Category: education

Posted on

Public scholarship, or: profs should edit wikipedia

Over on Savage Minds Rex Golub has written a compelling provocation about the places of ‘public anthropology’ (which I think could probably be broadened to ‘public scholarship). He points out that it’s all very well writing letters to venerable broad sheet newspapers but that doesn’t necessarily achieve much. Instead, Professors (or academics more broadly) might better spend their time editing wikipedia pages because that is the prime site of the public sourcing, and contestation, of knowledge. I think its quite a compelling argument… not least when thinking about the current trend and push for demonstrating “impact”. Isn’t it quite “impactful” to be the person who attempts to ensure that the most widely used source of knowledge on a given topic is rigorously written/edited? There’s no academic brownie points in that though… no promotions or awards/rewards are going to be given on that basis!

What do you think?

…my issue is that anthropologists are doing public anthropology in the wrong places and in the wrong way because they don’t understand how social media works today and are seduced by an out-moded model of cultural capital that makes them feels heroic, but it isn’t actually efficacious.

The new public anthropology, on the other hand, is not glamorous, will not make you famous, can be emotionally uncomfortable, involves working in new and unfamiliar genres, and can change the world. A good example of this sort of public anthropology is editing Wikipedia

Wikipedia is ground zero for knowledge in the world today. Everyone uses it to look stuff up quickly. Everyone. Some people may take it more seriously than others, but because its content can be reused on other sites, what wikipedia says spreads everywhere. For better or for worse – I’d say for better – it’s the public record of the state of human knowledge at the moment. Unlike letters to the New York Times, Wikipedia gets read. Constantly. When you contribute to Wikipedia, you are concretely and immediately altering what the world knows about your topic of expertise.

Posted on

The articles of faith of contemporary social and cultural geography

This post comes from a sense of dissatisfaction and a hope for finding different ways of (personally) doing geography. [I’ve been writing it for too long, so I’m just hitting “publish” – I welcome thoughts…]

When struggling for sleep and time to do things due to trying to do all of the things I know I should be doing to advance my career but also wanting to be with my family, I find it disheartening to decide to read newly published journal articles or agree to review articles and settle into reading them only to find they repeat familiar arguments, freighting the same rather narrow set of concepts. This post will likely irk (perhaps seriously) some who feel invested in some of the things I criticise, I can only apologise about that.

What I am identifying can’t be new, I’m sure plenty of others have made similar arguments… but it seems to me that we have a fairly set orthodoxy in how social and cultural geography gets done and what it can say. I am of course complicit. I am not seeking to distance myself from any of this, merely ‘confess’ and look for other ways of working.

The articles of faith we seem to have adopted in the REF-driven, short-termist form of research communication we inhabit and propagate concern both methodology and theory.

Methodologically, in spite of careful commentary reflecting upon the “new orthodoxy” of qualitative methods, we seem to have adopted a faith in the “theory–case study” model.

Generalise through theory – In this model one presents, often rather small scale, ethnographically derived empirical material. But rather than acknowledge the limits of scope and avoid attempting to generalise – following the model, this case study is read as an exemplar of a (sometimes muscular) ontological claim. I suggest this creates an epistemological slip, the modest empirical claims are rendered general by virtue of an appeal to theory. In this way, relatively modest empirical findings about a specific case study can be generalised by appealing to ‘big’ theory. This is of course understandable – we’re supposed to be writing four-star (“world leading”) research and using heavyweight theory is the conventional  ‘shortcut’ (in time and resources) to making such a claim. I’ve written papers like this, many have.

Theoretically, the discourses of social and cultural geography have, dare I say it, become rather dogmatic. There is a collective pressure through journals, email lists, social media and events to adopt the jargon and to conform (‘discursive regime’ anyone?). It seems to me there is a rather narrow range of concepts in use.

In part, I wonder whether this is due to an attempt to systematise the easier aspects of big (mostly French) philosophical systems of thought that gained traction in the late 1990s early 2000s, many of us went about formulating ways of ‘doing’ Deleuze for example (maybe I’m only repeating this mistake with Stiegler – I’m really trying not to!). Some have become a universal mechanism of explanation – regardless of the context of study. I worry that we are in danger of getting caught in a theoretical culdesac – everything becomes an example of those concepts we hold to be the truth. I am not suggesting we should not use the concepts I identify here or that they are in some way ‘wrong’. Some people have done careful and nuanced theoretical work that articulates the value of such theory. However, this doesn’t mean we all have to pile in and parrot the concepts to juice up our publications.

Sometimes concepts can be a sort of “sledgehammer to crack a nut”, sometimes they’re just a blinkered implication of causation that amounts to a dogmatic profession of faith – the empirical material demonstrates the concept, no matter what. Again, there are lots of understandable reasons – REF and employment pressures to get publications out, wanting to ‘fit in’ and being short on time so slipping into the ‘orthodoxy’.

I don’t actually buy the theoretical ‘arms race’ argument that has been posited about (mostly younger) researchers searching out the next ‘big’ theorist. I think we’re actually, mostly, more conservative – we’ve developed an orthodoxy that, in some cases, can verge on dogma: hence my provocation of the ‘articles of faith’.

The core concepts outlined here as the grounds of this ‘articles of faith’ are of course contestable and I’m not seeking to be definitive in any way. I suspect they are also all-too-familiar to the handful of people who will read this blog. My argument here is that perhaps we need to reflect a little more explicitly on how and when we use our theoretical blunderbusses…

  • The constitutional agency of Affect (& Atmosphere) – Given the arguments about the use of this concept, this perhaps one of the more difficult ideas to address. I sympathise with a desire to articulate the nonrepresentational and value some of the work done in that vein. Work around how we might understand intensities of relations and how particular places become constituted as much in unspoken sensations as through signification, and indeed how such spatial experience becomes perturbed, seems like a useful contribution to me. However, in some uses of the concept of affect/atmosphere there is an all-too-easy slip into appealing to amorphous (at times quasi-mystical) pre- / trans- subjective forces of affect/being affected to beef-up an argument. We are, I fear, in danger of creating what a colleague called a kind of ‘Phil Collins geography’, where something is literally “In the Air Tonight”.
  • The invocation of the Anthropocene – How can one argue against anthropogenic climate change? and I’m not trying to, but there appears, to me, to be a danger in invoking an all-encompassing rupture in ‘geological time’, in ecological understandings and in the cautious epistemological reflections upon how, as non-scientists, we understand and use ‘Scientific’ (with a big “S”) knowledge. We are in danger of eliding the careful reflections upon understandings and representations of Earth and world within geographical work. It seems to me this has granted license to engage in some peculiar forms of exercise in phenomenological impossibility, seeking to look ‘after the human’, and can perpetuate (globally) Western/ Northern perspectives that elide other ways of coming to terms with climate change. There has, of course, been some great work [e.g.] examining such problems.
  • The hegemony of Neoliberalism – or: the taken-for-granted force of the lumped together bogeymen of left-leaning thinkers along the lines of the ‘evils of capitalism’,  mostly denoting the combined phenomena of deregulation, privatisation and globalisation. An over-arching concept that affords one the opportunity to point to a thing we can be normatively against. There, of course, exists plenty of critique of the use of the idea in geography and suggestions for other terms or ways of engaging with the phenomena apparently denoted/ connoted by the term but it has a life of its own.
  • Witnessing the Non-human – on the one hand a useful means of articulating that the geographies we seek to explore have more than just us, “human” actors/actants/agents, in them. On the other hand, we are in danger of affirming precisely the sorts of (naive) humanism/human-centric ideas we are attempting to escape (via Latour et al.) For example, when is what gets called ‘non-human’ perhaps actually human? Technology is a case for me here and it all depends on the other theoretical assumptions you make about what a ‘technology’ is… Likewise, if we’re seeking to de-naturalise ‘nature’, to demonstrate that we are not and cannot be separate from what we identify as ‘nature’ then creating label for what may be ‘other’ to the human seems a weird way of going about it. Of course, again, there is some really excellent work that takes on board such understandings and I’m fortunate to work with several of the people doing/writing it. Nevertheless, the wider discursive use of ‘non-human’ risks doing the reverse of what one might think one if doing with it.
  • The supremacy of Subjectivity – The basis for understandings of human experience, in relation to which difference, identity, spatiality and many other concepts are conceived in much of geography. Of course, some fantastic work has been done on the idea of a subject, subject positions and subjectivity. I guess the reason I raise the concept here is because there seems an increasingly common slip between the ways we discuss subjective experience and the ways in which we are individualised in different domains (legal, political, technological etc.) to render an equivalence. An example here is an idea of a “digital subjectivity”[1]. On the one-hand we might see this in relation to the various ways one performs different identities through different apps, conforms to or breaks rules/conventions and so on. On the other hand we might see it as the ways we get surveilled, defined, addressed and perhaps conditioned by our data. Weirdly, given the popularity of ‘affect’ theory, we can get caught up in peculiar contradictions between the ‘excessive’ agency of the intersubjective and the repressive agency of subjection/subjectivation. In slipping between the two, we risk falling foul of longstanding arguments around reductive understandings of ‘subjection’ and eliding precisely the epistemological purchase the concept can, potentially, afford, i.e. multiplicity, intersubjectivity and so on.

Alternatives..?  I do not have easy answers, goodness knows I wish I did… However, I can offer some suggestions that I find myself contemplating as ways forward for rethinking how I go about understanding the kinds of knowledge claims I might seek to make in my future writing.

Firstly, maybe we can move beyond what I’ve called the “theory-case study” model? Perhaps it’s ok to return to a grounded theory approach, or to be rigorously empirical and refrain from particular forms of generalisation because that’s not what our ‘data’ grant. Perhaps we can innovate a little more (and perhaps I’m not reading enough to see that this is already happening?!)

Secondly, maybe it’s ok to do theory on it’s own, and we should find the confidence to do geographical theory too. Perhaps the editorial boards of our journals might already be receptive to this. Perhaps also we can collectively decide this is something we can value, so long as appropriate standards are applied.

Thirdly, maybe we should resist the artificial timetables of REF and so on dictating our push to produce work we may not feel entirely comfortable with. Maybe, with growing teaching and admin loads, maybe with increased precarity of work we, as a community of scholars, should say let’s cut ourselves some slack – especially those who are early career and forced into unsustainable habits of work: massive teaching loads for 9-months then a contract ends, all while attempting to get the next one and keep publications ticking over. I have no doubt that the ‘quickness’ with concepts and methods relates to the habits of work to which we are currently conforming. I cannot see how this is sustainable. It certainly isn’t for those of us with families. I admire those who succeed, in spite of all of this, but we cannot all do that and maybe we need to hold out a helping hand to others and say: it’s ok, you don’t need to copy us, you don’t have to do things our way – find your own ways of working, develop your own theory.

These are half-formed thoughts, at the end of term, frazzled by lack of sleep and trying to do too many things. I genuinely do not want to deride other people’s work here, I am merely identifying a dissatisfaction with how I understand my own working practices. I would welcome any thoughts…

Notes

  1. Or of course ‘algorithmic’ power/subjectivity/subjection – ‘algorithm’ might be included in a longer version of this list
Posted on

The Museum of Contemporary Commodities in EXETER

The Museum of Contemporary Commodities

Just a quick note to let you know that the brilliant Paula Crutchlow has brought “The Museum of Contemporary Commodities” (MoCC) to Exeter for the majority of May.

There’s lots going on, much of it creative and interesting – so if you’re in Exeter or nearby: come and visit!

Two immediate things this week:

RIGHT NOW!: help re-create the internet in paper with Artist Louise Ashcroft from 11 -2 in the Exeter University Forum.

TOMORROW: sign up to do a data walkshop with Alison Powell from the LSE on Saturday from 10-1. Places have to be booked, and the Eventbrite page is here https://www.eventbrite.com/e/mocc-data-walkshop-tickets-24464719635

Please do visit the MoCC website for lots more events and activities taking place this month and visit the shop:

87 Fore St,
Exeter
EX46RT

Open 10:00-18:00pm Weds-Sat, 4th-21st May.

Posted on

Yik Yak on campus and the tensions of public anonymity

This piece in The Seattle Times offers a fairly succinct view on the tensions being performed through students’ use of YikYak, the ‘public’ location-based messaging system in which one posts to a location’s public conversation through an app.

Since the growth in population of social media there has also been a growth in the ‘back channel’ at events such as conferences, a ‘second screen’ conversation around ‘appointment TV’ (at least according to the BBC), and from Facebook onwards, there has been a mediated conversation in the background of university lectures.

The students, especially, first years, take some delight in offering observations about the lecture material, the lecturer and so on – amongst the wider hubbub of conversation about pets, hangovers and the relative qualities and number of attractive people on campus.

However, this can spillover into insult. As noted in the BBC local news coverage of one brave lecturer’s response to insults on YikYak at Bristol.

The Seattle Times piece illustrates how, just as in other kinds of social media, a perception of anonymity and the opportunity to perform ourselves otherwise allows some of us to grant ourselves permission to say some appalling things.

I’ve used the example of Yik Yak, in relation to the performance of identity, in a first year lecture… it may have made some of them think… (or maybe not)

yCklGKOW

Posted on

PhD supervision, accountability and consumerism

There’s an(other) interesting ‘anonymous academic’ article in the Guardian Higher Ed section being touted on Twitter today that argues for greater accountability, in an Ofsted sort of way, for PhD supervisors.

I really feel for the author they, and apparently some of their friends, had a rough time – suffering at the hands of the revolving door of academics moving departments, and an out-dated and patronising attitude of one supervisor. This is sad and unfortunate.

However, I don’t think I agree with where the author ends up. They ask the question: “Is there an assumption that PhD students and supervisors are mature enough to work out mutually satisfactory supervision arrangements?” The answer offered is to call for “performance measures of PhD supervision”. This seems a terribly sad place to end up.

PhD supervision is an uneasy relationship. It is no longer the student – teacher relation but remains slightly different from a manager – subordinate/co-worker relation. I don’t think retreating to the teacher – student relationship and aggressively measuring that is appropriate, but I certainly don’t think students should ever feel they are being left to fend for themselves. Resorting to a form of ‘consumer rights’ model would, I feel, fatally undermine the enterprise of undertaking a PhD. It is a ‘supervisor – researcher’ relation, where the ‘researcher’ (‘student’ in the terms of the Guardian article) is a new ‘peer’ being inducted.

Undertaking your first big research project, that will be subjected to peer review, and garnering the training to do so (as well as training to support your development as an academic) is a form of induction into the research culture/environment of a department, of a university and perhaps of a discipline. I would hope that the researcher is both empowered to take responsibility for their actions while also being advised and supported in learning how they might do so.

In the universities in which I’ve worked there have been forms of a formal mechanism for keeping track of PhD progress. This has been in part due to the growth of inter-institutional ‘doctoral training centres’ and a need to administer them across institutions. But it has also been in response to precisely the problems the author of the Guardian article raises. Rather than figure the supervision relationship as the supervisor solely providing a service, that needs to be quality controlled, I would hope that it is possible to maintain precisely the ‘mature’ and ‘mutually satisfying’ supervision arrangements the author somewhat dismisses. Albeit, with appropriate levels of accountability – just like in any form of professional work – where the supervision agreement is documented and regularly revisited.

While I really do sympathise with the sentiment that supervisor–researcher relations can be seen as “high maintenance, and fragile”, and I wish that we had the time allocated in workload models to be able to adequately address this, the idea that the fault lies solely with ‘unprofessional’ supervisors is overly simplistic (although there are some people, in every walk of life, who are unprofessional). It’s a condition of the extraordinary stresses academics are put under, in terms of time, energy and resources. We should try, really hard, to protect postgraduate researchers from as much of this as is practicable but while this may sound unkind, to overly cosset them may only set them up for a fall when they face the realities of applying for jobs and slogging through the precarious ‘early career’ positions that are the only resort for the newly minted Post-Doc.

We, academics that act as supervisors, can control some of this – we can institute transparent regimes of documentation of the supervision agreement, meetings and progress reports; we can act as an advocate for the interests of our supervisees within the institution; and we can contribute to the professional development of the postgraduates by supporting them in professional activities (writing for publication, convening events etc.). Nevertheless, some of the necessary support lies outside of our capacities – and in this, the doctoral training centres are (by and large) a good development. DTCs can offer professional development activities and access to resources that individual supervisors, or even departments, cannot.

The reality of a PhD studentship in the social sciences in a university like Exeter (where I work) is that the supervisors are very important but not alone in the supervision of the postgraduate researcher – there are postgraduate tutors, DTC managers and administrators, as well as colleagues, in research groups, institutes and so on.

While the job prospects are, sadly, rather different, the support available now, in my limited experience, is even better than when I undertook my PhD. I think there is cause for cautious optimism.

Posted on

Reblog> Raising the Bar: The Metric Tide that Sinks All Boats

boat

This post by Liz Morrish is an excellent if dismal reflection upon the kinds of performance management we labour under in universities. The expectations for the ‘exeter academic’ are not dissimilar to those discussed in the post. Saw this via Julie Cupples.

Raising the Bar: The Metric Tide that Sinks All Boats

Liz Morrish writes: A longer post than usual, but very relevant if your working life in academia is governed by the insanity of metrics – grant income, PhD students, impact, REf 4* ‘outputs’. You know it is insanity, so read on”¦..

James Wilsdon may as well not have inveighed against the ‘metric tide’, and Jo Johnson could have saved printers’ ink asking vice-chancellors not to waste academics’ time, and students’ fee money by operating multiple ‘mock’ REFs (BIS Green Paper November 2015 Chapter 2, para 7).

It is time for a critical conversation to take place about the use and abuse of metrics. In July 2015, Hefce published The Metric Tide, the report of a review body chaired by James Wilsdon, professor of science and democracy at the University of Sussex.

Despite the report’s chilling preface, announcing a “new barbarity” in our universities, we continue to witness the misuse of metrics as a tool of management in UK higher education. “Metrics hold real power: they are constitutive of values, identities and livelihoods”, wrote Wilsdon. Universities should proceed with caution, then, lest metrics should spread like a digital Himalayan Balsam and undermine the ethical architecture of universities.

It is ironic, but perhaps fortunate, that students find universities a very different experience than the academic staff who labour in them. For students, the intrusive scrutiny of metrics can at least claim to betoken a therapeutic and supportive institution. Generally speaking, the student ‘dashboard’ does not harbour the disciplinary function of its academic equivalent. 

Read the full post.

Posted on

Reblog> Does Academia.edu Mean Open Access Is Becoming Irrelevant?

A really interesting post by Gary Hall on his blog around what ‘open access’ means and how we negotiate what might be understood as the ‘attention economy’ of academia in relation to the ways in which sites like academia.edu and research gate leverage the ‘respectability’ of our work and our collective need to find audiences in order to generate valuable metadata. As Hall argues:

 In this world who gate-keeps access to (and so can extract maximum value from) content is less important, because that access is already free, than who gate-keeps(and so can extract maximum value from) the data generated around the use of that content, which is used more because access to it is free.

I heartily recommend reading the whole piece…

Does Academia.edu Mean Open Access Is Becoming Irrelevant?

brief discussion took place this month on the Association of Internet Researchers air-l listserve concerning a new book from the publishers Edward Elgar: Handbook of Digital Politics. Edited by Stephen Coleman and Deen Freelon, this 512 page volume features contributions from Peter Dahlgren, Nick Couldry, Christian Fuchs, Fadi Hirzalla and Liesbet van Zoonen, among numerous others. The discussion was provoked, however, not by something one of its many contributors had written about digital politics, but by the book’s cost: $240 on Amazon in the US. (In the UK the hardback is £150.00 on Amazon. Handbook of Digital Politics is also available online direct from the publishers for £135.00, with the ebook available for £40.) As one of those on the list commented, ‘I’d love to buy it, but not at that price’ – to which another participant in the discussion responded: ‘I encourage everyone to use the preprint option to post their piece on ssrn.com and academia.edu, perhaps others have other open access suggestions (e.g. Institutional Repositories of individual universities)’. Now, to be fair, the idea that is implied by this suggestion – that the Academia.edu platform for sharing research represents just another form of open access – is a common one. Yet posting on Academia.edu is far from being ethically and politically equivalent to using an institutional open access repository.

Read the whole post here.

Posted on

Geographies of Popular Culture – a 1st year reading list

As we’re at the beginning of term here in Exeter and I’ve been fiddling with my teaching resources I thought I’d share some of them here, so please find below and in a linked PDF the suggested reading list I offer our first year students for a section of the module Geographies of Place, Identity and Culture concerning ‘Popular Culture’.

GEO1105 Geographies of Place, Identity and Culture

Geographies of Popular Culture: Reading List

 

In addition to Introducing Human Geographies, there are a few very good textbooks that may support further study, especially if you pursue cultural geographies in the second and third years:

Crang, Mike. 1998 Cultural Geography, London, Routledge.

Horton, John and Kraftl, Peter. 2014 Cultural Geographies. An Introduction, London, Routledge.

Storey, John. 2012 Cultural Theory and Popular Culture. An Introduction, 6th Edition, London, Pearson.

Lecture 1: Popular Culture

This lecture will introduce the theme of popular culture, revisiting key concepts and motifs that have emerged throughout the module and open out, as a context for further study, the pursuits and activities of popular culture.

 

Anderson et al. 2002 “A Rough Guide” in Anderson, K., Domosh, M., Pile, S., and Thrift, N. eds. Handbook of Cultural Geography, London, Sage, pp. 1-9

Storey, J 2012 ‘What is popular culture?’ in Cultural Theory and Popular Culture. An Introduction, London, Pearson, pp. 1-16

Wider reading

Bryman, A. 2004 The Disneyization of Society, London, Sage. –In library 306.3 BRY

du Gay, P., Hall, S., Janes, L., Mackay, H., & Negus, K. 1997 Doing Cultural Studies: The Story of the Sony Walkman, London, Sage.

Harvey, D. 1989 The condition of postmodernity, Oxford, Blackwell.

Klein, N. 1999 No logo, New York, Picador.

Mitchell, D. 1995 “There’s no such thing as culture: towards a reconceptualization of the idea of culture in geography”, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 20: pp. 102-116.

Skelton, T. and Valentine, G. 1998 Cool Places: Geographies of Youth Cultures, London, Routledge.

Turner, G. 2003 British Cultural Studies: An Introduction, 3rd Edition, London, Routledge.

 

Lecture 2: Geographies of Music

Music is the focus of the second lecture, situated both as forms of performance and a means of expression. We will look at the ways in which music is performed and how its audiences are convened. We will also explore how music is key medium for the expression of identity and the enactment of place.

 

Fraser, A. 2012 “The Spaces, Politics, and Cultural Economies of Electronic Dance Music”, Geography Compass 6(8): pp. 500-511.

Rogers, A. 2012 “Geographies of the Performing Arts: Landscapes, Places and Cities”, Geography Compass 6(2): pp. 60-75.

 

Wider reading

Anderson, B. 2004 “Time-stilled space-slowed: how boredom matters” Geoforum 35(6): pp. 739-754.

Cresswell, T. 2006 “‘You cannot shake that shimmie here’: producing mobility on the dancefloor”, Cultural Geographies 13: pp. 55-77.

Hudson, R. 2006 “Regions and place: music, identity and place”, Progress in Human Geography 30: pp. 626-634.

 

Kong, L. 1995 Music and cultural politics: ideology and resistance in Singapore. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 20: pp. 447–459.

Leyshon, A. 2009 “The software slump? Digital music, the democratisation of technology, and the decline of the recording studio sector within the musical economy”, Environment and Planning A 41(6): pp. 1301-1331.

Mels, T. 2004 “Lineages of a geography of rhythms”, in Mels, T. ed. Reanimating Places: A Geography of Rhythms, Aldershot, Ashgate, pp. 3-44.

Revill, G. 2000 “Music and the politics of sound: nationalism, citizenship and auditory space”, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 18: pp. 597-613.

Saldanha, A. 2002 “Music, space, identity: geographies of youth culture in Bangalore”, Cultural Studies 16: pp. 337-350.

Simpson, P. 2008 “Chronic everyday life: rhythmanalysing street performance”, Social and Cultural Geography 9(7): pp. 807-829.

Simpson, P. 2012 “Apprehending everyday rhythms: rhythmanalysis, time-lapse photography, and the space-times of street performance”, Cultural Geographies 19(4): pp. 423-445.

Watson, A., Hoyler, M. and Mager, C. 2009 “Spaces and Networks of Musical Creativity in the City”, Geography Compass 3(2): pp. 856-878.

White, B. and Day, F. 1997 “Country music radio and American culture regions”, Journal of Cultural Geography 16: pp. 21-35.

Wood, N., Duffy, M. and Smith, S. J. 2007 “The art of doing (geographies of) music”, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 25: pp. 867–889.

Wyndham, M. and Read, P. 2003 “Buena Vista Social Club: local meets global and lives happily ever after”, Cultural Geographies 10: pp. 498-503.

 

Lecture 3: Geographies of Life Online

In this lecture the we will explore the growing number of ways in which life is mediated with and through the internet. We will investigate the ways in which the internet reconfigures the performance of identity and our understandings of space and place.

 

Kinsley, S. 2013 “Beyond the screen: Methods for investigating geographies of life ‘online'”, Geography Compass 7(8): pp. 540-555.

Wider reading

Adams, P. C. 1997 “Cyberspace and virtual places”, Geographical Review 87(2): pp. 155-171.

– 2011, “A taxonomy for communication geography”, Progress in Human Geography 35(1): pp. 37-57.

Dodge, M. and Kitchin, R. 2001 Mapping Cyberspace, New York, Routledge.

Graham, S. 1998 “The end of geography or the explosion of place? Conceptualising space, place and information technology” Progress in Human Geography 22(2): pp. 165-185.

Hillis, K. 1998 “On the margins: the invisibility of communications in geography” Progress in Human Geography 22(4): pp. 543-566.

Kellerman, A. 2002 The internet on earth: a geography of information, Hoboken, NJ, Wiley.

Mossberger, K., Tolbert, C. J., and Stansbury, M. 2003 Virtual Inequality: beyond the digital divide, Washington DC, Georgetown University Press.

Thrift, N. 1996 “New Urban Eras and Old Technological Fears: Reconfiguring the Goodwill of Electronic Things”, Urban Studies 33(8): pp. 1463-1493.

Zook, M. 2005 The Geography of the Internet Industry: Venture capital dot-coms, and local knowledge, New York, Blackwell.

Lecture 4: Geographies of Books & Reading

While literature can be considered as ‘high’ culture, in this lecture we will consider the ways in which literature and fiction are a significant source of imaginative geographies and particular types of spatial experience.

 

Hones, S. 2008 “Text as It Happens: Literary Geography”, Geography Compass 2(5): pp. 1301-3117.

Kitchin, R. and Kneale, J. 2001 “Science Fiction or future fact? Exploring imaginative geographies of the new millennium”, Progress in Human Geography 25: pp. 17-33.

 

Wider reading

Cresswell, T. 1993 “Mobility as resistance: a geographical reading of Kerouac’s On the Road“, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 18: pp. 249-262.

DeLyser, D. 2005 Romana memories: tourism and the shaping of Southern California, Minneapolis, MN, University of Minnesota Press.

Kneale, J. 1999 “The virtual realities of technology and fiction: reading William Gibson;s cyberspace”, in Crang, M., Crang, P., and May, J. eds. Virtual Geographies, London, Routledge, pp. 205-221.

Lando, F. 1996 “Fact and fiction: geography and literature”, GeoJournal 38(1): pp. 3-18.

Livingstone, D. 2005 “Science, text and space: thoughts on the geography of reading”, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 30(4): pp. 91-401.

Romanillos, J-L. 2008 “‘Outside, it is snowing’: experience and finitude in the nonrepresentational landscapes of Alain Robbe-Grillet”, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 26: 795-822.

Said, E. 1995 (originally, 1978) “Imaginative geography and its representations: Orientalizing the Oriental”, in Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient. London: Penguin, pp. 49-73.

Sharp, J. 2000 “Towards a critical analysis of fictive geographies”, Area 32(3): pp. 327-334.

Shortridge, J. R. 1991 “The concept of the place-defining novel in American popular culture”, Professional Geographer 43(3): pp. 280-291.

 

Lecture 5: Geographies of Cinema and Television

As one of the key media of the 20th and 21st centuries, the moving image is crucial to understanding material cultures, changing ideas about landscape, and identity. In this lecture we will examine the ways in which cinema and television have both reflected and created kinds of spatial experience.

Rosati, C. 2007 “Media Geographies: Uncovering the Spatial Politics of Images”, Geography Compass 1(5): pp. 995-1014.

 Wider reading

Bolter, J. D. and Grusin, R. 1999 Remediation: understanding new media, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press.

Carter, S. 2007 “Mobilising generosity, framing geopolitics: Narrating crisis in the homeland through diasporic media”, Geoforum 38: pp. 1102-1112.

Carter, S. and McCormack, D. 2006 “Film, Geopolitics and the affective logics of intervention”, Political Geography 25: pp. 228-245.

Couldry, N. and McArthy, A. eds. 2004 MediaSpace: place, scale, and culture in the media age, New York, Routledge.

Lukinbeal, C. 2005 “Cinematic landscapes”, Journal of Cultural Geography 23(1): pp. 3-22.

Morley, D. 1996 “The geography of television: ethnography, communications and community”, in Hay, J., Grossberg, L., and Wartella, E. eds. The audience and its landscapes, Boulder, CO, Westview Press, pp. 317-342.

Rosati, C. 2007 “MTV: 360° of the industrial production of culture”, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 32(4): pp. 556-575.

 

Lecture 6: Spaces of Games and Play

Fun can be a serious business. In this lecture we will explore the various ways playing and playfulness are important to how we understand the world. We will examine how play allows us to be ‘other’, how structured games are important to how we negotiate individual and collective identity, and the ways playfulness is central to our performance of everyday life.

Woodyer, T. 2012 “Ludic geographies: not merely child’s play”, Geography Compass 6(6): pp. 313-326.

Wider reading

Ash, J. and Gallacher, L. 2011 “Cultural Geography and Videogames”, Geography Compass 5(6): pp. 351-368.

Borden, I. 2001 Skateboarding, space and the city: architecture and the body, Oxford, Berg.

Caillois, R. 1961 Man, play and games, New York, NY, Free Press of Glencoe.

Flusty, S. 2000 “Thrashing downtown: play as resistance to the spatial and representational regulation of Los Angeles”, Cities 17(2): pp. 149–158.

Holloway, S. L. and Valentine, G. 2000 Children’s geographies: playing, living, learning, London, Routledge.

Huizinga, J. 1949 Homo Ludens: a study of the play-element in culture, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Stevens, Q. 2007 The ludic city: exploring the potential of public spaces, Abingdon & New York, Routledge.

Sutton-Smith, B. 1997 The ambiguity of play, Harvard, MA: Harvard University Press.

Valentine, G. and McKendrick, J. 1997 “Children’s outdoor play: exploring parental concerns about children’s safety and the changing nature of childhood”, Geoforum 28(2): pp. 219–235.

Winnicott, D. W. 1971 Playing and reality, Harmondsworth, Penguin.

Waitt, G. 2008 “Urban Festivals: Geographies of Hype, Helplessness and Hope”, Geography Compass 2(2): pp. 513-537.

Lecture 7: Geographies of Consumption

Consuming goods and services lies at the heart of everyday life, for subsistence, work and for leisure. The ways we consume are a significant focus for cultural geographies research. We will explore how consumption relates to identity and place.

Crewe, L. 2000 “Geographies of retailing and consumption”, Progress in Human Geography 24: pp. 275-290.

Clarke, N. 2008 “From ethical consumerism to political consumption”, Geography Compass 2(6): pp. 1870-1884.

 

Wider reading

Anderson, B. 2004 “Time-stilled space-slowed: how boredom matters” Geoforum 35(6): pp. 739-754.

Bell, D. and Valentine, G. 1996 Consuming Geographies: We are what we eat, Routledge London.

Clarke, D., Doel, M. and Housiaux, K (eds) 2003 The Consumption Reader, Routledge London.

Crewe, L. 2001 “The besieged body: geographies of retailing and consumption”, Progress in Human Geography 25: pp. 629–40.

Crewe, L. 2003 “Geographies of retailing and consumption: markets in motion”, Progress in Human Geography 27(3): pp. 352-362.

du Gay, P. 1997 ‘Introduction’, in: du Gay, P., Hall, S., Janes, L., Mackay, H., & Negus, K. Doing Cultural Studies: The Story of the Sony Walkman, London, Sage, pp. 1-7. –In library: 301.243 DUG

Lury, C. 1996 Consumer Culture, Polity Press, Cambridge.

Mansvelt, J. 2005 Geographies of Consumption, Sage, London.

Paterson, M. 2006 Consumption and Everyday Life, Routledge, London.

Ritzer, G. 2013 The MacDonaldization of Society, 7th edition, London, Sage. –In library: 306.0973 RIT

Urry, J. 1995 Consuming Places, Routledge, London.

Urry, J. 1990 The Tourist Gaze, Sage, London.

 

Posted on

Reblog> The pseudo-digital natives argument

Great, and incisive, post by Martin about the slips we all make in lapsing into easy-but-flawed theories… I’d say this argument also applies to how people talk about a spatial distinction between ‘offline’ and ‘online’, or mediated and face-to-face, communications as a ‘virtual’ / ‘real’ dichotomy. It’s nonsense but still has some residual appeal because we like to put space in a box (a la Descartes).

The pseudo digital-natives argument

When I did my degree in Psychology I remember a lecturer dismissing lots of theories of cognition as a ‘pseudo-homunculus” explanation. The homunculus explanations of psychology posited a little person sitting inside, driving your actions (think Inside Out). Of course, this was debunked hundreds of years ago, but a pseudo-homunculus explanation was one that went so far and then almost implied a little person. For example, theories of perception that posited a projection of the external world as if it was a cinema screen inside the head. It didn’t explain how that then led to action.

I was thinking about this with ed tech presentations. The digital natives myth has long been debunked, like the homunculus, but what we have are often pseudo-digital native explanations. I joked on twitter that we should ban presenters from talking about their children’s use of technology. I don’t really want to ban it (before people start telling me why a ban would be a bad idea), and I think sometimes it is used to effectively make a point. But often the deployment of these anecdotes (or videos even) is to sneak some pseudo-digital native juice in, without being derided for such. “Look, my daughter uses the ipad in a totally different way to me, we need to be ready for these kids in university” is often the implicit or explicit message. I blogged a while ago that there is something appealing about the digital natives idea, people want it to be true, and so it finds new ways to reassert itself. So when you hear a “my kids” anecdote in a presentation, I just ask you to do a pseudo digital natives check. Stay vigilant people.