Alec (Alexandru) Balasescu | Simon Fraser University (original) (raw)

Books by Alec (Alexandru) Balasescu

Papers by Alec (Alexandru) Balasescu

This article explores the relationship between aspects of copyright law (as understood in France)... more This article explores the relationship between aspects of copyright law (as understood in France), copying as a practice employed or condemned by fashion designers (sometimes both at the same time), and the meaning that ‘authorship ’ has for the political economy of fashion production. The empirical substance is the result of 18 months of research in the fashion industry in two locations: Paris and Tehran. Foucault’s archaeological method applied to ‘the author ’ points to the constellation of conditions that make the existence of the author possible. This study follows ‘the author ’ in two differently located fields of power, interrelated through similar and communicating practices. The first part of the article presents the historic formation of legal authorship in the (Paris) fashion industry, the practices of authoring fashion, and the current legal debates connected to the European Law. The second part is an ethnography of the dynamic of authoring practices in Tehran.

Spectres of Fascism, 2020

Balkanologie, 2020

« Vintilă n'est plus là » [Vintilă nu mai e] a été l'intitulé spontanément proposé par un petit g... more « Vintilă n'est plus là » [Vintilă nu mai e] a été l'intitulé spontanément proposé par un petit groupe sur un réseau social, dont nous faisions partie. Étudiants de Vintilă Mihăilescu dans les années 1990, exerçant aujourd'hui l'anthropologie en diaspora, nous nous sommes rassemblés virtuellement, touchés par le poids insoutenable de la nouvelle de sa disparition.

Choice Reviews Online, 2016

Handbook of Islamic Marketing

Journal of Material Culture, 2005

This article explores the relationship between aspects of copyright law (as understood in France)... more This article explores the relationship between aspects of copyright law (as understood in France), copying as a practice employed or condemned by fashion designers (sometimes both at the same time), and the meaning that ‘authorship’ has for the political economy of fashion production. The empirical substance is the result of 18 months of research in the fashion industry in two locations: Paris and Tehran. Foucault’s archaeological method applied to ‘the author’ points to the constellation of conditions that make the existence of the author possible. This study follows ‘the author’ in two differently located fields of power, interrelated through similar and communicating practices. The first part of the article presents the historic formation of legal authorship in the (Paris) fashion industry, the practices of authoring fashion, and the current legal debates connected to the European Law. The second part is an ethnography of the dynamic of authoring practices in Tehran.

Development, 2011

While we are preparing for an urban age with a population that will exceed 60 percent of the worl... more While we are preparing for an urban age with a population that will exceed 60 percent of the world's total, sustainability is the buzzword now in urban studies. It has become the goal of urban planners, city designers, administrators, economists, and anthropologists involved in the process of urbanization. Alexandru Balasescu goes further to argue that each one of us shapes the city in which we live. The city is the result of humanity's decisions regarding their habitat; it is the material form of human emotions, desires, and ways of understanding of (and relating to) the world. We shape the city and the city shapes us. Taking Bucharest and Istanbul as examples, he discusses urban sustainability from the perspective of conflict solutions and futures. He reproblematizes the goal of sustainability, which he sees as locked up in the rhetoric of economic growth, and brings into the conversation on sustainability the concepts of cohabitation, negotiation, and harmony.

... ZETA SERIES IN ANTHROPOLOGY & SOCIOLOGY VOLUME I Series Coordinators Vintilă MIHĂILES... more ... ZETA SERIES IN ANTHROPOLOGY & SOCIOLOGY VOLUME I Series Coordinators Vintilă MIHĂILESCU, senior editor Raluca MOISE, junior editor Scientiﬁc Board Pierre BIDART anthropology, Bordeaux 2 Charles-Henri CUIN sociology, Bordeaux 2 Ellen HERTZ anthropology ...

Innovation: The European Journal of Social Science Research

The looming oil crisis, pollution, and climate change have pushed governments, corporations, and ... more The looming oil crisis, pollution, and climate change have pushed governments, corporations, and individuals to think of new policies, new objects/products and new manners to market them – usually under the label of “green economy” (or the shifting towards a sustainable economy). The changes that are on the way as a result of the envisaged “green revolution” need a broad vision that couples the economy of energetic techniques with the related socio-cultural economy that is induced by, and at the same time reciprocally influences, the mere technical transformations. Based on previous analysis of theories of socio-technological change and putting at its center the concept of subjectivation in social sciences, this article proposes a theoretical understanding of cultural shifts and their relationship with changes in the practices of production, transfer and use of energy. First part presents a schema of subjectivation in triangulation, that links the biological level with the material culture and with the representational realm of normativities in our society. It will be developed through the example of electric vehicle as metaphor of the energetic transition. Through this understanding, second part deals with the modeling of the three items as a processual energetic system by using the concepts of surplus and expenditure. Within this frame, we show how disruptions in one of the poles of this model influences the others and bring about changes in the entire Anthropo-Social level. Third part proposes possible types of emerging subjectivities and advances the idea of extending the realm of consciousness to the energetic transfers and their potentiality.

Development, 2010

Alexandru Balasescu proposes ways to counter the current economic crisis in a small community in ... more Alexandru Balasescu proposes ways to counter the current economic crisis in a small community in Bucharest, Romania. Drawing on the experience of various actors in 'La Bomba' he suggests that a collaboration of NGOs, Big Businesses, Government and Universities may transform the social fabric into a more economically prosperous one. He exposes the multiple layers of development and economic crisis as he argues that the key to change is to build trust between different types of institutions and encourage entrepreneurial spirit in all of them.

Ethical Implications of Reshaping Healthcare With Emerging Technologies

One of the conversations that emerged forcefully during the past year, in the context of the COVI... more One of the conversations that emerged forcefully during the past year, in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, is linked to the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare, and it touches both its effectiveness and its ethics. The chapter starts with three examples of using automated systems in healthcare and continues by proposing an understanding of the ethics from the perspective of the meaning assigned to optimisation. The argument is that we need to deeply explore the aim of optimisation in order to shed a different and perhaps more revealing light on ethical questions related to AI use in general, and in healthcare in particular. The chapter ends with a few propositions on how to approach optimisation and reconsider the way in which automation is both adopted and adapted.

Journal of Future Robot Life

This article proposes an anthropological approach on technology's own discourse on humanity-or wh... more This article proposes an anthropological approach on technology's own discourse on humanity-or whatever humanity will become-and proposes the term "Machine Anthropology" to designate this discourse. While it may resonate with Agamben's "anthropological machine"-through which humans constantly recreate themselves in reference to, and against, the animal-Machine Anthropology refers to something slightly different: it is pointing to a potentiality of the future, when humanity itself will be the object of analysis for the informed gaze of Artificial Intelligence. Thus, Machine Anthropology designates possible images of humanity through the sensorial and analytic apparatus of the future global technological network. This article in the inaugural issue of the Journal of Future Robot Life will be twofold. It will explore the possible implications of the emergence of Machine Anthropology, while also speculating on the triad AI, humanity, and nature. While Agamben's anthropological machine constantly recreates nature as opposing referent for culture/humanity, how will the introduction of a third dimension impact this binome? What will be the shape/understanding of nature, if it would exist at all, in the AI algorithms, and further more in the future Machine Anthropology? These type of questions are important today when the rapid advancement of technology is concomitant with the setting of rapid climate change disruptions. If we are approaching an AI future, will climate-and ultimately nature-be relevant for AI?

Journal of Future Robot Life

Journal of Philosophical Economics, 2018

Why do financial crises appear unprecedented in spite of being a rather regular occurrence across... more Why do financial crises appear unprecedented in spite of being a rather regular occurrence across countries and time? There are many answers from various schools of finance and economics, including Minsky’s financial instability hypothesis in which systemic stability endogenously results in instability. We explore the inclusion of observed human behaviour in an endogenous framework by engaging with anthropological concepts
such as myth, ritual and magic that structure and explain our behaviour, and by extending the concept of agency from human to non-human. We also point to the possibility of better understanding our position in the mythological cycle using the new social media data. The aim of the article is to offer a holistic framework of interpretation of causes and circumstances of economic crises, using the tools of economy, semiotics, and economic anthropology that would account for both the universality of these crises and for their particular occurrences that always seem unique.

This fiction is based on a classic anthropological type of approach: an appeal to an emic underst... more This fiction is based on a classic anthropological type of approach: an appeal to an emic understanding of a phenomenon, or as Tim Ingold would put it for example “knowing from inside”. The aim is to create empathy for the refugee condition not by presenting a fictional or ethnographic description of a group of refugees, but by a move to otherize the self. What if the knowing “us” become the others? Could this be better portrayed in a story in which the development of events bring the dominant subject in a subaltern position? And to what effect?

“Adopt a Canadian” raises those questions placing the story in a not so far future when climate change and political choices provoke a change in the direction of refugee flows. It is a world that is not yet re-settled, in which new values and hierarchies did not emerge, while the old ones are shaken and reinterpreted.
The short story is a stand alone piece but could be seen also as departing point for a “Climate Change” novel. As Amitav Ghosh recently remarked, the climate change fiction does not have the prominence it deserves, because it tackles a sensitive subject. Its necessity is incontestable, and it may itself be an instrument of knowledge that enables us to think in terms of an ethnography of the future.

Currently I am working into developing the story into a film script together with 88FilmWorks production company based in Southern California.
http://allegralaboratory.net/adopt-canadian-short-story/

This article explores the veil not as a symbol of oppressing religion, nor as a form of resistanc... more This article explores the veil not as a symbol of oppressing religion, nor as a form of resistance, but as an object that signifies a mode of subjectivation other than that proposed by the spatial configuration of secularism. On Tuesday, February 10, 2004, the French Assembly voted the law forbidding “the wearing of signs or dress ostensibly manifesting religious belonging in schools, high-schools and colleges.” This has been done to “enforce the spirit of laicism.”
The question that emerges and constitutes the key of this argument may be puzzling by its simplicity: Is it “women’s oppression” and “religious belonging” that upsets French politicians? In the present article, I will argue that an intricate relation between space and visibility is at the core of the dispute, revealing to us more the structure of French citizenship assumptions and its link with architecture, than anything about Islam. Thus, the article will approach the aesthetic, social, and political implications of the training of the eye. The argument will concentrate on ways of seeing in the public space, and how the visible is structured there. As there is no visibility in the absence of the invisible, it is often necessary to close our eyes to understand the image through its lack. Therefore, the public space does not emerge without its complementary private realm.

Spectres of Fascism, 2020

Balkanologie, 2020

Choice Reviews Online, 2016

Handbook of Islamic Marketing

Journal of Material Culture, 2005

This article explores the relationship between aspects of copyright law (as understood in France)... more This article explores the relationship between aspects of copyright law (as understood in France), copying as a practice employed or condemned by fashion designers (sometimes both at the same time), and the meaning that ‘authorship’ has for the political economy of fashion production. The empirical substance is the result of 18 months of research in the fashion industry in two locations: Paris and Tehran. Foucault’s archaeological method applied to ‘the author’ points to the constellation of conditions that make the existence of the author possible. This study follows ‘the author’ in two differently located fields of power, interrelated through similar and communicating practices. The first part of the article presents the historic formation of legal authorship in the (Paris) fashion industry, the practices of authoring fashion, and the current legal debates connected to the European Law. The second part is an ethnography of the dynamic of authoring practices in Tehran.

Development, 2011

Innovation: The European Journal of Social Science Research

Development, 2010

Ethical Implications of Reshaping Healthcare With Emerging Technologies

Journal of Future Robot Life

Journal of Philosophical Economics, 2018

Currently I am working into developing the story into a film script together with 88FilmWorks production company based in Southern California.
http://allegralaboratory.net/adopt-canadian-short-story/

While we are preparing for an urban age with a population that will exceed 60 percent of the worl... more While we are preparing for an urban age with a population that will exceed 60 percent of the world’s total, sustainability is the buzzword now in urban studies. It has become the goal of urban planners, city designers, administrators, economists, and anthropologists involved in the process of urbanization. Alexandru Balasescu goes further to argue that each one of us shapes the city in which we live. The city is the result
of humanity’s decisions regarding their habitat; it is the material form of human emotions, desires, and ways of understanding of (and relating to) the world. We shape the city and the city shapes us. Taking Bucharest and Istanbul as examples, he discusses urban sustainability from the perspective of conflict solutions and futures. He reproblematizes the goal of sustainability, which he sees as locked up in the rhetoric of economic growth, and brings into the conversation on sustainability the concepts of cohabitation, negotiation, and harmony.
KEYWORDS Istanbul; Bucharest; economic growth; cities; cohabitation; star architecture; transport

Why do financial crises appear unprecedented in spite of being a rather regular occurrence across... more Why do financial crises appear unprecedented in spite of being a rather regular occurrence across countries and time? There are many answers from various schools of finance and economics, including Minsky’s financial instability hypothesis in which systemic stability endogenously results in instability. We explore the inclusion of observed human behavior in an endogenous framework by engaging with anthropological concepts such as myth, ritual and magic that structure and explain our behavior, and by extending the concept of agency from human to non-human. We also point to the possibility of better understanding our position in the mythological cycle using the new social media data.

Click for Audio Presentation: http://staff.washington.edu/learner/Documents/FinBubble_Seminar_112015/FinBubble-sourceEdirol_Final.mp3

FR : Plutôt que changer de technique, ne s’agirait-il pas de changer de culture ? La contribution... more FR : Plutôt que changer de technique, ne s’agirait-il pas de changer de culture ? La contribution de la sociologie est, nous semble-t-il de tenter de mêler les changements culturels aux changements techniques, d’un point de vue anthropologique et historique. Ne faudrait-il pas chercher à combiner les différentes formes d’énergie ?
Pour ce faire, et sur la base des théories du changement socio-technologique, la présentation mettra au centre de son sujet, le concept de subjectivation en sciences sociales. Il s’agit d'une compréhension théorique des changements culturels et de leur relation avec les transformations dans les pratiques de production, de transfert et d’utilisation/usage de l'énergie. La première partie proposera un schéma de subjectivation en triangularisation, qui relie le niveau biologique avec la culture matérielle et avec le champ représentationnel des normativités dans notre société. La deuxième partie traitera de la modélisation de ces trois éléments comme un système énergétique processuel, en utilisant le concept de dépense et d’excès. Nous montrerons notamment comment des perturbations dans l'un des pôles de ce modèle de triangularisation, influence les autres pôles et apporte ainsi des changements dans l'ensemble du complexe anthropo-social. La troisième partie discutera des types potentiels de subjectivités émergentes, et avancera l'idée d'approfondir la connaissance et la conscience des transferts énergétiques entre les systèmes, à partir d’une sémiologie qui combinerait les différentes formes d’énergie.

EN : Rather than changing technics, would the question not be to change culture ? It seems to us that the contribution of sociology should be to blend the cultural changes with the technical changes, on anthroplogical and historical levels. Shouldn’t we seek to combine the different forms of energy ? Following this aim, based on previous analysis of theories of socio-technological change and putting at its center the concept of subjectivation in social sciences, this paper proposes a theoretical understanding of cultural changes and their relationship with changes in the practices of production, transfer and use of energy. The paper is structured in three parts: first part proposes a schema of subjectivation in triangulation, that links the biological level with the material culture and with the representational realm of normativities in our society. The second part deals with the concept of expenditure of surplus in this model and how disruptions in one of the poles of this model influences the others and bring about changes in the entire Anthropo-Social level. The third part proposes possible types of emerging subjectivities and advances the idea of extending the realm of consciousness to the energetical transfers and their potentiality, working on a semiology which would combine the different forms of energy.