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How do we recover the emancipatory potential of technological change and bring it back under popular democratic control? TNI is issuing a call for contributions for our Future Lab essay series.
Credit: Anastasya Eliseeva
In early 2020, TNI launched a new series on Digital Futures with this essay by Anita Gurumurthy and Nandini Chami at IT for Change, who are also now collaborating partners. We are open to receiving submissions from anyone interesting in writing in response to the call below. A selection of the essays will also be published on ROAR magazine.
Call for essaysWe are undergoing a time of accelerated technological change in the 21st century, with massive adoption of the internet and smartphones, ever-more sophisticated Artificial Intelligence, robots and automation, a genetics revolution and rapid technological changes in our energy, food and transport systems. It has been a heralded as a new industrial revolution, one that not only is automating production but also blurring the lines between the physical, digital, and biological spheres.
But for social movements, many of these developments are more often greeted with concern rather than optimism. This is a significant shift. The ICT revolution in the 1990s, for example, was greeted with acclaim and optimism by many social movements who welcomed its capacity to give voice to new actors, to connect people globally, to build powerful networks of social change. The confluence of two dynamics though has made this rapid technological change a much more disturbing rather than promising portent. First, the massive corporate concentration of political and economic power in the last decades has meant that much of the technological change is being driven and benefiting corporations with little regard for popular accountability or control. Second, the militarisation and security obsession of states, particularly since 9/11, has unleashed a seemingly relentless drive towards surveillance and militarisation at a massive cost to autonomy and privacy which deeply undermines movements that seek to transform society.
The result has been that a few tech giants now have unprecedented control not just not of our labour, but our feelings, our emotions and behavior, our inner life. Other TNCs are meanwhile using technology to deepen dispossession of land, make labour ever more precarious and take control of critical services and natural resources. States under a narrative of security-uber-alles are meanwhile monitoring and surveilling society evermore with drastic implications for activists, migrants and the exercise of democracy.
To recover technology’s emancipatory potential, we need to deepen our understanding of structures of power and how elites are appropriating technological change to serve profits and privilege, as well as advance proposals for bringing it back under popular control.
We are particularly interested in interrogating some of these questions:
We welcome a wide range of perspectives and analysis on the broad theme, however we appreciate submissions that relate to areas TNI most closely work on such as corporate impunity, trade and investment policies, land, agrarian and environmental justice, resource grabbing, public services, war and pacification, social movements and counter-power (see https://www.tni.org/en/programmes)
TNI has a very small number of grants – to be prioritized for activists with low-incomes and those working on these topics in the Global South. Please mention in your submission if you wish to apply for this grant which will be awarded if your essay is published.
Format and StyleOur goal ultimately is to provide accessible analysis that can be read and used by a broad range of activists and social movements that will help movements confront entrenched power and injustice. TNI produces its essays in the format of a long-read. For this series, the best essays will also be syndicated in a series in ROAR magazine. We are therefore looking for pieces written as journalistic long-reads that make information accessible.
EligibilityWhile TNI is proud of our high standard of scholarship, this call does not require any specific academic qualifications. Contributors to earlier editions of State of Power have included students, professors, journalists, activists and artists - all at different stages of their careers and lives. TNI particularly welcomes submissions by women, young scholars/artists and people based in the Global South.
ProcessThe essays will be published over 2020 and 2021. The selection process for essays from this open call will follow three stages:
1. In the first stage, writers are asked to send in a
a) pitch for your long-read essay
b) a short bio and
c) some links to previous work. It will help your application if your previous work is not just limited to academic texts but includes some more accessible journalistic pieces.
d) a deadline by which it can be completed
Pitches should include:
• the main argument you are trying to make
• the key points you would include
• stories or examples that illustrate it
The pitch can be based on existing papers but must be reworked to be as accessible as possible.
2. Those whose pitches are chosen will be asked to submit an essay. Upon submission, TNI's editorial panel will decide whether to publish them as attractive TNI long-reads on our website longreads.tni.org.
3. The approved essays will go through a final round of revisions based on feedback by TNI's Editorial Panel, and subject to final copyedit and will be published on longreads.tni.org. A small number will also be published on ROAR and/or other syndicated outlets.
4. Essays that aren't approved for publication as a featured long-read may be considered for publication as a PDF.
Instructions for submissionPitches may be emailed to futurelabs AT tni.org