On Flat Ontologies and Law


Book Description

This book examines the importance of flat ontologies for law and sociolegal theory. Associated with the emergence of new materialism in the humanities and social sciences, the elaboration of flat ontologies challenges the binarism that has maintained the separation of culture from nature, and the human from the nonhuman. Although most work in legal theory and sociolegal studies continues to adopt a non-flat, anthropocentric and immaterial take on law, the critique of this perspective is becoming more and more influential. Engaging the increasing legal interest in flat ontologies, this book offers an account of the main theoretical perspectives, and their importance for law. Covering the work of the five major theorists in the area – Gabriel Tarde, Bruno Latour, Manuel DeLanda, Karen Barad and Graham Harman – the book aims to encourage this interest, as well as to explicate the important problems of and differences between these perspectives. Flat ontologies, the book demonstrates, can offer a valuable new perspective for understanding and thinking about law. This book will appeal mainly to scholars and students in legal theory and sociolegal studies; as well as others with interests in the posthumanist turn in philosophy and social theory.




On Flat Ontologies and Law


Book Description

"This book examines the importance of flat ontologies for law and sociolegal theory. Associated with the emergence of new materialism in the humanities and social sciences, the elaboration of flat ontologies challenges the binarism that has maintained the separation of culture from nature, and the human from the nonhuman. Although most work in legal theory and sociolegal studies continues to adopt a non-flat, anthropocentric and immaterial take on law, the critique of this perspective is becoming more and more influential. Engaging the increasing legal interest in flat ontologies, this book offers an account of the main theoretical perspectives, and their importance for law. Covering the work of the five major theorists in the area - Gabriel Tarde, Bruno Latour, Manuel DeLanda, Karen Barad and Graham Harman - the book aims to encourage this interest, as well as to explicate the important problems of and differences between these perspectives. Flat ontologies, the book demonstrates, can offer a valuable new perspective for understanding and thinking about law. This book will appeal mainly to scholars and students in legal theory and sociolegal studies; as well as others with interests in the posthumanist turn in philosophy and social theory"--




The Democracy of Objects


Book Description

Since Kant, philosophy has been obsessed with epistemological questions pertaining to the relationship between mind and world and human access to objects. In The Democracy of Objects, Bryant proposes that we break with this tradition and once again initiate the project of ontology as first philosophy. Drawing on the object-oriented ontology of Graham Harman, as well as the thought of Roy Bhaskar, Gilles Deleuze, Niklas Luhman, Aristotle, Jacques Lacan, Bruno Latour and the developmental systems theorists, Bryant develops a realist ontology that he calls "onticology". This ontology argues that being is composed entirely of objects, properties, and relations such that subjects themselves are a variant of objects. Drawing on the work of the systems theorists and cyberneticians, Bryant argues that objects are dynamic systems that relate to the world under conditions of operational closure. In this way, he is able to integrate the most vital discoveries of the anti-realists within a realist ontology that does justice to both the material and cultural. Onticology proposes a flat ontology where objects of all sorts and at different scales equally exist without being reducible to other objects and where there are no transcendent entities such as eternal essences outside of dynamic interactions among objects. Contents: Towards a Finally Subjectless Object Grounds For a Realist Ontology The Paradox of Substance Virtual Proper Being The Interior of Objects Regimes of Attraction, Parts, and Structure The Four Theses of Flat Ontology




On Flat Ontologies and Law


Book Description

This book examines the importance of flat ontologies for law and sociolegal theory. Associated with the emergence of new materialism in the humanities and social sciences, the elaboration of flat ontologies challenges the binarism that has maintained the separation of culture from nature, and the human from the nonhuman. Although most work in legal theory and sociolegal studies continues to adopt a non-flat, anthropocentric and immaterial take on law, the critique of this perspective is becoming more and more influential. Engaging the increasing legal interest in flat ontologies, this book offers an account of the main theoretical perspectives, and their importance for law. Covering the work of the five major theorists in the area - Gabriel Tarde, Bruno Latour, Manuel DeLanda, Karen Barad and Graham Harman - the book aims to encourage this interest, as well as to explicate the important problems of and differences between these perspectives. Flat ontologies, the book demonstrates, can offer a valuable new perspective for understanding and thinking about law. This book will appeal mainly to scholars and students in legal theory and sociolegal studies; as well as others with interests in the posthumanist turn in philosophy and social theory.




Rhetorics of the Digital Nonhumanities


Book Description

"Author Alex Reid combines new materialist theory and media theory to examine rhetorical practices in the context of digital technologies. This innovative method allows rhetoric and composition to reconceptualize the associations and interactions between humans and technologies in digital media ecologies"--




Courtroom Power Distance Dynamics


Book Description

The book presents a comprehensive reconceptualization of Geert Hofstede’s well-known concept of power distance, applying the theory to the specific case of judge–witness courtroom interactions in Polish regional courts. In the light of the detailed critique of Hofstede’s original approach to power distance, the book first carefully develops a three-level concept of power distance, including personal preferences concerning the realization of power relations (subjective level); rules, practices and spatio-architectural arrangements underlying power relations (organizational level); and individual demeanors that can, in practice, increase or decrease the asymmetry between parties to a power relation (interactional level). This reconceptualization provides a universal conceptual apparatus that is applicable to various social settings, but the authors have used it in extensive qualitative and quantitative research focused on courtroom interactions. After laying the theoretical foundations, the book details the elements of judge–witness courtroom interactions (both verbal and non-verbal) that contribute to establishing power distance between judge and witness. These were identified over 6 months of observational research conducted in 2018 in the Kraków regional courts. Lastly, the book addresses the issue of the relationship between the subjective level of power distance and opinions that laypeople can have concerning a judge’s demeanor in the courtroom environment. To do so, it describes specific quantitative research that involved the creation of original film clips depicting witness questioning by the judge in a courtroom in three power distance situations. Offering a coherent framework for examining various interpersonal relations in legal contexts and illustrating how the framework can be applied on the courtroom interactions example, the book will appeal to a wide range of legal practitioners and academics. It also allows scientists outside the legal field to gain a new and broad understanding of power distance that they can easily apply in their respective fields. Furthermore, it provides non-academics with insights into courtroom interactional dynamics, as exemplified by the discussion of Polish judicial practice.




On Flat Ontologies and Law


Book Description

"This book examines the importance of flat ontologies for law and sociolegal theory. Associated with the emergence of new materialism in the humanities and social sciences, the elaboration of flat ontologies challenges the binarism that has maintained the separation of culture from nature, and the human from the nonhuman. Although most work in legal theory and sociolegal studies continues to adopt a non-flat, anthropocentric and immaterial take on law, the critique of this perspective is becoming more and more influential. Engaging the increasing legal interest in flat ontologies, this book offers an account of the main theoretical perspectives, and their importance for law. Covering the work of the five major theorists in the area - Gabriel Tarde, Bruno Latour, Manuel DeLanda, Karen Barad and Graham Harman - the book aims to encourage this interest, as well as to explicate the important problems of and differences between these perspectives. Flat ontologies, the book demonstrates, can offer a valuable new perspective for understanding and thinking about law. This book will appeal mainly to scholars and students in legal theory and sociolegal studies; as well as others with interests in the posthumanist turn in philosophy and social theory"--




An Introduction to Ontology Engineering


Book Description

An Introduction to Ontology Engineering introduces the student to a comprehensive overview of ontology engineering, and offers hands-on experience that illustrate the theory. The topics covered include: logic foundations for ontologies with languages and automated reasoning, developing good ontologies with methods and methodologies, the top-down approach with foundational ontologies, and the bottomup approach to extract content from legacy material, and a selection of advanced topics that includes Ontology-Based Data Access, the interaction between ontologies and natural languages, and advanced modelling with fuzzy and temporal ontologies. Each chapter contains review questions and exercises, and descriptions of two group assignments are provided as well. The textbook is aimed at advanced undergraduate/postgraduate level in computer science and could fi t a semester course in ontology engineering or a 2-week intensive course. Domain experts and philosophers may fi nd a subset of the chapters of interest, or work through the chapters in a different order. Maria Keet is an Associate Professor with the Department of Computer Science, University of Cape Town, South Africa. She received her PhD in Computer Science in 2008 at the KRDB Research Centre, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy. Her research focus is on knowledge engineering with ontologies and Ontology, and their interaction with natural language and conceptual data modelling, which has resulted in over 100 peer-reviewed publications. She has developed and taught multiple courses on ontology engineering and related courses at various universities since 2009.




Artefact Kinds


Book Description

This book is concerned with two intimately related topics of metaphysics: the identity of entities and the foundations of classification. What it adds to previous discussions of these topics is that it addresses them with respect to human-made entities, that is, artefacts. As the chapters in the book show, questions of identity and classification require other treatments and lead to other answers for artefacts than for natural entities. These answers are of interest to philosophers not only for their clarification of artefacts as a category of things but also for the new light they may shed on these issue with respect to to natural entities. This volume is structured in three parts. The contributions in Part I address basic ontological and metaphysical questions in relation to artefact kinds: How should we conceive of artefact kinds? Are they real kinds? How are identity conditions for artefacts and artefact kinds related? The contributions in Part II address meta-ontological questions: What, exactly, should an ontological account of artefact kinds provide us with? What scope can it aim for? Which ways of approaching the ontology of artefact kinds are there, how promising are they, and how should we assess this? In Part III, the essays offer engineering practice rather than theoretical philosophy as a point of reference. The issues addressed here include: How do engineers classify technical artefacts and on what grounds? What makes specific classes of technical artefacts candidates for ontologically real kinds, and by which criteria?​




Ontological Entanglements, Agency and Ethics in International Relations


Book Description

While the relevance of ontological commitments for epistemology and methodology in International Relations have been the subject of growing debate for several years, the implications for ethics and political agency of embracing an ontology of entanglement have remained unexplored. This work focuses on the importance of addressing the ontological and epistemological assumptions of the discipline of International Relations. There is increased awareness of the limits of abstract principles as ways of adjudicating real life political and ethical choices regarding International Intervention and international development for both practitioners and scholars. The work challenges IR prevailing ontological imaginaries rooted upon Newtonian physics and argues that non-substantialist ontological positions nurture a political ethos that privileges ‘modest’ engagements of practical solidarity and weights political choices with regard to the consequences and distributive effects they may produce in the context where they are made rather than based upon their universal normative aspirations. While the book is firmly rooted in metatheory, Zanotti also highlights the easiness with which political failures are dismissed as unintended consequences and argues that the current crisis in Syria, and genocides in Srebrenica and Rwanda have shown that advocating abstract ethical principles, be they the Responsibility to Protect, impartiality, or following rules can lead to disaster and can foster violent and exclusionary practices. She also exemplifies how an alternative ethos can be practiced through the example of an international NGO in Haiti. Highlighting the need for critically re-thinking the way we conceptualize political agency and validate ethics, this work will be of interest to scholars of International Relations theory, ethics and critical security studies.