[ecrea] cfp Other Senses of Place: Sociospatial Practices in the Contemporary Media Environment

Call for Abstracts
Other Senses of Place: Sociospatial Practices in the Contemporary Media 
Environment.
Deadline for abstracts submission: 30th September 2014.
Redazione , 22 giugno 2014

Sociologica will publish a symposium entitled Other Senses of Place: 
Sociospatial Practices in the Contemporary Media Environment.

Symposium Editor: Federica Timeto.

Today, geolocalized information and communication have become not only 
the content but also the context of our social interactions. New 
sociospatial formations have arisen from the spread of computing into 
the geomedia environment. On the one hand, electronic media have created 
an increasing dissociation between physical and social places, deeply 
changing the way we define, experience and communicate sociospatiality. 
On the other hand, locative media appear as more and more location-aware 
and context-dependent, foregrounding a transformation that interests 
places and media at the same time. This delineates a different scenario 
for contemporary social actors in terms of new affordances and 
constraints. The title of this call draws on Joshua Meyrowitz’s renowned 
No sense of place (1985), in which the idea of the situation of 
communication is explored, and we would like to expand this definition 
so as to include more recent approaches to the hybrid and multiple 
spaces of the contemporary media environment (Boyd; de Souza e Silva; 
Ito; Frith; Morley; Moores; Wilken & Goggin). Additionally, it relies on 
a definition of locative media that is not merely technical or 
restricted to the positioning devices employed, but rather foregrounds 
the situated experiences of social actors and the way their practice of 
the locative and mobile infrastructure in turn modifies the 
infrastructure of their experiences (Dourish & Bell).

This issue of Sociologica will explore the numerous ways in which the 
contemporary diffusion of locative and mobile media puts into relief the 
spatialization of communication events, as well as the communicative 
quality of places, in a condition of diffuse addressability (Mitchell). 
This underlines a co-emergence of information and sociospatial 
formations, pointing to the performativity of both (Mackenzie; Thrift). 
The issue also foregrounds the way in which the relation between the 
subjects and objects of communication also changes in such contexts of 
distributed agency and pervasive mediation, in which new sociotechnical 
formations emerge.

Contributions focusing on empirical case studies as well as 
methodological and theoretical reflections on (but not limited to) the 
following topics are welcomed:

    *

      Communication, space and mobility (location and mobility, 
theoretical and practical redefinitions of space and place, mobile 
methodologies, material and virtual mobilities, net localities, mobile 
devices);
    *

      The creativity and performativity of space (the social sciences 
after the non-representational turn, embodiment and situated aesthetics, 
materiality and mediation in space, locative arts);
    *

      Sociotechnical formations in mediaspaces (sociotechnical 
assemblages, hybrid spaces, mobile interfaces, The Internet of Things, 
smart objects);
    *

      The reshaping of the urban sphere (augmented environments, urban 
games, urban screens, open source urbanism, community and participative 
practices in digital localities, citizenship and civic engagement, the 
redefinition of the public and the private);
    *

      Mapping practices (geomedia environments, new visualization 
systems, surveillance, Location Based Social Networks, code/spaces, the 
aesthetics of mapping, grassroots mapping, emergency mapping, 
media-flânerie and navigational platforms).



Abstracts of 450-500 words, together with a short bio (100-200 words) 
describing the author’s background, current affiliation and research 
interests, should be submitted by e-mail before 30 September 2014 to the 
symposium editor at the following address: (ftimeto /at/ gmail.com)

Upon abstract acceptance, papers of no more than 8,000 words (including 
references and notes) in Word format must be submitted by 31 December 
2014. Papers will go through a double blind peer review process. 
Notification of acceptance will be given to authors, along with the 
reviewers’ comments, by February 2015. Final papers after revision will 
be due by March 2015.



---------------
ECREA-Mailing list
---------------
This mailing list is a free service offered by Nico Carpentier and ECREA.
--
To subscribe, post or unsubscribe, please visit
http://commlist.org/
--
To contact the mailing list manager:
Email: (nico.carpentier /at/ vub.ac.be)
URL: http://homepages.vub.ac.be/~ncarpent/
--
ECREA - European Communication Research and Education Association
Chauss�de Waterloo 1151, 1180 Uccle, Belgium
Email: (info /at/ ecrea.eu)
URL: http://www.ecrea.eu
---------------