Join us for an academic paper workshop on “Shady Subjects: Everyday
Contestation in Automated Systems.” Submission deadline: October 15, 2024.
Details below or at https://shadysubjects.org.
Best,
Malte
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CALL FOR PARTICIPANTS
Shady Subjects: Everyday Contestation in Automated Systems
Workshop | April 24–26, 2025 | Ithaca, NY | Cornell University
When things go wrong with automated systems, we tend to call on lawyers,
engineers, and regulators for solutions. Fairness audits, disclosure
requirements, algorithmic accountability, 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 2020), appropriated (Eglash
et al. 2004), disobeyed (Thoreau 1849), resisted (Scott 1985; Gopal 2019),
ridiculed (Waller 2017), 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, 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, 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 are 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 1, 2024 at https://shadysubjects.org/:
- Name, email, affiliation
- 600–750-word abstract, detailing your study, contribution, and relation
to the workshop theme
- Short biography (
