scholarly journals Curating #AanaJaana [#ComingGoing]: gendered authorship in the ‘contact zone’ of Delhi’s digital and urban margins

2021 ◽  
pp. 147447402199341
Author(s):  
Ayona Datta ◽  
Arya Thomas
Keyword(s):  
Mobile Phone ◽  
Contact Zone ◽  
Young Women ◽  
Power Dynamics ◽  
Space Technology ◽  
Women's Bodies ◽  
Gendered Authorship ◽  
The City ◽  
Self Authorship ◽  
Public Exhibition

This paper examines the curation of a month-long public exhibition titled #AanaJaana [#ComingGoing] in one of New Delhi’s busiest metro stations, as a form of self-authorship by young women from its digital and urban margins. #AanaJaana [#ComingGoing] is a metaphor for journeys, communications, connections, associations, interceptions, social networks and individual/collective behaviours, that is curated as women ‘see’ and ‘speak’ with/through their mobile phones. Using Marie Louise Pratt’s notion of ‘contact zone’, we examine #AanaJaana as a space of encounters that emerges by visually ‘composing-with’ as well as ‘learning-with’ the realities and constraints of space, technology and power. Based on self-authorship over a period of 6 months within a ‘safe space’ of a WhatsApp group of young women living in the urban margins, we draw attention to #AanaJaana as a set of crosscutting networks of power dynamics over women’s bodies across the home, mobile phone and the city. #AanaJaana refers to how young women in the margins negotiate the ‘freedoms’ of moving (aana) in online space with the ‘dangers’ of going out (jaana) into the city, or the restrictions of entering (aana) online space with the freedom of leaving (jaana) home. We argue first, that #AanaJaana is a space of confinement because of the infrastructural paralysis in the peripheries. Second that it is also at the same time translocally produced by referencing several textual, digital and material spaces of self-realisation. Finally, we argue that #AanaJaana is a space of intertextuality through encounters between emojis, shorthand, voice notes on the mobile phone, with parody and dark humour of their gendered experiences that can transform shame, humiliation and fear into reflection, resistance and agency. The paper concludes that as a polycentric practice, #AanaJaana offers an appropriate metaphor to expand the ‘contact zone’ in order to decolonise gendered knowledge and power across digital-analogue margins.

Effective Citizenship, Civil Action, and Prospects for Post-Conflict Justice in Yemen

2020 ◽  
Vol 52 (4) ◽  
pp. 754-758
Author(s):  
Stacey Philbrick Yadav
Keyword(s):  
Young Women ◽  
Cell Phones ◽  
Community Center ◽  
Volunteer Teachers ◽  
Civil Action ◽  
Internally Displaced ◽  
Rural Village ◽  
Youth Organization ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
The City

A woman takes on work repairing cell phones in a small town in the southern governorate of Lahj. In Aden, an ‘aqīla (neighborhood representative) refuses to authorize the marriage of an underage girl. In a rural village outside of Sana'a, women petition the shaykh for permission to build a community center in which they can market home crafts to other women. Young women and men in Ibb and in Hadramawt work as volunteer teachers and coordinate with very different municipal authorities to ensure children can learn. And in the divided city of Taiz, a youth organization trains internally displaced Yemenis in the maintenance of the solar technologies that are keeping the city running.

scholarly journals Prediction limits of mobile phone activity modelling

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 160900 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dániel Kondor ◽  
Sebastian Grauwin ◽  
Zsófia Kallus ◽  
István Gódor ◽  
Stanislav Sobolevsky ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Mobile Phone ◽  
Spatial Scales ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
Full Spectrum ◽  
Left Behind ◽  
Social Events ◽  
Prediction Limits ◽  
Spatio Temporal ◽  
City Structure ◽  
The City

Thanks to their widespread usage, mobile devices have become one of the main sensors of human behaviour and digital traces left behind can be used as a proxy to study urban environments. Exploring the nature of the spatio-temporal patterns of mobile phone activity could thus be a crucial step towards understanding the full spectrum of human activities. Using 10 months of mobile phone records from Greater London resolved in both space and time, we investigate the regularity of human telecommunication activity on urban scales. We evaluate several options for decomposing activity timelines into typical and residual patterns, accounting for the strong periodic and seasonal components. We carry out our analysis on various spatial scales, showing that regularity increases as we look at aggregated activity in larger spatial units with more activity in them. We examine the statistical properties of the residuals and show that it can be explained by noise and specific outliers. Also, we look at sources of deviations from the general trends, which we find to be explainable based on knowledge of the city structure and places of attractions. We show examples how some of the outliers can be related to external factors such as specific social events.

Hegemonic Masculinity and “Badness”

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-74
Author(s):  
Clare Choak
Keyword(s):  
Young Women ◽  
Hegemonic Masculinity ◽  
Women's Bodies ◽  
Urban Streets ◽  
Dominant Discourse ◽  
Everyday Lives ◽  
New Directions ◽  
The Relationship

The relationship between masculinity, crime, and violence has a long history, whereby hegemonic masculinity is utilized as a resource to create and sustain tough reputations “on road”, where everyday lives are played out on urban streets. Within the context of road culture—of which gangs are part—this is particularly significant given the hypermasculine focus. This paper considers Raewyn Connell’s (1995; 1997; 2000) work on hegemonic masculinity and emphasized femininity and develops it in new directions by exploring how these hegemonic identities are inscribed on women’s bodies. In the English context, the dominant discourse around young women “on road” is of that of passivity, as they are victims first and offenders second. An underexplored area is their role as perceived “honorary men” when adopting behavior associated with hegemonic masculinity, therefore how they bargain with patriarchy within these spaces is explored.

scholarly journals Anticipating Infertility: Egg Freezing, Genetic Preservation, and Risk

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lauren Jade Martin
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Analysis ◽  
Young Women ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Gender Norms ◽  
Reproductive Technology ◽  
Ontological Category ◽  
Women's Bodies ◽  
Marketing Literature ◽  
Cultural Anxieties ◽  
Egg Freezing

This article discusses the new reproductive technology of egg freezing in the context of existing literature on gender, medicalization, and infertility. What is unique about this technology is its use by women who are not currently infertile but who may anticipate a future diagnosis. This circumstance gives rise to a new ontological category of “anticipated infertility.” The author draws on participant observation and a qualitative analysis of scientific, mainstream, and marketing literature to identify and compare the representation of two different candidates for egg freezing: women with cancer and healthy young women. Although both populations experience anticipated infertility, their dichotomous portrayals as appropriate candidates are demonstrative of gender norms linking women to motherhood. Egg freezing is a concise illustration of how the medicalization of women’s bodies and bodily processes masks a host of cultural anxieties about aging, illness, reproduction, and risk.

Songs and Whispers

Sacred Sea ◽  
2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Thomson
Keyword(s):  
Lake Baikal ◽  
Young Women ◽  
Eastern Shore ◽  
Crack Open ◽  
The Road ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Local Residents ◽  
Northern Edge ◽  
The Moment ◽  
The City

Acrumpled and broken strand of asphalt rises at the northern edge of Ulan-Ude, wanders through the dark woods of the Khamar-Daban Mountains, and finally settles into a band of fertile bottom land in a narrow stretch of coastal plain approaching the eastern shore of Lake Baikal. A rattly old Toyota van skitters along the road, passing lonely farms and tiny villages that gather up out of nowhere and disappear just as quickly, domed churches that seem miles from any worshipers, and an occasional solitary babushka by the side of the road selling whatever she’s been able to squeeze from the earth or gather in the woods. There are seven of us riding this highway on this raw morning in October of 2000, crammed into the van and bobbing like buoys to its irregular rhythms—James and me from Boston, our guide Andrei Suknev, his colleague Igor and our driver Kim, all from the city of Ulan-Ude, and two young women who have also signed on with Andrei for a few days—Elisa, from France, and Chanda, from Canada. We’re all eating pine nuts that we bought from one of those women at a wide spot in the road—they’re called orekhi here—and washing them down with lemon soda from a huge plastic bottle. Andrei is showing us how to crack open the nuts’ hard shells with our front teeth and excavate their soft and pungent meat with our tongues. At an austere restaurant in a tiny village that Andrei tells us is called “Noisy Place,” we eat a lunch of rice and some sort of meat, dry bread, and a peculiar variation on borshch, and we pee in an outhouse across the road. We get back in the van and rumble on. We’re heading for a remote national park on Baikal’s eastern shore, but at the moment I’m not quite sure where we’re going. I’d asked Andrei to take us hiking and camping on the lakeshore, to introduce us to local residents, communities, and culture. He’s promised to do that, but he hasn’t provided much beyond the barest details, and none of us has been asking for more.

Territorial Integrity

Near Abroad ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerard Toal
Keyword(s):  
Mobile Phone ◽  
Air Force ◽  
The Self ◽  
Territorial Integrity ◽  
Russian Media ◽  
The Government ◽  
To Come ◽  
Russian Military ◽  
The City ◽  
The Town

On the Evening of August 7, 2008, Inal Pliyev was working late at his office in the center of Tskhinval(i). A former journalist, Pliyev was head of communications for the self-declared South Ossetian Republic. Earlier in the evening, Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili had declared a unilateral ceasefire after days of skirmishes between Georgian forces and South Ossetian militias. Pliyev, however, was still in the office because of information about increasing Georgian artillery and armor concentrations near the town. “First we heard what sounded like grenade launchers—after the years of conflict everyone here knows what sound is made by which weapon. I did not pay much attention to that.” But when he heard the first sounds of Grad missiles, Pliyev turned off his computer and ran for his life. “All parts of the city came under fire simultaneously. It was so intense, that you couldn’t even register a fraction of time between explosions, there were multiple explosions every second. The fire was non-stop. Electricity and gas supplies were cut off during the first minute of the shelling, and for the most part phone service was also cut off.” One shell fell next to the government building where Pliyev and his colleagues huddled. “The building shook so much that part of the ceiling bent down, and we ran into an underground bunker in a nearby non-government building. Explosions were becoming louder and even more frequent. We could not leave our hideout, and everyone was getting ready to die. Even more we feared being taken prisoner by Georgian soldiers. It was especially terrifying when we heard machine gun fire. Our only thought was to avoid being taken prisoner at any cost. Our only hope was for the Russian air force, we were waiting for it to come, so that Georgians would leave our city. But it wasn’t coming.” Pliyev had his mobile phone, and as its battery ran out he spoke to various Russian media outlets pleading for Russian military help.

scholarly journals Understanding shelter from a gender perspective: the case of Hawassa, Ethiopia

2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 463-480
Author(s):  
Faraz Hassan ◽  
Emma Grant ◽  
Sophie Stevens
Keyword(s):  
Women Elderly ◽  
Young Women ◽  
Elderly Women ◽  
Collaborative Study ◽  
International Institute ◽  
Average Income ◽  
Infrastructure Provision ◽  
Environment And Development ◽  
Female Headed Households ◽  
The City

The city of Hawassa is growing fast, driven by construction of a flagship industrial park that is expected to attract up to 60,000 workers by 2021, mostly young women, arriving without families or dependents, and living off very low wages. Along with these young women, female-headed households; divorced, separated and widowed women; elderly women; and women with disabilities all face severe/acute shelter vulnerabilities. These groups are most likely to struggle to access both formal and informal shelter, related to their below-average income levels but also to other forms of bias and discrimination. This paper draws out key findings on gender and housing from a collaborative study investigating shelter provision in Hawassa, part of a wider research study on inclusive cities in East Africa led by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED). It aims to highlight specific constraints faced by women in accessing shelter, and around such issues as informality, safety and security, and infrastructure provision.

scholarly journals The time varying network of urban space uses in Milan

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alba Bernini ◽  
Amadou Lamine Toure ◽  
Renato Casagrandi
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Mobile Phone ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Temporal Analysis ◽  
Mobile Phone Data ◽  
Natural Environments ◽  
Urban Structure ◽  
Land Uses ◽  
Population Mobility ◽  
The City

AbstractIn a metropolis, people movements design intricate patterns that change on very short temporal scales. Population mobility obviously is not random, but driven by the land uses of the city. Such an urban ecosystem can interestingly be explored by integrating the spatial analysis of land uses (through ecological indicators commonly used to characterize natural environments) with the temporal analysis of human mobility (reconstructed from anonymized mobile phone data). Considering the city of Milan (Italy) as a case study, here we aimed to identify the complex relations occurring between the land-use composition of its neighborhoods and the spatio-temporal patterns of occupation made by citizens. We generated two spatially explicit networks, one static and the other temporal, based on the analysis of land uses and mobile phone data, respectively. The comparison between the results of community detection performed on both networks revealed that neighborhoods that are similar in terms of land-use composition are not necessarily characterized by analogous temporal fluctuations of human activities. In particular, the historical concentric urban structure of Milan is still under play. Our big data driven approach to characterize urban diversity provides outcomes that could be important (i) to better understand how and when urban spaces are actually used, and (ii) to allow policy makers improving strategic development plans that account for the needs of metropolis-like permanently changing cities.

City Space, Technology, Popular Culture: The Modernism of Paul Strand and Charles Sheeler's Manhatta

2002 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-106 ◽  
Author(s):  
JUAN A. SUÁREZ
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Suspension Bridges ◽  
Space Technology ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
High Rise ◽  
City Space ◽  
Charles Sheeler ◽  
History Of ◽  
The City

Reputedly, painter Charles Sheeler and photographer Paul Strand's Manhatta is the first significant title in the history of American avant-garde cinema. It is a seven-minute portrait of New York City and focuses on those features which make the city a modern megalopolis – the traffic, the crowds, the high-rise buildings, the engineering wonders, and the speed and dynamism of street life. The film strives to capture rhythmic and graphic patterns in the movements and shapes of cranes, trains, automobiles, boats, steam shovels, suspension bridges, and skyscrapers. Due to the dominance of technology, the entire urban landscape appears in the film as a machine-like aggregate of static and moving parts independent from human intention.

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