Journal Articles by Dr. Sarah Grace Manski
Frontiers in Blockchain, 2020
Technological activists are designing blockchains and other distributed ledger technologies to ch... more Technological activists are designing blockchains and other distributed ledger technologies to challenge extractive value-accounting and identity management in global capitalism. This paper investigates how the new possibilities afforded through distributed ledger technology make possible an alternative future of generative value accounting and self-sovereign identity practices.
Frontiers in Blockchain, 2020
Distributed ledger technology (DLT) is increasingly proposed as a powerful tool to address the so... more Distributed ledger technology (DLT) is increasingly proposed as a powerful tool to address the social and ecological challenges in the Global South. DLTs are opening up possible futures, one of which is a wave of infrastructure decentralization with common-centric and cosmo-local production. Shared logistics and supply chains for a circular economy, with collaborative and networked "flow" accounting allow the integration of contributive logics as well as the integration of social and ecological externalities, including practical knowledge on resource use limitations linked to planetary boundaries, as an integral part of ecosystems of productive collaboration. Indeed, DLTs remove the need for central intermediaries to validate transaction between parties, who instead place their trust in the encrypted, disintermediated system software. DLTs can be designed as a new unencloseable (non-commodifiable) medium of communication, which could lead to radically new forms of cooperation, organization, and governance. Yet these revolutionary possibilities will not be realized unless technologists consciously and strategically design systems redistributing sovereignty from elites to the people in financial, service, and national infrastructures. This paper concludes with a critical examination of the application of DLT in Puerto Rico and how DLTs could alter the production and exchange of "value" in service of a global popular sovereignty.
Jacobin, 2018
The rise and fall of Wisconsin’s remarkable 2011 uprising holds lessons for a post-Janus world. T... more The rise and fall of Wisconsin’s remarkable 2011 uprising holds lessons for a post-Janus world. Today there are those who argue that Janus will eventually bring about the conditions for a renovated unionism. Similar things have been said about Wisconsin. And perhaps, in the long run, they may be right. But in the immediate term, if the national experience comes to resemble to what Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, and other labor heritage states have been through of late, we can expect major losses for union power and great harm to working and poor people. Replicating the great successes and avoiding the failures of 2011 require attention to the same central lessons: First, the real leadership for the coming struggle is to be found in a broad rather than narrow conception of the labor and popular movements that have been built over the past several decades; and second, it is vital that the national equivalents of the unions and popular organizations that produced the Wisconsin Uprising take on a nearly messianic sense of mission, a dynamic critical politics, and an active mutual solidarity against demobilization from above.
Strategic Change, 2017
Blockchain technologies are reconfiguring the global economy, though often in contradictory ways.... more Blockchain technologies are reconfiguring the global economy, though often in contradictory ways. Blockchain technologies are disrupting key economic and financial sectors. Some block-chain applications allow for democratization of finance, services, agriculture, and governance, yet they may also deepen inequality and weaken democracy. We need new understandings of the countervailing tendencies of blockchain technologies and the contingencies that shape their deployment.
The building of the blockchain is predicted to harken the end of the contemporary sovereign order... more The building of the blockchain is predicted to harken the end of the contemporary sovereign order. Some go further to claim that as a powerful decentering technology, blockchain contests the continued functioning of world capitalism. Are such claims merited? In this paper we consider sovereignty and blockchain technology theoretically, posing possible futures for sovereignty in a blockchain world. These possibilities include various forms of individual, popular, technological, corporate , and techno-totalitarian state sovereignty. We identify seven structural tendencies of blockchain technology and give examples as to how these have manifested in the construction of new forms of sovereignty. We conclude that the future of sovereignty in a blockchain world will be articulated in the conjuncture of social struggle and technological agency and we call for a stronger alliance between technologists and democrats.
Law & Critique, 2018
The building of the blockchain is predicted to harken the end of the contemporary sovereign order... more The building of the blockchain is predicted to harken the end of the contemporary sovereign order. Some go further to claim that as a powerful decentering technology, blockchain contests the continued functioning of world capitalism. Are such claims merited? In this paper we consider sovereignty and blockchain technology theoretically, posing possible futures for sovereignty in a blockchain world. These possibilities include various forms of individual, popular, technological, corporate, and techno-totalitarian state sovereignty. We identify seven structural tendencies of blockchain technology and give examples as to how these have manifested in the construction of new forms of sovereignty. We conclude that the future of sovereignty in a blockchain world will be articulated in the conjuncture of social struggle and technological agency and we call for a stronger alliance between technologists and democrats.
Book Reviews by Dr. Sarah Grace Manski
Dave Elder-Vass wrote Profit and Gift in the Digital Economy as a call to re-center economics arou... more Dave Elder-Vass wrote Profit and Gift in the Digital Economy as a call to re-center economics around the analysis of practices. He accomplishes this through a series of case studies of technology companies’ hybrid economic practices. The book succeeds in arguing for a new theory of political economy that Elder-Vass calls a ‘political economy of practices’, which he defines as distinct, interconnected, standardized and reinforced tendencies to act in certain ways. By focusing on practices instead of rational actors engaged in market exchange(as per neoclassical economics), Elder-Vass better accounts for the actualities of the global economy. Those unsatisfied with binary debates between neoclassical and Marxist economics will find themselves excited to discover this book, as will any reader looking for a more serious examination of how new digital technologies are challenging our understanding of business practices.
Papers by Dr. Sarah Grace Manski
Frontiers in Blockchain, 2020
Law and Critique, 2018
The building of the blockchain is predicted to harken the end of the contemporary sovereign order... more The building of the blockchain is predicted to harken the end of the contemporary sovereign order. Some go further to claim that as a powerful decentering technology, blockchain contests the continued functioning of world capitalism. Are such claims merited? In this paper we consider sovereignty and blockchain technology theoretically, posing possible futures for sovereignty in a blockchain world. These possibilities include various forms of individual, popular, technological, corporate, and techno-totalitarian state sovereignty. We identify seven structural tendencies of blockchain technology and give examples as to how these have manifested in the construction of new forms of sovereignty. We conclude that the future of sovereignty in a blockchain world will be articulated in the conjuncture of social struggle and technological agency and we call for a stronger alliance between technologists and democrats.
Strategic Change, 2017
Blockchain technologies are reconfiguring the global economy, though often in contradictory ways.... more Blockchain technologies are reconfiguring the global economy, though often in contradictory ways. Blockchain technologies are disrupting key economic and financial sectors. Some blockchain applications allow for democratization of finance, services, agriculture, and governance, yet they may also deepen inequality and weaken democracy. We need new understandings of the countervailing tendencies of blockchain technologies and the contingencies that shape their deployment.
Frontiers in Blockchain, 2020
Frontiers in Blockchain, Apr 7, 2020
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Journal Articles by Dr. Sarah Grace Manski
Book Reviews by Dr. Sarah Grace Manski
Papers by Dr. Sarah Grace Manski