations on how Simondon conceptualised the relation between culture and technics. It is the space between these two latter notions – and the potential for their systematic, open, and processual integration – in which this introduction contextualises this Special Issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A wide range of different AI systems based on the promising technology of machine learning has been implemented into everyday life without further ado, at times supplanting and delivering institutional decisions. Following Gilbert Simondon's analysis in On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects, this essay explores the contemporary technical objects of new Artificial Intelligence systems to ask if their premature acceptance might be based on a misunderstanding: AI systems are able to calculate meaning, whereby they are performing a task traditionally rooted in the sphere of culture. Are AI-informed technical objects, because of their new ability of calculating meaning, mistakenly being read as an 'aesthetic object' thereby creating the illusion of being 'integrated' into the world? And how could their integration be understood differently? The article contributes to studies located at the intersection of work on Simondon and digital technology, thereby traversing Science and Technology Studies and Philosophy of Technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses reports published within the issue including Jessica Rapson's "Mobilizing Lidice: Cosmopolitan Memory Between Theory and Practice," Vivian Halloran's "Recipes as Memory Work: Slave Food" and Beschea-Fache's essay on "The German Mujahid," by Boulem Sansal.

This essay attempts to disclose a uniquely volatile nexus that implicates – and perhaps, reinvigorates – a postcolonial analytics of insurgency. This nexus includes three strands of inquiry: the first is the so-called Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA), which really is – albeit in a qualified sense – revolutionary. War is doing new things with time and space through culture, media, and data technology, and in the process is mutating not only what it means to be a part of this or that national group but is also changing what it means to be human. The second strand of inquiry focuses on the legacy of postcolonial studies, particularly the notion of ‘writing back’ which, I contend, is an apposite starting point for writing critically about the RMA. Apposite though it is, there are limits to postcolonial studies in the contemporary war context. This is so because while the divisions of individual difference are shifting, the coherence of the nation state itself is undergoing radical change. Moving outward in scope to a planetary scale, the human being per se is no longer a primary category by and for which war is happening today. Thus the third strand of inquiry is focused on the residual anthropomorphic tendencies within postcolonial studies that too narrowly limit discussions of violence and collective belonging. The concept of the human being per se remains reliant on early models of technology and media (namely, writing and literature, usually novels). Therefore, in the context of an ever-expanding global war machine, ‘writing back’ is a concept that requires fine-tuning and revision. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Several photographs of drawings by Antony Gormley are presented including Eidolon, Graph and Immersion I.

The article discusses the concept of a pictorial turn which was first proposed by W.J.T. Mitchell in an article published in "ArtForum" in 1992. It states that although the idea of a pictorial turn resists any easy and simple definition, it supports the fact that pictures form a point of peculiar friction and discomfort across a range of intellectual inquiry. It notes that the pictorial turn is positioned within the much larger project of critical iconology which is being pursued by Mitchell.

Alain Badiou is a fierce critic of State-based parliamentary democracy and the supposedly radical democracy that fails to disentangle itself from the Statist logic of representation. This article traces Badiou's alternative proposal of a generic democracy based upon the prescription of an axiom of equality. However, the article then challenges an important consequence of this axiomatic democracy: the apparent disjuncture between politics and culture. It does so by re-describing the productive interface between the Rastafari movement and roots reggae music in Jamaica in the 1970s and beyond as, in Badiou's own terms, a 'configuration' that reveals the possibility of what is termed an 'evental culture'. By reading Rastafarian reggae as an example of a generic radical democracy with an explicitly cultural politics at its core, it is argued that the outlines of what has hitherto been an out-and-out oxymoron - a 'Badiouian cultural studies' - are provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Edward Said is the literary critic most cited by American anthropologists, but there has been relatively little anthropological examination of his concept of culture. Apart from an isolated attempt by Lila Abu-Lughod to 'write against culture', most anthropologists have ignored Said's approach. In Culture and Imperialism , Said draws on Matthew Arnold's 'best of the best' definition, while American anthropologists owe their holistic culture to fellow Victorian Edward Tylor. Claude Levi-Strauss is praised by Said, but other major anthropological approaches to culture are ignored. Said assumes anthropology is on the wrong side of the colonial divide, although he holds out hope for those who are now reading the work of literary and cultural critics. In this essay I compare Said's reading of anthropology, exemplified by Kipling's Colonel Creighton, to the influence of Bronislaw Malinowski and Franz Boas on ethnographic method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although Richard Rorty's controversial thought has been the subject of many works, there has not been much discussion about his approach to cultural difference. The purpose of this article is to examine how Rorty sees cultural differences philosophically and how he deals with them politically. For him, rationality, morality and even the scope of moral responsibility towards others are defined in terms of solidarity with a particular community and 'ethnocentrism', rather than in terms of a universal and metaphysically derived set of criteria. It can be argued that since language, language games and values are mainly components of culture, the latter is one of the most significant communities with which Rorty is concerned, though he is not explicit about it. Nevertheless, Rorty does not think that the moral and philosophical significance of communities, particularly cultural communities, should be reflected in politics. The main argument of the article is that there is an unresolved tension in Rorty's thought between philosophical, moral and emotional attribution of significance to communities and arguably cultural communities, and a disregard for them in the political sphere. This paves the way for outlining an approach to cultural difference that is more just and even more in harmony with Rorty's own philosophy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Provides information on the authors of articles published in a 2003 issue of "Culture, Theory & Critique." James Elkins; Sunil Manghani; Virginia Liberatore; Ken Hillis.