Dear Colleagues,
Please find below and attached a call for papers for a Digital
Geographies Working Group sponsored session at the RGS, Power 2.0: New
Digital Geographies.
Best wishes, Kate
Call for Papers ? Power 2.0: New Digital Geographies ? Digital
Geographies Working Group Sponsored Session
Session convenors: Kate Symons ([log in to unmask]), Centre for
Design Informatics and Department of Geography, University of
Edinburgh; George Jaramillo ([log in to unmask]), Institute of
Design Innovation, Glasgow School of Art; Brett Matulis
([log in to unmask]), Department of Geography, University of
Leicester.
Abstract: Geographers have contributed extensively to understanding
the agency of the more-than-human world. Increasingly, interactions
and assemblages involve novel configurations of socialised information
technologies. Examples include what may be the 21st Century?s general
purpose technology, the blockchain (a form of distributed ledger
providing new forms of exchange). The blockchain is celebrated as
heralding a revolutionary decentralised society in which people are
liberated from traditional forms of power and control, often imagined
as a post-capitalist, post-national, libertarian future (Rifkin 2015),
but sometimes as a socialist one (Huckle & White 2016). At the same
time, increasing discomfort is felt about the extent to which some
online relationships are kept concealed (such as the sale of personal
data), while technologies are interacting with existing capitalist
structures to co-produce novel forms of commodification (for example,
the Internet of Things enables devices to directly communicate with
companies such as Amazon to automatically reorder products). Far from
being neutral, such new data technologies are entangled with and are
co-producing political, economic, social and material arrangements
across spaces. This session will explore the geographical aspects of
these new relationships between people, data, things and technology,
including the social, political, ecological and geographic
implications of a new decentralised digital society. We want to focus
on questions of power and capital, especially novel forms of
commodification using data technologies. We welcome contributions in
the following areas:
- Debates relating to the ?real world? social, political, ecological
and geographic implications of a new decentralised digital society
- Questions of power and capital, especially novel forms of
commodification using data technologies
- Uses of technology to disrupt, and examples of progressive uses of
data technologies, such as in a development context
- The ways in which digital technologies are giving rise to novel
communities and power relations, and providing novel ways to organise
and contest
- Methodological, epistemological and/ or ontological analyses of
researching new digital geographies
Session format: We propose 4-5 papers of around 15-20 minutes
(depending on submissions), with opportunities for questions, debate
and discussion. Please send an abstract of 200 words to the session
convenors by 30 January 2017.
References: Huckle, S., & White, M. (2016). Socialism and the
Blockchain. Future Internet, 8(4), 49.; Rifkin, J. (2015) ?We are
glimpsing at the outlines of a new economic system?. The European.
http://www.theeuropean-magazine.com/jeremy-rifkin--2/9652-implications-of-the-third-industrial-revolution.
Kate Symons
Research Associate, OxChain
University of Edinburgh, Centre for Design Informatics
https://twitter.com/katesymons77
--
The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in
Scotland, with registration number SC005336.
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