Fandom’s paratextual memory : remembering, reconstructing, and repatriating “lost” Doctor Who

In this article, we aim to bring fan studies and memory studies into greater dialogue through the concept of “paratextual memory”. For media fans, paratextual memory facilitates a sense of “having been there” at key moments of T.V. broadcasting, sustaining fan authenticity and status. We focus on B.B.C. T.V.’s science fiction series Doctor Who (1963–) as a case study due to the fact that the program's “missing episodes” (wiped by the B.B.C.) have been reconstructed by fans through “remixes” of off-air sound recordings and “tele-snap” visual records. Unusually, then, fans’ paratextual memory and related forms of productivity have taken the place of archived television. We go on to address how fan-archivists and entrepreneurs have sought to recover and repatriate “lost” Doctor Who. Processes of fannish paratextual memory typically draw on heritage discourses to valorize “classic” Doctor Who, and fans’ paratextual memory has thus fed into the B.B.C.’s recommodification of “archive” T.V

Narratives and Memories for Resilience: Exploring the Missing Link between Engagement and Water Governance in Brazil and the United Kingdom

From an interdisciplinary, communication and trans-cultural perspective, participation in water governance should include non-political activities and engagement. In Brazil, it is mandatory for decision-making bodies to include society’s active participation, a democratic principle that speaks to a concept of ‘hydro-citizenship’ that is currently being explored in the UK, wherein top-down water governance is giving way to community-led adaptation planning. The opportunities for social and cultural learning have been explored in our UK and Brazil collaborative research. We offer relevant insights about the value of story, narrative and memories as emerging components of resilience beyond collective, community or national political containers. We argue that a missing link in the literature is the one between narratives, social memory and environmental resilience as a personally shared culture water. These insights have the potential to address participation and governance gaps through recourse to a trans-cultural understanding of socially networked communication about water management.De uma perspectiva interdisciplinar, transcultural e comunicacional, a participação na governança da água deve incluir atividades não políticas e engajamento. No Brasil, é obrigatório que os órgãos de decisão incluam a participação ativa da sociedade. Este é um princípio democrático que fala de um conceito de 'hidro-cidadania' que está sendo atualmente explorado no Reino Unido, em que a governança centralizada da água está dando lugar ao planejamento de adaptação liderado por comunidades. As oportunidades de aprendizado social e cultural foram exploradas em nossa pesquisa colaborativa no Reino Unido e no Brasil. Oferecemos propostas relevantes sobre o valor da história, narrativa e memórias como componentes emergentes da resiliência para além de contêineres políticos coletivos, comunitários ou nacionais. Argumentamos que um elo perdido na literatura é aquele entre narrativas, memória social e resiliência ambiental como uma água cultural compartilhada de maneira pessoal. Essas idéias têm o potencial de abordar as lacunas de participação e governança através do recurso a um entendimento transcultural da comunicação em rede social sobre gerenciamento de água

Improving water governance in Brazil : an organisational memory approach

Brazilian river basin committees are a democratic innovation increasingly studied throughout the world as a positive example of water governance, with some limitations. In our two-year research project (2018-2020), we aimed at activating, preserving and circulating narratives and stories from the participation of the various social, economic and political actors in the Upper Tietê River Basin Committee (São Paulo), in order to gather organisational memories. Our interview data bring lessons applicable to contexts with similar governance systems and others beyond, by suggesting how democratic, participatory arrangements can be improved as strategies that a society can explore in the process of learning how to cope with the effects of climate change, including the threat of water scarcity that grew in the metropolitan region of São Paulo after 2014. Interviews point to the need to clarify the roles of the committee and its members before society, to strengthen authority and legitimacy

Sustainable flood memory: Remembering as resilience

© 2016, © The Author(s) 2016. This article proposes the concept of sustainable flood memory as a critical and agentic form of social and cultural remembering of learning to live with floods. Drawing upon research findings that use the 2007 floods in the South West of England as a case study, we explore and analyse the media representations of flooding, the role of community and communicative memory of past floods for fostering resilience, and map emotional and affective responses to floods. To approach flooding in this way is critical to understanding how communities engage in memory practices (remembering and strategically forgetting) in order to cope with environmental changes. Moreover, the article embraces a research design and strategy in which ‘memory studies’ is brought into a conversation not only with geography (mental maps), social sciences and flood risk management policy but also with stakeholders and communities who collect, archive and remember flood histories in their respective regions

From extreme weather events to ‘cascading vulnerabilities’ : participatory flood research methodologies in Brazil during COVID-19

Extreme weather events are entangled with each other and with other extreme events, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, anti-racist protests, drought, a housing crisis, strikes, or climate emergencies, as well as with more general inadequacies due to national, economic, and political upheavals and accreted vulnerabilities from long-term policies or inactions. Effects of extreme weather events are intensified by ongoing social injustices like poverty and structural racism, a housing deficit, and the consequent informal and unplanned occupation of hazardous areas, such as riverbanks, and areas of previous social-environmental disasters. In the context of Brazil, the ongoing deforestation in the Amazon (agribusiness, mining and illegal wood) provoking droughts and energy shortages in the region creates further vulnerabilities that are felt globally. In this paper, our primary contribution to these inter-connected scenarios is to describe methodological interventions that were made in response to COVID-19, and to show how those changes provided new insights into vulnerability processes of both subjects and researchers. During a larger project (Waterproofing Data), focused on the case study research areas of São Paulo and Acre (Brazil) wherein our wider team conducted flood-risk community research, we were forced to rethink our approach. We moved away from the singularity of the flood event and its impacts toward acknowledging the cascading conditions of social vulnerability (caused by weather, health, social and political conditions). In this paper, we directly address the ‘cascade of vulnerabilities’ that the flood-prone communities already encounter when researchers seek to engage with them. We open new avenues to reconsider citizenship, space, and innovation in terms of the key challenges that our methods encountered when conducting participatory flood research methodologies, particularly during the first phase of the COVID-19 pandemic from March 2020 to November 2021. Through flood research in Brazil, we articulate methodological contributions from the arts, humanities, and social sciences for more realistic, just, and caring research practices within and about weather in the context of ‘slow violence’ [Nixon, R (2013). Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP]

A Beast with Two Backs....is back!

A research and public engagement event, recording community memories of the production, filming, and original broadcast of Dennis Potter’s Wednesday Play A Beast With Two Backs (1968) in Lydbrook where much of it was filmed using local extras. Providing the community focus and catalyst for the research was a screening of the play, and exhibition. This event runs in parallel with the British Film Institute own London Southbank two-summer season Messages for Posterity: The Complete Dennis Potter culminating in June-July 2015. The accompanying Lydbrook (Gloucestershire) exhibition also showcased to the Forest of Dean community the Potter research work to date of Jason Griffiths and Hannah Grist of the University of Gloucestershire, and Jo Garde-Hansen (now at University of Warwick including the HLF-supported Dennis Potter Archive Project, and the University of Gloucestershire funded Potter Matters website. The event also saw the launch of Remembering Dennis Potter Through Fans, Extras and Archives (2014) written by University of Gloucestershire research student Hannah Grist, and Dr Joanne Garde-Hansen associate professor in Culture, Media and Communications at the University of Warwick, both being members (internal and external respectively) of the Research Centre for Media, Memory and Community

Dialogic data innovations for sustainability transformations and flood resilience: the case for waterproofing data

Extreme weather events are becoming more frequent and have increasing impacts, which disproportionately affect marginalised and impoverished communities. This article proposes and assesses a new methodological approach for developing innovative solutions based on urban data analytics to address sustainability challenges in light of changing climate conditions. The approach draws inspiration from Paulo Freire's dialogic pedagogy and has been implemented in the international transdisciplinary project “Waterproofing Data”, with multiple study sites in Brazil. The project has introduced three methodological interventions: making data practices visible, engaging citizens and communities with data, and sharing data stories. Our study demonstrates that these methods have expanded the types of data used in flood risk management and have engaged a wider range of social groups in the generation, circulation, and utilization of data. We present a framework that provides guidance about the ways in which data innovations can contribute to transformative change, aiming to ensure that future development trajectories are just, inclusive, and equitable. The findings provide evidence that our approach not only helps fill existing data gaps and promote more equitable flood risk governance but also democratises decision-making in climate adaptation. Citizens were empowered to take proactive measures to improve resilience to disaster risks, thereby saving lives and safeguarding livelihoods