Assemblage Theory Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Assemblage is one way to examine complexities in today’s world. In Deleuzian thinking, assemblage refers to both the act of assembling diverse elements and the arrangements of these elements for a specific purpose. Importantly, it is the... more

Assemblage is one way to examine complexities in today’s world. In Deleuzian thinking, assemblage refers to both the act of assembling diverse elements and the arrangements of these elements for a specific purpose. Importantly, it is the interaction between elements that allows the assemblage to become more than the sum of its parts. Applying this concept to long-term research on Cold Rush – the transformation of the Arctic commons into commodities – I argue that examining the boom, bust, and buzz around the commons can be fruitfully conceptualised and studied with assemblage. This approach brings with it an ontological shift from binaries into multiplicities and multiple temporalities. Assemblage also sheds light on the role of discourse in these transformations and shows how language gains its productive force only in collaboration with other elements.

This paper takes tools of self-valuation in social media as an empirical focus. By way of a case-study of Klout, an influential measure of influence, we suggest that the forms of reactivity and self-fulfilling prophecy that have been... more

This paper takes tools of self-valuation in social media as an empirical focus. By way of a case-study of Klout, an influential measure of influence, we suggest that the forms of reactivity and self-fulfilling prophecy that have been identified as a problem with some forms of measurement are actually an intentional effect of such tools: that is, the measurements that such tools produce are not designed to capture a separate reality, but are deliberately employed to modify the activity that they themselves invite. In other words, they expect and exploit reactivity. We suggest that such media are indicative of the rise in what might be called participative metrics of value. We further suggest that the capacity to evaluate and modify the self that Klout affords is intricately tied up with the agency and (self-)valuation of Klout as a tool itself. An intermediate layer of the argument is that this tying up is achieved through the production of numbers as specific kinds of ‘enumerated entities’. We use this term to draw attention to the ways in which numbers are never simply abstractions, but always have specific material-semiotic properties. In this case, we show that these properties are tied to the use of media-specific operations, and that these properties, including those of inclusion and belonging, inform how Klout participates in particular kinds of ordering and valuation. We thus explore the interlinked movement of numbers, media, and value in social media as a kind of dynamic assemblage.

Following up on current discussions of digital youth culture, this article examines the concept of assemblage and its potential for understanding the ambiguous forces that shape young people's everyday media practices. In the first part... more

Following up on current discussions of digital youth culture, this article examines the concept of assemblage and its potential for understanding the ambiguous forces that shape young people's everyday media practices. In the first part of the article, we argue for approaching these forces in their affective materiality. To provide a situated example, in the second part of the article, we explore the distribution of relations between hashtags #selfie and #antiselfie attached to 200 photos that were publicly shared on Instagram between August 1st and 30th of November 2019. By focusing on the network of tagging, liking and sharing selfies, we consider the resulting hybrid assemblage of Instagram youth in its multiplicity -- from the digital affordances of connectivity and relations of identity performance to the attention economy of Instagram and its manifold affective dynamics that are at play.

The article explores the politics of life underground in Bucharest, Romania. It focuses on a tunnel passing under Bucharest's central train station, where a community of drug users and so‐called ‘homeless’ have made a long‐standing home,... more

The article explores the politics of life underground in Bucharest, Romania. It focuses on a tunnel passing under Bucharest's central train station, where a community of drug users and so‐called ‘homeless’ have made a long‐standing home, using a space that many others considered uninhabitable. Relying on extensive ethnographic observations and interviews undertaken within the tunnels, the article traces and illustrates the socio‐material entanglements characterizing life underground. It frames this assemblage of bodies, veins, syringes, substances and various relationships of power and affect, as a ‘propositional politics’ of home and life at the margins. Such a politics speaks of drug addiction and extreme marginalization, but also of a sense of belonging, reciprocal trust and care. In tracing such a politics, the article does not aim to romanticize the status of home in the underground or to treat it as the marginal antithesis of normative homeliness, but to reveal the ways in which an affirmative, self‐grounding politics of home emerges from the immanence of tunnel life within the fabric of the city. As such, the article contributes to debates around homing practices in conditions of uninhabitability and proposes a radical approach to the politics of life at the margins in the contemporary urban.

To understand what digital democracy is, this article suggests looking at the individual level of democratic subjectivity. Who is the democratic subject and how is it constituted in digital democracy? It revisits the... more

To understand what digital democracy is, this article suggests looking at the individual level of democratic subjectivity. Who is the democratic subject and how is it constituted in digital democracy? It revisits the poststructuralist-inspired debate about cyberdemocracy in the 1990s, which conceptualized the democratic subject as disembodied discursive self, reifying through textuality in cyberspace. In contrast, current debates on new materialism offer novel perspectives with attention to the materiality of bodies and things. New materialist thought has been fruitfully incorporated for social interaction online, but they have yet to be applied to political participation. By discussing three examples of political online participation in which users materialize their classed, raced, and gendered bodies, this essay contributes to a novel understanding of embodied democratic subjectivity in the digital age.

The study of enslaved people's consumption practices often relies on 'fast science,' reducing these acts to a reflection of socioeconomic structures or a medium for agency and self-expression. What often gets lost is the effects these... more

The study of enslaved people's consumption practices often relies on 'fast science,' reducing these acts to a reflection of socioeconomic structures or a medium for agency and self-expression. What often gets lost is the effects these actions had. My paper builds on Édouard Glissant's discussions of the ontological and ethical aspects of 'slow science' to argue that attending to what Glissant would call the poetics of consumption-how consumers and commodities came together and the effects that radiate outward from acts of consumption-allows us to see enslaved consumers as people whose actions affected the world around them. To demonstrate this, I draw on merchants' ledgers and archaeological data from ongoing excavations at Belle Grove Plantation to discuss how enslaved people came to acquire both tea and teawares, and how this consumption affected how local economies and the institution of slavery operated in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley.

This paper investigates the affective and performative aspects of the right to the city with a focus on the materialisation of this right, its corporeal coming into being. In elaborating the idea of an affective right to the city, I will... more

This paper investigates the affective and performative aspects of the right to the city with a focus on the materialisation of this right, its corporeal coming into being. In elaborating the idea of an affective right to the city, I will refer to Judith Butler's performative theory of assembly, along with findings drawn from ethnographic research conducted among individuals experiencing homelessness in Melbourne, Australia. My research suggests that the materialisation of the right to the city is embodied in the social, material and affective occupation of urban spaces. This work reveals how the body's inhabitation of place, and the affordances of the material environment, mediate the performative expression of the right to the city. It also calls for a shift from a juridical conception of the right to the city to an affective one, more accommodating of the social and material contexts in which this right is enacted. I conclude with a brief discussion of the implications of this affective conception of rights for performative studies of homelessness in urban space.

Table of contents special issue in Citizenship Studies 19(2), 2015 'Citizenship agendas in and beyond the nation-state' Guest-editors: Martijn Koster, Rivke Jaffe & Anouk de Koning Citizenship agendas in and beyond the nation-state:... more

Table of contents special issue in Citizenship Studies 19(2), 2015 'Citizenship agendas in and beyond the nation-state' Guest-editors: Martijn Koster, Rivke Jaffe & Anouk de Koning Citizenship agendas in and beyond the nation-state: (en)countering framings of the good citizen Anouk de Koning, Rivke Jaffe & Martijn Koster pages 121-127 Between ballots and bullets: elections and citizenship in and beyond the nation-state Rivke Jaffe pages 128-140 Of ordinariness and citizenship processes Catherine Neveu pages 141-154 Citizenship agendas for the abject: the production of distrust in Amsterdam's youth and security domain Anouk de Koning pages 155-168 Muslim sound, public space, and citizenship agendas in an American City Alisa Perkins pages 169-183 Post-conflict reconstruction and citizenship agendas: lessons from Beirut Najib B. Hourani pages 184-199 Vigilantes, gangsters, and alcohol: clashing citizenship regimes in postwar Guatemala Ellen Sharp pages 200-213 Citizenship agendas, urban governance and social housing in the Netherlands: an assemblage approach Martijn Koster pages 214-228

Collaborative workspaces are rapidly evolving around the world and coworking is now a global phenomenon, based on a number of shared values such as openness, community, accessibility etc. During the last few years, we have observed the... more

Collaborative workspaces are rapidly evolving around the world and coworking is now a global phenomenon, based on a number of shared values such as openness, community, accessibility etc. During the last few years, we have observed the emergence of profit-driven, commercialized spaces, such as incubators, accelerators and big coworking chains. On the other hand, there is an emergence of bottom-up, community-led spaces, such as coworking spaces, hackerspaces, makerspaces, hubs etc., territorializing 'loose' communities of professionals, freelancers and small and social enterprises driven by desires related to alternatives modes of organizing production through the collaborative use of common pool resources and new, hybrid labour (re)arrangements. This paper contributes to the ongoing debate concerning collaborative workspaces' capacities and potentialities to operate as commons, by proposing an extended topology of collaborative networks, involving both the "core" components of the coworking praxis and those components' interactions with broader networks and circuits (capitalist markets, urban commons, social movements etc.). We argue that through the lens of Assemblage Theory, the proposed topology overcomes restricting dualisms and taxonomies, allowing an inclusive description and evaluation of those recently emerged modes of labour organization and production. Moreover, we employ the autonomist lens of the commons theory, in order to place emphasis upon the collaborative assemblages' potentiality to constitute a paradigm shift concerning the organization of labour, operating in tense with the capital, as a transformative force in favour of coworkers.

In this chapter I propose a time and place of birth for maritime security. Utilising Deleuze and Guattari's assemblage theory, I locate the original context from which maritime security arose in a foundational violent event that bore... more

In this chapter I propose a time and place of birth for maritime security. Utilising Deleuze and Guattari's assemblage theory, I locate the original context from which maritime security arose in a foundational violent event that bore witness to the presence of different visions of order at sea. I document how the sudden irruption of activist non-state actors into the maritime assemblage challenged the traditional statist construction of the sea. I locate that event in the bombing of the Greenpeace flagship, "Rainbow Warrior", by French secret service agents on 10 July 1985, in Auckland harbour, at 23h45. At that moment maritime security was born as a complex, evolving field of relationships housing inter alia, state and non-state actors, forces of stasis and change, and practices of military technocracy and radical democracy.

Dark Sides of the City-Editorial And work of every description ceased, and all the trades were abandoned by the artisans, and all other work as well, such as each had in hand. Indeed, in a city which was simply abounding in all good... more

Dark Sides of the City-Editorial And work of every description ceased, and all the trades were abandoned by the artisans, and all other work as well, such as each had in hand. Indeed, in a city which was simply abounding in all good things, starvation almost absolute was running riot.

To date, most discussion of security privatization in international politics has been focused on the role of private military companies and mercenaries. This article seeks to shift the focus away from the battlefields and toward the less... more

To date, most discussion of security privatization in international
politics has been focused on the role of private military companies and mercenaries. This article seeks to shift the focus away from the battlefields and toward the less spectacular privatization and globalization of commercial private security. Drawing on Saskia Sassen’s notion of state ‘‘disassembly,’’ we situate the growth of private security within broader shifts in global governance. Pointing to the weakness of seeing the rise of private security as an erosion of state power and authority, we show instead a re-articulation of the public ⁄ private and global ⁄ local distinctions
and relationships into what we term ‘‘global security assemblages.’’ Analyzing the role of private security in two such assemblages in Sierra Leone and Nigeria, we show how a range of different security agents and normativities interact, cooperate and compete, to produce new institutions, practices and forms of security governance. Global security assemblages thus mark important developments in the relationship between security and the sovereign state, structures of political power and authority, and the operations of global capital.

Studying fanfiction in a field called “fan studies” conveys the assumption that we study it primarily to learn about fans. But what of fanfiction from a textual perspective—its distinctive recombinatory, iterative, and unstable textual... more

Studying fanfiction in a field called “fan studies” conveys the assumption that we study it primarily to learn about fans. But what of fanfiction from a textual perspective—its distinctive recombinatory, iterative, and unstable textual effects and pleasures? How can it be defined and understood from literary historical and theoretical perspectives, or as a distinctive literary mode in its own right? Though it does seem refer to a recognizable kind of text, “fanfiction” resists a single definition but rather indicates an often playful relation nonetheless ordered by power dynamics—between source and text, writer and text, law, profit, platform or code and text, etc. Arguing through cephalopods and theorists influential in assemblage and network theory (Deleuze, Kittler), this chapter claims that “fanfiction” challenges models of unitary authorship and artistic hierarchies derived from Kant even as it relies on these models both conceptually and historically for the conditions of its existence

This article is an attempt to move beyond the conventional binary heuristic of identity to its progressive representation based on multiplicity, difference, and dispersion popularized by the 'rhizomatic' theory of Gilles Deleuze and Félix... more

This article is an attempt to move beyond the conventional binary heuristic of identity to its progressive representation based on multiplicity, difference, and dispersion popularized by the 'rhizomatic' theory of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, in Charlotte Perkins Gilman's story, "The Yellow Wall Paper". It is a cliché belief that multiplicity comprises of numerous units, and these units can be eventually united under one category such as the ages of population. Deleuze and Guattari interrogated such logocentric assumptions, and 'arborescent root-tree' model of objectified structures, language, identity and self. This article seeks to trace the voyage of Jane's identity whose dairy constitutes the story "The Yellow Wall Paper". Her identity has evoked ramified and conflicting networks of references. Feminists broach that she is caged to be a conventional caring mother; for a Freudian she is a 'hysteric' struggling with temporary nervous depression, Lacanian posit that she is a 'psychotic' who persistently tries to satisfy the 'gaze' of her physician husband John, and for a Deleuzian the moment she fails to bear the burden of capitalism driven 'bio-power' and 'nuclear family' she becomes a 'schizo'. The object of study of this article is not Jane's mind which romanticizes asylums rather the interrelation between 'bio-power' and her 'desire'. The article will portray that Jane's 'self' is evacuated from its fixed position to cherish free form of human interaction, and her identity is not handcuffed by any law, rather it is in a state of constant 'flux', in a ceaseless motion of 'becoming', it is a 'rhizome', facilitating a non-hierarchical network.

In response to policy-makers' increasing claims to prioritise 'people' in smart city development, we explore the publicness of emerging practices across six UK cities: Bristol, Glasgow, London, Manchester, Milton Keynes, and Peterborough.... more

In response to policy-makers' increasing claims to prioritise 'people' in smart city development, we explore the publicness of emerging practices across six UK cities: Bristol, Glasgow, London, Manchester, Milton Keynes, and Peterborough. Local smart city programmes are analysed as techno-public assemblages invoking varie-gated modalities of publicness. Our findings challenge the dystopian speculative critiques of the smart city, while nevertheless indicating the dominance of 'entrepre-neurial' and 'service user' modes of the public. We highlight the risk of bifurcation within smart city assemblages, such that the 'civic' and 'political' roles of the public become siloed into less obdurate strands of programmatic activity.

The consumer Internet of Things (IoT) has the potential to revolutionize consumer experience. Because consumers can actively interact with smart objects, the traditional, human-centric conceptualization of consumer experience as... more

The consumer Internet of Things (IoT) has the potential to revolutionize consumer experience. Because consumers can actively interact with smart objects, the traditional, human-centric conceptualization of consumer experience as consumers’ internal subjective responses to branded objects may not be sufficient to conceptualize consumer experience in the IoT. Smart objects possess their own point of view and their own experience in interactions with the consumer and with each other. We develop a conceptual framework based on assemblage theory and object-oriented ontology that details how consumer experience and object experience emerge in the IoT emerge. We anchor our conceptualization in the context of smart home assemblages and introduce the idea that consumer experience, through its emergent properties and capacities, has two broad facets: extension experience and expansion experience. We develop a parallel conceptualization of the construct of object experience, arguing that it can be perceived by consumers through the mechanism of anthropomorphism. Interaction of consumer and object experiences lead to the emergence of relationship styles defined by combinations of agentic and communal orientations that consumers and objects express during interaction. Our framework extends considerations of consumer behavior to objects and has implications for studying emergence from interaction in the face of dynamic change.

Special Issue in Citizenship Studies

Issue edited by Martijn Koster, Rivke Jaffe and Anouk de Koning

This article is a critique of the neologism “Daoist medicine” (daojiao yixue 道教醫學) that has recently entered scholarly discourse in China. It provides evidence that this expression is an anachronism which found its way into scholarly... more

This article is a critique of the neologism “Daoist medicine” (daojiao yixue 道教醫學) that has recently entered scholarly discourse in China. It provides evidence that this expression is an anachronism which found its way into scholarly discourse in 1995 and has now become so widely used that it is seen as representing an undisputed “historical fact.” It demonstrates that the term has no precursor in the pre-modern record, and critiques two substantive attempts to set up “Daoist medicine” as an analytical term. It reviews earlier scholarship on Daoism and medicine, or healing, within the larger context of religion and medicine, and shows how attention has shifted, particularly in relation to the notion of overlap or intersection of these historical fields of study. It proposes that earlier frameworks grounded in epistemology or simple social identity do not effectively represent the complexity of these therapies. Practice theory, on the other hand, provides a useful analytic for unpacking the organisation and transmission of curing knowledge. Such an approach foregrounds the processes and dynamics of assemblage, rather than theoretical abstractions. The article concludes by proposing a focus on the Daoing of medicine, that is, the variety of processes by which therapies come to be known as Daoist, rather than imposing an anachronistic concept like Daoist medicine.

The term "cable," as used in the context of diplomacy, is ambiguous. It denotes both a message and its technological messenger. Telegraph wires were used around the middle of the nineteenth century to connect the capitals of Europe. The... more

The term "cable," as used in the context of diplomacy, is ambiguous. It denotes both a message and its technological messenger. Telegraph wires were used around the middle of the nineteenth century to connect the capitals of Europe. The network soon expanded, and by 1870, with the laying of submarine cables, fast-traveling telegraphic messages could be sent between Britain, Continental Europe, North America, the Middle East, and India. Through these cables, diplomatic posts communicated with their ministries back home. But the term "cable" also came to denote the message that was sent by telegraph. In this chapter I use this ambiguity as an entry point for an exploration of what the new materialist turn can bring to Diplomatic Studies. I will demonstrate how at three particular points in history the cable, as both diplomatic message and technological messenger, made a difference to how things played out. To make sense of this, one needs to be perceptive of the myriad ways in which meaning and materiality intertwine in the making of what we call diplomacy. What is called for is, in other words, a material-semiotic analysis of diplomacy...

Вплив Мішеля Фуко на сучасного соціолога та фі-лософа Бруно Латура навряд чи можна піддати сум-ніву. Останнього можна називати бозна-як: наївним позитивістом, релятивістом, постмодерністом, кон-ст рукціоністом (в поганій конотації) тощо.... more

Вплив Мішеля Фуко на сучасного соціолога та фі-лософа Бруно Латура навряд чи можна піддати сум-ніву. Останнього можна називати бозна-як: наївним позитивістом, релятивістом, постмодерністом, кон-ст рукціоністом (в поганій конотації) тощо. Але ні-коли не варто забувати, що він був також спінозис-том (навіть таким собі спінозистом-дельо зіан цем [La tour, 2014]) і фукольдіанцем. Фактично знамени-тій áкторно-мережевій теорії Б. Латура (АМТ) пе-ре дувала саме концепція влади, створена М. Фуко. Всі фукольдіанські концепти — біовлада, мікро-влада, мікрофізика влади — іманентно присутні й у латурівській АМТ, хоча і мають у ній інші назви. Більш глибоко зрозуміти фукольдіанську концеп-цію влади можна, на наш погляд, через АМТ і нав-паки — історичну генезу АМТ слід відстежувати не починаючи від семінарів у Вищій гірничій школі, а з праць бунтівного французького інтелектуала. Обидві теорії, як концепція влади Фуко, так і АМТ Латура, розмиті концептуально. Для них не існує жорстких фреймів, у які зазвичай можна укласти будь-яку соціальну теорію — недарма Латур нази-ває свою соціологію «соціологією асоціацій» — асо ціація тут має не лише значення «збірки» пев-них елементів (наприклад, «люди та об'єкти»), але й своє пряме значення — навіяний чимось образ. Саме такою, спонтанною, мінливою й без демар-каційних меж, бачить свою теорію Латур. Фуко ж бажає за краще називати власні соціальні та полі-тологічні концепції «нарисами»: це не будівля і на-віть не фасад будівлі, а радше штрихи до портрета,

The chapter focuses on the specific practices of a set of people in Denmark, who voluntarily, and reflexively generate, process and analyse data about their lives. From 2012-2014 we followed these ‘self-trackers’, who are organized in a... more

The chapter focuses on the specific practices of a set of people in Denmark, who voluntarily, and reflexively generate, process and analyse data about their lives. From 2012-2014 we followed these ‘self-trackers’, who are organized in a movement called “Quantified Self” (QS), in order to understand the conscious digital tracking and active engagement with data in the construction of subjectivity and sociality.
Our theoretical frame is based on assemblages of interacting economic, technological, social and cultural logics (Barad 2003; Marcus & Saka 2006; Orlikowski 2007; Ruppert et al. 2013; Lupton 2014a). In this way we focus our analysis of self-trackers on the dynamic and historically intertwined constellations of discourses, practices, meanings and materialities. Our conceptual argument is that the process of self-tracking subjectivation can be described by the metaphor of the digital doppelgänger: a digital version of the self that is perceived as ‘more you than you are yourself’.

This book interrogates why feminist memories matter. Feminist Afterlives explores how the images, ideas and feelings of past liberation struggles become freshly available and transmissible. In doing so, Red Chidgey examines how popular... more

Beyond enabling participatory forms of memory-making, digital media reconfigure power relations in memory construction. In the Philippines, we witness this through the hashtag network #ArawNgMagnakakaw (‘Day of Thieves’) to counter the... more

Beyond enabling participatory forms of memory-making, digital media reconfigure power relations in memory construction. In the Philippines, we witness this through the hashtag network #ArawNgMagnakakaw (‘Day of Thieves’) to counter the heroic commemoration of the dictator Ferdinand Marcos sanctioned by the state and supported by online networks that distort and deny his crimes during his 20-year regime. This case illustrates not only how digital media facilitates the negotiation of memory by non-institutional actors, but also how it sets the conditions to resist elite narratives through non-conventional ways of remembering. This study examines the performance of counter-memory (Foucault, 1977) in the intersection of networked publics, counter-narratives, and technologies of memories. We investigate the hashtag network #ArawNgMagnanakaw by mapping its social network and analyzing its discourses as digital practices (Jones, Chik & Hafner, 2015). We argue that the network derives its power from neither elite nor collective actions, but through connective action of structures, discourses and practices of remembrance. Firstly, the locus of analysis shifts from a single actor (‘who remembers’) to the assemblage (‘what enacts the remembering’) as an agent of counter-memory, with technology shaping its possibilities and boundaries. Secondly, the assemblage’s resistance to elite commemoration surfaces silenced and neglected historical narratives (‘what is remembered’) through affective articulations of protest and subversive commemorative practices (‘how is it remembered’). We theorize the ‘assemblage of counter-memory’ as the connective, discursive, and material assemblage that enact political agency to privilege marginalized narratives and play an active role in the (re)construction of memory.

A gulf habitually seems to separate single-player games from multiplayer games. From the start screen of a huge swath of games, the two paths diverge. In the first, a single-player campaign laden with narrative components unfolds. In the... more

A gulf habitually seems to separate single-player games from multiplayer games. From the start screen of a huge swath of games, the two paths diverge. In the first, a single-player campaign laden with narrative components unfolds. In the second, gameplay hinges on the actions of other players, whether oppositional combat in a fighting game, or cooperatively as in some sports titles. This perceived split manifests in a variety of historical and contextual forms: it emerges from the single-player games of the frenetic, quarter-driven arcades against the social play style dominant in early generations of home consoles; or, likewise, from the solitary, single-player journeys of role-playing games (RPGs) played in suburban dens to sprawling virtual communities of massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs). It often pops up in the interstices between the two, as in the local area network (LAN) party, alternating or asynchronous play, or local cooperative play. Without a doubt, understandings of single-player/multi-player entangle both the context of play and type of game. Approaches in game studies are not immune to the fracturing divide of single/multi, often bracketing off online experiences in studies of community, leaving design, nar-ratological, and philosophical concerns in the single-player realm. Several questions arise from the slash of single/multi: what are, both material and cultural, the historic conditions that facilitate the rift? How do different schools in the loosely-affiliated field of game studies cultivate, approach, and defy the fracture? How do bounds of platforms, player action, methodology, economic, and marketing interests all shape the senses of single-player and multiplayer experiences? Moreover, if a great deal of what separates the two collapses, then what binds the two and how should we account for the multi-faceted material, discursive, and cultural assemblage of single/multi?

The oceans are increasingly understood as a security space. Does the new maritime security agenda lead to new spatial configurations? This chapter introduces the concept of 'pragmatic spaces' to explore spatial configurations produced in... more

The oceans are increasingly understood as a security space. Does the new maritime security agenda lead to new spatial configurations? This chapter introduces the concept of 'pragmatic spaces' to explore spatial configurations produced in responses to maritime security. Four exemplary spaces are discussed: how counter-piracy led to the development of high risk areas, how maritime security capacity building produced new regions constructed through codes of conduct, how the identification of smuggling routes established new forms of international partnerships, and how maritime domain awareness systems advance new transnational spaces of surveillance. These new spatial configurations were introduced to manage maritime security issues and enable transnational forms of governance.

Focusing on the efforts of Nairobi’s water utility to reduce leakage in the city’s expansion of water infrastructure, this study offers an organizational assemblage perspective on infrastructure. Drawing on the concept of assemblage and... more

Focusing on the efforts of Nairobi’s water utility to reduce leakage in the city’s expansion of water infrastructure, this study offers an organizational assemblage perspective on infrastructure. Drawing on the concept of assemblage and its uptake in science and technology studies and cultural anthropology, infrastructure is the material form of emergent systems through which the flow of nature, goods, ideas, people and finance is organized over space and time. Nairobi’s water infrastructure brings together a diverse set of features, including pipes, meters, GPS technologies, smartphones, engineering reports, Excel spreadsheets, landlords, plumbers, African chiefs, thieves, foreign experts, politicians, accountants, engineers, the everyday lives and ethnicities of the people of Nairobi, climate conditions, hydraulics, urban topographies and the fluids sludge and water.
Based on a thick performative description of three praxiographic studies, condensed from a four-year ethnographic case study that included eight months of onsite fieldwork in Nairobi, I describe the engagement of Nairobi’s water utility in three technoscientific practices of water leakage and loss management: measuring, tracking, and demarcating water flow and leakage. Through a creative non-fictional writing process, including ficto-critical storytelling, inspired by a postcolonial and feminist understanding in science and technology studies, I empirically and politically account for how a technoscientific intervention enacts the pacification, visibility, and formalization of infrastructure.
My practical ontology framework helps me to understand how the organizing of infrastructure enacts the recursive dynamic of ontological multiplicity and stabilizing, a key concern in assemblage thinking and actor-network-theory. This dynamic is not only experimental, but entangled in organizing practices of governing fluidity, managing invisibility, and operating messiness. I also give the uptake of the concept of assemblage thinking in the turn to infrastructure in social theory empirical depth. This study suggests an empirical and conceptual way forward for organizational research to deploy infrastructure thinking.

The history of religion in the United States cannot be understood without attending to histories of race, gender, and sexuality. Since the 1960s, social and political movements for civil rights have ignited interest in the politics of... more

The history of religion in the United States cannot be understood without attending to histories of race, gender, and sexuality. Since the 1960s, social and political movements for civil rights have ignited interest in the politics of identity, especially those tied to movements for racial justice, women's rights, and LGBT rights. These movements have in turn informed scholarly practice, not least by prompting the formation of new academic fields, such as Women's Studies and African American studies, and new forms of analysis, such as intersectionality, critical race theory, and feminist and queer theory. These movements have transformed how scholars of religion in colonial North America and the United States approach intersections of race, gender, and sexuality. From the colonial period to the present, these discourses of difference have shaped religious practice and belief. Religion has likewise shaped how people understand race, gender, and sexuality. The way that most people in the United States think about identity, especially in terms of race, gender, or sexuality, has a longer history forged out of encounters among European Christians, Native Americans, and people of African descent in the colonial world. European Christians brought with them a number of assumptions about the connection between civilization and Christian ideals of gender and sexuality. Many saw their role in the Americas as one of Christianization, a process that included not only religious but also sexual and cultural conversion, as these went hand in hand. Assumptions about religion and sexuality proved central to how European colonists understood the people they encountered as " heathens " or " pagans. " Religion likewise informed how they interpreted the enslavement of Africans, which was often justified through theological readings of the Bible. Native Americans and African Americans also drew upon religion to understand and to resist the violence of European colonialism and enslavement. In the modern United States, languages of religion, race, gender, and sexuality continue to inform one another as they define the boundaries of normative " modernity, " including the role of religion in politics and the relationship between religious versus secular arguments about race, gender, and sexuality.

The chapter argues for the complex middle position in aesthetics as the most radical. The picturesque, "a station between beauty and sublimity," as Uvedale Price argued in 1796, views the forces that either make or destroy things as... more

The chapter argues for the complex middle position in aesthetics as the most radical. The picturesque, "a station between beauty and sublimity," as Uvedale Price argued in 1796, views the forces that either make or destroy things as coexistent with their form. The chapter culminates in a fictional skirmish between Heidegger and Ruskin where for the first the sublime is what all things strive for, while for the latter it merely consists of a point to grow away from.

This article explores a new model of urban practice that is not limited by environmental moralism by investigating theories of plastic, which is today’s prevailing environmental problem and also a ubiquitous strata of everyday life. In... more

This article explores a new model of urban practice that is not limited by environmental moralism by investigating theories of plastic, which is today’s prevailing environmental problem and also a ubiquitous strata of everyday life. In doing so, it investigates the following two things. The first is to speculate about the ontological dimensions of plastic. Often thrown away after a single use and thrown into the ocean in the form of microplastics, plastic is rubbish and also a toxic material influencing climate change on a global level. It is both a problematic material and an object to overcome. However, such an objectification is a result that does not pay enough attention to its ubiquity. By considering plastic as a crucial form of life, this article pays close attention to its ontological dimensions. The second thing is to examine “assemblage urbanism” as a new form of urban model that could be further explored in relation to the plastic ontology. Assemblage urbanism brings Gilles Deleuze’s notion of assemblage into urban discourses, thereby trying to rethink the conventional theories of the city, represented by its counterpart known as “critical urbanism” that highlights an analytical approach. This article examines the debate between those two camps, which appeared in serial issues of the journal City in 2011, as well as paying attention to the weak points of assemblage urbanism. What this article derives through the investigation is a theory called “plastic urbanism,” a new form of urban practice that is not subjugated by the Anthropocene as a grand narrative, but offers a microscopic and diagrammatic model of the city.

The Conference provided a setting for discussing theoretical and methodological transdisciplinarity in urban morphology. The topic of the conference, Cities as Assemblages, encouraged deliberation on the processes of urban emergence and... more

The Conference provided a setting for discussing theoretical and methodological transdisciplinarity in urban morphology. The topic of the conference, Cities as Assemblages, encouraged deliberation on the processes of urban emergence and transformation from a relational perspective, as well as consideration, in research methodologies and design approaches, to the relationship between physical and human elements. The aim of conference was to address the challenges currently faced by urban morphology: bridging the gaps between different approaches, developing cross-disciplinary studies, and integrating research and practice. The themes of the conference covered theory (emergence, relationality, social sciences, and the scope of limits of urban theories), methods (embedding and combining different approaches), urban design (urban morphology and building typology) and contextual topics (conflict, divided cities and port cities) relating to the location of the Conference. Approximately 220 presentations were delivered in 45 parallel sessions. This present volume includes 49 contributions from all themes, focusing on specific subthemes: emergence, relational theories, the social sciences and urban morphology (theory), embedding different approaches into the study of urban morphology (methods) and Mediterranean port cities in a global context (focus). The papers included in this volume were, in most cases, presented within the same sessions. Under the theme of theory, the papers discuss the notion and mechanisms of emergence in the formation of socio-spatial relations, debate the idea of cities as assemblages for the description of emergence and also discuss the contradictory and multi-faceted nature of urban design. The papers within the theme of methods present a variety of mapping techniques focusing on quantitative approaches, applications of concepts and narrative tools through critical analysis, and diachronic analyses of urban development. There is a strong focus on three-dimensional form, the relationship between built and open spaces, and public space more generally. The socio-cultural dimension of form in the relations between building typology and urban space features prominently as a key to analysing the impact of design and everyday life on the public realm. In the urban design theme, public space and its use remain core elements of analysis, but with a stronger focus on the impact of the design of recent development projects, in particular transport projects, including road systems, public transport and walkability. New and subur-Preface ban neighbourhoods, gated and houseboat communities, industrial and waterfront areas were also subjects of research Finally, in the focus theme, a small number of papers cover comparative analyses of port cities and their evolution in the Mediterranean and in Asia. This volume offers a variety of the different papers that were presented at the Conference, providing a permanent record of the fruitful knowledge exchange that took place during the four days of the event, touching upon many important aspects of urban morphology and producing insights, which I believe will be invaluable for the future development of the field. I would like to thank all participants for their contributions to the Conference programme and to these Proceedings. My special thanks go to the keynote speakers:

This essay begins by arguing that discussions of interdisciplinarity between literature and science have been overly preoccupied by problems of counting: the issue is not that there are or are not Two Cultures, but that we start from... more

This essay begins by arguing that discussions of interdisciplinarity between literature and science have been overly preoccupied by problems of counting: the issue is not that there are or are not Two Cultures, but that we start from defining and delimiting specific numbers of disciplines. It then suggests that that the works of Margaret Cavendish, a philosopher, scientist, playwright, and poet from the mid-seventeenth century, offer two concepts that may help us escape the traps of counting. With her concepts of grounds, she insists on fiction or literature as a mode of rationality parallel to and comparable to reason or science. She also attempts to re-orient contemporary debates about the possible grounds of scientific knowledge, insisting that Nature herself, in all of her variety, must serve as the ground or basis of nature. The essay then shows that the concept of the creature, as Cavendish develops it in her late works, offers a generative model for thinking about combination, cooperation, and association, and might therefore be a useful concept for helping us think beyond the numbering of disciplines.

Building on an ethnography of contemporary art worlds and intellectual life in Mexico City, this paper re-evaluates the dominant concepts that form the so-called ethnographic turn in contemporary art, including the emblematic concept of... more

Building on an ethnography of contemporary art worlds and intellectual life in Mexico City, this paper re-evaluates the dominant concepts that form the so-called ethnographic turn in contemporary art, including the emblematic concept of ethnography. To the ethnographic turn's largely sensorial, historical, people-oriented, cosmopolitan and postcolonial mode of attention, the paper juxtaposes another form of contemporary anthropological inquiry with alternate conceptual constellations and affective modes of research. The proposed contemporary anthropology affirms joyful pedagogies of the concept, cultivates modes of caring for assemblages, designs collaborative research mise-en-scènes that secede from national, diasporic and cosmopolitan geographies, and welcomes those risky creative acts that harbour untimely and non-organic modes of life. The stakes, the paper argues, are nothing less than the differential futures brewing in the contemporariness of contemporary anthropology and contemporary art.

How do a city and a nation deal with a legacy of perpetrating atrocity? How are contemporary identities negotiated and shaped in the face of concrete reminders of a past that most wish they did not have? Difficult Heritage focuses on the... more

How do a city and a nation deal with a legacy of perpetrating atrocity? How are contemporary identities negotiated and shaped in the face of concrete reminders of a past that most wish they did not have? Difficult Heritage focuses on the case of Nuremberg-a city whose name is indelibly linked with Nazism-to explore these questions and their implications. Using original archival, interview and ethnographic sources, it provides not only fascinating new material and perspectives, but also more general innovative theorizing of the relationship between heritage, identity and material culture. The book looks at how Nuremberg has dealt with its Nazi past post-1945. It focuses especially, but not exclusively, on the city's architectural heritage, in particular, the former Nazi party rally grounds, on which the Nuremberg rallies were staged. The book draws on original sources, such as city council debates and interviews, to chart a lively picture of debate, action and inaction in relation to this site and significant others, in Nuremberg and elsewhere. In doing so, Difficult Heritage seeks to highlight changes over time in the ways in which the Nazi past has been dealt with in Germany, and the underlying cultural assumptions, motivations and sources of friction involved. Whilst referencing wider debates and giving examples of what was happening elsewhere in Germany and beyond, Difficult Heritage provides a rich in-depth account of this most fascinating of cases. It also engages in comparative reflection on developments underway elsewhere in order to contextualize what was happening in Nuremberg and to show similarities to and differences from the ways in which other 'difficult heritages' have been dealt with elsewhere. By doing so, the author offers an informed perspective on ways of dealing with difficult heritage, today and in the future, discussing innovative museological, educational and artistic practice.

Birdstones are an enigmatic and diverse group of objects found across eastern North America with concentrations around the Great Lakes region. Via specula- tive interpretations of form, analogical comparison with other regions, and... more

Birdstones are an enigmatic and diverse group of objects found across eastern North America with concentrations around the Great Lakes region. Via specula- tive interpretations of form, analogical comparison with other regions, and consideration of basic contextual information, archaeologists think of birdstones as parts of canoes, flutes, unspecified ceremonial assemblages, and, most fre- quently, atlatls. Discourse and debate about birdstones largely neglects issues of material vibrancy and semiotic process, including the processes by which archae- ologists and others began to name and typify these objects in the late nineteenth century. This paper rethinks birdstones through a ‘more than representational’ approach that combines assemblage theory with Peircean semiotics. Although both lines of thought align with relational ontologies, non-representational critiques, and post-anthropocentrism, archaeologists rarely consider the two together. This approach helps us chart how birdstones emerged and evolved through a complicated set of human-nonhuman interactions that continue into the present.