Social Sorting

Scholars are increasingly concerned about affective polarization among partisans in the United States and elsewhere. This concern has led to numerous studies attempting to explain this phenomenon and also searching for means to reduce it. However, while there is evidence that some partisans are more polarized than others, research on affective polarization rarely considers heterogeneity among partisans. Recent research by Mason suggests a source of heterogeneity: social sorting. Using US data from the American National Election Studies (ANES) and cross-national data from the Comparative Study of Electoral systems (CSES), I show that there is considerable heterogeneity in levels of affective polarization among partisans. I also show that partisans whose partisanship is rooted in social groups are more affectively polarized. These findings have major implications for our interpretation of the phenomenon of affective polarization and for attempts to reduce it.

The status of France's ethnic minorities has become a major issue in recent years owing to the riots in October and November of 2005, as well as the National Assembly debates on the Taubira law, ethnic statistics, affirmative action, and the memory and commemoration of slavery and the slave trade,2 and communautarisme 3.The present paper shows how, against the aforementioned backdrop, the black community is creating itself as a visible group ‘endowed with value systems and representation systems’ (Champagne, P., 1984. La manifestation: La production de l'evenement politique. Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales, 52–53(1), 18–41), and how the positions taken by the various actors (associations, journalists and politicians) have contributed to this process of legitimation. Thus, it appears that although France's Blacks are still a largely fragmented group, they are constructing an identity for themselves in the republic via a process that is a reaction to the apparent rigidity of France's republican system and to the real (albeit denied) stigmatization and discrimination that some Blacks say they are subjected to on a daily basis.

This work is a revised version of a paper accepted for presentation at the ‘Strangers, Aliens and Foreigners’ conference organized in Mansfield College, Oxford, UK, between Tuesday 22 September and Thursday 24 September, 2009.

This paper investigates empirically whether cultural, racial, and linguistic similarities increase marriage migration. By using marriage migration data from South Korea, I find that the similarities between an origin country and South Korea pull more marriage migration, but the positive effects of the similarities are mainly driven by female marriage migrants from middle and low income countries. The pulling effects of the similarities can be explained by female deficits in the marital age group in South Korea that motivate Korean
men to seek foreign brides who share similar traits with locals.

CYBER IN SECURITIES is a 2013 exhibition that addresses the
growing concern among a cross-generational group of artists
who are deeply enthusiastic about new media, but whose
enthusiasm is complicated by the suspicion that the good will
of their shared digital consciousness is being used against
them. Artists featured in this exhibition hosted by the Washington Project for the Arts includes:
Birgit Bachler, Walter Langelaar, Owen Mundy and Tim Schwartz
Channel TWo (CH2): Adam Trowbridge and Jessica Westbrook, with Jesus Duran
Heather Dewey-Hagborg
Hasan Elahi
The Force of Freedom with Dave Young
Taylor Hokanson
Ricarda McDonald and Donna Szoke
Lexie Mountain
Preemptive Media
David Rokeby
Julia Kim Smith
WhiteFeather

One of the material questions in this exhibition concerns
the feasibility of locating the experience of an artwork when it
is distributed throughout a network. This distributed experience
reflects early visions of the Internet as a “knowledge engine”,
envisioning a free association of ideas linking all of the sciences,
literature, and the arts. Internet pioneers chose a decentralized,
non-hierarchical method of communication that offered
the potential for creating a shared consciousness to solve the
world’s most urgent problems. Meaning in motion became the
law of this democratically built network, just as going viral is its
natural instinct. Conversely, keeping secrets is the antithesis of
a distributed network (as seen in recent media events).

Borders, surveillance, and control in the digital age explores the way in which public and private institutions leverage electronic surveillance technologies to monitor and control individuals’ personal communications, information, and movement across physical and virtual borders.  Public and private institutions’ transition from an emphasis on using physical border controls to an emphasis on using virtual border controls reflects a paradigm shift from a disciplinary society to a controlled society.  Whereas in the past, visas and passports offered only a limited amount of individuals’ personal data at physical borders, electronic surveillance technologies allow nations and institutions to instantaneously collect, monitor and control a vast amount of personal data from decentralized virtual access points. These decentralized virtual access points add a digital dimension to Foucauldian panopticism and expand the ways in which nations and institutions can continually monitor and control individuals within, across, and outside their borders.  In this paper, I investigate three major apparatuses of physical and virtual border control: global communications monitoring, ubiquitous tracking technologies, and biometrics and electronic databases.

Cet article s’intéresse aux façons par lesquelles certains types d’applications smartphone médiatisent la navigation urbaine de leurs utilisateurs dans la ville de New-York. L’article commence par démontrer l’importance que détiennent ces logiciels lorsqu’il s’agit de gérer l’organisation spatio-temporelle de ses activités quotidiennes. Partant de ces prémices, la réflexion se concentre spécifiquement sur le fonctionnement de logiciels « intelligents », adaptant leur contenu en fonction de leur utilisateur, de ses routines particulières et de son contexte d’utilisation (heure, emplacement etc.). A partir d’entretiens semi-directifs réalisés à New-York auprès d’utilisateurs de Foursquare, Google Now et Mynd, l’analyse proposée aborde la progressive personnalisation des informations sur lesquelles repose en partie la navigation des utilisateurs dans l’espace urbain. Démontrant, d’une part, que ces logiciels rendent l’espace urbain plus familier pour leurs utilisateurs, l’article cherche également à problématiser ce que signifie, pour ces acteurs, le fait qu’un logiciel les profile et les « connaisse » à ce point. Deux questions majeures sont alors abordées : celle des risques que court l’utilisateur du point de vue de l’exposition de certaines de ses informations personnelles (privacy) ; et celle des conséquences du profilage en terme de tri social et d’accès à l’information spatiale.
Mots clés : smartphone, personnalisation, navigation urbaine, sphère privée, mobilités différentielles

In this article, we explore the promises of security that are embedded in the smart city technologies and algorithms and their potential implications for creating social inequality and discrimination. Our ethnographic case study is the Living Lab Stratumseind, a popular nightlife street in Eindhoven where smart technologies and algorithms are being tested with the aim of increasing security in the street. First, we introduce the context in which the Living Lab Stratumseind was developed and trace this development and the multiple forms of governance that characterise it and highlight the main ‘smart technologies’ that can be found there. Second, we focus our attention on the ways in which smart technologies and algorithms promise to enhance public security by directly and uncritically translating technological rationales and discourses into social domains. Third, we argue that the smart city technologies and algorithms risk to create, reproduce and reinforce social inequalities and ...