[Commlist] CFP: Optimization: Towards a Critical Concept

Call for Papers: Optimization: Towards a Critical Concept for Special 
Themed Issue of the /Review of Communications/

Optimization has emerged as a quiet “buzzword.” It is seemingly 
everywhere and yet elusive. Our bodies, tools, and institutions are now 
understood as resilient and perpetually updatable. New diets and fitness 
apps promise to optimize our caloric intake just as an optimal 
information diet promises to make many informed citizens. So informed 
that what to watch next or who to vote for becomes one of many 
effortless choices made possible by the recommendations of algorithms, 
smartphones, and other optimizing systems. But what does optimization 
mean anyway? Or more crucially, what does it do? Who or what is 
optimized? What relationships or platforms are generated? And who or 
what or where falls away—is dis-optimized?

Optimization intervenes in the growing formulation of algorithmic 
governance, regulation or algocracy, drawing on theories of 
communication and control. Optimization refers to specific technical 
architectures (e.g., centralized, decentralized or distributed) as well 
as applications of mathematical theory to social life—including Pareto 
optimalities, linear programming and stochastic theory. Taken together, 
optimization provides a way to understand the iterative projects of 
algorithmic governance as iterations of operations research, 
systems-cybernetic theory, or computational management.

But optimization is also deeply cultural and situated—even if its claims 
are often general or biopolitical. As such, its technical logics and 
architectures should be considered alongside real social practices, 
geopolitical networks, and the forms of organization (and violence) 
shored up by the desire for optimum performance.

This themed issue calls for the interdisciplinary scrutiny of 
optimization as a critical concept and a form of management crucial to 
the rhythm of networks. We invite historical and theoretical 
interventions around optimization and seek a wide range of approaches 
and analyses of the sociotechnical assemblages made possible by 
autonomous software and ubiquitous hardware. The goal is to provide a 
clear, multi-faceted introduction; help situate contemporary concerns 
around platforms and social engineering within the development of 
management, cybernetics, social and political theory; and turn attention 
to global specificities beyond North Atlantic examples, as well as the 
many forms of difference elided by optimization itself.

How do these systems intervene in economic, social, and political life? 
And how do they transform or diminish the political imagination—now tied 
to industrial research and development and the calculations of a control 
society?

Some topics this issue hopes to consider include, but are not limited to:

  * Considerations of how optimization systems intervene in economic,
    social, and political life. How do they transform or diminish the
    political imagination—now tied to industrial research and
    development and the calculations of a control society?
  * Case studies of optimization of the human/body (e.g., health,
    self-harm, mindfulness, biohacking) or systemic optimization (e.g.,
    smart cities, ecosystems, platforms, networks)
  * Genealogies of optimization techniques with particular attention to
    operations research, Pareto optimalities, linear programming, game
    theory, chaos theory, and multi-agent emergent systems
  * Metaphors and practices of optimization in popular or political
    cultures (e.g., self-tracking, speculative fiction, acceleration,
    activism)
  * Optimization from or in relation to the margins (e.g., questions of
    scale, geopolitics, and frameworks beyond the biopolitical or
    cybernetic) or attention to problems of difference (e.g., race,
    ethnicity, indigeneity, religion, disability, sexuality, gender)
  * Regulatory consequences of myths or discourses of optimization in
    social, media, or technology policy
  * Speculations around the possibility of dark optimizations or radical
    futures through optimization (e.g., fully automated luxury
    communism, post scarcity, posthuman, post-Earth, dis-optimization)

*Submission Deadline and Guidelines*

*December 1, 2019* Submit a 500-word abstract for Guest Editors’ review
*Spring 2020* Submit full manuscript for Guest Editors’ review
*July 1, 2020* Submit full manuscript for peer review

Manuscripts must be submitted electronically through the ScholarOne 
Manuscripts site for /Review of Communication/: 
https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/rroc

Manuscripts should be prepared in Microsoft Word using a 12-point common 
font, double-spaced, and between 6,000 to 8,000 words (including endnotes).

Please refer to and follow the journal’s manuscript preparations 
instruction for authors 
<https://www.tandfonline.com/action/authorSubmission?show=instructions&journalCode=rroc20>.

Authors should identify which themed call their paper is responding to 
by selecting the relevant drop-down option in ScholarOne.

*Review Process*
In keeping with the journal’s current practice, submissions will undergo 
rigorous peer review, including screening by the guest editors and 
review by at least two anonymous referees.

Please direct inquiries about the Optimization: Towards a Critical 
Concept themed issue to:

*Fenwick McKelvey, PhD*
Associate Professor
Department of Communication Studies
Concordia University
fenwick.mckelvey[at]concordia.ca <http://concordia.ca>

*Joshua Neves, PhD*
Associate Professor
Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema
Concordia University
joshua.neves[at]concordia.ca <http://concordia.ca>


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