New book series: Econormativites (Routledge)
Major news this week, as we announce the creation of a new book series with Routledge: Econormativities. The series editors are Dr Connal Parsley, Dr Conor Heaney, Professor Margaret Davies, and Professor Scott Veitch.
This series has come from our experience running Future of Good Decisions workshops on econormativity since 2024 in Melbourne, Hong Kong and Exeter. We noticed that there is a wide range of work across the theoretical humanities, creative research and critical AI and technology studies that is effectively addressing normative questions about new patterns of value, meaning, norms and evaluation in evolving technosocial ecologies - but it tends not to always understand itself as ‘normative’ or as directly relevant to normative thought. We hope this series will give some of this work a home.
Similarly, existing legal and institutional thought is often caught up in theorising ‘law’ itself (rather than the guidance and evaluation of ‘life’), or applying established ‘legal’ sources and methods. As such, it can sometimes lose sight of where political community, meaning and value are being made and unmade today. This book series also aims to support those many political and legal thinkers who are advancing new accounts of normativity, particularly in relation to today’s ecological and technological condition. It will be a good home for theoretical work, as well as theoretically-informed practical approaches to, for example, shifting centres of gravity for governance, or the practical functioning of today’s complex regulatory systems.
We will publish books in three formats: shorter, ‘key concepts’ volumes (25-50,000 words), edited collections, and research monographs.
Those who follow the Future of Good Decisions project may already see how this agenda fits with our focus on interrogating and updating the values and criteria we use to shape and evaluate administrative decision processes in the age of algorithmic automation. Looking beyond ‘human in the loop’ mechanisms, which presume the efficacy of human oversight and think of decisions as the ultimate product of an individual mind, what value criteria should we use to assess whether a disaggregated, datafied, socio-technical process is ‘good’, today? How can we rethink the practical functioning of decisions, system design and evaluation, in relation to the broader technical, social, ecological conditions of administrative government?
it turns out that we won’t have a page on the Routledge site until the first book goes into publication (on which, more exciting news soon - follow the project for updates, via the ‘connect’ tab).
In the meantime, a flyer can be found here, setting out some more context and our International Advisory Board members. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/connal-parsley-08ab7b17_econormativities-routledge-book-series-activity-7454859212502945792--ucV?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAAAON9aoBjSrH-lt1-GDeXhFyXE2FzgQcAZ4
If you have an idea for a book proposal, don’t hesitate to get in touch with one of the series editors, or the Future of Good Decisions project via email or the ‘connect’ tab.