Public sphere as assemblage: the cultural politics of roadside memorialization

This paper investigates contemporary academic accounts of the public sphere. In particular, it takes stock of post‐Habermasian public sphere scholarship, and acknowledges a lively and variegated debate concerning the multiple ways in which individuals engage in contemporary political affairs. A critical eye is cast over a range of key insights which have come to establish the parameters of what ‘counts’ as a/the public sphere, who can be involved, and where and how communicative networks are established. This opens up the conceptual space for re‐imagining a/the public sphere as an assemblage. Making use of recent developments in Deleuzian‐inspired assemblage theory – most especially drawn from DeLanda's (2006) ‘new philosophy of society’ – the paper sets out an alternative perspective on the notion of the public sphere, and regards it as a space of connectivity brought into being through a contingent and heterogeneous assemblage of discursive, visual and performative practices. This is mapped out with reference to the cultural politics of roadside memorialization. However, a/the public sphere as an assemblage is not simply a ‘social construction’ brought into being through a logic of connectivity, but is an emergent and ephemeral space which reflexively nurtures and assembles the cultural politics (and political cultures) of which it is an integral part. The discussion concludes, then, with a consideration of the contribution of assemblage theory to public sphere studies. (Also see Campbell 2009a)     

Walking with technology: understanding mobility-technology assemblages

ABSTRACT

It is difficult to deny that technology – be it listening to music through headphones, engaging with smartphone apps or conversing through hands-free headsets – has become a ubiquitous part of everyday walking practices, influencing daily activities and shaping how these are operationalised. While digital technologies cannot replace conventional interactions with landscapes (e.g. the weather, clothing, street furniture, etc.), the intersections of people, places and technologies can converge in exciting and surprising ways to produce new forms of interrelating with(in) spaces. In this paper, I focus on the digital walking tour as a novel instrument through which to examine how mobility-technology assemblage assists with understanding how engagements with environments might produce various, contrasting assemblages of mobilities, bodies, affects, emotions and placemaking. I argue that participating within hybridised physical/digital spaces affects and is affected by different mobility practices. Through this paper, I propose that mobility-technology assemblage thinking provides new interventions into the ways in which people interact with technology, with each other and with(in) everyday spaces. Hence, while the person–technology interface may be considered a largely individual experience, I posit that the amalgamation of people, places and technologies can, in fact, greatly influence how pedestrian experiences are assembled, transmitted, received and interpreted.     

Flying through Ash Clouds: Improvising Aeromobilities in Singapore and Australasia

Scholars have recently been concerned with how the aviation industry is assembled through a series of tightly coupled processes and relations that render it fragile and prone to disruptions. While not disagreeing with this view, this paper explores some alternative ways aviation can be reunderstood as something more emergent and adaptable. Two ash cloud events, in Singapore and Australasia, are elucidated to show how breakdowns in air travel seldom unfold without intervening human actions and spontaneous reformations. Suggesting that aerial systems are thus continually renewed, this paper seeks to recognize in (aero)mobilities their potential for improvisation, even as it acknowledges their riskiness.     

“李毅吧冶的主体塑造历程与中国互联网群体主体性的变迁

网络主体建构的研究在近年全球建制化权力都在不断强化互联网控制的背景下,受到学界愈加密切的关注。 文章从行动者网络理论的视野出发,试图通过对百度贴吧“李毅吧”自 2004 年建吧以来的主体叙事和自我构建的历时性分析,来勾划李毅吧吧友聚合群体的身份政治史,并以此来揭示中国互联网身份政治与媒介技术、社会权力关系变迁之间的复杂关联。 文章认为,李毅吧的从粉丝、反粉丝、“屌丝”到“小粉红”的聚合群组变迁过程,展现了中国网络用户聚合群体主体性建构从赋权主题的网络主体性自我构建向治理术主导的主体塑造的转变过程。 这种转变过程可被视为中国网络主体建构的一个典型转变路径。     

Automobility and site ontological analysis

Many scholars of mobility employ the concepts of assemblage, practice and intensive force. This paper argues that site ontological analysis is a productive way to understand the ways these phenomenon work together. The importance of practice organization to such a differential ontology is emphasized. A case study of an automobile journey on the Pennsylvania Turnpike illustrates how a momentary stranding in the driving event modified the site’s practices, temporalities, subjectivities and intensivities.     

Mobility and the City Improvement District: Frictions in the Human-capital Mobile Assemblage

In this paper, we interrogate the role of the city improvement district (CID) in the intervention and management of mobility within the context of the South African city and the case study of the Groote Schuur Community Improvement District (GSCID), a public–private urban governance scheme situated in Cape Town’s middle income southern suburbs. Using the theoretical lens of bodily-scale mobility, we investigate the CID’s activation and management. This is useful, as we will demonstrate, because it is through the mobility and immobility at the scale of the body, where the CID’s mandate is operationalised and it is through the control of mobility that the CID’s mission, discourses and activities are linked. This work demonstrates that CIDs, as elite-driven urban renewal initiatives closely aligned with capital interests, employ exclusionary spatial practices that have the potential to shape the twenty-first century urban experience in significant ways. We conclude by theorising the co-constitutive nature of human mobilities and capital as the ‘human-capital mobile assemblage’ and by arguing that the CID occupies an ambivalent place in the contemporary city.     

Assessing the performance of the bootstrap in simulated assemblage networks

Archaeologists are increasingly interested in networks constructed from site assemblage data, in which weighted network ties reflect sites’ assemblage similarity. Equivalent networks would arise in other scientific fields where actors’ similarity is assessed by comparing distributions of observed counts, so the assemblages studied here can represent other kinds of distributions in other domains. One concern with such work is that sampling variability in the assemblage network and, in turn, sampling variability in measures calculated from the network must be recognized in any comprehensive analysis. In this study, we investigated the use of the bootstrap as a means of estimating sampling variability in measures of assemblage networks. We evaluated the performance of the bootstrap in simulated assemblage networks, using a probability structure based on the actual distribution of sherds of ceramic wares in a region with 25 archaeological sites. Results indicated that the bootstrap was successful in estimating the true sampling variability of eigenvector centrality for the 25 sites. This held both for centrality scores and for centrality ranks, as well as the ratio of first to second eigenvalues of the network (similarity) matrix. Findings encourage the use of the bootstrap as a tool in analyses of network data derived from counts.     

组合理论视野下倮倮泼葬礼的人类学解读——美国人类学家艾瑞克·穆格勒新著《给死去父母的歌》

美国人类学家艾瑞克?穆格勒的新著《给死去父母的歌》从身体、文本、世界三个角度对云南彝族倮倮泼地区葬礼仪式中的多种现象、关系及物质的多重组合展开了多方位解码和释读，呈现出了一个立体多维的区域性文化和历史的面貌。