Syndicate: Place and Identity in an Age of Technologically Regulated Movement

[Andreas Broeckmann <abroeck@v2.nl>]

[taking place a week after the Syndicate Junction meeting in Skopje on 2-4
Oct., this conference call describes interesting aspects of the
territoriality/ identity/ borders/ deep europe theme that we had in mind
for the skopje conference; -a]


Date: Sat, 13 Jun 1998 23:09:24 -0700
From: Michael Curry <curry@geog.ucla.edu>

OPEN CALL FOR PARTICIPATION

VARENIUS INITIATIVE:

PLACE AND IDENTITY IN AN AGE OF TECHNOLOGICALLY REGULATED MOVEMENT

Between October 8-10, 1998 a three-day specialist meeting will be
held in Santa Barbara, California.  The purpose of the meeting is to
explore the nature of identity in the current era, an era of a vastly
increased movement of people, goods, and information, yet also an era
in which information and geographic-information technologies portend
an equally increased ability to trace and record those movements,
not just at border crossings but virtually everywhere.  Will the ease
of movement of ideas spell the end of spatially bounded communities?
Will the threat of surveillance give new life to the most insular,
place- and non-place bound communities?  Or will, perhaps, the
"fragmented identities" celebrated by postmodernists become the norm?

The conference will address this issue in the context of the following
themes:

What have been the traditional means for the regulation of borders?
In what ways have they been successful in promoting territorially-
based identities?

How has the development of modern communications and especially
geographical technologies altered the regulation of flows of people,
goods, and information?

To what extent has the "regulation of borders" at various scales-from
neighborhood to nation state and beyond-moved away from geographical
borders, and been replaced by ubiquitous forms of control?

How are these various regulatory regimes related to personal and group
identity?

How have alternative, non-place-based identities been promoted and
maintained?  How have they been controlled, and how successful have
these controls been?  What lessons relevant to the world of the
Internet can be learned from these experiences?

What future is there for borders and boundaries in a world where
`there is no there'?

We seek participants whose interests and expertise complement and
expand upon recent work in geographic information systems and science,
and who will be able to address issues such as:

The history of regulation of immigration and human movement; of the
movement of goods; and of trans- border data flows.

The nature of current and developing communications and locational
technologies.

The relationship between place, community, and identity.

Potential participants should submit proposals consisting of two
parts: (1) a 750-1000 word abstract, describing your area of research,
its relevance to the conference topic, and a proposed presentation;
and (2) a two-page biography or curriculum vitae, listing your
relevant publications and experience.  References to Web- based
materials are invited, but should augment-and not replace-the above.

Participants will be expected to prepare a research paper for
distribution one month prior to the meeting, and will be invited to
contribute to an edited book.

This specialist meeting is sponsored by the Varenius project, with
funding from the National Science Foundation.  Varenius is a project
of the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis
(NCGIA), and seeks to advance geographic information science through
research to extend our understanding in three strategic areas:
Cognitive Models of Geographic Space; Computational Implementations
of Geographic Concepts; and Geographies of the Information Society.
Varenius is a three-year project, and is described in greater detail
in materials available at the NCGIA Web site
http://www.ncgia.ucsb.edu.

Completed proposals should be sent to Munroe Eagles at the State
University of New York at Buffalo by July 10, 1998, in both hard-copy
and email formats (ASCII or WORD/RTF).  Notices of acceptance and
travel awards will be issued on August 7, 1998.  All submissions will
be reviewed by the Initiative co-leaders in consultation with the core
planning group.  Participation will be limited to 25-30 people, and
will be by invitation only.

The project will reimburse reasonable travel and accommodation costs
for participants.  Please include a quote of lowest available airfare
in your application.  Funded foreign participants must use U.S. air
carriers and meet immigration/visa requirements.

Please direct requests for information to the project co-leaders:

Munroe Eagles
Associate Dean
Faculty of Social Sciences
275 Park Hall
State University of New York at Buffalo
Buffalo, NY 14260-4100
Voice: (716) 645-3101
Fax: (716) 645-2893
E-mail: eagles@acsu.buffalo.edu

Michael R. Curry
Department of Geography
University of California, Los Angeles
Los Angeles, CA 90095
Voice: (310) 825-3122
Fax: (310-206-5976
E-mail: curry@geog.ucla.edu

CORE PLANNING GROUP

John Agnew, Dept. of Geography, University of California, Los Angeles
Philip Agre, Dept. of Communication, University of California, San Diego
Colin Bennett, Dept. of Political Science, University of Victoria
Audrey Kobayashi, Dept. of Geography, Queen's University
Carolyn Marvin, Annenberg School of Communication, University of Pennsylvania
Mark Poster, Dept. of History, University of California, Irvine

 SUMMARY

The nation-state is rather new, but identity and boundaries have
always been related, just because identity-formation involves the
differentiation of oneself or one's group from others.  Indeed,
the nation-state has been but one particularly powerful of these
geographically bounded communities, and identities are often the
result of a complex nesting of place-based identities, overlain with
non-place-based ones.  Still, the nation-state has promoted a powerful
image of identity, as something that can be described in terms of
borders in a landscape and lines on a map.  And even though there have
always been forces and pressures--in the form of alternatives such
as religion, race, class, and even the corporation-to challenge the
association between place and identity, geographically-based forms of
identity have remained important, even central, in the lives of most
people.

But with the advent of modern communication technologies, apparent
alternatives to place-based identity systems have become increasingly
visible.  Indeed, the Internet or cyberspace has been touted by many
as constituting the most far-reaching challenge yet to the strength
and persistence of place-based identity.  Unfortunately, in the
popular literature it is often overlooked that the Internet and the
dramatically increased flow of ideas has emerged within a larger
context, of the unprecedented flow of people and goods.  Where these
flows have crossed local, regional, and national boundaries, they
have been accompanied by the development of institutions designed
to regulate them, and by the increasing ability to track goods,
people-and information.  The interaction of these phenomena-increasing
amounts of mobile information, the increased flows of goods and
people, and the rise of new mechanisms for the regulation of each-
raises interesting questions about the future of geographically based
identities.

CO-DIRECTORS

Michael Curry
Department of Geography, University of California, Los Angeles
Web: www.geog.ucla.edu/faculty/curry.html

Research interests: Dr. Curry's research concerns the development
of and interactions among geographic ideas (space, place, nature);
geographic technologies (geographic information systems, the written
work, the map); the structure of the discipline of geography; and
the broader social, cultural, and legal contexts within which the
discipline, ideas, and technologies are situated.  He is currently
working on a book entitled, On belonging: Privacy, property, and the
primacy of place.

Selected publications: The work in the world: Geographical practice
and the written word (Minnesota, 1996); Digital places: Living with
geographic information technologies (Routledge, 1998)

Munroe Eagles
Department of Political Science, SUNY at Buffalo
Web: http://wings.buffalo.edu/soc-sci/pol-sci/dme.html

Interests: Comparative politics; electoral and political geography;
comparative politics of advanced industrial societies (esp. Britain
and Canada).  Current research, on Ecological analyses of Canadian
constituency politics; geographic information systems, spatial
analysis, and the social sciences; constituencies and political
representation in Canada; political sociology; geographic perspectives
and human capital research.

Selected publications: The Almanac of Canadian Politics, co-author,
(1995; 1991); Spatial and Contextual Models in Political Research,
editor (1995); guest editor, Political Geography (August-October,
1995).


CORE PLANNING GROUP

John Agnew

Dept. of Geography, University of California, Los Angeles
Web: www.geog.ucla.edu/faculty/agnew.html

Interests: Dr. Agnew is a political geographer.  His research
focuses on international political economy and the urban geography of
Italy, but he has published widely, extending to cultural and social
geography, and the history of geography.

Selected Publications: (With S. Corbridge) (1995).  Mastering Space:
Hegemony, Territory and International Political Economy.  London
and New York: Routledge; (With P. L. Knox) (1994).  The Geography
of the World Economy.  London: Arnold; The Territorial Trap: The
Geographical Assumptions of International Relations Theory.  Review of
International Political Economy (1994), 1: 53-80; (With J. S. Duncan)
The Power of Place: Bringing Together Geographical and Sociological
Imaginations.  London: Unwin Hyman, 1989.

Philip Agre

Dept. of Communication, University of California, San Diego
Web: http://communication.ucsd.edu/pagre/agre.html

Interests: Agre's research focuses on the ideas that shape technology.
His dissertation concerned the difficulty of making computational
theories of human activity, given that the metaphors of computational
research have historically been geared to studying human thinking.
Recent research has brought this perspective to several other
aspects of his work, such as the privacy issues that arise through
the application of devices for tracking the movements of people and
things.

Selected Publications: The Internet and public discourse, First Monday
3(3), 1998; Computation and Human Experience, Cambridge University
Press, 1997; (edited with Marc Rotenberg) Technology and Privacy: The
New Landscape, MIT Press, 1997.

Colin Bennett

Dept. of Political Science, University of Victoria
Web: http://www.cous.uvic.ca/poli/cben.htm

Interests: A specialist in public policy and administration, Professor
Bennett has written on information and communications policy, and
comparative policy analysis.

Selected publications: Regulating Privacy: Data Protection and Public
Policy in Europe and the United States (Ithaca, New York: Cornell
University Press, 1992).  (Winner of the 1993 Charles H. Levine
Memorial Book Prize from the Structure and Organization of Government
Section of the International Political Science Association)

Audrey Kobayashi

Dept. of Geography, Queen's University
Web: http://www.gis.queensu.ca/kobayashi.html

Interests: My interests and social concerns lie in the intersection of
gender and racism.  I address these concerns through empirical work on
immigrant and refugee women, and through theoretical work on gendered
and racialized thinking.  Recently, I have been working from the
perspective of critical legal studies, examining how the legal system
structures social relations, and affects the lives of marginalized
people.

Selected publications: Challenging the national dream: gender
persecution and Canadian immigration law.  In Racism, Nationalism and
the Rule of Law, ed. P. Fitzpatrick (London: Dartmouth, 1995): 61-74;
Learning their place: Japanese/Canadian workers/mothers.  In Women,
Work and Place, ed. A. Kobayashi (1994).

Carolyn Marvin

Annenberg School of Communication, University of Pennsylvania
Web: www.asc.upenn.edu/general/faculty/fcm.html

Interests: I'm interested in the perceived borders of things.
Especially social borders that give a shape to culture.  Borders tell
who belongs and who doesn't, and what it's all right to do and what
isn't okay.  Gender, race and class are borders that many people are
currently interested in.  I'm interested in the fact that they're
borders, and I want to know how they do border work.  My current
research focus is on national symbols and patriotic practices that
constitute group borders that are matters of life and death.  I want
to understand how national symbols acquire power, how that power is
replenished, and how it is lost.

Selected Publications: When Old Technologies Were New: Thinking
About Communication in the Late Nineteenth Century (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1988; paperback, 1990); Quando le Vecchie
Technologie erano Nuove (Turin: VTET-Libreria, 1995); Capturing
the Flag: The Symbolic Structure of Nationalism (In progress)

Mark Poster

Dept. of History, University of California, Irvine
Web: www.hnet.uci.edu/mposter

Interests/publications: I teach in the History Department of the
University of California, Irvine as well as in its Critical Theory
Emphasis.  I am also associated with the Department of Information
and Computer Science.  I published recently The Second Media Age
(Blackwell, 1995) which is version 2.0 of The Mode of Information
(Chicago Press, 1990).  One chapter of this book is available here
as "Postmodern Virtualities." I continue my work on the social and
cultural theory of electronically mediated information with an essay,
"CyberDemocracy," (see below), "Theorizing the Virtual: Baudrillard
and Derrida," "The Being of Technologies," "Nations, Identity and
Global Culture" and "Virtual Ethnicity." I have also completed
"Cultural History and Postmodernity," Columbia University Press,
1997, on the relation of poststructuralist theory to the discipline
of History.



=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
This message was forwarded through the Red Rock Eater News Service (RRE).
Send any replies to the original author, listed in the From: field below.
You are welcome to send the message along to others but please do not use
the "redirect" command.  For information on RRE, including instructions
for (un)subscribing, send an empty message to  rre-help@weber.ucsd.edu
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=