Chicago 2006 CGSG Sponsored Session Abstracts
Between
Place and Virtual Place
Representing Northwest Indiana
on the Web
Michael W. Longan - Valparaiso University
Abstract: This paper explores the virtual space of Northwest
Indiana on the World Wide Web in order to understand who is representing
the region online, how they represent the region, and for what purposes.
Content analysis of 150 place-related web sites about Northwest Indiana
reveals that local governments and chambers of commerce play a primary
role in representing the region online and that providing government information
and place promotion for economic development are primary aims of their
sites. Analysis of images on these sites reveals a region of small town
values and big city advantages with a connection to the natural environment.
Few sites have features that encourage audiences to participate in dialog
or reflect place-based political activism. Places experiencing economic
distress seem to have more web sites about history than do places that
are growing. Among the most interesting but rare sites are ones created
by individuals that present a historical and geographical portrait of
the place where they live and that express a love of place. In short,
a wired elite represent Northwest Indiana on the web in order to connect
the region to what Castells calls the "global space of flows"
in order to attract economic development. Their discourses about the region
face little challenge from everyday citizens living in the "space
of places."
Keywords: cyberspace, representation, Northwest Indiana
Your Urgent Assistance is Requested: The Intersection of Imagined
Nations and Internet Spam
Matthew Zook - University of Kentucky
Abstract: Unsolicited email (i.e., spam) is an unfortunately
ubiquitous phenomenon of the Internet. A particularly colorful subset
of spam known as "419 spam" or "West African spam"
requests the recipient to aid in the transfer of money (often explicitly
described as illegally obtained) from West Africa. This paper focuses
on 419 spam and how it intersects with place and polity in a number of
ways. Starting with a small database on the geographic origin and transmission
of 419 spam, I analyze the complex networks used by these spammers. I
focus on both the way in which spammers depend upon weakened (and corrupt)
national states to construct their ever-changing narratives and create
imagined national state institutions (complete with faux embassies) to
legitimize their work. The research highlights the fungibility of Internet
technologies via their use by social groups present in a society (i.e.,
criminal gangs) and how the breakdown in civil/political society in a
place like Nigeria touches (albeit largely electronically) the rest of
the world. Finally, I will consider how 419 spam impacts the places and
polities with which it is associated. Ranging from strengthening public
conceptions of West Africa as a sea of corruption to a decreased ability
to interact with the outside world (some spam filters can automatically
delete all email coming from an address with a .ru ending), I argue that
spam and spammers are playing an important, if illicit, role in the construction
of global (and national subsets) of cyberspace.
Keywords: internet, nationalism, community, polity
Othering in Video Games:
Representation of Foreign Cultures in World of Warcraft, Suikoden III,
Shenmue, and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
Leigh Schwartz
Abstract: Despite the growing use and complexity of
the virtual environments of video games, geographers have neglected investigation
of the representation of video game spaces. Game spaces are entirely artificial,
and whether they feature swords-and-sorcery fantasy worlds or gritty urban
streets, video game environments are embedded with political and mythological
metaphors and ideas. This paper examines the representation of foreign
cultures in four recent games, conducting visual and textual analysis
of the representation of fantasy, realism, and othering.
Keywords: virtual, othering, media, cyberspace, fantasy,
realism, games
Geographical consequences
of ubiquitous computing (ubicomp)
Author(s):
Daniel Z. Sui - Texas A&M University
Abstract: With the accelerated development of sensor
webs, coupled with steady innovations in wireless/embedded computing and
communications, the past five years have witnessed the emergence of ubiquitous
computing (ubicomp). Technologies of ubicomp present both exciting new
opportunities as well as daunting challenges for society. Theoretically
grounded in the literature related to paradoxes of progress, this chapter
presents a comprehensive analysis and synthesis on the geographical consequences
of ubicomp along behavioral, social, spatial, and environmental dimensions.
Whereas ubicomp has greatly facilitated individual life and business operations
in many interesting ways, it has also simultaneously increased the vulnerabilities
of our society to a new set of risks at unprecedented scale and complexity.
A geographic perspective will crucial for society to better cope with
the paradoxes and uncertainties ubicomp brings to individuals and society
in the years to come.
Keywords: ubicomp
Between Recreated Past and
Threatening Future: Representing Urban Planning in Post-War British Media
Ben P Clifford, PhD Student - King's College London
Mark Tewdwr-Jones, Professor of Spatial Planning - Univesity College London
Abstract: In this paper, we explore how urban planning
- an inherently geographical activity with important impacts for the management
of urban spaces – has been represented in a range of British media between
World War II and the present day. The paper assesses perceptions of planning,
development and of the planning profession over the last fifty years.
It commences with a review of the academic and popular literature and
cinematography of the immediate post-war period, and then charts the development
of planning in culture and the media over the following decades. We draw
on empirical research to explore the representation of urban planning
and urban planners in British newspapers and in film and television, and
discuss how this representation is embedded with powerful symbolism that
links to a particular discourse surrounding the activity of planning in
Britain. We also trace the changing representation of planning over the
period and explore how this links to changes in society with respect to
how professional expertise is valued and how this links back to issues
of media communication of government policy. The overall purpose of the
paper is to identify whether the perceptions of urban planning and development
have remained the same, improved or worsened since the post-war period,
with the aim of working towards identifying why representations of British
urban planning are stereotypical, outdated and monolithic.
Keywords: Planning, media representation, local politics,
urban policy, Great Britain
Communication
and the Construction of Community
Science for the People:
A Retrospective
Melanie McCalmont - University of Wisconsin-Madison
Abstract: From 1969-1992, Science for the People (SftP)
was a national organization of communication networks and activists that
published, protested, and organized to increase public awareness of the
use or misuse of scientific research. SftP's members were concerned about
alarming developments in sociobiology, genetic engineering, ecology, and
warfare science. The Madison, Wisconsin collective of Science for the
People, active until 1974, was especially focused on the Army Mathematics
Research Center (AMRC) on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus.
This paper's retrospective on Science for the People will provide insights
into how volunteer groups negotiate the translation of political views
and complicated science into public communication. This paper suggests
that both the topics and critiques by Science for the People retain their
relevance as translation of science for the public has become both more
complex and urgent since 1969. The SftP narrative is told using local
and national archival records along with the group's publications, artifacts,
publicity, and reports. The narrative offers an historical backdrop from
which to view the continuing difficulties of separating science from politics
yet communicating its results for political citizens.
Keywords: Communication networks, social activism, protest,
science communication
The Geography of Delight:
Cultural Practices and Intergenerational Communication
Jonathan M. Smith - Texas A&M
Abstract: The words "communication geography"
immediately call to mind the tangible technologies that are used to transmit
and display information and advocacy. Telephone lines and billboards are
conspicuous examples of these instruments of propagation. They are, however,
but two (rather antique) devices in an arsenal of communication hardware
that, with every passing day, insinuates itself more and more deeply into
our lives. Communication gear of all sorts clearly warrants and lends
itself to geographical study, but the cultural activity called communication
does not always employ what is commonly recognized as communication gear,
and a preoccupation with such gear and the type of content it can convey
may blind us to much else that should be understood as communication.
Certainly one of the most important instances of human communication is
the transmission of an ethos from one generation to the next. Some of
this ethos is communicated as articulate precepts and arguments that can
be transmitted by means of information technology. But much more takes
the form of experience goods that are communicated to persons who perform
specific traditional practices, and who are thereby initiated into the
sentimental sodality of a community. These goods are internal to their
respective practices, and are communicated from one generation to the
next by propagation of practices, not the transmission and display of
messages. The propagation of practices is accomplished by places and landscape,
which is why place and landscape is a communication technology.
Keywords: culture, communication, landscape, practices
Rethinking anonymity: New
media and the ecology of attention and forgetting
Michael R. Curry - University of California, Los Angeles
Leah A Lievrouw - University of California, Los Angeles
Abstract: Anonymity, literally "namelessness,"
is in today's security environment viewed negatively, and technologies
from cryptography to the sealed envelope are suspect. Yet this view misrepresents
both the nature of anonymity and its positive functions. It fails to see
that anonymity is defined within an ecology of attention and forgetting;
an act is anonymous if no one is paying attention to it, or if, though
attended to, it will be forgotten. An act is often anonymous not by virtue
of an actor's intentions, but by virtue of its situation; and one often
learns to be anonymous by learning to act in the appropriate way in the
appropriate place. But the increasing technological mediation of communication
means that everyday activities, from making a telephone call to searching
for a library book, traverse paths punctuated with places from which one's
actions may be monitored. Within this environment, the possibilities for
attention and forgetting become more complex, and it becomes difficult
for an individual to judge whether her actions are anonymous. If anonymity
had no positive functions this might not matter. But anonymous communication
is important to the formation of the political subject and to the formation
of alternative political communities and movements. Unfortunately, against
the background of new technologies tools that have traditionally protected
anonymity, and especially those that involve the appeal to privacy, are
particularly feeble. Indeed, the development of better tools can only
occur against the background of an understanding of anonymity that gives
centrality to the concept of place.
Keywords: Anonymity, communication, privacy
International Diffusion
of the Cellular Telephone
Thomas A. Wikle - Oklahoma State
Jonathan C. Comer - Oklahoma State University
Abstract: The miniaturization of computing equipment,
improvements in radio technology, and developments in high speed networking
have brought enormous change to personal communication. Among innovations
of the late 20th Century, the mobile or cellular telephone has become
among the world's most successful consumer products. Today, one in five
persons on Earth (1.15 billion) is a cellular telephone user making the
cellular telephone second only to the television (1.8 billion) in product
ownership. Remarkably, it took the world a century to reach one billion
wire-line telephones but only ten years to reach the same number of cellular
phones. Growth in cellular subscriptions has happened more rapidly in
some regions such as Europe but has not been restricted to industrialized
nations. Contributing to the rate of cellular diffusion are social and
culture characteristics of populations, the status of wired-telephone
systems within countries, and government policies. Countries can be loosely
organized into four categories: 1) where society and culture emphasize
high levels of connectivity such as Finland and Taiwan, 2) countries with
a growing middle class with many potential subscribers such as China,
3) less developed nations with poor wired-telephone infrastructure, and
4) countries where totalitarian regimes have been barriers to cellular
diffusion. This paper examines initial development of cellular technology,
the transformation of the cellular phone into a consumer product, and
the world-wide diffusion of cell networks.
Keywords: telecommunications, cellular telephone, diffusion
Municipal Wireless Implementation:
Chaska and Moorhead, MN
James Tedrick - University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
Abstract: Our current telecommunications infrastructure
generally relies on one of two networks for delivery of service: telephone
and coaxial cable networks. These networks are traditionally owned and
accessed through private corporations. However, several communities in
Minnesota, due to a variety of circumstances, own the systems serving
the communities. This community ownership of networks is beginning to
expand both within Minnesota and throughout the United States as many
cities are investigating, and in some cases implementing municipal data
networks providing public access to the internet. Within Minnesota, the
communities of Chaska and Moorhead are among those who have operational
public data networks. In this paper, I will outline the history of community
utility ownership in Minnesota, the development of wireless technologies
with regard to data access and then detail the development of Chaska and
Moorhead's wireless solution, including the policy questions arising from
the specific technical and economic solutions embraced by Chaska. I will
further situate these communities' implementation of wireless within the
broader phenomenon of municipal wireless data access provision that is
either being considered or implemented across the United States.
Keywords: Municipal Internet, Communication Geography
Communication Networks and Messages
On networks and metaphors:
new and seeing the new in the network society
Kristof a.m. Van Assche - St. Cloud State University
Abstract: Since Manuel Castells, everyone seems to think
that the pre- eminence of networks is part and parcel of the present condition
of human life. Since Castells, the network concept has been revisited
often enough. Still, we would like to give it another try. First, we will
argue that networks have been important in other times and cultures. Medieval
and early modern Genua and Venice will serve as examples of network- like
territories, dependent on networks of people, structuring different types
of flows, accommodating different types of spatial signification, dependent
on networking activities among Europe's high powers. Similarities and
differences with our situation will be given; it is not sufficient to
claim that scientists nowadays have an often a-historical perspective,
and that networks always existed; it is as important to show how it worked
in context. Secondly, we will try to analyze why the network concept had
such a success, why it tends to blind people for its own history, and
how the concept succeeds in multiplying and invading the most diverse
terrains of thought and action. Our analysis will evolve around the concept
of metaphor, and the dynamics of new metaphors. Next comes the question
why this specific metaphor [X is a network] became so successful [Y and
Z are also networks] Here, the Netherlands will be taken as an example
of a country where disciplines and administration, picked up the network
concept, applied it in analyses and tried to use the principles of network
dynamics to improve policy making.
Keywords: network -historicity - governance - metaphor
The Diffusion of Message
Ribbons in American Culture as a Case Study of the Stimulus Diffusion
of Meaning
Richard A. Waugh - University Of Wisconsin, Platteville
Abstract: The diffusion of "message ribbons"
in American culture can be explained by models of biased innovation and
stimulus diffusion. The focus herein is not on spatial diffusion; due
to the internet, other media, and the equating of displaying ribbons as
the "right" thing to do, as well as the embrace of ribbons by
pop culture, the spatial diffusion of ribbons was so rapid as to be virtually
instantaneous. Rather it was a stimulus diffusion of meaning through this
instantaneous space. The morphology of the ribbon was fixed by the phenomenon
of the magnetic car ribbon, while the ideology of meaning expanded rapidly
from "support our troops" to overt expressions of patriotism,
supporting a political ideology, and the nascent development of an American
homeland into a generic expression of charitable awareness and finally
into quasi-humorous self-parody. That all of these meanings co-exist can
be viewed as an expression of biased innovation.
Keywords: Stimulus Diffusion, Biased Innovation, Message
Ribbons
The role of the Internet
in presenting Indigenous Data
Melinda J. Laituri - Colorado State University
Abstract: This paper considers the role of online technology
and its relationship to the presentation and dissemination of indigenous
information. Various websites that represent indigenous knowledge are
examined to explore how science and culture are intertwined for resource
management and for local expression and empowerment. Internet geospatial
technologies are specifically investigated with regard to their application
and availability. The key themes of complexity theory provide the underlying
conceptual basis of this paper in assessing the relationships between
science and indigenous information via online technology.
Keywords: indigenous knowledge, online technologies,
gis
Internet Use and Attitudes
toward Cultural Preservation among Asian Indians in the US
Paul C. Adams, Ph.D. - University of Texas at Austin
Emily Skop, Ph.D. - University of Texas at Austin
Abstract: The Internet is emblematic of globalization,
and globalization is often equated with cultural homogenization. Yet in
practice the internet is often appropriated by groups seeking to preserve,
develop and celebrate their distinctiveness. A survey of immigrants to
the US from India as well as their US-born children indicates that those
individuals who use Indian-oriented websites are: 1) more likely to perceive
cultural preservation as an important goal; 2) more likely to be concerned
about Americanization; 3) more likely to support the continuation of arranged
marriage; and 4) more likely to believe that Indian people have contributed
more to world civilization than Europeans. The survey also reveals distinct
sub-populations among the Asian Indian population defined by patterns
of media use. These communicationally-defined sub-populations correlate
strongly with demographic variables of age, sex, citizenship, and profession.
The survey data indicate that the Internet is one of many resources at
the disposal of Asian Indian and their US-born children for the construction
of a sense of personal identity based around ethnicity.
Keywords: Asian-Indians, diaspora, cultural preservation,
communication media, Internet
Geographies of Media I: Cinema
Framing a 'surplus humanity':
La Haine and the contradictions of urbanization
Amy Siciliano - University of Toronto
Abstract: The city has become the site of two contradictory
phenomena: on one hand it is becoming the spectacle for capitalist accumulation;
on the other, it is (re)emerging as a terminus for a 'surplus humanity'
displaced by political, economic, and environmental violence. This paper
examines this contradictory process of urbanization through the French
film La Haine (1995). The film brings' le banlieue' to life as an active
participant in the shaping of its tragic narrative, underscoring what
is at stake in the relationship between the spaces of the city and socioeconomic
disempowerment. It illustrates how racial discourse and fear of the 'other'
has been spatially reinterpreted and rearticulated, delving into this
post-colonial era to show how the liquidation of the empire abroad has
been reinstated in the Parisian suburbs. By analyzing the productive and
consumptive context of the film itself - namely a post-colonial, post-modern
world fuelled by global commodity capitalism - I argue that the film serves
as an allegory of our collective anxiety toward a 'surplus humanity' as
we enter the most dramatic and unconventional era of global urbanization.
Keywords: cinema, urbanization
Re-envisioning Nationalism:
Film Neorealism and the Politics of Scale in Postwar Italy
Brent J. Piepergerdes, Ph.D. Candidate - University of Kansas
Abstract: Emerging out of the ashes of Fascism, Italian
neorealist films were inexorably tied to the social, political, and economic
reorganization of the nation in the immediate postwar years. Coupled with
the advent of new cinematic techniques that characterized the genre (the
use of non-actors, natural lighting, on-location shooting, and the absence
of melodrama), the reassertion of local and regional realities in neorealist
films marked a sharp break from Fascist-era depictions of a national ideal.
Such depictions highlighted the ideological necessity of Fascism to create
a balance at the national scale between the modern, urban subject (as
embodied in the stracittŕ films) and the valorized agrarian peasant (the
strapaese films). By injecting presentations of poverty and class conflict
into the urban setting and deconstructing the rural idyll, neorealist
films highlighted the difficulties inherent in the social construction
of the 'nation' given the historic centrality of the 'region' to Italian
identity. The attempts to present the "social truths" of the
postwar period, however, often fueled the retrenchment of regional stereotypes,
shifting the focus of a nationalist movement from a symbiotic balance
of urban/rural to a true socio-cultural unification of the North and South,
unachieved by the Risorgimento. Rossellini's Paisŕ (1946), De Sica's Ladri
di biciclette (1948), and Visconti's La terra trema (1948) are discussed
as emblematic of the shared moral and stylistic unity of the genre.
Keywords: film, Italy, regionalism
Cinema North Carolina: Cinematic
Articulations of Place in "Loggerheads" and "Junebug"
Joseph Palis - University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Abstract: North Carolina's physiographic division into
mountains, piedmont and coastal plain provides a cinematic correlative
to two recent films filmed in North Carolina by North Carolina-born filmmakers:
Phil Morrison's "Junebug" and Tim Kirkman's "Loggerheads".
The cinematic depictions of the region-specific physiography of North
Carolina enshrines "Junebug" and "Loggerheads" with
what Arturo Escobar calls "the particular, the limited, the local
and the bound". In "Junebug", a Chicago-based art dealer
is trying to woo an outsider artist who lives in North Carolina and realized
that the paintings of this self-taught artist are not as luridly gothic
as the family of her husband that she romanticizes about. In "Loggerheads",
Kirkman's unconventional narrative repeatedly shifts between mountains,
piedmont and coast as he explores the trajectories of three different
sets of characters who are struggling from legal barriers that keep them
from reconnecting with their progenies who they gave up for adoption.
While both films are steeped in distinctively North Carolina topographies,
I will use the arguments of Doreen Massey and Arturo Escobar in proposing
that place is an event rather than as a safe and secure ontological category
rooted in the notions of the authentic.
Keywords: film, place, representation, North Carolina
Un-poetically 'Man' Dwells:
Age and Alienation in the Film About Schmidt
Kevin E. McHugh - Arizona State University
Ann M. Fletchall - Arizona State University
Abstract: Martin Heidegger's philosophy relating to
'being' and 'dwelling' casts a long shadow. We are haunted by diffuse
longings and yearnings for meaningful connection with people and place.
A sense of alienation and existential insecurity is an inescapable feature
of the modern condition. Nowhere is this more evident than in Alexander
Payne's 2002 film About Schmidt. It is painful to bear witness to Warren
Schmidt, 67 year-old retiree, coming face to face with the meaninglessness
of his life. Schmidt is out of step at every turn. Occasional outbursts
of anger and moments of gripping sadness interrupt a constant and eerie
state of emotional blankness. The journey of life—the inexorable journey
in aging—is symbolized in Schmidt's solo road trip in his recently purchased
Winnebago motor home: return to birthplace in Nebraska and university
alma mater in Kansas, forward to his daughter's wedding in Denver. In
the end, Schmidt's fragile connection with the world, correspondence with
a Tanzanian 'foster child', offers no salvation. About Schmidt is tragically
comic and deeply disturbing. Akin to Greek tragedy we see that Schmidt's
fate is sealed, for there is no altered course in the oblivion of being.
Keywords: dwell, place, mobility, aging, cinematic geographies
Geographies of Media II: Media and Society
South African Soap Operas:
Performing the Post-Apartheid Citizen
Sarah F Ives - University of Washington
Abstract: Soap operas, with their depictions of the
dramas of everyday life, provide a compelling medium for building a normative
national consciousness. Since television first arrived in South Africa
in 1976, it has influenced the countrywide belief system, first as an
apparatus of apartheid and later as a 'voice' of the 'New' South Africa.
Today, South African television plays the sometimes conflicting role of
fostering national unity through the redressing of historical wrongs and
encouraging economic growth and foreign investment. South African soap
operas reach a large and diverse audience nationwide. Locally produced
soap operas have quickly outpaced foreign soaps in television ratings,
and, in the absence of a strong film industry, soap opera actors have
become major stars, dominating gossip columns and entertainment news.
Through an examination of the political economy of television in South
Africa, a discourse analysis of the soap operas "Generations"
and "Soul City," and a study of the treatment of these shows
in the popular press, I address how television produces, performs, and
contests the notion of a post-apartheid South African citizen. Using the
theoretical framework of feminist, post-structural and cultural geographers,
as well as work in cultural studies and anthropology, I examine the construction
of race, gender, class, and national identity in the 'New' South Africa
- a country informed by its unifying 'rainbow' ideology, as well as the
global aspirations of neoliberal economic policies. Through this discussion,
I will also address the importance of examining visual media, and television
in particular, in geographic research.
Keywords: Africa-South, media, soap opera, nation, television
Of Cycles and Spheres: American
Women, Mobility and the Media
Christina Dando - University of Nebraska-Omaha
Abstract: The bicycle's "prime" was a mere
decade, 1890-1900, but in this brief window, it had a profound impact
on American women's lives. This paper will examine the role of the media
in transforming women's relationship to their world, altering how, where
and why they moved through the landscape. Prior to and during this era,
the concept of separate gender "spheres" was prevalent in the
press, emphasizing a women's sphere focused on home and family. Through
popular magazine articles, stories and advertisements, American women
(as well as men) were "informed" of the possibilities the bicycle
had to offer, modeling geographic mobility, greater spatial awareness,
and the expansion of the women's sphere. As a result women had to tackle
new technologies -- bicycles, maps, spatial information -- to successfully
transcend their sphere on their cycle. While women's roles in society
did not substantially change, it did lead to greater personal freedoms
in mobility and the need for more detailed geographic information.
Keywords: gender, maps, geographic knowledge, bicycle,
spatial mobility
Signing the Scenery: The
Dialogue Between the Production, Consumption, and Contestation of Outdoor
Advertisements
Stephanie L Boucher - University of Maine at Farmington
Abstract: The ubiquity of outdoor advertisements - e.g.
billboards and posters - in many of America's landscapes prompts a consideration
of how their presence transforms both the landscape and the people who
live and/or travel within it. Specifically, by linking particular commodities,
images, or ideas with specific identities, advertisers seek to define
the meanings of those identities and then to reify and locate those definitions
by inscribing them onto the landscape. Outdoor advertisements thus have
the power to change not only the way our landscapes our constructed, but
also to alter how we relate to and view those landscapes, our commodities,
our neighbors, and ourselves. These definitions and inscriptions are not
left undisputed, however - they have continually been contested along
class, race, and gender lines contributing to a debate where the meanings
and values of public space and identities are fiercely debated. In this
paper, I critically examine how the very presence of billboards has been
contested by elite women's groups considering the landscape to be an extension
of the domestic sphere, as well as how racial and ethnic minorities have
contested the way in which such advertisements target and portray their
identities
Keywords: cultural geography, outdoor advertising, activism
Re-conceptualising the Creative
Industries: The horizontalisation of the Film and TV industry in Sydney
Oli Mould - University of Leicester
Abstract: There is a plethora of literature on the creative
industries and their situation in the economic-cultural nexus, as well
as their global and local processes. Much of this work however, in situating
the creative industries in the fulcrum of these meta-narratives serves
to deny the multiplicity of connections that the creative industries embroil.
Viewing these creative industries as networks moves away from the constraints
of a 'top-down', metaphysical approach that has been built on the preconceived
falsities of 'culture', 'economics', 'global' and 'local', and allow us
to conceptually and empirically study the 'realtional' connections that
formulate the networks of the creative industries. Using an Actor-Network
Theory approach, data was collected from the film and TV production industry
of Sydney to show that if we 'horizontalise' our conceptualisation of
the creative industries we find that there is a multiplicity of topologies
which simply cannot be restricted, constrained or limited to the preconceived
meta-narratives of conventional creative industries research.
Keywords: Creative Industries, Film and TV Industry,
Sydney, Actor-Network Theory, World City
Geographies
of Media III: Media Spatialities
Beyond Deleuze: Pierre Levy
and Affective Geovisualization
James Craine - San Diego State University
Abstract: I explore how Pierre Levy's virtualization
works between actual places, television, and the Internet by referencing
the real landscapes of Los Angeles, the visualized landscapes of the FX
network television show The Shield, and the virtualities of www.theShieldfans.com.
Unlike current Deleuzean-based theories of visualization that privilege
the passage from the virtual to the actual, Levy focuses instead on how
virtualization moves back from the real/actual toward the virtual. I argue
that this philosophical reversal illustrates the way in which the virtual
constitutes the viewer/consumer and thus functions to resituate the virtual
within the body. I further argue, using The Shield as the modality, that
the virtual is necessarily an element of the very body which it serves
to constitute because the virtual is indeed an essential part of the determination
of the geographies of every concrete biocultural body. My example of The
Shield becomes the means by which we can bring the force of the virtual
to bear on our experience and I use the show as the catalyst for an expansion
of the margin of indetermination constitutive of our technically-facilitated
embodiment. By further relating the TV show to its web-based landscape,
I show how virtualization can thus specify the virtual dimension constitutive
of human experience.
Keywords: affectivity, Pierre Levy, visualization, culture
Popular Geopolitics, Comic
Book Discourse, and the Tyranny of the Serial
Jason Dittmer - Georgia Southern University
Abstract: This paper seeks to theorize the impact of
the comic book medium on geopolitical worldviews and attitudes. Evidence
of the use of comic books to promote specific discourses by geopolitical
actors is presented, and the conventions that govern the limits of comic
book narration are outlined. Among the conventions of production discussed
are the role of 'continuity' as a structuring force and the serial nature
of most comic books. The impact of these conventions is viewed through
an examination of Watchmen and Captain America comic books. Both series
revolve around issues of political legitimacy and the structuring of geopolitical
space, but do so in different ways. Finally, a theorization of the limits
to comic book discourse is outlined, and its ultimately conservative political
outcome is described as endemic to the genre.
Keywords: Popular geopolitics, Comic books, Popular
culture, Media
The Border As Cube
Harald Bauder - University Of Guelph
Abstract: The Border as Cube is a website that represents
six different images of the international border. Drawing on ideas presented
by Ludwig Wittgenstein and Étienne Balibar, the site illustrates how the
border assumes a different visual image and symbolic meaning depending
on the manner in which it is used. A combination of video, sound, still
images and text presents the border as a line, barrier, checkpoint, fence,
shore and filter. The objective of the Border as Cube is to enable the
viewer to recognize different "aspects" of the border, and thereby
envision multiple meanings and uses for it. It serves the wider political
goal to challenge existing neoliberal, imperialist, racist and sexist
border politics, and to envision the border freshly.
Keywords: borders, border politics, website, Ludwig
Wittgenstein, Étienne Balibar
eBay and an Online Space
for the Trace
Ken Hillis - University Of North Carolina - Chapel Hill
Abstract: Regis Debray has argued that the reliance
on "video-documented realia . . . produces in modern consciousness
a priority on the immediate . . . and the graphic" that viewers equate
with the real itself. I introduce Debray's proposal to contend that a
comprehensive understanding of eBay's emergence as an everyday living
part of culture, and a global economic phenomenon, lies not only in the
site's promotion of neoliberal economic assumptions but also in its ability
to allow buyers, sellers and browsers alike an experience of objects for
sale online as transmitting a trace of the objects in question. Such an
experience, I argue, requires naturalizing the belief that the Web constitutes
a space. Spatial metaphors promoting belief that the internet is a space
allow individuals to conceive of the technology as locating actors in
social space. However, unlike the earlier text-based internet, image-reliant
websites such as eBay, made possible by technological advances incorporated
into information networks, go further and provide viewers a phenomenological
experience of telepresence—a sense of going somewhere else while remaining
"here," an experience of multiple spatiality, of being neither
fully here nor fully there yet somehow both at once. Telepresence, in
turn, allows for the rise of a contemporaneous belief that a trace—some
remaining fragment of an object in space—can convey online. I exemplify
the discussion with "media friendly" eBay listings such as the
2004 "Virgin Mary in Grilled Cheese" and the spatialized narrative
effects and economic power such listings work to produce.
Keywords: eBay, virtual space, affect, new media
Three Train Wrecks Since
Minot, What Is New With The Emergency Alert System
M Marian Mustoe, Ph.D. - Eastern Oregon University
Abstract: This (ongoing) research attempts to evaluate
the role of the Emergency Alert System (EAS) in disasters at the local
level and considers the impacts of the new localism in the activation
of this warning system. Three additional rail accidents fitting a Minot
(derailment) model have occurred since the Minot, North Dakota event in
2002. These include accidents in Macdona, Texas; Graniteville, South Carolina;
and Texarkana, Arkansas. One characteristic stands out in two of the three
events: the Emergency Alert System was not used. In Graniteville, the
EAS was activated 2 hours after the event. How do these additional events
compare to Minot? Using an interview protocol, this research takes each
accident and evaluates the event from both the public emergency management
side and on the side of local broadcasters. In addition, analysis of how
the state emergency management plan plays a role in these events is reviewed.
An outcome of this research has been a recommendation to re-evaluate the
EAS using a bottom up approach, and reconsider the responsibilities included
within the relationship of public emergency managers and commercial radio
station managers. Finally this paper considers an emergency communications
model which suggests a fit through all the stages of a disaster and discusses
the role of radio stations in the broader scope of integrating the EAS
into other communications systems.
Keywords: Emergency Alert System, Localism, Federal
Communications Commission, ENDEC, Local Primary Stations, Emergency Message
Programming, NWS Weather Radio, Train Derailments, Hazardous Cargo, Homeland
Security, Commercial Radio Broadcasting.
The
Rise of the Network Security Society
Securing food or securing
the industry: the National Animal Identification System
Carrie Breitbach - Chicago State University
Abstract: Since the highly publicized discovery of several
incidents of BSE or mad cow disease in Canada and the United States over
the last few years, plans have been initiated for a National Animal Identification
System (NAIS). The system is intended to provide tracking information
for any animal discovered to be diseased. Despite widespread concern about
the threat that diseases present to all sectors of animal industries,
plans for the NAIS system, which are still being debated, are highly contentious.
Among the more controversial issues is the possibility of private operation
of the NAIS database, an option that is being considered by the USDA despite
concerns from some producers that this could lead the program to serve
commercial rather than public safety purposes. There is also a question
of whether the NAIS system is an effective way to address food safety
concerns, since it does not change the industrial practices alleged to
be behind increased incidence of animal disease. This paper reviews the
logic behind an individual animal identification program, as well as the
controversies that implementing such a program is provoking, revealing
the multiple implications of a technological system designed to coordinate
information across an industry that is historically rife with complex
class divisions and a widespread uneven geography. Given this uneven geography,
the paper explores the functioning of the NAIS and its ideal of food security
as part of a complex of networks that work to secure the functioning and
profitability of the industry itself.
Keywords: food security, network
Hidden Societal Vulnerability
Within the Confines of the Security State
Matt Hidek – Syracuse University
Abstract: In the aftermath of 11 September 2001, the
United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has developed a wide
range of comprehensive plans for the protection of physical infrastructure
deemed as "critical" to the proper functioning of the national
economy. Administered by the newly created Department of Homeland Security,
their original intent was to provide a threat-based, collaborative, and
highly coordinated means of addressing the ongoing threat that militant
groups pose to the American public. Although designed for the general
security of metropolitan areas, the primary role of these programs, in
practice, has been markedly different. The focus has been extremely reactive
and administrative in nature, revealing a lack of attention to the importance
of urban planning, community systems, and problems associated with fragmented
local government. Within the city, people and their communities are literally
missing from the DHS radar, unless by chance they reside in close proximity
to critical infrastructure. The Urban Areas Security Initiative, administered
by DHS' Office of Domestic Preparedness, has enabled gatekeepers to define
geographic areas that should be included (or rather protected), and by
extension excluded (or left vulnerable), producing veritable topographies
of power. Along these lines, the urgent need for concurrent attention
to address societal vulnerabilities remains largely unaddressed within
the post 11 September 2001 security apparatus, further intensifying the
problem for marginalized communities within urban areas. With emphasis
on the state-directed planning process, this paper explores the ongoing
problem and calls for a more inclusive approach for community-oriented
urban security.
Keywords: Homeland Security, Political Geography, Urban
Planning, Urban Geography
USAID and trade capacity
building: Development, security, and the state
Jamey Essex - University of Windsor
Abstract: Focusing especially on the US Agency for International
Development (USAID), this paper examines the shift toward trade capacity
building by state institutions, and how this shift rearticulates the relationships
between state and capital, and between development and security. Emerging
from the WTO's Doha Round, trade capacity building remains vague as a
policy framework, but lies at the heart of ongoing efforts to reorient
state institutions and strategies of development toward the means and
objectives of neoliberalization, particularly by marshalling state practices,
discourses, and institutions of development to support capital internationalization,
trade liberalization, and the reconstitution of security. I focus on USAID,
which has redefined critical aspects of its development mission, undergone
internal restructuring, and altered its relations with other state institutions
and capital in efforts to center trade capacity building as a primary
mechanism and goal of development. Strategically, this has meant strengthening
ties with internationalizing capital, focusing resources on countries
and sectors strategic to US trade policy objectives, and rearticulating
foreign development in relation to changes in US national security discourses.
The actual prospects for achieving security or development are slim, however,
as USAID's trade capacity building strategies rely on narrow conceptualizations
of these terms and a discourse of "strong" and "weak"
states that ignores the political economic realities and contradictions
of international neoliberalism. To demonstrate this final point, the paper
concludes with a consideration of the relationship between agricultural
development and food security in USAID trade capacity building programs.
Keywords: development, security, trade capacity building,
USAID
The Terror of Communication:
Critical Infrastructure and the Culture of Security
Clayton Rosati - University of Vermont
Abstract: Protecting the nation's "critical infrastructure"
has become a central directive of federal, state, and local policy. Many
such efforts are aimed at preventing photographs, video footage, or other
uncontrolled communications about such infrastructure. This paper focuses
on the infrastructure of telecommunications, media, and the industrial
production of culture. It is argued that uncontrolled communication--and
the uncontrolled action it may precipitate--represents a terrorizing threat,
not just to the immediate properties containing such infrastructure but
more importantly to the web of property circulating through them. While
such underground geographies of infrastructure are the location of multinational
financial transactions, call routing, and Internet circulation, they also
assure that shows like MTV's Total Request Live (TRL) flow unhindered
to national broadcast and carry their advertisements to "rented"
audiences. Having been ejected from the aging Manhattan skyscraper (the
Old Western Union Building) through which TRL is routed, for trying to
take a photograph of a plaque in its lobby, this paper asserts the need
to understand the increasing securing and policing of the means of producing
and engaging cultural forms. As industrial cultural forms like TRL are
becoming both increasingly wide spread and secured from those to whom
they are meaningful, those fans who attempt to occupy the spaces of industrial
cultural production and possess its means are quasi-terrorists within
the intensifying culture of security. This paper draws on interviews with
TRL creative staff and participant observation to contemplate the convergence
of culture, security, and property.
Keywords: Communication, Security, Culture, Terrorism,
Network