position:professor of sociology

  • African American Photographs Assembled for 1900 Paris Exposition -

    Du Bois Materials - Prints & Photographs Online Catalog (Library of Congress)

    http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/anedub/dubois.html

    Ce lien pointe sur une époustouflante collection d’images, de figures, de photographies qui ont été réunies par #W.E.B_Du_Bois lui même, pour l’exposition "« The American Negro » présenté à Paris en 1900 lors de l’exposition universelle.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Exhibit_of_American_Negroes

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exposition_Universelle_(1900)

    At the turn of the century, W. E. B. Du Bois compiled a series of photographs for the “American Negro” exhibit at the 1900 Paris Exposition. He organized the 363 images into albums, entitled Types of American Negroes, Georgia, U.S.A. and Negro Life in Georgia, U.S.A..

    At the time, Du Bois was a professor of sociology at Atlanta University, committed to combating racism with empirical evidence of the economic, social, and cultural conditions of African Americans. He believed that a clear revelation of the facts of African American life and culture would challenge the claims of biological race scientists influential at the time, which proposed that African Americans were inherently inferior to Anglo-Americans. The photographs of affluent young African American men and women challenged the scientific “evidence” and popular racist caricatures of the day that ridiculed and sought to diminish African American social and economic success. Further, the wide range of hair styles and skin tones represented in the photographs demonstrated that the so-called “Negro type” was in fact a diverse group of distinct individuals. The one public statement Du Bois made concerning these photographs was that visitors to the American Negro exhibit would find "several volumes of photographs of typical Negro faces, which hardly square with conventional American ideas."1

    Du Bois’s work for the American Negro exhibit was extensive and much praised. In the Spring of 1900, Paris Exposition judges awarded him a gold medal for his role as “collaborator” and “compiler” of materials for the exhibit.

    #cartographie #précurseurs #visualisation #cartoexperiment

  • Des universitaires et des artistes israéliens mettent en garde contre une mise en équation de l’antisionisme et de l’antisémitisme
    22 novembre | Ofer Aderet pour Haaretz |Traduction J.Ch. pour l’AURDIP
    https://www.aurdip.org/des-universitaires-et-des-artistes.html

    Une lettre ouverte de 34 éminents Israéliens, dont des chercheurs en histoire juive et des lauréats du Prix Israël, a été publiée mardi dans les média autrichiens appelant à faire une différence entre critique légitime d’Israël, « aussi dure puisse-t-elle être », et antisémitisme.

    Cette lettre a été émise avant un rassemblement international à Vienne sur antisémitisme et antisionisme en Europe.

    L’ événement de cette semaine, « L’Europe par delà l’antisémitisme et l’antisionisme », se tient sous les auspices du Chancelier autrichien Sebastian Kurz. Son homologue israélien, Benjamin Netanyahu, devait y prendre part, mais est resté en Israël pour s’occuper de la crise dans sa coalition gouvernementale.

    « Nous adoptons et soutenons totalement le combat intransigeant [de l’Union Européenne] contre l’antisémitisme. La montée de l’antisémitisme nous inquiète. Comme nous l’a enseigné l’histoire, elle a souvent été l’annonce de désastres ultérieurs pour toute l’humanité », déclare la lettre.

    « Cependant, l’UE défend les droits de l’Homme et doit les protéger avec autant de force qu’elle combat l’antisémitisme. Il ne faudrait pas instrumentaliser ce combat contre l’antisémitisme pour réprimer la critique légitime de l’occupation par Israël et ses graves violations des droits fondamentaux des Palestiniens. » (...)

    #antisionisme #antisémitisme

    • La liste des signataires:
      Moshe Zimmerman, an emeritus professor at Hebrew University and a former director of the university’s Koebner Center for German History; Moshe Zukermann, emeritus professor of history and philosophy of science at Tel Aviv University; Zeev Sternhell, a Hebrew University emeritus professor in political science and a current Haaretz columnist; Israel Prize laureate, sculptor Dani Karavan; Israel Prize laureate, photographer Alex Levac; Israel Prize laureate, artist Michal Naaman; Gadi Algazi, a history professor at Tel Aviv University; Eva Illouz, a professor of Sociology at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and former President of Bezalel Academy of Art and Design; Gideon Freudenthal, a professor in the Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas at Tel Aviv University; Rachel Elior, an Israeli professor of Jewish philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Anat Matar, philosophy professor at Tel Aviv University; Yael Barda, a professor of Sociology at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem; Miki Kratsman, a former chairman of the photography department at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design; Jose Brunner, an emeritus professor at Tel Aviv University and a former director of the Minerva Institute for German History; Alon Confino, a professor of Holocaust Studies at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst; Israel Prize laureate, graphic designer David Tartakover; Arie M. Dubnov, Chair of Israel Studies at George Washington University; David Enoch, history, philosophy and Judaic Studies professor at Israel’s Open University; Amos Goldberg, Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Israel Prize laureate and vice-president of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities David Harel; Hannan Hever, comparative literature and Judaic Studies professor at Yale University; Hannah Kasher, professor emerita in Jewish Thought at Bar-Ilan University; Michael Keren, emeritus professor of economics at Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Israel Prize laureate, Yehoshua Kolodny, professor emeritus in the Institute of Earth Sciences at Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Nitzan Lebovic, professor of Holocaust studies at Lehigh University; Idith Zertal, Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Dmitry Shumsky, professor of Jewish History at Hebrew University; Israel Prize laureate David Shulman, professor emeritus of Asian studies at Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Ishay Rosen-Zvi, Jewish philosophy professor at Tel Aviv University; Dalia Ofer, professor emerita in Jewry and Holocaust Studies at Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Paul Mendes-Flohr, professor emeritus for Jewish thoughts at the Hebrew University; Jacob Metzer, former president of Israel’s Open University; and Israel Prize laureate Yehuda Judd Ne’eman, professor emeritus at Tel Aviv University arts faculty

      #Palestine

  • Israeli academics and artists warn against equating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism
    Their open letter ahead of a conference in Vienna advises against giving Israel immunity for ‘grave and widespread violations of human rights and international law’

    Ofer Aderet
    Nov 20, 2018

    https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-israeli-professors-warn-against-equating-anti-zionism-with-anti-se

    An open letter from 35 prominent Israelis, including Jewish-history scholars and Israel Prize laureates, was published Tuesday in the Austrian media calling for a distinction between legitimate criticism of Israel, “harsh as it may be,” and anti-Semitism.
    To really understand Israel and the Middle East - subscribe to Haaretz
    The letter was released before an international gathering in Vienna on anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism in Europe.
    The event this week, “Europe beyond anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism: Securing Jewish life in Europe,” is being held under the auspices of Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz. His Israeli counterpart, Benjamin Netanyahu, had been due to take part but stayed in Israel to deal with the crisis in his coalition government. 
    “We fully embrace and support the [European Union’s] uncompromising fight against anti-Semitism. The rise of anti-Semitism worries us. As we know from history, it has often signaled future disasters to all mankind,” the letter states. 
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    “However, the EU also stands for human rights and has to protect them as forcefully as it fights anti-Semitism. This fight against anti-Semitism should not be instrumentalized to suppress legitimate criticism of Israel’s occupation and severe violations of Palestinian human rights.” 

    The signatories accuse Netanyahu of suggesting an equivalence between anti-Israel criticism and anti-Semitism. The official declaration by the conference also notes that anti-Semitism is often expressed through disproportionate criticism of Israel, but the letter warns that such an approach could “afford Israel immunity against criticism for grave and widespread violations of human rights and international law.”
    The signatories object to the declaration’s alleged “identifying” of anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism. “Zionism, like all other modern Jewish movements in the 20th century, was harshly opposed by many Jews, as well as by non-Jews who were not anti-Semitic,” they write. “Many victims of the Holocaust opposed Zionism. On the other hand, many anti-Semites supported Zionism. It is nonsensical and inappropriate to identify anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism.”
    Among the signatories are Moshe Zimmerman, an emeritus professor at Hebrew University and a former director of the university’s Koebner Center for German History; Zeev Sternhell, a Hebrew University emeritus professor in political science and a current Haaretz columnist; sculptor Dani Karavan; Miki Kratsman, a former chairman of the photography department at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design; Jose Brunner, an emeritus professor at Tel Aviv University and a former director of the Minerva Institute for German History; Alon Confino, a professor of Holocaust Studies at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst; and graphic designer David Tartakover.

    Ofer Aderet
    Haaretz Correspondent

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    • La liste des signataires:
      Moshe Zimmerman, an emeritus professor at Hebrew University and a former director of the university’s Koebner Center for German History; Moshe Zukermann, emeritus professor of history and philosophy of science at Tel Aviv University; Zeev Sternhell, a Hebrew University emeritus professor in political science and a current Haaretz columnist; Israel Prize laureate, sculptor Dani Karavan; Israel Prize laureate, photographer Alex Levac; Israel Prize laureate, artist Michal Naaman; Gadi Algazi, a history professor at Tel Aviv University; Eva Illouz, a professor of Sociology at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and former President of Bezalel Academy of Art and Design; Gideon Freudenthal, a professor in the Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas at Tel Aviv University; Rachel Elior, an Israeli professor of Jewish philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Anat Matar, philosophy professor at Tel Aviv University; Yael Barda, a professor of Sociology at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem; Miki Kratsman, a former chairman of the photography department at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design; Jose Brunner, an emeritus professor at Tel Aviv University and a former director of the Minerva Institute for German History; Alon Confino, a professor of Holocaust Studies at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst; Israel Prize laureate, graphic designer David Tartakover; Arie M. Dubnov, Chair of Israel Studies at George Washington University; David Enoch, history, philosophy and Judaic Studies professor at Israel’s Open University; Amos Goldberg, Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Israel Prize laureate and vice-president of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities David Harel; Hannan Hever, comparative literature and Judaic Studies professor at Yale University; Hannah Kasher, professor emerita in Jewish Thought at Bar-Ilan University; Michael Keren, emeritus professor of economics at Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Israel Prize laureate, Yehoshua Kolodny, professor emeritus in the Institute of Earth Sciences at Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Nitzan Lebovic, professor of Holocaust studies at Lehigh University; Idith Zertal, Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Dmitry Shumsky, professor of Jewish History at Hebrew University; Israel Prize laureate David Shulman, professor emeritus of Asian studies at Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Ishay Rosen-Zvi, Jewish philosophy professor at Tel Aviv University; Dalia Ofer, professor emerita in Jewry and Holocaust Studies at Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Paul Mendes-Flohr, professor emeritus for Jewish thoughts at the Hebrew University; Jacob Metzer, former president of Israel’s Open University; and Israel Prize laureate Yehuda Judd Ne’eman, professor emeritus at Tel Aviv University arts faculty

  • Connecting Cambridge Analytica, Mercers, Steve Bannon, Nigel Farage, Donald Trump And Russia – Gronda Morin
    https://grondamorin.com/2017/07/24/connecting-cambridge-analytica-mercers-steve-bannon-nigel-farage-donald

    On May 20, 2017/ last updated on June 14, 2017 Carole Cadwalladr of the Guardian (The Observer) penned the following exposé, “The great British Brexit robbery: how our democracy was hijacked.”

    Excerpts:

    “This is not just a story about social psychology and data analytics. It has to be understood in terms of a military contractor using military strategies on a civilian population. Us. David Miller, a professor of sociology at Bath University and an authority in psyops and propaganda, says it is “an extraordinary scandal that this should be anywhere near a democracy. It should be clear to voters where information is coming from, and if it’s not transparent or open where it’s coming from, it raises the question of whether we are actually living in a democracy or not.”

    “Paul and David, another ex-Cambridge Analytica employee, were working at the firm when it introduced mass data-harvesting to its psychological warfare techniques. “It brought psychology, propaganda and technology together in this powerful new way,” David tells me.”

    #boycott_facebook versus #deletefacebook

    July 24, 2017

  • Ingenious : Dalton Conley - Issue 48 : Chaos
    http://nautil.us/issue/48/chaos/ingenious-dalton-conley

    When Dalton Conley, a professor of sociology at Princeton University, talks about race, his authority is based on more than academic research. Every day he straddled the lines of race in the New York City housing project where he grew up in 1970s, a white kid, son of bohemian artists. The apartment complex, Masaryk Towers, then and now stands in a largely Puerto Rican and African-American neighborhood on the Lower East Side. As Conley explained when he stopped by the Nautilus office last week for an interview, his childhood was like a social science experiment. “Even when you flip the script and you are the minority, you see the stark advantages of whiteness and the divisions of social and cultural capital,” he said. Traversing the flagrantly unequal means of living in Manhattan shaped (...)

  • Toxic News – Environment, Health, Justice…
    https://toxicnews.org

    Flatlining: Exploring hidden toxic landscapes and the embodiment of contamination at Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge, USA.

    Stephanie Malin, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Colorado State University and Becky Alexis-Martin, Senior Research Fellow in Human Geography at The University of Southampton Within the boundaries of the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge, black bears prowl, elk tussle, prairie dogs burrow and porcupines forage. A diverse array of wildlife, wedged between the cities of Boulder …

    #environnement #pollution #produits_toxiques #cologie #empreinte_écologique

  • Geographies of Extraction: How Global Trade Has Impacted Urban Inequality - Architizer
    http://architizer.com/blog/saskia-sassen-geographies-of-extraction

    “Right now, the dominant geographies are geographies of extraction; they’re geographies of power,” says Saskia Sassen in an interview with Ibai Rigby of urbanNext at the “Decoding Asian Urbanism” conference at Harvard University. Sassen, a professor of sociology at Columbia University and a member of its Committee on Global Thought, sees the development of new global geographies whose boundaries are dictated not by physical borders, but rather by financial markets.

    via @cdb_77 :) #extraction #épuisement #destruction

  • How #Disney and #Pixar mislead your kids
    http://finance.yahoo.com/news/how-disney-and-pixar-are-misleading-your-kids-190252975.html

    It’s cool to be poor.

    That’s the implied message in some of the most popular children’s movies of all time, including classics such as “Snow White” and modern hits such as “Aladdin,” "A Bug’s Life" and “Ratatouille,” according to a new study from Duke University researchers. The study examined the socioeconomic status of characters in 32 G-rated films and found a kind of Lake Woebegone effect: The wealthy were overrepresented, poverty was glamorized and upward mobility seemed effortless.

    #Enfants

    http://sites.duke.edu/dukeresearch/2016/03/07/in-the-land-of-fantasy-inequality-is-benign

  • More people in #Europe are dying than are being born
    http://phys.org/news/2016-01-people-europe-dying-born.html

    Texas A&M Professor of Sociology Dudley Poston, along with Professor Kenneth Johnson, University of New Hampshire, and Professor Layton Field, Mount St. Mary’s University, published their findings in Population and Development Review this month.

    The researchers find that 17 European nations have more people dying in them than are being born (natural decrease), including three of Europe’s more populous nations: Russia, Germany and Italy. In contrast, in the U.S. and in the state of Texas, births exceed deaths by a substantial margin.

    #démographie

  • Media : Is the US ignoring military burn pits’ harm to Middle East civilians ?
    http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org/ehs/news/2015/oct/media-is-the-us-ignoring-military-burn-pits2019-harm-to-mid

    « The US » : comprendre les politiques ET les médias ET les scientifiques,

    The U.S. media has failed to expose the civilian toll of recent wars by largely ignoring burn pits’ toxic effects on local people, a U.S. researcher argues in a new report, suggesting the burn pits are this generation’s Agent Orange.

    The coverage gap helps legitimize war and overlooks the undeniable humanitarian impacts, said Eric Bonds, an assistant professor of sociology and researcher at the University of Mary Washington.

    During the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, things such as plastics, Styrofoam, electronics and unexploded weapons were burned in large pits, sending toxics into the air and people’s lungs. Bonds surveyed major U.S. newspapers from 2007 to 2014, and found that of 49 stories that mentioned wartime burn pits, only one mentioned civilian impacts on par with that of soldiers.

    This “silence and selective attention” of the U.S. media extends to the U.S. government and researchers who are well aware of what toxics in the air might do to local citizens, said Mozhgan Savabieasfahani, an independent environmental toxicologist who studies the environmental toll of recent Middle East conflicts.

    “This makes me, as a public health researcher, feel extremely uneasy,” said Savabieasfahani, who won the 2015 Rachel Carson prize for her research in the Middle East.

    In comparing the open pit burning to Agent Orange used during Vietnam, Bonds points out the U.S. government has performed some small scale cleanup of Agent Orange-contaminated areas, but has never made amends with the Vietnamese who were most affected and said the burn pits are on the same track.

    “Even as the U.S. government establishes a ‘burn pit registry’ to study the impacts of toxic pollution on soldiers, it is on course to leave Iraqi and Afghan victims exposed to burning-trash fumes unacknowledged and uncompensated,” Bonds wrote in his study published this month in the journal Environmental Politics.

    #criminels #Etats-Unis #fosses_de_brulage #santé #civils #victimes_civiles #moyen-orient #impunité #leadership

  • Anti-BDS academics urge ’personal’ sanctions against ’annexationist’ Zionist professors, including renowned political theorist Michael Walzer, say U.S. and EU should restrict visas and freeze assets of Bennett and three others who entrench the occupation.
    By Debra Nussbaum Cohen | Dec. 11, 2014 | Haaretz
    http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/jewish-world-news/.premium-1.631336

    NEW YORK –A nascent group of well-known academics is calling on the U.S. government and European Union to impose personal sanctions on four prominent Israelis “who lead efforts to insure permanent Israeli occupation of the West Bank and to annex all or parts of it unilaterally in violation of international law.”

    Scholars for Israel and Palestine (SIP) a group that describes itself as “pro-Israel, pro-Palestine, pro-peace” is asking the U.S. and EU governments to impose visa restrictions and to freeze the foreign assets of Economy Minister and Habayit Hayehudi leader Naftali Bennett, Housing Minister Uri Ariel, Likud MK Moshe Feiglin and Ze’ev “Zambish” Hever, a former Jewish Underground member who heads the Amana organization, which oversees the settlement enterprise, including illegal outposts.

    “We chose four Israeli leaders and public figures to start with because they stand out by working to make the occupation permanent and irreversible,” said Gershon Shafir, a professor of sociology at University of California San Diego, who came up with the concept.

    These four “were particularly dismissive of Secretary of State Kerry’s peace-making efforts, and explicitly call for and work towards the formal annexation of the West Bank or part of it, and thereby push Israel in the direction of violating international law. They are the ones who cross particularly sharp red lines,” Shafir said in an interview initially conducted by email. The approach is being invoked for the first time in the context of the Israel-Palestine conflict, he said later by telephone.

    The call’s 20 signatories include several well-known academics from UCLA to Boston College and Columbia University, including renowned political theorist Michael Walzer, professor emeritus of social science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J. All the signatories to SIP’s call are Zionists, Walzer said in an interview, and are deeply opposed to academic boycotts.

    The signatories are all members of a group called The Third Narrative established in 2013 by the Labor Zionist group Ameinu as a Zionist-progressive response to far left attacks on Israel – including BDS. One who signed the new call for personal sanctions, Columbia University sociologist Todd Gitlin, published an article last month asserting that broad anti-Israel BDS is a “legal and moral disaster.”

    The new SIP call, which is titled “Israel: A Time for Personal Sanctions,” was also published on the Third Narrative website, though it was not endorsed by the group as a whole.

    Its backers say that it is completely distinct from the BDS resolutions being fought on campuses nationwide, which would effectively ostracize all Israeli academics. This, in contrast, targets some of the individuals most personally responsible for expanding the occupation. It is similar to the approach adopted by President Obama earlier this year when he signed an executive order freezing the assets of seven top Russian officials for their involvement in the annexation of Crimea, they claim.

    “All of us are very engaged in opposing the academic boycott and other boycotts,” said Walzer in an interview. He is author of numerous books, including “In God’s Shadow: Politics in the Hebrew Bible,” (Yale University Press) and last year retired as co-editor of Dissent magazine. “But at the same time we always insist we are against the occupation. This seemed to be a usefully dramatic way of focusing attention on where it should be focused and not where some of the BDS people are trying to put it,” Walzer said.

    In their petition, the academics detail their reasons for choosing the four targeted individuals. Bennett is cited for “leading the struggle” against the 2010 settlement freeze during his tenure as director of the Yesha settlements council, for advocating the annexation of Area C, which constitutes 62% of the West Bank, and for “pressing strongly for a policy of creeping annexation” as a cabinet minister. Ariel is blasted for issuing housing tenders across the Green Line and thus undermining Secretary of State John Kerry’s peace efforts and for calling for the establishment of a Third Temple on the Temple Mount. Feiglin is targeted for his “straightforward and undisguised extremism” and anti-Arab statements, while Hever “has been one of the most persistent and influential organizers of settlement construction.”

    Gitlin, a professor of journalism and sociology and longtime participant in protest movements, said that he signed on because “I felt it was time to move the conversation to a different plane.” He first supported a boycott of apartheid South Africa in 1965, he recalled in an interview with Haaretz.

    “The call to condemn right-wing governments is insufficient to get their attention,” he said. “We are holding Israeli figures whose declarations are inimical to a just and peaceful settlement to account,” Gitlin said. “They undermine American policy and security in the Middle East. We think it’s a matter of American policy to say we do not consider these people to be friends of America, but adversaries.”

    Eric Alterman, Distinguished Professor of English at Brooklyn College, is a Third Narrative member who elected not to sign onto the new call for personal sanctions. “I don’t believe in politics that are purely symbolic,” he told Haaretz. “Some people do, and that’s fine. But I only believe in politics when I can see how what I’m supporting might actually happen.”

    Indeed many of The Third Narrative’s Academic Advisory Council’s members did not sign on to the new personal sanctions effort, though Shafir, Gitlin and other signatories to the new call are members of that body as well.

    “This proposal would take us down a route of increasing hostility that can only further isolate Israel from the world community and undermine efforts to build the cooperation necessary to a negotiated settlement,” said Cary Nelson, Jubilee Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “While I support condemning the views these politicians hold, I cannot support sanctioning them for exercising their free speech rights,” he wrote by email from Israel, which he is visiting.

    The SIP’s call for personal sanctions very specifically opposes wide boycott efforts and its backers are not worried about being lumped together with the BDS proponents who are widely regarded as working toward Israel’s destruction.

    It is “utterly different than anathematizing an entire category of persons like the academic boycott efforts,” Gitlin said. “In this case there is a proper target, people whose activity is toxic and we think they need to be named.”

    “This would provide a way of mobilizing votes against blanket boycotts but equally against the attempts to make the occupation irreversible,” Shafir said. “It would allow us to find a place in the middle and remain distinguished from but remain part of the ongoing dialogue in a productive way that is protective of Israel’s ties with the U.S., the world and liberal intellectuals.”

    “We really are fighting on two fronts,” said Shafir, who was born in Ramat Aviv and began his career at Tel Aviv University, before moving to California in 1987. “That is our identity.”

    Other signatories to the petition include Jeff Weintraub, a political theorist who has taught at the University of Pennsylvania and Israel’s Haifa University; Sam Fleischacker, a philosophy professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago; Alan Wolfe of Boston College; Alan Weisbard of the University of Wisconsin; Rebecca Lesses from Ithaca College; Joe Lockard from Arizona State University; Zachary Braiterman from Syracuse University; Irene Tucker from the University of California, Irvine; Michael Kazin, coeditor of Dissent and professor of history at Georgetown University; Steven Zipperstein from Stanford University; Jeffry Mallow of Loyola University; Rachel Brenner of the University of Wisconsin; Chaim Seidler-Feller of UCLA; Jonathan Malino of Guilford College; Miriam Kastner of UC at San Diego; Barbara Risman from the University of Illinois and Ernst Benjamin, an independent scholar.

  • How One Woman Hid Her Pregnancy From Big Data
    http://mashable.com/2014/04/26/big-data-pregnancy

    For the past nine months, Janet Vertesi, assistant professor of sociology at Princeton University, tried to hide from the Internet the fact that she’s pregnant — and it wasn’t easy.

    Vertesi said that by dodging advertising and traditional forms of consumerism, her activity raised a lot of red flags. When her husband tried to buy $500 worth of Amazon gift cards with cash in order to get a stroller, a notice at the Rite Aid counter said the company had a legal obligation to report excessive transactions to the authorities.

    #bigdata #sociologie #surveillance #état_policier

    • Vertesi said we need to be more aware of the information we give our servers voluntarily, and wondered if a time will ever come when we can opt out of giving personal information to the Internet.

      Winter Mason, fellow panelist and data scientist at Facebook, said that he doesn’t think that’s possible anymore.

      En Europe nous ne somme pas encore arrivés au même point, le combat n’est pas encore perdu, mais il sera rude ...

      http://www.heise.de/tp/news/Gerichtsvollzieher-treibt-Forderung-in-Schufa-Zentrale-ein-2108660.html

      Gerichtsvollzieher treibt Forderung in Schufa-Zentrale ein
      Peter Mühlbauer 04.02.2014
      Ein 69-jähriger Friedrichsfehner zeigt, dass sich Klagen gegen die Kreditauskunft lohnen können

      Am 28. Januar entschied der Bundesgerichtshof, dass die Kreditauskunft Schufa das genaue Zustandekommen der „Scores“, mit denen Banken und andere Unternehmen die Kreditwürdigkeit von Verbrauchern beurteilen, nach § des 34 Bundesdatenschutzgesetzes auch dann nicht offenlegen muss, wenn es zu einer offensichtlichen Fehleinschätzung kam. Dieses Urteil heißt jedoch nicht, dass sich eine Klage gegen die Schufa nicht lohnen würde, wie der Fall des Friedrichsfehner Kaufmanns Rolf Bartels zeigt.

      Der 69-Jährige hatte vor zwei Jahren beim Kauf einer Wohnung zufällig festgestellt, dass die Schufa Banken und Telekommunikationsdienstleistern die falsche Auskunft erteilte, er sei mit einem Bonitätswert von 36 Prozent nicht sehr kreditwürdig. Auf Anfrage erfuhr Bartels, dass dies an Insolvenzen lag, mit denen er gar nichts zu tun hatte. Er ging deshalb von einer Namensverwechslung aus, was sich als zutreffend herausstellte. Damit die Kreditauskunft das zur Kenntnis nahm, beauftragte er den Oldenburger Rechtsanwalt Heinrich Enneking, der erreichte, dass die Auskunftei ihren Eintrag abänderte und alle Personen und Unternehmen, die Bartels Kreditwürdigkeit abgefragt hatten, über die Richtigstellung informierte.

      Allerdings wollte die Schufa Bartels das Rechtsanwaltshonorar nicht erstatten. Deshalb musste der Kaufmann vor die Amtsgerichte Westerstede und Wiesbaden ziehen und die 718,40 Euro über einen Gerichtsvollzieher in der Unternehmenszentrale eintreiben lassen.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schufa
      #schufa