All-Russian Research Conference - The Political in the Context of Digital Transformation: Philosophy, Science, Technology

The introduction of digital technologies in politics is accompanied by debates about the benefits, challenges and risks of the political. Contemporary digital politics requires adaptability, mobility, flexibility, sensitivity and speed of response to emerging issues. All this is interrogated by transformations in the sphere of political events. It incorporates data-driven requirements, including principles of collaboration, transparency and openness, innovation and co-production. At the same time, digital technologies exacerbated the problem of control from above (surveillance), giving rise to the anxiety of the formation of the Big Brother, Panopticon, or the All-Seeing Eye. The danger to freedom and privacy caused a control response from below (sousveillance), creating a threat to integration and coordination of efforts in public space. Discussions on freedom, domination and intervention are accompanied by evidence of a potential-free strategy for the interaction of a digital governance and digital citizens based on cooperation, transparency and honesty, which are based on digital technology algorithms. Many are convinced that algorithmic politics will remove the dangers of inefficiency and mistrust by putting a share of responsibility on impersonal procedures.

The content of the main trends in the development of contemporary political science in connection with digital phenomena affecting its thematic, methodological and theoretical problems, as well as its connection with political practice. The logic of the search for new political thinking consists in a sequential transition from solving the problems of the digital in the field of interdisciplinary methodological synthesis to considering the unity of political methodology and ontology, and then to ontologizing political studies expressed in two ontological turns. Interdisciplinary synthesis involves overcoming the boundaries between qualitative and quantitative research, as well as the natural and social sciences. The unity of political methodology and ontology was based on the recognition of the primacy of substantive political research. The first ontological turn concerned criticism of the post-political review of politics and attempts to substantiate political theory and philosophy. In the thematic plan, attention was paid to disclosing the content of the political and substantiating the relationship between philosophy and politics. The second ontological turn led to the politicization of ontology and the ontologization of politics by criticizing metaphysics, rationalism, and human subjectivity. This turn is expressed in the new political realism, which includes actor-network theory and object-oriented ontology.

Under these conditions, the question arises of how the political is transformed under a digitalization of society and politics. Can we just talk about its adaptation to the changing requirements of digitalization? Or do we observe a kind of digital political that radically changes the principles, methods, attitudes and norms of political life? What is this politics of the digital and how does the digital political shape its ontology? What role do the processes of learning to act and interact (both within the administrative bodies and between them and the citizens) on the basis of cooperation, reciprocity and mutual responsibility play in this process of forming/adapting the political? Or are there new divisions, gaps and antagonism/agonism in contemporary politics of digitalization?

We invite conceptualists, case researchers and comparativists to participate. We are interested both in theoretical reports and in empirical studies of the transformation of the political in the post-truth world. We are particularly interested in reports that show the difference between the introduction of digital politics in democratic and authoritarian regimes.

Applications for the conference are accepted on the website https://events.spbu.ru/events/anons/politics/reg.html. For the application, annotations of 150 - 200 words are accepted.

The application deadline is 1 August 2021.

Contact:
Kirill Neverov, kir.neverov@gmail.com