Faustian Bargain Research Articles

Impotence Through Relevance? Faustian Bargains, Beyond Impact and the Future of Political Science

Impotence Through Relevance? Faustian Bargains, Beyond Impact and the Future of Political Science

Has the human biological interaction with SARS-CoV2 variants entered a pliant "Faustian bargain"?

We hypothesize that a "Faustian bargain"-the trading of increased SARS-CoV2 viral infection with a concurrent potential for prevention of life-threatening lower lung infection explains the previous and future morbidity and mortality from COVID-19. Further, this trade-off is made feasible by fundamental principles of thermodynamics and receptor affinity.

Āl-e Ahmad's Faustian Bargain? Antonio Gramsci, the “Progressive Clergy,” and the Search for Hegemony in Late-Pahlavi Iran

This article explores the first translations of the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci into Persian and a more speculative reconstruction of Gramsci's reception during the second half of the 1960s by two prominent Iranian intellectuals and dissidents close to the League of Iranian Socialists. After examining the initial translations by the influential translator and political activist, Manūchehr Hezārkhānī (d. 2022), the author moves to unpack, Jalāl Āl-e Ahmad's (d. 1969) interpretations, reconstruction, and deployment of these fragmentary translations from an already disjointed and curated edition of the Prison Notebooks. Gramsci's analyses of culture, religion and religious institutions, intellectual production, and political mobilization were drawn upon for a variety of purposes. Thus, while some intellectuals, most famously Āl-e Ahmad, hypothesized that the politically engaged clergy's moral and political leadership was essential to the successful mobilization of the masses against imperialism and the overthrow of the US-backed Pahlavi dictatorship, others, including Hezārkhānī, ultimately came to advocate in favor of a popular front and coalition of secular and religious forces in defense of “democratic freedoms” against the threat of clerical domination in the 1979 revolution's aftermath.

:Faustian Bargain: The Soviet-German Partnership and the Origins of the Second World War

:<i>Faustian Bargain: The Soviet-German Partnership and the Origins of the Second World War</i>

The Open Prison of the Big Data Revolution: False Consciousness, Faustian Bargains, and Digital Entrapment

Although some scholars raise alarm about societal harm emerging from Big Data practices, critical social theory (CST) Information Systems research on the structures and dynamics driving Big Data practices is rare. In this research commentary, we interrogate how tech firms use social practices and platform design to strategically manipulate individuals into accepting datafication and data assetization that accrue positive data network effects for themselves and mostly negative data network effects (economic loss, social and privacy harm) for individuals. We draw on the ideas of Heidegger and Marcuse to critically question the Big Data paradigm in order to develop better understanding of the social implications for individuals and society. Using the concepts of false consciousness, digital entrapment, and Faustian bargains, we critically inquire into the Big Data practices that keep us tethered to digital platforms. Specifically, we interrogate sociomaterial structures that socially condition individuals into a digital habitus and to identify themselves as homo digitalis, who view all their “relations” (social and economic) as digital. This social conditioning reproduces a false consciousness that constricts our worldview, undermines our rational choices, and enables the risky compromises we make with tech companies that manipulate and exploit us with their increasingly oppressive Big Data practices and related dark patterns. We critically analyze the case of Microsoft Viva to provide an illustration of how mundane digital tools can condition our reality and entrap us into an open prison. We argue that if we do not critically interrogate our false consciousness of the digital and understand how digital giants colonize our social systems by structurally embedding Big Data practices, we will continue to be susceptible to manipulation and digital entrapment. Ongoing risky compromises with tech firms will erode the very foundations of the “good life,” freedom, liberty, and personal privacy, and they will institutionalize the open prison. The CST explanation we propose and the research agenda we outline are meant to encourage research into solutions to the digital entrapment problem.History: Suprateek Sarker, Senior Editor; Robert Gregory, Associate Editor.Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/isre.2020.0588 .

Technology as a Faustian Bargain: Examination of Marshall McLuhan’s Tetrad with Neil Postman’s 5 Ideas about Technology

Postman, kültür, eğitim, medya ve iletişim üzerine yazmış olduğu kitap-larla teknolojinin bu alanlarda birey ve toplum hayatına nasıl etkiler doğur-duğunu ortaya koymuştur. Dünya tarihini bir teknoloji tarihi olarak gören ve geliştirilen teknikler üzerinden sınıflandıran Postman, aynı zamanda medya ekolojisi kavramını ortaya koymuş ilk kişidir. Bunun dışında teknoloji dönemlerini tanımladığı tenokrasi ve teknopoli kavramları da ona aittir. Postman’ın fikir dünyasında doktora öğrencisiyken tanışmış olduğu McLuhan’ın etkisi çok yüksektir. McLuhan ise 1960’lı yıllarda ortaya koymuş olduğu “the medium is the message”, “küresel köy” ve “hot-cold medya” gibi kavramlarla öne çıkmış ve bir kamusal entelektüele dönüşmüştür. Hocası olan Harold Innis’in dünya tarihini iletişim araçları üzerinden yorumlaması McLuhan’ın medya anlayışının temelini oluşturmuştur. Hem Postman hem de McLuhan teknolojinin kendisi nötr bir araç olarak görmekten ziyade değer yüklü bir çevre unsuru olarak betimlemektedirler. Teknolojinin insan üzerindeki etkisini çeşitli kavramlar ve analizler üzerinden inceleyen bu iki akademisyeni ayıran temel şey ise teknolojinin yaratmış olduğu çıktıları nötr ya da ahlaki olarak okumalarıdır. Bu noktada Postman daha karamsar ve etik olarak teknoloji – insan ilişkisini incelerken, McLuhan sürekli olarak bir dairesel dönüşümü vurgulamaktadır. Hem Postman hem de McLuhan açısından öne çıkan kav-ramlardan bir tanesi de Faustçu pazarlıktır. Yeni bir teknolojinin sunduğu her avantaja karşılık gelen bir dezavantaj vardır şeklinde tanımlanabilecek olan bu tanımlama ismini Johann Wolfgang Goethe’nin Faust isimli kitabındaki şeytanla yapılan pazarlıktan almaktadır. Medya ve İletişim çalışmaları açısından önemli iki figür sayılan Neil Postman ile Marshall McLuhan’ın teknoloji anlayışlarını ele alacağımız bu makalede, teknolojinin birey ve toplum açısından nasıl bir Faustçu pazarlık yarattığı ele alınacaktır. Çevre olarak medyanın incelenmesi olarak bilinen medya ekolojisi geleneği için de önemli olan bu iki ismin teknolojinin insan hayatı ve kültürleri üzerinde etkilerini incelemeye yarayan Neil Postman’ın “5 things” ile Marshall McLuhan’ın Tetrad kuramı üzerinden insan ve teknoloji arasındaki ilişki incelenecektir. Marshall McLuhan’ın ölümünden sonra yayınlanan Laws of Media: The New Science’ta medya yasaları olarak öne sürdüğü Tetrad soruları ile Neil Postman’ın 1998 yılında Teknolojik Değişimler Hakkında Bilmeniz Gereken Beş Şey olarak bir bildiri de ortaya koyduğu beş fikri değerlendirilecektir.

Faustian Bargain: The Soviet–German Partnership and the Origins of the Second World War, by Ian Ona Johnson

Faustian Bargain: The Soviet–German Partnership and the Origins of the Second World War, by Ian Ona Johnson

Book Review: Faustian Bargain: The Soviet-German Partnership and the Origins of the Second World War by Ian Ona Johnson

Book Review: <i>Faustian Bargain: The Soviet-German Partnership and the Origins of the Second World War</i> by Ian Ona Johnson

Are aligners our Faustian bargain?

Are aligners our Faustian bargain?

Aspirin and immunotherapy: a Faustian bargain?

Fibrinogen-like protein 1 (FGL1) has been associated with improved survival in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). However, recent evidence suggests that FGL1 may bind to surface receptors on lymphocytes and induce immune senescence. In this issue of the JCI, Lin and co-authors show that FGL1 may be acetylated by aspirin and targeted for degradation, which is associated with increased antitumor immunity and improved survival. Similar findings were obtained with inhibitors of sirtuin 2 (SIRT2), a histone deacetylase. These findings expand our current understanding of the role of FGL1 in cancer and provide an impetus for the evaluation of alternative immunotherapy combinations in HCC.

Security assistance, securitization, security systems, and insecurity in the Mediterranean mashriq and maghreb

ABSTRACT The Middle East and North Africa, of which the southern and eastern Mediterranean sub-region constitutes the bulk of the population and territory, is the world’s most securitized region. It is also the leading recipient of security assistance but provides the least security of any global region. A related paradox is that this region, the states of which are the world’s least democratic, receives the bulk of its security assistance from democracies. This article draws upon the causes and consequences of these two paradoxes to investigate relationships between securitization, security systems, and insecurity in the Mediterranean and broader MENA region. These paradoxes are products of historical legacies and limited access orders that characterize the region’s political economies. They are key drivers of ‘Faustian Bargains’ between providers and recipients of security assistance and the costs of those relationships. The article concludes with a review of proposals to improve the balance of costs and benefits of SA, recommending a dual strategy of seeking to reform recipients’ civil–military relations while changing military roles and responsibilities of both partners in security assistance relationships.

A Faustian Bargain? Rethinking the Role of Debt in Law Students' Career Choices.

Despite the absence of strong empirical evidence to support the relationship, legal scholars have long argued that a model of financing legal education through student debt makes it difficult, if not impossible, for most students to take seriously a career path in Government and Public Interest law (GPI), where salaries are generally lower than private, corporate practice. Drawing from a multi-wave, panel survey of law students, we take advantage of a unique tuition remission intervention that occurred at the founding of UCI Law, resulting in a natural, quasi-experiment. Using OLS regression and an instrumental variables approach, we ask whether law student debt influences the likelihood that students (1) will launch their careers in the GPI and (2) aspire to the GPI sector five years after graduation. We find little to no evidence that student debt is a barrier to a graduate's decision to take a position in the GPI sector at career launch or that debt is a factor in a graduate's career aspirations at UCI law school during the study period. These counterintuitive findings provoke new questions about our understanding of debt in the context of legal education and the types of interventions that might facilitate greater entry into the public sector.

Nonpolitical Mann? Faustian Bargains and False Romanticism in Colm Tóibín’s The Magician

This essay explores how Colm Toíbín’s biographical novel The Magician, alongside Thomas Mann’s own writings, exposes contradictions in Mann’s definition of “nonpolitical,” the relationship to today’s culture wars, the risks of virtue signaling and cancel culture, and the Faustian bargain of literary fame and external validation versus empathy and real human connection. Building on her study, Derivative Lives: Biofiction, Uncertainty, and Speculative Risk in Contemporary Spanish Narrative, Rademacher argues that what biofiction does especially well is to illuminate powerful spaces of uncertainty. Such gaps of knowledge and “not seeing” are not internalized, apolitical actions, but expose unsettled, contentious questions that continue to act on our lives. Within this framework, it is fear of and retreat from the uncertain that complicates Mann’s thinking and fiction. Toíbín’s novel exposes how Thomas Mann internalized a false Romanticism that rationalized personal and political forms of detachment and disengagement. In turn, the biofiction reveals how individuals become lost when they use imagination not as a means of contesting reality to understand the always incomplete and evolving nature of the human condition, but in order to conceal or evade this inquiry—deepening deceptive fictions.

Faustian bargains: Short-term and long-term contingencies in phylogeny, ontogeny, and sociogeny.

Rachlin's interpretations of self-control depend on the short-term versus the long-term consequences of behavior. Sometimes these effects support each other (typing an abstract produces a written product now and is later read by others). Sometimes they conflict (procrastination now is incompatible with finishing the abstract by deadline). We usually reserve the language of self-control for human cases where long-term consequences are chosen over short-term ones. Rachlin made this distinction salient in ontogeny, but it also applies to selection in phylogeny (Darwinian evolution) and sociogeny (behavior passed from one organism to another). Our account examines relations between short-term and long-term consequences at each level of selection. For example, sexual selection has adaptive, short-term mating consequences but may drive species to extreme specializations that jeopardize long-term survival. In sociogeny, as in the Tragedy of the Commons, group members may get immediate economic benefits from exploiting resources but exhaust those resources over the long term. Whatever the level, when short-term and long-term consequences have opposing effects, adaptive behavior may depend on whether temporally extended contingencies exert more control than more immediate benefits.

The Religious, Scientific, Cultural, and Economic Foundations of America

Historian Lynn White wanted to understand why the Western civilization had exploited nature so much that its own quality of life--even its survival--was now at stake. White concluded that the answer is: the Judeo-Christian tradition.The environmental movement began in the early 1960s, with far-reaching changes in American values and attitudes, that were powering a growing interest in wilderness and its preservation.By destroying pagan animism, Christianity made it possible to exploit nature in a mood of indifference to the feelings of natural objects. Severed from the human community and its ethical protection, nature was fully exposed to human greed.Aristotle’s scientific philosophy of nature—animate and alive—dominated Western thought for two thousand years after his death. But thanks to the Scientific Revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries, the notion of an organic and spiritual universe was replaced by that of the world as a machine, and the word machine became a dominant metaphor of the modern era. It was around 1850, that Western Europe and North America arranged a marriage between science and technology that signified the Baconian creed of power over nature. Its acceptance as a normal pattern of action may mark the greatest event in human history since the invention of agriculture. Perhaps the most profound legacy of the Scientific Revolution is the principle of reductionism that encourages an atomistic and disintegrated view of nature. As a result, we have the Faustian bargain of Hydrogen bombs that pose an existential threat to the universe. Individualism is first on the list of American cultural heritage. Next is the “Bootstrap philosophy.” This phrase has become part of American mythology, and the nation’s attitude toward helping those in society that have been left behind; and we lecture them to lift themselves up by their bootstraps. Next are the negative attitudes toward government that are unjustified. Then there is the free-market crusade that has led to American economic decline. And next, this is their promised Utopia for what ails America: “Privatization, deregulation, downsizing, shrinking entitlements, and lower taxes.”Smith’s explanation of the paradox of the interplay between supply and demand, is an important scientific contribution to society. But, why then did he cross that line, and enter the domain of metaphysics with his proclamation that “consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production”?Yet, he put no limits on consumption and left the door of overconsumption wide open.Smith says that in an unfettered market--propelled by competition among self-interested sellers and buyers--the invisible hand will then allocate goods efficiently.However, one of the best-kept secrets in economics is that there is no case for the “invisible hand.”Finally, Adam Smith ignored the Industrial Revolution? This is because his static theory could not handle innovation.

Storylines of Geoengineering in the Australian Media: An Analysis of Online Coverage 2006–2018

ABSTRACT In the light of inadequate global emissions mitigation, geoengineering – solar radiation management and carbon dioxide removal – is increasingly being positioned and problematized by some researchers, policymakers, and advocates as a partial solution for avoiding catastrophic levels of warming. However, there are concerns that geoengineering may serve as a rhetorical tactic for delaying emissions reduction. As the news media field is an important space in which storylines surrounding geoengineering are created and circulated, the manner in which media actors discuss these topics is an important factor that can legitimate some policy pathways and close off others. In this paper, we analyze patterns in news media coverage of geoengineering in Australia to identify four dominant storylines: “a symptom of systems failure”, “silver buckshot”, “the Faustian bargain”, and “time for plan B”. We consider the implication of these storylines for the role that geoengineering may play in the Australian climate policy regime. We identify a risk geoengineering may be positioned as a rhetorical tactic for delaying emissions reduction. However, we note that the storylines in the public sphere provide a basis for public debate that engages critically with geoengineering, engaging with risks and differentiating solar radiation management from carbon dioxide removal.

Formalizing the fundamental Faustian bargain: Inefficacious decision-makers sacrifice their freedom of choice to coercive leaders for economic security.

Individuals typically prefer the freedom to make their own decisions. Yet, people often trade their own decision control (procedural utility) to gain economic security (outcome utility). Decision science has not reconciled these observations. We examined how decision-makers’ efficacy and security perceptions influence when, why, and how individuals exchange procedural and outcome utility. Undergraduate adults (N = 77; Mage = 19.45 years; 73% female; 62% Caucasian, 13% African American) were recruited from the psychology participant pool at a midwestern U.S. metropolitan university. Participants made financial decisions in easy and hard versions of a paid card task resembling a standard gambling task, with a learning component. During half the trials, they made decisions with a No-Choice Manager who controlled their decisions, versus a Choice Manager who granted decision control. The hard task was designed to be too difficult for most participants, undermining their efficacy and security, and ensuring financial losses. The No-Choice Manager was designed to perform moderately well, ensuring financial gains. Participants felt greater outcome satisfaction (utility) for financial gains earned via Choice, but not losses. Participants (85%) preferred the Choice manager in the easy task but preferred the No-Choice Manager (56%) in the hard task. This change in preference for choice corresponded with self-efficacy and was mediated by perceived security. We used Decision Field Theory to develop potential cognitive models of these decisions. Preferences were best described by a model that assumed decision-makers initially prefer Choice, but update their preference based on loss-dependent attentional focus. When they earned losses (hard task), decision-makers focused more on economic payoffs (financial security), causing them to deemphasize procedural utility. Losses competed for attention, pulling attention toward economic survivability and away from the inherent value of choice. Decision-makers are more likely to sacrifice freedom of choice to leaders they perceive as efficacious to alleviate perceived threats to economic security.

Sustainable Entrepreneurs in Digital Business Ecosystems - Sovereignty vs. Business Model Potential

The digital transformation helps organizations to become more efficient while increasing their outreach and targeting new markets. However, it also makes organizational design more malleable and can blur or even disrupt a firm’s boundaries. Opening the firm to external influences impacts the sovereignty of the business. For sustainable entrepreneurs who develop business models for sustainability (BMfS), this might come as a Faustian bargain, as they might be trading their sovereignty for unlocking business models’ potential. In this in-depth action design research case, we chose a methodological process design to accompany and evaluate the development of BMfS based on digital technologies. To better understand rising tensions, we look not only at the related dynamics within the entrepreneurial firm but also engage a digital business ecosystem perspective. We discuss our findings with a contingency corridor that supports the recognition and reconciliation of digital transformation dynamics affecting the value logics of sustainable entrepreneurs.

Faraday's Dogma

Contemporary scientific research is competitive, costly and coupled to the parallel universe of commerce. A Faustian bargain between scientists and politicians allows the funding to flow. There is another path: to slow down, think and experiment without the pressure of competition and frequent publication. That path will come at a cost: reduced funding for people and equipment. The article compares and contrasts the most creative musical and visual artists with the current scientific model. I suggest that science requires acceptance that true creativity can only come by decoupling from current commercial and political imperatives.

Limitation at the stage of Section 37: A Faustian Bargain

Limitation at the stage of Section 37: A Faustian Bargain