Selfies beyond self-representation: the (theoretical) f(r)ictions of a practice

Drawing on a wide corpus of ethnographic research pro- jects, including on photography practices, young film- makers and writers, and current research with young unemployed people, we argue that contemporary under- standings of selfies either in relation to a ‘‘documenting of the self’’ or as a neoliberal (narcissistic) identity affirmation are inherently problematic. Instead, we argue that selfies should be understood as a wider social, cultural, and media phenomenon that understands the selfie as far more than a representational image. This, in turn, necessarily redirects us away from the object ‘‘itself,’’ and in so doing seeks to understand selfies as a socio-technical phenomenon that momentarily and tentatively holds together a number of different elements of mediated digital communication

A review of the rural-digital policy agenda from a community resilience perspective

© 2016 The Authors This paper utilises a community resilience framework to critically examine the digital-rural policy agenda. Rural areas are sometimes seen as passive and static, set in contrast to the mobility of urban, technological and globalisation processes (Bell et al., 2010). In response to notions of rural decline (McManus et al., 2012) rural resilience literature posits rural communities as ‘active,’ and ‘proactive’ about their future (Skerratt, 2013), developing processes for building capacity and resources. We bring together rural development and digital policy-related literature, using resilience motifs developed from recent academic literature, including community resilience, digital divides, digital inclusion, and rural information and communication technologies (ICTs). Whilst community broadband initiatives have been linked to resilience (Plunkett-Carnegie, 2012; Heesen et al., 2013) digital inclusion, and engagement with new digital technologies more broadly, have not. We explore this through three resilience motifs: resilience as multi-scalar; as entailing normative assumptions; and as integrated and place-sensitive. We point to normative claims about the capacity of digital technology to aid rural development, to offer solutions to rural service provision and the challenges of implementing localism. Taking the UK as a focus, we explore the various scales at which this is evident, from European to UK country-level

Claiming ‘creativity’: discourse,‘doctrine’ or participatory practice?

Drawing on empirical work with a third sector community organisation in the UK and the young NEET adults (16–20  years old, ‘not in employment or education or training’) they ‘creatively’ work with, this paper explores the practices and meanings of creativity as they emerged through a project funded through public and third sector organisations. The paper argues that there is an increasing disjuncture between creativity as a process or method, evidenced in the approaches, practices and ethos of the community organisation I worked with, and the notion of creativity as productive outcome seen in wider policy. This is having an impact on the practices and values of community organisations, particularly as they are pushed to rationalise processes as a result of austerity measures. Indeed, in the era of wider public and third sector cuts, creativity as a process or method is becoming harder to sustain on a day-to-day basis

Constructing communities: the community centre as contested site

Drawing on original empirical research and theories of cultural geography, this article investigates the multiple ways community is produced, understood and valued through a closer interrogation of the community centre as a contested site. The paper investigates the symbolism of the buildings [see Dovey, K. (1999) Framing Places: Mediating Power in Built Form. Routledge, London] as they are claimed and framed by local government; the use of the buildings and how this contributes to what we might call the overall assemblage or forming of the building [see Lees (Towards a critical geography of architecture: the case of ersatz colosseum. Cult. Geograp.; 2001 8:51–86), De Landa (2006) A New Philosophy of Society: Assemblage Theory and Social Complexity, Continuum, London, Jacobs (A geography of big things, Cult. Geograph. 2006;13:1–27)]; the affect of the buildings or architecture on community use [see Thrift, N. (2004) Intensities of feeling: towards a spatial politics of affect, Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography, 86(1), 57–78]; and disruptive, haptic, unintended or ‘queer’ use of such spaces (see Grosz (2001) Architecture from the Outside: Essays on Virtual and Real Space, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA). In so doing, we argue that an investigation of architecture can offer key insights and contributions to debates in wider policy, particularly in relation to the values and affordances of ‘community’ in the UK today. By focusing on the community centre, we also shift the existing focus of much architectural research away from what Jacobs has called ‘big things’ [Jacobs (A geography of big things, Cult. Geograph. 2006;13:1–27, pp. 4–5)] onto ordinary, everyday and mundane architectures of community centres. Secondly, we argue that, particularly the newer breed of ‘community facing social enterprise centres’, construct and imagine notions of communities in inherently problematic ways, and while in some instances such productions and imaginings are disrupted through use, the architecture nevertheless continues to be claimed by local government as a powerful indicator of (a particular notion and construction of) community

[Im]mobility in the Age of [im]mobile phones: young NEETs and digital practices

This article draws on research with young NEETs (not in education, employment or training) in Leeds in order to contest the assumption that technological qualities informing new media devices (here mobile phones) simply or transparently translate into social or ontological categories. We draw on a long-term ethnographic study of NEET individuals to argue that one of the underpinning principles of mobile phones – that they pertain to mobility and that mobility is positive and agential – is called into question. Our aim is not only to unpack a number of concepts and assumptions underpinning the mobile phone but also to suggest that these concepts unhelpfully (and even detrimentally) locate mobile phones in relation to the technological possibilities on offer without taking into account what is simultaneously made impossible and immobile, and for whom. Finally, when we set the digital experiences of NEETs alongside the discourses around mobile phones, we find that mobility is restricted – not enabling, and that it is forged in, and articulated as part of an everyday life that is dominated by the social and economic horizons set by the groups status as NEET