CALL FOR PARTICIPANTS
We are inviting scholars to submit work for an academic paper workshop on the topic of Shady Subjects: Everyday Contestation in Automated Systems. Participation is limited; the submission deadline passed on October 15, 2024.
ABOUT THE WORKSHOP
When things go wrong with automated systems, we tend to call on lawyers, engineers, and regulators for solutions. Fairness audits, disclosure requirements, accountability rules, and civil litigation are just some of the initiatives intended to redress automated harms. Yet, as anthropologists, historians, and sociologists have shown, authoritative systems tend to be gamed (Biagioli and Lippman 2020Mario Biagioli & Alexandra Lippman, Gaming the Metrics: Misconduct and Manipulation in Academic Research. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2020), appropriated (Eglash et al. 2004Ron Eglash, Jennifer L. Croissant, Giovanna Di Chiro, & Rayvon Fouché (eds), Appropriating Technology: Vernacular Science and Social Power. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004), disobeyed (Thoreau 1849Henry David Thoreau. "Resistance to Civil Government."" In Aesthetic Papers, ed. by Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, 189–211. Boston: G.P. Putnam, 1849.), resisted (Scott 1985James C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985.; Gopal 2019Priyamvada Gopal, Insurgent Empire: Anticolonial Resistance and British Dissent. London: Verso, 2019.), ridiculed (Waller 2017J. Michael Waller, "Weaponizing Ridicule."" Military Review, October 2017, 49–59.), and otherwise contested long before official interventions take effect.
This academic workshop brings together scholars studying everyday practices of contestation in the shadow of an automated system. Often dismissed, denounced, or overlooked, these practices may seem trivial at first, but play a crucial—and often paradoxical—role in both challenging and sustaining automated systems. How are those affected by these systems adjusting and responding to their situations? What new and non-obvious forms of evasion, obfuscation, gaming, storytelling, false compliance, disobedience, cheating, humor, sabotage, art, complaining, trolling, misdirection, circumvention, workarounds, and other forms of contestation can we find? What can we learn by looking at these practices across places, times, technologies—and how might these insights help us rethink conventional notions of due process, recourse, and redress in automated systems?
WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR
The goal of the workshop is to take stock of these seemingly shady practices to analyze and theorize what happens if we consider them as an integral part of automation. We welcome empirically grounded, methodologically innovative, and analytically generative contributions from scholars in science & technology studies (STS), but also history, sociology, anthropology, media studies, socio-legal studies, and related fields. We are particularly interested in historical, ethnographic, and other interpretive studies that document, contextualize, and theorize reactive practices in specific areas, periods, and settings.
The workshop is an excellent opportunity to share work in progress and think through the broader implications of studying automated systems from the margins. Book chapters, journal articles, dissertation excerpts, or a piece specifically written for the workshop are all welcome. We do not yet have a plan for a particular product. Our main goal is to invite your best, most interesting, and relevant work without prior commitment and see what—if anything—emerges during discussion.
WHAT YOU'RE EXPECTED TO DO
Accepted participants are expected to submit a working paper of not more than 8,000 words for discussion in time before the workshop and act as discussant for one other paper. At the workshop, the discussant, rather than the author, introduces and leads a discussion on the paper. There are no panels or talking heads; all attendees read all papers in advance and offer constructive feedback as full participants.
The workshop takes place in person in Ithaca, NY. We will start in the afternoon of Thursday, April 24, 2025 and wrap up after lunch on Saturday, April 26, 2025.
HOW TO APPLY
If you're interested in attending, please submit the following information by October 15, 2024 through this online form:
- Name, email, affiliation
- 600–750-word abstract, detailing your study, contribution, and relation to the workshop theme
- Short biography (up to 200 words) and link to profile/work
- Three articles, books, or other pieces related to the workshop theme you recommend to the group (does not have to be your own work—anything from an obscure 1965 conference paper on the cybernetics of resistance to an old syllabus on anarchy in tech is fair game)
Accepted paper authors will receive a travel stipend and accommodation. Participation is limited; we expect to invite ten paper authors, which leaves space for a small number of people acting as discussants only.
KEY DATES
Abstract deadline: October 15, 2024
Selection notification: Early November, 2024
Paper due for circulation: March 25, 2025
Workshop: April 24–26, 2025
Questions? Contact the organizers at shadysubjects
cornell.edu.
ORGANIZERS
Marc Aidinoff (IAS, Cornell) & Malte Ziewitz (Cornell). Additional program committee members: Gili Vidan & Karen Levy.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The workshop is made possible through support from a National Science Foundation CAREER award (#1848286), the Department of Science & Technology Studies, and the Digital Due Process Clinic at Cornell University.