Pre-existing Logics Research Articles

“A Name Which to Them is Sacred”: Quakers and Religious Trademarks in American Enterprise

Abstract This article examines disputes surrounding the ownership and appropriation of the name “Quaker” in American enterprise in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. I focus specifically on efforts by the Society of Friends – colloquially known as the Quakers – to prohibit the use of the name of any religious church, denomination, society, or association in commerce, thereby rendering religious trademarks unregistrable. By exploring disputes around the Quaker name, I argue that the Society of Friends strategically appropriated terminology provided by trademark law (product origin, goodwill, distinctiveness) to claim ownership in the Quaker name while simultaneously arguing that religious names were sacred and thus could not be owned as a form of intellectual property. This historical debate provides insights to crucial questions about the spectral operation of trademark law in the United States. For instance, how are the taxonomies and logics of trademark law ‘possessed’ or spectrally animated by other pre-existing cultural/theological dimensions of ownership? Conversely, how does trademark law then reconstitute pre-existing logics around naming within religious organizations, for instance by providing new frames (the name as defense for consumer confusion or as guarantor of divine source) for understanding American religious practice?

From hegemony-reinforcing to hegemony-transcending transformations: horizons of possibility and strategies of escape

In the face of ever escalating global socioecological crises, the necessity of radical systemic transformations has gained increasing political and academic traction over the last decade, among others in the context of ‘green’ and bio-based economies. We draw on the works of political philosophers Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe and Judith Butler to develop a typology of transformational dynamics. In this typology, the word transformation implies political agendas, processes and outcomes that involve the total structural reordering of a social field, which we juxtapose with ‘inclusion’, which implies cases in which pre-existing logics are further entrenched or extended. Drawing on the theoretical framework of hegemony, inclusions and transformations, we develop an analytical lens that focuses on the relations between hegemony and transformative dynamics. This analytical lens is developed and exemplified by discussing the transformative potentials of multiple socioecological and political agendas, including those associated with eco-modernism, Marxism, decoloniality, eco-feminism, degrowth and eco-anarchism. Depending on the transformative dynamics in relation to hegemony and the dominant political logics, we distinguish between hegemony-reinforcing, hegemony-replacing, and hegemony-transcending transformations. The provided lens and the typologies of transformations should be useful to those seeking to conceptualize, differentiate, analyse, and tactically strategize the realization of an array of socio-ecological agendas.

Nietzsche's Last Will

Nietzsche's Last Will

Control, Extract, Legitimate: COVID-19 and Digital Techno-opportunism across Africa.

ABSTRACTAcross Africa, the deployment of digital solutions such as track and trace apps and vaccine passports to tackle COVID‐19 largely failed in their public health objectives. Yet, in the process, these material interventions revealed and unleashed new potentialities of governance throughout the continent. This article examines these developments and their significance through historical and theoretical lenses. Since colonialism, African states have been built partially through responses to public health emergencies. Such emergencies have enabled authorities to experiment with and enact logics of control, extraction and legitimation. By interrogating the relationship between epidemics, power and technological artefacts, this article argues that COVID‐19 constituted an exceptional event that both unmasked pre‐existing logics of governance but also enabled experiments with novel techniques through digital technology. Digital techno‐opportunist interventions did little to curb the spread of COVID‐19, but such interventions nevertheless have ramifications and implications that extend beyond this moment. While the political outcomes of the rupture caused by COVID‐19 are not yet fully known, and are subject to resistance and reimagination from below, the political opportunity of ‘crisis’ reveals distinctly new ways in which states and corporations are combining to pursue logics of control, extraction and legitimation across Africa in a digital age.

Qualifying Violence: Visible Data, Invisible Lives in Recife, Brazil

AbstractThis article brings attention to the rise of digital computing in policing in Brazil, where new technologies have been integrated into the criminal justice apparatus to surveil, manage, and police criminalized communities. I examine a reformist public policy called the Pacto pela Vida (Pact for Life) in Recife and foreground the process of collecting and interpreting data at crime scenes as a means by which to analyze how criminality is understood and conceptualized. Drawing on extensive ethnographic research, I explore how data collected by the police link racial identifiers, places, and different types of offenses. Hence, I argue that the Pacto governmentality infers a preexisting logic of power and control over the Black poor using new technologies and policing models mainly imported from the United States. When police collect data at crime scenes and categorize it according to provided standards, the sociocultural context in which events occur become invisible.

Design of a power-efficient Kogge–Stone adder by exploring new OR gate in 45nm CMOS process

PurposeThe purpose of this work is to reduce the power consumption of KSA and to improve the PDP for data path applications. In digital Very Large – Scale Integration systems, the addition of two numbers is one of the essential functions. This arithmetic function is used in the modern digital signal processors and microprocessors. The operating speed of these processors depends on the computation of the arithmetic function. The speed computation block for most of the datapath elements was adders. In this paper, the Kogge–Stone adder (KSA) is designed using XOR, AND and proposed OR gates. The proposed OR gate has less power consumption due to the less number of transistors. In arithmetic logic circuit power, delay and power delay products (PDP) are considered as the important parameters. The delays reported for the proposed OR gate are less when compared with the conventional Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) OR gate and pre-existing logic styles. The proposed circuits are optimized in terms of power, delay and PDP. To analyze the performance of KSA, extensive Cadence Virtuoso simulations are used. From the simulation results based on 45 nm CMOS process, it was observed that the proposed design has obtained 688.3 nW of power consumption, 0.81 ns of delay and 0.55 fJ of PDP at 1.1 V.Design/methodology/approachIn this paper, a new circuit for OR gate is proposed. The KSA is designed using XOR, AND and proposed OR gates.FindingsThe proposed OR gate has less power consumption due to the less number of transistors. The delays reported for the proposed OR gate are less when compared with the conventional CMOS OR gate and pre-existing logic styles. The proposed circuits are optimized in terms of power, delay and PDP.Originality/valueIn arithmetic logic circuit power, delay and PDP are considered as the important parameters. In this paper, a new circuit for OR gate is proposed. The power consumption of the designed KSA using the proposed OR gate is very less when compared with the conventional KSA. Simulation results show that the performance of the proposed KSA are improved and suitable for high speed applications.

Immigrants facing Covid 19 containment in France : An ordinary hardship of disaffiliation

In order to limit the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, the majority of governments have introduced population containment. Certain population groups, including immigrants in precarious situations, are experiencing the impact of this measure in a brutal manner. This article is based on accounts of containment experiences collected by telephone within the framework of a pre-existing intervention research carried out among immigrants to France from Sub-Saharan Africa who are in a precarious situation. It highlights certain social effects of containment and the logics at work in the precarious situations. This research shows how this a priori unprecedented situation affects individual capacities to act and generates a ‘disaffiliation process’ causing individuals to shift towards ‘social non-existence’, repeating lived experiences and exacerbating pre-existing logics. The ordeal of containment proves to be an ordinary experience for these individuals.

A comprehensive security approach: bolstering Finnish cybersecurity capacity

ABSTRACTFinland, at the easternmost border of the European Union (EU), has set itself apart as a global leader in cybersecurity technology. Yet, despite Finland’s relative technological strength in this space, the government has actively intervened in the market in order to bolster cybersecurity capacity and competency. Why? There is an important distinction between the presence of technological expertise and a strategy for the security of society writ large, the latter of which necessitates resilient critical infrastructure and services within a country. To this end, the government has utilised a pre-existing logic for market intervention: Finland’s geopolitical position and its corresponding defence doctrine’s emphasis on defence of society by maintaining society-wide resilience in the event of a crisis. In comprehensive security (kokonaisturvallisuus), which includes cybersecurity, the responsibility for and the safeguarding of the vital functions of society are jointly held by private and public actors, industry and government, defence forces and citizens. Notably, given this focus on industry and civil society’s role within the provision of security, Finland’s approach provides an institutional foundation that is well suited to the realities of addressing cybersecurity at the national level.

Initial Urbanization and the Emergence of the State in Hierakonpolis (Nile Valley) and Monte Albán (Oaxaca Valley)

One of the main foci of comparative research on ancient societies deals with urban dynamics. Within this context, an interesting issue is the relationship between the processes of initial urbanization—i.e., the creation of the first cities—and the transformations that led to the emergence of state dynamics. Here, we will consider two historical situations in which both processes—urbanization and state origin—were, in broad terms, concomitant: Hierakonpolis, in the Nile Valley, towards the mid-4th millennium BC, and Monte Alban in the Valley of Oaxaca, in the second half of the 1st Millennium BC. We will address, first, the available evidence for both historical situations, which will be organized into four major areas—related to demographic dynamics, forms of functional specialization, social differentiation, and conflict—allowing us to see the main innovations that characterize these processes. And second, we will propose a reconsideration of the information that relates to a specific problem: the relationship between the concentration of population in urban contexts and the processes of social hierarchization that took place within urban centers as well as between these centers and the surrounding villages. In this sense, beyond the multiple differences between the states that, in the long run, would be consolidated in the Nile Valley and in the Oaxaca Valley, the beginnings of the urbanization processes that occurred in both regions have a common characteristic, which is fundamental for further transformations: the creation of a social context whose practices exceeded the limits related to the pre-existing logic of social organization.

Producing the NAPLAN Machine: A Schizoanalytic Cartography

Everything revolves around desiring-machines and the production of desire… Schizoanalysis merely asks what are the machinic, social and technical indices on a socius that open to desiring-machines (Deleuze & Guattari, 1983, pp. 380-381). Achievement tests like NAPLAN are fairly recent, yet common, education policy initiatives in much of the Western world. They intersect with, use and change pre-existing logics of education, teaching and learning. There has been much written about the form and function of these tests, the ‘stakes’ involved and the effects of their practice. This paper adopts a different “angle of vision” to ask what ‘opens’ education to these regimes of testing(Roy, 2008)? This paper builds on previous analyses of NAPLAN as a modulating machine, or a machine characterised by the increased intensity of connections and couplings. One affect can be “an existential disquiet” as “disciplinary subjects attempt to force coherence onto a disintegrating narrative of self”(Thompson & Cook, 2012, p. 576). Desire operates at all levels of the education assemblage, however our argument is that achievement testing manifests desire as ‘lack’; seen in the desire for improved results, the desire for increased control, the desire for freedom, the desire for acceptance to name a few. For Deleuze and Guattari desire is irreducible to lack, instead desire is productive. As a productive assemblage, education machines operationalise and produce through desire; “Desire is a machine, and the object of the desire is another machine connected to it”(Deleuze & Guattari, 1983, p. 26). This intersection is complexified by the strata at which they occur, the molar and molecular connections and flows they make possible. Our argument is that when attention is paid to the macro and micro connections, the machines built and disassembled as a result of high-stakes testing, a map is constructed that outlines possibilities, desires and blockages within the education assemblage. This schizoanalytic cartography suggests a new analysis of these ‘axioms’ of testing and accountability. It follows the flows and disruptions made possible as different or altered connections are made and as new machines are brought online. Thinking of education machinically requires recognising that “every machine functions as a break in the flow in relation to the machine to which it is connected, but at the same time is also a flow itself, or the production of flow, in relation to the machine connected to it”(Deleuze & Guattari, 1983, p. 37). Through its potential to map desire, desire-production and the production of desire within those assemblages that have come to dominate our understanding of what is possible, Deleuze and Guattari’s method of schizoanalysis provides a provocative lens for grappling with the question of what one can do, and what lines of flight are possible.

Refashioning a Field? Connected Consumers and Institutional Dynamics in Markets

Abstract We investigate the participation of engaged consumers in the fashion market through the lens of institutional theory. We develop theoretical insights on the unintended market-level changes that ensue when consumers who are avidly interested in a field connect to share ideas with one another. We find that consumers take on some of the institutional work previously done primarily by paid actors and introduce new forms of institutional work supportive of the field. We show that engaged consumers can precipitate the formation of new categories of actors in the field and the contestation of boundaries between established and emergent actor categories. Further, we propose that new consumer-focused institutional logics gain momentum, even while consumers support and promote preexisting logics through their practices. We compare cases where discontented market actors have brought about market changes with our investigation of one where contented consumers unintentionally precipitated market-level dynamics, and we show that the accumulation of consumers’ micro-level practices can have pervasive and profound impacts.

SBROME: A Scalable Optimization and Module Matching Framework for Automated Biosystems Design

The development of a scalable framework for biodesign automation is a formidable challenge given the expected increase in part availability and the ever-growing complexity of synthetic circuits. To allow for (a) the use of previously constructed and characterized circuits or modules and (b) the implementation of designs that can scale up to hundreds of nodes, we here propose a divide-and-conquer Synthetic Biology Reusable Optimization Methodology (SBROME). An abstract user-defined circuit is first transformed and matched against a module database that incorporates circuits that have previously been experimentally characterized. Then the resulting circuit is decomposed to subcircuits that are populated with the set of parts that best approximate the desired function. Finally, all subcircuits are subsequently characterized and deposited back to the module database for future reuse. We successfully applied SBROME toward two alternative designs of a modular 3-input multiplexer that utilize pre-existing logic gates and characterized biological parts.

Hybrid Logics: An Oxymoron? The Case of Variation of a Minor and Major Logic.

The literature on logics takes for granted that in a same organization, hybriditization or combination is the result of several independent logics. Moreover, it shows that those independent logics are only focused on one unique institutional field. In this paper, we attempt to show that a given independent logic encompasses already in its roots, a pre-existing logic or a minor logic, which may or may not be expressed. From an inductive in-depth case study in a social integration enterprise (SIE) in France, which combines both a social welfare and a commercial logic, we show through a practice lens how hybridization of social welfare and commercial logics will impact practice variation of recruitment. We found that in same hybrid logic, when social welfare logic is higher, the SIE tends to recruit people with more extensive social problems, whereas when commercial logic increases, good physical and mental conditions are more accepted despite societal troubles.

The organizational dynamics of Enterprise Risk Management

This paper explores the organizational dynamics of Enterprise Risk Management (ERM). ERM is the main form taken by firms’ increasing efforts to organize uncertainty, which ‘exploded’ in the 1990s. The ERM approach seeks to link risk management with business strategy and objective-setting, entering the domains of control, accountability and decision making. In this work, the organizational variations of ERM are investigated through a longitudinal multiple case study, using data from three companies collected over a 7-year period (from 2002 to 2008). The findings contribute to our understanding of ERM as a practice, revealing its trajectory within the organizations as it encounters pre-existing logics, and as both are shaped by risk rationalities, experts and technologies.

Comparing LTL Semantics for Runtime Verification

When monitoring a system w.r.t. a property defined in a temporal logic such as LTL, a major concern is to settle with an adequate interpretation of observable system events; that is, models of temporal logic formulae are usually infinite words of events, whereas at runtime only finite but incrementally expanding prefixes are available. In this work, we review LTL-derived logics for finite traces from a runtime-verification perspective. In doing so, we establish four maxims to be satisfied by any LTL-derived logic aimed at runtime verification. As no pre-existing logic readily satisfies all of them, we introduce a new four-valued logic Runtime Verification Linear Temporal Logic RV-LTL in accordance to these maxims. The semantics of Runtime Verification Linear Temporal Logic (RV-LTL) indicates whether a finite word describes a system behaviour which either (i) satisfies the monitored property, (ii) violates the property, (iii) will presumably violate the property, or (iv) will presumably conform to the property in the future, once the system has stabilized. Notably, (i) and (ii) correspond to the classical semantics of LTL, whereas (iii) and (iv) are chosen whenever an observed system behaviour has not yet lead to a violation or acceptance of the monitored property. Moreover, we present a monitor construction for RV-LTL properties in terms of Moore machines signalizing the semantics of the so far obtained execution trace w.r.t. the monitored property.

Interactive conflict detection and resolution for personalized features

In future telecommunications systems, behaviour will be defined by inexperienced users for many different purposes, often by specifying requirements in the form of policies. The call processing language (CPL) was developed by the IETF in order to make it possible to define telephony policies in an Internet telephony environment. However, user-defined policies can hide inconsistencies or feature interactions. In this paper, a method and a tool are proposed to flag inconsistencies in a set of policies and to assist the user in correcting them. These policies can be defined by the user in a user-friendly language or derived automatically from a CPL script. The approach builds on a pre-existing logic programming tool that is able to identify inconsistencies in feature definitions. Our new tool is capable of explaining in user-oriented terminology the inconsistencies flagged, to suggest possible solutions, and to implement the chosen solution. It is sensitive to the types of features and interactions that will be created by naive users. This tool is also capable of assembling a set of individual policies specified in a user-friendly manner into a single CPL script in an appropriate priority order for execution by telecommunication systems.