— CALL FOR PAPERS —
American Association of Geographers (AAG) Annual Meeting
Honolulu, Hawaii, April 16-20, 2024
Session Title: Digitally-enabled Social Innovation initiatives in the City
Organizers
Venere Stefania Sanna, University of Siena, Italy
Chiara Certomà, University of Turin, Italy
Paolo Giaccaria, University of Turin, Italy
Pouya Sepehr, University of Turin, Italy
One of the pivotal challenges in modern society involves understanding and governing the digital revolution, along with its sociopolitical repercussions. Moving beyond the uncritical technology and optimism inherent in digital capitalism, it is vital to contemplate the spatial, sociocultural, and politico-economic impacts stemming from the widespread permeation of digital technologies (Fields et al., 2020).
Cities, as hubs for the blossoming of Digitally-enabled Social Innovation (DSI) initiatives, particularly feel these impacts. DSI involves a variety of collaborative innovation practices, such as ‘fab-labs’, open software co-creators, and ‘citizen scientists’. These practices unite communities of innovators, who, with varying intentions—from strengthening and reforming to subverting neoliberal institutions—leverage digital technologies and internet connectivity to develop knowledge and solutions addressing a myriad of social needs. From enabling citizen participation and providing services to harnessing people’s creativity, DSI initiatives are proliferating and transforming both the structural and operational spaces of contemporary cities. The compactness of cities, coupled with high levels of connectivity, density, and potentially exponential creative contaminations, provides ideal conditions in terms of practicality, social acceptability, and effectiveness of proposed innovation.
However, the spatial dimensions implicated in, and created by, DSI practices have been notably underexplored in scientific literature. This oversight in considering DSI spatialities hinders a profound understanding of the sociopolitical implications of the ‘Digital Turn’ (Ash et al., 2018), which includes threats to social justice and sustainability, as well as strategies for constructing alternative platform futures (Graham, 2020).
Our session aims to delve into how alterations in the digital dimension influence the organization, comprehension, and operation of society across its various spatial dimensions. Specifically, the spatial structures that are both generated by and generate DSI initiatives, serving as sites and tools for the (re)production of power geometries, and fostering imaginaries and narratives about the city’s destiny, warrant consideration.
To this end, we welcome contributions that:
- Critically examine the space and spatialities of DSIs.
- Investigate, either qualitatively or quantitatively, the interaction between DSI practices and urban environments.
- Analyze the practices of innovator communities, considering the social, political, environmental, and cultural spaces in which they operate.
- Explore the primary socio-political, environmental, and cultural challenges posed by the digitalization of urban areas.
- Evaluate DSI’s role in fostering diverse economies that coexist with, and pose challenges to, neoliberal digital urbanism.
Submission
We envisage an in-person session in Hawaii.
Interested applicants should send abstracts (max. 250 words) to Venere S. Sanna (venere.sanna@unisi.it), Chiara Certomà (chiara.certoma@unito.it), Paolo Giaccaria (paolo.giaccaria@unito.it) and Pouya Sepehr (pouya.sepehr@unito.it) by Monday November 3rd. Accepted applicants will be notified by November 8th. Please send your registration PIN along or make sure you can get it within a few days after the deadline.
References
Ash, J., Kitchin, R., & Leszczynski, A. (2018). Digital turn, digital geographies? Progress in Human Geography, 42(1), 25-43.
de Wall, M. (2015). The City as Interface: How New Media Are Changing the City. Amsterdam: NAI
Fields, D., Bissell, D., & Macrorie, R. (2020). Platform methods: studying platform urbanism outside the black box, Urban Geography, 41(3), 462-468
Glimell, H. (2001). The Social Production of Technology: On the everyday life with things. Gotenborg: BAS Publisher
Graham, M. (2020). Regulate, replicate, and resist – the conjunctural geographies of platform urbanism, Urban Geography, 41 (3), 453-457.
Greenfield, A. (2017). Radical technologies: The design of everyday life. London: Verso
Han, H., Hawken, S. (2018), Introduction: Innovation and identity in next-generation smart cities, City, Culture and Society, 12, 1-4
Moulaert, F., Martinelli, F., Swyngedouw, E., Gonzalez, S., (2005) Towards Alternative Model(s) of Local Innovation. Urban Studies, 42, 1969-1990
Stokes, M. (2020) What system factors help DSI to grow and thrive? DSI4EU, Nesta. Retrieved from https://digitalsocial.eu/blog/145/a-first-run-of-the-dsi-index
van Dijk, J. A. G. M., & Hacker, K. (2003). The digital divide as a complex and dynamic phenomenon. Information society, 19(4), 315-32
[photo:C.Certomà]
Chiara Certomà 