Suchergebnisse

In an example of Enlightenment 'engaged research' and public intellectual practice, Euler established the basis of topology and graph theory through his solution to the puzzle of whether a stroll around the seven bridges of 18th-century Königsberg (Kaliningrad) was possible without having to cross any given bridge twice. This 'Manifesto' argues that, born in a form of cultural studies, topology offers 21st-century researchers a model for mapping the dynamics of time as well as space, allowing the rigorous description of events, situations, changing cultural formations and social spatializations. Law and Mol's network spaces, Serre's folded time, Massey's 'power geometries', Lefebvre's 'production of space' and 'rhythmanalysis' can be developed through a cultural topological sensitivity that allows time to be understood as not only progressive but cyclical, relationships and the 'reach' of power can be understood through 'knots', and a topology of experience to model the 'plushness of the Real' via extra- and over-dimensioned time-spaces that capture nuance while drawing on systematic conceptual resources.

This article draws out temporal and spatial affects such as hope and fear, trust and confidence, and assumptions of actors in plant biotechnology development and its regulation by the Federal Government of Canada. These underlie both insider developers' and regulators' hopes and trust, and outsider experts' and publics' anxiety and fear. Etymologically, hope is rooted in actual capacities or dunamis and in latent potency or potentia . Ethnographic interviews among researchers, producers, and regulators of plant biotechnologies in Canada conducted between 2001 and 2003 provide an empirical illustration of this argument. In the regulatory process for plants with novel traits (PNTs), different affective responses (hope, fear, trust) correlate with social insiders and outsiders around biotechnology generally and PNTs specifically. Insiders form a regulatory figuration in Elias's sense of the term. The spatiotemporal qualities of different affects—dunamis here and now versus the distant and future quality of potentia— "torque" discourse, risk-taking behavior, and calculations of standards of precaution.

AbstractUrban research is unreflexive toward its object of study, the city, compromising its methodologies and theoretical capacity. This polemic draws on examples such as 'creative cities', which have been profiled and analysed for their local recipes for economic success. 'Global cities' have become stereotypes of a neoliberal form of the 'good life' to which much recent urban research is a handmaiden, a hegemonic knowledge project. These 'metro‐poles' of value are a form of urban pedagogy that presents lesser local elites with lessons to be followed. A form of cargo cult theory suggests, build it and wealth will come — hence the symmetry of urban scholarship with the fad for city rankings in pop journalism. In contrast to neo‐structural analyses of the global city, other research focuses too closely on regional geographies, local forces and urban affordances. A synthetic level of theory is proposed to bridge the divide which marks urban and regional studies. The 'urban' needs to be rediscovered as a central question. The urban is an object of theory and the city is a truth spot. The urban is more than infrastructure and bodies but an intangible good or 'virtuality' that requires an appropriate methodological toolkit.RésuméLa recherche urbaine manque de réflexivitéà l'égard de son objet d'étude, la ville, ce qui compromet ses méthodologies et sa capacité théorique. Cette critique part d'exemples tels que les "villes créatives" dont on a établi le profil et l'analyse pour en déterminer les recettes locales de réussite économique. Les "villes planétaires" sont devenues des stéréotypes d'une forme néolibérale de la "bonne vie" au service de laquelle se met généralement la recherche urbaine, un projet de savoir hégémonique. Ces métro‐pôles de valeur constituent une sorte de pédagogie urbaine qui expose aux moindres élites locales des leçons à suivre. Un genre de théorie du culte du cargo suggère qu'il suffit de construire pour voir la richesse arriver, d'où la symétrie entre les travaux de recherche urbaine et la mode pour les palmarès de villes dans le journalisme populaire. Contrairement aux analyses néo‐structuralistes de la ville planétaire, d'autres études se consacrent de trop près aux géographies régionales, aux forces locales et aux affordances urbaines. Un niveau de théorie synthétique est proposé pour franchir la ligne de démarcation des études urbaines et régionales. Il faut redécouvrir "l'urbain" en tant que question centrale. L'urbain est un objet de théorie, la ville est un lieu de vérité. L'urbain est plus qu'une infrastructure et des entités, c'est un bien intangible, une "virtualité", qui nécessite un jeu d'outils méthodologiques approprié.

As a literary figure or conceit, Haraway's cyborg is kin to Dumas' and Balzac's flâneur. As a social science fiction, crossing and mixing categories, the cyborg is an abject quasi-body who does not fit the Enlightenment model of the political subject and actor. The 'Manifesto' has a geography of sites - Home, Market, Paid Work Place, State, School, Clinic-Hospital and Church - which this article updates and to which it adds the Body and the Web. However, Haraway's 'cyborg-analysis' directs attention to the nanotechnological scale of biotechnology. The spatialization implied in the 'Manifesto' is more like a surface, a site of regeneration, not a space of the body or of rebirth or the space of institutions such as the Market or School. The cyborg cannot be an Enlightenment political actor, but challenges the traditions, scale and space of the public sphere even as she carries ethical qualities and potentials for less normative forms of politics.

Theories of the present have converged on changes in spatialization or the spatial order of societies. This article discusses the focus on borders and boundaries in programmatic statements on reflexive modernity or remodernization (RM) by Latour and Beck. It is insufficient to say that boundary-marking and border-making become simply more fraught or obvious. There is an historicity and dynamic quality which are central to these analyses which are best understood in terms of the intangible aspects, or virtuality, of borders and boundaries. A dynamic, four-part ontology is advanced to elucidate the functioning of borders as interfaces and liminal zones with their own internal semiotics and emergent meanings and effects. This is the basis of a critique of RM. Further, a more diverse set of methods than might be supposed is required to research boundary phenomena, which social sciences are ill-equipped to undertake.

Explores the idea of social spatialization as it relates to critical geopolitics, focusing on historical & symbolic notions of the North & northernness. In this light, the interplay of topology & chorography is touched on, suggesting that states & transnational institutions articulate such positions in defining themselves in nation- & region-building projects that require local places to be enjoined in a unified cultural construct, then enacted in a spatialization. Thus the North is simultaneously a discursive construction & a set of nondiscursive, sociological relations & institutions. Finland is briefly discussed to illustrate, highlighting national identity as ideologically rooted in the landscape & in a national mythology as generated by artists & media elites. What emerges is a "critical geopolitics from below" or of everyday life that cross-examines the geographical, topological, chorographical assumptions of state building while also considering cultural dimensions. J. Zendejas

This paper presents a critique of notions of information and knowledge found in the management literature and amongst proponents of 'knowledge management' (Davenport and Prusak 2000) interviewed in the course of a study of changing operations of the Federal Government of Canada vis a vis the 'knowledge-based economy' as it is found in Canada (Shields, Taborsky, Jones, and O'Hara 2000). Interviews with a range of Federal Government Departments and Agencies on a number of topics including knowledge management were conducted throughout the Summer of 2000. During these interviews a number of competing definitions and numerous misunderstandings of the relationship between knowledge and information emerged. We will distinguish and contrast these with definitions derived from semiotic and information science frameworks. We argue for the importance of the collective and processual nature of knowledge. Our conclusions allow us to specify the shortcomings of existing knowledge management approaches and to identify a necessary and specific focus for future knowledge initiatives in organizations.