As regular readers of this blog know, I am undertaking my bicycle PhD with Griffith University, School of Professional Studies. I am using Feminist New Materialisms (FNM) to explore how bicycles enable or constrain rural African girls’ access to education. I need to better understand FNM (which is essentially Quantum Physics applied to Social Science/Education). To do this, I want to read, talk, process and write about FNM with others who know what the heck I’m on about as a way to bounce ideas around and learn more.
We
meet once a month and the time came around pretty quick for our September
meeting.
I
was delighted!
2nd Feminist New Materialisms Special interest Group (FNM SIG) Meeting
In keeping with the ethical intent of fNM, Sherilyn and I intend using our forum as a way of flattening power hierarchies within and across the Academy. (We are currently co-authoring a publication on this exact topic).
This means that, as our meetings progress, we will be showcasing research from experienced (academics) and emerging researchers (candidates). So we invite all the participants to let us know if they would like to present their research ideas/dilemmas to the group for some open and honest feedback, or as a way to process and work through areas of research ‘stickiness’.
At
this FNM SIG meeting, we have a guest presentation by Prof Simone Fullagar and
Dr Wendy O’Brien (and Dr Adele Pavlidis who unfortunately could not make it) whose
book, Feminism
and a Vital Politics of Depression and Recovery, has just been published.
See more about the book at the end of the post.
Congratulations!
Image: Palgrave
After their presentation, we had open question/discussion time before moving into a group activity in order to collate some key terms that have emerged thus far.
The stimulus materials (see 2 attachments) for this meeting were provided by Prof Fullagar. The materials are an extract from their new book (Introduction) and an article that is structured around an interview with Karen Barad – a much quicker way of accessing her ideas than reading Meeting the Universe Halfway.
In their informal presentation, Prof. Fullagar and Dr O’Brien shared insights about what it was like to conduct the research, how the process impacted them and some ‘moments of rupture’ they experienced.
The discussion was super interesting as different people were triggered by different aspects of what was shared. I am very keen to hear more about how people are actually applying FNM approaches in practice. This is one of the first opportunities I have had to read FNM work (readings) and then directly question the researchers who have undertaken a full-scale FNM framing. Insightful and inspiring!
We
all felt the time went too quickly – we could have talked another 2 hours at
least!
It
is an aim of mine as co-convenor of the SIG to have an activity that collaborately
produces some sort of output for each meeting. For this session it was a Wordle – Word Cloud.
We
wanted to capture some of the key terms or concepts that the participants are
aware of – or that came out of the readings. Here is what we created:
GU GIER: FNM SIG 2nd Meeting. Wordle
It was a very moving, inspirational and generative session.
Like many other who attended, I went back to my desk and made
copious notes about what had bubbled up for me and what aspects has resonance with
my own bicycle PhD research project.
Here is more info about their book: Drawing upon insights from feminist new materialism the book traces the complex material-discursive processes through which women’s recovery from depression is enacted within a gendered biopolitics. Within the biomedical assemblage that connects mental health policy, service provision, research and everyday life, the gendered context of recovery remains little understood despite the recurrence and pervasiveness of depression.
Rather than reducing experience to discrete biological, psychological or sociological categories, feminist thinking moves with the biopsychosocialities implicated in both distress and lively modes of becoming well. Using a post-qualitative approach, the book creatively re-presents how women ‘do’ recovery within and beyond the normalising imperatives of biomedical and psychotherapeutic practices.
By pursuing the affective movement of self through depression this inquiry goes beyond individualised models to explore the enactment of multiple self-world relations. Reconfiguring depression and recovery as bodymind matters opens up a relational ontology concerned with the entanglement of gender inequities and mental (ill) health.
My abstract for the upcoming Pedagogies in the Wild Conference has been accepted!
This is great news because I already have an abstract accepted for the international 2019 New Materialist Reconfigurations of Higher Education Conference(Dec 2-4th 2019) and this conference follows straight after (4-6th December) and is at the same place – the University of the Western Cape (Cape Town, South Africa).
I am working towards a research trifecta: 2 conferences and fieldwork in the one trip.
This conference is being affectionately referred to ‘the D & G conference’.
That is because it focuses on integrating the work of two highly influential scholars whose work is transdisciplinary and has had ‘epic consequence’ in many fields – Deleuze and Guattari. Gilles Deleuze is a philosopher and Felix Guattari is a psychoanalyst. Some their most influential works are: Anti-Oedipus, What Is Philosophy? and A Thousand Plateaus. They have written extensively together on an array of topics. In particular for my project, their work has been foundational in extending New Materialists understandings.
The Pedagogies in the Wild Conference 2019 is being run for the third time and is solely focused on unpacking, exploring and apply Deleuze-Guattarian thinking and approaches.
As many regular readers of this blog know, my research is complexified by interrogating various aspects of power relations – such as gender in/justice, post-colonialism, and what/who are academic/research/educational ‘experts’.
The session I will be presenting is based on a publication I currently writing with my amazingly brave PhD Supervisor Dr Sherilyn Lennon.
Title: Cycling-with-through-and-on the edge of the PhD supervisor-candidate relationship: A post-humanist bike ride to a different place.
Abstract: Traditionally, the PhD supervision relationship is predicated on a supervisor as expert – supervisee as learner/novice model of knowledge transmission. Most of the supervisory work is performed either on the university campus or via digital channels that allow the ‘expert’ to direct the conversation and establish the performance expectations for both candidate and supervisor. But what might be possible if the formalities and associated materialities of this power structure were to be disrupted and reframed?
This session presents insights that emerged when a PhD candidate and her Supervisor shared a bayside bicycle ride in Brisbane, Australia, to see what would happen. While the candidate was an expert
bike rider, her Supervisor was far less experienced and somewhat anxious about
her (st)ability. The bicycle ride was viewed as a
way of deliberately disrupting and displacing traditional notions around
academic performances, spaces of learning and who gets to navigate.
What emerged was surprising,
revealing and uncomfortable.
The bicycle ride enabled
encounters with/in the world/self that worked to queer the way in which both
Supervisor and candidate understood their relationship. We contend that the
candidate/supervisor relationship is an iterative and dynamic entanglement of
forces wherein subjectivities, bodily performances, past experiences, fears,
technologies, planned and unplanned encounters are forever and always
entangled.
Influenced by Baradian philosophy,
this session focuses on the material-discursive-affective phenomena that
emerged as the experience of riding-with the candidate/supervisor. In this way “systems of entrapment that manifest power relations in the academy” and “instigate codes of conduct and…exclusionary practices that can limit how academic knowledges…are produced” (Charteris et al., 2019, p. 2) are able to be troubled, re-thought and re-balanced.
My PhD Supervisor Dr Sherilyn Lennon and I on our bike ride. Sat. 22nd June, 2019.
What is Pedagogies in the Wild Conference 2019?
Here is more about the conference: The recent #Rhodesmustfall and #feesmustfall protests have set South African higher education on a new course towards transformation, focusing on equitable access to higher education, Africanisation and decolonisation.
Similar movements have reverberated across the globe,
addressing issues of neoliberalism, for example in Canada, the UK, the
Netherlands and Chile; racism, as in Ghana and the US; and curfews on women
students in India.
This has raised important questions regarding knowledge
production; continuing structural racism, patriarchy, homophobia and
transphobia; the use and value of western theorists in research and curricula;
and who gains epistemological and physical access to higher education.
On the other hand, we have seen many productive junctures
between pedagogy, education studies and the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari.
In particular, there has been a focus on cartography, schizoanalysis, corporeal
theorising, rhizomatic learning and nomadic thought in socially just
pedagogical praxis.
These junctures and innovative genealogies and
methodologies can both address these issues and be further improved and made
more precise by engagements with what it means to transform and reconfigure
pedagogies and practices in higher education.
Image: Pedagogies in the Wild 2019
My Conference Stream – Topic 2. Spaces, Spatiality and Unschooling
Topic 2. Spaces, Spatiality and Unschooling: Places of/and/un/Learning in Higher Education
How can we challenge assumptions
such as ‘knowledge belongs to experts’ in favour of
materialist/experimental/experiential collaborations in teaching and learning?
Expanded Conference Topic 2
Higher education spaces are usually considered in relation
to how they optimise student learning and, increasingly, how they optimise
marketing potential to attract new students.
In addition, meanings of ‘space’, ‘place’, ‘environment’ and
‘context’ are often elided, and it is taken for granted that learning happens
in classrooms, seminar rooms and lecture halls.
Such discourses take space for granted as a neutral background
on which human endeavour is located.
Unschooling (in a meta sense rather than the narrow sense of
homeschooling) resists this kind of pedagogy in favour of building real
communities and replacing dry, nationalist agendas with different kinds of training
programs, learning opportunities and methodologies, apprenticeships,
internships and mentorships.
Unschooling thus represents a material politics aimed at
genuine social freedom and enjoyable learning. Normative ways of understanding
space and schooling are challenged by Deleuze-Guattarian understandings which,
instead, conceptualise space as an entangled ‘constellation of human–nonhuman
agencies, forces and events’ (Taylor, 2013: 688) within which objects, bodies
and things do surprising and important if often unnoticed and mundane work as
material agents and actants.
Theoretically, such work draws on and takes forward the rich
traditions of feminist and postmodernist understandings of space developed by
Doreen Massey, Henri Lefebvre, and Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophy of space and
striation.
This theme therefore wishes to open up debates about higher
education spaces by considering questions such as:
What is the role of architecture, design and infrastructure in higher education?
How might the materialities of higher education spaces and places be conceptualised via inter-, multi- and post-disciplinary frameworks?
How can we take account of the importance of places of informal learning?
How does the iterative materialisation of space-time-matter come to matter in higher education spaces?
How is higher education being spatially reconfigured in relation to global flows of bodies?
Which/ whose bodies matter in higher education spaces?
What new spatial imaginaries are needed for higher education to thrive?
How can feminist new materialisms in its overlaps and divergences with Deleuze-Guattarian philosophy aid us to produce new understandings of space-place-matter entanglements in higher education?
How can we challenge assumptions such as ‘knowledge belongs to experts’ in favour of materialist/experimental/experiential collaborations in teaching and learning?
What kinds of material and affective potential does unschooling offer us for thinking about curriculum development in Higher Education.
The theoretical framing I am using for my bicycle-education PhD is feminist New Materialisms (fNM). Actually, it is more than just a philosophical perspective and as a doctoral researcher, I have to understand this ethico-onto-epistemological approach super well in order to apply it to my PhD.
I am lucky that my supervisor Dr Sherilyn Lennon is already immersed in this field and has been an invaluable resource and guide in unpacking FNM complexities.
In a recent meeting, I said to Sherilyn that I wanted/needed more time to process and experiment with fNM approaches. I asked her if there was any academic Special Interest Groups (SIG) she knew that I could join. She had been part of an informal fNM SIG previously, but it had disbanded due to lack of official support. So, the opportunity and need was there to establish an official fNM reading/discussion group at Griffith Uni.
Success! We now have an official FNM SIG at Griffith!
We plan to start
with a monthly reading and discussion group and then see what organically
happens as opportunities present and requests are made.
Our first meeting was on Thursday 1st August 2019 and we had 12 attendees.
The first meeting
was semi-structured with the discussion focus being: The emergence of feminist
New Materialisms.
The two stimulus resources
were:
Reading: Pierre, E. S. (2014). A brief and personal history of post qualitative research: Toward “post inquiry”. Journal of curriculum theorizing, 30(2).
We started with a welcome and an introduction of attendees: name, connection to Uni and how we plugged into fNM – and an acknowledgment that ‘matter matters’ to set the scene.
We wanted to keep the discussion open to whatever came up, so we had three questions (traffic light ) for people to think about and write their answers down on coloured post-its. Teachers call this a ‘think, pair, share’ activity, which is great because everyone contributes individual ideas to the collective discussion.
Here are our traffic (green = enabling, yellow= interesting, red =constraining) light questions and responses.
Red responses
Orange responses
Green responses
‘Traffic light’ questions
Then we formed smaller groups to share and discuss
our answers – and whatever else bubbled up.
Each group discussed different aspects and ideas.
We put all the stick notes on the wall to create
a gallery walk so we could pass by and read other people’s thoughts and ideas.
It was a way to see what other groups discussed and it was super interesting to
see what other people were wrestling with.
Sherilyn pulled one idea off the wall for the whole group to discuss in more detail.
Dr Sherilyn Lennon
The time went so quick!
Sherilyn and I wanted the meeting to honour central fNM tenets – like being open to change and what emerges in a moment. I also really like the idea of not just discussing ideas, but also actively and collaboratively producing something original (gallery wall) that did not exist before.
It is very FNM to recognise and (re)produce matter that can only be created in that very particular ‘entangled’ moment made up of the room, ideas, bodies, histories, location, identities, artefacts, concepts and all the other processes and practices that made the meeting what it was.
The meeting was a great start and we got very positive feedback.
It will take a few meetings to get into the
groove, but I like having a semi-structured activity (with an collective production)
that can then opened up and modified as the groups see fit.
We will be having one meeting each month for the rest of 2019 and I am very much looking forward to it!
A massive big thank you to all the participants and to GIER for their support.
Over the past 20 years, New Materialism has become an umbrella term used to represent a range of theoretical perspectives that share the re-turn to a focus on matter. It is an emerging theoretical field that encompasses four main streams: Speculative Realism, Object-oriented ontology (OOO), Actor-Network Theory (ANT) and feminist New Materialisms (fNM).
In the last 15 years in particular, fNM have gained considerable attention as a consequence of a unique approach to considering the agency of all matter. In using such understandings habitual human-centric ways of thinking, doing and being are disrupted as an ethico-onto-epistemological approach emerges. This approach is capable of bringing together multiple disciplines as it redistributes agency through material, discursive and affective forces.
European Universities (in particular Utrecht Uni which has a New Materialism Research Centre) have enthusiastically adopted fNM and are currently the most active researchers in the field. While Australia has a growing pool of fNM scholars, a similar uptake is yet to be seen here. This is surprising considering that the movement has been primarily driven by a number of internationally-celebrated Australian feminist scholars including Rosi Braidotti, Elizabeth Grosz, Claire Colebrook, Vicki Kirby, Bronwyn Davies and Jane Kenway.
As an emerging methodology, fNM is being taken prominently in the field of educational research. Those working in this field are contributing significant insights while laying the foundations for a profound shift in the way we come to understand educational issues, teacher education, and professional and educational practice-based learning.
At Griffith, we have a number of academics working with ANT, but few engaging with fNM. My supervisor, Dr Sherilyn Lennon, is publishing in this space and I am using feminist New Materialist thinking in my PhD. Given the excitement and emerging nature of this way of thinking, a fNM SIG at Griffith University provides an opportunity to directly engage in the discussion and lead a feminist New Materialist Research Group that will brings together PhD Candidates, academics from Griffith and other institutions, scholars and interested parties to more deeply, critically, creatively and actively engage with fNM. The field of FNM is still being chartered. This makes it an emergent and dynamic space in which to be researching.
The aim of this fNM SIG is to:
To build a vibrant and productive community of FNM researchers and professionals who cross-pollinate ideas while growing new research projects
To participate and contribute in this emergent theoretical field
To bring together researchers with trans-disciplinary and cross-institutional knowledge as a means of creating hybrid rigour
To support GU HDR candidates who are using FNM thinking
To grow research, researchers and research practices and networks
Establish Griffith/GIER as active in the FNM space
Leverage and extend Australian feminist scholarship
I am delighted to share this story. As well as being an incredibly inspirational story and testament to Dinesh Palipana’s unique fortitude and character, this story showcases some of the pioneering work that my university is doing. …And it is totally bike related! I’ve been working at Griffith for over 5 years now. I am continually impressed with the reach, impact and significant contributions Griffith makes to improve society. Last year, I posted about Griffith design graduate and PhD candidateJames Novak’s global award-winning world’s first 3D printed bicycle – also unreal!! This story is about how Dinesh and his team turned an accident he had during his PhD into a scientific-bike research breakthrough. This article was originally published by Griffith News earlier this year. Here it is in full. Enjoy! NG.
Griffith medical graduate and Gold
Coast University Hospital junior doctor Dinesh Palipana thinks about
walking a lot, since a car accident left him a quadriplegic part-way through
his medicine degree.
Now he’s thinking about pushing the pedals of a
specially-adapted recline bike, and thanks to electronic muscle stimulation,
he’s actually moving, in what is the first step towards a world-first
integrated neuro-musculoskeletal rehabilitation program, being developed at the
Gold
Coast Health and Knowledge Precinct (GCHKP).
Griffith biomechanical scientists and engineers Professor
David Lloyd, Dr Claudio Pizzolato and his team, together with Dinesh as
both researcher and patient, are aiming to use their ground-breaking 3D
computer-simulated biomechanical model, connected to an electroencephalogram
(EEG) to capture Dinesh’s brainwaves, to stimulate movement, and eventually
recovery.
Thinking about riding a bike
“The idea is that a spinal injury or neurological patient
can think about riding the bike. This generates neural patterns, and the
biomechanical model sits in the middle to generate control of the patient’s
personalised muscle activation patterns. These are then personalised to the
patient, so that they can then electrically stimulate the muscles to make the
patient and bike move,” says Professor Lloyd who is also from Griffith’s Menzies
Health Institute Queensland.
“It’s all in real-time, with the model adjusting the amount
of stimulation required as the patient starts to recover.
“We’re in the early stages of research and we’re having to
improvise with our equipment, however we know we have shown our real-time
personalised model works, basically like a digital twin of the patient.”
Dr
Palipana is excited to be part of such novel research in his own backyard.
“I
have a selfish and vested interest in spinal cord injury research and I’m
completely happy to be the guinea pig,” Dr Palipana says.
“We’ve
had equipment for many years where people passively exercise using stationary
bikes, and stationary methods where people get on and the equipment moves their
legs for them. The problem is you really need some stimulation from the brain.
“As
the years go by we’re starting to realise that the whole nervous system is very
plastic and it has to be trained, so actually thinking about moving the bike or
doing an activity stimulates the spinal cord from the top down and that creates
change.”
This
top down, bottom up approach is novel, with the model effectively providing a
substitute connection between the limbs and the brain where it was previously
broken when the spinal cord was injured.
The
neuro-rehabilitation research will dovetail with exciting research by Griffith
biomedical scientist, Associate Professor James St John, who has had promising
results for his biological treatment using olfactory (nasal) cells, to create
nerve bridges to regenerate damaged spinal cords.
Establishing new neural pathways
“You use the modelling to recreate the connection, and over
time, with the science of Associate Professor James St John, you establish new
neural pathways. So over time patients will be less dependent on the model to
control the bike movement and it will move back to their own control, with
their regenerating spinal cord and their reprogrammed neural pathways,” says
Professor Lloyd.
Associate Professor James St John hopes to move into human
clinical trials in the GCHKP within the next 2-3 years, and in parallel
Professor Lloyd and his team hope to refine their rehab testing with Dinesh,
and develop the technology with leading global companies in exoskeleton design.
These companies, could in turn, be attracted into the 200-hectare GCHKP.
“In ten years we want to be a one-stop shop for spinal cord
injury and complex neurological patients,” Professor Lloyd says.
“I’m just really lucky to be well-positioned here where
it’s all happening and I want to be involved as much as possible as a doctor
and a potential scientist,” says Dr Palipana.
“It’s my university, my hospital, my city – it’s just
really nice to be a part of that.”
In this post, we look at a recent publication by Mike Lloyd, entitled The non-looks of the mobile world: a video-based study of interactional adaptation in cycle-lanes.
Mike Lloyd is
an Senior Lecturer in Cultural Studies with Victoria University (Wellington,
NZ). His research interests include ethnomethodology, sociology of everyday
life, cycling and interaction and more recently video methodologies.
I initially contacted Mike after reading his article about
NZ MTB trail rage – which was an absolute delight.
Since then, this blog has previously hosted two of Mike’s
articles:
Mike is coming to Brisbane in November for the International Cycling Safety Conference. So we are hoping to go for a ride together! Woohoo!
Image: Mike Lloyd (2019)
Article: The non-looks of the mobile world
In this particular article, Mike examines how cyclists and pedestrians in cycle-lane
space adapt their interactions with each other, paying particular attention to
the role of looking and non- looking as it unfolds moment-by-moment.
Any bike rider will be able
to read and totally appreciate the happenings in this article.
It is very interesting exploring how differences between pedestrians ‘doing and being oblivious’ impact cyclists in bike lanes.
I also like the analytical focus of dissecting action and the absence of looking – or non-looks. Original, interesting and pertinent to all cyclists!
Other key concepts from
this article that stand out are: the gaze to shift another pedestrian, direction
of views, standing in bike lanes, people getting out of cars, pedestrians and
mobile phones, ‘observer’s maxim’ moving for public transport and my favourite:
glance, action, apology.
Creatively, Mike uses video still data from a bicycle Go-Pro to explain key theoretical concepts and outcomes.
His writing is well researched, interesting and entertaining.
This article is valuable contribution
to extend discussions of how bicycles and cycle-lane use feature within
mobility, space/infrastructure and situational interactions discourse.
This
empirical study uses video data to examine interactional adaptation between
cyclists and pedestrians in a relatively new cycle-lane. Existing research on
intersections shows order is achieved through the frequent use of a
look-recognition-acknowledgement sequence. Whereas this is found in the
cycle-lane interactions, there is also an important divergent technique which
on the surface seems less cooperative.
Others are
made to cede space based on ‘doing and being oblivious’, in short, forms of
non-looking force others to take evasive action and subtly alter their line of
travel. Here the dynamic nature of this obliviousness is shown through empirical
examples.
Even though it is not always easy to
distinguish between the two forms of non-looking, it is concluded that ‘doing
oblivious’, whilst possibly annoying for others, is most probably harmless, but
there are good reasons to be more concerned about ‘being oblivious’, for it may
lead to collisions between pedestrians and cyclists.
Aspects of
non-looking provide an important addition to knowledge of the mobile world,
suggesting we renew attention to specific sites where people concert their
movements in minutely detailed ways.
I got an email yesterday saying that my abstract submission for the 10th Annual New Materialisms Conference of Reconfiguring Higher Education has been accepted!
Woohoo!
This conference will be held at University of the Western Cape (Cape Town, South Africa) from 2-4 December 2019.
This is great news!
I have been working furiously on my Ethics Submission. Ethics continues to be an epic mission because of the international fieldwork aspect where I will be bike riding with locals (the Ethics board want Risk Assessments, Ethics for me, the project and the locals). This means an added level of evaluation, justification and paperwork, more so than if I just had local Brisbane participants. But I am up for the challenge!
So for this event, aside from the opportunity to participate in an international theory/practice conference, I am also engineering this trip to work in with my fieldwork.
I am very excited! There are a few big NM names also presenting, including:
Conference Streams
There are 6 conference streams this year. They are:
New materialities, decolonialities, indigenous knowledges
Slow scholarship
Arts-based pedagogies/research in HE
Neurotypicality, the undercommons and HE
New materialist reconfigurings of methodology in HE
Political ethics of care, the politics of affect, and socially just pedagogies
Image: Macro Morocco
My Abstract
Title: An athlete-teacher-researcher mountain bike race (re)turned: entangled becoming-riding-with
In this paper, I share how engaging with new materialist approaches have enabled me to think deeply and disruptively about my unfolding athlete-teacher-researcher performativities and methodology. Using as a starting point a ‘moment of rupture’ (Lennon, 2017) during a popular female-only mountain bike race, I problematize how representation, subjectivity and embodiment matters in my research with respect to my own athlete-teacher-researcher-becoming entanglements. In doing this, I draw on Wanda Pillow’s (2003) concept of ‘reflexivities of discomfort’ and Karen Barad’s (2014) diffractive ‘cut together-apart’ to reframe critical becoming-riding-with moments in alternative ways. In doing so, I delve into some messy and destabilizing ways of becoming-to-know and knowing as I continue to experiment with foregrounding the agential force of bicycles within my research unfolding.
Image: Pxhere
Conference Info.
Taken from the official conference website: Annual New Materialisms Conferences have been organised since 2009 by an international group of scholars who received the EU’s H2020 funding from 2014–18.
The conferences are meant to develop, discuss and communicate new materialisms’ conceptual and methodological innovations, and to stimulate discussion among new materialist scholars and students about themes and phenomena that are dear to the hosting local research community as well as interdisciplinary new materialist scholarship.
After having visited many cities across Europe, as well as Melbourne (Australia), the conference will come to Cape Town (South Africa) in 2019 in order to discuss the dynamic higher education landscape that we find ourselves in today. The recent #Rhodesmustfall and #feesmustfall protests have, in particular, set South African higher education on a new course towards transformation, focusing on equitable access to higher education, Africanisation and decolonisation.
This has raised important questions regarding knowledge production beyond the South African context, particularly in relation to the use and value of western theorists in local research and curricula, as well as who gains epistemological and physical access to higher education.
On the other hand, we have seen many productive junctures between pedagogy and the new materialisms, including the use of Deleuze and Guattari in education studies. In particular, there has been a focus on cartography, schizoanalysis, corporeal theorising, rhizomatic learning and nomadic thought in socially just pedagogical praxis.
These junctures and innovative genealogies and methodologies can both address as well as be further improved and made more precise by engagements with transformation toward accessible, Africanised and decolonised curricula, and research agendas and practices.
It seems fitting, then, that the 3rd South African Deleuze and Guattari Studies Conferencewill be held directly after the 10th Annual New Materialisms Conference as we grapple, together, towards new ways of being and seeing in relation to higher education.
Welcome back to this third post in a series of four taken from Dr Jennifer Bonham’s Bicycle Politics Review Essay IDEAS IN MOTION: ON THE BIKE. In the first post, Dr Bonham provided the background and context for the three bicycle politics books she reviews. The second post reviewed the book ‘Pedal Power: The quiet rise of the bicycle in American public life’. In this post, she reviews Zack Furness’s ‘One Less Car: Bicycling and the Politics of Automobility’. This book is a personal favourite of mine. I have a copy on my desk and I love that this book is a reiteration of Furness’s PhD Dissertation. It was also the first time I saw the term BIKETIVISM. Books like this one keep me motivated in my own community bicycle PhD research. If you get a chance, read this book. It is comprehensive, thought-provoking, full of interesting bike facts and is incredibly well-researched. A must read for any cyclist! Thanks again to Dr Bonham. Enjoy! NG.
Furness, Z. (2010). One less car: Bicycling and the politics of automobility. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
Less Cars
Zack Furness is an assistant professor in cultural studies at Columbia College, Chicago. His book One Less Car: Bicycling and the Politics of Automobility is a revised version of his Ph.D. dissertation and it is impressive in its scope and detail. Furness carves out a place for cycling both in the formation of automobility, which he locates in the late nineteenth century, and as a point of resistance to it. The bicycle, he argues, played a central role in a series of cultural transformations in “mobility, technology, and space” (16). These transformations included the construction of a “mobile subjectivity,” the development of a meaning system around personal transportation and the disciplining of bodies and environment to long-distance, independent mobility (17).
These transformations, according to Furness, were key components in the new “system of automobility.”9 Following from this, the automobile did not initiate cultural transformations; rather, the automobile itself “made sense” because these transformations had already taken place. Furness acknowledges cycling was not alone in bringing about some of these changes but he regards it as a proto-type of automoblity so that “automobiles provided an almost logical solution to the culture of mobility forged by cyclists and the bicycle industry” (45).
Having argued that cycling played a key role in the formation of automobility, the substantive chapters of One Less Car operate as point and counterpoint to the automobile norm. In Chapter Three, Furness discusses the early twentieth century growth in automobile ownership, legislative changes regarding conduct on the streets, and the modification of public space to facilitate motor vehicle movement. These changes are explained in terms of the automobile-industrial complex, which facilitated production and consumption on a massive scale. The discussion then turns to cycling as a point of resistance to this complex. Furness locates the emergence of U.S. cycle activism in the 1960s/1970s and places cycling organizations, advocacy groups and activism at the centre of challenges to the automobile that run through to the present day. Like Wray, he explores the role of different political actors and actions in creating alternative mobility cultures, illustrating the case with a detailed and multi-layered account of Critical Mass.10
Moving to contemporary society, Furness is particularly concerned with the mechanisms by which cycling is devalued in relation to the automobile and focuses on specific cultural products—film, television shows, road- safety pedagogy and news reporting—for the way they have created and maintained automobile norms. Bike riding characters in films such as Pee- wee’s Big Adventure and television shows like Get a Life infantilize and emasculate cyclists while road-safety “documentaries” effectively prepare child-bicyclists to become adult-motorists. In terms of news reporting, he argues, cycling has been represented favorably in times of crisis—the war effort and petrol rationing—but more recently power relations have been turned on their head as motorists are positioned as victims of the inept or elitist behavior of cyclists.
Image: Contra Texts
As a counterpoint to these negative representations, the remaining chapters offer thick descriptions of cycling sub-cultures in the U.S. These chapters are the real strength of One Less Car, offering insights into an aspect of U.S. cycling that, until recently, has been overlooked. They examine the linkages within specific sub-cultural groups between bicycling, environmentalism, community development and anti-consumption. These include the “Do it Yourself/Do It Ourselves” ethos of the punk musicians who have embraced bicycling, bike messengers and mutant bike clubs.
Furness also explores the important role of community bike projects within disadvantaged localities as they provide places for people to gather and access resources and knowledge that is usually unavailable. He examines the role that specific projects have played in supplying bikes to people within their own local communities and, with a more critical eye, the place of such projects in developing countries as they assist in creating alternative global networks.
Furness also examines the more problematic aspects of cycling sub-culture—the pervasive sexism of cycling in the U.S. and the assumptions that underpin bicycle projects in developing countries. Furness finishes the book with a brief review of the shift of bike manufacturing out of the U.S. to low-wage countries and contemplates the potential of the industry to once again provide employment in the U.S.
Furness attempts to place the bicycle at the centre of the analysis but, like Wray, he re-inscribes the bicycle/automobile dichotomy and despite paying careful attention to one set of cultural transformations he ignores others. Furness does not draw attention to the micro-political processes through which decisions about the material formation of cars and bikes have been (and continue to be) made. Nor does he relate the bicycle or the automobile to broader discussions in the late nineteenth century about the spatialization of activities and the development of cities, which included the urban industrial economy; urban efficiency, sub/urbanization and public health. Although Furness examines contestation within the various cultural transformations he describes, there is an air of finality in these transformations that offers little hope of change.
Finally, as Furness identifies bicycle activism as the key point of resistance to the automobile in the anti-freeway protests of the 1960s/1970s, he overlooks the efforts of local communities, built environment professionals, politicians, and academics in questioning freeway planning.
Image: behance.net
Notes
10. Critical Mass is a regularly staged bike ride in cities around the world that brings cyclists together in a blend of political statement and celebration of cyclists.
Dr Jennifer Bonham is a senior lecturer in the School of Social Sciences, University of Adelaide. She has a background in human geography specializing in urbanization and cultural practices of travel. Her research focuses on devalued mobilities as it explores the complex relationship between bodies, spaces, practices, and meanings of travel. Her current research explores the gendering of cycling. Jennifer’s work is informed by a concern for equitable and ecologically sustainable cities.
Contact details: School of Social Sciences, University of Adelaide, Adelaide 5005, Australia. jennifer.bonham@adelaide.edu.au
This excerpt is from: Bonham, J. (2011). Bicycle politics: Review Essay. Transfers, 1(1), 137. doi:10.3167/trans.2011.010110.
Images and hyperlinks included here are not part of the original publication.
Welcome back to this second post in a series of four taken from Dr Jennifer Bonham’s Bicycle Politics Review Essay IDEAS IN MOTION: ON THE BIKE. In the last post, Dr Bonham (Uni of Adelaide) provided an introduction and background for this essay and established the histo-politico-social context. This post reviews the first (of three) American books on Bicycle Politics. Thanks again to Dr Bonham. If you have not yet read this book, check out this review and see if you want to head to your local library for more. Enjoy! NG.
Wray, J. H. (2008). Pedal power: The quiet rise of the bicycle in American public life. Boulder, CA: Paradigm Publishers.
Pedal Power
J. Harry
Wray’s Pedal Power: The Quiet Rise of the Bicycle in American Public Life is
an immensely readable account of the nascent shift toward bike friendliness in
the United States. Wray has written both a cycling advocacy text and, as a
professor of politics at De Paul University in Chicago, an accessible
introductory text for students taking courses in culture and politics. Each
chapter offers an entry point into discussions about the nature of politics,
political theory, the mechanisms that foster particular meanings and values
over others, and the processes of political struggle and change.
The early chapters of Pedal Power establish the background for the pivotal third chapter after which the discussion turns to the development of a bicycle culture and the process of creating political change. Wray opens his case with a “bicycle view” strategy—that of the touring cyclist— to contrast the embodied experiences and social interactions enabled through cycling and car driving. He uses a familiar set of concepts in making this comparison: the surface of the road reverberating through the body; muscles responding to topography; elements assailing the flesh.
Further, the fact of sitting “on” a bike and “in” a car facilitates different types of relations with co-travelers (those who walk, ride, drive (passenger) alongside), “by-standers” (those not going anywhere—for the moment), and other species and things. Wray links these different experiences of mobility to different political positions arguing the bicyclist tends to a more progressive (and preferable) politics as the cyclist is always located within his/her context whereas driving tends to isolate and insulate motorists from their environment.
Clearly,
the bicycle and the motorcar will enable different experiences and interactions
but Wray misses a number of opportunities by simplifying the argument into a
bicycle versus car dichotomy. It works toward fixing differences between cars
and bikes and smoothes over the processes through which bodies, machines,
materials, spaces, and concepts have been, and continue to be, wrought
together. Further, it limits our view of other ways of getting around and the
diversity of experiences and interactions these enable. To illustrate this
point, we could assemble cycling (racing, utility, etc.), walking (jogging,
running), taking the tram, bus or train, riding a scooter, wheelchair or sled,
skateboarding, being a passenger in a car, driving a truck, taxi or automobile,
rickshaw cycling, parcour and rollerblading. We could then question the
apparatuses through which these particular categories have been created, or
excised, from the mass of human experience and bracketed into discrete sets of
mobility. Picking apart these categories (the practices, emotions, concepts,
materials and interactions they entail) is a political tactic through which we
would scramble our existing categories, create new ones and challenge the
valuing or prioritization of any one set of practices over another. The point
Wray makes in contrasting bicycling and driving is to challenge the privilege
accorded to motoring practices. However, he also re-inscribes the car/bike
hierarchy as he seeks to value the very characteristics through which cycling
has been devalued.
The
second and third chapters contrast the politics and culture of bike riding in
the Netherlands and the United States. Wray explains bicycle culture in the
Netherlands in terms of a sense of shared responsibility and a political
pragmatism that was brought to bear on the 1960s/1970s backlash against the
motor vehicle. This explanation prepares the ground for a discussion of cycling
and motoring in relation to the core American values of individualism and
materialism. He is specifically concerned with whether and how cycling and
motoring foster and extend each of these values. The “myth” of individualism,
and its strong links to materialism, are explained as the outcome of the
country’s Protestant roots, (initial) fluid class system and the stories
Americans tell about their long frontier history. This individualism was transformed
through the process of industrialization where it was reconstituted as
“personal product choices” (61).
It is
within this context that the motor vehicle figures as a symbol and mechanism
for the further elaboration of consumption and individualism. The motorcar
represents the U.S.’s extreme form of individualism— isolation and separation.
Writing in the lead-up to the 2008 election campaign, Wray argues that growing
disillusionment and discontent in the United States provides fertile ground for
alternative cultural norms. The bicycle is a symbol of that alternative.
Importantly, Wray links the bicycle to both a “tamer” form of individualism and
community cohesion. Rather than the bicycle being a “private” means of
transport, Wray emphasizes the particular social interactions it enables
thereby making a powerful challenge to the traditional public/private transport
dichotomy.
The
second half of Pedal Power is devoted to challenging current cultural
norms, the mechanisms by which participation in everyday cycling is being
encouraged and the role of different players working inside and outside formal
political processes to revalue the bicycle. Wray devotes a chapter each to the
role of: individual cyclists and advocates who provide alternative ways of
seeing and being in the world; bike advocacy groups which reinforce each other
as they lobby for funding and legislative changes from the national through to
the local scale; bicycle activism that engages the wider citizenry in bicycle
politics by encouraging participation in myriad bike-related activities; and
sympathetic politicians who can influence legislation and funding decisions to
further the interests of cycling. These chapters are alive with detail as Wray
offers numerous examples of the people, groups, activities, and legislative
changes he believes are facilitating a culture of bicycle use and political
change.
Image: Mary Kate McDevitt
Dr Jennifer Bonham is a senior lecturer in the School of Social
Sciences, University of Adelaide. She has a background in human geography
specializing in urbanization and cultural practices of travel. Her research
focuses on devalued mobilities as it explores the complex relationship between
bodies, spaces, practices, and meanings of travel. Her current research
explores the gendering of cycling. Jennifer’s work is informed by a concern for
equitable and ecologically sustainable cities.
Contact details: School of
Social Sciences, University of Adelaide, Adelaide 5005, Australia.
jennifer.bonham@adelaide.edu.au
This excerpt is from: Bonham, J. (2011). Bicycle
politics: Review essay. Transfers, 1(1), 137.
doi:10.3167/trans.2011.010110.
Images included here are not part of the original
publication.
Work on my community bicycle PhD research project requires me to read a lot of academic literature on bikes. Whilst it is my immense pleasure, there is always more to read. Recently, I came across a review essay by Dr Jennifer Bonham (University of Adelaide) that summarised and appraised three key (and popular) American ‘bicycle politics’ books. This essay a very interesting read as it identifies critical histo-politico-social aspects of bicycling from each of the books in an accessible, succinct and thoughtful way. Woohoo! What a gift! So here is Dr Bonham’s full essay IDEAS IN MOTION: ON THE BIKE as a series of four blog posts. This first post covers the intro and background, followed by three more – one post each reviewing, in turn, the three bicycle books below. A massive thank you to Jennifer for her analytical synthesis explaining why riding a bike is a political act. Enjoy! NG.
Wray, J. H. (2008). Pedal power: The quiet rise of the bicycle in American public life. Boulder, CA: Paradigm Publishers.
Furness, Z. (2010). One less car: Bicycling and the politics of automobility. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
Mapes, J. (2009). Pedalingrevolution: How cyclists are changing American cities. Corvallis, OR: Oregon State University Press.
Since the mid-1990s,
bicycling has been identified as a solution to problems ranging from climate
change and peak oil to urban livability, congestion and public health. A
plethora of guidelines, strategies, policy statements, plans and behavior
change programs have been produced— especially in industrialized countries—in
an effort to encourage cycling. Despite many localities registering increases
in cycling over the past decade, English-speaking countries such as Australia,
Canada, the United Kingdom and United States continue to have extremely low
national rates of cycling. The benefits of cycling are widely accepted and
barriers well documented but changes are slow, uneven, and often contested. The
disjuncture between government rhetoric and commitment to bicycling (via
legislation, funding, infrastructure) foregrounds the broader cultural and
political context within which cycling is located.
Implementing pro-cycling1 policies is difficult in cultural contexts where bicycles/bicyclists are set in a hierarchical relation with automobiles/ motorists and the latter valued over the former. It is equally difficult to effect cultural change when decision makers fail to prioritize cycling on the political agenda. A key research problem has been to understand how the hierarchical relation between different travel practices has been established and reproduced. Often, this problem is approached by centering the automobile in the analysis:2 a tactic which positions the motor vehicle in a series of dichotomous relations with “other” travel practices—private/public, motorized/non-motorized, choice/captive.
Such dichotomous
approaches have been widely criticized for re-creating rather than undermining
established hierarchies.3
An alternative tactic
involves unpicking the mechanisms through which these categories are produced
and bodies are differentially valued. Recently the bike has been placed at the
centre of the analysis in an effort to unsettle its persistent marginalization.
However, this type of analysis will be limited if it simply reproduces the
bicycle/automobile dichotomy.
Throughout the late
twentieth century, “cyclists” and everyday practices of cycling have been
constituted through concepts and research practices within the field of
transport and positioned as problematic—in terms of safety, efficiency,
orderliness. But the past 15 years4 have
seen researchers from a range of disciplines—health, political science,
geography, sociology, urban planning and transport—creating new “versions” of
cycling.5
As they centre
bicycling in their work and offer recommendations on “what is lacking” and
“what should change” they also provide insights into the mechanisms by which
cyclists have been explicitly excluded from or marginalized within public
space, academic study and public policy. This literature is a fundamental part
of political and cultural change not so much for the veracity of its claims but
in re-constituting cycling as an object of study and opening the path to
alternative ways of thinking about and practicing mobility.
From the early 2000s,
there has been a steady growth in research into practices of cycling and
cycling sub-cultures.6
Arguably, this
ethnographically oriented work can be traced to Michel de Certeau’s seminal
essay Walking in the City,7 which made apparent the historical and
cultural specificity of contemporary travel practices. There has been a steady
growth in research into particular travel/mobility practices and sub-cultural
groups who identify through their mobility.8 The study of local cycling groups and
cycling sub-cultures challenges hegemonic meanings, which devalue bicycling,
and offers alternative mobility futures. They can also link bike riders to more
mainstream values and beliefs thereby questioning their marginal status. The
very practice of riding a bike and/ or being part of a cycling sub-culture is
implicitly political as it challenges dominant forms of mobility. However, some
individuals and sub-cultural groups are explicitly political as they use the
subject position of cyclist as a means by which to resist exclusion and
advocate for bike riding.
The books reviewed in this paper examine the bicycle culture-politics nexus in the context of the United States. They provide explanations for the marginalization of cycling but more particularly they are concerned with how to bring about change. Each author addresses culture and politics to different degrees, recognizing them as inextricably linked but emphasizing one or the other in their analyses. They draw upon research from health and environmental sciences, architecture, urban, and transport planning to support their arguments rather than reflecting on this knowledge as a fundamental part of contemporary culture or cultural change. Culture is discussed in terms of the sites through which meanings are attached to cycling—especially film and television, literature, advertising, and news reporting—and how these are being challenged through the bicycle cultures and everyday mobility practices that form part of a growing social movement in cycling.
Image: Bikeyface.com
Notes
Pedestrians, public transport users, scooter riders, roller bladers and so forth could be included along with cycling.
For example, James Flink, The Car Culture (Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1975); Peter Freund and George Martin, The Ecology of the Automobile (Montreal: Black Rose Books Ltd 1993); Mimi Sheller and John Urry, “The City and the Car,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 24 no. 4 (2000): 737–757.
Feminists from Butler to Hekman have been at the forefront of this critique. Judith Butler, Gender Trouble (New York: Routledge, 1990); Susan Hekman, The Material of Knowledge: Feminist Disclosures (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010).
This timeline reflects research into everyday cycling in English-speaking countries.
Borrowing Annemarie Mol’s theorization of different versions of reality, I want to suggest we do not have a single object (the cyclist) which is studied through a different lens by each discipline; rather we create the cyclist in different ways through the methodologies we use within each discipline. Annemarie Mol, The Body Multiple: Ontology in Medical Practice (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002).
The Ethnographies of Cycling workshop held at Lancaster University in 2009 included presentations from a number of researchers working in this area since the early 2000s. http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/centres/cemore/event/2982/
Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984).
Dr Jennifer Bonham is a senior lecturer in the School of Social Sciences, University of Adelaide. She has a background in human geography specializing in urbanization and cultural practices of travel. Her research focuses on devalued mobilities as it explores the complex relationship between bodies, spaces, practices, and meanings of travel. Her current research explores the gendering of cycling. Jennifer’s work is informed by a concern for equitable and ecologically sustainable cities.
Contact details: School of Social Sciences, University of Adelaide,
Adelaide 5005, Australia. jennifer.bonham@adelaide.edu.au
This excerpt is from: Bonham, J. (2011). Bicycle politics: Review essay. Transfers, 1(1), 137. doi:10.3167/trans.2011.010110.
Images included here are not part of the original publication.
As part of my PhD research and work at Griffith University, I get a few opportunities to work on research projects. At the moment, I am at capacity and full workload so no new work for me. But one PhD researcher/ intern vacancy come across my desk this week I thought might be interesting for a few Brisbane-based PhD readers. Here it is. Good luck! NG.
Project details
Applications Close: 24th April 2019
Reference: APR – 849A
Payment: $3,000 per month stipend
Location: Spring Hill, Brisbane QLD (although travel may be required)
Duration: 4 months
Proposed start date: May/June 2019
Contract company: APR Intern
Project
Background
Veterans, particularly younger veterans without Gold Cards,
report significant challenges in accessing appropriate General Practice
support, as well as medical specialists related to chronic medical conditions
and surgical services. Finding medical specialists who understand the package
of health issues faced by veterans can be a challenge. Finding medical
specialists who are also willing to engage with the Department of Veteran
Affairs (DVA) payment system, where healthcare is eligible for DVA funding, is
a second and significant challenge.
Often, veterans report that they have attempted to navigate
the complex civil healthcare system only to find their referred specialist is
unwilling to provide services at DVA rates. This forces the veteran to return
to their General Practitioner for a new referral, or in many cases, veterans
drop out of the health system until their condition deteriorates where
healthcare costs are known to escalate.
Research
to be Conducted
In Phase 1 of the
project, a series of questionnaires, surveys and feedback tools will be applied
to the younger veteran target population. These questionnaires and surveys will
be delivered through a combination of face-to-face, telephone and online survey
instruments. Using a combination of Likert scale and open questions, these
surveys will allow the team to refine the set of issues and barriers for the
second Phase of the investigation.
In Phase 2 of the
health project, the project team will combine the results of desktop research
with the initial survey results attained in Phase 1 to further refine the areas
of investigation. The Project Team will then interview and survey a number of
health specialists to understand their attitudes to veteran healthcare and
issues they see in providing care to this population.
Deep-dive interviews will also be conducted with younger veterans in this second phase
of the project to better understand the summary issues and barriers identified
through the surveys conducted in Phase 1.
Skills
Required
We are looking for a PhD student with the following:
ESSENTIAL
Mixed method research experience, but particularly qualitative research
Strong experience in stakeholder engagement and communication
DESIRABLE
Health system understanding and experience
Expected
Outcomes
This project will result in a clear understanding of the
issues and barriers preventing ease of access to civil healthcare for younger
veterans, as well as their attitudes toward access of both GP and medical
specialist healthcare.
The results of this project will then allow a clear roadmap
of strategies to address barriers to access, from both the provider side
(health specialists), younger veterans and for funders (DVA).
We anticipate that the project will also involve
recommendations and strategies around care coordination and case management,
given the complexity of the civil healthcare system, and such strategies would
also include their own engagement and communication strategies to increase the
awareness of suitable services for younger veterans.
Additional
Details
The intern will receive $3,000 per month of the internship,
usually in the form of stipend payments.
It is expected that the intern will primarily undertake
this research project during regular business hours, spending at least 80% of
their time on-site with the industry partner. The intern will be expected
to maintain contact with their academic mentor throughout the internship either
through face-to-face or phone meetings as appropriate.
The intern and their academic mentor will have the
opportunity to negotiate the project’s scope, milestones and timeline during
the project planning stage.
We recommend that you liaise with the Graduate Research
School (GRS) and/or Higher Degree Research (HDR) Placements Office at your university,
prior to submitting an application, to validate your eligibility to participate
in the APR.Intern program.
