Summer Academy 2020: Law and Political Economy of TECHNOLOGY

Digital technologies promise to transform industry and regulation. Transformation is thought to simultaneously ‘disrupt’ traditional patterns of production and governance, while ‘innovation’ promises greater efficiencies and results. From warfare to shopping to health care to the cell phones in our pockets – we live in the wake of new digital technologies.

At the same time, for most cultures of expertise interested in governance, technology remains a confusing topic – a black box. First, we relate to technology through our gadgets but do not tend to understand its operating logics or the insights and vocabularies from professional communities working in the field. Second, technology operates within complex regimes of administration, production and spending. To understand technology requires that we understand these background legal regimes and institutional mechanisms that make up contemporary life. Third, technological ‘disruption’ usually is centred on privatisation and profit making, and efficiencies usually come with unintended consequences and hidden costs. Technology is, in short, wrapped up in fundamental questions about social organisation and public policy – and often working against democratic sovereignty.

The aim of the 2020 Summer Academy is to study technology within the geography of political economic life and the current challenges facing democratic governance. Over the course of two days, emerging and senior scholars from around the world will collaborate together at the University of Manchester Law School to share and better understand these dynamics at the interface of law and political economy. Questions of socio-economic status, gender, race, as well as capitalism, colonialism, climate change and other pressing challenges to global governance will be considered in relation to technological innovation.

In addition to rethinking how we understand technology, the Academy also experiments with how we engage and learn from one another. The majority of the programme organises participants in back-to-back sessions, first broken into small working groups to analyse a common problem, and then reconvening together for each of the groups to share their insights and take questions. Each day the composition of the working group changes participants, with the interest in mobilising diversity, practicing non-hierarchical forms of learning, and creating fresh environments for innovative thinking. An opening and daily closing session offers space for general group reflections about what did and did not work effectively and brainstorms alternative approaches.

All accommodations and meals are provided with generous support from the Association for the Promotion of Political Economy and Law (APPEAL) and the Institute for New Economic Thought Young Scholars Initiative (INET YSI). We hope you will apply and join the community.

More information on the application process will be available online from the beginning of February.