Tag Archives: Ismael Al-Amoudi

CSO 11th annual workshop & open workshop: ‘Margaret Archer’s legacy to the social sciences’ – Grenoble Ecole de Management, Grenoble, France on Jan. 12th 2024 morning.

The 11th annual Centre for Social Ontology (CSO) workshop Celebrating Margaret Archer’s intellectual life and contributions will take place at Grenoble Ecole de Management (GEM), Grenoble, France, from January 9th to January 12th, 2024. It will culminate in an open workshop (roundtable) Margaret Archer’s legacy to the social sciences in the morning of Friday January 12th. The CSO is glad to invite GEM colleagues (e.g., Professors, PhD students) to attend this open workshop. Other researchers in the Grenoble area are also welcomed. This year, we will discuss the legacies of sociologist and social theorist Prof. Margaret S. Archer (†2023) who founded the CSO in 2011. Registration details below.

Margaret Archer’s legacy to the social sciences
Centre for Social Ontology Open Workshop

Friday 12th Jan. 2024, from 9.30am to noon
Grenoble Ecole de Management, 12 rue Pierre Sémard, 38000 Grenoble, France
Room F601 (last-minute change!), in-person only

Registration: please contact Aristide Bertrand on aristide.bertrand@grenoble-em.com (RSVP by Monday 18th Dec. 2023). Attendance is free of charge.

Discussants of this roundtable:

Ismael Al-Amoudi (Grenoble Ecole de Management, FR);
Mark Carrigan (University of Manchester, UK);
Anna Galazka (Cardiff University, UK);
Doug Porpora (Drexel University, PA, USA);
Genevieve Shanahan (Cardiff University, UK).

With special thanks from the CSO to Chrystel Brochand, from GEM research administration, for her prime role in making it possible for these discussants to discuss at GEM in-person.

Prof. Margaret S. Archer (†2023) was one of the most distinguished sociologists and social theorists of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Although her life and career have been long and fruitful, her death also leaves a void among academics, esp. those interested in interdisciplinary research that combats structures of oppression and inequality. She leaves behind a large and dense sum of works that deserves to live through the future writings of new generations of scholars.

This year’s CSO Open Workshop consists in a roundtable gathering scholars from various disciplines and of various levels of experience who engaged with Archer’s work in their research. Participants shall discuss the contributions of Prof. Margaret Archer both to social theory and to the practices of (inter-disciplinary) social scientists. Doing so is compounded by the breadth of Archer’s intellectual career that went through several intellectual turns, each spanning over thousands of densely written pages: realism and temporality in the 1990s, in defence of Humanism in the 2000s; social reflexivity in the 2010s and philosophical reflections on personhood and robophobia in the late 2010s/ early 2020s…

Picture at the top: Copyright Agence Prisme / Pierre Jayet via GEM photothèque

Are post-human technologies dehumanizing? Human enhancement and artificial intelligence in contemporary societies – Ismael Al-Amoudi.

Ismael Al-Amoudi, Director of the CSO, Professor at Grenoble Ecole de Management, has recently published an article in the Journal of Critical Realism, entitled Are post-human technologies dehumanizing? Human enhancement and artificial intelligence in contemporary societies.

We are happy to highlight this article, in which Ismael Al-Amoudi mobilises a number of chapters published by CSO members within the latest book series ‘Post-human society and the future of humanity’, so to explore dehumanizing potentials of post-human technologies.

“I cannot state how much my thinking has benefitted from discussing and reading the works of other CSO writers while I was treading my own little path through the wonders of post-human society. This intellectual journey has allowed me to investigate the following question: post-human technologies offer great hopes and great perils to human beings, but in what sense are post-human technologies dehumanizing?” (Al-Amoudi, 2022, p. 521).

On that note, the CSO wishes all a fully human Christmastime!

Image from David S. Soriano, Wikipedia Commons under CC BY-SA 4.0

Book review: Al-Amoudi, I., & Morgan, J. (Eds.). (2019). Realist responses to post-human society: Ex machina. Abingdon, UK: Routledge.

Prof. Andrew Sayer (Lancaster University, Sociology department) has just written a book review for Realist Responses to Post-Human Society: Ex Machina. This first volume of the CSO’s latest book series on ‘Post-human society and the future of humanity’ was edited by Profs. Ismael Al-Amoudi and Jamie Morgan.

The review appears in the journal Organization and can be accessed here.

“What comes across most clearly is that we cannot avoid issues of how we characterise the human, the nature of personhood, intelligence and the components of flourishing, and how we should value them vis-a-vis other species or intelligent machines” (Sayer, 2022).

Image from Geralt, CC0 1.0

Artificial intelligence and algorithmic irresponsibility – Ismael Al-Amoudi

In an article for The Conversation France, professor Ismael Al-Amoudi, director of the Centre for Social Ontology, and John Latsis, chairman of the Independent Social Research Foundation, investigate AI’s deresponsibilizing tendencies: ‘Artificial intelligence and algorithmic irresponsibility: the devil in the machine?

Image via www.vpnsrus.com, CC BY 2.0