In their 1996 publication of the same name, Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron characterized what they called the “Californian ideology” as a combination of “the free-wheeling spirit of the hippies and the entrepreneurial zeal of the yuppies” (Barbrook & Cameron 1996: 44). At its core, this Californian ideology is defined by the notion of a society characterized simultaneously by libertarian markets, alternative ideas of community and individual freedom—shaped by technology more than other social forces. Such notions were driven by networks such as those that emerged around the Whole Earth Catalog, and later, Wired magazine (Turner 2006), which communicated these ideas far beyond the American West Coast. Many of today’s platforms and digital infrastructures, which drive the current “deep mediatization” (Hepp 2020) of society, were created in the spirit of such an ideology, supported by ideas of “global scalability” of once found "technical solutions”.
At the same time, there were groups early on that seem to be opposed to such ideas. Examples of this are the Hacker, Open Source, or Civic Hacking movements, which are interested in critically questioning tendencies of commercialization. Such groups exert their influence by developing alternative “sociotechnical imaginaries” (Jasanoff & Sang-Hyun 2015) about possible futures – thus creating a space of possibility. However, if one also looks at emerging communities today such as the Maker, Quantified Self, or Biohacking movements, it becomes evident that many “alternative” imaginaries are closely interwoven with the Californian ideology. On closer inspection, the boundaries do not appear to be so easily drawn; there are manifold connections, fractures, affinities, and differences in the various communities.
Flags, emblems, monuments, street names, statues are some of the means by which nations and states promote themselves, both to their own citizens and to the world at large; the public face of our imagined communities. But as they seek to unify, such symbols have often been the occasion for contestation, disagreement, violence even. Empires, systems, regimes rise and fall. Societies change, and with such change comes a reassessment of societies’ symbolic life, as yesterday’s heroes become today’s villains, past triumphs a present embarrassment. The past is continually raked over, re-examined and reinterpreted, with each re-examination argued over. Examples abound from across the globe: the toppling of Rhodes’ statue in Cape Town in 2015; in Budapest, Soviet era leaders are gathered together in Memento Park. While Ukraine had by 2017 decreed the removal of all 1,320 statues of Lenin. And in Germany there are no monuments commemorating the military in the war years.
In the USA, statues of Confederate leaders are being taken down; thwarted by a statute forbidding such removals, the mayor of Birmingham Alabama had one offending figure covered in plastic. Outside Delhi statues of military and British royalty languish, a ‘shambles’ in a ‘veritable dust bowl’ (Times of India) awaiting a revamp that never seems to arrive, the neglect telling its own story. In the UK the national flag and the statues of slavers are being fought over by the government and sections of the population deploying memes, hashtags and video footage whilst also appearing in official and commercial films, TV, documentary, news footage.
We know that environmental change due to massive global warming negatively influences the world’s poorest and most-marginalized the most, as do the corporate and collective actions themselves that drive greenhouse gas emissions. With greater urgency, media scholarship – and practice – must now turn to the wicked problems associated with forms of human inequality that are sometimes linked to efforts to develop local and global sustainability: racialized gentrification of urban areas to form wetlands creates a forced migration of residents. The development of environmentally sound (and expensive) housing pushes out the poor. Mainstreamed media narratives of climate change activists elevate particular people and parts of the world over others. And yet such effects of sustainability are often invisible or missing from mediated discourses and arenas.
As notions of sustainability become more normalized as key to our shared social futures, they can remain tied to long-standing issues of racialized environmentalism shaping government and corporate decisions, as well as individual and collective interpretations of curbing climate change. ‘Climate change is the result of a legacy of extraction, of colonialism, of slavery’, Elizabeth Yeampierre, cochair of the Climate Justice Alliance, told PBS in the US in 2020. ‘The truth is that the climate justice movement, people of color, indigenous people, have always worked multi-dimensionally because we have to be able to fight on so many different planes.’ We share in this concern.
The Digital Inclusion, Policy and Research Conference (DIPRC)
Tuesday, September 14 2021
The conference will be free to attend and held online
In this third edition of the Digital Inclusion, Policy and Research Conference (DIPRC) 2021, we invite scholars and practitioners to talk about their latest work in what many consider as a crucial point for digital inclusion, digital divides and data literacy. Who got left behind and struggled the most during the pandemic? What new digital practices emerged from the pandemic to help people manage their well-being and survival? Did technology interventions such as contact tracing apps actually help manage the pandemic? How did different communities organise to assist each other via digital means? How did different governments and local municipalities respond to digital literacy challenges? How is mainstream media implicated in how we understand what is happening?
Digital Inclusion, Policy and Research Conference (DIPRC)
Tuesday, September 14 2021
University of Liverpool and Nuffield Foundation
In this third edition of the Digital Inclusion, Policy and Research Conference (DIPRC) 2021, we invite scholars and practitioners to talk about their latest work in what many consider as a crucial point for digital inclusion, digital divides and data literacy. Who got left behind and struggled the most during the pandemic? What new digital practices emerged from the pandemic to help people manage their well-being and survival? Did technology interventions such as contact tracing apps actually help manage the pandemic? How did different communities organise to assist each other via digital means? How did different governments and local municipalities respond to digital literacy challenges? How is mainstream media implicated in how we understand what is happening?
Multi-platform and Connecting Communities: Contemporary Challenges for Minority Language Media
14-15 October 2021
Europa Universität Flensburg (Germany)
The guiding idea behind the second biennial conference on minority language media is to bring together academics and professionals from this field, as well as facilitating intensive exchange of research and practical experiences. This event aims to build upon the expertise of the International Association of Minority Language Media Research (IAMLMR) established in Edinburgh in 2019.
The upcoming conference will be held at the Europa Universität Flensburg, 10 years on from when the institution co-hosted the 13th International Conference on Minority Languages in 2011. Moreover, the core organisational partners at the European Centre for Minority Issues and the University of the Basque Country bring an expanded pan-European focus alongside the regional dimension. Indeed, the Danish-German borderlands provide a unique setting for debates concerning minority language media: it features multiple national minorities (with and without a kin-state), several languages, and long-established minority language media institutions cooperating across borders.
“What it means when the media moves from the new to the habitual—when our bodies become archives of supposedly obsolescent media, streaming, updating, sharing, saving.”
Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, in ``Updating to Remain the Same (MIT Press, 2016), argues that our media “become more important when they appear to be of no importance - when they move from the 'new' to the ‘habitual’”. Technologies such as smartphones are no longer surprising to us, they have been absorbed into our lives in such a way that “we become our machines: we transmit “live”, update, capture, share, connect, save, delete and track” (from the introduction).
Chun interprets the incorporation of social networks in our habits as a defining concept of the present. “Networks have been central to the rise of neoliberalism, replacing 'society' with groups of individuals (...) Habit is central to the inversion of privacy and advertising that drives neoliberalism and networks”. It is in this field, for example, that Natalie Bookchin's artistic work expands individual expressions that embody this paradoxical intimate exposure in the visual digital flow.
Communities in Europe: Between Continuity and Transition
May 13-14, 2021
Online Conference
In the midst of the global Covid-19 pandemic, the notion of community has taken on a powerful meaning of solidarity and support: ‘Mutual Aid’ communities have burgeoned everywhere in the world, delivering foods and medication to the elderly and vulnerable; technology provided unprecedented levels of connectivity through which communities could be formed; new and creative forms of activism have emerged in the shape of crowdfunding campaigns to salvage independent shops as well as theatres and other cultural institutions.
