Collective discussion: Toward critical approaches to intelligence as a social phenomenon

TY - JOUR

T1 - Collective discussion

T2 - Toward critical approaches to intelligence as a social phenomenon

AU - Jaffel, Hager Ben

AU - Hoffmann, Alvina

AU - Kearns, Oliver

AU - Larsson, Sebastian

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © The Author(s) (2020). Copyright: Copyright 2021 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.

PY - 2020/9/1

Y1 - 2020/9/1

N2 - This collective discussion proposes a novel understanding of intelligence as a social phenomenon, taking place in a social space that increasingly involves actors and professional fields not immediately seen as part of intelligence. This discussion is a response to the inherent functionalism in Intelligence Studies (IS) that conceives of intelligence as a cycle serving policymakers. Instead, our interventions seek to problematize and break with this notion of the cycle and show what an alternative study of intelligence would look like. In the first part of the discussion, we situate our intervention in the broader fields of IS and International Political Sociology. Espousing a transdisciplinary approach, we build our four interventions as transversal lines cutting through a social space in which agents with differing stakes participate and reframe the meaning and practice of intelligence. Intelligence professionals not only have to reckon with policymakers, but also increasingly with law enforcement agents, representatives from the science and technology sector, judges, lawyers, activists, and Internet users themselves. Each move takes a step further away from the intelligence cycle by introducing new empirical sites, actors, and stakes.

AB - This collective discussion proposes a novel understanding of intelligence as a social phenomenon, taking place in a social space that increasingly involves actors and professional fields not immediately seen as part of intelligence. This discussion is a response to the inherent functionalism in Intelligence Studies (IS) that conceives of intelligence as a cycle serving policymakers. Instead, our interventions seek to problematize and break with this notion of the cycle and show what an alternative study of intelligence would look like. In the first part of the discussion, we situate our intervention in the broader fields of IS and International Political Sociology. Espousing a transdisciplinary approach, we build our four interventions as transversal lines cutting through a social space in which agents with differing stakes participate and reframe the meaning and practice of intelligence. Intelligence professionals not only have to reckon with policymakers, but also increasingly with law enforcement agents, representatives from the science and technology sector, judges, lawyers, activists, and Internet users themselves. Each move takes a step further away from the intelligence cycle by introducing new empirical sites, actors, and stakes.

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85099622197&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1093/ips/olaa015

DO - 10.1093/ips/olaa015

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:85099622197

SN - 1749-5679

VL - 14

SP - 323

EP - 344

JO - International Political Sociology

JF - International Political Sociology

IS - 3

ER -