This blog is a collection of research updates, rough ideas, and harebrained schemes that I won't have a chance to work through in the near future. I'll publish some of these eventually if there's time. My more polished work can be found via the "Publications" link in the menu at top right. Topics include: … Continue reading
Influences: Recognition
“You tell me not to worry About the simple fact I’m dead. It’ll go away by morning.” –Sleater-Kinney, “What if I Was Right?” This is a post about the concept of recognition, which is the subject of debate in political theory. (See the summaries in these two different reviews of Patchen Markell’s book on the […]
Reading With: A New Series of Posts
Recently I posted "Fucking with Friedman," the first of a new type of post that will consist of close readings of short excerpts of texts, for students and anyone who’s interested. The idea is to include short excerpts from sources I’m currently reading—primarily on race, class, gender, decolonialism, capitalism, logistics, infrastructure, cities, and disaster—to share… Continue reading Reading With: A New Series of Posts
Influences: Reclaiming
This post is part of my Influences series, which is explained here. Black Star’s song “Astronomy (8th Light)” is especially helpful for thinking about how to repurpose concepts that came before, because it is structured around a reclaiming of negative metaphors of Blackness such as phrases like “black sheep” and associations of Blackness with death,… Continue reading Influences: Reclaiming
Influences: A New Series of Posts
Short Summary When designing my university courses, I’ve always wanted to create a list of sources that embody aspects of the theories we discuss in class. These posts are aimed primarily at students, as well as anyone working with similar themes to those found in my course syllabi, which are available on this website via… Continue reading Influences: A New Series of Posts
Reading With: Fucking with Friedman
$%*@&#! with FriedmanMany researchers have sources that they keep coming back to, but that they don’t like very much, or people who they cite who we might not want to cite, but who we end up using, even just as contrast for our own ideas. There is a whole politics to that, which I might… Continue reading Reading With: Fucking with Friedman
Placing Classification
I’ve been thinking about the places of classification, meaning both where it takes place and how different classification systems incorporate space and place. This is in part a reaction to collaborative work I’ve been doing (with a group from the Algorithms Studies Network), since algorithms are (in)famous for traveling across domains without attending to the… Continue reading Placing Classification
Recap: Richard Sennett @ WORM
Photo credit: Aad Hoogendoorn I was delighted to be asked by De Dépendence to respond with Tina Rahimy to Richard Sennett at an event at WORM in December 2018 (video below), moderated by Farid Tabarki. Sennett was speaking about his new book Building and Dwelling, where he argues in favor of open cities, and against closed, controlled,… Continue reading Recap: Richard Sennett @ WORM
Being Here for Each Other
Being Here for Each Other: Accountability, Willem Schinkel, and the #WOinactie Protests So I haven't been involved in the Dutch university protests #WOinactie, partly because, living in Rotterdam, I’m a bit outside the loop and simply don’t know many people in Amsterdam and Utrecht. But I want to talk about one of the most… Continue reading Being Here for Each Other
Titanic Redux: Bodies as Materials
I'm very excited to have a new article on disaster and body recovery out in Social Studies of Science, with many thanks to the wonderful editors and peer reviewers. The abstract and PDF (open access) are here. I give an overview of the article and its broader context here. The second link goes to the text of… Continue reading Titanic Redux: Bodies as Materials
Whale Falls: Making Opression Remote
A whale fall the carcass of a whale as it sits at the bottom of the ocean. A dead whale is a boon for local wildlife, and they swarm it in stages, sometimes reducing it to the bones in a matter of months, although the body can continue to be influential for decades. I first started… Continue reading Whale Falls: Making Opression Remote
Jess Bier 