Bodies as Evidence

From biometrics to predictive policing, contemporary security relies on sophisticated scientific evidence-gathering and knowledge-making focused on the human body. Bringing together new anthropological perspectives on the complexities of security in the present moment, the contributors to Bodies as Evidence reveal how bodies have become critical sources of evidence that is organized and deployed to classify, recognize, and manage human life. Through global case studies that explore biometric identification, border control, forensics, predictive policing, and counterterrorism, the contributors show how security discourses and practices that target the body contribute to new configurations of knowledge and power. At the same time, margins of error, unreliable technologies, and a growing suspicion of scientific evidence in a “post-truth” era contribute to growing insecurity, especially among marginalized populations

Building State Capability: Evidence, Analysis, Action

Governments play a major role in the development process, and constantly introduce reforms and policies to achieve developmental objectives. Many of these interventions have limited impact, however; schools get built but kids don’t learn, IT systems are introduced but not used, plans are written but not implemented. These achievement deficiencies reveal gaps in capabilities, and weaknesses in the process of building state capability. This book addresses these weaknesses and gaps. It starts by providing evidence of the capability shortfalls that currently exist in many countries, showing that many governments lack basic capacities even after decades of reforms and capacity-building efforts. The book then analyzes this evidence, identifying capability traps that hold many governments back—particularly related to isomorphic mimicry (where governments copy best practice solutions from other countries that make them look more capable even if they are not more capable) and premature load bearing (where governments adopt new mechanisms that they cannot actually make work, given weak extant capacities). The book then describes a process that governments can use to escape these capability traps. Called PDIA (problem-driven iterative adaptation), this process empowers people working in governments to find and fit solutions to the problems they face. The discussion about this process is structured in a practical manner so that readers can actually apply tools and ideas to the capability challenges they face in their own contexts. These applications will help readers devise policies and reforms that have more impact than those of the past

Changes in Employment Localization and Accessibility:the Case of Switzerland between 1939 and 2008

Until about the end of WWII, the territorial organization of the economy could be expressed along a very strong center-periphery gradient, with industries and services concentrated in cities while the countryside supplied agricultural products. Since the industrial revolution, industrial regions had emerged essentially in mining regions which perturbed this very simple scheme, but without fundamentally modifying it. In the first half of the 20th century, with the advent of mass transportation and of the individual car, the residential functions started to deconcentrate and residential suburbs developed. However, as a general rule, most non-agricultural economic functions remained tightly attached to the city core and its immediate surroundings, and with them their jobs. These structures were accounted for by various theoretical models, of which the Von Thunen land-rent model family, the Weber models of industrial localization and regional specialization, and the Christaller model of hierarchical city networks were the most prominent. However, since 1945, those jobs have seen their territorial distribution shift. First, the importance of agriculture dwindled, to the profit first of industrial activities, then of services. Land-hungry activities, such as the industry and logistical activities vacated the urban centers in search for ample space, which they generally found in suburban settings under the guise of industrial zones. But they weren't alone at deconcentrating. Retail and personal services tended to follow their customers in the suburbs. During the last quarter of the 20th century, selected suburbs evolved from purely residential or industrial functions to more complete economic ones, integrating retail, high tech and professional services. By 1990, the phenomenon was largely recognized in North America, where those job-intensive suburbs were nicknamed edge cities. Empirical studies showed convincingly that the same patterns of job and functional deconcentration were found in the whole world and especially in western countries. Job suburbanization is contemporary with major spatial and functional economical upheavals. The economy, for instance, evolved from the fordist integrated economical model dominated by very large companies internalizing most of their functions in a vertical, hierarchical relationship pattern to a post-fordist disintegrated model where companies concentrate on their core competencies and subcontract in a horizontal, contractual manner their non-core needs. Economical spatial deconcentration is also contemporary with the current version of globalization, materialized by the emergence of global cities and metropolises which keep constant communication flow between themselves, in a horizontal manner, and which are less and less dependent on their hinterland for their economical survival and development. Likewise, the economy becomes more and more informational, relying on knowledge, immaterial services, instant worldwide communication, and the production of sophisticated products for which worldwide shipping costs became negligible, and for which the location needs shifted from access to markets to access to qualified workers. While globalization, metropolization and the post-fordist economical transition have been thoroughly studied, job suburbanization has not been the focus of such an interest from the scientific community. Consequently, we lack empirical evidence and theoretical advances which would help us to better understand how the economy spatially evolved since 1945 and where the world is heading if the trends seen since 1945 are maintained. The prime goal of this work is to provide a better understanding of the way the economy spatially evolved at the intra-metropolitan scale, based on the example of Switzerland, a fairly exemplary western country. The work is divided in three major parts – an introductory one, an empirical one, and a inferential one. The core hypothesis of this work is that as the individual car became ubiquitous, proximal relations were progressively supplanted by accessibility relations. We surmise that job distributions and their evolution can be explained by accessibility patterns and change, which are in turn dependent on a number of factors – the population distribution, the structure and state of the road network, the state of the car technology, and the time commuters are ready to travel to go to work. The first three chapters aim at defining our object of study in chapter 1, to give an understanding of the country on which we will be working and of the data at our disposal in chapter 2, and a working definition of what constitutes a job center in chapter 3, where major distinctions between urban, mixed, suburban, exurban, touristic centers and edgeless space are introduced which accompanies us for the rest of the work. The next four chapters constitute the empirical part of the work. Chapter 4 seeks at describing as precisely as possible the territorial evolution of the Swiss economy since WWII, studying it at nine different points in time from 1939 to 2008. Chapter 5 takes a long-term view of the same series of data and seeks to detect, describe and explain the trends which are unearthed by this larger view. Chapter 6 concentrates on the latter half of the period under review and studies the distributions along more precise branch divisions, as well as miscellaneous other classifications according to added value and productivity, interaction needs, job qualification and creativity. Chapter 7 concentrates on the command and control structure of the economy as seen through the spatial relations entertained by headquarters and their subsidiaries, by Swiss and foreign multinationals, by the public and private sector. Finally, chapters 8 and 9 undertake the inferential part of our work, and aim at testing our core hypothesis of a statistically demonstrable link between accessibility, which is defined and thoroughly studied in its historical dimension in chapter 8, and a measure of job quality. Chapter 9, the last of the work, takes this core hypothesis to the statistical test. The results of this work are multiple. First of all, it shows that the spatial structure of the economy indeed transitioned from a very strong center-periphery organization in 1939, when two thirds of all non-agricultural jobs were located in urban centers, about a quarter in the country-side and the rest in numerous small industrial villages, to a vastly different structure in 2008 with less than half such jobs located in urban centers while suburban centers capitalize about a quarter of them, the rest being distributed mainly in edgeless space – industrial villages having somewhat lost in importance. This work shows that the spatial components of the economical structure have also greatly evolved. While in 1939 urban centers concentrated most of the economic functions and all of the commanding ones, spatial specialization has been relentless since then, and especially since the last quarter of the 20th century. Suburban centers have grown, but also gained in quality, especially in the high tech and the professional services sectors, and in commanding functions: as of 2008, they hosted more jobs in headquarters than in subsidiaries. In parallel, cities have tended to specialize on some key sectors of the economy: finance and governmental services at large, accompanied by personal services catering for the new urban elite. Taken altogether those developments pick at the prevailing spatial economic theories and show a major departure from the Christallerian model. Anecdotal evidence shows that by and large suburban centers seem not located haphazardly in the larger suburban belt, but are concentrated on several specific point within it, namely the higher accessibility areas, especially highway junctions and interchanges. This hints at the possibility that high accessibility is a determinant of job localization. In the course of this work we demonstrated first that accessibility is more dependent on road network changes that to other parameters such as population distribution, technological changes and attitude changes towards commuting, and that the accessibility changes due to road network evolutions display far stronger local accessibility gradients. Secondly, we demonstrated the existence of a link between accessibility and job density taken as a measure of job quality, after taking into account the effects of spatial autocorrelation. Much of the unexplained variance shown by a global regression model can be modeled away as regional effects when using a geographically weighted regression, so that the combination of regional effects and accessibility accounts for a major part of the job density variance. Finally, the introduction of time lags between accessibility conditions and job densities hinted at the possibility that a causal link exists between the two, accessibility changes preceding, and maybe then causing, job density changes: in short, this work shows that accessibility by car is a major determinant of job localization

Liminal Boundaries and Vulnerabilities to Radicalisation in the Context of Securitisation of Migration

This thesis examines the systemic securitisation of migration, the production of liminality and associated vulnerabilities to radicalisation in a refugee camp context against a global backdrop. The camp has been conceived as a total institution that presents forms of physical, mental and other expressions of encampment inimical to freedoms. As such, three interlocking formulations of encampment, which is a measure of securitisation, arise. The first manifestation of encampment arises from the practice of the interminable spatial confinement of refugees in developing countries that has resulted in what is technically known as Protracted Refugee Situations (PRS). The second expression is the onshore and offshore immigration detention system in Western countries. The third manifestation of encampment is symbolic and constitutes the self or externally imposed patterns of settlement in migrant enclaves in developed and developing countries. In recent times, international migration has provoked concerns over insecurity in refugee-hosting states. Beyond the animated public discourse, the tenor of securitisation has further necessitated the use of extraordinary means of refugee containment that include confinement in ‘camps’. Indeed, some camps have become politicised and militarised spaces where sections of refugee populations have developed extreme views and exerted political influence in their homelands and host states. Encampment therefore not only presents humanitarian concerns but also raises significant security challenges for host states and beyond. The thesis examines vulnerabilities to radicalisation in a camp environment that closely interacts with the global system. The Somali protracted refugee situation at Dadaab Refugee Complex in Kenya, the thesis case study, is an archetype of encampment. The elusive actualisation of durable solutions to the Somali refugee problem has placed them in a state of limbo, technically referred to as the liminal state. The thesis traces the historical roots of conflict and forced displacement in Somalia. Further, the study traces the Somali migration trajectory from the homeland to the first host state, Kenya, and concludes the journey in the third countries of resettlement in the West. The research further employs a broad-brush approach and provides examples from other camps and countries to complement the case study and advance its arguments. It is argued that the conditions in a camp in concert with latent ‘external’ factors present sources of vulnerability to radicalisation, particularly in contexts in which polarisation, terrorism and other forms of political violence are already prevalent. It is further argued that as intersubjective constructs, securitisation may create vulnerabilities to radicalisation while radicalisation may expand opportunities for securitisation. Significantly, radicalisation in the context of migration does not occur in a vacuum but in a synergistic dynamic that summons a range of actors and drivers in securitised speech-act. By examining the interface of pre-encampment, encampment and post-encampment, the thesis demonstrates that the camp is a social entity that interacts with other systems. Notably, the continued adoption of ahistorical and reductionist approaches in the analysis of radicalisation in migrant contexts, and in counter-terrorism remain void as long as broader contextual factors and actors in other sub-systems that drive radicalisation are neglected. In adopting this approach, the research addresses the gap of technological advancements, ahistoricity and broader-context reductionism in dominant scholarship on radicalisation among refugees. The thesis’ contribution is therefore the development of an analytical framework that examines the dynamic and evolutionary character of deep-rooted structural drivers of radicalisation. The inter-subjective construction of radicalisation – of the refugee – in public space, constitutes another important contribution.Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, School of Social Sciences, 201

Designing engaging experiences with location-based augmented reality games for urban tourism environments.

Gameplay has recently unfolded as playfulness in various cultural forms using mobile technologies. The rapid affordability paired with the latest technology improvements enabled the diffusion of mobile devices among tourists, who are among the most avid users of mobile technologies. The advent of mobile devices has initiated a significant change in the way we perceive and connect with our environment and paved the way for location-based, mobile augmented reality (AR) games that provide new forms of experiences for travel and tourism. With the recent developments like Pokémon Go and a prediction of 420 million downloads per year by 2019, the mobile game market is one of the fastest growing fields in the sector. Location-based AR games for mobile devices make use of players‟ physical location via the GPS sensor, accelerometer and compass to project virtual 2D and 3D objects with the build-in camera in real time onto the mobile game user interface (GUI) in order to facilitate gameplay activities. Players interact with the virtual and physical game world and overcome artificial challenges while moving around in the real environment. Where current mobile games withdraw players from reality, location-based AR games aim to engage players with the physical world by combining virtual and physical game mechanics in an enhanced way that increases the level of interactive educative and entertaining engagement. Despite some recent research on location-based AR games, game designers do not know much about how to address tourism requirements and the development of mediated playful experiences for urban tourism environments. This study explores the use of location-based AR games to create engaging and meaningful experiences with the tourism urban environment by combining interdisciplinary research of social sciences, (mobile) game design and mobile game user research (mGUR) to contribute to experience design in the context of travel and tourism. Objectives of the study are to identify the influence of key game elements and contextual gameplay parameters on the individual game experience (GX). To achieve the aim, the study has taken a pragmatic interpretivist approach to understand the player‟s individual GX in an evolving gameplay process in order to inform location-based game design. The project explores the interaction between the player, the game and the tourism context, which is assessed by a sequential triangulation of qualitative mixed methods. Two games were identified to be relevant for the tourism application that fulfilled the attributes of a location-based AR game. The first game is a role-playing adventure game, set in the time and place of the Cold War, called Berlin Wall 1989. The second game, Ingress, is a fictive, large area, massively multiplayer role-playing game that uses the real world as the battleground between two game fractions. A conceptual framework has been developed that presents the player engagement process with location-based AR games in urban tourism environments. The findings of the study indicate that gameplay is a moment-by-moment experience that is influenced by multiple aspects. The creation of engaging experiences between players, the game and the tourism context is related to six identified engagement characteristics; emotional engagement, ludic engagement, narrative engagement, spatial engagement, social engagement and mixed reality engagement. The study identified that the main motivations of playing a location-based AR game are the exploration of and learning about the visited destination, curiosity about the new playful activity and socialising with other players. Emotions underlie the creation of engagement stimulated by the alteration of playful interactions. The findings revealed that storytelling and simple game mechanics such as walking, feedback and goal orientation are essential elements in the creation of engaging experiences. Augmented reality, as a feature to connect the real with the virtual world, needs to create real added value for the gameplay in order to be perceived as engaging for players. The study proposes serious location-based AR games as an alternative form for tourism interpretation and has showed opportunities to enhance the tourist experience through self-directed, physical and mental interaction between players, the environment and the location-based AR game. The findings of the research illustrate the complexity of designing location-based game experiences. The developed conceptual framework can be used to inform future location-based AR game design for travel and tourism