Critical geography of Digital Social Innovation. “Reading for difference” the space and spatialities of socio-technological networks

The working paper “Critical geography of Digital Social Innovation. “Reading for difference” the space and spatialities of socio-technological networks in the augmented city” I am writing with Paolo Giaccaria has been presented by Paolo himself and discussed at the 21^th Annual STS Conference Graz 2023 „Critical Issues in Science, Technology and Society Studies“. This is the joint Annual Conference of the Science Technology and Society Unit of the Institute of Interactive Systems and Data Science of Graz University of Technology, the Inter-University Research Centre for Technology, Work and Culture (IFZ) and the Institute for Advanced Studies of Science, Technology and Society (IAS-STS)

The abstract of our presented contribution is below:

Critical geography of Digital Social Innovation. “Reading for difference” the space and spatialities of socio-technological networks in the augmented city

Institutionally promoted as well as grassroots Digitally-enabled Social Innovation (hereafter DSI) initiatives are mushrooming in worldwide cities, both influenced by and influencing in return the urban organisational logics, functional structures and operative processes. Despite over the last few years these attracted an increasing interest in a wide range of disciplines, they remain very marginal and almost unexplored in both human geography and STS studies. Our presentattion engages with the reasons underlying this trend and explain, building upon recent flourishing of critical geography analyses on cognate areas of digital methods, smart city and platform society, how the analysis of spatial implications of DSI can bring novel exploratory insights in TST studies, with special reference to post-growth theories. To this end we adopt Gibson-Graham’s tripartite methodological approach of “reading for difference” social agency, notably DSI initiatives. In so doing, the paper suggests that critical scholars’ limited attention toward DSI roots in a dominant polarised reading of DSI as neoliberal vs revolutionary; and in the massive association of DSI with the first pole due to the dominance of innovation management analyses, leaving underrated considerations on space and spatialities of DSI. Drawing on non- dualistic digital geography contributions, influenced by the material semiotic perspective of ANT, we therefore detect commonalities amongst diverse initiatives and genuinely emancipatory socio-technological agency of heterogenous networks in urban context. In so doing, the paper identifies the multiple issues of interest relevant for STS scholars in the analysis of how DSI is increasingly intervening in the multi-layered spaces of everyday urban life around the thematic nodes of representation, reproduction and power in the growth/post-growth divide.

Our DIGGEO@ESOMAS colleague Luis Martin Sanchez also presented an interesting contribute at the conference titled “Metaverse. Old and new urban issues in virtual cities”.