{"title":"The Body, this Intimate Enemy: The Thymic Disjunction","authors":"Ralitza Boneva","doi":"10.14649/100889","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14649/100889","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41258,"journal":{"name":"Versus-Quaderni di Studi Semiotici","volume":"11 1","pages":"37-54"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83051847","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Move of the Knight. Sociosemiotics of Creolization and the Prejudice of Subalternity","authors":"Stefano Jacoviello","doi":"10.14649/101997","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14649/101997","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41258,"journal":{"name":"Versus-Quaderni di Studi Semiotici","volume":"43 1","pages":"257-272"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79317998","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The relevance of the semiotic heritage of Paolo Fabbri: «We» of the young generation 2020-2021","authors":"Inna Merkoulova","doi":"10.14649/102001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14649/102001","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41258,"journal":{"name":"Versus-Quaderni di Studi Semiotici","volume":"35 1","pages":"309-324"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89426758","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Dis/Assembling Value","authors":"Emma Greeson, Stefan Laser, Olli Pyyhtinen","doi":"10.3384/vs.2001-5992.2020.7.2.151-166","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3384/vs.2001-5992.2020.7.2.151-166","url":null,"abstract":"In this text, we offer a vision of waste as integral and immanent to valuation practices and argue that engaging with waste materials can thereby significantly contribute to the field of valuation studies. We lay special emphasis on the intertwined practices and processes of assembling and disassembling value and waste. Creating value is a process of joining together: classifying, grouping, combining, making, re-forming. Yet it is also a process where persons, things, parts of bodies, or landscapes are disentangled, abandoned, dismissed, or corrupted. The notion of disassembly attracts attention not only to the center of the action of valuation but also to its peripheries—to things and materials which are cast aside, to spaces which accommodate that which has been disassembled, and the ambiguities and potentialities opened up by processes of disassembly. Thinking with waste also pushes us to think about how various regimes of value are connected and how they coexist and/or compete. As such, waste is not a coherent thing, but rather one that gets displaced and transformed in valuing practices which coexist in various ways.","PeriodicalId":41258,"journal":{"name":"Versus-Quaderni di Studi Semiotici","volume":"11 1","pages":"151-166"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2020-07-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85600273","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Ecologies of Valuation","authors":"Emma Greeson","doi":"10.3384/vs.2001-5992.2020.7.2.167-196","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3384/vs.2001-5992.2020.7.2.167-196","url":null,"abstract":"When used consumer goods are exchanged, valuation proceeds differently than in markets for new goods. Many studies emphasize the social or socio-technical nature of valuation processes. This article outlines the difficulties inherent in these approaches when it comes to understanding valuation of used goods. These approaches, somewhat paradoxically, obscure the greater situatedness of contextualized “moments of valuation” in material flows and in relation to production processes. The ecological approach developed here shows that moments of valuation are never divorced from temporally and spatially prior and subsequent moments of valuation and waste production, and cannot be fully understood if not considered alongside the conditions in which the goods being valued are produced. The subtractive logic of ridding is crucial in the processes of production and valuation of used goods. This article draws on ethnographic and interview data from fourteen months of fieldwork in England to show how used books are valued in an ecology that stretches across connected moments and sites.","PeriodicalId":41258,"journal":{"name":"Versus-Quaderni di Studi Semiotici","volume":"5 1","pages":"167-196"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2020-07-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85218695","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Sorting, shredding and smelting scrap","authors":"Stefan Laser","doi":"10.3384/vs.2001-5992.2020.7.2.221-255","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3384/vs.2001-5992.2020.7.2.221-255","url":null,"abstract":"The global economy of e-waste recycling has received much attention in recent waste studies literature. This article gives an account from the inside of two different sites within a leading high-tech recycling and smelting company in which such e-waste is assessed; and discusses the valuation of electronic waste in the course of its industrial processing. Based on a two-month long ethnography by way of an internship, the article examines how the recycler manages to distinguish and separate out valuable ‘scrap’, in contrast to valueless ‘waste’. The article subdivides the inquiry into two questions. What practices are involved when transforming e-waste into scrap and waste? And how can we appreciate differences in how they are configured? The study of two different facilities in operation next to one another provides additional leverage to the inquiry since the valuation practices involved when assessing the incoming e-waste differ between them. Differences are tied to specificities in how the electronics are sorted out, shredded, and smelted. The article shows how these processes of deformation are linked to the valuation practices and the accounting system of the company. Calculations, it is argued, succeed only because things are literally broken.","PeriodicalId":41258,"journal":{"name":"Versus-Quaderni di Studi Semiotici","volume":"77 1","pages":"221-255"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2020-07-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83259732","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
A. Pozzo, Ugo Volli, C. Marrone, Remo Gramigna, M. Amir-Moezzi, Mattia Thibault, Vincenzo Idone Cassone, Roberto Pellerey, Alessandro Prato
{"title":"Introduction to a Semiotics of Concealment","authors":"A. Pozzo, Ugo Volli, C. Marrone, Remo Gramigna, M. Amir-Moezzi, Mattia Thibault, Vincenzo Idone Cassone, Roberto Pellerey, Alessandro Prato","doi":"10.14649/97028","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14649/97028","url":null,"abstract":"The collection of articles in this issue of Versus on the semiotics of concealment proposes theoretical reflections and some of their possible applications on the many facets of secret communication. The aim of these texts is to bring together a semiotic methodology, to enunciate the logic of decryption, to highlight some rhetoric of dissimulation and to offer an anthropological overview of secret communication. The resulting material is offered to the scientific community, which often finds itself unarmed in the face of new occurrences of concealment whose traditional patterns are difficult to identify. After a brief account of the current state of research and of the practice of concealment over time, the articles published below are presented.","PeriodicalId":41258,"journal":{"name":"Versus-Quaderni di Studi Semiotici","volume":"67 1","pages":"3-18"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2020-06-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79633098","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Valuating Practices, Principles and Products in DIY Biology","authors":"M. Meyer, R. Wilbanks","doi":"10.3384/vs.2001-5992.2020.7.1.101","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3384/vs.2001-5992.2020.7.1.101","url":null,"abstract":"In this article, we study do-it-yourself (DIY) biology, by looking in particular at the different forms of valuation within the DIY biology movement. Building upon recent work in economic sociology and the study of valuation, we take as case studies different projects developed by DIY biologists. Our approach is attentive to the moments when these projects are valued, i.e. during competitions, investment pitches, and crowdfunding campaigns. The projects analyzed involve both market valuations (with investments, products and potential markets) and non-market valuations (be they social, ethical or cultural). Our key argument is that value is produced through distributed and heterogeneous processes: products, practices, principles and places are valued at the same time. We show that there is not only a valuation of technical and production aspects (well highlighted in the key literature on valuation), but also a valuation of social links and of specific forms of organization. Both are inseparable - it is neither the object nor the context in themselves that are valued, but the “good-within-the-context-of-its-making”: the production of vegan cheese or biological ink and the places and communities of DIY biology or future markets are valued. The valuation practices we examine aim at producing an interest in a threefold sense: a general interest (a public good), an interest for the public (its curiosity), and a monetary interest (by making people financially participate).","PeriodicalId":41258,"journal":{"name":"Versus-Quaderni di Studi Semiotici","volume":"69 1","pages":"101-101"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2020-03-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86813886","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Communicating Credibility by Expert Service Workers","authors":"Phillipa K. Chong, A. Bourgoin","doi":"10.3384/vs.2001-5992.2020.7.1.65","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3384/vs.2001-5992.2020.7.1.65","url":null,"abstract":"One of the fastest-growing occupational groups in the US is expert service workers: knowledge workers who sell their expert knowledge and services on the free market. In this paper, we offer a comparative case study of how expert service workers, whom are hired for their professional evaluations, navigate the tensions of the expert service-client relation in a specific but critical way: How do they convince others that their professional recommendations are credible? Specifically, we draw on two disparate cases of expert evaluators, book reviewers and management consultants, and document two communicative patterns that these professional groups use to build the credibility of their professional recommendations: (i) transparency and (ii) distanciation. Similarities in the credibility tactics of these two sets of expert service workers from two very different worlds, the Arts and business, suggest their generalizable value. Hence, we conclude by discussing how our findings offer a general approach we call, the evaluative triangle, for studying the credibility tactics of expert claims across multiple worlds of work.","PeriodicalId":41258,"journal":{"name":"Versus-Quaderni di Studi Semiotici","volume":"22 1","pages":"65-65"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2020-03-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81919975","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Temporality in Academic Evaluation","authors":"Björn Hammarfelt, A. Rushforth, S. de Rijcke","doi":"10.3384/vs.2001-5992.2020.7.1.33","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3384/vs.2001-5992.2020.7.1.33","url":null,"abstract":"This paper builds on emerging concerns with how temporality and spatiality unfold in, and order, academic evaluation practices. We unpack how the notion of ‘trajectory’ – a simultaneously prospecti ...","PeriodicalId":41258,"journal":{"name":"Versus-Quaderni di Studi Semiotici","volume":"23 1","pages":"33-33"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2020-03-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81212296","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}