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"van Heur, Bas"
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Turning to ontology in STS? Turning to STS through ‘ontology’
We examine the evidence for the claim of an ‘ontological turn’ in science and technology studies (STS). Despite an increase in references to ‘ontology’ in STS since 1989, we show that there has not so much been an ontological turn as multiple discussions deploying the language of ontology, consisting of many small movements that have changed the landscape within STS and beyond. These movements do not point to a shared STS-wide understanding of ontology, although it can be seen that they do open up STS to neighbouring disciplines. Three main thematic complexes are identified in this literature: constructivism and realism; instruments and classification; and the social sciences and the humanities. The introduction of ontology into the long-running constructivism-realism debate can be considered as an acknowledgement on both sides that objects are real (i.e. pre-existing the situation) and constructed at the same time. The second thematic complex focuses on the role of instruments and classification in establishing not only relations of heterogeneity, but also of stability. The third thematic complex broadens the debate and actively seeks to promote an STSdriven ontological turn for research concerned with the humanities and the social sciences more generally. This study is based on both quantitative and qualitative interpretations of the literature.
Journal Article
Broadening the Urban Planning Repertoire with an ‘Arrival Infrastructures’ Perspective
In this article we propose an arrival infrastructure’s perspective in order to move beyond imaginaries of neighbourhoods as a ‘port of first entry’ that are deeply ingrained in urban planning discussions on migrants’ arrival situations. A focus on the socio-material infrastructures that shape an arrival situation highlights how such situations are located within, but equally transcend, the territories of neighbourhoods and other localities. Unpacking the infrastructuring work of a diversity of actors involved in the arrival process helps to understand how they emerge through time and how migrants construct their future pathways with the futuring possibilities at hand. These constructions occur along three dimensions: (1) Directionality refers to the engagements with the multiple places migrants have developed over time, (2) temporality questions imaginaries of permanent belonging, and (3) subjectivity directs attention to the diverse current and future subjectivities migrants carve out for themselves in situations of arrival. This perspective requires urban planners to trace, grasp and acknowledge the diverse geographies and socio-material infrastructures that shape arrival and the diverse forms of non-expert agency in the use, appropriation and fabrication of the built environment in which the arrival takes place.
Journal Article
Mapping the Shadow Economy: Spatial Variations in the Use of high Denomination Bank Notes in Brussels
The aim of this paper is to map the spatial variations in the size of the shadow economy within Brussels. Reporting data provided by the National Bank of Belgium on the deposit of high denomination banknotes across bank branches in the 19 municipalities of the Brussels-Capital Region, the nding is that the shadow economy is concentrated in wealthier populations and not in deprived or immigrant communities. The outcome is a call to transcend the association of the shadow economy with marginalized groups and the wider adoption of this indirect method when measuring spatial variations in the shadow economy.
Journal Article
Transnational conflicts and the politics of scalar networks: evidence from Northern Africa
This article offers a conceptualisation of transnational conflicts between state and non-state actors. Theorists of globalisation and transnationalism have developed a number of approaches in order to rethink the roles of these actors in conditions of globality. Their reluctance, however, to develop middle-range concepts has left us with arguments that are unable to deal with the complexity of transnational conflicts. In the theoretical section we develop a conceptual vocabulary that tries to do justice to these complexities and to questions of hierarchy and internal differentiation of the conflicting formations. We focus in particular on the ways conflict is mediated through various scalar networks. In the empirical section we draw on two cases from Northern Africa-the Ethiopian state versus Oromo ethno-nationalists and the Moroccan state versus Western Sahara activists-in order to illustrate how these concepts can contribute to a theoretically guided understanding of the emergence and perpetuation of transnational conflicts.
Journal Article
Public spaces in the occupied Palestinian territories
Most research on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict has focused on macro and meso-levels of abstraction by exploring national territorial and urban scales. This article, however, takes a more micro-level approach by investigating one specific public space in detail. It analyses the transformation and use of Dawar, the main public space of the city of Nablus, during the First (1987-1993) and Second (2000-2005) Intifadas. Public spaces in Palestinian cities have been transformed during the two Intifadas on both the physical and the socio-economic levels. Changing power relations affect the way public spaces are produced and regulated. Citizens, too, (re) produce public spaces through everyday practices, uses, and—in our case—explicit forms of resistance. The study proposes an analytical framework to look at public spaces as the result of power relations by combining the work of two French theorists, Michel Foucault and Henri Lefebvre. This framework is then applied to Dawar during the two Intifadas.
Journal Article
The Clustering of Creative Networks: Between Myth and Reality
This paper discusses the myths and realities surrounding the clustering of creative networks through a critical analysis of music production and its clustering tendencies in London and Berlin. Instead of assuming that networks 'naturally' cluster for a variety of reasons, the focus is on the tensions between networks of aesthetic production and the 'creative clusters' that emerge from these networks. It is argued that the clustering of networks is structured by the contemporary accumulation regime and mode of regulation and that these direct aesthetic production in system-confirmative ways. At the same time, in order to understand the specificity of aesthetic practices, it is necessary to grasp the constitutive role played by networks in deflecting and transforming the structuring effects of creative clusters.
Journal Article
Virtual Knowledge
Today we are witnessing dramatic changes in the way scientific and scholarly knowledge is created, codified, and communicated. This transformation is connected to the use of digital technologies and the virtualization of knowledge. In this book, scholars from a range of disciplines consider just what, if anything, is new when knowledge is produced in new ways. Does knowledge itself change when the tools of knowledge acquisition, representation, and distribution become digital? Issues of knowledge creation and dissemination go beyond the development and use of new computational tools. The book, which draws on work from the Virtual Knowledge Studio, brings together research on scientific practice, infrastructure, and technology. Focusing on issues of digital scholarship in the humanities and social sciences, the contributors discuss who can be considered legitimate knowledge creators, the value of \"invisible\" labor, the role of data visualization in policy making, the visualization of uncertainty, the conceptualization of openness in scholarly communication, data floods in the social sciences, and how expectations about future research shape research practices. The contributors combine an appreciation of the transformative power of the virtual with a commitment to the empirical study of practice and use.The hardcover edition does not include a dust jacket.
eBook
European Capital of Culture - emancipatory practices and Euregional strategies
The transformations that characterize the Network Society (Castells 1996) can be understood as key problems to be addressed by major events. In the Netherlands, for instance, the Raad voor Cultuur (2010) points to a paradox: in networks, nodes become more individual as well as more interdependent. We see a sharp increase in the possibilities to communicate and interact, but at the same time the process of individualization has led to a decline in social cohesion and shared sense of community. Although technology has long been a driver of innovation, in a network society which 'craves meaning', the cultural sector finds itself centre stage. This implies that the 'cultural sector should function as a \"laboratory of meaning\" in the domain of open societal innovation' (ibid.: 3). Whilst the European Capital of Culture (ECOC) is perceived by the European Union (EU) as a political-cultural initiative, it is surprising how little we read about the organizational, aesthetic and normative logics informing this sector. Although 'culture' is positioned as the solution to various social and economic problems (European Commission 2010), questions concerning the relative strengths and weaknesses of particular cultural strategies in addressing these remain unanswered. We suggest understanding the broader event and evaluation process through problem-oriented research, with these spaces as sites for the articulation of problems and experimenting with possible solutions.
Book Chapter