Niels van Dijk
Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Metajuridics, Faculty Member
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The Horizon 2020 framework programme for research and innovation is promoting an approach referred to as Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI). Mandates to implement and mainstream RRI are already evident, whereby interdisciplinarity... more
The Horizon 2020 framework programme for research and innovation is promoting an approach referred to as Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI). Mandates to implement and mainstream RRI are already evident, whereby interdisciplinarity and integration are treated as pre-given in accounts of what the RRI approach is in practice. In this paper, our point of departure is to ask what to expect realistically when experts and professionals are brought together across disciplines, institutions and national borders in practical attempts to achieve interdisciplinarity and integration of approach to innovation. We revisit Woolgar's and Ashmore's treatise on social epistemology in their development of the reflexive thesis in the late 1980s, and we revisit the turn to practice in STS in the early 2000s. We present our analysis of commitment to matters of practical sensitivity and reflexivity in reference to the philosophical influences and study objectives of the reflexive thesis and the practice turn and we consider how sociological studies have articulated expert practices and the use of knowledge and skill. We address the epistemological challenges innovation assessments face in justifying the relationship they draw between study objects, observation, interpretation and representation and in justifying ideologically and methodologically their own production of knowledge about how others produce knowledge. We address the implications this work has for the development of interdisciplinarity and integration in case studies we have observed, of evaluating new-emerging innovation domains. We argue that the consequences of advancing reflexivity (or awareness of it) as a progressive step forward, rather than a problem to remedy, is critical in shaping a more balanced approach to innovation, even though achieving interdisciplinarity and integration is fragmented and partial.
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The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), in force since 2018, has introduced design-based approaches to data protection and the governance of privacy. In this article we describe the emergence of the professional... more
The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), in force since 2018, has introduced design-based approaches to data protection and the governance of privacy. In this article we describe the emergence of the professional field of privacy engineering to enact this shift in digital governance. We argue that privacy engineering forms part of a broader techno-regulatory imaginary through which (fundamental) rights protections become increasingly future-oriented and anticipatory. The techno-regulatory imaginary is described in terms of three distinct privacy articulations, implemented in technologies, organizations, and standardizations. We pose two interrelated questions: What happens to rights as they become implemented and enacted in new sites, through new instruments and professional practices? And, focusing on shifts to the nature of boundary work, we ask: What forms of legitimation can be discerned as privacy engineering is mobilized for the making of future digital markets and infrastructures?
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Abstract The proposal for a new European Data Protection Regulation introduces the novel obligation of performing data protection assessments. Since these assessments will become a mandatory exercise for those in control of data... more
Abstract The proposal for a new European Data Protection Regulation introduces the novel obligation of performing data protection assessments. Since these assessments will become a mandatory exercise for those in control of data processing systems, they will become an important apparatus for the governance of new and emerging information technologies. This tool, and in particular the notion of “risks to the rights and freedoms of data subjects” which is at its core, epitomises the shift from classical legal practice to more risk-based approaches. Merging risks and rights in the proposed fashion could change their meanings into something hardly predictable. This contribution proposes to explore the nature of the relation between both concepts within the assessment of a “risk to a right”. It will start by mapping out the various relations that exist between risks and rights in different practices. This should serve to identify gaps in the way DPIAs are currently operationalised and might well determine whether the introduction of this methodology in its current form might itself pose a risk to the rights of privacy and data protection. In turn however, it can provide opportunities for improvement and for lessons to be drawn from other practices and expertise that strike different relations between risks and rights, like the ones found in environmental governance and courts.
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ABSTRACT The making of digital copies is the fundamental manner in which information technologies function. This has transformed copyright in the dominant legal form for the world of digital technologies and into a fundament for the... more
ABSTRACT The making of digital copies is the fundamental manner in which information technologies function. This has transformed copyright in the dominant legal form for the world of digital technologies and into a fundament for the modern knowledge economy. We are today confronted with the introduction and implementation of a new generation of information processing technologies under the header of Ambient Intelligence. Profiling is one of the enabling technologies behind Ambient Intelligence. These technologies provide a continuous and real-time production of profiles, which are themselves in a constant state of flux. Determining the legal status of profiles shows the increasing challenges of imposing the old intellectual rights scheme, based on presuppositions about original expressions of ideas, on these new information technologies.
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In this chapter, we would like to sketch societal challenges posed by smart grids, and in particular those related to surveillance, and – subsequently – to critically as- sess the approach of the European Union (EU) to addressing them. We... more
In this chapter, we would like to sketch societal challenges posed by smart grids, and in particular those related to surveillance, and – subsequently – to critically as- sess the approach of the European Union (EU) to addressing them. We first use the Dutch example of smart meters roll-out to illustrate that smart grids constitute a complex socio-technical phenomenon, and first and foremost, can be used as a sur- veillance tool (sections 2-3). Second, as the treat of abusive surveillance, to which we limit this chapter, is frequently framed in the language of privacy and personal data protection, we briefly introduce relevant legal frameworks of the EU (section 4) in order to demonstrate how smart grids interfere with these notions (section 5). Third, although the said frameworks solved some issues, they still left a number of open questions. Thus the EU has experimented with adding, on top of them, a “light” regulatory framework for personal data protection in smart grids, of which a data protection impact assessment (DPIA) can be seen as a core element. Having overviewed this development in section 6, we attempt to critically assess it in a sub- sequent section. We analyse the choice of regulatory instruments, their scope, focus, quality and effectiveness, among others. We conclude, in section 8, that the DPIA framework, chosen as the main means to solve the threat of abusive surveillance in smart grids, is rather a missed opportunity.
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Taking up the Latourian challenge of offering an alternative empirical account of what it is, precisely, to ‘do’ law, Niels van Dijk, in ‘The Life and Deaths of a Dispute’, mobilises insights gleaned from ethnographic research conducted... more
Taking up the Latourian challenge of offering an alternative empirical account of what it is, precisely, to ‘do’ law, Niels van Dijk, in ‘The Life and Deaths of a Dispute’, mobilises insights gleaned from ethnographic research conducted at a law firm and courts in Belgium to formulate the legal-theoretical concept of matters of dispute. Tracing the gradual transformation of these matters into legal cases and finally judgments and accomplished facts, van Dijk names each step in the biography of a dispute, sharpening our understanding of the nature of legality along the way. Moving from the development of the dispute through a series of contractions, condensations and extensions to its reduction to contentious points and the judicial linearisation of its complicated folds, van Dijk invents a conceptual topology of law that he calls, suggestively, legal pointillism. Rather than a mere ‘aestheticisation’ of law, this represents a philosophical ungrounding, or re-grounding, of all existing jurisprudence and legal epistemology, stimulating a new look at fundamental concepts (thing, cause, effect, ground, point …) that have been locked for too long in the dusty inventories of metaphysics. Van Dijk claims an affinity not only with Leibniz, Whitehead and Deleuze, but with Harman’s object-oriented philosophy as well. Finally, though his indebtedness to Latour’s ethnography of the Council of State is clear on every page, van Dijk marks a number of differences with him on crucial questions, like the nature of the legal totality and the role of tautology in legal reasoning, arguing that, in the end, it would be better to speak of assignation as a mode rather than law.
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This article explores the role of constitutional thought in Latour’s work on cosmopolitics. It will study his non-modern proposal in the Politics of Nature (2004) and argue for a constitutional rather than political understanding. To... more
This article explores the role of constitutional thought in Latour’s work on cosmopolitics. It will study his non-modern proposal in the Politics of Nature (2004) and argue for a constitutional rather than political understanding. To address criticisms of being too metaphysical or unpractical, we will work out the notion of a “constitutional ecology of practices” to highlight how different practices such as politics, science, organization, but also law, all contribute to the design of the stage and processes for composing a common world. Special focus will here be placed on the role of “epigrams”: practical models for ordering contributions of different practices or modes in hierarchical relationships. This renders them identifiable, mobilizable, and contestable as cross-cutting models for shaping mutual relations in concrete collaborative settings. The case of the legal regulation of robots will be presented as an example of a cosmopolitical attempt to introduce non-human entities in the common collective. We will here observe the role that epigrams play in framing, ordering and contesting the epistemic contributions of the various practices involved in this innovation ecology. This case will be used to discuss Latour’s proposals and to study non-modern constitutionalism in action.