Psychogeography and Ground Zero

In this paper I want to discuss a psychogeographical project conducted at the main site of the horrific and monstrous September 11th 2001 attacks in New York, U.S.A. I will explain how I made sense of and reflected on my experiences of being at that site as well as conceptualising how I drew on the situationist practice of psychogeographical walking. I will explain how I drew on the work of the situationists and why their ideas of detournement, spectacle and psychogeography are important. In terms of my experience in being at the site of the attacks, I will also discuss core themes of my research including trauma and violence and the limits of words to explain experience. In recent years in my research, I have connected and considered this work in relation to the current memorialization of the Ground Zero site, to current political events (i.e. the ongoing war on ‘terrorism’, the banking crisis, Occupy, and more recently with the Charlie Hebdo events) and in relation to considering how my research in psychology should connect with political practice and social change

Psychogeographical counter-tour guiding: Theory and practice

In this paper, will be outlined and explained a mode of tour guiding referred to as ‘psychogeographical’ counter-tour guiding that has been conducted in Manchester, Huddersfield and Leeds with groups such as the Huddersfield Psychogeography Network, the Loiterers Resistance Movement and the Leeds Psychogeography Group. The usage of psychogeography here draws on elements of the situationist practice of playful wandering without destination in order to: experientially make sense of and creatively engage in group dialogue about the changing form of towns and cities and to creatively consider what sort of societies we would really like. In doing this type of counter-tour guiding, it will be explained how the author’s methodological approach to this work is conceptualised as a psychogeographer, counter-tour guider and as a critical psychologist drawing on situationism and reflexivity theories. Connection will also be drawn with other individual and groups doing similar adventures and journeys such as Walk Walk Walk, Wrights and Sites and also the Manchester Area Psychogeographic. Key analytical data and conclusions to the work will also be discussed

Teaching research methods: Introducing a psychogeographical approach

This paper explores teaching business students research methods using a psychogeographical approach, specifically the technique of dérive. It responds to calls for new ways of teaching in higher education and addresses the dearth of literature on teaching undergraduate business students qualitative research methods. Psychogeography challenges the dominance of questionnaires and interviews, introduces students to data variety, problematizes notions of success and illuminates the importance of observation and location. Using two studies with undergraduate students, the authors emphasize place and setting, the perception of purpose, the choice of data, criteria of success and the value of guided reflection and self-reflection in students’ learning. Additionally the data reflect on the way students perceive research about management and the nature of management itself. The paper concludes that the deployment of psychogeography to teach business research methods although complex and fraught with difficulty is nevertheless viable, educationally productive and worthy of further research

Popular music, psychogeography, place identity and tourism: The case of Sheffield

Tourism and cultural agencies in some English provincial cities are promoting their popular music ‘heritage’ and, in some cases, contemporary musicians through the packaging of trails, sites, ‘iconic’ venues and festivals. This article focuses on Sheffield, a ‘post-industrial’ northern English city which is drawing on its associations with musicians past and present in seeking to attract tourists. This article is based on interviews with, among others, recording artists, promoters, producers and venue managers, along with reflective observational and documentary data. Theoretical remarks are made on the representations of popular musicians through cultural tourism strategies, programmes and products and also on the ways in which musicians convey a ‘psychogeographical’ sense of place in the ‘soundscape’ of the city

Exploring the Perception and Identity of Place through Sound and Image

In this paper the concept of place is explored as the stimulus for the creation of original works combining electronic music and photography. Although the compositions of both authors take inspiration from different facets of place there is a similarity of theoretical approach regarding the identity of the individual and their relationship to geographical situations and place. We will draw upon aspects of psychogeography, psychosonology, the theory of ‘atmosphere’ by Gernot Böhme to explore complexity of place in 21st centur

Psychogeography and Ground Zero

In this chapter I want to discuss a psychogeographical project conducted at the main site of the horrific and monstrous September 11th 2001 attacks in New York, U.S.A. I will explain how I drew on the situationist practice of psychogeographical walking and why the ideas of detournement, spectacle and psychogeography are important. In recent years in my research, I have connected and considered this work in relation to the current memorialization of the Ground Zero site, to current political events (i.e. the on-going war on ‘terrorism’, the banking crisis, Occupy, and more recently the Charlie Hebdo events) as well as in relation to the question of how my research in psychology should connect with political practice and social change

Walking the radical talk

The majority of the general public and indeed many psychologists would probably not associate walking and getting lost as ‘research’. However, many artists, poets, activists and more recently academics in disciplines such as psychology, geography and architecture have used the practice of what is called ‘psychogeographical walking’ to reflectively and politically make sense of our relations to environments as well as to consider what future non-capitalist towns and cities could look like. Some readers may be familiar with the following work by: Engels (1845) and his accounts of the poverty encountered by the working classes in cities such as Manchester and London; Chtcheglov’s (1958) reflections on Paris and how working class districts were effectively dismantled to make way for shopping arcades in the late 1950s and de Quincey’s (1822) writings about his walks around Paris and London in an opium haze. Such work has informed and inspired the types of readings of environments conducted by psychogeographers both past and present. In more recent years in television programmes such as The Perfect Home presented by architectural theorist Alain de Botton and Grand Designs presented by Kevin McCloud we are encouraged to think about how built environments make us feel and to consider what ideal living spaces could look like. Whilst such programmes are useful to get audiences to consider the emotional effects of environments and to provide ideas for how our living and working environments can be changed, such attempts for change stop at the point of only getting us to consider immediate physical changes rather than considering alternatives to the capitalist order of things. This indeed is a point raised by various environmental psychologists such as Uzzell and Räthzel (2009), that I argue needs to be considered seriously in considering the implications of the types of psychological knowledge that we produce and what such knowledge manages to change in the discipline and also in society

Psychogeography in a Time of Calamity: Dériving with Defoe

This paper responds to the ECRM Call for Papers by discussing and assessing the value of a co-articulation of two research approaches, that of psychogeography and the use of fictional writing, particularly novels, as a basis for business and management research. It examines Daniel Defoe’s novel A Journal of the Plague Year as the prototypical psychogeographical text and a model of the dérive. In doing so it explores the opportunities and problems of using fiction to understand complex current phenomena. This enables us to further the case for psychogeographical exploration or the dérive as a research method which is well established as a literary genre and which contributes to new understandings of the limits of management and organization theory. We draw parallels between the London Great Plague of 1665 which exposed the contrasting mobility of the rich and poor when calamity strikes, the problems of balancing the private and public good, the challenge of providing employment when businesses have closed and other consequences of urban disaster and how these can help us analyse the impact of such modern day disasters as 9/11, the Global Financial Crisis, climate change, and the world-wide refugee crisis. Through repeated forays (dérives) into the plague-ridden streets of London, the narrator of A Journal of the Plague Year illustrates the limits of ‘management thinking’. In the light of current claims that we have reached ecological limits in the ‘global village’ and the apparent widespread breakdown of social order in many parts of the world, the research approach adopted here has the potential to illuminate our current condition. Given this condition, the need to transcend current frames of reference and the necessity to innovate according to the situation includes innovation in research approaches. To the best of our knowledge the co-articulation of psychogeography and fiction has not yet been tested. Treating A Journal of the Plague Year as our ‘case study’ we are able to argue for the dérive as a useful and productive research method that illuminates different aspects of organizational life, as well as the larger context of our organizations. We also contribute to the growing body of work that uses fiction to extend management theory

Consumer spaces as political spaces: a critical review of social, environmental and psychogeographical research

The purpose of this review is to critique the social and environmental psychology literature on spaces and places with a focus on consumer culture and neoliberalism. By drawing on social theory and the Continental philosophical literature the review argues that an alternative approach to knowledge production is required. To this end recommendations are provided for what a psychogeographical approach in social and environmental psychology could look like. It argues that such work could be of benefit to academic and local communities by exposing the social costs and consequences associated with consumer culture and neoliberalism

Arts of urban exploration

This paper addresses ways in which artists and cultural practitioners have recently been using forms of urban exploration as a means of engaging with, and intervening in, cities. It takes its cues from recent events on the streets of New York that involved exploring urban spaces through artistic practices. Walks, games, investigations and mappings are discussed as manifestations of a form of ‘psychogeography’, and are set in the context of recent increasing international interest in practices associated with this term, following its earlier use by the situationists. The paper argues that experimental modes of exploration can play a vital role in the development of critical approaches to the cultural geographies of cities. In particular, discussion centres on the political significance of these spatial practices, drawing out what they have to say about two interconnected themes: ‘rights to the city’ and ‘writing the city’. Through addressing recent cases of psychogeographical experimentation in terms of these themes, the paper raises broad questions about artistic practices and urban exploration to introduce this theme issue on ‘Arts of urban exploration’ and to lead into the specific discussions in the papers that follow