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What is ephemera: theory & politics in organization? ephemera is an independent journal, founded in 2001. ephemera provides its content free of charge, and charges its readers only with free thought. theory ephemera encourages contributions that explicitly engage with theoretical and conceptual understandings of organizational issues, organizational processes and organizational life. This does not preclude empirical studies or commentaries on contemporary issues, but such contributions consider how theory and practice intersect in these cases. We especially publish articles that apply or develop theoretical insights that are not part of the established canon of organization studies. ephemera counters the current hegemonization of social theory and operates at the borders of organization studies in that it continuously seeks to question what organization studies is and what it can become. politics ephemera encourages the amplification of the political problematics of organization within academic debate, which today is being actively de-politicized by the current organization of thought within and without universities and business schools. We welcome papers that engage the political in a variety of ways as required by the organizational forms being interrogated in a given instance. organization Articles published in ephemera are concerned with theoretical and political aspects of organizations, organization and organizing. We refrain from imposing a narrow definition of organization, which would unnecessarily halt debate. Eager to avoid the charge of ‘anything goes’ however, we do invite our authors to state how their contributions connect to questions of organization and organizing, both theoretical and practical. ephemera 17(2), May 2017 The social productivity of anonymity Götz Bachmann, Michi Knecht and Andreas Wittel in association with: may f l y www.mayflybooks.org Published by the ephemera editorial collective: Bent Meier Sørensen, Bernadette Loacker, Birke Otto, Christian Garmann Johnsen, Christos Giotitsas, Ekaterina Chertkovskaya, Helen Delaney, Justine Grønbæk Pors, Katie Sullivan, Kenneth Weir, Konstantin Stoborod, Lena Olaison, Marton Racz, Martyna Śliwa, Matthew Allen, Nick Butler, Ozan Nadir Alakavuklar, Randi Heinrichs, Rowland Curtis, Sara Louise Muhr, Stephen Dunne. First published for free online at www.ephemerajournal.org and in print in association with MayFlyBooks (www.mayflybooks.org) in 2017. ISSN (Online) 1473-2866 ISSN (Print) 2052-1499 ISBN (Print) 978-1-906948-37-5 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by- nc-nd/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA. The cover art is “Dead Drops”, anonymous offline filesharing in public by Aram Bartholl, 2010 - 2017; picture by Aram Bartholl. [https://deaddrops.com] Table of Contents Editorial The social productivity of anonymity 241-258 Götz Bachmann, Michi Knecht and Andreas Wittel Articles Immunity from the image: The right to privacy as an antidote to anonymous modernity 259-281 Daniël de Zeeuw The exposure of Kataryna: How Polish journalists and bloggers debate online anonymity 283-305 Kornelia Trytko and Andreas Wittel On anonymity in disasters: Socio-technical practices in emergency management 307-326 Katrina Petersen, Monika Büscher and Catherine Easton What can self-organised group therapy teach us about anonymity? 327-350 Paula Helm Archaeology of no names? The social productivity of anonymity in the archaeological information process 351-376 Isto Huvila Notes Against a personalisation of the self 377-397 Renée Ridgway Visual Essay Images of anonymity 399-419 Andreas Broeckmann Interview The terms of anonymity: An interview with Marit Hansen, German data protection expert 421-430 Götz Bachmann, Paula Bialski and Marit Hansen Reviews The dark riders of the internet? 431-438 Nils Zurawski Transilient relations: Exploring the social in anonymity 439-446 Amelie Baumann Crisis, critique and alternatives: Revolutionary politics as the lost substance of the left? 447-455 Christian Huber and Vitor Hugo Klein Jr., Information, cybernetics and the second industrial revolution 457-465 Thomas Swann the author(s) 2017 ISSN 1473-2866 (Online) ISSN 2052-1499 (Print) www.ephemerajournal.org volume 17(2): 241-258 The social productivity of anonymity∗ Götz Bachmann, Michi Knecht and Andreas Wittel Introduction Anonymity is under attack. In a process that started decades ago, an increasing multiplicity of forces is creating a slow, but steadily rising perfect storm. These forces include communication infrastructures like the IP-address-based Internet, cellular networks and social media platforms. Exponentially increasing storage and processing capabilities are now mounting up to big data, to be analysed with algorithms evolving out of machine learning. An ever increasing number of sensory devices, from surveillance cameras to smartphones, smart cars, smart cities to the rise of drones are matched by low cost ways of analysing DNA and other biological traces. All such technical forces find their equals in the politics of fear; in the extension of the various national security apparatus; in normative dreams of transparency, connectivity and justice-via-measurement; and in digital capitalism’s competition for more and more data. As a consequence, the end of anonymity has been declared as near, or already upon us. But even though this special issue is partially motivated by such scenarios, we aim to take a step back. Our initial questions are simple: What is that which might be under threat? And why should we care? ∗ Some elements of our conception of anonymity were developed in the context of a VolkswagenStiftung funded project ‘Reconfiguring anonymity: Reciprocity, identifyability and accountability in transformation’. We thank all our colleagues in this project. Further essential input came from Bernd Jürgen Warneken and Carol Wittel, as well as from the reviewers and members of the editorial collective of ephemera. ephemera: theory & politics in organization 17(2): 241-258 Conceptualising anonymity This special issue is based on the premise that anonymity is always socially productive and always produced. With this premise we do not try to establish a normative or ethical principle. Our aim is to highlight conditions for, and potentials of, anonymous forms of social action and interaction to contribute to the making of the social world. Anonymity’s contributions are manifold. Surely they include those to radical political action, as anonymity can not only help to evade and fight surveillance, but it can also enable particular forms of equality or certain forms of speaking out and speaking up. Indeed, the ties of radical politics to anonymity are only bound to grow further – an example for this is anonymity’s potential to challenge new forms of surplus value extraction in the data economy. However, at the same time we know all too well that hate speech or attacks on the values and practices of doubting and challenging truth claims thrive under anonymous constellations, too. And indeed, all such forms and potentials – be it for politics of the radical left or its opposite – are part of an even larger field of the social productivity and production of anonymity in general: a field that is not only marked by various and often contradictory ethical and political potentials, but also by a plethora of forms, constellations, practices, actors and outcomes. It is the aim of this issue to explore this wider field. We aim to explore how the productivity and production of anonymity contribute to the making of the social world (which includes, but exceeds radical politics.) Given that anonymity plays a significant role in the constitution of the social world, it received for a long time less theoretical attention than one might expect. But this situation has started to change profoundly. As anonymity is seen as both under threat, and threatening – both claims are often tied to digital media –, the topic of anonymity has generated a small boom of research in a variety of disciplines. Anonymity has thus become a topic in organisation studies (Rossiter and Zehle, 2014; Scott, 2013), media and communications (Brunton and Nissenbaum, 2015; Lovink, 2011,), philosophy (Halpin, 2012, Ponesse, 2013; Vogelmann, 2012), history (Pabst, 2011; Starner et al, 2011), literature studies (Griffin, 2003, Mullan, 2007), sociology (Bauman, 2012; Hirschauer, 2010; Rost, 2003; Wiedemann, 2012), information science (Tsikerdekis, 2013), geography and urban studies (Garber, 2000). Some disciplines can draw on more intensive traditions of engagement: these entail social psychology (Huang and Li, 2016), law and legal studies (Kerr et al., 2009) and cryptography, mathematics and computer science (Danezis and Diaz, 2008) as well as the new, specialised surveillance studies (Lyon, 2007; Marx, 2015). While it is notable that the topic has seen a rise of attention in a multiplicity of disciplines, it is also remarkable how little acknowledgement or discussion there is across them. 242 | editorial Götz Bachmann, Michi Knecht and Andreas Wittel The social productivity of anonymity We conceptualise anonymity, as many of the aforementioned authors do, as constellations of partial unknowability, invisibility and untrackability. However, such a short definition hides as much as it clarifies. The editorial