Category: Politics

• June Workshop – Thinking and Doing Digital Mapping

  

  I thought I’d repost an announcement from Charting the Digital on a forthcoming workshop at the University of Warwick. I should be presenting an early version of a paper I’m co-writing with fellow CTD member Alex Gekker (who has recently set up his Casual Space blog). We will be talking about the ludification of automobility and satellite navigation. Martin Dodge, Muki Haklay and Lisa Parks are amongst the workshop participants. The blurb is below:

  “Digital mapping has developed over the last thirty years to become a pervasive and global technology. It shapes our understanding of the world, and strongly mediates how we approach it.

  Yet remarkably little is known about how particular assemblages of digital mapping actually do their work, or contribute to thinking about the world. What approaches yield which kinds of understanding about the encounter between people, mapping and the world? And how are different methodologies wrapped up in digital mapping?

  To this end, Charting the Digital is hosting a workshop titled “Thinking and Doing Digital Mapping”. The workshop will explore how digital mapping has become a central tool for thinking and doing in today’s global culture.

  Sybille Lammes (University of Warwick, UK)*

  Nanna Verhoeff (University of Utrecht, NL)*

  Chris Perkins (University of Manchester, UK)*

  Tristan Thielman (Siegen University, Germany)

  Martin Dodge (University of Manchester, UK)

  Joe Gerlach (University of Oxford, UK)

  Gregory Asmolov (LSE, UK)

  Barry Brown (University of Glasgow, UK)

  Muki Haklay (UCL, UK)

  Lisa Parks (University of California Santa Barbara, USA)

  Larissa Hjorth (RMIT, Australia)

  Sam Hind (University of Warwick, UK)*

  Alex Gekker (University of Utrecht, NL)*

  Clancy Wilmott (University of Manchester, UK)*

  It aims to bring together a variety of researchers and practitioners from a wide range of disciplinary and methodological backgrounds who share a common focus on digital mapping. The workshop will run in June at the University of Warwick.”

  All * individuals are affiliated to the Charting the Digital project.

  2013.03.28

• A History of the World in Twelve Maps

  Martin Dodge reviews Jerry Brotton’s recent title at Society and Space. Further reviews are available at Times Higher Education, The Economist, and the Guardian.

  2013.03.26

• Castells on Protest and Space

  A Comment is Free video over at the Guardian. Aside from taking rhizomatic as his own concept, this is a relatively good introduction by Manuel Castells into the dynamic of protest movements, urban space and what he calls ‘cyberspace’. I’m always a little wary of the latter category hence the scare quotes.

  I find it a little odd people like Castells are still trying to make sharp boundaries between urban (‘physical’) and cyber (‘non-physical’) space. The city is full of digital technology – in fact, contemporary cities are positively built on it, so why when it comes to discussing protest movements do we essentialize urban space as being pure, physical, non-digital space? Conversely, why do we see the digital as not having an effect on ‘on the ground’ protest? It patently does.

  2013.03.26

• When is a protest not a protest?…When it’s Critical Mass

  A bike blog post on The Guardian concerning the trial of 9 cyclists prosecuted after last summer’s Olympic Games Critical Mass.

  The case seemingly revolved around the definition of protest, and whether the ill-fated ride constituted a protest event or not. The London Metropolitan Police thought it did. Critical Mass participants, arguably, did not. It is described by the author of this piece as an ‘explicitly apolitical social event’.

  Critical Mass rides are patently not ‘explicitly apolitical social events’ but neither are they hotbeds of wanton anarchy either. Unfortunately and inevitably, they seem to have been drawn into debating whether or not it constituted a political event in order to contend the London Met’s deployment of section 12 of the Public Order Act (“to prevent serious public disorder, serious criminal damage or serious disruption to the life of the community”).

  ‘Serious disruption’ is obviously a supremely subjective term. Serious public disorder and criminal damage maybe less so. But in truth, this section is readily mobilised if a “senior police officer…reasonably believes” disorder, damage disruption or intimidation is to take place.

  So no matter how hard you argue to the contrary, if the senior officer has reasonable belief – and really, that’s no great burden of proof – whatever event, procession, march or ‘apolitical’ bike ride is going to be halted and offending participants arrested. Spinning them as harmless social events won’t quite cut it, despite the obvious injustice.

  2013.03.18

• How open is openness?

  Re: the BBC and New Broadcasting House’s supposed ‘open’ newsroom, an NYT column by Evgeny Morozov.

  2013.03.16