Thursday, 19 December 2013

Local news

BBC local news Gaia launchThe Gaia satellite has been launched. Its purpose is to map the precise positions and distances to more than a billion stars in the Milky Way. I invite you to join me in admiring the fact that the BBC home page today linked to this story from its 'Local News' section.

On a slightly smaller scale - just internet-wide - it may be of passing interest that this blog is ten years old this month.

 

19 Dec 2013 14:53:15

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What do we mean by overcrowding? The Building and Social Housing Foundation has published the results of research using focus groups, investigating public understandings of space in the home and overcrowding. The research explored how a minimum space standard might be meaningfully described. Among the conclusions was the assertion that ‘Every home should allow space for all members of the household to eat together or for a small number of friends or family members to visit.’ There was widespread agreement across the focus groups that different types of household would have different needs in terms of health and development, social interaction and essential items. The focus groups explored these issues by developing a list of space requirements for three case study households: Couple with two young children Couple over 60 Single working-age man without children. Participants were asked to agree the furniture and other possessions, activities and levels of privacy needed in the home. According to the focus group discussions, ‘a couple with one child require a minimum of 65 m2 of usable floor area. In England, 14 per cent of families with children live in homes smaller than this.’
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Network capital, racial segregation and mobility You don't often hear reference to the concept of network capital these days, which is odd since we're now firmly embedded in a network society, like it or not. But it's reappeared in an unlikely corner. It must be fifteen years since I heard Geoff Mulgan talking about the concept, but here's Mimi Scheller describing how it was crucial to the forms of resistance to slavery in the southern US. Scheller argues that the institution of slavery can be seen as being defined 'by the exercise of control over mobility, and the immobility of an entire labour force... Almost all of the elements of network capital, ever since the founding of plantation regimes across the Americas, are more concentrated in white hands, and were denied to enslaved people and later to freed people.' She goes on to talk about how 'The production of space through racial segregation of dwelling places and neighourhoods, of private and public spaces that are racially distinguished, of transit corridors and vehicles that have segregated use of them - all of these areas which became central within US politics and governance of mobility - are arenas of racial domination, racial privilege and demands for racial justice.' Given my post-Mandela note the other day about the demographics of London bus travel, and given the whiteness of privileged forms of transport that she refers to, this seems a salient and resonant theme. Maybe it is worth reconsidering the potent 1956 image of Rosa Parks on the Montgomery bus in terms of network capital - reflecting on the fact that it was an orchestrated event, that there was a photographer and that that is a reporter sat behind her. The civil rights movement had had to fight first to establish some network capital and learned to exploit it. Mobility was a key factor in that struggle just as Mandela's immobility was a factor which worked first in the interests of, and then against, apartheid. I humbly suggest that Scheller's video might be a good use of ten minutes of your time. She was co-founder with John Urry of CeMoRe, the Centre for Mobilities Research at Lancaster, and I'm not likely to forget the privilege of having been present at their memorable launch conference in about 2005.

Kevin Harris

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