Visualizing Theory

By Luke Kim In their article “The Ghost in the Algorithm: Racial Colonial Capitalism and the Digital Age”, Ricarda Hammer and Tina M. Park (2021) use a DuBoisian perspective to argue that digital technologies not only rely upon but exacerbate existing colonial capital relations between the Global North and the Global South. Specifically, Hammer and Park note how the development of AI technologies uses nations in the periphery as experimental laboratories for surveillance and data collection. However, the way that AI is presented and received in the Eurocentric world, primarily through the modicum of East and Southeast Asian (ESEA) women, also rearticulates colonial ideologies of Orientalism through a technological gaze.  In these two pictures, viewers can see the models of XiaoIce and Mitsuku, who are both AI chatbots developed by Microsoft and computer programmer Steve Worswick, respectively. In both cases, we can see the models are supposed to imitate the appearance of ESEA wom...

  by Stephanie Chang      This image depicts an Amazon Echo home assistant device, an example of surveillance capitalism infiltrating households under the pretense of utility. Hammer and Park argue that we voluntarily subject ourselves to “serving as trainers and teachers for the neural networks which power” (Hammer and Park 2021:224) such technologies.  Works Cited Hammer, Ricarda and Park, Tina M. 2021. “The Ghost in the Algorithm: Racial Colonial Capitalism and the Digital Age.” Political Power and Social Theory 38: 221-249. “Hey Alexa: How can we escape surveillance capitalism?” April 30, 2019. From Engadget. Retrieved May 5, 2022 (https://www.engadget.com/2019-04-30-hey-alexa-how-can-we-escape-surveillance-capitalism.html). 

By Caleb Newman Apple is known for their reliable software and products. In the photo above, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering Craig Federighi is introducing new software features for Apple devices at the WorldWide Developer Conference (WWDC) in June 2020. Federighi talked about how Artificial Intelligence (AI) will help power the latest iPhones and iMacs to insane performances. Apple’s AI and the photo above are both elusive. While there are several computers in the background, one of them featuring code, and fancy words being said, such as neural networks and machine learning, it is all a facade.  In reality, most of the development of Apple’s products are made overseas as shown in the diagram above. Consumers need to realize the global impact of using an iPhone or iMac. In a recent paper, Hammer and Park explain that tech companies, Apple included, deceive consumers to make them believe that AI will power their devices rather than human labor (2021:235). Th...

  By: Reanna Phillips Every day, it seems more people become disillusioned with the fact that living in a "first world country" (and I use that term lightly) is not the equivalent of living in a modern utopia. Every day, we make choices that will hurt and harm and it seems as though those choices are becoming increasingly inevitable. Of course, change starts slow, but it begins with being willing to accept the lies we have told ourselves in order to exist more comfortably. One of the greatest lies that exists today has its roots in undoing and refraining from doing harm-specifically to animals. That lie is that going vegan, is cruelty-free. The Bracero program saw its beginnings in 1942, and it allowed Mexican field workers to work in America based on short-term labor contracts (Bracero History Archive). It was during the second world war when, if America didn't hire these workers, the government realized they could very possibly be put in a dangerous situation with consi...

Hammer and Park highlight how technology strengthens racial colonial capitalism. They state that "the metropolitan population created an investment of the veil that prevents them coming to terms with the supply chain and its dramatic human and natural toil" (Hammer and Park 2021:231).  There is a certain disconnect between the individual buying and goods and the individuals who source out these goods, this concept can be defined by the global veil. Many places use labor in countries that have been former colonies to exploit people for cheap and unsafe labor.  Despite, drastically reducing the number of conflict diamonds existing, many diamonds are still resourced through exploitation. For example the Human Rights Watch shed light on how many diamond companies do not know where their diamonds come from. Further, the Kimberley process, the process that initially prevented conflict diamonds, defined conflict diamonds as 'rough diamonds used to finance wars against government...

  Cam Moore In their DuBoisian analysis of algorithmic data extraction, Ricarda Hammer and Tina M. Park observe: “Just as much as the colonial project and racialized governance enabled the extraction of labor, land, and resources, so do digital technologies replicate racial governance, while in turn extracting labor, resources, and data.” (226) It’s no small secret that in nearly every niche of the digital technology industry, there are entities who make a vast majority of their income selling the data volunteered by their users to other companies, corporations, or at times even governments. But as technology and data collection further permeate our day-to-day existence, hyper-inflated entities like Amazon have sought to capitalize on their extraction of user data by dealing it to the racially-governing, pro-state forces such as police.  “Amazon Rekognition” is a learning, data-based image recognition software designed by Amazon and distributed for corporate use in 2016. These...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trwq3CNCMkU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xSGhuKENAY By Julián A. Clivillés Morales  In "The Color Line in Southeastern Europe" by Jeremy Kuperberg, the idea of Yugoslavs, a vaguely white ethnic group from Southeastern Europe, distancing themselves from less-white groups in order to assimilate into whiteness is explored. Kuperberg writes: "As plausibly white and European nations, however, they also sought acceptance in the twentieth-century community of colonial powers through differentiation from less-white groups and spaces" (287).  Historically, this pattern is not exclusive to Southeastern Europeans, however. Through this short blog post, I will attempt to explore this process of assimilation and what it entails.     Historically, Italians weren't always seen as white. Southern, darker-skinned Italians were the target of much racism and ire by Northern Italians. To the Northerners, the Southerners were, and I quote: "a...

  Yadhira Ramirez Professor Villegas SOCY  5 May 2022 In “The Ghost in the algorithm: raciak colonial capitalism and the digital age” Ricarda Hammer and Tina M. Park emphasizes how technologies have contributed to the increase of social inequalities especially in the economy. In the picture above, there are workers who are packaging bananas for the company Chiquita. This banana company focuses on providing individuals with the best and delicious produce that they have ever tasted. Behind the Chiquita sticker, there was discrimination within the laborers and owners. One of the problems that these workers face is the lack of pay that they receive compared to the amount of work that they produce. Not only are they unpaid unfairly, but they experienced horrible working conditions as well.  While the workers were being abused, owners spent their time and money on the cultivation and making sure they are financially stable, yet they undermined the fact that their workers are th...

By Camryn Langley Hammer and Park utilize Du Bois' concept of the Veil and his theory about the relationship between capitalism and colonialism to expose the tech industry's abstraction of post-colonial labor forces and resources. The Du Boisian veil creates a “colonial other [that] is nonhuman, while the colonizer is able to utilize violence in order to dominate, dispose, and extract” (Hammer and Park 2021: 229). Technological advancement is rooted in these colonial relationships and has become so incorporated into the daily lives of colonial powers that there is “an investment in the veil that prevents coming to terms with the supply chain and its dramatic human and natural toil” (Hammer and Park 2021: 231). Technology has become entrenched in the functioning of society in many colonial powers, so much so that life without technology is unimaginable for many. However, as Hammer and Park note, technology has developed because of the labor and resources of people of color. The ...

     Ian Krein     T he picture I have chosen for this week shows Elon Musk’s response to someone being critical of the US involvement in Bolivia after Evo Morales was ousted, just months before Morales’s party (MAS) would be voted back into power. I chose this picture because I think it does a good job of highlighting the colonial commodity as laid out by Hammer and Park. They write that in order to understand the colonial commodity we must “carefully examine the narratives we construct around these objects, particularly resources and labor existing in neocolonial relationships, which erase and disregard the extractive and exploitative labor practices enmeshed in the object” (Hammer and Park, 233). In their essay, Hammer and Park explain how lithium is a colonial commodity, but this picture highlights how that commodity is treated by domestic business leaders and consumers. Elon Musk plays an important role in the twitter ecosystem, both as the face of Tes...

  By: Kate Beck Technology has made our lives much more convenient and easy, reflecting DuBois’ idea that “the metropolitan world relies on the smooth operation of an imperial world order” (Hammer and Park 2021: 231). The ability to online shop has furthered the distance between items bought and the process in which it was made, creating a “smooth operation.” Far too many brands outsource labor to countries that have been colonized and exploit people for cheap and unsafe labor.  Hammer and Park investigate how technology has mimicked and intensified racial colonial capitalism. “the metropolitan population created an investment of the veil that prevents them coming to terms with the supply chain and its dramatic human and natural toil… DuBois’ global veil allows us to understand why metropolitan populations are at once unable and unwilling to see the colonial violence which enables their worlds (Hammer and Park 2021: 231).  The distance between the individual shopping onli...

  Shelby Goodwin Hammer and Park’s “The Ghost in the Algorithm” applies a Dubosian perspective to globalization, emphasizing the racialization of workers under colonialism. DuBois’ concept of the veil, considered on a global scale, explains why “... the metropolitan population cannot consider the colonial population as fully human” (Hammer and Park 2021: 230). The global veil “... protects the metropolitan world from reckoning with the kind of violence upon which its comforts depend” (Hammer and Park 2021: 230). Today, the global veil continues to justify the violence of the global supply chain, which ultimately benefits consumers in the global North at the expense of workers in the global South. Consumers in the North are mostly ignorant of the conditions within the supply chain because of the veil’s concealment. The above image depicts workers at one of the largest hair factories in China: Guangzhou Honest Hair Factory in Guangzhou City, Guangdong Province, China. China is one of...