Category: academia

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Reblog> Postdoc job on ProgCity project – great opportunity

This is a great opportunity for someone broadly working in the areas of interest specified below…

Post advertised: Postdoc on ProgCity project

We are seeking a postdoctoral researcher (14 month contract) to join the Programmable City project.  The researcher will critically examine:

  • the political economy of smart city technologies and initiatives; the creation of smart city markets; the inter-relation of urban (re)development and smart city initiatives; the relationship between vendors, business lobby groups, economic development agencies, and city administrations; financialization and new business models; and/or,
  • the relationship between the political geography of city administration, governance arrangements, and smart city initiatives; political and legal geographies of testbed urbanism and smart city initiatives; smart city technologies and governmentality.

There will be some latitude to negotiate with the principal investigator the exact focus of the research undertaken. While some of the research will require primary fieldwork (Dublin/Boston), it is anticipated it will also involve the secondary analysis of data already generated by the project.

More details on the post and how to apply can be found on the university HR website.  Closing date: 5th December.

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The awkwardness of data debates, or how social scientists & policymakers don’t talk

I feel prompted to write something I’ve been puzzling over for a while because of a tweet and post on medium [The commodification of data, by Ade Adewunmi] I saw recently:

It’s a good post, but for some academic social scientists this is now an established argument that’s been developed, been the subject of conferences and books and so on. For a while now, I’ve had a sense of an awkward gap between the conversations about the various concerns for ‘data’ I witness through social media. In particular, I’ve been struck by how different the conversations are between (social sciences) academics from those involved in the development and running of ‘digital’ government services*. I recognise that the following is a bit of a caricature but the quick characterisation serves to assist the wider point I’m interested in exploring.

The fellow academics I follow (mostly in geography but from across the social sciences) have a relatively developed set of political and ethical arguments about the analysis (commercial & governmental–often blurred), big-ness,  collecting/gathering, transformation and so on of digital ‘data’, more often than not with reference to tropes around governance, labour, privacy and surveillance and ‘subjectivity’ (usually in the frame of how we are made individual subjects). So, ‘data’ in this set of debates may signal, for some, negative connotations of commercial or institutional ‘big brother’ and so on. There, of course, plenty of reasons to feel this way.

The digital government services folk, and some of the digital research services people (e.g. from JISC), that I follow often have more diverse and opaque (to me) views. A common foundation for many is the broadly liberal set of arguments for ‘open‘ networked services, somewhere between Stewart Brand’s libertarianism (in the vein of the arguments around “information wants to be free“) and the systematic optimistic liberalism of the W3C: “web for all, web on everything“. Some blog and tweet about the challenges of implementing that ethos and the various systems/techniques developed as a result within the auspices of government. Others write about what is and can be achieved by pursuing the ‘open’ agenda in government. More often that not, there is a positive and ‘progressive’ slant to the debate – developing a ‘common good’ (for want of a better phrase).

The debates do not crossover in my experience. They have their own  pet concepts and specialist terminology, with academics (like me) banging on about ‘dataveillance’, ‘discipline’ and ‘control’, governmentality, and, of course, ‘neoliberalism’; whereas the digital government folk I follow can talk about ‘digital’ and ‘open’ (as nouns), ‘agile‘ and ‘lean‘ (also sometimes nouns) practices. I am not saying any of this is representative, simply pointing out that the kinds of conversation are rather different. Neither of these groupings (as I characterise them) talk about or suggest policy in any detail, which is interesting. Social scientists studying ‘data’ (etc) often discuss methodological technique and diagnose what are perceived to be negative aspects of digital systems, whereas digital government folk are often highlighting progress being made in making ‘public’ data and associated services ‘open’ and more accessible. This may be an issue of ‘methods’. To be (perhaps overly) general – the social scientists I follow do particular kinds of, often, politically inflected research, whereas the digital government folk I follow are attempting to build politically neutral services. So, here, the academics are looking for expressions of power and politics, the digital government folk are attempting to minimise their effects.

We are left with what appears to be an unfortunate gap in a possibly fruitful conversation – there are constructive ways that academic researchers can offer insights into how opaque power structures can operate and, likewise, the digital government folk actually have experience of making complex digital systems for government. At present, in my Twitter stream I see (at best) mutual suspicion and often just totally separate conversations. There are moments though and some academics are clearly engaging albeit ‘critically’, e.g.

I recognise my partiality – that there are more than likely more in-depth conversations going on that I’m missing and I do think there’s some really positive work going on, for example as part of the Programmable City project – for example see the great talk by Sung-Yueh Perng below, that is attempting to look at what it means to build digital public services and the kinds of contributions social scientists (like me – there are lots of other kinds of course!) can make.

I welcome suggestions and comments about this, so please do get in touch.

Sung-Yueh Perng – Creating infrastructures with citizens: An exploration of Beta Projects, Dublin City Council from The Programmable City on Vimeo.

* I am not claiming that those I follow on Twitter and are pigeonholing with this category are representative in any way, this just works for this broad example.

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Research seminars and ‘environment’

Many permanently contracted ‘early career’ academics get the job of organising departmental seminars at some point. It can be great, you talk to interesting colleagues from across the discipline, listen to talks about research you simply haven’t heard about before and meet people you admire and wouldn’t otherwise have the opportunity to do so. It can also be thankless – you ask for recommendations, book those speakers and your colleagues fail to turn up to their own recommended speakers’ talk(!)

If we’re supposed to be participating in the creation of “An environment that is conducive to producing research of world-leading quality, in terms of its vitality and sustainability” – as per the REF criteria, and if we were to take that seriously, then perhaps running the seminars, organising wider events, reading groups and so on would be explicitly recognised and rewarded – in workload terms, and so on…

So, with that in mind, if you are an academic reading this – please can you answer the following simple question:

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Exciting course for postgraduate researchers: History of Geographical Thought and Philosophy

Here’s a wonderful thing – Christian Abrahamsson, based at U. Oslo,  is convening a course at Oslo for PGRs, with guest appearances from: Trevor Barnes, Innes Keighen, Frederico Ferretti and the inimitable Gunnar Olsson. This is a fantastic opportunity for anyone wanting to engage with geographical thought:

SGO9204 – History of Geographical Thought and Philosophy

Course content

The purpose of this course is to examine the historical and philosophical development of modern geography and geographical knowledge. The course will explore key discourses, debates, and controversies which shaped the modern discipline. A key aim of the course will be to place the development of geographical thought and practice within a broader societal and scientific perspective. The course will also put emphasis on the geographies of the history of geographical thought – i.e. in what ways have, for example, the Nordic welfare states affected geographical thought and practice?

Learning outcome

After the course the students will be able to understand:  On completion of the course, the postgraduate student will be able to describe and analyse their own research projects in relation to broader historical discourses and concepts. The postgraduate student will have acquired knowledge of how different theoretical perspectives and concepts can be brought to bear on their individual projects. They will also have knowledge of how geographers at various times have understood the relation between geographical thought and practice. The course will also give the students an understanding of how geographical scholarship has been related to and informed by larger societal and scientific processes – e.g. the importance of evolutionary theory for 19th century geographical thought. Finally the course will give the students a sense of how and where their own projects fit within the history of the discipline.

Admission

The course is open to applications from all interested Ph.D. students. PhD students at the Department of Sociology and Human Geography at the University of Oslo gain theory-points and register for the course in StudentWeb.

Interested participants outside the department shall fill out this application form.

The deadline for applications is 21st October 2016.

Prerequisites

Formal prerequisite knowledge

No requirements other than that the students have to be enrolled in a doctoral program.

Teaching

Lecturers: 

Dr Christian Abrahamsson, UiO

Professor Trevor Barnes, University of British Columbia, Vancouver

Dr Innes Keighren, Royal Holloway, London

Dr Federico Ferretti, University College, Dublin

Professor Emeritus Gunnar Olsson, Uppsala University

 

Schedule: 

The course is going to be in room 211, Harriet Holters hus

Monday – Part 1: The History and Geography of Geographical Knowledge 

10.00-12.00: Introduction: Why do we need a history of geographical thought?, (Christian Abrahamsson)

12.00-13.15: Lunch

13.15-15.00: Lecture: The historical geographies of geographical knowledge, (Christian Abrahamsson)

15.15-17.00: Discussion

 

Tuesday – Part 2: Geography, Enlightenment, Romanticism 

10.15-12.00: Lecture: Kantian and Humboldtian geographies (Federico Ferretti)

12.00-13.15: Lunch

13.15-15.00: Discussion

15.15-17.00: Discussion

 

Wednesday – Part 3: Science and Explanation 

10.15-12.00: Lecture: Darwinian geography and the rise of geography as a university discipline (Christian Abrahamsson)

12.00-13.15: Lunch

13.15-15.00: Lecture: Environmental determinism and the nation state (Innes Keighren)

15.15-17.00: Discussion

 

Thursday – Part 4: Contemporary Geography 

10.15-12.00: Lecture: Spatial science and the quantitative revolution (Trevor Barnes)

12.00-13.15: Lunch

13.15-15.00: Lecture: Geography, the cold war, planning, and the welfare state (Trevor Barnes)

15.15-17.00: Discussion

 

Friday 

10.15-12.00: Discussion

12.00-13.15: Lunch

13.15-15.00: Discussion

15.15-17.00: Discussion

 

 

Preliminary reading list

(will be subject to changes according to proposals from the lecturers.):

Geographical Traditions: Rethinking the History of Geography. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, New Series, 20(4): 403-422. o

Mayhew “Geography’s Geneaologies”, and Withers “Geography’s Narratives and Intellectual History”, in John Agnew and David N. Livingstone. The SAGE Handbook of Geographical Knowledge, pp. 1-50.

Innes M. Keighren, Christian Abrahamsson and Veronica della Dora, On canonical geographies. Dialogues in Human Geography 2(2012): 296-312

John Agnew and David N. Livingstone. The SAGE Handbook of Geographical Knowledge, pp. 51-136, 149-184, 217-227.

Neil Smith, ‘Geography as museum: private history and conservative idealism in Richard Hartshorne’s The nature of geography’, in Nick Entrikin and Stanley Brunn (eds) Reflections on Richard Hartshorne’s The nature of geography (1989) pp. 91-120.

Stuart Elden. 2008. Reassessing Kant’s geography. Journal of Historical Geography.

Robert B. Louden. Anthropology from a Kantian point of view: toward a cosmopolitan conception of human nature. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A. Volume 39, Issue 4, December 2008, Pages 515-522.

David Livingstone The Geographical Tradition, pp.102-138.

Nicolaas Ropke ‘Alexander von Humboldt and Revolution’, in Livingstone and Withers. Geography and Revolution, pp. 336-350.

Michael Dettlebach, “Humboldtian science,” pp. 287-304 in N. Jardine, J. Secord, E. Spary (eds), Cultures of Natural History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).

Marie Louise Prat. Imperial Eyes selections on Humboldtian Science and transculturation.

Livingston, D. N. (1992) “The Geographical Experiment: Evolution and Founding of a Discipline” The Geographical Tradition. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. 177-215.

Neil Roberts, “The Idea of Evolution in Geographic Thought”, in John Agnew and David N. Livingstone. The SAGE Handbook of Geographical Knowledge, pp.441-451.

James Moore. “Revolution of the space invaders: Darwin and Wallace on the Geography of Life”, in Livingstone and Withers. Geography and Revolution, pp. 106-132.

D.R. Stoddart, “Darwin’s Impact on Geography,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Vol. 56 (Dec., 1966): 683-698.

Janet Browne, “Biogeography and empire,” pp. 305-321 in N. Jardine, J. Secord, E. Spary (eds), Cultures of Natural History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).

Bassin, M.: Imperialism and the Nation State in Friedrich Ratzel’s Political Geography, Prog. Hum. Geog., 11, 473–495, 1987.

Smith,W. D.: Friedrich Ratzel and the Origins of Lebensraum, Ger. Stud. Rev., 3, 51–68, 1980.

David N Livingstone, “Environmental Determinism,” in John Agnew and David N. Livingstone. The SAGE Handbook of Geographical Knowledge, pp.368-380.

Ellen Churchill Semple, Influence of Geographic Environment on the Basis of Ratzel’s System of Anthropo-geography. New York: Russell and Russell, 1911. A reprint is available in Human Geography: An Essential Anthology. Edited by John Agnew, David N. Livingstone, and Alistair Rodgers. Oxford: Blackwell. Pp. 252-267. An online e-reprint from Project Gutenberg can be found at http://infomotions.com/etexts/gutenberg/dirs/1/5/2/9/15293/15293.htm

Peter Kropotkin, selections from “Mutual Aid” in P. Appleman (ed), Darwin: A Norton Critical Edition, pp 399-405 [1902].

Theodore M. Porter, How science became technical. Isis 100 (2009): 292-309

Davis, William M. 1899. The Geographical Cycle. Geographical Journal 14: 481-504.

Nick Spedding, “Landform”, in John Agnew and David N. Livingstone. The SAGE Handbook of Geographical Knowledge, pp. 465-474.

Antony Orme. “The Cycle of Erosion” in John Agnew and David N. Livingstone. The SAGE Handbook of Geographical Knowledge, pp.465-491.

Barbara A. Kennedy. Inventing the Earth: Ideas on Landscape Development Since 1740. Blackwell, 2006,

Neil Smith, “Geography as a museum: Private history and conservative idealism in The Nature of Geography” in Reflections on the Nature of Geography, eds N. Entrikin and S. Brunn (Washington: AAG, 1989), 91-120.

Trevor J. Barnes and Matthew Farish, “Between Regions: Science, Militarism, and American Geography from World War to Cold War,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Vol. 96(4) (December 2006): 807-26.

David Harvey, “Owen Lattimore: a memoire” in Harvey, Spaces of Capital: Towards a Critical Geography (New York: Routledge, 2001), pp 90-107. [1983]

Nicholas Entrikin, “Region and regionalism”, in John Agnew and David N. Livingstone. The SAGE Handbook of Geographical Knowledge, pp. 344-356.

Trevor Barnes, “Spatial Analysis”, in John Agnew and David N. Livingstone. The SAGE Handbook of Geographical Knowledge, pp.381-392.

Peter Gould, “Geography 1957-1977: The Augean Period,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Vol. 69 (1979): 139-51.

Fred Schaefer, “Exceptionalism in Geography: A Methodological Examination,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Vol. 43 (3): (1953): 226-49.

Livingstone, David. 1992. “Statistics Don’t Bleed: Quantification and its Detractors” The Geographical Tradition. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. pp. 304-311.

Trevor Barnes, ‘Placing ideas: heterotopia, genius loci and geography’s quantitative revolution’, Progress in human geography 28 (2004) pp. 565-95

Stuart Lane, “Making mathematical models perform in geographical space(s)”, in John Agnew and David N. Livingstone. The SAGE Handbook of Geographical Knowledge, pp. 228-245.

Michael J. Watts. 1968 and All That. Prog Hum Geogr June 2001 vol. 25 no. 2, pp.157-188.

William Bunge, “Fitzgerald: Geography of a Revolution” (1971), Selections

Trevor Barnes and Nik Heynen, A classic in human geography: William Bunge’s (1971) Fitzgerald: Geography of a Revolution. Progress in Human Geography. October 2011 35: 712-715.

Nik Heynen, “Marginalia of a revolution: naming popular ethnography through William W. Bunge’s Fitzgerald”, Social & Cultural Geography, 14 (2013): 744-751.

Yves Lacoste, “An Illustration of Geographical Warfare: Bombing the Dikes on the Red River, North Vietnam”, Antipode 5 (1973): 1-13

Gavin P. Bowd and Daniel W. Clayton, “Geographical warfare in the tropics: Yves Lacoste and the Vietnam War”, Annals of the Association of American Geographers 103(2013): 627-646.

 David Harvey, “On the history and present condition of geography: an historical materialist manifesto” in Harvey, Spaces of Capital: Towards a Critical Geography (New York: Routledge, 2001), pp 108-120 [1984].

Doreen Massey, “In what sense a regional problem?” in J. Agnew, D. Livingstone and A. Rogers (eds) Human Geography: an Essential Anthology (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), pp 398-413 [1979].

Wilbur Zelinsky, “The Strange Case of the Missing Female Geographer.” Professional Geographer, Vol. 25 (1973): 101-05.

Mildred Berman, “On Being a Woman in American Geography: A Personal Perspective,” Antipode, Vol. 6, No. 3 (1984): 61-66.

Linda McDowell and Doreen Massey, “A Woman’s Place?” pp 458-475 in J. Agnew, D. Livingstone and A. Rogers (eds) Human Geography: an Essential Anthology (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), [1984]

Robinson, J. (1994). White Women Researching/Representing Others: From Anti-apartheid to Postcolonialism? In G. Rose & A. Blunt (eds), Sexual/Textual Colonisations. London: Guildford. 197-226

Gillian Rose, “Feminism and Geography: An Introduction” and “Women and Everyday Spaces,” in Feminism and Geography: The Limits of Geographical Knowledge (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), 1-40.

Gillian Rose, “Geography as a science of observation: The landscape, the gaze, and masculinity”, in F. Driver and G. Rose (eds), Nature and Science, Historical Geography Research Series no. 28, pp 8-18.

Examination

Each participant is requested to submit a 200 word project description i) outlining their interest in the course ii) describing their own research. This need to be submitted two weeks before the start of the course, 7th November to katalin.godberg@sosgeo.uio.no.

The entire five-day event makes up the Ph.d.-course, with the equivalent of 6 credits. For approval, this includes writing a paper of minimum 4 000 words to be submitted by 8th January 2017. The paper will deal with some theme in the curriculum. The paper is to be sent to katalin.godberg@sosgeo.uio.no.

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CFP> “Countercultures of Data” – Special Issue of Philosophy & Technology

Another interesting CFP and goodness knows this needs doing(!) I look forward to seeing what comes of this, should be great!

CFP: “COUNTERCULTURES OF DATA” – SPECIAL ISSUE OF PHILOSOPHY & TECHNOLOGY

Call for Papers for Philosophy and Technology’s special issue on Countercultures of Data

Guest Editor – Anna Lauren Hoffmann, School of Information – University of California, Berkeley

Journal cover featuring white text on blue backgroundAbout the Issue
25 years ago, Sandra Harding–in her influential book Whose Science? Whose Knowledge? Thinking from Women’s Lives–detailed and extended critical debates surrounding knowledge production and practices in science and technology. Collectively, these “countercultures of science” confronted the “problematics, agendas, ethics, and consequences” of scientific and technological production head on. Today, these same perspectives offer insight into the realm of data science, as philosophers, scholars, and practitioners alike grapple with ethical questions in a world where discourse, design, and governance increasingly revolve around “big” data and quantifiable knowledge.

This special issue will bring together rigorous conceptual and theoretical perspectives on what might best be called–following Harding–emerging “countercultures of data.” In particular, this issue will further critical and philosophical thinking about the theories, methods, institutions, and technological arrangements that underwrite or support data science in various industries and forms. Combined, contributions to the special issue will put forward a more realistic assessment of possible futures for a data driven world.

We invite submissions related (but not limited) to:

– Race and Data Science
– Theories of Property, Labor, and Data
– Political Economies of Data
– Data and Imperialism
– Feminist Perspectives on Data Science
– Data, Bodies, and Disability
– Data, Infrastructure, and the Environment
– Data, Philosophy, and the Law
– Communities and Data
– Data and Queer Subjects
– Data and/as Human Subjects in Research
– Data Science and Epistemic Justice

Timetable for Submissions
October 24, 2016: Deadline for paper submissions
December 21, 2016: Deadline reviews papers
February 6, 2017: Deadline revised papers
2017: Publication of the special issue

Submission Details
To submit a paper for this special issue, authors should go to the journal’s Editorial Manager http://www.editorialmanager.com/phte/
The author (or a corresponding author for each submission in case of co- authored papers) must register into EM.

The author must then select the special article type: “COUNTERCULTURES OF DATA” from the selection provided in the submission process. This is needed in order to assign the submissions to the Guest Editor.

Submissions will then be assessed according to the following procedure:
New Submission => Journal Editorial Office => Guest Editor(s) => Reviewers => Reviewers’ Recommendations => Guest Editor(s)’ Recommendation => Editor-in-Chief’s Final Decision => Author Notification of the Decision. (The process will be reiterated in case of requests for revisions.)

About the Journal
The journal addresses the expanding scope and unprecedented impact of technologies, in order to improve the critical understanding of the conceptual nature and practical consequences, and hence provide the conceptual foundations for their fruitful and sustainable developments. The journal welcomes high-quality submissions, regardless of the tradition, school of thought or disciplinary background from which they derive. The journal’s Editor-in-Chief is Luciano Floridi (Oxford).

Contact
For any further information please contact: Anna Lauren Hoffmann – annalauren [at] berkeley [dot] edu

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Reblog> HPGRG Dissertation Prizes (2015 and 2016) Announced

Two worthy winners for some excellent undergraduate research…

HPGRG Dissertation Prizes (2015 and 2016) Announced

We are delighted to announce the dissertation prizes for 2015 and 2016.

Kirsty Matthews (Durham University) won the prize in 2015 for her dissertation “Mattering the Mind: Subjectivity and Not Knowing Within Obsessive Compulsive Disorder”, which was described as a most impressive piece of work.

Mirjami Lannto (University of Glasgow) won the prize this year, for her outstanding research on “Experiencing River Landscapes: the Affective Capacity of Landscapes and its Potential in Environmental Management“. She has granted us permission to reproduce her dissertation on the site. In addition, Samuel Nutt (Durham University) received a commendation for his dissertation, “The Anxieties of Empire in Byron’s Turkish Tales: Exploring the Potential of Fiction in Postcolonial Geography”.

Congratulations to our winners. The list of past prizes can be found here.

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New book from Gary Hall: The Uberfication of the University

An interesting new book from Gary Hall has recently been published with Minnesota. It kind of resonates with some of Stiegler’s latest bits and pieces…

Here’s the blurb:

Even after the 2008 financial crisis, neoliberalism has been able to advance its program of privatization and deregulation. The Uberfication of the University analyzes the emergence of the sharing economy–an economy that has little to do with sharing access to good and services and everything to do with selling this access–and the companies behind it: LinkedIn, Uber, and Airbnb. In this society, we all are encouraged to become microentrepreneurs of the self, acting as if we are our own precarious freelance enterprises at a time when we are being steadily deprived of employment rights, public services, and welfare support. The book considers the contemporary university, itself subject to such entrepreneurial practices, as one polemical site for the affirmative disruption of this model.

Forerunners: Ideas First is a thought-in-process series of breakthrough digital publications. Written between fresh ideas and finished books, Forerunners draws on scholarly work initiated in notable blogs, social media, conference plenaries, journal articles, and the synergy of academic exchange. This is gray literature publishing: where intense thinking, change, and speculation take place in scholarship.

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Scoping review @ESRC : Ways of being in a digital age ~ anyone applying?

A kind colleague sent this to me just now and it made me both sit up in interest and slightly slump in my chair… I would love to be involved in this but just can’t see how…

This looks like a really interesting opportunity for an interdisciplinary team to provide a valuable and incisive push to the ESRC to think about what an earth “ways of being in a digital age” might mean. I do hope someone cam drive this forward in a positive way, the boosterism of “big data” etc. or the dystopian malaise of “algorithmic governance” are simply not sufficient for this task1.

Invitation to submit Expressions of Interest

We are delighted to invite Expressions of Interest (EoI) for a scoping review to inform a future ESRC initiative on ‘Ways of being in a digital age’.This is an exciting opportunity to inform ESRC’s possible future strategic investment and provide a more holistic view of how digital technology mediates our lives, and the way technological and social change co-evolve and impact each other.

This is a broad and much researched area, so the purpose of the scoping review is to undertake a systematic literature review and synthesis; to identify gaps in current research and determine where the ESRC should focus any initiative to add most value. Through this process the aim of the scoping review is also to build new networks and extend existing ones across the academic community, amongst other stakeholders and potential funding partners.

The scoping review is for a maximum duration of eight months and must commence no later than 1 August 2016. The maximum budget for the scoping review is £300,000 at 100 per cent in full economic costs. In accordance with RCUK policy, the ESRC will contribute up to 80 per cent of the full economic costs.

The call makes a brilliant plea for qualitative work (bottom of p. 3), which is very much needed. I hope this is something we can all build upon.

The initial questions offered in the invitation are interesting, but really need to be pushed a bit further For example, talking about “impacts” on society and forms of community that emerge “as a result” of technology are far too technologically determinist, and there isn’t “the digital” as some kind of amorphous separate domain,  where’s the conceptual nuance here?!

  • How we define and authenticate ourselves in a digital age

  • How do we construct the digital to be open to all, sustainable and secure

  • How digital technology impacts on our autonomy, agency and privacy – illustrated by the paradox of emancipation and control

  • What are the challenges of ethics, trust and consent in the digital age

  • How we live with and trust the algorithms and data analysis used to shape key features of our lives

  • How our relationships are being shaped and sustained in and between various domains, including family and work

  • What new forms of communities and work emerge as a result of digital technologies – for example new forms of coordination including large scale and remote collaboration Whether and how our understanding of citizenship is evolving in the digital age – for example whether technology helps or hinders us in participating at individual and community levels

  • How we define responsibility and accountability in the digital age Whether technology makes us healthier, better educated and more productive.

None of the disciplinary silos is sufficient in addressing this. It would be really, really depressing to see just a “digital sociology”, “digital geography”, or “digital anthropology” type review made here.

I hope someone is bold and imaginative and really pushes at the questions we should be asking. I would welcome conversations about how I could contribute in some small way…

Note
1. I am not seeking to denigrate those who work on such things, merely pointing out that no fashionable trope is sufficient. Just as those that led the “Virtual Society?” theme for the ESRC back in didn’t bang on about “cyberspace”, although the use of the term “virtual” is/was possibly problematic…

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“Ways of Being in a Digital Age”, one of five @ESRC priorities for research 2016-2020

I’ve only just seen this but wanted to post this here as a reminder and to point it out to others with similar interests…

In the recently published ESRC Delivery Plan 2016-2020 one of the five priority areas for research is “Ways of Being in a Digital Age”, here’s their one paragraph explanation (p. 4):

Ways of Being in a Digital Age – digital technology is present in all aspects of our lives, whether we actively engage with it or not. It affects the way we communicate, and the ways we receive, consume and process information. It influences routine behaviours – the way we travel, shop and work. The presence of digital technology mediates our perceptions, behaviours and practices across these different domains and thereby influences our ways of living. This raises a number of fundamental questions about our ways of being in a digital age, the risks and opportunities associated with digital living, and our understanding of the individual, community, and society.