Justus Uitermark | University of Amsterdam (original) (raw)

Papers by Justus Uitermark

Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie

As the volume of digital data is growing exponentially and computational methods are advancing ra... more As the volume of digital data is growing exponentially and computational methods are advancing rapidly, network analysis is an increasingly important analytical tool to understand social life. This paper revisits the rich history of network analysis in geography and uses insights from that history to review contemporary computational social science. Based on that analysis, we synthesize the distinctive qualities of what we term geographical network analysis. Geographical network analysis presumes that networks are situated, construed through meaning, and reflect power relations. Instead of pursuing parsimonious explanations or universal theories, geographical network analysis strives to understand how uneven networks develop across space and within place through a constant back and forth between abstraction and contextualization. Drawing on the articles in this special issue, this paper illustrates how geographical network analysis can be put to work.

Nordic Journal of Religion and Society

Frontiers in Sustainable Cities

Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 2016

This paper accounts for important shifts in the debate on immigration reform by considering the g... more This paper accounts for important shifts in the debate on immigration reform by considering the geographies of protest. Our findings point to the importance of urban hubs of activists and organisations that have worked with one another over extended periods of time. While these urban hubs constitute distinctive activist worlds, they have also connected to one another and coordinated nation-wide actions through a variety of networks (social media, interpersonal, and inter-organisational). Using interviews, network analysis, and data on funding, we show how this decentralised network evolved and eventually outflanked nationally centred and reformist advocacy organisations in recent anti-deportation campaigns.

Journal of Housing and the Built Environment

PLoS ONE, 2020

This article introduces the Twitter Parliamentarian Database (TPD), a multi-source and manually v... more This article introduces the Twitter Parliamentarian Database (TPD), a multi-source and manually validated database of parliamentarians on Twitter. The TPD includes parliamentarians from all European Free Trade Association countries where over 45% of parliamentarians are on Twitter as well as a selection of English-speaking countries. The database is designed to move beyond the one-off nature of most Twitter-based research and in the direction of systematic and rigorous comparative and transnational analysis. The TPD incorporates, in addition to data collected through Twitter's streaming API and governmental websites, data from the Manifesto Project Database; the Electoral System Design Database; the ParlGov database; and the Chapel Hill Expert Survey. By compiling these different data sources it becomes possible to compare different countries, political parties, political party families, and different kinds of democracies. To illustrate the opportunities for comparative and transnational analysis that the TPD opens up, we ask: What are the differences between countries in parliamentarian Twitter interactions? How do political parties differ in their use of hashtags and what is their common ground? What is the structure of interaction between parliamentarians in the transnational debate? Alongside some interesting similarities, we find striking cross-party and particularly cross-national differences in how parliamentarians engage in politics on the social media platform.

Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 2019

The immigrant rights movement in the United States evolved from largely localised and grassroots ... more The immigrant rights movement in the United States evolved from largely localised and grassroots struggles in the 1990s into a coherent and coordinated national social movement in the late 2000s and 2010s. Scaling up in this way is challenging because grassroots organisations tend to lack the resources needed to operate at the national level over an extended period. This paper examines how this movement overcame the obstacle by focusing on role of national organisations in concentrating key resources (money, political capital, discursive power) and developing a national social movement infrastructure. The consequences of this process are shown to be paradoxical: While it enabled potent advocacy in the national political arena, the concentration of resources generated constraints on strategies and tactics, inequalities, and conflicts between different factions of the movement. This article describes the process by drawing on interviews with key stakeholders, tax files, newspapers, foundation documents, and White House visitor records.

Frontiers in Sustainable Cities, 2020

Digital platforms are reshaping cities in the twenty-first century, providing not only new ways o... more Digital platforms are reshaping cities in the twenty-first century, providing not only new ways of seeing and navigating the world, but also new ways of organizing the economy, our cities and social lives. They bring great promises, claiming to facilitate a new "sharing" economy, outside of the exploitation of the market and the inefficiencies of the state. This paper reflects on this promise, and its associated notion of "self-organization," by situating digital platforms in a longer history of control, discipline and surveillance. Using Foucault, Deleuze, and Bauman, we scrutinize the theoretical and political notion of "self-organization" and unpack its idealistic connotations: To what extent does self-organization actually imply empowerment or freedom? Who is the "self" in "selforganization," and who is the user on urban digital platforms? Is self-organization necessarily an expression of the interests of the constituent participants? In this way, the paper broadens the analysis of neoliberal governmentalities to reveal the forms of power concealed under the narratives of "sharing" and "self-organization" of the platform era. We find that control is increasingly moving to lower-level strata, operating by setting the context and conditions for self-organization. Thus, the order of things emerge seemingly naturally from the rules of the game. This points to an emerging form of complex control, which has gone beyond the fast and flexible forms of digital control theorized by Deleuze.

International Communication Gazette, 2020

Minority integration is a highly contested topic in public debates, and assimilationist actors ap... more Minority integration is a highly contested topic in public debates, and assimilationist actors appear to have gained discursive ground. However, it remains difficult to accurately depict how power relations in debates change and evolve. In this study, the public debates on minority integration in Flanders and the Netherlands between 2006 and 2012 are studied to ascertain changing power relations. We use a relational method to identify clusters formed through discursive contention and study polarization in the debates as well as several aspects of discursive power between and within clusters. In the Netherlands, a pattern identified in earlier research is reproduced, whereby a unified but small cluster of assimilationists with strong discursive leaders is able to

Mobilization: An International Journal, 2020

The Movement for Black Lives has connected millions of people online. How are their outrage and h... more The Movement for Black Lives has connected millions of people online. How are their outrage and hope mediated through social media? To address this question, this article extends Randall Collins's Interaction Ritual Theory to social media. Employing semisupervised image recognition methods on a million Instagram posts with the hashtag #blacklivesmatter, we identify four different interaction ritual types, each with distinct geographies. Instagram posts featuring interactions with physical copresence are concentrated in urban areas. We identify two different types of such areas: arenas where contention plays out and milieus where movement identities are affirmed. Instagram posts that do not feature physical copresence are more geographically dispersed. These posts, including memes and selfies, allow people to engage with the movement even when they are not embedded in activist environments. Our analysis helps to understand how different forms of engagement are embedded in particular places and connected through the circulation of social media posts.

Social Media + Society, 2020

Commentators and scholars view both social media and cities as sites of fragmentation. Since both... more Commentators and scholars view both social media and cities as sites of fragmentation. Since both urban dwellers and social media users tend to form assortative social ties, so the reasoning goes, identity-based divisions are fortified and polarization is exacerbated in digital and urban spaces. Drawing on a dataset of 34.4 million interactions among Amsterdam Instagram users over half a year, this article seeks to gauge the level of fragmentation that occurs at the interface of digital and urban spaces. We find some evidence for fragmentation: users form clusters based on shared tastes and leisure activities, and these clusters are embedded in four distinct lifestyle zones at the interface of social media and the city. However, we also find connections that span divisions. Similarly, places that are tagged by Instagram users generally include a heterogeneity of clusters. While there is evidence that Instagram users sort into groups, there is no evidence that these groups are isolated from one another. In fact, our findings suggest that Instagram enables ties across different groups and mitigates against particularity and idiosyncrasy. These findings have important implications for how we should understand and study social media in the context of everyday life. Scholars should not only look for evidence of division through standard network analytic techniques like community detection, but also allow for countervailing tendencies.

While forms of authority that descend from social or cultural tradition are commonly understood a... more While forms of authority that descend from social or cultural tradition are commonly understood as archaic, traditional authorities often survive and occasionally even thrive during the formation of modern states. Chieftaincies do not only endure in the Ghanaian countryside but also proliferate in new neighbourhoods on the peripheries of Ghana’s fast-growing cities. We develop an explanation for the endurance of traditional authorities, based on extensive fieldwork in one recently developed neighbourhood in a previously uninhabited part of Greater Accra, where we conducted interviews and analysed documents from the archives of the chief’s Divisional Council. We show that the formation of a modern state has restricted the chiefs’ discretion as sovereigns but afforded them greater power as managers of the land and gatekeepers of the state bureaucracy. Traditional authority is not overwritten but rather refined, transformed and stabilized in the process of state formation.

A wealth of empirical studies examine the diffusion of novel scientific ideas. While those studie... more A wealth of empirical studies examine the diffusion of novel scientific ideas. While those studies typically focus on the low level of individual adoption or the top level of aggregate patterns, we examine how communities at the meso level mediate diffusion. As a case study, we analyze the diffusion of a specific scientific idea, namely the ’Strength of Weak Ties’ hypothesis, introduced by Granovetter in his 1973 paper. Using Web of Science data, we construct a network of scholars who referenced Granovetter’s paper. By combining topic modeling, network analysis and close reading, we show that the diffusion network features communities of scholars who interpret and use Granovetter’s hypothesis in distinct ways. Such communities collaboratively interpret Granovetter’s hypothesis to amend it to their specific perspectives and interests. Our analysis further shows that communities are clustered around figureheads, i.e., scholars who are central within their communities and perform pivotal roles in translating the general hypothesis into their specific field. The larger implication of
our study is that scientific ideas change as they spread. We argue that the methodology presented in this paper has potential beyond the scientific domain, particularly in the study of the diffusion of opinions, symbols, and ideas.

This study examines differences in endorsement networks on Twitter amongst parliamentarians in 23... more This study examines differences in endorsement networks on Twitter amongst parliamentarians in 23 different countries. It draws upon a database that tracks all Twitter activity and Twitter interactions of members of parliament from the 23 countries. This article serves to
introduce this dataset and provide a first look on the patterns that it reveals. We focus on the network patterns that emerge from the politicians’ retweets, and find that generally speaking, politicians are fiercely loyal to their party: they mostly retweet fellow party members. As a consequence, clusters identified through community detection generally coincide with party membership. However, there are also important variations between the countries in terms of the degree of partisanship and patterns of conflict. We construct a typology to capture such differences in political coalitions and divisions.

This article discusses the potential and the limitations of big data analysis for the study of re... more This article discusses the potential and the limitations of big data analysis for the study of religion. While big data analysis is often perceived as overtly positivistic because of its quantitative and computational nature, we argue instead that it lends itself to an induc-tive approach. Since the data are typically not collected for the purpose of testing specific hypotheses, it can best be seen as a resource for serendipitous exploration. We therefore pose a number of substantive research questions regarding the global circulation and local mediation of sartorial styles and practices among Muslim women. We present an analysis of the #hijabfashion hashtag on Instagram, drawing on a database of 15 million posts.

This article examines engagement with digitally networked, politically contentious actions. Maint... more This article examines engagement with digitally networked, politically contentious actions. Maintaining engagement over time is a key challenge for social movements attempting to network digitally. This article argues that proximity serves as a condition to address this challenge, because it configures the personal networks upon which transmission depends. This is a paradox of digital activism: it has the capacity to transcend barriers; however, proximity is essential for sustaining relations over time. Examining Twitter data from the #not1more protest campaign against immigrant deportations in the United States, quantitative and social network analyses show a differentiated development of engagement, which results in a particular geographical configuration with the following attributes. First, there is a robust and connected backbone of core organizers and activists located in particular major cities. Second, local groups engage with the campaign with direct actions in other cities. Third, a large and transitory contingent of geographically dispersed users direct attention to the campaign. We conclude by elaborating how this geographically differentiated configuration helps to sustain engagement with digitally networked action.

Geographers have conceived of networks as a foundational spatial concept (e.g. Jessop et al 2008;... more Geographers have conceived of networks as a foundational spatial concept (e.g. Jessop et al 2008; Leitner et al 2008). In spite of this recognition, the adoption of network analysis within contemporary geography has been varied across geographical subdisciplines. This session departs from the conviction that network analysis heralds considerable promise to develop theoretical notions as well as methods that allow us to better understand how spaces are constituted and contested. This session therefore explores the potentials and limitations of network analysis for human geography. Demonstrating the relevance of networks as theoretical constructs, scholars like Michael Mann (1986) and Manuel Castells (1996, 2009) have shown how networks of various kinds are constitutive of social power. Networks of people, corporations, and government officials agglomerate in specific locations, with some agglomerations concentrating more resources and power than others. Network analysis further provides a rich array of techniques and methods that can capture relations in places and across space. Despite the early adoption of network-analytical techniques by both physical and human geographers during the heyday of the spatial science era (e.g. Haggett and Chorley, 1969), contemporary geographers only make limited use of such technological affordances, with notable exceptions of research on city networks (e.g. Taylor and Derudder, 2016) and digital geographies (Crampton et al. 2013). The growing availability of digital data and the development of advanced techniques for network analysis provide many new opportunities for geography while also raising new issues with respect to research ethics and data validity. Lastly, network analysis can facilitate conversation across disciplines and subdisciplines. Network analysis provides theoretical notions and techniques that can be used to capture phenomena ranging from social movements and corporate networks to the diffusion of innovation or road infrastructures. Because it provides a common vocabulary, network analysis has the potential to highlight patterns and mechanisms that operate across different fields. While the reduction of complex social relations to a standardized vocabulary offers exciting opportunities, the imposition of network categories can also result in theoretical and political blinders. The session aims to encourage and inspire scholars to theoretically, methodologically, and empirically explore the potentials and limitations of network analysis for geography. We invite papers from various geographical specializations (e.g. economic, political, social, cultural, transportation, physical and environmental geography) to compare network approaches and build a more comprehensive and dynamic theory of networked geographies. We particularly welcome contributions that focus on:

The Dutch government introduced the Act on Extraordinary Measures for Urban Problems in 2006 to b... more The Dutch government introduced the Act on Extraordinary Measures for Urban Problems in 2006 to bolster local regeneration efforts. The act enables local governments to stop specific groups of deprived households from moving into designated neighbourhoods. More specifically, the Act allows local governments to refuse a residence permit to persons who have lived in the metropolitan region for less than six years and who do not receive an income from work, pensions or student loans. The policy is based on the idea that reducing the influx of poor newcomers improves liveability by providing a temporary relief of the demand for public services and by making neighbourhoods demographically 'balanced' or 'socially mixed'. This review examines the socio-spatial effects of the Act in Rotterdam between 2006 and 2013. While the Act produces socio-demographic changes, the state of the living environment in designated areas seems to be worsening rather than improving. Our findings show that the policy restricts the rights of excluded groups without demonstrably improving safety or liveability. The review concludes with a reflection on how the Act may signify a broader change in European statecraft and urban policy.

Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie

Nordic Journal of Religion and Society

Frontiers in Sustainable Cities

Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 2016

Journal of Housing and the Built Environment

PLoS ONE, 2020

Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 2019

Frontiers in Sustainable Cities, 2020

International Communication Gazette, 2020

Mobilization: An International Journal, 2020

Social Media + Society, 2020

Given the hostile climate facing immigrants, it might be expected that they would try to remain h... more Given the hostile climate facing immigrants, it might be expected that they would try to remain hidden and under the radar. However, many immigrants have asserted their rights for equality in the countries they reside in. While the general policy evolution has been in the direction of greater restrictions, some immigrant mobilizations have successfully swum against the tide and achieved important wins including large-scale regularizations. Cities and Social Movements make sense of these remarkable mobilizations and their successes or failures.

Through historical and comparative research on the immigrant rights movements of the United States, France, and the Netherlands, this book examines how small resistances against restrictive immigration policies do – or don’t – develop into large and sustained mobilizations. Drawing on a range of disciplines, the book rethinks movements from the bottom-up. The authors descend to the urban grassroots to uncover the micro-mechanisms through which movement networks emerge or disband. Cities and Social Movements demonstrate how efforts to enforce national borders trigger countless resistances and shows how some environments provide the opportunities to nurture these small resistances into sustained and system-challenging mobilizations.

Table of Contents

1 Sparks of Resistance
2 Rethinking Movements from the Bottom Up

Part I The Birth of Immigrant Rights Activism

3 Making Space for Immigrant Rights Activism in Los Angeles
4 Radical Entanglements in Paris
5 Placing Protest in Amsterdam

Part II Urban Landscapes of Control and Contention

6 The Laissez-Faire State: Re ]politicizing Immigrants in Los Angeles
7 The Uneven Reach of the State: The Partial Pacification of Paris
8 The Cooptative State: The Pacification of Contentious Immigrant Politics in Amsterdam

Part III New Geographies of Immigrant Rights Movements

9 Los Angeles as a Center of the National Immigrant Rights Movement
10 Paris as Head of Splintering Resistances
11 Divergent Geographies of Immigrant Rights Contention in the Netherlands

12 Conclusion: Sparks into Wildfires

In this presentation, I want to analyze the role of cities in driving or curbing immigrant rights... more In this presentation, I want to analyze the role of cities in driving or curbing immigrant rights movements in France, the Netherlands, and the United States. Drawing on a forthcoming book I'm co-authoring with Walter Nicholls, I examine how geography is implicated in the emergence and decline of movements. The briefest possible summary of our project is that we argue for a relational approach that examines how and why the networks constituting movements develop by tracing where they develop. I want to give you an impression of what this means by discussing some cases from our book and teasing out some more general theoretical implications.

Disclaimer: In this presentation I argue for using complexity theory to better understand social ... more Disclaimer: In this presentation I argue for using complexity theory to better understand social movements. This does not mean I think complexity theory provides all the answers or that it's the only perspective that should be used but I do think complexity thinking can bring something to sociology in general and social movement research in particular.