Dan Swanton
Biographic Data
| ID | 1448137 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Dan Swanton |
| GIVEN NAMES | Dan |
| FAMILY NAME | Swanton |
| SIGNATURE | SWANTON D |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Edinburgh |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0903-0762 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 15 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 494 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 15 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2010 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Between/within/across a landscape of practice
This paper describes a new community for Scottish geography, earth, and environmental sciences educators (i.e. the ScotGEESE community). It explores the formation of our community including our aims, distinguishing features, and influences through the metaphor of geese behaviour: hatching, honking, flocking, and flying. We identify tensions that have arisen including the visibility and access to our disciplines and the lack of communication betwe…
Manifesto for fieldwork
The manifesto for fieldwork is an invitation to engage in pedagogic discussion that sets out visions for the future of teaching fieldwork. At a time when curriculum projects in many universities are advocating for more experiential learning in authentic and real-world contexts, teaching and learning in the field faces challenges from climate and nature crises, pandemics, financial pressures, technology and the importance of ensuring fieldwork is …
The role of virtual field trips in Geography higher education
In this perspective paper, we explore the role virtual field trips (VFTs) may play in creating a more resilient, sustainable and equitable field education for Geography students in higher education as we move away from the pandemic but into a financially precarious higher education environment. While in‐person field trips are a fundamental part of Geography (and allied subjects) education, there is growing recognition of the equality, diversity, …
Encounters convening publics
In this article, we examine the outbursts of a white passenger on a London tram, antagonizing others through swearing, nationalist, racist and anti-immigrant talk and the responses of carriage members to her confrontational talk. Our analysis uses a video recording of the event made by a passenger that circulated widely on social and news media. We document multiple forms of response, including the video-witnessing itself. We describe how the tro…
A Different Difference
Reading Deleuze and Race has been both energizing and frustrating. In many ways reviewing this book resonated with my experiences of reading Deleuze and his frequent collaborator Guattari, and tryi
Materialism and the politics of assemblage
In response to the commentaries on Anderson et al. (2012), the authors’ short response raises questions about, first, the status of materialism and realism in current debates around relations and relationality and, second, the implications of understanding assemblage as a particular kind of ethos for the politics of assemblage-based thinking
Afterimages of Steel
This essay works with afterimages of the steel industry to explore the material legacies and many afterlives of industrial remains in Dortmund. Inspired both by Walter Benjamin’s writings on the afterimages of capitalist modernity in the Arcades Project, and by the afterimages of steel produced by Haiko Hebig, the article gathers fragmented encounters in an account that evokes the materiality, textures, co-habitations, and memories of Dortmund’s …
The steel plant as assemblage
On assemblages and geography
In this paper we explore what assemblage thinking offers social-spatial theory by asking what questions or problems assemblage responds to or opens up. Used variously as a concept, ethos and descriptor, assemblage thinking can be placed within the context of the recent 'relational turn' in human geography. In this context, we argue that assemblage thinking offers four things to contemporary social-spatial theory that, when taken together, provide…
Assemblage and Critical Urban Praxis
Additional informationNotes on contributorsDan SwantonHe is also an editor for City
Assemblage and Critical Urban Praxis
Additional informationNotes on contributorsDan SwantonHe is also an editor for City
Assemblage and Critical Urban Praxis – Part Four
Global shifts in contemporary times
At one level, this paper centres on the closure of a steel plant in Germany, the closure and then reprieve of another in the UK and the expansion of a third in China, but at another level this changing geography of steel production can be seen as symptomatic of and symbolizing profound changes in the global manufacturing economy. The closures at Dortmund (permanently) and Redcar/south Teesside (temporarily) both reflected the growing internationa…
Sorting Bodies
This paper examines how race might be understood differently when social interaction is taken as the starting point of analysis. I argue that dominant modes of theorising race as a biological construct or epistemological marker remain insufficient for understanding the multiple, contingent, and devious ways in which race takes form in, and gives shape to, encounters. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Keighley-a former mill town in northern Eng…
Flesh, Metal, Road
By approaching the road as a contact zone, I develop novel insights into the turbulent multiculture of a northern mill town in England. Through a montage of encounters with taxis and 'flash' cars on the streets of Keighley, West Yorkshire, I illustrate how social differentiation is performed on the road as human difference is sorted and judged through assemblages of flesh, metal, and road. I develop recent debates on the social construction of ra…
On assemblages and geography
In this paper we explore what assemblage thinking offers social-spatial theory by asking what questions or problems assemblage responds to or opens up. Used variously as a concept, ethos and descriptor, assemblage thinking can be placed within the context of the recent 'relational turn' in human geography. In this context, we argue that assemblage thinking offers four things to contemporary social-spatial theory that, when taken together, provide…
Sorting Bodies
This paper examines how race might be understood differently when social interaction is taken as the starting point of analysis. I argue that dominant modes of theorising race as a biological construct or epistemological marker remain insufficient for understanding the multiple, contingent, and devious ways in which race takes form in, and gives shape to, encounters. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Keighley-a former mill town in northern Eng…
Flesh, Metal, Road
By approaching the road as a contact zone, I develop novel insights into the turbulent multiculture of a northern mill town in England. Through a montage of encounters with taxis and 'flash' cars on the streets of Keighley, West Yorkshire, I illustrate how social differentiation is performed on the road as human difference is sorted and judged through assemblages of flesh, metal, and road. I develop recent debates on the social construction of ra…
The steel plant as assemblage
Materialism and the politics of assemblage
In response to the commentaries on Anderson et al. (2012), the authors’ short response raises questions about, first, the status of materialism and realism in current debates around relations and relationality and, second, the implications of understanding assemblage as a particular kind of ethos for the politics of assemblage-based thinking
Afterimages of Steel
This essay works with afterimages of the steel industry to explore the material legacies and many afterlives of industrial remains in Dortmund. Inspired both by Walter Benjamin’s writings on the afterimages of capitalist modernity in the Arcades Project, and by the afterimages of steel produced by Haiko Hebig, the article gathers fragmented encounters in an account that evokes the materiality, textures, co-habitations, and memories of Dortmund’s …
Assemblage and Critical Urban Praxis
Additional informationNotes on contributorsDan SwantonHe is also an editor for City
Assemblage and Critical Urban Praxis
Additional informationNotes on contributorsDan SwantonHe is also an editor for City
Assemblage and Critical Urban Praxis – Part Four
Encounters convening publics
In this article, we examine the outbursts of a white passenger on a London tram, antagonizing others through swearing, nationalist, racist and anti-immigrant talk and the responses of carriage members to her confrontational talk. Our analysis uses a video recording of the event made by a passenger that circulated widely on social and news media. We document multiple forms of response, including the video-witnessing itself. We describe how the tro…
A Different Difference
Reading Deleuze and Race has been both energizing and frustrating. In many ways reviewing this book resonated with my experiences of reading Deleuze and his frequent collaborator Guattari, and tryi
Global shifts in contemporary times
At one level, this paper centres on the closure of a steel plant in Germany, the closure and then reprieve of another in the UK and the expansion of a third in China, but at another level this changing geography of steel production can be seen as symptomatic of and symbolizing profound changes in the global manufacturing economy. The closures at Dortmund (permanently) and Redcar/south Teesside (temporarily) both reflected the growing internationa…
Sorting Bodies
This paper examines how race might be understood differently when social interaction is taken as the starting point of analysis. I argue that dominant modes of theorising race as a biological construct or epistemological marker remain insufficient for understanding the multiple, contingent, and devious ways in which race takes form in, and gives shape to, encounters. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Keighley-a former mill town in northern Eng…
Flesh, Metal, Road
By approaching the road as a contact zone, I develop novel insights into the turbulent multiculture of a northern mill town in England. Through a montage of encounters with taxis and 'flash' cars on the streets of Keighley, West Yorkshire, I illustrate how social differentiation is performed on the road as human difference is sorted and judged through assemblages of flesh, metal, and road. I develop recent debates on the social construction of ra…
Assemblage and Critical Urban Praxis
Additional informationNotes on contributorsDan SwantonHe is also an editor for City
Assemblage and Critical Urban Praxis
Additional informationNotes on contributorsDan SwantonHe is also an editor for City
Assemblage and Critical Urban Praxis – Part Four
Global shifts in contemporary times
At one level, this paper centres on the closure of a steel plant in Germany, the closure and then reprieve of another in the UK and the expansion of a third in China, but at another level this changing geography of steel production can be seen as symptomatic of and symbolizing profound changes in the global manufacturing economy. The closures at Dortmund (permanently) and Redcar/south Teesside (temporarily) both reflected the growing internationa…
Materialism and the politics of assemblage
In response to the commentaries on Anderson et al. (2012), the authors’ short response raises questions about, first, the status of materialism and realism in current debates around relations and relationality and, second, the implications of understanding assemblage as a particular kind of ethos for the politics of assemblage-based thinking
Afterimages of Steel
This essay works with afterimages of the steel industry to explore the material legacies and many afterlives of industrial remains in Dortmund. Inspired both by Walter Benjamin’s writings on the afterimages of capitalist modernity in the Arcades Project, and by the afterimages of steel produced by Haiko Hebig, the article gathers fragmented encounters in an account that evokes the materiality, textures, co-habitations, and memories of Dortmund’s …
The steel plant as assemblage
On assemblages and geography
In this paper we explore what assemblage thinking offers social-spatial theory by asking what questions or problems assemblage responds to or opens up. Used variously as a concept, ethos and descriptor, assemblage thinking can be placed within the context of the recent 'relational turn' in human geography. In this context, we argue that assemblage thinking offers four things to contemporary social-spatial theory that, when taken together, provide…
A Different Difference
Reading Deleuze and Race has been both energizing and frustrating. In many ways reviewing this book resonated with my experiences of reading Deleuze and his frequent collaborator Guattari, and tryi
Encounters convening publics
In this article, we examine the outbursts of a white passenger on a London tram, antagonizing others through swearing, nationalist, racist and anti-immigrant talk and the responses of carriage members to her confrontational talk. Our analysis uses a video recording of the event made by a passenger that circulated widely on social and news media. We document multiple forms of response, including the video-witnessing itself. We describe how the tro…
The role of virtual field trips in Geography higher education
In this perspective paper, we explore the role virtual field trips (VFTs) may play in creating a more resilient, sustainable and equitable field education for Geography students in higher education as we move away from the pandemic but into a financially precarious higher education environment. While in‐person field trips are a fundamental part of Geography (and allied subjects) education, there is growing recognition of the equality, diversity, …
Between/within/across a landscape of practice
This paper describes a new community for Scottish geography, earth, and environmental sciences educators (i.e. the ScotGEESE community). It explores the formation of our community including our aims, distinguishing features, and influences through the metaphor of geese behaviour: hatching, honking, flocking, and flying. We identify tensions that have arisen including the visibility and access to our disciplines and the lack of communication betwe…
Manifesto for fieldwork
The manifesto for fieldwork is an invitation to engage in pedagogic discussion that sets out visions for the future of teaching fieldwork. At a time when curriculum projects in many universities are advocating for more experiential learning in authentic and real-world contexts, teaching and learning in the field faces challenges from climate and nature crises, pandemics, financial pressures, technology and the importance of ensuring fieldwork is …
Sociology (11 works) · Epistemology (8 works) · Geography (8 works) · Archaeology (7 works) · Assemblage (archaeology (6 works) · Philosophy (6 works) · Philosophy (6 works) · Aesthetics (5 works) · Art (5 works) · Computer Science (5 works)