A convivial-agonistic framework to theorise public service media platforms and their governing systems

This article addresses the need to find alternative ways to envision, develop and govern public service media’s (PSM) online services and data-driven systems. By critically discussing both opportunities and shortcomings of how European PSM organisations developed their online services and personalisation systems, we argue that in their own platformisation processes, PSM have partially lost their distinctiveness and have not been able to provide viable alternatives to the dominant audiovisual media platforms. Thus, building on Mouffe’s agonistic theory and Illich’s conviviality theory, this article proposes a theoretical framework to radically rethink the guiding principles and rationales driving public service platforms, in order to develop viable alternatives to the currently dominant models. By doing so, we envision the development of such services as convivial tools that are based on three principles, namely, symmetry of power (intended as hackability, openness and algorithmic conviviality), independence and environmental sustainability

DIY networking as a facilitator for interdisciplinary research on the hybrid city

DIY networking is a technology with special characteristics compared to the public Internet, which holds a unique potential for empowering citizens to shape their hybrid urban space toward conviviality and collective awareness. It can also play the role of a “boundary object” for facilitating interdisciplinary interactions and participatory processes between different actors: researchers, engineers, practitioners, artists, designers, local authorities, and activists. This position paper presents a social learning framework, the DIY networking paradigm, that we aim to put in the centre of the hybrid space design process. We first introduce our individual views on the role of design as discussed in the fields of engineering, urban planning, urban interaction design, design research, and community informatics. We then introduce a simple methodology for combining these diverse perspectives into a meaningful interdisciplinary collaboration, through a series of related events with different structure and framing. We conclude with a short summary of a selection of these events, which serves also as an introduction to the CONTACT workshop on facilitating information sharing between strangers, in the context of the Hybrid City III conference

Post-automation: report from an international workshop

The purpose of this report is to share lessons from an international research workshop dedicated to post- automation. Twenty-seven researchers from eleven different countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Europe, met at the Science Policy Research Unit at Sussex University on 11-13 September 2019, where we discussed empirical research papers and explored post-automation in group activities. We write this report primarily for researchers, but also for activists and policy advisors looking for more imaginative approaches to governing technology, work and sustainability in society, compared to those dominant agendas adapting automatically to the interests behind automation. The report is structured as follows. Section two introduces the workshop topic and papers presented, and which leads into two related areas that became a focus for discussion. First, some challenges in the foundations of automation theory (section three). And second, post-automation as a more constructive proposition to the challenges of automation, and that is happening right now (section four). Section five summarises some key points arising from the workshop, based on empirical observations from the margins of digital technology development, and that give both a flavour of the workshop and help elaborate the post-automation proposition. Some analytical and strategic themes are discussed in section six. We conclude in section seven with proposals for a post-automation agenda

Authority and Inclusion: Reconsidering Integration in a Fragmented Age

This paper explores the meaning of refugee integration in a fragmented age where multi-culturalism is said to be dead. It focuses on the results of recent research in four cities in South and East Africa, which showed an increasing tendency towards new forms of association that the author termed “communities of convenience”. The author reflects upon the lessons that these highly mobile African urban contexts offer for refugee integration in Britain

Mobility, space and urbanism: a study of practices and relationships among migrants from African countries in Cape Town, South Africa

This study examines the ways in which migrants' diverse experiences in urban Cape Town are mediated by their mobility, movement, and circulation of necessary livelihood objects and ideas. I explore how social formations are individually and collectively created and co-created by migrants' daily interactions, encounters, experiences, and social dynamics in the city. The research is innovative in its deliberate option not to classify migrants based on their country of origin (except where necessary to explain the experiences of actors), thereby challenging stereotypes and preconceptions about African migrants and migration as “people out of place”. Data for this study were gathered using a multi-sited ethnography between 2019 and 2021. Numerous visits in various Cape Town neighbourhoods, observations, interactions, and participation in migrants' social activities, as well as formal and informal interviews and group discussions with a sample of Cape Town's migrant population, were used. The data gathered were analysed using the framework of incompleteness and conviviality, to understand how migrants in Cape Town foster and sustain social networks, such as hushamwari (friendship) and mutuality inspired by ubuntu. The empirical data reveals that the category “migrant” generates and reinforces particular kinds of “borders” and “boundaries” that limit and restrict the mobility potential, access to space and livelihood opportunities of the people so categorized. Some of these obstacles consist of profiling based on belonging and non-belonging, roadblocks set up by law enforcement and local hostilities that implicitly or overtly target them. Due to the precarious nature of their situation, migrant women are confronted with a greater number of challenges. In addition to these challenges, the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic added another layer of difficulty to the problems that migrants face. Their livelihoods, sources of income, and as a direct result, remittances were all negatively impacted. In coping with the challenges, migrants form connections with diverse people and embrace various social networks, such as hushamwari, inspired by ubuntu and conviviality. Social networks are an important factor in assisting migrants in gaining access to opportunities for livelihood, sending available money and goods home (during the COVID-19 lockdown) and developing sociality. Even though social networks exist, they are not easily accessible to everyone and will not last indefinitely. They may suffer and strain since they are not immune to conflicts, friction and tension. Conflicting religious practices, beliefs, and values have been demonstrated to strain and pose challenges to migrant social networks. Though social networks may be disputed among migrants as a result of conflict, the social bonds made through conviviality, mutuality, hushamwari and ubuntu appear to be strong and promising. By embracing these concepts, this study portrays migrants as rational individuals who rely on numerous interconnections and creative interdependencies to survive in Cape Town. In conclusion, this study underscores that more than nationality, networks such as hushamwari, which are built on incompleteness, ubuntu, and conviviality are more important in the everyday interactions, encounters, and livelihood struggles of migrants, and it is important to foreground this in research on urbanism and its cosmopolitan imperative

Food prosumption technologies : A symbiotic lens for a degrowth transition

Prosumption is gaining momentum among the critical accounts of sustainable consumption that have thus far enriched the marketing discourse. Attention to prosumption is increasing whilst the degrowth movement is emerging to tackle the contradictions inherent in growth-driven, technology-fueled, and capitalist modes of sustainable production and consumption. In response to dominant critical voices that portray technology as counter to degrowth living, we propose an alternative symbiotic lens with which to reconsider the relations between technology, prosumption, and degrowth living, and assess how a degrowth transition in the context of food can be carried out at the intersection of human–nature–technology. We contribute to the critical debates on prosumption in marketing by analyzing the potentials and limits of technology-enabled food prosumption for a degrowth transition through the degrowth principles of conviviality and appropriateness. Finally, we consider the sociopolitical challenges involved in mobilizing such technologies to achieve symbiosis and propose a future research agenda.©2023 Sage Publications. The article is protected by copyright and reuse is restricted to non-commercial and no derivative uses. Users may also download and save a local copy of an article accessed in an institutional repository for the user's personal reference.fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

De-growth and critical community psychology: Contributions towards individual and social well-being

This contribution sets out to combine the perspective of the degrowth paradigm with that of Critical Community psychology. Following the degrowth argument, the advancement of human well-being calls for a shift from growth-based societies to ones grounded in the ethos of degrowth. In this regard, we acknowledge the necessity for both theoretical principles and examples of good practice, which can lead to this transition. To this end, the article combines some of the underlying principles of the degrowth paradigm (i.e. decolonisation of the imaginary, reciprocity and conviviality, and environmental sustainability) with those of Critical Community Psychology, as well as, in one case, of Liberation Psychology (i.e. conscientisation and de-ideologisation, responsible togetherness, and environmental justice). This integration intends to equip academic scholars, practitioners, and social activists with visions and practices for the implementation of strategic actions aimed at individual and social well-being. The article concludes with a thorough reflection on social justice and how to better promote it through the combined contributions of both degrowth and Critical Community psychology

Conviviality in Bellville: an ethnography of space, place, mobility and being

This study provides insight into the experiences of mobility and migration in contemporary South Africa, contributing to a field of literature about multiculturalism and urban public space in globalizing cities. It is a study of how the mystique of conviviality configures amongst a diverse migrant and mobile population that frequents Bellville's central business district surrounding the train station - an area located approximately 25 kilometres from Cape Town, and a prominent destination for informal trading, shop keeping, and other ad hoc livelihoods. Understanding the emergence of conviviality and the forms it takes in this particular locality lies at the heart of this thesis. I argue that conviviality emerges out of shared understandings of Bellville as a zone of mobility, of safety and of livelihood opportunities; and of negotiated meanderings within particular spaces of the Bellville central business district. Bellville's migrant networks become convivial when individuals innovatively sidestep away from tensions broiled in rhetoric of the "outsider" and instead negotiate space - both physical and social - to derive relations that often result in mutual benefits. This study also takes into consideration the greater international political and local socio- economic factors that drive migration, relationships and conviviality, and how they are intertwined in the everyday narrative of "insiders" and "outsiders" in Bellville. The Bellville central business district demonstrates the realities of interconnected local and global hierarchies of citizenship and belonging and how they emerge in a world of accelerated mobility. Ethnographic research in Bellville further demonstrates how the emergence of conviviality in everyday public life represents a critical field for contemplating contemporary notions of human rights, citizenship and belonging

Convivial public space : passage through the second watershed in La Pau with Ivan Illich

This thesis engages with the work of Ivan Illich in his book, Tools for Conviviality (1973). The aim is to translate his concept of conviviality into an operational term for urban planning. Illich criticises the industrially rooted institutions of power and mass production and promotes conviviality as an antipode ideology rooted in sociality and a fitting alternative for the future autonomous and sufficiency-driven civilisation. This study will seek to operationalise conviviality within the field of urban planning based on the relationship between public space, spatial self-initiative and the urban planning process. Three methodological approaches were used; literature review on Tools for Conviviality to synthesise the variables and themes of the study, a historical review using orthophotos, maps and photographs of La Pau to highlight the journey and impacts of the two watersheds in the industrial period and a case study review of the public space and spatial self-initiatives within La Pau to provide an analysis of the current impacts of the industrial model on urban planning. This research breaks down conviviality into independent variables; survival, justice and self-defined work and dependent variables; sufficiency, efficiency and productivity as indicators of citizen-centric urban planned public space. This research bridges the literature gap created by studies that conceptualise conviviality without analysing Illich’s thesis on conviviality. Illich’s thesis being over half a century old publication is a time scope research limitation. However, his diagnosis of the concept remains relevant till today and the study will justify the impact operationalising conviviality can have on livelihoods today. At the end of the study, operationalisation of conviviality in urban planning will be synthesised by demonstrating the adoption of the independent variables to address spaces left out of planning, ingredients for organic growth, vibrant lifestyles and 24/7 space