GENERATIVE COLLECTIVES

Analyzing generative group activities against the backdrop of an increasingly connected world, this theory development paper introduces the concept of generative collectives as a new framework for classifying internet-based collectives and a novel theoretical lens for explaining why some internet-based groups are more generative than others. Generative collectives are groups of people with shared interests or goals who mutually engage in rejuvenating, reconfiguring, reframing and revolutionizing acts. We submit that any type of collective has the capacity to be generative; however, some collectives are more generative than others. We explore two core structural dimensions of generative collectives and provide a framework for classifying these collectives and their respective levels of entropy as a proxy for their collective generative capacity. Subsequently, we derive and illustrate four archetypes of generative collectives, which can help account for the varying levels of generativity in different groups. Finally, implications for future research and practice are discussed

Distributed Cognition in Online Generative Collectives: Enabling Collective Generative Capacity through Reflections, Interactions and Representations

Analyzing online group activities against the backdrop of an increasingly connected world, this empirical paper extends the concept of “distributed cognition as a theoretical lens for explaining why some Internet-based collectives are more generative than others. These so-called Internet-based generative collectives—groups of people with shared interests or goals who mutually engage in generative acts—evolve around three processes of distributed cognition, namely reflection, interaction, and representation. Using Q-methodology, the relations between these three dimensions of distributed cognition and the generative capacity of Internet-based collectives is explored. The findings of a Q-factor analysis reveal that processes of distributed cognition lie at the heart of generative collectives. Furthermore, depending on how enabling the underlying structure and available technology of a collective is, an environment emerges in which the processes of interaction, reflection, and representation can flourish, thereby maximizing the collective’s generative capacity. Finally, implications for practice and future research are discussed

Code, space and everyday life

In this paper we examine the role of code (software) in the spatial formation of collective life. Taking the view that human life and coded technology are folded into one another, we theorise space as ontogenesis. Space, we posit, is constantly being bought into being through a process of transduction – the constant making anew of a domain in reiterative and transformative practices - as an incomplete solution to a relational problem. The relational problem we examine is the ongoing encounter between individuals and environment where the solution, to a greater or lesser extent, is code. Code, we posit, is diversely embedded in collectives as coded objects, coded infrastructure, coded processes and coded assemblages. These objects, infrastructure, processes and assemblages possess technicity, that is, unfolding or evolutive power to make things happen; the ability to mediate, supplement, augment, monitor, regulate, operate, facilitate, produce collective life. We contend that when the technicity of code is operationalised it transduces one of three forms of hybrid spatial formations: code/space, coded space and backgrounded coded space. These formations are contingent, relational, extensible and scaleless, often stretched out across networks of greater or shorter length. We demonstrate the coded transduction of space through three vignettes – each a day in the life of three people living in London, UK, tracing the technical mediation of their interactions, transactions and mobilities. We then discuss how code becomes the relational solution to five different classes of problems – domestic living, travelling, working, communicating, and consuming

Clinical encounter and the logic of relationality : Reconfiguring bodies and subjectivities in clinical relations

Acknowledgements I would like to thank all the patients and staff for their collaboration in the study and to acknowledge the other members of the team: James N’Dow and Sara MacLennan for their helpful guidance. I am grateful to Zoë Skea and Vikki Entwistle for the early discussions of the paper, to Natasha Mauthner and Lorna McKee for their insightful comments to various drafts, and to two anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful suggestions, which helped to clarify its argument. Funding The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was supported by a grant from the Big Lottery Fund. The views expressed here are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect those of the funding bodies or any other organisation.Peer reviewedPostprin

Modeling Human Ad Hoc Coordination

Whether in groups of humans or groups of computer agents, collaboration is most effective between individuals who have the ability to coordinate on a joint strategy for collective action. However, in general a rational actor will only intend to coordinate if that actor believes the other group members have the same intention. This circular dependence makes rational coordination difficult in uncertain environments if communication between actors is unreliable and no prior agreements have been made. An important normative question with regard to coordination in these ad hoc settings is therefore how one can come to believe that other actors will coordinate, and with regard to systems involving humans, an important empirical question is how humans arrive at these expectations. We introduce an exact algorithm for computing the infinitely recursive hierarchy of graded beliefs required for rational coordination in uncertain environments, and we introduce a novel mechanism for multiagent coordination that uses it. Our algorithm is valid in any environment with a finite state space, and extensions to certain countably infinite state spaces are likely possible. We test our mechanism for multiagent coordination as a model for human decisions in a simple coordination game using existing experimental data. We then explore via simulations whether modeling humans in this way may improve human-agent collaboration.Comment: AAAI 201

Collective Generativity: The Emergence of IT-Induced Mass Innovation

Analyzing how collective action leading to mass innovation emerges against the backdrop of an increasingly connected world, we introduce the concept of collective generativity as a new theoretical lens for understanding the ability of distributed communities to engage collectively in bottom-up processes of creation and innovation. Applying this lens allows us to understand how collective generativity emerges and evolves and how to design systems and spaces that evoke and enhance this communal generative capacity. In this paper, we explore the underpinnings of collective generativity: connectivity, distributed cognition, collective action and mass innovation. Jointly, these theoretical insights are used to derive a set of design principles for the development of co-generative systems, which are conducive to mass collective action and innovation. Finally, we demonstrate our thesis with an illustrative vignette of collective generativity and conclude with several implications for future research

Undecidability and the urban: Feminist pathways through urban political economy

There is a well established body of feminist scholarship critiquing the methodological and epistemological limits of an “objective” view from nowhere in urban research and political economy frameworks. Recent developments, such as the planetary urbanization thesis, have reignited feminist efforts to counter patriarchal, colonial, and hegemonic ways of knowing. Here, we recount our frustrations with the reproduction of dominant political economic modes of “knowing” urban processes such as gentrification and culture-led regeneration in research that seeks to uncover the production of neoliberal spaces and subjectivities. We argue that this narrow approach forecloses the possibility of observing or working with radical world-making projects that stand outside of traditional understandings of the political. Thus, we heed our feminist colleagues’ call to foreground the undecidability of the urban, allowing ourselves and our subjects to express uncertainty about the causes, outcomes, and impacts of urban processes. In what follows, we share short research vignettes from our projects in Toronto and Glasgow and discuss the implications of forging unexpected solidarities, engaging in embodied, participatory knowledge production, and reading urban politics off of persistent, uncertain, under-the-radar projects. We maintain that working from a position of undecidability yields greater potential for renewing our political imaginations beyond neoliberalism