Dr Shanthi Robertson chats to Professor Aihwa Ong, who was in Sydney recently to present  the keynote at ICS's Knowldege / Culture / Economy International Conference. 

A Conversation with Aihwa Ong

Professor Daniel Miller from University College London presented on 'Why We Post: the Anthropology of Social Media' in the ICS Seminar Series on 6 May 2016.

Abstract:

This paper will provide an overview of an extensive research project on the use and consequences of social media around the world that is resulting in 11 Open Access books as well as a dedicated website and an e-learning course in 8 languages. The project saw nine anthropologists each spend 15 months living in eight countries in communities as varied as an English village, a factory town in China, and a community on the Turkish-Syrian border, an IT complex set in villages within south India, a low income settlement in Brazil, as well as sites in Chile, Italy and Trinidad.

The project resulted in an original definition of social media as 'scalable sociality' and a demonstration of how generalisation, analysis and theory can be made compatible with the considerable evidence for cultural differences in the use and consequences of social media across the nine fieldsites. In particular it will challenge the usual way social media is represented in terms of platforms and their affordances.

Topics addressed will include the way social media changes human communication, and the reasons people post memes and selfies. It will explore social media as a place in which we live, and ask why social media may represent the world as more conservative than offline life. It will also briefly address the general impact of social media on areas such as privacy, commerce, education, gender and politics. In conclusion it will show how this comparative global project can be turned into new forms of global education.

Biography:

Dr Daniel Miller (Twitter: dannyanth) is Professor of Material Culture at the Department of Anthropology, University College London and a Fellow of the British Academy. He has specialised in the study of material culture and consumption. He is the author of many books and journal articles, including The Comfort of Things (Polity, 2008), Consumption and its Consequences (Polity, 2012), and, most recently, Social Media in an English Village (UCL Press, 2016).

Professor Daniel Miller: Why We Post: the Anthropology of Social Media

In this thinking-in common session we explore the concept of resilience. Resilience is a term with a long history and diffuse origins. Arising in engineering, ecology, and psychology in the 1970s, resilience is generally defined as the capacity for materials, ecosystems or individuals to persist in the face of stress. More recently this term has come to circulate across numerous disciplines from economics to health to considerations of infrastructure. As the concept has spread it has moved from being a suite of measurable properties to a politically potent metaphor and, increasingly, a political objective in many policies and programs. As appeals to ‘become resilient’ or ‘build resilience’ proliferate it is an open question as to whether or not the term has reached its ‘use by date’. Could resilience be following in the footsteps of other terms like sustainability to diversity by becoming increasingly empty and vacuous? Or does it still have political traction and policy potential as a rallying term for new approaches to pressing contemporary concerns? Can appeals to resilience become a sort of shorthand for celebrating individuals’ and communities’ capacity to adapt to rapid change—from digital disruption to extreme weather to rising inequality and precarity? And what is the effect of these celebrations of resilience – do they distract from the impacts of ecological, economic, political and cultural change or foreground them? This panel explores how the concept of resilience and its complex uses and effects might be recovered. Can resilience provide a way of describing other and better economies, politics, cities and forms of caring for people and places in these dark times?

Panellists featured in this podcast include:

Dr Louise Crabtree is a Senior Research Fellow and Director of Engagement at the Institute for Culture and Society. Her research includes housing, sustainability, and governance.

Professor Simone Fullagar is an interdisciplinary sociologist and Professor, Physical Culture, Sport and Health at the University of Bath, UK. Her research explores the embodied politics of gender, physical cultures, health and wellbeing through material feminist and post-structuralist perspectives. She is writing a new book - A Vital Politics of Depression and Recovery.

Dr Stephen Healy is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Culture and society and a founding member of the Community Economy Research Network.

Professor Paul James is an editor of Arena Journal and author or editor of 34 books including Nation Formation (Sage) and Globalism, Nationalism, Tribalism (Sage).

Thinking In Common: 'Resilience'

ICS PhD candidate Alejandra Villanueva interviews ICS Emeritus Professor David Rowe about the interconnections between music, sports and media. Professor Rowe poses some political questions that are relevant for national and global contexts, but more specifically for Greater Western Sydney.

Professor David Rowe on music, sport and media

The Institute for Culture and Society is a leading interdisciplinary research institute based at Western Sydney University, Australia.

Institute for Culture and Society

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