Tag: The Semaphore Line

• Political Affects in Public Space II

  I said I’d return to make a few comments on the Barnett (2008) paper I read yesterday (direct link to that post here). He understands the Thriftian notion of affect in two registers and calls up a number of problems:

  1. under the critical vision of the politics of affect.

  Are all affectual outcomes bad? Because that’s what Barnett thinks Thrift gets at for a large part. If affect matters politically it’s because ‘it opens up new surfaces for the exercise of manipulation’ (198). But Barnett says that excitement, joy, fear, compulsion, shame etc. ‘have no a priori political valence at all’ (198) and as such can’t be deemed bad per se. It’s a process of interpreting the outcomes from these affects that have the political dimension. Thrift needs to consider this in order to qualify this dimension.

  and

  2. under the affirmative vision of the politics of affect.

  The spaces of affect can be progressively appropriated in order to realise new ‘configurations of feelings’ (198). But why is Thrift making these somewhat covert attempts to open up political regimes of affect? Surely their value only comes from the kinds of political projects that are ongoing and are directed to anyway (’emotional liberty’, ‘ethos of engagement’ 198)? Thrift needs to engage with these political dimensions outright if he wants to make a project of the spaces of affect. Although something tells me that’s not what he wants to do. But Barnett says if that is what Thrift intends, then he has to clarify the implications of it for democratic principles (liberty, free-speech etc.), and for the people who should be participating in this process of commanding the spaces of affect (i.e. every single citizen).

  2012.11.16

• Actor-Network Theory in Plain English

  Just found a cute little cut-and-paste video on YouTube about ANT:

  2012.11.16

• Instagram REALLY wasn’t made for this…

  

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

  Some great posts on Dronestagram in the last few days. The Guardian ran a world news post on it this Monday, as did The Atlantic, here. Although David Gregory does the leg-work required to make sense of this over at his Geographical Imaginations blog, here. I’m going to re-quote what David has already quoted over at GI because it speaks to everything that’s critical about the kinds of technological distancing that goes on in drone warfare, and it’s by Dronestagram’s creator, James Bridle:

  The political and practical possibilities of drone strikes are the consequence of invisible, distancing technologies, and a technologically-disengaged media and society. Foreign wars and foreign bodies have always counted for less, but the technology that was supposed to bring us closer together is used to obscure and obfuscate. We use military technologies like GPS and Kinect for work and play; they continue to be used militarily to maim and kill, ever further away and ever less visibly.

  Yet at the same time we are attempting to build a 1:1 map of the world through satellite and surveillance technologies, that does allow us to see these landscapes, should we choose to go there. These technologies are not just for “organising” information, they are also for revealing it, for telling us something new about the world around us, rendering it more clearly.

  History, like space, is coproduced by us and our technologies: those technologies include satellite mapping, social photo sharing from handheld devices, and fleets of flying death robots. We should engage with them at every level. These are just images of foreign landscapes, still; yet we have got better at immediacy and intimacy online: perhaps we can be better at empathy too.

  I mean, come on, that’s such a rich chunk of text – a real, intelligent conceptualization of the US drone war project. James identifies everything that drone warfare pertains to be; bloodless, clinical, and distanced. He also brings together the war technologies of drone control and the play technologies of front-room computer gaming. He tells us that these technologies do more than ‘present’, more than ‘organize’: he tells us they engage and immediate and that we can do a whole lot better than confine them to other, a-sensorial worlds.  
  

  2012.11.15

• Map alignment and orientation

  …while we assume we know what any particular human action is and what it looks like and then quickly jump to what cognitive ability could have lain behind it, such an arrogant assumption has allowed us to pass by quite what the thing is that we began with. In other words, we think we know what map use, wayfinding and navigation in the world are, but really we are only beginning our inquiries.

  The closing lines of Laurier and Brown (2008) ‘Rotating maps and readers: praxiological aspects of alignment and orientation’ Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 33 (2): 201-216. Although the Transactions version is subscription only (here), there is another (presumably earlier) version available open-access here.

  2012.11.13

• Interview dynamics and fieldtrip mobilities

  

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

  I’ve just returned from a week-long fieldtrip to the island of Gozo, hence the lack of posts on here. I’ve also started to read a lot of articles on mobilities and methodologies recently, and this really wasn’t a coincidence. Fieldtrips provide the opportunity to think about empirical opportunities away from the usual inhabited spaces of reading and writing (i.e. the office desk, the commute etc.) Also, with the weather in the UK typical for the time of year there was nothing better than flying out for some winter sun (23 degrees anyone?), island exploration and discussion. I’ll talk of two parts to the fieldtrip that were worthwhile for myself.

  Interviews

  In the first instance there were two group interviews (of 11/12 people) with 3 individuals (local mayor, holiday business owner x2) focused around a variety of island-based questions on immigration, asylum, cultural identity, tourism, local food & drink, environmental/energy issues, war and empire, EU funding, economic stability, crime and travel connections.  Although the questions were for the benefit of the students (although asked by all), the dynamics of each of the two interviews were critical for understanding appropriate interview techniques. The benefits of a large interview panel were multifarious, despite a number of potential pitfalls. We were able to cover a wide range of topics without jumping arbitrarily between subjects due to the entangled nature of the themes discussed (EU funding > bridges > crime etc.). Although this did require some initiative and timing, making the right judgements on when to move topic and when to continue the current line of questioning. It also gave the students enough time to compose questions and allowed a more varied interview path. No one person was responsible for asking all the questions. Also, in interview 1 we arranged ourselves in a ’roundtable’ fashion that arguably levelled out the power relations between interviewee and interviewer. It took place in the local council building in a clean, air-conditioned event room. The interview arrangement was in contrast to the classic confrontational dynamic of the one-to-one interview that can be daunting for those involved due to the bodily proximity and exposure to the interviewee. The large table (complete with water, coffee and biscuits) gave  interviewers enough space and bodily distance to feel comfortable and confident enough to ask questions. Interview 2 was a ‘poolside’ interview at the apartments we stayed in. Both interviewees were joint owners of the holiday complex and seemed happy and relaxed at being interviewed on sunloungers by the resort pool (much like the rest of us…)! Questions didn’t flow as easily as the initial interview but did take on an informal structure. Both interviews were interspersed with a few jokes, communal laughs and general at-ease gestures. Both contained a number of challenging and straightforward questions for interviewees and the size of contributors helped in mediating some difficult topics. Talking to Mediterranean islanders about North African immigration and asylum policy is a prickly subject. The range of interviewers helped to disperse the conflict between subjects, allowing some ‘softer’ questions to bookend the difficult ones. With some students having a more confrontational technique (helping to open some thematic doors), and others a more laidback approach we were able to put our subjects in a non-threatening position, getting an array of rich answers in the process.

  Travel

  The second part of the fieldtrip that was particularly worthwhile involved different modes of transport. In the week away I travelled:

  On foot (short distances to the local village, around supermarkets, up steps, hillsides and pilgrimage routes, around monuments and along coastlines)

  By car and people carrier (middle and long-distances of between 1/2 hour and 3 hours from village to town, island to island and from holiday complex to ferry port; with 3 people and with 6 people, as navigator and passenger, on shopping trips and on day trips)

  By taxi, minibus and airport shuttle (in the UK to the airport at 5am, across an unfamiliar landscape from airport to hotel complex, by an Asian Mancunian and a Maltese driver, from complex to airport back across a now-familiar route, from aeroplane to terminal, with hand-luggage)

  By public bus (from town to village, from town centre to tourist attraction, on a newly privatized service, on air-conditioned vehicles, by the rhythms and luck of a local service, with locals and fellow tourists alike, with conversations with bus drivers, for considerably less money than in the UK!)

  By ferry (from an uninspiring Maltese port to a far more picturesque Gozitan marina [see above], from Cirkewwa to Mgarr, by Gozo Channel Company Ltd, as a foreign tourist, as a car passenger, as a day-tripper rather than commuter)

  By aeroplane (from Manchester to Malta, from gloomy English rain to balmy Mediterranean sunshine, by low-cost airline, alongside lecturers, students and other travellers, enjoyed with conversation and reading literature, by the window and aisle)

  On my return to the UK I also subsequently travelled by bicycle (home – centre of Manchester), local bus service (airport – home, Coventry – Warwick), and lastly, train (Manchester – Birmingham – Coventry and back again).

  By all accounts that’s a fair bit of travelling. 11 different modes of transport. Multiple journeys and many miles! My only recommendation is never to drive out of Valletta during rush-hour. An astonishing 310, 409 cars are registered in Malta, seemingly most of which were trying to get out its capital at the same time as we were.

  Here’s an article, book, video and a novel I’ve all read and watched recently that have shaped these personal experiences:

  Ingold, T (2004) Culture on the ground: The world perceived through feet. Journal of Material Culture. (subscribers only – although look for any of Ingold’s work at his staff page here)

  Pink, S (2012) Situating Everyday Life. (available on amazon for £18~) and her What is Sensory Ethnography video on the SAGE methodspace website (http://www.methodspace.com/video/what-is-sensory-ethnography-by)

  Poe, E.A. (1999 [1838]) The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (a novel by Penguin Classics, around £6/7)

  

   

  2012.11.08