Between Truth And Power

This work explores the relationships between legal institutions and political and economic transformation. It argues that as law is enlisted to help produce the profound economic and sociotechnical shifts that have accompanied the emergence of the informational economy, it is changing in fundamental ways.

Our current legal system is to a great extent the product of an earlier period of social and economic transformation. From the late nineteenth century through the mid-twentieth century, as accountability for industrial-age harms became a pervasive source of conflict, the U.S. legal system underwent profound, tectonic shifts. Today, struggles over ownership of information-age resources and accountability for information-age harms are producing new systemic changes. In Between Truth and Power, Julie E. Cohen explores the relationships between legal institutions and political and economic transformation. Systematically examining struggles over the conditions of information flow and the design of information architectures and business models, she argues that as law is enlisted to help produce the profound economic and sociotechnical shifts that have accompanied the emergence of the informational economy, it is too is transforming in fundamental ways. Drawing on elements from legal theory, science and technology studies, information studies, communication studies and organization studies to develop a complex theory of institutional change, Cohen develops an account of the gradual emergence of legal institutions adapted to the information age and of the power relationships that such institutions reflect and reproduce. A tour de force of ambitious interdisciplinary scholarship, Between Truth and Power will transform our thinking about the possible futures of law and legal institutions in the networked information era.

A work of ambitious interdisciplinary scholarship that explores the ways that law and technology interact. Our current legal system is to a great extent the product of an earlier period of social and economic transformation. From the late nineteenth century through the mid-twentieth century, as accountability for industrial-age harms became a pervasive source of conflict, the US legal system underwent profound, tectonic shifts. Today, struggles over ownership of information-age resources and accountability for information-age harms are producing new systemic changes. In Between Truth and Power, Julie E. Cohen explores the relationships between legal institutions and political and economic transformation. Systematically examining struggles over the conditions of information flow and the design of information architectures and business models, she argues that as law is enlisted to help produce the profound economic and sociotechnical shifts that have accompanied the emergence of the informational economy, it is too is transforming in fundamental ways. Drawing on elements from legal theory, science and technology studies, information studies, communication studies and organization studies to develop a complex theory of institutional change, Cohen develops an account of the gradual emergence of legal institutions adapted to the information age and of the power relationships that such institutions reflect and reproduce. A tour de force of ambitious interdisciplinary scholarship, Between Truth and Power will transform our thinking about the possible futures of law and legal institutions in the networked information era.

‘Post-truth’ was Oxford Dictionaries 2016 word of the year. While the term was coined by its disparagers in the light of the Brexit and US presidential campaigns, the roots of post-truth lie deep in the history of Western social and political theory. Post-Truth reaches back to Plato, ranging across theology and philosophy, to focus on the Machiavellian tradition in classical sociology, as exemplified by Vilfredo Pareto, who offered the original modern account of post-truth in terms of the ‘circulation of elites’. The defining feature of ‘post-truth’ is a strong distinction between appearance and reality which is never quite resolved and so the strongest appearance ends up passing for reality. The only question is whether more is gained by rapid changes in appearance or by stabilizing one such appearance. Post-Truth plays out what this means for both politics and science.

This book covers the topics Foucault helped make the core agenda of Western political culture - medicine, prisons, psychiatry, government and sexuality - emphasising Foucault's practical concern with discrimination, coercion and exclusion in human society.

The work of the Glasgow Media Group has long established their place at the forefront of Media Studies, and Getting the Message provides an ideal introduction to recent work by the Group. Contributors discuss themes such as the relationship between the media and public opinion, the emergence of TV news formats and styles, and the relations between theory and method in media research. Recent work undertaken by the Group on the media's role in reporting on AIDS, Vietnam, Northern Ireland and the Gulf War is also represented. In its fresh approach to the relationship between journalists and their sources and occupation analysis, the collection also illuminates how the earlier work of the group has been extended, and the ways in which its research has developed both individually and collectively. Getting the Message offers an invaluable and far-reaching exploration of the inter-relations between the production of media messages and their reception - an invaluable guide for any study of the development of media theory.

Taking the long view of conflicts between truth and political power What role does truth play in government? In context of recent political discourse around the globe—and especially in the United States—it is easy to believe that truth, in the form of indisputable facts, is a matter of debate. But it’s also important to remember that since ancient times, every religious and philosophical tradition has wrestled with this question. In this volume, scholars representing ten traditions—Western and Eastern, religious and secular—address the nature of truth and its role in government. Among the questions they address: When is deception permissible, or even a good thing? What remedies are necessary and useful when governments fail in their responsibilities to be truthful? The authors consider the relationship between truth and governance in democracies, but also in non-democratic regimes. Although democracy is distinctive in requiring truth as a fundamental basis for governing, non-democratic forms of government also cannot do without truth entirely. If ministers cannot give candid advice to rulers, the government’s policies are likely to proceed on false premises and therefore fail. If rulers do not speak truthfully to their people, trust will erode. Each author in this book addresses a common set of issues: the nature of truth; the morality of truth-telling; the nature of government, which shapes each tradition’s understanding of the relationship between governance and truth; the legitimacy and limits of regulating speech; and remedies when truth becomes divorced from governance. Truth and Governance will open readers’ eyes to the variety of possible approaches to the relationship between truth and governance. Readers will find views they thought self-evident challenged and will come away with a greater understanding of the importance of truth and truth-telling, and of how to counter deliberate deception.

Considers the contested concept of truth in contemporary politics in light of the postmodernist challenge to Enlightenment ideals and examines the treatment of truth in an unusual lineup of thinkers ranging from Plato and Hobbes to Weber, Foucault, and Arendt.