Book
Nielsen, Rasmus Kleis, Ole Dahl Rasmussen & Ole Wæver (eds.) 2007, 10×10, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle (UK). Available through Amazon. More from the publisher here.
A set of essays about the good books that inspired good social scientists. Contributors include B. Guy Peters, Chantal Mouffe, Elinor Ostrom, James M. Buchanan, Joseph H.H. Weiler, Kenneth Waltz, Richard Katz, and Thomas Hylland Eriksen [pre-publication draft of the introduction here].
Blurbs:
“10×10 is a wise reminder of the power that certain monumental canonical texts of the past, veritable cathedrals of ideas, have had and continue to have in the minds of significant thinkers. Even in an age focused on increasing opportunities for publishing made possible by new technologies, it is often from these same great arteries of thought that fresh and sustained thinking is drawn.”
Frank A. Moretti, professor, Teachers College, Columbia University
“10×10 gives a unique insight into the relations great academics have with great books. It brings together very important works, very prominent scholars, and the personal and often very different views they have of both classics and less well-known, sometimes surprising, sources of inspiration.”
Ove K. Pedersen, professor, Copenhagen Business School
- – - -
Peer-reviewed Articles
Nielsen, Rasmus Kleis 2009, “The Labors of Internet-Assisted Activism: Overcommunication, Miscommunication, and Communicative Overload.” Journal of Information Technology and Politics. Volume 6, Issue 3 & 4, July 2009, page 267-280. DOI: 10.1080/19331680903048840. Link.
Abstract: This article analyzes the use of Internet elements in political activism through a close ethnographic case study of a volunteer group involved in the 2008 U.S. Democratic presidential primary. Whereas the literature on political activism has generally argued that the Internet provides low-cost communication that facilitates collective action, this case highlights the labors that accompany Internet-assisted activism. The analysis, based upon participant-observation, identifies three interrelated problems with which the activists struggled: overcommunication, miscommunication, and communicative overload. Drawing on concepts taken from science and technology studies, the article argues that these problems have sociotechnical roots and arise from the specific affordances of an increasing number of Internet elements. Such elements reduce the up-front costs associated with communication for the sender, but they generate new transaction costs when integrated into heterogeneous assemblages with no shared communication protocol, no clear infrastructure or exostructure, and no significant means of tempering the tendency towards ever greater amounts of communication. [pre-publication version available here]
- – - -
Nielsen, Rasmus Kleis (forthcoming), ”Participation Through Letters to the Editor: Circulation, Considerations, and Genres in the Letters Institutions.” Journalism, scheduled for publication in 2010, Volume 11, Issue 1.
Abstract: This article analyze who participate in newspaper-mediated debate through letters to the editor, how they come to do it by passing muster under six editorial considerations, and what the three predominant genres (storytelling, criticism, appeal) of letters allow them to participate in. The starting point is a sedimented ideal of media that citizens can use—an ambition for media that are not only watchdogs, sources of information, or entertainers, but also enablers of participation in action and interaction. The contemporary incarnation of this ideal in newspapers is what is here identified as the ‘letters institution’. Its patterns of circulation and contribution, editorial considerations, and narrative genres constitute a fragmented contentious zone between politics, the media, and the private life of the limited number of citizens who get a chance to express themselves through the concrete operations of one of the institutions that gives the abstraction ‘the public debate’ whatever reality it has. [pre-publication version available here]
- – - -
Nielsen, Rasmus Kleis 2007, ”Hegemony, Radical Democracy, Populism”. Distinktion – Scandinavian Journal of Political Theory, No. 13, 2006, pp. 77-97.
Abstract: This article demonstrates what it means to construe Ernesto Laclau’s work as precisely political theory. By analyzing his work in terms of the relation between ‘hegemony’ as a theory of the political, ‘radical democracy’ as a normative theory, and the ever-present but often overlooked element of ‘populism’ as a theory of a form of politics, it captures the full-fledged political character of his work (as opposed to simply moral theory). Though the article offers various criticisms of the ways the three elements are elaborated and interlinked, especially through the imprecise notions of ‘the underdogs’ and ‘the underprivileged’, it also highlights the value of attempting to situate the act of political theorizing in the world at hand by explicitly trying to identify an immanent form of politics thought in terms of a theory of the political and a normative theory, an act that will allow one to go beyond value-neutral political analysis, empty moral theory, or blind political strategizing. Only together do these three elements make up properly political theory [pre-publication version available here].
- – - -
Nielsen, Rasmus Kleis 2006, ”Det epistemologiske syndefald: et sekulært skred i betingelserne for det transcendentales politik – reformation, oplysning, revolution (1517-1848)”. Tidsskriftet Politik, 9 (1), pp. 14-25.
Abstract: This article argues that the one trait common to otherwise different secular orders is to be at the epistemological level. Despite their differences when it comes to the precise regulation of the relation between religion and politics, and degrees of secularization, widely different secular orders in Western Europe all share a common imaginary for the politics of the transcendental. This imaginary allows – in contrast to the religious hegemony that ruled before the Reformation – for other sources than religious ones to provide transcendental organizational principles for the social order. The development of the new imaginary is traced through the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and the Revolutions of 1848 [pre-publication version available here (Danish only)].
- – - -
Other Academic Publications (not peer-reviewed)
2009 “Uneven Accelerations”, review essay. In New Media and Society, 11 (1-2), 2009, pp.299-306. [pre-publication version available here]
2008 Review of Philip N. Howard 2006, New Media Campaigns and the Managed Citizen. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York. In Tidsskriftet Politik, 10 (4), 2008.
2007 Review of Jules Boykoff 2006. The Suppression of Dissent. Routledge, New York & London. In Mobilization, December 2007, 12 (4), pp. 433-434.
2007 Review of Jens Hoff & Kresten Storgaard (eds.) 2005, Informationsteknologi og demokratisk innovation – borgerdeltagelse, politisk kommunikation og offentlig styring, Forlaget Samfundslitteratur, Denmark and Lars Torpe, Jeppe Agger Nielsen & Jens Ulrich 2005, Demokrati på nettet – Offentlighed, deltagelse og digital kommunikation, Aalborg Universitetsforlag, Denmark. In Tidsskriftet Politik 9 (3), 2007.
2007 Review of Gitte Meyer 2005, Hvorfor skulle der ikke kunne være en offentlig fornuft?, Syddansk Universitetsforlag, Denmark. Including my ‘Reply to Gitte Meyer’. In Tidsskriftet Politik, 9 (3), 2007.
2006 Review of Peter Sloterdijk 2005, Kritik af den Kyniske Fornuft, Det Lille Forlag, København. In Tidsskriftet Politik, 8 (4), 2006.
2006 Review of Ulrikke Moustgaard 2005, Håndtasken, heksen, og de blåøjede blondiner, Roskilde Universitetsforlag, Denmark. In Tidsskriftet Politik, 8 (3), 2006.
2005 Review of Roland Barthes 2004, Fortællerens død og andre essays, Gyldendal, København. In Slagmark – Tidsskrift for Idehistorie, No. 42, 2005.
2004 Review of Søren Hein Rasmussen & Niels Kayser Nielsen (eds.) 2003, Strid om demokratiet: artikler fra en dansk debat 1945-1946, Aarhus Universitetsforlag, Århus. In Tidskriftet Politik, 7 (1), 2004.
2004 Review of Jenny Edkins 2003, Trauma and the Memory of Politics, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge . In Millenium – Journal of International Studies, 33 (1), 2004.
2004 Review of Anette Warring 2004, Historie, Magt og Identitet – grundlovsfejringer gennem 150 år, Aarhus Universitetsforlag, Århus. In Økonomi og Politik, 77 (3), 2004.
2003 Review of Anette Borchorst & Drude Dahlerup (eds.) 2003, Ligestillingspolitik som diskurs og praksis, Samfundslitteratur, Denmark. In Politologiske Studier, 6 (3), 2003.
- – - -
Presentations
2009 ‘Mundane Internet Tools and Mobilizing Practices in American Campaigns’, presented at the International Association for Media and Communication Research’s 2009 Conference, Mexico City, July 21, 2009.
2009 ‘The Labors of Internet-Assisted Activism’, presented at Personal Democracy Forum 2009 in New York City, June 28, 2009. Based on my article of the same name.
2009 ‘Mundane Internet Tools and Mobilizing Practices in American Campaigns’, presented at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, May 20, 2009. Recordings of the presentation is available in various forms here.
2009 ‘The Labors of Internet-Assisted Activism’, presented at Politics Online 2009 in Washington, D.C., April 21, 2009. Based on my article of the same name.
2009 ‘Personalized Political Communication: The Overlooked Ground War’, presented at the Midwest Political Science Association’s 2009 annual conference in Chicago, April 4, 2009.
2008 ‘The Overlooked Ground War’, presented at Professor David Stark’s CODES workshop at Columbia University, September 11, 2008.
2008 ‘Personalized Political Communication’, presented at Professor Charles Tilly’s Contentious Politics workshop at Columbia University, April 7, 2008.
2008 ‘How the Media Began to Blog’ (revised version), presented at the Communication and Technology section’s ‘To Blog or Not to Blog’ panel at the International Communications Association’s 2008 Annual Conference in Montreal, May 22-26.
2008 ‘The Political Public’ (revised version), presented at the Contemporary Political Theory section’s ‘Rethinking Representation’ panel at the Midwest Political Science Association’s 2008 Annual Conference in Chicago, April 3-6.
2008 Invited participant at the Media Re:Public, March 27-28, conference in LA co-sponsored by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School and USC’s Annenberg School for Communication.
2007 ‘The Political Public’, presented at Media Sociology Forum at NYU, November 2.
2007 ‘How the Media Blogs’, paper accepted for Global Fusion Conference, St. Louis, September 7-9, 2007.
2007 Participant in ‘New Media, New Theories, New Methods’, Nordic Doctoral Education Network in Media and Communication Research workshop at the University of Helsinki, August 15-16, 2007.
2006 ‘The Organization of Dissent’, presented at New York State Communications Associations conference ‘Communicating Dissent’, October 20-22, 2006.
2006 ‘The return to tradition and implosion of ATTAC in Denmark’, presented at Critical Themes in Media Studies at New School University , and in a revised edition at Media, Culture, and the Politics of Small Things, New School for Social Research, May 7, 2006
2004 ‘The case of Jessica Lynch – propaganda politics and resistance in hypermedia’, presented at the 5th annual Graduate Conference in Political Theory, University of Essex , UK , May 7-8, 2004.
2003 ‘Power and Principle’, table presentation at a British International Studies Association working group meeting at Cambridge University , October 18, 2003.
Clips
Long newspaper and magazine pieces include:
‘United we Stand’, in Vision, nr. 1., 2009, pp.28-29.
‘Medlemsaktivering er vejen frem i USA’, in Politiken, February 10, 2007, p. 4.
‘November 2005 – et stumt oprør’, in Information, November 17, 2005, p. 24.
I have also written for a variety of other smaller political periodicals in Denmark.
