Scales of Place and Networks

An Ethnography of the Imperative to Connect through Information and Communications Technologies

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2216253
AutoresSarah Green (0000-0002-8094-433X), Penny Harvey (0000-0001-7765-1221), Hannah Knox
Año2005
Volumen46
Número5
Páginas805-826
Fecha de publicación2005-12-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaCurrent Anthropology (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0011-3204 • E-ISSN: 1537-5382
EditorialUniversity of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1086/432649
OpenAlexW2321681692
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas29
Referencias citadas48

Much has been made of the spacetransforming and spacedefying characteristics of information and communications technologies. This focus tends to separate the spatial characteristics of these technologies from those of the Euclidean world; it also takes the spatial characteristics of the Euclidean world for granted. Yet anthropologists have shown that place making in any spatial context is a complicated process, always involving an entanglement of imagination, politics, and social relations. This paper, by focusing on the promotion of the development of information and communications technologies through the public sector in Europe, shows that these technologies have become as much a part of political place making as other transportation and communication technologies in the past. Using our ethnographic research on several European Unionfunded projects based in Manchester, we argue that many of the perceived difficulties experienced in projects which envision these technologies as holding the potential for social change derive from a tension between imagined communities and imagined networks as two different forms of place making. The paper illustrates this tension by tracing the political, institutional, and social development of what we term an imperative to connect, which constitutes a moral and social imperative as much as an economic one

Context (archaeology · Economic geography · Emerging technologies · Geography · Information and Communications Technology · Political science · Politics · Promotion (chess · Public relations · Sociology · Computer Science · Cross-Border Cooperation and Integration · Law · Spatial and Cultural Studies · Urban Planning and Governance