Hi Nick
These could be useful.
1) Making the connection: mobile phone geographies
2) Demand a fair trade cell phone
A 9 minute video of a TED talk by Bandi Mbubi of the 'Congo Calling' campaign, who talks about mobile phones as both fueling the civil war in the DRC and an essential communication tool for activists, journalists,
etc. As he says 4 minutes in, "Don't throw your phones away yet. Because the incredible irony is that the technology that has placed such unsustainable devastating demands on the Congo is the same technology that has brought this situation to our attention".
3) The iPhone 4CF
A brilliant (I think) piece of cultural activism in which spoof website was created advertising a new 'conflict free' iPhone, which you could get from your local Apple Store by simply going in and asking
for a free upgrade. When you are told that it's not available, then the question is 'why not?' The campaign, its tactics, discussions that it generated, and impacts/outcomes that it had are all detailed here http://www.followthethings.com/iphone4cf.shtml
This page was recommended as a post-16 resource in the Geographical Association's 2012 'Geography Awareness Week' pack (download here).
To expand on Mark Graham's generous plug, most of
followthethings.com's pages are intended to be cut-and-pastable for use in a variety of classes, and the whole site is intended to be a resource for trade justice education and research. We are keen to publish teaching
materials that draw upon the site's pages (+ other resources) on our 'Classroom' page
http://iwanttodiscussthat.wordpress.com/teaching-resources/ If you - or anyone else - are interested in publishing the teaching resources you put together (and/or a description of what
you did in class, what happened, etc.), please get in touch.
Good luck with this!
Best wishes
Ian
Ian Cook
Associate Professor of Geography
University of Exeter
wrote:
Hi Nick
There is an exhibition at the Science Museum in London, Phone Wars (which I saw back in 2008 but which is still there) involving artists and high school students who used text messaging to raise awareness of the coltan minerals from the Democratic Republic
of Congo that are used in mobile phones.
From the website (which has more detail)
Phone Wars was a project by artists Harwood, Wright, Yokokoji, with students from the John Roan School, that enabled people to discuss the ‘Coltan Wars’ in the Congo by passing on messages via their mobile phones. Based on the traditional Congolese practice
of 'pavement radio' - meeting on street corners to spread information due to restrictions on free speech and fears that the government monitors communications - Phone Wars was a version of this tradition that used a mobile phone network to spread messages.
http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/smap/collection_index/phone_wars.aspx
In my second year development class, I give a lecture on the conflict in the DRC, and tell students that they are all almost certain to have a little piece of the DRC on them. Only one or two of them know that it is the coltan in their cell phones.
Julie
Dr. Julie Cupples
Department of Geography
University of Canterbury
Private Bag 4800
Christchurch 8140
Aotearoa New Zealand
+64 3 364 2893
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Forthcoming from Routledge
Latin American Development
http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415680622/
________________________________________
From: A forum for critical and radical geographers [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of Nicholas Gill [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Tuesday, November 20, 2012 11:43 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: mobile phones and conflict
Nick
Some of us here at Wollongong have a book out next year with Edward Elgar 'Household Sustainability: Challenges and Dilemmas in Everyday Life' . It has a chapter on mobiles which to some extent fits your bill but you may find the references useful. One of the
interesting things that came out of the research we did for that was work on only the issue of the phones themselves but the significance of the footprint of the networks and growing data management and storage infrastructure.
I can send you the chapter if of interest.
Best
Nick Gill
Dr. Nicholas Gill
School of Earth and Environmental Science and Australian Centre for Cultural Enviromental Research
University of Wollongong NSW 2522 Australia
Ph: 02 4221 4165
Fax: 02 4221 4250
Skype: nicholas-gill1
Email: [log in to unmask]
Twitter: DrNickGill
http://www.uow.edu.au/science/eesc/eesstaff/UOW002998.html
Head of Postgraduate Studies - SEES
This e-mail may have been generated using voice recognition software. Please excuse any errors or oddities.
-----Original Message-----
From: A forum for critical and radical geographers [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Nick Megoran
Sent: Tuesday, 20 November 2012 2:29 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: mobile phones and conflict
Dear Critters,
I've been asked to go into a school and do the following:
" give a workshop on "the political geography of the mobile phone" - although you may be able to think of a better title. The idea was to talk about the sources of elements and products that go into a mobile, and the links between the demand for these and
conflict and war, especially in the Congo."
Aimed at 15 year- olds This is off my usual territory but sounds like a great idea. Does anyone have suggestions for resources (pedagogical, NGO report, or other), plus academic research they could point me to? If anyone has actually done this sort of thing
and has some advice, that'd be great.
Thanks!
Peace - Nick
-
Dr Nick Megoran,
Lecturer in Political Geography,
GPS Office, 5th Floor, Claremont Tower, School of Geography, Politics and Sociology, Newcastle University, United Kingdom NE1 7RU.
Tel: +44 191 222 6450
url: www.megoran.org
"In our time of wars, of national self-conceit, of national jealousies and hatreds ably nourished by people who pursue their own egotistic, personal or class interests, geography must be - in so far as the school may do anything to counterbalance hostile influences
- a means of dissipating these prejudices and of creating other feelings more worthy of humanity." Peter Kropotkin, 'What geography ought to be', 1885.
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