Selling Smartness: Corporate Narratives and the Smart City as a Sociotechnical Imaginary

2018 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
pp. 540-563 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jathan Sadowski ◽  
Roy Bendor
Keyword(s):  
Smart City ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Counter Narratives ◽  
Near Future ◽  
Smart Urbanism

This article argues for engaging with the smart city as a sociotechnical imaginary. By conducting a close reading of primary source material produced by the companies IBM and Cisco over a decade of work on smart urbanism, we argue that the smart city imaginary is premised in a particular narrative about urban crises and technological salvation. This narrative serves three main purposes: (1) it fits different ideas and initiatives into a coherent view of smart urbanism, (2) it sells and disseminates this version of smartness, and (3) it crowds out alternative visions and corresponding arrangements of smart urbanism. Furthermore, we argue that IBM and Cisco construct smart urbanism as both a reactionary and visionary force, plotting a model of the near future, but one that largely reflects and reinforces existing sociopolitical systems. We conclude by suggesting that breaking IBM’s and Cisco’s discursive dominance over the smart city imaginary requires us to reimagine what smart urbanism means and create counter-narratives that open up space for alternative values, designs, and models.

Abdullahi dan Fodio and Muhammad Bello’s Debate over the Torobbe-Fulani: Case Study for a New Methodology for Arabic Primary Source Material from West Africa

2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 34-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Naylor
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Political Legitimacy ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Personal Relationships ◽  
The Political ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Critical Commentary

This paper explores the conflict between Abdullahi dan Fodio and his nephew, Muhammad Bello, over the origin of their ethnic group, the Torobbe-Fulani. Initially open to his uncle’s theories of an Arabocentric migration narrative, Bello went on to change his views abruptly and undermine his uncle’s work. Through sketching the background to the conflict followed by a close reading of the documents themselves–Abdullahi’s īdāʿ al-nusūkh and Bello’s critical commentary to it, the ḥāshiya–I suggest these documents offer different models for political legitimacy. Prefaced by a critical analysis of the use of the Fodiawa’s Arabic writings in Sokoto historiography, I suggest that future approaches must take into account the political nature of these documents, the specific contexts in which they were produced and the personal relationships of their authors.

The 2016 Police and Crime Commissioner elections

2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 41-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Joyce
Keyword(s):  
Public Awareness ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
Key Issues ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Government

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to analyse the 2016 elections for Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) and to compare them with those that took place in 2012. It seeks to evaluate the background of the candidates who stood for office in 2016, the policies that they put forward, the results of the contests and the implications of the 2016 experience for future PCC elections. Design/methodology/approach This paper is based around several key themes – the profile of candidates who stood for election, preparations conducted prior to the contests taking place, the election campaign and issues raised during the contests, the results and the profile of elected candidates. The paper is based upon documentary research, making particular use of primary source material. Findings The research establishes that affiliation to a political party became the main route for successful candidates in 2016 and that local issues related to low-level criminality will dominate the future policing agenda. It establishes that although turnout was higher than in 2012, it remains low and that further consideration needs to be devoted to initiatives to address this for future PCC election contests. Research limitations/implications The research focusses on the 2016 elections and identifies a number of key issues that emerged during the campaign affecting the conduct of the contests which have a bearing on future PCC elections. It treats these elections as a bespoke topic and does not seek to place them within the broader context of the development of the office of PCC. Practical implications The research suggests that in order to boost voter participation in future PCC election contests, PCCs need to consider further means to advertise the importance of the role they perform and that the government should play a larger financial role in funding publicity for these elections and consider changing the method of election. Social implications The rationale for introducing PCCs was to empower the public in each police force area. However, issues that include the enhanced importance of political affiliation as a criteria for election in 2016 and the social unrepresentative nature of those who stood for election and those who secured election to this office in these contests coupled with shortcomings related to public awareness of both the role of PCCs and the timing of election contests threaten to undermine this objective. Originality/value The extensive use of primary source material ensures that the subject matter is original and its interpretation is informed by an academic perspective.

The Edwardians and the Making of a Modern Spanish Obsession

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kirsty Hooper
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Turn Of The Century ◽  
World War ◽  
Popular Imagination ◽  
Concert Halls ◽  
Material History ◽  
British People ◽  
Industrial Investment

What did the Edwardians know about Spain, and what was that knowledge worth? The Edwardians and the Making of a Modern Spanish Obsession draws on a vast store of largely unstudied primary source material to investigate Spain’s place in the turn-of-the-century British popular imagination. Set against a background of unprecedented emotional, economic and industrial investment in Spain, the book traces the extraordinary transformation that took place in British knowledge about the country and its diverse regions, languages and cultures between the tercentenary of the Spanish Armada in 1888 and the outbreak of World War I twenty-six years later. This empirically-grounded cultural and material history reveals how, for almost three decades, Anglo-Spanish connections, their history and culture were more visible, more colourfully represented, and more enthusiastically discussed in Britain’s newspapers, concert halls, council meetings and schoolrooms, than ever before. It shows how the expansion of education, travel, and publishing created unprecedented opportunities for ordinary British people not only to visit the country, but to see the work of Spanish and Spanish-inspired artists and performers in British galleries, theatres and exhibitions. It explores the work of novelists, travel writers, journalists, scholars, artists and performers to argue that the Edwardian knowledge of Spain was more extensive, more complex and more diverse than we have imagined.

scholarly journals Yes, John G Lake was a Con Man: A Response to Marius Nel

2017 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Barry Morton
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Southern Africa ◽  
Life Story ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Apostolic Faith Mission

This response to Marius Nel’s 2016 article (in Studia Historiae Ecclesiasticae no. 42, 1, 62-85) uses primary source material to refute his claims that John G Lake, the initiator of Pentecostalism in southern Africa, was an upstanding man of God. A wide array of American and South African sources show that Lake invented an extensive but fictitious life story, while also creating a similarly dubious divine calling that obscured his involvement in gruesome killings in America. Once in South Africa, he used invented “miracles” to raise funds abroad for the Apostolic Faith Mission. Before long, he faced many accusations of duplicity from inside his own church.

Spiritualité, Spirituality, and Espiritualidad

2021 ◽  
Vol 101 (4) ◽  
pp. 496-525
Author(s):  
Rady Roldán-Figueroa
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Modern Concept ◽  
Colonial Latin America ◽  
Conceptual History ◽  
Academic Study

Abstract This article offers a corrective to the widely held idea that the modern concept of spirituality is traceable to the seventeenth century French notion of spiritualité. Instead, the argument is made that the sixteenth and seventeenth century Spanish terms spiritual and spiritualidad are earlier expressions of the modern concept of spirituality. The article opens with an examination of the place of spirituality in the academic study of religion and proceeds to a discussion of the premises of conceptual history and modern lexicography. In the closing section, the author analyses a plethora of lexicographical and other primary source material from the medieval to the early modern periods that demonstrate the usage of the terms spirital and espiritualidad in Spain as well as in colonial Latin America. Among the sources examined are Sebastián de Covarrubias Orozco, Tesoro de la lengua castellana (Madrid: Luis Sánchez, 1611); Fernando de Valverde, Vida de Jesu Christo nuestro señor (Lima: Luis de Lyra, 1657); and Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Madrid: En la imprenta de Francisco del Hierro, 1726–1739).

Art and archives

1978 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 33-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Irene Whalley ◽  
Clive Wainwright ◽  
Sarah Fox-Rtt
Keyword(s):  
Primary Source ◽  
Source Material ◽  
16Th Century ◽  
National Register ◽  
Siegfried Sassoon ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
General Kind ◽  
Victoria And Albert Museum ◽  
Active Policy

The Library of the Victoria and Albert Museum has always collected primary source material. This consists of artists’ letters, diaries, sitters’ books and various personal papers. Or it may be material of a more general kind: inventories, bills, unpublished articles, recipes for paints and varnishes and similar items of use to the Museum departments or to other readers. Occasionally in the past we have been offered material relating to a firm, a person, or a society, which consisted of a mixture of printed matter, photographs, original drawings, manuscript letters etc., which, when received in the Museum, would be divided among the relevant departments — the Library and the Department of Prints and Drawings in particular. The Library continues to acquire manuscript material of the kind mentioned above, and indeed in the last two years has pursued an active policy in this field. As a result we have acquired such varied items as the wardrobe accounts of the Empress Josephine for 1809 (2 large boxes of them), a 16th century herald’s sketchbook, an unpublished history of jade, and a letter from Sir William Nicholson to Siegfried Sassoon agreeing to illustrate ‘Memoirs of a fox-hunting man’. A list of the English accessions is published annually, and all acquisitions are notified to the National Register of Archives. Most of the items were acquired by purchase (e.g. from booksellers’ lists or auction sales), but there have also been some welcome donations.

Art and Society in England and France in the Mid-Nineteenth Century: Two Paintings before the Public

1972 ◽  
Vol 22 ◽  
pp. 119-139
Author(s):  
Alan Bowness
Keyword(s):  
Primary Source ◽  
Source Material ◽  
The State ◽  
Work Of Art ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Historical Fact ◽  
Art And Society ◽  
The Moment ◽  
State Of Art

The primary source material for the art historian is of course the work of art, and this in itself places him in a fortunate position because the permanent relevance of the work of art is, I take it, self-evident. For the art historian, the work of art is an historical fact, pre-selected for generally accepted aesthetic reasons. But the work of art has no absolute meaning: it does not exist in a vacuum. It has both what we might call a history and a geography—the history being that record of interpretation and evaluation which accrues to the work of art from the moment of its creation down to the present day; and the geography being the particular artistic and social context of its original creation. The history can at times be very misleading: it is obvious that each generation is going to interpret the past as it wishes, and no judgment can be objective. So it is the geography that is more important, and this is extremely difficult to define. But if we are to understand the work of art, we need to enquire into the circumstances of its creation: we must ask, what did this painting or sculpture or building signify when it first appeared? Only from such specific investigations can one proceed to general propositions about the state of art at any particular moment, and perhaps also about the state of society which produced the art.

Everyday urbanisms and the importance of place: Exploring the elements of the emancipatory smart city

Urban Studies ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 004209802097097
Author(s):  
Nancy Odendaal
Keyword(s):  
Smart City ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Social Issues ◽  
Transformational Change ◽  
Human Dimensions ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Visual Narrative ◽  
Technology Appropriation ◽  
Multiple Dimensions ◽  
Smart Urbanism

Two of the most striking features of smart city discourses are the centrality of technology as a driver of transformational change and the strange ‘placelessness’ of its visual narrative. Whether envisaged in Kenya or Singapore, the commercial smart city is represented as a ‘city in a box’, seemingly capable of solving complex social issues through algorithms and technical innovation. Recently a robust literature has emerged that is critical of the techno-determinism inherent in smart city discussions. This paper expands on this critique by arguing that by solely focusing on the material dimensions of technologically informed urban change, devoid of context, we miss an opportunity to uncover an important moment in contemporary urbanity. By foregrounding the human dimensions of technology appropriation and the interface with livelihoods in their particular spatial contexts, this paper consciously decentres the dominant smart city discourse by arguing for the foregrounding of local dynamics. This paper rejects the universalisms embedded in smart city promises and argues that by provincialising the idea of smart urbanism, opportunities are presented for understanding the true markers of contemporary urbanism. Critical debates on the smart city, and by extension the need to consider smart urbanism contextually and as an infrastructure, relationally, together with the conceptual insights provided by postcolonial science and technology studies, contribute to a proposed frame for researching the ongoing dynamic between contemporary urban life and technological innovation. Empirical vignettes from urban Africa are used to illustrate the multiple dimensions of the interface between livelihoods and technology appropriation.

George Eliot's Estuarial Form

2020 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 187-217
Author(s):  
Kyle McAuley
Keyword(s):  
Literary History ◽  
Formal Model ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Global Capitalism ◽  
Ecological System ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Reading Practices ◽  
Mill On The Floss ◽  
Ecological Form ◽  
Near Future

This essay recasts the central locale of The Mill on the Floss in order to show how the geography and society of George Eliot's novel function together as a conjoined ecological system. I show that the port at St. Ogg's is set on an estuary, and from this observation, I claim that the entanglement of multiple estuarial waters provides a formal model for the overall ecology of the novel. Referring to this system as “ecological form,” the essay shows how the characters’ misunderstanding of the estuarial nature of the St. Ogg's hydrography is the primary source of the communal divisions with which the novel is so famously riven. In so doing, this essay makes two methodological interventions, one local, and one slightly more global. In the first, I show how unsticking the progression of our criticism from that of a novel's plot—especially one with such a catastrophically strong telos as Mill’s—can allow us to view form and, particularly, geography as newly vital to literary history. This leads to the second intervention, in which I suggest that reading practices in an age of environmental collapse should look beyond disaster itself and toward affected communities’ systemic ties to those extraneous systems—economic, legal, imperial—that aid and abet disasters elsewhere and even ignore the potential for catastrophic reoccurrence in the near future. In other words, reading for water readily yields a wide-ranging map of global capitalism perhaps unexpectedly centered on a small town in Lincolnshire.

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