Новости

Peer-reviewed open access journal “ПЕРЕКРЁСТКИ” (“CROSSROADS”) invites contributions to its special issue “A CRITICAL THEORY OF THE ‘PUBLIC’ FOR DIGITALLY MEDIATED URBANIZATION”.

The growing digitalization of human agency and habitat, as well as the proliferation of user-generated data, have significantly transformed the horizons and challenges of research in the social sciences and humanities. The most obvious and persistent factor in this change is a rapid growth in access by various knowledge-producing actors to technologies of information creation and transmission. In this way, digitalization has launched a process of the re-definition of the autonomy of academia and of academic research as practice in relation to other practices of knowledge production and transmission. One can notice that in academia the most intensively explored development horizon within this process is an orientation towards quantification and the computational analysis of collective human behavior. In this orientation, the very nature of big data and of the quantification process is often unequivocally presented as a public asset that simply has to be mastered and used. There are already arguments about digitalization and big data as, on the one hand, fragmenting the public sphere as well as privatizing the knowledge of society about itself and, on the other, creating new modes of collective action and thus challenging hegemonic agendas. However, there is a lack of a systematic theorizing of the influence of digitalization on the meanings and practices of the ‘public’.

The goal of this journal issue is to explore notions and practices of ‘public space’ – from ‘accessible’ and ‘transparent’ to ‘deliberated’ and ‘identity giving’. And, further, to discuss these notions and practices of ‘public space’ from the angle of the particular traits of reality that mark the turn to the digital humanities – new modes of data, new study methods, new types of researchers, as well as new types of recipients of research results. The expected outcomes of the publication hence are 1) the identification of those dimensions of urban processes in digitally mediated societies that are operationalized as ‘public space’ and as ‘public space’ making; and 2) the elaboration and discussion of concepts and methodological approaches to study and interpret these dimensions of urban processes from a critical theory perspective. The critical theory perspective in this case requires an exploration of the co-articulation between the techno-economic base and a technological bias, on the one hand, and utopias and ideologies of collective actions and political identities on the other. The editor of the special issue is Dr. Siarhei Liubimau (EHU Laboratory of Critical Urbanism). The journal issue’s focus is specified, but not reduced to following questions:

-          How does the value of transparency in digitalization agendas define what is public in cities? What modes of urbanity are thus emerging?

-          How do digital design tools impact on urban democracy? What are the digital biases of deliberative and participatory urban processes today?

-          How does a digital profile transform the ontology of political processes and urban politics?

-          What are the practices and conflicts of valuation in digitally mediated urbanization? 

-          Are there shifts in approaches to and methodologies of urban studies provoked by the boom of digital content?

-          How does the study of digitalization re-define the limits of the ‘urban’ in a ‘planetary urbanization’ perspective?

-          How do algorithms socially differentiate space?

Deadline for submissions – December 28, 2018.

Submissions must be provided in English.

Original articles, reviews should be e-mailed: perekrestki@ehu.lt