Abstract
Online Territories is an edited collection that seeks to provide a detailed account of contemporary research into diverse facets of computer-mediated communication and social interaction. The ‘central rationale’ for the book, as the editors see it, is driven by the need ‘for further, research-based contextualization of [and critical interventions into] preexisting theories related with, for example, globalization, mobility, citizenship and civic participation, socio-spatial dynamics and network society’ (p. 1).
This ambitious agenda is pursued via two angles of approach: (1) an understanding of ‘online practices and spaces not as distinct and isolated pursuits’, but as closely tied to everyday, offline milieus (p. 2); and (2) that any account of ‘online territories must account for the interplay between situated individual and social practice, and global processes’ (p. 2). As such, Online Territories can be situated within, and makes strong contributions to, at least three strands of existing scholarship: that which is dedicated to challenging the ‘romanticizing attributes associated with the online’ (p. xi) that were characteristic of early, especially techno-boosterist, internet commentary; that which is concerned with critically reevaluating globalization (especially ‘deterritorialization’) discourses by, among other things, highlighting the importance of bringing ‘the social logics of boundary making, maintenance and negotiation clearly into the vision of contemporary (online) media studies’ (p. 2); and, finally, that which is concerned with mapping the ‘ever-growing popularity of online communications’ and the ‘diverse and complex shapes’ (p. 1) that these social interactions take.
The collection is organized into three thematic sections, each with its own short introduction. The first, entitled ‘Everyday Intersections’, echoes the sentiments of other critics that the internet is now an embedded part of our lives and that, as they ‘enter the realm of the banal, they become significant sources for social and economic change’ (p. 10). Contributions in this section explore: US soldiers’ use of YouTube in the ‘construction, reproduction and transmission of “normal” or “everyday” activities’ (p. 17); everyday domestic contexts and how they shape people’s encounters with online pornography on the one hand and internet gambling on the other; and fan cultures, which prompt a ‘reevaluation of audiences’ impact on the shape and structure of the internet’ (p. 50). An outstanding contribution to this section is Kristoffer Gansing’s thought-provoking study of the ‘functional ambiguity’ of spam in which he reconceives of spam as ‘ambiguous waste product and excess of communication’ (p. 90). The contributions to this first section make a particularly welcome addition to scholarship on the everyday uses of the internet as well as to broader studies of everyday life.
The second section traverses questions of citizenship, public space and online communication. It includes contributions that explore communication and ‘glocal’ development challenges in contexts, such as East Africa, where internet access is patchy at best; a critical reevaluation of online feminism and the ‘dramatic defeat’ it is said to have experienced as ‘a politics of gender subversion’ (p. 132); an investigation of the extent of internet use by US-based social movements; and a study of music fans and the allies who ‘actively oppose the imposition of new consumption norms for digital distribution of commercial music’ (p. 185), such as the ‘insinuation’ of digital rights management into music-listening practices (p. 186). An especially strong contribution to this second section is David Phillips’s examination of ‘the interrelations among public space, surveillance practice and identity play’ (p. 172). The key contribution of this essay is Phillips’s differentiation between visual surveillance and what he (drawing from Foucault) terms ‘actuarial surveillance’: that is, ‘the systematic, analytic, methodological creation of normativity’ through ‘the observation and recording of each individual’s activities’ (p. 174).
Of the four chapters that form the third section, ‘Transnational/Translocal Nexuses’, three draw out different facets of, and methodological approaches in examining, diasporic−ethnic identities and the use of networked media. The fourth chapter in this section, by André Jansson, offers a fascinating account of Scandinavian development workers (‘expatriate professionals’) in Managua, Nicaragua. Drawing on philosopher Lieven De Cauter’s understanding of the operation of networked media technologies as ‘a form of capsule’, Jansson traces how these workers use mobiles and other forms of social media, such as Facebook, in ways that ‘absorb and isolate people from one another’ (p. 239), rather than connect them. In response, Jansson develops the concept of ‘cosmopolitan capital’ – defined by him as ‘a certain kind of interpretative, disembedding and re-embedding competence, and as a socially recognized and distinctive possession that may be exchanged into social capital at a global scale’ (p. 248, original emphasis) – as a possible countervailing force with the potential to be deployed in ways that ameliorate or resist processes of encapsulation (p. 251).
Completing the book is an excellent ‘Afterword’ by David Morley – although the title ‘Afterword’, which suggests a certain brevity, does not convey the real contribution that he makes with this extended, chapter-length piece. In it, Morley offers a detailed and thoughtful, if at times critical, commentary on (the editors call it a ‘response’ to) the contributions that make up Online Territories. He also uses the opportunity to expand on key themes articulated in the collection that resonate with his own past and present research – a body of work which figures strongly in, and informs the framing arguments set out by the editors in, the Foreword and the introductory essay to the book.
One reservation I have with this book is the decision by the editors to frame the project around the organizing rubric of ‘online territories’. It is a term that is deployed to capture the idea that what is needed are more ‘complex understanding[s] of territorial reconfiguration’ (p. 4). The editors stress that ‘the concept of online territory . . . does not refer to an exclusive realm of “online practices”’ (p. 5). Rather, they insist it is intended to highlight ‘the extensions and reconfigurations of pre-existing means of territorialization, be they cultural, economic, or geopolitical, as well as the potential for new types of social territories to take shape, enabled by online connectivity and sociability’ (p. 5). The reasoning is sound, but the term selected to convey this reasoning – that of ‘online territories’ – is problematic. To my mind, this title phrase does little to capture (or clarify) our complex engagements with overlapping territories and social practices that is the core concern of the book, and, in this way, perhaps, does something of a disservice to the very nuanced analyses that, for the most part, comprise the volume.
This issue aside, Online Territories is overall a strong collection that brings together detailed (micro-scale) analyses of ‘particular territories and identities’ (p. 11) which open up possibilities for (macro-scale) reexaminations and more complex views of ‘how global processes that in a certain light could be seen as deterritorialization may also entail, even depend upon, mutual processes of territorial struggle’ (p. 3), and all the cultural, economic, power, and geopolitical implications this involves.