Tuesday, November 12th, 2024 12:00 – 13:30
HS 5 3/4
Prof. Roberta Hawkins University of Guelph, Canada
Digital disruptions: Technologies, nature and care
Additional Workshop: Tuesday, November 12th, 2024, 14:30 – 16:00
Tuesday, December 3rd, 2024 12:00 – 13:30
HS 5 3/4
Dr. Devran Koray Öcal University of Bern, Switzerland
Revisiting State Violence through Perpetrators’ Lenses: A Feminist Embodied and Everyday Analysis
Additional Workshop: Wednesday, December 4th, 2024, 09:00 – 12:30
Thursday, January 9th, 2025 14:00 – 15:15
Prof. Anke Strüver University of Graz, Austria
HS 4
Lebensmittel liefern lassen: Die Reorganisation häuslicher sozialer Reproduktion durch ortsbasierte Arbeitsplattformen
Additional Workshop: Thursday, January 9th, 2025, 15:45 – 17:15
Thursday, January 16th, 2025 12:00 – 13:30
Audimax
Dr. Maria Anne Fitzgerald Ashoka University, India
Writing Feminist Geographies through Patchwork Ethnography
Additional Workshop: Wednesday, January 15th, 2025, 09:00 – 13:00
Tuesday, November 12th, 2024
2:00 – 13:30
HS 5 3/4
Innrain 52e
Digital disruptions: Technologies, nature and care
In this presentation I explore the potential of digital technologies, like social media, digital mapping and e-mail to disrupt our understanding of and engagement with nature, conservation efforts and care. I begin by examining ‘Miss Costa’ a female white shark with a Twitter/X account. In 2016, she was captured, tagged and released near Massachusetts by a non-profit organization and self-described “scientific disruptor” called OCEARCH. OCEARCH named Miss Costa after a corporate sponsor (Costa sunglasses) and created a Twitter account under her name. @MissCostaShark’s tweets often include screenshots of maps showing where Miss Costa has recently been in the ocean, information that is available because OCEARCH fitted her with acoustic, accelerometer, and ‘smart position and temperature transmitting’ (SPOT) tags. Throughout the presentation I trace and critically consider practices of following Miss Costa, from researchers, environmentalists, digital storytellers and audiences. I contrast the spectacularized digital nature of Miss Costa with other examples of humans engaging with nature through technology in efforts to build relationships, envision better futures and disrupt human-nature divides. Inspired by feminist thinking, I focus on the everyday aspects of digital technological engagement like scrolling through social media feeds and consider how care shows up – or not – within these practices. I conclude the presentation by highlighting lessons learned that can be applied to sustainability and global development efforts.
Roberta Hawkins …
.. is an Associate Professor of Geography at the University of Guelph, Canada. Roberta teaches courses on human-environment relations, research methods and feminist theories. Her research expertise includes ethical consumption, digital media and environmental politics. She explores how everyday practices can lead to wider societal and environmental change. Roberta’s research is published in academic journals including Gender, Place and Culture and Geoforum. Most recently she co-authored the book: Higher Expectations: How to survive academia, make it better for others and transform the university.
Tuesday, December 3rd, 2024
12:00 – 13:30
HS 5 3/4
Innrain 52e
Revisiting State Violence through Perpetrators’ Lenses: A Feminist Embodied and Everyday Analysis
Geographers have extensively explored the theme of violence, examining its various forms, political implications, and impacts. Feminist geographers have significantly enriched this discourse by highlighting its often overlooked embodied and affective dimensions, challenging existing knowledge asymmetries. However, much of the focus has remained on delineating specific manifestations of violence and examining the gendered, racial, and discriminatory outcomes it produces. This focus can constrain our ability to analyze violence as an independent category, leading to the neglect of the complex motivations, intricacies, and contextual realities contributing to its emergence. Building on the intellectual contributions of feminist political geography this talk undertakes an in-depth analysis of the concept of state violence itself. Adopting an embodied and everyday perspective, the project specifically examines the case of state violence against Kurds in Turkey. It draws upon interviews with soldiers and police officers, who are potential agents of state violence, to investigate the underlying motivations, emotions, biases, and everyday interactions that precipitate the onset of state violence. By engaging with the lived experiences of these potential perpetrators, we not only gain a more nuanced perspective on the dynamics that lead to the emergence of state violence but also move beyond the notion of institutions like the military and police as monolithic entities. Instead, we reveal the often messy and contradictory nature of the state, composed of individuals whose actions and interactions are complex and multifaceted.
Devran Koray Öcal…
.. is a postdoctoral researcher at the Social and Cultural Geography Unit of Bern University in Switzerland. As a geographer with a specialization in political geography, Dr. Öcal’s research, writing, and teaching are centered on key topics such as state geographies, feminist geopolitics, migration, religion, and diaspora studies. Dr. Öcal completed both a BA and an MA in Political Science in Turkey before earning a Ph.D. in Geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2020. Following his doctoral research, which examined the political and social significance of Turkish-Sunni diaspora mosques in Germany, Dr. Öcal collaborated with Dr. Banu Gökarıksel and Betül Aykaç on a project investigating the geopolitical discourses surrounding the bodies of Afghan and Syrian refugees in Turkey. His current research delves into the dynamics of state violence through a feminist-embodied lens.
Donnerstag, 9. Januar 2025
4:00 – 15:15 Uhr
HS 4
Innrain 52e
Lebensmittel liefern lassen: Die Reorganisation häuslicher sozialer Reproduktion durch ortsbasierte Arbeitsplattformen
Gig-Plattformen, die Dienstleistungen zur sozialen Reproduktion an/in Haushalte vermitteln, werden zunehmend als urbane Infrastrukturen wahrgenommen (Barns 2019; Strüver & Bauriedl 2022; Zampoukos et al. 2024). Während kritische Wissenschaftler:innen die mit der digitalen Vermittlung verbundenen Arbeitsbedingungen, Profite und Probleme ausgiebig diskutieren, gibt es kaum eine Debatte über die häusliche (Re-)Organisation von Reproduktionsarbeit durch plattformvermittelte Dienstleistungen. Als mögliche technologische Lösung für die Krise der sozialen Reproduktion bieten Plattformen einen scheinbar bequemen Weg, häusliche Reproduktionsarbeiten zu externalisieren. Die Krise und ihre Effekte werden jedoch nicht auf gesellschaftlicher Ebene bearbeitet, sondern auf einzelne Haushalte verlagert; diese wiederum werden in medialen wie wissenschaftlichen Debatten kaum thematisiert. Mit einer feministischen Perspektive, die materialistische und poststrukturalistische Ansätze kombiniert, und anhand des Beispiels von Essensschnelllieferdiensten für Lebensmittel und verzehrfertige Mahlzeiten, argumentiert der Beitrag die Notwendigkeit, die Plattformisierung haushaltsnaher Dienstleistungen jenseits technologischer Machbarkeiten und Unsicherheiten auf die gesellschaftlich-institutionalisierte Organisation von sozialer Reproduktion hin zu durchleuchten.
Anke Strüver …
.. ist Professorin für Humangeographie mit Schwerpunkt Stadtforschung an der Universität Graz und forscht zu urbanem Alltagsleben mit Schwerpunkt Subjektivierungs- und Verkörperungsprozesse entlang der Themen Gesundheit, Bewegung, Ernährung und Digitalisierung. Neben ihrer Arbeitsgruppe urbanHEAP (urban health and everyday activities take place) leitet sie das RCE-Graz Styria–Zentrum für nachhaltige Gesellschaftstransformation, dessen Projekte sich alle auf die Verknüpfung von sozialer Gerechtigkeit mit ökologischer Nachhaltigkeit stützen.
Thursday, January 16th 2025
2:00 – 13:30
Audimax
Innrain 52a
Ágnes-Heller-Haus
Writing Feminist Geographies through Patchwork Ethnography
Traditional ethnographic methods tend to overlook the interconnectedness of the personal and professional responsibilities of researchers. By highlighting these intersectionalities, patchwork ethnography fosters a reflexive practice that acknowledges the researcher’s positionalities and the influence of their lived experiences on the research process. This reflexivity is crucial for writing feminist geographies that critically engage with issues concerning identity, space, belongingness, resistance and agency, among other aspects. Further, patchwork ethnography offers a flexible, non-linear and adaptative methodological approach to uncovering questions related to the inherent power dynamics of spatial processes. By embracing these complexities of fieldwork, patchwork ethnography weaves together different narratives, voices, perspectives and possibilities that reflect the diverse experiences of people and places – a key question for feminist geography. Deploying patchwork ethnography as a feminist geographer entails centring voices, which not only challenge hegemonic narratives, but also emphasize on the importance of context in understanding geographical and cultural intersections. Drawing from my doctoral research which relied on patchwork ethnography to situate the diverse lived experiences of young people from cross-cultural families in Kolkata in India, I discuss how patchwork ethnography challenges traditional ethnographic methodologies and epistemologies by foregrounding the identity experiences of individuals whose life histories are silenced, invalidated and marginalized by dominant narratives.
Maria Anne Fitzgerald …
.. is a feminist geographer. She is a Senior Writing Fellow at the Centre for Writing and Communication in Ashoka University. Coming from a culturally blended family provoked her to document the ‘in-between spaces’ and everyday experiences of young people from cross- cultural families in India for her doctoral study. Some of these stories are posted on her collaborative blog ‘makingspace’. Her writing is honed by personal identity experiences of growing up in small-town Thiruvalla, post-colonial Calcutta and metropole Delhi in India. She also pens thoughts on emotions, belongingness, liminality and place-making from a geographical perspective. Her research interests include: geographies of young people/youth, social geographies, feminist methodologies, creative visual methods, auto- ethnography, feminist interventions in academic spaces, DEIJ advocacy research and the Anglo-Indian community. She advocates for critical thinking and writing using a feminist lens.