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Critical Sociocybernetics

April 2021

Published onApr 30, 2021
Critical Sociocybernetics
key-enterThis Pub is a Review of
Critical Sociocybernetics: Developing the Concept of Dispositif for an Analysis of Steering Processes Between Social Systems
Description

Sociocybernetics is particularly interested in investigating how societies steer their social systems. According to Hornung (2006), sociocybernetic studies have predominantly followed three main strategies: a problem–solution scheme, a structural analysis and a normative proposal. We consider that, to have an integral constructivist foundation, sociocybernetics needs to also take a critical perspective into account. Critical theory used to be circumscribed to the first school of Frankfurt, but now it includes a wide range of approaches —such as Michel Foucault’s genealogical and archaeological project, psychoanalytical perspectives (e.g. Slavoj Žižek), schizoid-analysis (e.g. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari), feminist perspectives (e.g. Judith Butler), and de–colonialist proposals (e.g. Boaventura De Sousa Santos)— offering very diverse notions of power, ethics and transformation. Nevertheless, some key concepts, such as dispositif, event, subject, cultural industry and antagonism, link many of these critical theorists. In this article, we explore how sociocybernetics can develop a critical perspective and some of the challenges of bringing together concepts pertaining to different theories. Specifically, we develop the concept of dispositif originally used by Foucault, Agamben and Deleuze for an analysis of asymmetrical dynamics of power and steering processes between social systems. Thus, we put forth a sociocybernetical understanding of dispositifs as second–order steering mechanisms which intervene strategically between systems and couple them conditionally. Ultimately, we seek to demonstrate that sociocybernetics can benefit from critical theory and vice versa.

If you want to know how Sociocybernetics works, you should read this paper. The dispositif as a topic or subject is in some way either a theory or speech in the societies and communities. The grassroots have their dispositive which contains certain slang terms and definitions. The artifacts are technological objects like televisions, computers, smartphones, smartwatches, and video game consoles. The dispositive could manipulate the thinking of the people and reinforce the control of the enterprises and the politicians with an agenda in order to produce a problem-solution. Consider how the digital contents (from our computers and smartphones) would affect us. - HGS

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