We are witnessing an upsurge in crime forecasting software, which supposedly draws predictive knowledge from data on past crime. Although prevention and anticipation are already embedded in the ...apparatuses of government, going beyond a mere abstract aspiration, the latest innovations hold out the promise of replacing police officers’ “gut feelings” and discretionary risk assessments with algorithmic-powered, quantified analyses of risk scores. While police departments and private companies praise such innovations for their cost-effective rationale, critics raise concerns regarding their potential for discriminating against poor, black, and migrant communities. In this article, I address such controversies by telling the story of the making of CrimeRadar, an app developed by a Rio de Janeiro-based think tank in partnership with private associates and local police authorities. Drawing mostly on Latour’s contributions to the emerging literature on security assemblages, I argue that we gain explanatory and critical leverage by looking into the mundane practices of making and unmaking sociotechnical arrangements. That is, I address the chain of translations through which crime data are collected, organized, and transformed into risk scores. In every step, new ways of seeing and presenting crime are produced, with a significant impact on how we experience and act upon (in)security.
ABSTRACTCurrent research on post-truth politics often portrays a war waged by anti-science populists against pure, truth-seeking scientists. This critical framework was replicated in Brazil, where ...the former President Jair Bolsonaro was accused of neglecting scientific expertise to promote alternative treatments for the COVID-19 pandemic. Bolsonaro was deemed responsible for replacing sound scientific evidence with religious and ideological claims, resulting in many deaths. In this article, we investigate public controversies surrounding chloroquine (HCQ) and indicate that Bolsonaro’s discourses were not based on anti-science statements, as the literature on post-truth politics often emphasizes. Instead, Bolsonaro invoked the symbols of modern science and claimed to have the actual experts on his side. Thus, we argue that to understand the challenge posed by far-right populists to scientific institutions, we need to employ analytical instruments that help us complicate easy demarcations of facts and stark binaries of science/anti-science.
Resumo Políticas de controle da pandemia de Covid-19 têm sido alvo de disputas no Brasil, com autoridades divergindo sobre formas de tratamento e os efeitos das estratégias de distanciamento social. ...Análises recentes caracterizam tais disputas como uma “batalha ideológica” de Bolsonaro contra “argumentos racionais” de especialistas e da OMS. Além disso, críticos caracterizam Bolsonaro como um representante do “populismo científico” que produz fake news para sustentar pautas negacionistas. Neste artigo, dialogamos com o campo de estudos de Ciência, Tecnologia e Sociedade (CTS) para analisar os usos da ciência durante a pandemia. Demostramos que Bolsonaro não nega enunciados científicos in toto, mas busca legitimar suas políticas de saúde a partir das controvérsias públicas sobre a ciência. Ao explorar os meandros da produção de fatos científicos, o que Bolsonaro faz é questionar as credenciais da OMS e acusar opositores de politizarem pesquisas sobre formas de contenção da pandemia. Em outras palavras, Bolsonaro e seu entorno avançam uma imagem transcendental da Ciência, que reifica a divisão moderna entre o saber científico e a cultura, para criticar a contaminação ideológica de algumas instituições científicas no período de pandemia. Tal postura revela o jogo de poder epistêmico intrínseco ao debate contemporâneo sobre pós-verdade, no qual ideologia, esoterismo e desrazão são atribuídos sempre ao enunciado do outro.
Abstract The politics of Covid-19’s pandemic control in Brazil has been engulfed in disputes, with local authorities disagreeing about alternatives of health treatment and the effects of social distancing strategies. Recent analyses have characterized such disputes as Bolsonaro’s “ideological battle” against “rational arguments” of specialists and the WHO. Also, critics have described Bolsonaro as a representative of “scientific populism” who produces fake news to support his anti-science politics. In this article, we engage with the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS) to observe the multiple uses of science during the pandemic. We argue that Bolsonaro does not deny scientific statements in toto but seeks to legitimize his government’s health politics based upon public controversies about science. Bolsonaro explores the interstices of the making of scientific facts to question WHO’s credibility and to accuse his adversaries of politicizing scientific research during the pandemic. Thus, Bolsonaro sustains a transcendental image of science, which reifies the modern separation between science knowledge and culture, to criticize the ideological contamination of certain institutions. This posture reveals the epistemic dispute intrinsic to contemporary debates on post-truth, which postulates that ideology, esoterism, and anti-reason are always attributes of others.
Abstract The COVID-19 pandemic has sparked controversies over health security strategies adopted in different countries. The urge to curb the spread of the virus has supported policies to restrict ...mobility and to build up state surveillance, which might induce authoritarian forms of government. In this context, the Copenhagen School has offered an analytical repertoire that informs many analyses in the fields of critical security studies and global health. Accordingly, the securitisation of COVID-19 might be necessary to deal with the crisis, but it risks unfolding discriminatory practices and undemocratic regimes, with potentially enduring effects. In this article, we look into controversies over pandemic-control strategies to discuss the political and analytical limitations of securitisation theory. On the one hand, we demonstrate that the focus on moments of rupture and exception conceals security practices that unfold in ongoing institutional disputes and over the construction of legitimate knowledge about public health. On the other hand, we point out that securitisation theory hinders a genealogy of modern apparatuses of control and neglects violent forms of government which are manifested not in major disruptive acts, but in the everyday dynamics of unequal societies. We conclude by suggesting that an analysis of the bureaucratic disputes and scientific controversies that constitute health security knowledges and practices enables critical approaches to engage with the multiple – and, at times, mundane – processes in which (in)security is produced, circulated, and contested.
Resumo A pandemia de COVID-19 tem gerado controvérsias em torno das políticas de saúde adotadas em diferentes países. A necessidade de controlar a propagação do vírus tem sido usada como justificativa para medidas de restrição da mobilidade e para largos investimentos em dispositivos de vigilância, o que pode abrir espaço para formas não democráticas de governo. Nesse contexto, a Escola de Copenhague tem oferecido o instrumental teórico que informa muitas das análises nos campos de estudos críticos de segurança e saúde global. Segundo esta perspectiva, a securitização da COVID-19 agiliza as respostas à crise, mas guarda caráter discriminatório, contribuindo ainda para o avanço de políticas autoritárias potencialmente duradouras. Neste artigo, exploramos os debates recentes em torno das políticas de contenção da pandemia para abordar os limites políticos e analíticos da teoria da securitização. Por um lado, demonstramos que o foco em momentos de ruptura e políticas de exceção negligencia práticas de segurança que se desenvolvem no dia a dia das disputas institucionais e na construção de conhecimento especializado sobre saúde pública. Por outro, apontamos que a proposta da Escola de Copenhague impede uma genealogia dos aparatos modernos de segurança e ignora formas violentas de governo que não se manifestam em grandes atos disruptivos, mas na rotina de sociedades desiguais. Sugerimos, por fim, que a análise das disputas burocráticas e controvérsias científicas que constituem os conhecimentos e práticas dos campos de segurança e saúde permite que abordagens críticas se engajem com os múltiplos e, por vezes, mundanos processos pelos quais a (in)segurança é produzida, disseminada e contestada.
In the context of COVID-19 pandemics, Brazilian cities implemented social isolation policies and deployed digital systems to monitor urban mobility. This article addresses the setting of two digital ...technologies based on massive cell-phone data collection by private companies in São Paulo state. We relied on secondary data from multiple sources (press conferences, interviews, newspaper articles, public documents), complemented by primary data from the authors’ ongoing research. In our analysis of heterogeneous and contingent techniques of pandemic control, we found that although these monitoring technologies seem to be effective in assisting public services and informing society, they also raise issues about performativity and transparency, with relevant consequences for their adoption in sanitary emergencies, and their potential legacy to São Paulo’s public safety management.
This thesis's objectives are twofold. On the one hand it contributes to the literature on critical security studies by advancing an empirically-grounded narrative on security innovations, ...particularly the making of policing technologies, which questions the idea of neoliberal policy diffusion and accounts for the role of materiality. On the other hand, it explores the potentialities of different ontological perspectives and methods in the field of International Relations theory. By deploying the concepts of translation, mediation and controversies while focusing on the immanent properties and connections that hold socio-technical assemblages together, I offer different accounts for some of the basic dichotomies within mainstream IR theory, such as local and global, public and private, culture and nature. I address such objectives through the analysis of police innovations in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in preparation for the FIFA World Cup (2014) and the Olympic Games (2016). In a short period, authorities and private entrepreneurs invested in variegated digital technologies which promised to enhance police efficiency and accountability, while also raising awareness among locals and tourists on the spatialisation of crime and insecurity. I carried out fieldwork with security professionals engaged in everyday operations in Rio's Integrated Centre for Command and Control (ICCC), and followed a Brazilian-based think tank which developed a crime prediction app ('CrimeRadar') to inform citizens on risk levels across the city. The thesis offers empirical insights into the transformation of security practices in Rio de Janeiro, and theoretical contributions to the literature on critical security studies and international political sociology, increasing the repertoire of critical methods and the analytical vocabulary for productive intervention. By understanding the power struggles that build technologies up and hold them together, it is also possible to delineate strategies to disrupt or hack them in our benefit. We can then move from critique to composition, from debunking to (re)assembling.
Species occurrence records from online databases are an indispensable resource in ecological, biogeographical and palaeontological research. However, issues with data quality, especially incorrect ...geo‐referencing or dating, can diminish their usefulness. Manual cleaning is time‐consuming, error prone, difficult to reproduce and limited to known geographical areas and taxonomic groups, making it impractical for datasets with thousands or millions of records.
Here, we present CoordinateCleaner, an r‐package to scan datasets of species occurrence records for geo‐referencing and dating imprecisions and data entry errors in a standardized and reproducible way. CoordinateCleaner is tailored to problems common in biological and palaeontological databases and can handle datasets with millions of records. The software includes (a) functions to flag potentially problematic coordinate records based on geographical gazetteers, (b) a global database of 9,691 geo‐referenced biodiversity institutions to identify records that are likely from horticulture or captivity, (c) novel algorithms to identify datasets with rasterized data, conversion errors and strong decimal rounding and (d) spatio‐temporal tests for fossils.
We describe the individual functions available in CoordinateCleaner and demonstrate them on more than 90 million occurrences of flowering plants from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) and 19,000 fossil occurrences from the Palaeobiology Database (PBDB). We find that in GBIF more than 3.4 million records (3.7%) are potentially problematic and that 179 of the tested contributing datasets (18.5%) might be biased by rasterized coordinates. In PBDB, 1205 records (6.3%) are potentially problematic.
All cleaning functions and the biodiversity institution database are open‐source and available within the CoordinateCleaner r‐package.
A dissertação analisa de forma crítica parte da literatura de segurança internacional que advoga pela ampliação da agenda do campo, evidenciando as consequências éticas e políticas de se adotar a ...lógica da securitização em análises sobre questões sociais. Para tanto, são abordadas as contribuições da Escola de Copenhague às análises sobre a política de controle de fronteiras da União Europeia (UE). Este estudo tem como linha condutora as diferentes visões sobre a criação da Frontex, agência que, apesar das acusações de desrespeito aos direitos dos imigrantes, tornou-se a principal produtora de conhecimento acerca dos riscos às fronteiras europeias. Por fim, é abordada a contribuição do campo da Sociologia Política Internacional para os estudos de segurança, especialmente os trabalhos de Didier Bigo e Jef Huysmans. Esta perspectiva realça os principais problemas da ampliação da agenda de segurança e seu impacto no Estado liberal, demonstrando que há uma modificação drástica nas formas de governança, com restrições à liberdade individual em prol de um suposto aumento de proteção. Deste modo, o objeto desta dissertação é tanto a literatura da Escola de Copenhague, compreendendo suas limitações práticas e silêncios políticos, quanto a própria Frontex, cujas operações são evidências empíricas dos argumentos de Bigo e Huysmans.
This dissertation criticizes part of the literature on international security that advocates for the expansion of the agenda of the field, evidencing the ethical and political consequences of adopting the securitisation perspective while analysing social issues. In this sense, the theoretical contributions of the Copenhagen School to the interpretations of the European Union (EU) policy of boarder control are addressed. This work has as its conductive line the different visions on the creation of the Frontex, an agency that, depite being accused of disrespecting the rights of immigrants, became the main producer of knowledge on the risks to European boarders. Finally, the contribution of the International Political Sociology field to security studies is addressed, mainly through the work of Didier Bigo and Jef Huysmans. This perspective highlights the main problems of widening the security agenda and its impact in the Liberal State, demonstrating that there is a drastic change in the forms of governance, with restrictions to individual freedoms on behalf of an alleged increase in protection. Thereby, the object of this dissertation is both the Copenhagen School literature, understanding its practical limitations and political silences, and Frontex itself, whose operations are empirical evidences of Bigos and Hyusmans s arguments.
PONTIFÍCIA UNIVERSIDADE CATÓLICA DO RIO DE JANEIRO
COORDENAÇÃO DE APERFEIÇOAMENTO DO PESSOAL DE ENSINO SUPERIOR
PROGRAMA DE SUPORTE À PÓS-GRADUAÇÃO DE INSTS. DE ENSINO
A dissertação analisa de forma ...crítica parte da literatura de segurança internacional que advoga pela ampliação da agenda do campo, evidenciando as consequências éticas e políticas de se adotar a lógica da securitização em análises sobre questões sociais. Para tanto, são abordadas as contribuições da Escola de Copenhague às análises sobre a política de controle de fronteiras da União Europeia (UE). Este estudo tem como linha condutora as diferentes visões sobre a criação da Frontex, agência que, apesar das acusações de desrespeito aos direitos dos imigrantes, tornou-se a principal produtora de conhecimento acerca dos riscos às fronteiras europeias. Por fim, é abordada a contribuição do campo da Sociologia Política Internacional para os estudos de segurança, especialmente os trabalhos de Didier Bigo e Jef Huysmans. Esta perspectiva realça os principais problemas da ampliação da agenda de segurança e seu impacto no Estado liberal, demonstrando que há uma modificação drástica nas formas de governança, com restrições à liberdade individual em prol de um suposto aumento de proteção. Deste modo, o objeto desta dissertação é tanto a literatura da Escola de Copenhague, compreendendo suas limitações práticas e silêncios políticos, quanto a própria Frontex, cujas operações são evidências empíricas dos argumentos de Bigo e Huysmans.
This dissertation criticizes part of the literature on international security that advocates for the expansion of the agenda of the field, evidencing the ethical and political consequences of adopting the securitisation perspective while analysing social issues. In this sense, the theoretical contributions of the Copenhagen School to the interpretations of the European Union (EU) policy of boarder control are addressed. This work has as its conductive line the different visions on the creation of the Frontex, an agency that, depite being accused of disrespecting the rights of immigrants, became the main producer of knowledge on the risks to European boarders. Finally, the contribution of the International Political Sociology field to security studies is addressed, mainly through the work of Didier Bigo and Jef Huysmans. This perspective highlights the main problems of widening the security agenda and its impact in the Liberal State, demonstrating that there is a drastic change in the forms of governance, with restrictions to individual freedoms on behalf of an alleged increase in protection. Thereby, the object of this dissertation is both the Copenhagen School literature, understanding its practical limitations and political silences, and Frontex itself, whose operations are empirical evidences of Bigos and Hyusmans s arguments.
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