Relational architectures and wearable space: Smart schools and the politics of ubiquitous sensation

This paper undertakes an analysis of the “smart school” as a building that both senses and manages bodies through sensory data. The authors argue that smart schools produce a situation of ubiquitous sensation, in which learning environments are continuously sensed, regulated, and controlled through complex sensory ecosystems and data infrastructures. This includes the consideration of ethical and political issues associated with the collection of biometric and environmental data in schools, and the implications for the design and operation of learning environments which are increasingly regulated through decentralised sensor networks. Working through a relational and adaptive theory of architecture, the authors explore ways of intervening in smart schools through the reconceptualization of sensor technologies as “atmospheric media” that operate within a distributed ecology of sensation that exceeds the limited bandwidth of the human senses. Drawing on recent projects in contemporary art, architecture, and interaction design, the authors discuss specific architectural interventions that foreground the atmospheric qualities and ethical problematics of sensor technologies in school buildings

New empiricisms in the Anthropocene: Thinking with speculative fiction about science and social inquiry

Interest in new empiricisms and transdisciplinary methods has led many social inquirers to engage with 20th-century post-classical physical science. Many of these projects have focused on alternative matter–mind mixtures and in/organic variation, concerned that past theories of sociality have dismissed the vibrancy and animacy of the nonhuman material world. This paper explores the power of speculative fiction to help us rethink empiricism in posthuman ecologies of the Anthropocene, in the midst of post-truth conditions and growing science denialism. We foreground speculative fiction as a way to open up scientific imaginaries, rethinking the relationship between nature, technics, and human “sense” making. We show how such texts offer alternative images of research methods for studying pluralist ecologies and new forms of worldly belonging

When male heterosexual leaders politicize gender and sexual issues: The logic of representation in the 2014 Bordeaux municipal election campaign

Gender and sexual politics were major issues during the 2014 French municipal elections campaign. A few weeks before the election, France experienced large-scale campaigns against gay marriage and gender equality policies. The aim of this article is to question the relationship between descriptive and substantive representation in the context of the municipal election campaign in Bordeaux. In the context of the 'demo for all', the return of a religious-based opposition between 'moral order and permissive-ness' calls for further investigation. This article thus offers an original point of view based on fieldwork at the municipal level and polling data.Les territoires de l'élection, genre, religion et politiques locales. Un approche comparée (France XXe-XXIe siècle