Social Justice and Democracy

 

Dahl, R. (1998) On Democracy. New Haven : Yale University Press. Chapter Two: Where and How Did Democracy Develop? A Brief History pp. 7-25.

 

Dahl, R. (1998) On Democracy. New Haven : Yale University Press. Chapter Three: What Lies Ahead? pp. 26-32.

 

Le Guin, U. (1975) "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas."  In: The Wind's Twelve Quarters: Short Stories. New York : Harper & Row.

 

Leonhardt, D. (2005) The College Dropout.  In: Bill Keller (Ed.) Class Matters. New York:  Henry Holt and Company. pp. 87-104.

 

Miller, D.  (1999) "The Scope of Social Justice."  In:  Principles of social justice. Imprint Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press.

 

Thiele, L. (2004)  Thinking Politics:  Perspectives in Ancient, Modern, and Postmodern Political Theory. New York : Chatham House Publishers. pp. 208-215.

 

 

Surveillance, Privacy and Society

 

How Laura Poitras Helped Snowden Spill His Secrets

BY PETER MAASS | Published: August 13, 2013

The New York Times.

 

Moglen, E. (2013). The Tangled Web We Have Woven.Communications of the ACM, 56(2), 20-22.

 

O'Brien, M. (2008). Law, privacy and information technology: a sleepwalk through the surveillance society?Information & Communications Technology Law, 17(1), 25-35.

 

 

TechnoCulture

Latour, B. (2011) "Where Are The Missing Masses? : The Sociology of a Few Mundane Artifacts." In: Seth Giddings with Martin Lister (Eds.) The New Media and Technocultures Reader. New York : Routledge.

 

Nye, D. (2006) Technology Matters.  Chapter One: Can we define "technology"? Cambridge : MIT Press. 1-15.

 

Verbeek, P. (2011) Moralizing Technology" Understanding and Designing the Morality of Things. Chicago : The University of Chicago Press. Chapter One: "Mediated Morality."  pp. 1-17.

 

Winner, L. (1986) "Do Artifacts Have Politics" In: The Whale and the Reactor: A Search For Limites in an Age of High Technology. Chicago : The University of Chicago Press.

 

Winston, M. (2009) “Children of Invention Revisited.” In: Morton E. Winston and Ralph D. Edelbach (Eds.). Society, ethics, and technology. Belmont, CA : Wadsworth Cengage Learning.

 

 

Digital Diversity 

Howard Besser,  “The Next Digital Divides” ,Teaching to Change LA 1:2, Spring 2001, http://www.tcla.gseis.ucla.edu/divide/politics/besser.html

 

Mark Warschauer, “Reconceptualizing the Digital Divide” First Monday, Volume 7, Number 7 - 1 July 2002

http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/967/888

 

Twitter and Literacy, I refuse to make up a twittery name for it by Howard Rheingold.

 

Confronting  the Challenges of Participatory Culture. Media Education for the 21st Century. Henry Jenkins 

 

 

Grassroots Online Activism (China)

Yang, Guobin (2009) The power of the Internet in China : citizen activism online. Introduction. New York : Columbia University Press. pp 1-23.

 

Yang, Guobin (2009) The power of the Internet in China : citizen activism online. Chapter 1: New York : Columbia University Press. pp 25-43.

 

Articles
Yang, “Activists beyond virtual borders: internet-mediated networks and informational politics in China”
http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/1609/1524
Bristow, “Can microblogs change China’s rulers?”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-14422581
Wikipedia, Internet in China
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_in_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China

News report on different cases
Wenzhou train crash
Wines and LaFraniere, “In baring facts of train crash, blogs erode China censorship”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/29/world/asia/29china.html?pagewanted=all
China Digital Times, “Chinese media muzzled after day of glory”
http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2011/07/chinese-media-muzzled-after-day-of-glory/
China Digital Times, “After Deadly Train Crash in China, Critics Claim State Cover-Up (Updated)”
http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2011/07/after-deadly-train-crash-in-china-critics-claim-state-cover-up/

Dalian PX factory
Larson, “The new epicenter of China’s discontent”
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/08/23/the_new_epicenter_of_china_s_discontent?page=0,0
LaFranniere and Wines, “Protest over chemical plant shows growing pressure on China from citizens”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/16/world/asia/16dalian.html?_r=1

Slave labor
Martinsen, “In search of the missing kiln workers”
http://www.danwei.org/blogs/in_search_of_the_missing_kiln.php
Lorenz, “Combing the brickyards for the disappeared”
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,499877,00.html

Sun Zhigang (C&R)
Wikepedia, “Custody and repatriation”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Custody_and_repatriation
Xiao Qiang, “The rising tide of internet opinion in China”
http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/reports/article/100852/The-Rising-Tide-of-Internet-Opinion-in-China.aspx
Zhang reports on a talk by Luo, “The internet in China: a force for democracy or oppression?”
http://www.international.ucla.edu/article.asp?parentid=67152

Zhang Xianzhu (hepatitis B discrimination)
http://www.chinareview.info/issue2/pages/main1.htm

Internet censoring
Wikipedia, “Great firewall of China”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Firewall_of_China
Elgin and Einhorn, “The great firewall of China”
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jan2006/tc20060112_434051.htm

 

Websites
“China Beat” (CB)    
http://www.thechinabeat.org/?p=3636    
“China Digital Times” (CDT)                         
http://chinadigitaltimes.net/china/online-activism/   

 

 

 

Emergent Behavior 

Interview with Mary Joyce   

Mary Joyce, an leader in Digital Activism, answers questions about the sucess, or lackthereof, social media to bring about change in politically turbulent contexts. Small Change –

 

The Twitter Effect: How Social Media Changes the News Narrative by Devin Harner

 The Victorian poet and critic Matthew Arnold, best known for the bleak and cynically fatalistic love poem, "Dover Beach," once described journalism as "literature in a hurry." As the news cycle has been spurred on by Twitter and social media, and quickened to the point of being nearly instantaneous, I can't help but wonder what Arnold would think of...

 

Why the Revolution Will Not be Tweeted   

Malcolm Gladwell's article in the New Yorker, makes the case that social media has not cause any great changes in the way that world addresses political conflict.  This article is attacked by many others as "missing the point".

 

We Need a Serious Critique of Net Activism  

Cory Doctorow takes on Evgeny Morozov's critism of the net as an agent of change.  He addresses many of the condemnations of Social Media in previous articles and supports the idea the Social Media gives the voiceless political power.

 

Technology is Not the Answer  

This article in The Atlantic by Kentaro Toyama argues that technology on its own has little effect on issues of Social Justice.  He focuses on Poverty in this article.

 

The First Twitter Revolution?  

Ethan Zuckerman, writing for Foreign Policy highlights in this article the overblown credit to Social Media for toppling the Tunisian government.

 

Interview with Timothy Wu  

While not strictly on topic, this interview by the New York Times Book Review gives some interesting thoughts and insights into the structure of power behind the digital media companies.  It gives some historical perspective on how information empires rise and fall.

 

Why Social Media is Reinventing Activism  

Sara Kessler reports for Mashable, among other outlets as a freelance journalist.  This article, perhaps the most positive take of the lot on the success of social media making a difference.  Be sure to following the links she provides to change.org. avaaz.org, and wearevisible.com.

 

Crisis Mapping

The ultimate application of emergence and social justice currently on the web

 

Gamers for Change

Title says it all, this collection of sites has many different kinds of sites: educational, brainstorming-problem solving, and fund-raising.

 

Emergent Behavior Simulation Tool

This site allows users to "write the behavior" of individual agents and then watch as large numbers of them interact.  The user gets a sense of the difficulties in specifying particular, desired outcomes in such a context.

 

 

Comparative Revolutions 

 

Gause, Gregory (2011). Why Middle East Studies Missed the Arab Spring. Foreign Affairs, 90(4), 81-90.

This is a short piece by F. Gregory Gause in the July/August 2011 issue of Foreign Affairs on the Arab Spring and how academics missed it.  Read this to get a sense of the number of Middle East countries involved in the uprisings of 2011.  For background on each country go to the CIA's World Factbook and the BBC Timelines for each of the countries mentioned here.  Also see the maps of the Middle East at the UT Austin site.

 

Kinzer, S. (2008). Inside Iran's Fury. Smithsonian, 39(7), 60-70.  Photo Gallery

This is a nice summary of Iranian history by journalist and student of foreign affairs--Stephen Kinzer.  This brief historical overview here--organized around an explanation of Iranian nationalism--includes a description of the 1953 covert overthrow of the democratically elected government in 1953 by the United States and the 1979 mass protests that led to the overthrow of the Shah. 

 

Malcom Gladwell on social media and social change

This is a good, well-written article in the New Yorker offering a summary explanation of sociological theory (Doug McAdam) on key factor in organizing demonstrations for serious social or political change--need for "strong-tie."  Gladwell's article begins with the example of the lunch-counter demonstration in 1960 Greensboro, North Carolina protesting segregation.   What made that demonstration grow (and become iconic in the Civil Rights Movement)?   The key is not social media.  Gladwell concludes that social media is a useful tool for making the status quo more efficient; it is not a significant factor for bringing about major social change.

 

James Fallows on Chinese Winter   

This recent piece from the Atlantic by James Fallows comments on Chinese government’s response and capacity for suppression of any possible spread of Arab Spring to China. 

 

Review from London Review of Books   

This is a review essay by James Harkin in the London Review of Books critical of the actual utility of social media for political mobilization. This review was published in December 2010, just before the Arab Spring. It refers to use, or bungled attempts to promote, social media by the U.S. Government as tool of statecraft. The primary case here is the summer 2009 mobilization in Iran sparked by the June 2009 presidential election and apparent fraud.

 

I'd like to recommend that we also use some of the chapters from one of the books reviewed here:  The Net Delusion: the Dark Side of Internet Freedom by Evgeny  Morozov, Public Affairs, 2011.

 

NYTimes piece critical of "Facebook Revolutions"   

This March 2011 piece by Simon Montefiore in the New York Times argues the point that “Facebook Revolutions” are mobilizations without organization. The actual accomplishment of regime transformation requires more. 

 

Are You Following a Bot? Atlantic Monthly

A short piece from the May 2011 Atlantic on the development of software to trawl social media, mine it, and change it. “Are you following a Bot?”

 

Electronic Waste

Puckett, J. (2006)  "High-Tech's Dirty Little Secret: The Economics and Ethics of the Electronic waste Trade.  In:Challenging the Chip: Labor Rights and Environmental Justice in the Global Electronics Industry". Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.

 

"Petopia" by Benjamin Crowell

www.lightandmatter.com/fiction/petopiaPetopia. by Benjamin Crowell. Originally published in Asimov's Science Fiction, June 2010. 

 

Grossman, E. (2006) High Tech Trash: Digial Devices, Hidden Toxics, and Human Health. Chapter One: The Underside of High Tech. Washington : Island Press.

 

Mooallem, J. (2008, January 13) "The Afterlife of Cellphones." The New York Times Magazine. Retrieved fromhttp://www.nytimes.com

Strasser, S. (1999) "Toward a History of Trashmaking." In: Waste and want : a social history of trash. New York : Metropolitan Books.

 

Hamilton, C. (2010). Consumerism, self-creation and prospects for a new ecological consciousness.Journal of Cleaner Production, 18(6), 571-575.

 

Jackson, T. (2009) Prosperity without growth : economics for a finite planet.   London ; Sterling, VA : Earthscan.  Chapters 8 Macro-economics for Sustainability and  9 Flourishing – within limits. pp. 75-92.

 

Jackson, T. (2009) Prosperity without growth : economics for a finite planet.   London ; Sterling, VA : Earthscan.  Chapters 10 Governance for Prosperity and 11Steps towards a Sustainable Economy. pp. 93-108.

 

Leonard, A. (2010) The Story of Stuff.  Chapter 4: "Consumption." New York : The Free Press.

 

 NYE, D. (2006) Technology Matters. Chapter Six: Sustainable Abundance, or Ecological Crisis? Cambridge : MIT Press.

 

Responsible Electronics Recycling Act of 2011

Introduced on June 22nd in the US House of Representatives, this bill will stop sham U.S. “recyclers” from dumping electronic waste on developing countries and will promote much needed recycling jobs in the U.S. where unemployment rates are soaring.

 

Federal Legislation – Electronics TakeBack Coalition

The Responsible Electronics Recycling Act of 2011 has been filed with bi-partisan sponsorship in both the House and Senate. The bill would make it illegal to send toxic e-waste to developing nations.

 

Byster, L. and Smith, T. (2006)  "From Grassroots to Global: The Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition's Milestones in Building a Movement for Corporate Accountability and Sustainability in the High-tech Industry."  In: Challenging the Chip: Labor Rights and Environmental Justice in the Global Electronics Industry. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.

Rees, W. and Westra, L. (2003) "When Consumption Does Violence: Can there be Sustainability and Environmental Justice in a Resource-limited World?" In: Julian Agyeman, Robert Bullared and Bob Evans (Eds.) Just Sustainabilities: Development in an Unequal World. Cambridge, MA : The MIT Press. 

Scanlan, J. (2005) Afterword. In: On Garbage.London : Reaktion Books, Ltd.