Strolling through the (post)modern city: Modes of being a flaneur in picture books

The city and the urban condition, popular subjects of art, literature, and film, have been commonly represented as fragmented, isolating, violent, with silent crowds moving through the hustle and bustle of a noisy, polluted cityspace. Included in this diverse artistic field is children’s literature—an area of creative and critical inquiry that continues to play a central role in illuminating and shaping perceptions of the city, of city lifestyles, and of the people who traverse the urban landscape. Fiction’s textual representations of cities, its sites and sights, lifestyles and characters have drawn on traditions of realist, satirical, and fantastic writing to produce the protean urban story—utopian, dystopian, visionary, satirical—with the goal of offering an account or critique of the contemporary city and the urban condition. In writing about cities and urban life, children’s literature variously locates the child in relation to the social (urban) space. This dialogic relation between subject and social space has been at the heart of writings about/of the flâneur: a figure who experiences modes of being in the city as it transforms under the influences of modernism and postmodernism. Within this context of a changing urban ontology brought about by (post)modern styles and practices, this article examines five contemporary picture books: The Cows Are Going to Paris by David Kirby and Allen Woodman; Ooh-la-la (Max in love) by Maira Kalman; Mr Chicken Goes to Paris and Old Tom’s Holiday by Leigh Hobbs; and The Empty City by David Megarrity. I investigate the possibility of these texts reviving the act of flânerie, but in a way that enables different modes of being a flâneur, a neo-flâneur. I suggest that the neo-flâneur retains some of the characteristics of the original flâneur, but incorporates others that take account of the changes wrought by postmodernity and globalization, particularly tourism and consumption. The dual issue at the heart of the discussion is that tourism and consumption as agents of cultural globalization offer a different way of thinking about the phenomenon of flânerie. While the flâneur can be regarded as the precursor to the tourist, the discussion considers how different modes of flânerie, such as the tourist-flâneur, are an inevitable outcome of commodification of the activities that accompany strolling through the (post)modern urban space

History, Sociology, Modernity : How Connect?

Special Issue on 'The State of Scottish History: Past, Present and Future'Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Hybrid social media:Employees' use of a boundary-spanning technology

Improved employee collaboration and communication can be facilitated by social technologies that extend within and beyond organizations. These social technologies have increasingly come to be represented by social media sites, which are used to extend workplace relationships across personal and professional boundaries in a hybrid role. This presents opportunities and risks as those boundaries are collapsed. Using boundary management as a theoretical lens, we evaluate the associations of relationship initiation between colleagues at different levels of organisations with employees’ strategies and their well-being. We also investigate relationships with social media usage, age and propensity to self-monitor and group employees using cluster analysis. We consider implications of our findings for developing more sophisticated policies, training, and guidance for employees on the use of social media as a workplace tool

Hybrid social media:Employees' use of a boundary-spanning technology

Improved employee collaboration and communication can be facilitated by social technologies that extend within and beyond organizations. These social technologies have increasingly come to be represented by social media sites, which are used to extend workplace relationships across personal and professional boundaries in a hybrid role. This presents opportunities and risks as those boundaries are collapsed. Using boundary management as a theoretical lens, we evaluate the associations of relationship initiation between colleagues at different levels of organisations with employees’ strategies and their well-being. We also investigate relationships with social media usage, age and propensity to self-monitor and group employees using cluster analysis. We consider implications of our findings for developing more sophisticated policies, training, and guidance for employees on the use of social media as a workplace tool

Saving time, saving money, saving the planet, 'one gift at a time': a practice-centred exploration of free online reuse exchange

Online reuse networks seek to reduce waste by connecting people who have something they no longer want with others who might have a use for it. The intention is that 'everyone wins': givers are saved the hassle of disposal, recipients save money and the ecological burden of consumption is eased. Existing research has tended to focus on individuals' motivations for involvement. As part of a wider study of how alternative consumption practices become embedded in everyday life, this paper follows a different line of enquiry, taking its orientation from how theories of practice conceptualise what people do and how this changes. The initial emphasis is on establishing 'what sort of practice' free online reuse is, what makes it different from other ways of acquiring and disposing, and on identifying its constituent materials, competences and meanings. The focus then shifts to how these elements are variably integrated in the performance of reuse. First, what are the implications for how people go about giving and receiving when small details are changed relative to other similar practices? Findings suggest that technologically mediated reuse 'communities' connect some people but exclude others. Eliminating money from the exchange process gives participants access to goods they would otherwise struggle to afford, but at the same time raises questions as to how goods are allocated, potentially privileging other unequally distributed material and cultural resources. Second, the meanings of reuse vary from context to context, in turn corresponding to different kinds of performance. Any given performance can, meanwhile, belong to a number of different practices at the same time

Robot dogs, interaction and ludic literacy: Exploring smart toy engagements in transgenerational play

This article highlights a study focusing on playful human-robotics interaction with an interest in robot dogs, technologically enhanced play, and ludic literacy. In order to find out how players of different ages react to, approach and employ a robot dog (called Golden Pup) in play, we designed an experimental study with 6–7-year-old preschool children and 80+-year-old seniors. We conducted the study with preschoolers and seniors, who during a playtest session interacted with a toy robot, namely a smart toy dog resembling a golden retriever puppy. Our aim was to find out how the toy robot invites playful interaction with it, facilitates social engagement between generations of players, and opens up conversations around social robotics and adaptive learning on toy-based technologies between players of different ages. Our findings suggest the role and importance of play in media education and show how robotic toys can be used to enhance ludic literacy when shared as a part of the transgenerational play. Keywords: human-computer interaction; ludic literacy; robotics; toy-based learning; transgenerational play