Category: methods

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Sam Merrill on “Mapping Maps and Gaps: A Critical Digital Cartography of the ‘Mediterranean Refugee Crisis'”

Over on his blog, a little while ago, Sam Merrill blogged an excellent write-up of his participation in the 2016 Digital Methods Initiative Winter School (something I would’ve liked to do but didn’t know about[!] and anyway didn’t have time/funds to do). There’s a lot to think about from Sam’s blogpost, from the politics of different uses of maps in different phonic communities to the discursive politics of ‘refugee’ and ‘migrant’ and the complex representational politics of different media organisations. Definitely worth a read!

Mapping Maps and Gaps: A Critical Digital Cartography of the ‘Mediterranean Refugee Crisis’

Last month I attended the 2016 Digital Methods Initiative Winter School led by Richard Rogers and his team at the University of Amsterdam. Organised in the format of a data sprint the event saw participants attend a day of keynote talks presented by the likes of, among others, Lilie Chouliaraki, Mathieu Jacomy, Carolin Gerlitz and Rogers himself before turning their attention to a hands-on digital project for the remainder of the week. With the rather clever title of, Otherwise Engaged – Critical Analytics and the New Meanings of Engagement Online the Winter School set out to problematize online engagement and develop new methods by which to measure, visualise and interpret that engagement. The group I joined, which was made up of Natalia Sanchez-Querubin (University of Amsterdam), Rik Smit (University of Groningen), Belal Islim (University of Amsterdam), Quentin Lobbe (Telecom Paris Tech), Gabriele Colombo (Density Design), Suzanne van Geuns (Utrecht University) Jasper Bol (University of Amsterdam), Lars Dellemaan (University of Amsterdam), Hadewieg Beekman (University of Amsterdam) set out to create a digital critical cartography of the so-called ‘Mediterranean Refugee Crisis’ (although this phrase formulation arguable shifts attention from the true location of the crisis in the Middle East) .

Our pilot study compared the maps, images, locations and texts returned by Google searches for the queries ‘refugee routes’ and ‘migrant routes’ in seven languages: Arabic, English, French, Italian, Dutch, German and Spanish. As we expected the result showed the different levels of empathetic distance, dehumanization and solidarity associated with the two terms (refugee and migrants) and reinforced the relevancy of the recent debates in the European press about the responsible use of these terms and the campaign by the UNHCR about the degree to which, in this context particularly, word choice matters. It would take too much space to explain in detail all of the different hybridized digital-human methods that we explored and used over the week not to mention all the multi-leveled findings suggested (but not necessarily confirmed) by our initial interpretive forays. So instead I direct those interested to visit our project wiki, which although still being updated, gives a good idea of what we got up to during the week.

Read the full blogpost.

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Sue Ruddick ~ reading & writing in a materialist way

There’s a free to access commentary on the Society and Space website by Sue Ruddick on reading and writing in a materialist way. i really enjoyed reading this and I recommend it…

Here’s a snippet:

…concepts matter.  They matter in their distinctions.  They make a difference, in the most literal sense that, in the act of philosophizing, in the invention, creation of a new concept, one is attempting to change sensibilities, provoke new perceptions and understandings, to make difference. This is why we must proceed with caution in attempts to make new or difficult concepts legible to a wider audience; we must be a careful not simply to appeal to a common sense understanding, lest we risk losing the very specificity of the concept in question. It is in this sense, I argue, that we cannot simply substitute a more commonly understood term for its less familiar concept. We cannot for example exchange “affect” for “emotion” (unless we want to launch a fully developed argument as to why they are equivalent) any more than we might substitute “price difference” for “surplus value”.  To paraphrase Deleuze, when a philosopher employs a distinctive term or concept, it is in principle because he or she has a reason to (Deleuze 1978).

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Reblog> Making space for writing: geography and research writing

This looks interesting and pertinent to the rash of writing-related blogging by Stuart Elden and others in the last couple of years…

Making space for writing: geography and research writing

RGS-IBG ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE 2016
Royal Geographical Society, London

30th August – 3rd September 2016

Call for Papers

Making space for writing: geography and research writing

Sponsored by the Higher Education Research Group of the RGS-IBG

Session Organisers: Rae Dufty-Jones (Western Sydney University) and Chris Gibson (University of Wollongong)

Writing is integral to how we perform our scholarly identities as geographers. As Kamler and Thompson (2006: 15) argue: ‘we are represented by our writings and we are judged by them’. Research writing is a key product by which colleagues and institutions evaluate our past and potential contributions. It is often the source of much personal anxiety. To be able to write about their research is also a key skill that graduate students are often expected to have mastered by the time they complete their doctoral studies.

Yet, while we regularly espouse the need to ‘find space’ for our writing, we have seldom overtly theorised space in our writing practices. Writing remains a ‘black box’ in geographical literatures.

This session invites proposals to present work examining the nexus between geography, geographers and research writing. Some suggested questions for framing papers include:

  • What role does ‘space’ play in our writing practices?
  • What strategies are employed by geographers to make ‘space’ (figurative, literal, relational) for our research writing?
  • What does the advent of the neoliberal university mean for academic writing practice?
  • How have geographers challenged or resisted managerial expectations around their writing practices and products?
  • How might geographers contribute theoretically/conceptually to understandings of research writing both generally, and pedagogically?
  • What approaches do geographers use in teaching graduate students how to write, and how might these approaches be improved, especially through a focus on ‘making space’ for writing?
  • Reflections on graduate student experiences of being taught how to write their research – the good, the bad and the ugly.

Please email proposals (title + 200-250 word Abstract) or queries to Rae Dufty-Jones (r.dufty-jones@western.edu.au) and Chris Gibson (cgibson@uow.edu.au).  The deadline for Abstracts is Friday 5th February 2016.  The format of the session will be the presentation of 4-5 selected papers each lasting 20 minutes.

Reference
Kamler B and Thomson P. (2006) Helping doctoral students write: Pedagogies for supervision, London: Routledge.

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First Contagion paper – Translating social media: promises and problems for critical human geography

As one or two readers of this blog will know, I was a Co-I on the Contagion project led by Prof Steve Hinchliffe between September 2013 and May of this year (2015). The project investigated the idea and the performances of ‘contagion’ across several domains, including in relation to social media and in relation to disease. The first paper from the work on social media was recently completed and I’m happy to share some information here…

Those who found my brief post for the LSE’s ‘Impact’ blog concerning what I called the ‘political economy of Twitter data’ may find this paper of particular interest.

The paper’s title is Translating social media: promises and problems for critical human geography – ‘translation’ here addresses the (positive and negative) methodological potentials of the adaption and adoption of social media data and techniques (some of which are ‘black-boxed’) and their attendant epistemological assumptions.

The authors of the paper are myself, Rebecca Sandover (who was RA on the project and wrote some interesting blogposts concerning cognate issues) and Steve Hinchliffe.

Here is the abstract:

This article interrogates the promise as well as the critical implications of how social media reshape geographical research and in doing so offers an intervention into the emerging geographies of social media. The article is structured in three substantive parts: First, we introduce the promise of social media research through an initial exploration of how those media are ineluctably entangled in changes within social, economic and political fields. Second, the translations of data in social media research are addressed through the applications and techniques involved. Third, we focus upon issues relating to access to data and the ethics of gathering and interrogating social media data. This provides a basis for subsequent discussion of the theoretical implications of digital data methods and the performances of socialities online. This article signals how, through the exploration of different techniques, critical social media studies can speak to Rose’s (2015) challenge to chart the complexities of digitally–mediated cultural performances, interpretations and movements through the investigation of data attributes.

We have submitted this paper for review, so we’ll have to see what happens…

If you’d like to know more or would like a copy of the paper please feel free to get in touch.

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Museum of Contemporary Commodities

I have meant, and singularly failed, to blog about this fantastic project for a while, so I mean to makes amends now:

The Museum of Contemporary Commodities (MoCC) is an artistic, collaborative and activist project cooked up by the excellent Paula Crutchlow – who just so happens to be a PhD student in Exeter Geography Dept. The project is a collaboration with my colleague Ian Cook and several other interesting and exciting people – not least the folk at Furtherfield.

Funnily enough, I learned about MoCC when it was in its larval stages before I joined the department at Exeter – Ian and Paula held a ‘Thinkering Day’ here in Devon and we explored some ideas around what MoCC could be… the event was supported by REACT (hence why I learned about it) – here’s a snazzy video:

You should definitely explore the MoCC website to learn more, but here’s how MoCC is explained on the Furtherfield website:

The Museum of Contemporary Commodities (MoCC) is neither a building nor a permanent collection of stuff – it’s an invitation. To consider every shop, online store and warehouse full of stuff as if it were a museum, and all the things in it part of our collective future heritage.

Imagine yourself as this museum’s curator with the power to choose what is displayed and how. To trace and interpret the provenance and value of these things and how they arrived here. To consider the effects this stuff has on people and places close by or far away, and how and why it connects them.

What do we mean by things or stuff? Everything that you can buy in today’s society. The full range of contemporary commodities available to consume.

Please join us on our journey by browsing and adding to our collection, attending an event, and becoming a researcher. We are currently curating connections between trade-place-data-values.

There are further events planned and lots more exciting things to come so keep an eye on both the Furtherfield and the MoCC websites.

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CFP> Mobile Work-Life Arrangements: Exploring conceptual and methodological challenges

This was posted to crit-geog and I thought it looks interesting and wanted to share:

Mobile Work-Life Arrangements: Exploring conceptual and methodological challenges.

 An Interdisciplinary Late-Summer School

9-18 October, 2015
University of Freiburg, Germany

Convened by: COME (Research Group Cultures of Mobility in Europe) and ANTHROMOB (EASA Anthropology and Mobility Network)

Anna Lipphardt (Freiburg); Jamie Coates (Waseda/Sheffield) and Roger Norum (Leeds/UCL)

Funded by Volkswagen Foundation

OVERVIEW
The interdisciplinary field of mobility studies has produced a broad spectrum of theoretical works and structural analyses, driven by research focusing on recent innovation in transport and communication. Within that field, economic and work-related aspects of mobility, are often treated as distinct from other life practices. This late-summer school aims to contribute to the field of mobility studies with respect to two key issues: First, it will turn attention to the interplay between work and non-work (e.g. leisure, family life, well-being) spheres of life linked to mobility. Second, it focuses on the complexities of mobile work-life arrangements as they play out in the everyday lives of an ever-growing number of people worldwide, across the economic spectrum and across diverse professional and socio-cultural fields.
The late-summer school explicitly aims to bring together people studying a range of empirical cases including (but not limited to) research across the following subjects:

  • peripatetic and pastoralist groups
  • transport-sector professionals
  • artists, creatives and travelling entertainers
  • seasonal and project-based labourers
  • academics
  • lifestyle migrants

OBJECTIVES AND KEY QUESTIONS
The late-summer school has two core objectives:

1. Providing a forum for discussing qualitative methodological approaches to mobility, including multi-sited, mobile or trajectory ethnography; life-course and life-world analyses; and newly-emerging ICT-based methods;

2. Exploring the differing forms of knowledge production concomitant with mobile work-life arrangements, it will encourage a critical reflection of the theoretical frameworks, empirical operationalisations and political discourses that implicitly or explicitly inform much research on mobile groups. Our intention is to bring together different epistemic communities, thus fostering a comparative perspective.

Key questions which the late-summer school will address are:

  • How do we develop a critical analytical position in light of the complex entanglements between the political and economic discourses on certain mobile groups, the conceptual approaches of our respective research disciplines, and the emic perspectives of the people we study?
  • What are the advantages, challenges, and limitations of differing analytical models such as multi-sited ethnography, qualitative case study, life-course analysis, or phenomenology in exploring mobile work-life arrangements?
  • How can we compare or generalise insights gained from qualitative studies on specific mobile fields? And how can we employ empirical research to advance theoretical stances on mobility, both within a given research area and across disciplinary divides?

PROGRAMME AND WORKING FORMATS
The programme includes keynote lectures and advanced seminars by Noel Salazar (University of Leuven), Michaela Benson (Goldsmiths University) and Huub van Baar (University of Amsterdam/Giessen University). It also comprises presentations by doctoral students, workshops on mobile methods and representational strategies, informal discussions on practical issues of mobile/multi-sited fieldwork, career and professional development sessions, a film screening, and recreational activities. The working language is English.

WHO WE ARE LOOKING FOR
The programme is aimed at doctoral students working on projects situated in qualitative social research focusing on issues related to mobile work-life arrangements. The common ground for all participants will be their interest in the labour/economic aspects of the mobile empirical fields they study, their footing in qualitative social research, and a shared interest in the epistemology of Mobility Studies. We welcome applications from doctoral students based in disciplines such as cultural and social anthropology, sociology, political science, social work, education, geography, and relevant interdisciplinary research fields including mobility, communication, environmental, transport and labour studies. Doctoral students at any stage of their research – including beginners – are invited to present work in progress and to discuss central research issues with which they are currently concerned. To ensure an open and collaborative learning environment, the number of participants will be limited to a maximum of 25.

APPLICATION
Interested applicants are asked to submit the following materials to the convenors by email up until August 10, 2015:

1. Curriculum Vitae (1 page);
2. Short description of your dissertation project (1-2 pages);
3. Personal statement (1-2 pages) that answers the following:
– Why do you wish to attend the Mobile Work-Life Arrangements Late-Summer School?
– What specific aspects of your dissertation and fieldwork are you most interested in discussing?

Successful applicants will be notified by email by the 3rd week of August.

ACCOMODATION AND TRAVEL GRANTS
It is expected that participants take part in the full duration of the late-summer school. All meals and accommodation will be covered, as will reimbursement for the following travel expenses: up to 150 Euro for participants from Germany; up to 300 Euro for those from other European countries; and up to 800 Euro for students who come from overseas. Participants from developing countries and from countries affected by current economic crises are eligible to apply for full travel funding.

For more information, please see www.mobworklife.net. Please feel free to contact us for specific questions about the programme or application.

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What might happen when ‘things’ design themselves?

I’ve been meaning to flag this for a while… Chris Speed at Edinburgh (who gave the ‘dancing with data‘ talk I posted a while ago) is leading a project called ThingTank:

The ThingTank project identifies that ‘things’ may soon know more about lives than we do and may also be able to make suggestions about what is missing. The purpose of this project is to explore the potential for identifying novel patterns of use within the data that is streamed through the interaction between people and things, and things and things. Our project builds on research and innovation that has been established by the three investigators across the fields of Internet of Things, Social Experience Design and Machine Learning. Through a better understanding of how what data can tell us about how we use objects, new models of use will emerge and reinvigorate the role of things and people within design and manufacturing.

The project offers some interesting provocations both as research outcomes and as innovation in methods. It’s worth looking at this write-up by Chris on his website Fields.

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Reblog> Embracing interdisciplinarity

Really nice blogpost by Sam Merrill about interdisciplinarity over on his blog. I definitely identify with some of the experiences Sam relates, albeit in different institutional contexts…

Embracing interdisciplinarity

I recently read Matt Houlbrook’s excellent blog post, ‘on being a one trick historian’ (appropriately accompanied by The Smiths’ Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before) and was struck by the particular resonance of some of his words.“It is not easy to turn new tricks in the world we inhabit. Starting from scratch is an uncomfortable experience – it means admitting our ignorance, addressing the reading we have not done, relying upon the kindness of academic strangers.

It takes time”

As Matt does elsewhere on his website, I tend to emphasise the mobility that has characterised my academic pathway to date and the benefits I believe it has brought my scholarly practice. This mobility extends beyond study and employment spells at different UK higher educations institutions, which depending on how strictly I define ‘spells’ ranges from between three and five universities, to also include periods of education and work in different national and cultural settings including at two universities in Germany and two in Australia. Most importantly, however, this mobility also pertains to the level of scholarly flexibility that I have tried to uphold through a willingness to cross academic borders and expose my research to the perspectives of new disciplines. This is reflected by the fact that in the last ten years I have spent time in archaeology and ancient history, heritage studies, cultural geography, urban studies, business, economics and tourism, and modern languages departments. I do not mean this list to sound conceited, not least because I have come across enough criticism and regularly grapple with the potential risks of this chosen path to know that it is not something that all would feel proud of or feel comfortable about.

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David Moats reviews Rob Kitchin’s The Data Revolution in TCS

On the Theory Culture & Society journal website you can read a review of Rob Kitchin’s The Data Revolution by David Moats.

Here’s the abstract:

Rob Kitchin’s The Data Revolution helpfully strips away the hype surrounding ‘big data’ and clarifies key terms. This review suggests some avenues where the book could be taken further, particularly in reference to the performativity of big data discourses and infrastructures, giving the example of Cameron and Palin’s dismantling of the hype around globalisation. It is also suggested that the performative effects of data enact sociality in new ways and may require more dramatic methodological and philosophical shifts. Crucially however, Kitchin’s book successfully clears a space of shared understanding on which more radical projects can be built.

Read the whole review.

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Symposium on Innovations in Ethnographic Methodology

The Centre for Ethnographic Research (UC Berkeley) is holding a symposium on innovations in ethnographic methodology, please find the CFP copied below. Looks interesting!

CFP: Symposium on Innovations in Ethnographic Methodology

On March 4, 2016, CER is hosting a one-day symposium on Innovations in Ethnographic Methodology. We invite scholars from any discipline to submit paper proposals that focus on methodological innovations in conducting ethnographic research.  Exemplars to illustrate methodological contributions may be drawn from any substantive field, e.g. education, everyday life, inequality, health, migration, organizations, urban, etc. Scholars working in ethnographic traditions including Intepretivism, Symbolic Interaction, Ethnomethodology, Phenomenology, the Extended Case Method, and Behavioralism are encouraged to participate.

Those wishing to present a paper are requested to submit an abstract (up to 500 words) along with a current cv. Papers should be focused on methodology and not on findings. The abstract should include a description of the innovation and state the contribution the paper makes to the existing issues within one or more ethnographic methodological traditions. Those chosen to present their papers will have their economy airfare and two nights of lodging paid by the Center.  Selected papers from the conference will be submitted for a special issue of the journal Ethnography.  Abstracts for the conference are due by September 10, 2015, and notification of acceptance will be provided by October 10, 2015.  Please send abstract and cv to cer2015conf@gmail.com.

Via Ethnography Matters.