Berrys Political machines a reading

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Berrys Political machines a reading
Eric Monteiro, Norwegian U. of Science and
Technology and U. in Oslo Spring 2002
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Contents

• Governance, political science WITH technology-
  not only institutions
• The network metaphor
• Scaling, large processes
• standardisation

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Network (I)

• Europe is not a network state (p. 101)

But it is a problematic metaphor. It may convey
an illusory sense of rigidity, order and of
structure and it may give little sense of
uneveness of the fabric and the fissures,
fractures and gaps that it contains and forms
(p.15) (cf. Splintering urbanism)
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Network (II)
Moreovercreating and maintaining a network
requires work and repair (p. 15)
Castells network state is a purely social
organisation, devoid of any technological
elements (p.101)
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Network (III)
zones involve the formation of a dynamic
flow space of flows and surfaces full of creases,
dislocations and intersections I prefer the
notion of zone precisely because it does not have
such a specific metaphorical association (p.
40)
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Scaling
How can one address the problem of scale of the
kinds of collective arrangements which make up
contemporary industrial societies? (p. 20)
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Critical case - EU
particularly clear in the case of the European
Union a significant part of what the EU has
come to do is attempt to reduce differences
bewteen technical practices and intstruments
across Europe But technical devices and
procedures and material artefacts may also resist
normalisation (p. 26)
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EU (II)
Brussels
the European project, not through its formal
political institutionsbut through the vast array
of technical instruments, expert practices and
material objects which are assosiated with
them(pp. 66-67)
Ex. chocolate, laboratory practices,
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EU (III) the boomerang
The process of harmonisation does not create a
huge centralised European state, but relies on a
much more dispersed set of governmental institutio
nswithin the private and the
public sector In rendering Europes uneven
technological surface visible to further and more
detailed scrutiny, further fractures are revealed
and produced (p. 72)
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EU (IV) - irreversibility
Objects and devices which have been used for
a long time can not easily be changed without a
vast amount of work. As a result, it either
proves impossible to agree in Europe, or if it is
possible to agree, it can take too long(p. 74)
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Politics revisited - demonstrations

• Ethnography of political demonstrations

It takes a lot of work make an object into an
object of scientific knowledge in the laboratory.
likewise it takes a lot of work to make an
object political, and to create the kinds of
sites within which political action can happen
(p. 194)