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project description of my upcoming year of fieldwork in China. research narrative here: http://bit.ly/pros13
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Digital Urbanism on the Margins: Chinese Migrants and Intensive Technology
Tricia Wang | www.triciawang.com
what can we learn from 300 million rural-urban migrants?
they can help us answer an important question
what the future of the internet will look like
how will the next 2 billion users experience everyday digital life?
Migration is taking place in a new technoscape
the cellphone is the lifeline for every migrant moving to the city
migrants come to the city for a better life
undergoing massive re-urbanization – laying the infrastructure for the new digitally ubiquitous city
cities are the site of this new technoscape
decreasing rural populationincreasing urban population
China’s increasing income per capita over last 200 years
China has largest internet community
384,000,000 (chart from 2008)
Convergence of processes unfolding in cities
re-urbanization
Digitization of information
Creation of largest middle-class
Tech infrastructure build out
we are digitally networking the consumption desires of millions of people
But can the planet support the a networked middle-class from China?
Will ICTs be the game changer?
do ICTs signal to a paradigm shift for society?
someone has theorized about this a lot…
Society of Control1950 - ?
Disciplinary Societies1700-1950
WE ARE IN A PERIOD OF TRANSITION
Gilles DeleuzeMichel Foucault
Deleuze theorized this in 1992!
How are people experiencing these changes today?
so what now?
I offer some initial thoughts and theories for how I’m thinking about this in terms of China
I propose a new urban assemblage
digital urbansim
an urban assemblage in which the materiality of living in cities and its digital infrastructures are becoming mutually constituted
materiality of living in cities
digital infrastructures
everyday life of digital urbanism
sites of tech access become the loci of sociality
driven by the virtualization of urban experiences and digitization of information
workings of digital urbanism
people
(subjectivity, identity)
product
(hardware, content)
tech & economic
policy(legislation)
protocol(code/networks/
standards)
software: social media/gaming
widespread infrastructure
Hardware: low-cost tech tools
rural-urban migration
digitization of information
practice
(communication, spatial)
state managed
growth
open web standards and programming
languages
organization workflow
non co-present communication
desires
dreams
DIGITAL URBANISMmillions of rural-urban migrants are becoming urbanized through low-cost digital tools
on the margins
urban life on the marginsuneven rights
disruptive citizenship
widely available digital tools
publicly virtual
internet cafes- digital “street corners”
immobile mobility (Wallis 2008)
SOME HYPOTHESES FOR A DIGITAL URBANISM ON THE MARGINS
based on the preliminary fieldwork that I’ve conducted over the last 3 years
1 tools/mediums of information matter less than
relations of information
tools/medium of information vs relations of
information• binary framework
• digital divide - haves or have-nots, one either has or doesn’t have access
• tech determinism
• linear reading, based on progress
• captures a snapshot of social relation
•ICT4D (information communication technologies for development)
• relative framework
• socio-digital sieves- complex interplay of social structures & processes
• avoids tech determinism
• de-centered reading, based on ruptures and possibilities
• captures change in process
I propose this perspective
people will experience urban space as a mix of cyberspace and code/space
Dodge & Kitchen 2003: code/space is where code dominates the production of space - it mediates socio-spatial processes
2materiality of living in cities and its digital infrastructures are becoming mutually constituted - produced through one another
most prominent in sites of tech access – internet cafes
change from the bottom up will take form in
disruptive citizenshipthis happens when people on the margins experience the limits of consumer citizenship 3
modulationdividualizing
disruption self-healing
ubiquitous
4structural characteristics of digital urbanism
5commercial sites of internet access become the loci of sociality – third places (Oldenburg 1989)
necessary spaces to build communitynot work, not home the new “street
corner”
several discursive regimes produce the space of digital urbanismwe will see increasing tension around information and digital
politics, what I call neo-informationalism6
artificiality is not superficiality
ubiquity and seamlessness is desired normalization and stigmatization of debt
discursive regimes
neo-informationalism
• information as site of wealth expansion
• information determinism as model of social change (Ames 2008)
“INFORMATION
• compliments neo-liberal economic policies
• internet freedom myth
ideology of
WANTS TO BE FREE”
neo-informationalismInformation functions like currency:
borderlessunregulatedmobile
in an ideology that information should flow freely between institutions, governments, and people to ensure democracy, free-markets, and equality.
neo-informationalism
While no entity promoting this mechanism has used this word, it is a concept that I have assigned to the practices of people and corporations who promote the ideology cum theology of free-information.
what are the processes that shape people’s everyday experiences in digital urbanism?
code/space (interwoven physical and virtual space)
governing data, not bodies
mediated remembrance through the archive
perpetual anxiety in credentials
how do we find some answers to these questions?
ethnographic imagination & grounded theory
living with migrants
hanging out in internet cafes
working in factoriesgoing to schools
I’m starting 1 year of fieldwork in a 2nd tier urban Chinese city
watching informal public spaces
research methods
mental mapping
deep ethnography
historical research
ICT mapping mobile diaries
photo elicitation
I’ll have some observations to report in 2012!
In the meantime, I will be sharing fieldnotes on www.culturalbytes.com
There is no need to fear or hope, but only to look for new weapons. Deleuze, Postscript on the Societies of Control
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