People

Jamie Ranger

Research Topic:

Radical Democratic Theory After Social Media: Technics, Ontology and the Political
AFFILIATION
Political Theory Network
Communications Team
College
St Hugh's College
Course
DPhil Politics
Downloads
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My thesis explores the relationship between radical politics and the technical configuration of social life. I argue that technological developments contribute to a form of social acceleration that destabilises institutional and ideological arrangements and “repoliticises” our collective sense of time and place (producing new political subjectivities). The resultant political turbulence provides opportunities for the emergence of both reactionary and emancipatory political alternatives. Social media is my core example, demonstrating that politically both “everything and nothing” changed through its disruption of traditional media consumption.

My research interests include - radical democratic theory (critical theory, post-Marxism, anarchism and expansive accounts of democracy); the politics of technology (social media, internet cultures); interdisciplinary approaches to the politics of memory and space; the history of political thought, specifically receptions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau; and unconventional political thought from outside the philosophical canon.

Before the DPhil, I received an MPhil in Politics from the University of Oxford, an MSc in Political Theory from the London School of Economics and a first-class BA in Politics and Philosophy from the University of Sheffield.

Publications

Ranger, J., & Ranger, W. 2022. Towards a resonant theory of memory politicsMemory Studies0(0).

Ranger, J., 2020. Slow Down! Digital Deceleration Towards A Socialist Social Media. tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique. Open Access Journal for a Global Sustainable Information Society18(1), pp.254-267.

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Ranger, J., 2022. Book Review: Spectacle and Diversity: Transnational Media and Global Power by Lee Artz. tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique. Open Access Journal for a Global Sustainable Information Society, 20 (1), pp.138-142.

Ranger, J., 2022. Book Review: Psychoanalysis and Digital Culture – Audiences, Social Media, and Big Data by Jacob Johanssen & Event Horizon – Sexuality, Politics, Online Culture, and the Limits of Capitalism by Bonni Rambatan & Jacob Johanssen. tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique. Open Access Journal for a Global Sustainable Information Society20(1). pp.37-44.

Ranger, J., 2021. Book Review: The Imperial Mode of Living: Everyday Life and the Ecological Crisis of Capitalism by Ulrich Brand and Markus Wissen. tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique. Open Access Journal for a Global Sustainable Information Society19(2), pp.277-286.

Ranger, J. 2021. Book Review: The Circle of the Snake: Nostalgia and Utopia in the Age of Big Tech by Grafton Tanner. tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique. Open Access Journal for a Global Sustainable Information Society 19(2), pp.301-306.

Ranger, J., 2020. Book Review: The Internet Myth: From The Internet Imaginary to Network Ideologies by Paolo Bory. tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique. Open Access Journal for a Global Sustainable Information Society, pp.556-559.