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Featured researches published by Nicholas Gane.


Theory, Culture & Society | 2006

When we have never been human, what is to be done? : interview with Donna Haraway

Nicholas Gane

This interview reconsiders Donna Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto 21 years after it was first published. It asks what has become of the three boundary breakdowns around which the Manifesto was structured - those between animals and humans, animal-humans (organisms) and machines, and the ‘physical and non-physical’. Against this backdrop, this interview examines the connection between the Cyborg Manifesto and Haraway’s more recent writings on companion species, along with what it means to read or write a ‘manifesto’ today. Recent notions of the ‘posthuman’ are also placed into question.


Sociology | 2006

Geodemographics, software and class

Roger Burrows; Nicholas Gane

This article examines some of the implications for the sociological analysis of social class of the migration of geodemographic classifications of various sorts into software systems designed to ‘sort out’ people and places. It begins by offering an overview of the history and development of geodemographic classifications. It then argues that such classifications are increasingly becoming embedded in ‘soft-ware sorting’ procedures of various sorts, which in turn leads to the prospect of ‘automated spatiality’ becoming a common feature of the contemporary constitution of social class.


The Sociological Review | 2012

The governmentalities of neoliberalism : panopticism, post-panopticism and beyond

Nicholas Gane

This paper draws on the writings of Michel Foucault, in particular his lectures on biopolitics at the Collège de France from 1978–79, to examine liberalism and neoliberalism as governmental forms that operate through different models of surveillance. First, this paper re-reads Foucaults Discipline and Punish in the light of his analysis of the art of liberal government that is advanced through the course of these lectures. It is argued that the Panopticon is not just an architecture of power centred on discipline and normalization, as is commonly understood, but a normative model of the relation of the state to the market which, for Foucault, is ‘the very formula of liberal government’. Second, the limits of panopticism, and by extension liberal governance, are explored through analysis of Gilles Deleuzes account of the shift from disciplinary to ‘control’ societies, and Zygmunt Baumans writings on individualization and the ‘Synopticon’. In response to Deleuze and Bauman, the final section of this paper returns to Foucaults lectures on biopolitics to argue that contemporary capitalist society is characterized not simply by the decline of state powers (the control society) or the passing down of responsibilities from the state to the individual (the individualization thesis), but by the neoliberal marketization of the state and its institutions; a development which is underpinned by a specific form of governmentality. In conclusion, a four-fold typology of surveillance is advanced: surveillance as discipline, as control, as interactivity, and as a mechanism for promoting competition. It is argued that while these types of surveillance are not mutually exclusive, they are underpinned by different governmentalities that can be used to address different aspects of the relationship between the state and the market, and with this the social and cultural logics of contemporary forms of market capitalism more broadly.


Theory, Culture & Society | 2014

The Emergence of Neoliberalism: Thinking Through and Beyond Michel Foucault’s Lectures on Biopolitics

Nicholas Gane

This paper uses Michel Foucault’s lectures on biopolitics as a starting point for thinking historically about neoliberalism. Foucault’s lectures offer a rich and detailed account of the emergence of neoliberalism, but this account is far from complete. This paper addresses some of the blind-spots in Foucault’s lectures by focusing on the space between the decline of classical liberalism at the end of the 19th century and the subsequent attempt to develop a ‘positive’ or ‘ordo’ liberalism in post-war Germany. The primary concern of this paper is to chart the emergence of a new or neo- liberalism in the writings of Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich von Hayek through the 1920s and 1930s. These writings, which are barely considered by Foucault, are important as they redefine the liberal project against the political economy of the late 19th century and, in particular, against the threat of socialism. In conclusion, it is argued that by returning to the work of Mises and Hayek it is possible to develop a critical sociology of neoliberalism, one that not only engages with the writings of these two thinkers but which also exposes the fracture lines that exist within the neoliberal project, and reconsiders the political positions that neoliberalism initially sought to reject.


Theory, Culture & Society | 2005

Radical Post-humanism Friedrich Kittler and the Primacy of Technology

Nicholas Gane

This article uses the work of Friedrich Kittler to address the ways in which media technologies underpin and structure the basis of ‘human’ existence and understanding. Kittler’s ‘media materialism’ is explored through four main influences: the information theory of Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver, the media analysis of Marshall McLuhan, the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan, and Michel Foucault’s work on power and discourse. These figures are used, in turn, to draw into question the materiality of information technology, and, following this, to develop a post-human approach to media analysis. The final section of this article considers the challenges such an approach poses to the humanistic bias of mainstream sociology and media studies.


Archive | 2012

Max Weber and contemporary capitalism

Nicholas Gane

This book turns back to a famous classical source - the work of Max Weber - in order to think in new ways about capitalism today. By reading between Weber and a range of contemporary theorists, including Gilles Deleuze, Ulrich Beck and Zygmunt Bauman, it is argued that the on-going value of Webers work lies in the concepts that underpin his economic and cultural sociology. Webers method of concept formation is addressed before five main concepts are assessed and developed: capitalism, market, neoliberalism, class and modernity. These concepts are assembled into a network of thinking devices that are used to frame a sociological understanding of the present. It is argued that through such conceptual work it is possible to think creatively about the underlying dynamics of contemporary capitalism, and in so doing move beyond the limits of so-called postmodern and second modern theory.


Sociology | 2014

Sociology and Neoliberalism: A Missing History

Nicholas Gane

This article argues that neoliberal thought initially positioned itself in relation to classical sociology by developing an economic epistemology in response, on one hand, to Max Weber’s methodological writings, and, on the other, to the positivist sociology of figures such as Auguste Comte. These points of contact between early sociological and neoliberalism are addressed in detail in order to consider the challenges that the latter poses to sociological thought. It is argued that because the neoliberal project developed out of an epistemological and political critique of classical ideas of the ‘social’, this places sociology in a position of strength to advance a critical response to the intellectual basis of neoliberalism.


Theory, Culture & Society | 2007

Ubiquitous Surveillance Interview with Katherine Hayles

Nicholas Gane; Couze Venn; Martin Hand

THIS INTERVIEW with Katherine Hayles was conducted at the University of Tokyo on 16 July 2007, immediately before her plenary lecture entitled ‘Reality Mining, RFIDs and Real Fears about Infinite Data’. Those present were Nicholas Gane, Couze Venn and Martin Hand. The interview focuses on new forms of surveillance that are emerging through the use of radio frequency identification (RFID) technologies, and considers the ways in which such technologies are today linked to relational databases that have increased powers to track and sort populations.


Theory, Culture & Society | 2012

C. Wright Mills 50 Years On: The Promise and Craft of Sociology Revisited

Nicholas Gane; Les Back

This article takes the fiftieth anniversary of the death of American sociologist C. Wright Mills as a cue to revisit his legacy but also the value of sociology today. It argues that the enduring relevance of Mills’ work is his cultivation of a sociological sensibility, which is both an attentive and sensuous craft and also a moral and political project. The article returns to some of the key aspects of Mills’ life and work, and focuses, in particular, on his influential book The Sociological Imagination. Revisiting the opening and closing chapters of this book – entitled ‘The Promise’ and ‘On Intellectual Craftsmanship’ – this article argues that the contemporary social imagination needs to offer its students the capacity to open out to the world through a heightened sensory attentiveness, which in turn makes possible a different kind of social imaginary. In this way Mills’ gift to the future is a sociological sensibility furnished by its tradition, but one also that is constantly re-tuned to the circumstances and problems of the present.


Information, Communication & Society | 2003

Computerized Capitalism: The Media Theory of Jean-François Lyotard

Nicholas Gane

There is currently a tendency in cultural studies literature to analyse new media technologies in isolation from the underlying dynamics of capitalist culture. In response, this paper draws on the work of Jean-François Lyotard to reassert a series of basic connections between technological development and the further extension of capitalist principles into cultural production and exchange. This analysis will treat Lyotard as a key, but neglected, figure in media theory. The following arguments will be developed from three of his key texts: that the computerization of society is accompanied by a new stage in the commodification of knowledge (The Postmodern Condition); that we are witnessing the speed-up and extension of capitalist culture through the reduction of knowledge to information and information to bits (The Inhuman); and that new media technologies promote the streaming of culture (even oppositional culture) into homogeneous forms of capital that can be exchanged, received and consumed almost ahead of time (Postmodern Fables). Lyotards strategies of resistance to these three processes, and to the invasion of capitalist logics into culture more generally, are placed into question in the final section of this paper.

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Geoffrey Winthrop-Young

University of British Columbia

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