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This chapter is a reflection on the digital mediation of death and dying in the COVID-19 pandemic from a critical political economy perspective. It asks: What is the role of the communication of death and dying in capitalist society? How has communication with dying loved ones changed in the COVID-19 pandemic? What roles have digital technologies and capitalism played in this context?

Building on foundational theoretical insights into the role of death and dying in capitalism, this essay presents some empirical studies of death and dying in society and the COVID-19 pandemic and interprets their findings from a Communication Studies perspective.

In capitalist societies, death and dying are taboo topics and are hidden, invisible and institutionalised. The COVID-19 pandemic had contradictory effects on the role of death in society. It is a human, cultural and societal universal that humans want to die in company with loved ones. The presented empirical studies confirm the insights of the philosophers Kwasi Wiredu and Jürgen Habermas that humans are fundamentally social and communicative beings from the cradle to the grave. The wish to die in a social manner derives from humans' social and communicative nature. In capitalism, the reality of dying diverges from the ideal of dying. Capitalism hides, individualises, makes invisible and institutionalises death and dying.

The analysed studies confirm the insights of the philosophers Kwasi Wiredu and Jürgen Habermas that humans are fundamentally social and communicative beings from the cradle to the grave. Building and going beyond the works of the political theorist and philosopher Achille Mbembe and the philosopher and sociologist Erich Fromm, the essay introduces the notion of capitalist necropower. It is shown how the COVID-19 pandemic in many cases destroyed the social and communicative nature of human beings and how capitalist necropower created unnecessary surplus deaths and formed the context of the digital mediation of communication with dying loved ones in the pandemic.

Purpose – The purpose of this chapter is to bring data to suggest that group processes have a biological base, lodged in human neurology as it evolved over the last 7 million years.

Design/methodology/approach – The method for discovering the neurological basis of group processes is labelled evolutionary sociology, and this method revolves around: (1) cladistic analysis of traits of distant ancestors to humans and the great apes, with whom humans share a very high proportion of genes, (2) comparative neurology between the great apes and humans that can inform us about how the brains of humans were rewired from the structures shared by the last common ancestor to humans and apes, and (3) ecological analysis of the habitats and niches that generated selection pressures on the neurology of apes and hominins.

Findings – A key finding is that most of the interpersonal processes that drive group processes are neurologically based and evolved before the brain among hominins was sufficiently large to generate systems of symbols organized in cultural texts remotely near the human measure. There is, then, good reason to study the neurological basis of behavior because neurology explains more about the dynamics of interpersonal behavior than does culture, which was a very late arrival to the hominin line.

Research implications – One implication of these findings is that social scientific analysis of interpersonal processes and group dynamics can no longer assume that groups are solely a constructed process, mediated by culture and social structure. There were powerful selection pressures during the course of hominin evolution to increase hominin sociality and especially group formation, which required considerable rewiring of the basic ape brain. Since groups are not “natural” to apes in general and even to an evolved ape-like humans, it is important to discover how humans ever became group-organizing animals. The answer resides in the dramatic enhancing of emotions in hominins and humans, which shifts attention away from the neocortex to the older subcortical areas of the brain. Once this shift is made, theorizing and research, as well as public views on human sociality, need to be recast as, first, an evolved biological trait and, only second, as a most tenuous and fragile of a big-brained animal using language and culture to construct its social world.

Originality/value – The value of this kind of analysis is to liberate sociology and the social sciences in general from simplistic views that, because humans have language and can use language to construct culture and social structures, the underlying biology and neurology of human action is not relevant to understanding the social world. Indeed, just the opposite is the case: to the extent that social scientists insist upon a social constructionists research agenda, they will fail to conceptualize and perform research on more fundamental forces in the social world, including group dynamics.

Service robots are expected to become increasingly common, but the ways in which they can move around in an environment with humans, collect and store data about humans and share such data produce a potential for privacy violations. In human-to-human contexts, such violations are transgression of norms to which humans typically react negatively. This study examines if similar reactions occur when the transgressor is a robot. The main dependent variable was the overall evaluation of the robot.

Service robot privacy violations were manipulated in a between-subjects experiment in which a human user interacted with an embodied humanoid robot in an office environment.

The results show that the robot's violations of human privacy attenuated the overall evaluation of the robot and that this effect was sequentially mediated by perceived robot morality and perceived robot humanness. Given that a similar reaction pattern would be expected when humans violate other humans' privacy, the present study offers evidence in support of the notion that humanlike non-humans can elicit responses similar to those elicited by real humans.

The results imply that designers of service robots and managers in firms using such robots for providing service to employees should be concerned with restricting the potential for robots' privacy violation activities if the goal is to increase the acceptance of service robots in the habitat of humans.

To date, few empirical studies have examined reactions to service robots that violate privacy norms.

Applications of artificial intelligence (AI), such as virtual and physical service robots, generative AI, large language models and decision support systems, alter the nature of services. Most service research centers on the division between human and AI resources. Less attention has been paid to analyzing the entangled resource relations and interactions between humans and AI entities. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to extend our metatheoretical understanding of resource integration and value cocreation by analyzing different human–AI resource relations in service ecosystems.

The conceptual paper adapts a novel framework from postphenomenology, specifically cyborg intentionality. This framework is used to analyze what kinds of human–AI resource relations enable resource integration and value cocreation in service ecosystems.

We conceptualize seven different human–AI resource relations, namely background, embodiment, hermeneutic, alterity, cyborg, immersion and composite relation. The sociotechnical entangled perspective on human–AI resource relations challenges and reframes our understanding of interactions between humans and nonhumans in resource integration and value cocreation and the distinction between operant and operand resources in service research.

Our primary contribution to researchers and service providers is dissolving the distinction between operant and operand resources. We present two foundational propositions. 1. Humans and AI become entangled value cocreating resources in inherently sociotechnical service ecosystems; and 2. Human and AI entanglements in value cocreation manifest through seven resource relations in inherently sociotechnical service ecosystems. Understanding the combinatorial potential of different human–AI resource relations enables service providers to make informed choices in service ecosystems.

This study aims to examine humans’ reactions to service robots’ display of warmth in robot-to-robot interactions – a setting in which humans’ impressions of a service robot will not only be based on what this robot does in relation to humans, but also on what it does to other robots.

Service robot display of warmth was manipulated in an experimental setting in such a way that a service robot A expressed low versus high levels of warmth in relation to another service robot B.

The results indicate that a high level of warmth expressed by robot A vis-à-vis robot B boosted humans’ overall evaluations of A, and that this influence was mediated by the perceived humanness and the perceived happiness of A.

Numerous studies have examined humans’ reactions when they interact with a service robot or other synthetic agents that provide service. Future service encounters, however, will comprise also multi-robot systems, which means that there will be many opportunities for humans to be exposed to robot-to-robot interactions. Yet, this setting has hitherto rarely been examined in the service literature.

The supposedly radical development of artificial intelligence (AI) has raised questions regarding the moral responsibility of it. In the sphere of business, they are translated into questions about AI and business ethics (BE) and corporate social responsibility (CSR). The purpos of this study is to conceptually reformulate these questions from the point of view of two possible aspect-changes, namely, starting from corporate social irresponsibility (CSI) and starting not from AIs incapability for responsibility but from its ability to imitate human CSR without performing typical human CSI.

The author draws upon the literature and his previous works on the relationship between AI and human CSI. This comparison aims to remodel the understanding of human CSI and AIs inability to be CSI. The conceptual remodelling is offered by taking a negative view on the relation. If AI can be made not to perform human-like CSI, then AI is at least less CSI than humans. For this task, it is necessary to remodel human and AI CSR, but AI does not have to be CSR. It is sufficient that it can be less CSI than humans to be more CSR.

The previously suggested remodelling of basic concepts in question leads to the conclusion that it is not impossible for AI to act or operate more CSI then humans simply by not making typical human CSIs. Strictly speaking, AI is not CSR because it cannot be responsible as humans can. If it can perform actions with a significantly lesser amount of CSI in comparison to humans, it is certainly less CSI.

This paper is only a conceptual remodelling and a suggestion of a research hypothesis. As such, it implies particular morality, ethics and the concepts of CSI and AI.

How this remodelling could be done in practice is an issue of future research.

The author delivers the paper on comparison between human and AI CSI which is not much discussed in literature.

With the increase in the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI)-based decision-making, organizations are facilitating human–AI collaboration. This collaboration can occur in a variety of configurations with the division of labor, with differences in the nature of interdependence being parallel or sequential, along with or without the presence of specialization. This study intends to explore the extent to which humans express comfort with different models human–AI collaboration.

Situational response surveys were adopted to identify configurations where humans experience the greatest trust, role clarity and preferred feedback style. Regression analysis was used to analyze the results.

Some configurations contribute to greater trust and role clarity with AI as a colleague. There is no configuration in which AI as a colleague produces lower trust than humans. At the same time, the human distrust in AI may be less about human vs AI and more about the division of labor in which human–AI work.

The study explores the extent to which humans express comfort with different models of an algorithm as partners. It focuses on work design and the division of labor between humans and AI. The finding of the study emphasizes the role of work design in human–AI collaboration. There is human–AI work design that should be avoided as they reduce trust. Organizations need to be cautious in considering the impact of design on building trust and gaining acceptance with technology.

The paper's originality lies in focusing on the design of collaboration rather than on performance of the team.

Although humans are part of nature, the relationship between humans and nature is not well understood, neither in sustainable marketing nor in relationship marketing. Nature is damaged by humans, and a lot of natural resources coming from nature are taken for granted. The services provided by nature are also often taken for granted. However, humans cannot live without these services, but nature can probably survive without humans, especially man-made (artificial) services. The paper aims to offer a frame that allows aligning marketers and academics’ understanding of service with that of sustainability for sustainable marketing.

A literature review of different literature streams, biological, ecological and service literature shows that service is a much broader phenomenon as discussed in the service literature. The paper will show that a fundamental relationship between either humans or humans and nature is service as defined here. Service is understood here as an ongoing process of exchange and change. Service as proposed here is a form of coexistence.

Service will be defined as an ongoing process of exchange and change (transfer and transformation) of resources. This understanding integrates human and natural service without connecting it only to human intentions, wishes or needs as causation for service. The process of service as conceptualized here is in line with the understanding of sustainability, as it is discussed nowadays. Aligning marketers’ understanding of service with that of sustainability gives a new frame for sustainable marketing.

The work may be understood as a step toward a sustainable marketing by framing sustainable processes from a service perspective. The holistic understanding of sustainable marketing offers new chances not only for further research but also for a better (more sustainable) understanding of day-to-day practices.

If humans understand the fundamental relationship with nature, it can help to act in harmony with nature and not against it to improve sustainable development based on a better understanding of human’s relationship with nature.

Mainstream sustainable marketing is sometimes based on a strong anthropocentrism. This paper balances the role of humans toward nature.

It is the first paper in relationship marketing looking at the relationship with nature and uses this view to frame this concept of sustainable marketing.

Recent efforts to go beyond gross domestic product as a measure of economic performance raise important questions about the nature of the economy, including: what is the best measure of a sound, flourishing economy, and what is the purpose of ‘doing well’ in economic terms? One possible measure of the soundness of an economy is the extent to which it results in better lives for humans – a thought that has inspired measures such as the Human Development Index, among others. In the bigger picture, a sound, flourishing economy should also be consistent with good, and perhaps optimal, lives for non-humans, and well-functioning ecosystems. On this measure, economics should not be an altogether anthropocentric enterprise. To go beyond anthropocentric notions of economic performance, a degree of integration between economics, philosophy and biology is required, with Umwelt theory and biosemiotics indicating a way forward. A merely economic outlook can easily lead to the commodification of each and every organism and natural resource, thus neglecting the agency, interests and intrinsic value of animals and other non-humans. To truly ‘serve all’ in an Anthropocene-era world, where the living conditions of practically all organisms on the planet are affected by human economic activities, economists need to acknowledge that there are economic stakeholders beyond humans. This would make economics more compatible with current outlooks in normative ethics with regard to the value of animals, biodiversity, etc., and could be part of a radical reconceptualization of the nature of the economy, in which economic value is situated within value theory in a wider sense.

This essay asks: How can we understand and theorise the impacts of robots and Artificial Intelligence (AI) on everyday life based on Radical Humanism? How can Lefebvre's ideas be used to reveal the ideological character of contemporary accounts of the impacts of robots and AI on society? It engages with rather unknown works of the Radical Humanist Henri Lefebvre on the sociology and philosophy of technology such as Vers le cybernanthrope (Towards the Cybernanthrope). Foundations of a Lefebvrian, dialectical, Radical Humanist approach to the sociology and philosophy of technology are presented. This essay introduces Lefebvre's notion of the cybernanthrope and sets it in relation to robots and AI in contemporary society. Based on Lefebvre's critique of the cybernanthrope, this chapter develops foundations of the ideology critique of robots and AI in digital capitalism. It discusses examples of technological deterministic and social constructivist thought in the context of robotics, AI, and cyborgs and argues for an alternative, Lefebvrian, dialectical approach. This essay situates Humanism in the context of computing, AI and robotics. The chapter advances a Lefebvrian Radical Humanism by engaging in analyses of AI and robots in Post-humanism, Transhumanism, techno-deterministic approaches, social construction of technology approaches, techno-optimism, techno-pessimism, acceleratonism, the mass unemployment hypothesis and Spike Jonze's movie Her. This chapter shows that the major lesson we can learn from the Radical Humanist sociology of technology and Henri Lefebvre's works on technology is that Radical Humanism helps creating and sustaining technologies for the many, not the few. This insight remains of high relevance in the age of digital capitalism, smart robots and AI.