Traditionally, Marxists are sympathetic to technological progress. They often proclaim that only the further development of productive forces prepares the material conditions for the post-capitalist mode of production. While the late Herbert Marcuse (1992) came to explicitly emphasize the environmentally destructive aspects of capitalist production, even he was optimistic about the possibility of technological advancement as the major force for human emancipation beyond scarcity and poverty through the famous dialectics of quantity and quality. He suggested that the biological foundation

Unfortunately, the Promethean dream of realizing freedom through technical progress has not been realised. Or, to put it in terms of the dialectic, the dialectical transformation of quantity to quality happens only in such a way that technical ‘progress’ comes to exert an uncontrollable destructive power over the planet.

Despite its history of failure, Promethean ideas are again coming back to have a great influence within political ecology. In fact, ecomodernist ideas become hegemonic as the ecological crisis deepens. Now the development and application of gigantic technologies and science seems to be the only solution that is fast enough and on a sufficient scale to tackle the serious threat of climate breakdown. The new advocates of Prometheanism argue that environmentalists, by contrast, are too naïve in calling for slowing down and scaling down to live in harmony with nature. Environmental Prometheanism is ‘a lesser evil’ (Symons 2019: 52).

Contemporary Marxism is also responding to this situation. For example, Alberto Toscano (2011) insists upon reviving the ‘Promethean’ ideals of the left in order to envision a post-capitalist world.

Today, there are robust discussions on the ecological crisis that pivot around the Anthropocene as a new geological age. Since the entire surface of our planet is now covered by traces of human economic activities, there apparently exists no pristine ‘nature’ that remains untouched by humans. Bill McKibben’s claim about the ‘end of nature’ (McKibben 1989) has become quite compelling 30 years after it was first pronounced, but the full-blown impact of climate change beyond any human control signifies the ultimate failure of the modern Promethean dream of absolute domination over nature. The catastrophic situation created by this failure recalls Engels’s warning about the ‘revenge’ of nature as well as Max Horkheimer’s discussion of the ‘revolt of nature’ in Eclipse of Reason (Horkheimer [1947] 2005: 86).

The ‘revenge’ and ‘revolt’ of nature seem to redistribute the agency, creating a new ontological situation, in which the passive ‘things’ in nature appear to acquire agency against humans. This appearance of the total remaking of nature as well as the new agency of things is the reason why both Noel Castree’s ‘production of nature’ and Bruno Latour’s ‘actor–network theory’ (ANT) are gaining increasing popularity in recent debates over political ecology. While Castree (2005) denies the existence of a nature independent of human beings, Latour (1993) rejects the modern dualist conception of subject and object, redistributing agency to things as ‘actants’. Their ideas are certainly quite different, but they share a common belief in the superiority of ontological monism over dualism in the face of the hybridity of the social and the natural that they think of as characteristic of the Anthropocene.

In this context, the Marxian concept of ‘metabolism’ (Stoffwechsel) as the theoretical foundation for Marxian ecology has been the target of harsh criticism. Especially, its central concept of ‘metabolic rift’ has been accused of ‘epistemic rift’ (Schneider and McMichael 2010: 467) due to its ‘Cartesian dualism’ of ‘Nature’ and ‘Society’ as two fully separate and independent entities. There are accordingly various attempts even among Marxists – particularly by Jason W. Moore (2015) – to replace this dualist treatment of capitalist development with a post-Cartesian one for a better understanding of the current ecological crisis.

Introduction

The study of international relations has long focused on the strategic interactions of governments – games of war and treatises of peace. But increasingly in today’s globalised world, collective action crosses national boundaries and critical decisions that affect the world of politics fall to non-state actors, be they individuals, terrorist groups, grassroots movements or corporations. As Anne-Marie Slaughter describes in her apt analysis, practitioners and students of international affairs would benefit from seeing the world not as a chessboard of strategy games between statesmen, but as a web of networks, overlapping and intersecting worldwide and online (2017, 5–7). To understand action and reaction in the twenty-first century, one must now grapple with an entirely new space where neither state nor non-state actors exercise full control: the internet, whose infrastructure increasingly determines how information is consumed and decisions are made. This chapter discusses new challenges to the exercise of democracy and human rights in the international arena, brought on by the increasing ubiquity of online fora where modern public discourse takes place.

Freedom of expression is a key component of both democratic and human rights frameworks. Its regulation online has become subject of great discussion, both because of non-democratic regimes that seek to limit dissent and information online, and due to increasingly concerning disinformation and hate speech within social networks worldwide. Foundational to the liberal principle of free speech is the oft-invoked image of a ‘marketplace of ideas’. The concept dates back to nineteenth-century political philosophers like John Stuart Mill, who argued that in an unfettered space where the public could freely debate and weigh competing ideas without interference, rational human behaviour would allow the ‘best’ ideas to be chosen and exercised in society (see Mill, 1989, Part 2). Yet many scholars, including Mill himself, have discussed the imperfections of such an image, as the marketplace can be distorted by real-life conditions that create ‘market failures’, such as censorship, human bias towards the status quo and the historical evidence that the rationality of a human mind is not infallible (Ingber, 1984, 4–6). Distortions alter the ability of a rational individual to identify and act on an objectively best option or identify truth.

The literature that references personal data collection risks is growing amidst international scandals, notably the Cambridge Analytica/Facebook interference in the Brexit referendum and 2016 US presidential election as well as other elections in countries throughout our world. Questions of fundamental importance to the study and practice of international relations are being asked as concerns are expressed, including the most pressing that speak to accountability, the ethics of use in local areas and the impact on the vulnerable populations that information and communications technologies (ICTs) promise to serve. Yet, the editors observe that in key texts written to teach international relations, less mention is made of personal data collection risks in countries around the globe. As we address this significant omission in the literature, this introduction notes the observation made by Acharya and Buzan that ‘with the possible exception of the emerging ideology of environmental stewardship, no new ideologies of equivalent weight have come along to reshape international relations’ (p. 12).

As the call for the protection of personal data increases globally, other uses of data under the colour of state action continue to complicate the issue. The attack by Russia on Ukraine occurred simultaneously with Russia’s participation in the UN’s Ad Hoc Committee to Elaborate a Comprehensive International Convention on Countering the Use of ICTs for Criminal Purposes. Russia strongly advocated for a new global cybercrime treaty despite the existence of the Budapest Convention on Cybercrime ratified by sixty-six countries, but Russia did not join, stating that the convention violated state sovereignty principles. Yet, alongside its urging that statements to the Secretariat should not include information about the war against Ukraine, Russia pushed the UN to adopt its proposal, which lessened humanitarian rights. All the while Russia has seemingly turned a blind eye to cybercriminals operating within its borders and has openly and actively supported these perpetrators.

These chapters provide a glimpse into the struggles of liberal internationalism and, yet, seem to suggest a way forward. First, there remain concerns about the impacts of the coronavirus pandemic on liberal internationalist principles because the virus severely tested many governments’ resolve to support its premise.

How ought one to conduct research in post-conflict spaces? The issue of ethical data collection becomes increasingly fraught when research takes place in settings that have experienced, or are currently experiencing, violent conflict. In addition to the usual considerations of human research subject protections – in particular, preserving the confidentiality of personally identifying information and minimising harm or the potential for harm to research subjects – researchers who study populations in settings that have experienced violence also must take into consideration the heightened vulnerability of these populations. For example, research participants may face grave threats to their physical security should their personally identifying information be exposed. Furthermore, participation in research may be triggering to participants who have experienced primary or secondary trauma as a result of the conflict. That is to say, these research participants face greater and different risks than research participants in other situations, and thus it is necessary to take special care when designing research in conflict and post-conflict spaces.

The Project

This project began as the subject of my doctoral dissertation, which aimed to assess secondary school students’ attitudes towards different ethnic groups within BiH. The 1992–95 Bosnian War ended with the signing of the Dayton Peace Agreement (DPA), also known as the General Framework Agreement for Peace. The DPA introduced consociational democracy to BiH and consequently restructured all of the country’s political institutions. The redesign of these political institutions included the administration of the Bosnian education system, and as a result, there are effectively three different models of primary and secondary education in BiH. My project was rooted in the suspicion that those different models of education would correspond with differences in students’ attitudes towards different ethnic groups.

BiH holds the distinction of being the most ethnically mixed of the former Yugoslavia’s six constituent republics. Unlike Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia, BiH could not be claimed by any one dominant ethnic group. Rather, BiH prior to the war was a republic in which three main ethnoreligious groups – Bosniaks (who were typically Muslim), Croats (who were typically Catholic) and Serbs (who were typically Orthodox) – lived together, with none of these groups able to claim an absolute majority of the population.

The aim of this chapter is to provide an interpretative framework for scapegoating anti-Roma rhetoric and over-policing throughout Europe, targeting a minority group which is already disproportionally affected by virus. The case study is situated in the context of the American ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement, as well as current debates on conceptualising and operationalising race and ethnicity, ethno-racial disparities in the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic as well as various forms of penal populism and nationalism, and shows that the virus exacerbates social inequalities. The chapter begins with outlining the social science context of the inquiry. The points of reference include conceptualising and operationalising race, ethnicity and membership in national groups/communities, in particular in the field of medicine; the discursive and institutional framework of populism, in particular penal populism and penal nationalism; and mapping out four distinct ways in how the virus may affect certain groups incommensurately and lead to systemic and institutional discrimination. This is followed by an overview of the status of Roma in Europe. The subsequent section provides a case study of Hungary for conceptualising the Roma at the intersection of a racial, cultural or socio-economic minority, as well as an overview of populist policing strategies. The final section shows how Roma have been targeted by populist political rhetoric and securitising law enforcement in lieu of the pandemic.

The Social Science Context

The social science context of anti-Roma rhetoric and over-policing members of the Roma community throughout Europe (and Central-Eastern Europe in particular) is manifold. The first section is aimed at dissecting and providing an overview.

Black Lives Matter vs. Roma Lives Matter

There is a significant interest in analysing the recent uprise of the Black Lives Matter movement in lieu of the COVID-19 crisis (McCrudden, 2020), highlighting how institutional discrimination within and beyond law enforcement disproportionately burdens African Americans and augments the impact of the pandemic. Patterns of social marginalisation and institutional discrimination in the criminal justice system and in particular within the operation of the law enforcement machinery are parallel in lieu of the African American and the European Roma community. However, unlike in the case of African Americans, as the fifth section will show, the spread of the COVID-19 virus brought a surge in targeted anti-Roma rhetoric and scapegoating, often coupled with disproportionate law enforcement action enforcing social distancing and lockdown measures.

Introduction: New Pedagogy for Digital Human Subjects Research

Ethics in human subjects research, whether in medical or social sciences, has been a key topic in researchers’ training for decades in the United States and United Kingdom (UK). In the United States, the history of IRBs in evaluating and overseeing the conduct of ethical human subjects research has its roots in legislation. The 1974 National Research Act was signed into law after a series of congressional hearings on human subjects research and gained greater momentum in response to the Tuskegee syphilis study (Chadwick, 1997). In the UK the processes have been more decentralised with research ethics committees distributed across research sectors and universities, but since the early 2000s there have been greater efforts to develop national standards for both biomedical and social science human subjects research in the UK. While these standards are world leading, world-leading, and many developing countries are adopting their own human subjects research frameworks based on them, the advent of widespread digital data collection presents new challenges for researchers and educators to address in ethics and research protocol pedagogy. This is especially true when research is being done in and with vulnerable subjects in developing countries.

How we address this question has implications for general society as well as academic research. Complex power relations emerge in this space between a university’s IRB’s conception of ethical human subjects research and a technology’s terms of use, including those between the researcher and participant, and the researcher and software company. As the nature of research adapts and incorporates technological changes, the IRB will increasingly be the facility that mediates the power of different actors in a digital human subjects research process to make sure research participants are protected.

Increasingly, the interface between digital research and peoples’ daily online behaviour is blurring. When we, for example, use Twitter, it is possible that this mundane activity is producing data that can be used by a researcher. This type of relationship would be governed by a platform’s terms of use, to which a researcher who uses Twitter or social media data must conform.

Introduction

The experience of European integration provides a challenge to classical realism. The newly partnered states of Western Europe constructed a community narrative of ‘no more war’ embodied by the creation of a security community embodied in economic integration of Original Six of the Treaty of Rome – with its original six members – France, West Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg, and West European military integration within NATO (Kupchan, 2010). With these steps, Western Europe turned its back on the fratricide that led to three Franco-German conflicts in less than 70 years, which resulted in two world wars (Stern, 2007).

The twentieth-century international system had Europe as its reference point: first, as the subject of empires in decline; and, subsequently, after World War II, as the object of superpower competition with a divided Germany at the front line (DePorte, 1979). During the Cold War, the debate was dominated by Waltz’s focus in the international relations literature on bipolarity, namely, the ideological and material competition between the United States and the former Soviet Union. Structural realism, also called neorealism, placed the emphasis squarely on the international system, the so-called third image (Waltz, 1959). In hindsight, the waning years of the last century may be perceived as a bridge decade between the fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989 and the destruction of the Twin Towers on 11 September 2001 (Chollet and Goldgeier, 2008). That period from 11/9 to 9/11 bore witness to the rise of the internet as the driver of the latest phase in the history of globalisation, namely, the information and communications technology revolution. This latest turning point in world history featured a frequently disorienting experience of contrasts between old-world hierarchies and new social networks (Ferguson, 2019).

The early twenty-first century has experienced a series of three inflexion points. The first came right at the end of the bridge decade with the attacks on the United States in 2001. Less than a decade later, the world experienced the financial crisis of 2007–8, which left many Western countries in a state of future shock (Aliber and Kindleberger, 2015).

Introduction

In a keynote speech opening the 2019 F8 Developers Conference in San Jose, California, Facebook’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, announced his company is about to enter a new chapter in which greater focus will be put on the protection of users’ personal information. Having admitted that Facebook ‘[doesn’t] have the strongest reputation on privacy’, he then promised ‘historically important’ changes to the services it offers, including a new, entirely encrypted ‘privacy-focused platform’ parallel to the already existing traditional social network (Facebook for Developers). The ostensive effort to address user-privacy-related concerns comes at a moment when the platform is mired in multiple investigations, drawing criticism from state actors all around the ‘Western’ world. For instance, shortly before Zuckerberg’s announcement, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada issued a report in which it accused Facebook of committing ‘serious contraventions of Canadian privacy laws and fail[ure] to take responsibility for protecting the personal information of Canadians’ (OPC, 2019). More recently, the United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) approved a record fine of $5 billion after deciding the company violated the FTC’s order from 2012 when a settlement was reached following charges of ‘deceiving consumers by telling them they could keep their information on Facebook private, and then repeatedly allowing it to be shared and made public’ (FTC, 2019). Meanwhile in Europe, Facebook is subject to 11 pending investigations by the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) alone, all falling under possible violations of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

These select few examples are merely a fraction of many more instances when the interests of digital platforms appear to stand in direct opposition to the information privacy rights of their users. Moreover, an examination of the structural characteristics of the business model adopted by companies like Facebook, Amazon or Google suggests that further privacy breachesshould be anticipated, as they tend to be the rule rather than exception. Since the very logic of capital accumulation that digital platforms rely on is based on personal data collection and its analysis and assembly into information products that are sold to third parties (Fuchs, 2012), it begs a question about the adequacy of applying a privacy-oriented legal framework to effectively protect users’ personal information.