TY - JOUR
T1 - The “digital revolution” reconsidered – NPS Christian bay best paper award APSA 2015, San Francisco, CA
AU - Kirsch, Robert
PY - 2016/1/2
Y1 - 2016/1/2
N2 - This article responds to the 2014 American Political Science Association Annual Conference’s theme of “Politics After the Digital Revolution.” It first gives a brief assessment of how the discipline of political science has reacted to the digital revolution. It then seeks to couch the putative revolution in Thorstein Veblen’s theory of a “machine process” in order to recast it less as a discrete phenomenon to be dealt with by the discipline, but instead as part of an evolutionary process of social change that instils habits of mind of those who are subject to it, and who in turn, influence the machine process itself in a co-determinant manner. This article offers the synthesis of Veblen and the Frankfurt School to theorize how the digital revolution might be critically assessed in its evolutionary framework, and speaks towards an evolutionary critical theory for analysing political society beyond discrete events.
AB - This article responds to the 2014 American Political Science Association Annual Conference’s theme of “Politics After the Digital Revolution.” It first gives a brief assessment of how the discipline of political science has reacted to the digital revolution. It then seeks to couch the putative revolution in Thorstein Veblen’s theory of a “machine process” in order to recast it less as a discrete phenomenon to be dealt with by the discipline, but instead as part of an evolutionary process of social change that instils habits of mind of those who are subject to it, and who in turn, influence the machine process itself in a co-determinant manner. This article offers the synthesis of Veblen and the Frankfurt School to theorize how the digital revolution might be critically assessed in its evolutionary framework, and speaks towards an evolutionary critical theory for analysing political society beyond discrete events.
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U2 - 10.1080/07393148.2015.1125635
DO - 10.1080/07393148.2015.1125635
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84957989560
SN - 0739-3148
VL - 38
SP - 100
EP - 115
JO - New Political Science
JF - New Political Science
IS - 1
ER -