Matt Hannah Interviewed on Dark Territories

Exploring Geopolitics has an excellent lengthy interview with Matt Hannah on his latest book Dark Territories in the Information Age.

On the parallels to protest today:

It is perhaps more interesting to note that the parallels between issues of anonymity in physical public spaces and anonymity in the virtual world of electronic information were already clear then. At the same time that boycotters were challenging the state’s ‘epistemic sovereignty’, its right to know everything about the people living within its borders, struggles raged in the streets and courtrooms over whether protestors should be allowed to cover their faces and wear improvised armour (motorcycle helmets, etc.).

The right to see faces and to coerce or injure bodies, like the right to gather personal data and use it to coerce compliant behaviour, were explicitly seen as part of the emergence of what Hamburg activists called ‘cybernocracy’.

In the Occupy movements of today, these links remain clear, even if the strategic and tactical struggles have moved into new areas, for example in protestors’ use of their own camera drones to track police movements.

On the possibilities of “informatinal citizenship” (one of the big takeaways from the book, for me):

By the term informational citizenship I mean a way of seeing many different kinds of knowledge about people, not just knowledge about their preferences among official parties or candidates, as forms of political representation. To exercise informational citizenship would thus be to get involved actively in decisions about what kinds of knowledge are gathered about us, linked to what sorts of social ontologies, by what organisations, to what purpose, what is done with that knowledge, how is it stored and for how long, etc.

Foucault on geography, space and territory

I’m currently working on my chapter for the A Companion to Foucault (Falzon, C., O’Leary, T., Sawicki, J. Eds., Oxford: Blackwell. Forthcoming 2012). My topic is Foucault, geography, space and territory in the “Power and Governmentality” section.

In thinking about this at first I had assumed that there was relatively little that explicitly engages with these topics, broad as they are. The topic is one that is more scattered, and you might say well integrated into the extent of Foucault’s writing. I think I’ll still make this point, and that it’s profitable to see Foucault relating space to his longstanding concerns (“space/knowledge” or space/power/knowledge if you like) but nevertheless there are explicit engagements.

Here’s a minimal list I’m reading through:

Questions on Geography (& Questions back to Herodote)
Eye of Power
Discipline & Punish/panopticon, urban spatial partition
Space vs. history (DE 234 in Japan)
Space, knowledge, power (despite its title one of the less interesting ones)
Security, Territory, Population, esp. Jan. 11.
The three Rio 1974 lectures for the early development of biopower
Heterotopia piece, OT Preface
The governmentality chapter
HF on exclusions
Abnormal 15 Jan
Elden on Foucault as collaborateur to pick up on habitats, urban infrastructure (collective equipments), and public hygiene (cf. the Rio lectures)
BC chapter 1
The confinement of 1657 and challenges of its extent
Translations in our Space Knowledge Power book, some of the case studies, scene settings and elaborations

In terms of topics I think the following are critical:

1. Spatial orderings, exclusions, enclosures, partitions

2. Governmental technologies (eg panopticon, plans, tables, surveys, mappings) and territory

3. The calculative, hence leading to the statistical, risk, norms.

I think the key here is the way that space is not just used as a metaphor but is brought in either in the background of the writings or importantly is foregrounded at key moments.

As you can see, I’m focussing more on MF than the secondary literature as I believe that’s what’s needed in a companion book. There may be a small bias toward stuff from say 1970 onwards but I think that’s supported by the emphasis Foucault places himself.

I’d be glad to hear if there’s anything obviously missing or if this seems offbase. I think the topic is fairly straightforward but you never know. We’ve got around 8k words, so actually not a lot of room to dwell.

Latour on digital cartographies: some comments

Bruno Latour will give a talk to the Architecture Association that will pick up some of the recent work in mapping and digital cartographies he and his co-workers have been doing.

Bruno Latour
Do objects reside in res extensa and if not where are they located?

Date: 22.02.2011
Time: 18:00:00

Experience of space is supposed to be divided into an objective reality that is not “really lived” and a “lived” reality which, on the other hand, is not objectively real… The lecture will explore this apparently philosophical question by surveying several topics which have been deeply renewed by the digital techniques: the experience of using digital cartographies; the mapping of scientific controversies and the reinvention of originals through fac similes by the British artist Adam Lowe and his Madrid studio Factum Arte.

A link to a paper by November, Camacho-Hübner and Latour from Env. & Planning D (2010) is provided. This paper springs from some sessions at the 2009 IBG/RGS conference in Manchester that I attended. The paper argues against a supposed cartographic obsession with the “base map” to point to how maps frame a calculative, if not risk-based assessment. They argue that we’ve become “fascinated” by the base map (which they don’t explain or define but could be a small-scale topographic or locational map understood as actual physical reality) and thematic content (understood as socially constructed) and that this leads to an unfortunate reality/lived experience dichotomy.

I am obviously sensitive to parts of this argument, especially having written on the calculative work of thematic maps myself (they do cite a couple of pieces of my work–nice!). My latest piece on maps and the calculative has just been officially published in PiHG (see previous post).

If their comments on the “fascination” with base maps are a little overdrawn for expository purposes or just a lack of familiarity with the field, I think that they will bring some needed attention to these issues. What would be good going forward would be an actual case study. One that comes to mind is the impact of the geoweb/volunteered geographic information (VGI). Do the exciting possibilities of citizen cartography necessarily collapse back to the calculative?

I’m exploring some of this in the context of citizen redistricting possibilities in the US context. This year most states will redraw their Congressional Districts based on the Census data that will be released next month. Tools now available that marry GIS and VGI (or whatever you want to call it, I realise there’s territory in the name choices here) allow citizens to be part of this process, making it more transparent. I hope to talk about this at a VGI preconference at the AAGs (if my abstract is accepted) and in a commentary piece for a VGI section of Env. & Planning A organised by Matt Wilson and Mark Graham.

(Via Stuart Elden)

Last progress report for Progress in Human Geography available

My last report on Cartography for Progress in Human Geography has been officially published (it was available Online First for most of last year):

“Cartographic calculations of territory” Progress in Human Geography February 2011 vol. 35 no. 1 92-103.

doi:10.1177/0309132509358474