Nicola Green

Who's watching whom? Monitoring and accountability in mobile relations

This chapter offers some tentative thoughts on an issue that has recently become a subject of public debate — the capability of mobile technologies, especially emerging location-based services, to act as technologies of “surveillance”. I take as my starting point two instances of social relations, one drawn from what might be termed “popular culture”, the other drawn from observational research.1

Configuring the Mobile User: Sociological and Industry Views

Abstract: This article considers the role of the consumer in the diffusion of mobile telecommunications technologies. There is presently little research on the consumption and use of mobile technologies, and the aim of the present paper is to facilitate discussion about the way consumer behaviour is currently understood in industry and academia. The paper considers key themes in social science research on mobile ICTs, and understandings of the consumer held by those in the mobile industry. Bringing these understandings together, we reiterate the now well attested view that the diffusion and consumption of mobile telephony and computing cannot be understood without investigating the contexts and processes of their use in everyday life.

Disrupting the Field Virtual Reality Technologies and “Multisited” Ethnographic Methods

This article discusses the challenges involved in constructing a field of study when the social relations in question involve multiple locations, objects, and stories about them. This article argues that the geographical, social, technical, and conceptual uncertainties presented by virtual systems problematize conventional constructions of the field and fieldwork, and require a flexible and “multisited” methodological approach. The article draws on experiences researching virtual reality technologies, and outlines the multisited ethnographic methods used in response to the methodological challenges involved. It outlines strategies of following objects, following people, and following stories to construct a flexible and multiple field of research. Such strategies are consistent with theoretical developments in feminist poststructuralism and science and technology studies that seek to deconstruct the coherence of the research process. The article argues that it is crucial to develop such methodological approaches in order to make nuanced critique of technology development, production, and consumption into the next millennium.

Unravelling the Threads: Discourses of Sustainability and Consumption in an Online Forum

This article analyzes an online discussion that followed an article published by UK environmental activist and journalist George Monbiot in The Guardian online newspaper. The analysis addresses the ways in which participants in an online forum debate responded to the tensions and contradictions between lifestyle, consumption, and sustainability highlighted in the original article. The discursive construction of class, green political orientations, and identities; visions of “the good life”; and appeals to religion and science are highlighted throughout the analysis—as are the discursive strategies for positioning self, other, and audience in the debate. The argument emphasizes the heterogeneity of discursive positioning and reflects on the role of social media in the politics of consumption and sustainability, especially given the inherent reflexivity of web forums as online communicative forms.

Are We Sitting Comfortably? Domestic Imaginaries, Laptop Practices, and Energy Use

The considerable literature on domestic energy consumption practices has tended to focus on either the (re)production and contestation of normative imaginaries, or the links between escalating standards and energy use. Far less has been written which links these related areas together. Accordingly, this paper is positioned at the intersection of debates on domestic consumption, energy use, and home cultures. Through a qualitative study of laptop use in the home, we illustrate how energy-intensive practices, such as ‘always-on-ness’, and changing computer ecologies and infrastructures, are intimately bound up with the reproduction of particular domestic imaginaries of family and home. A key insight in this paper is that a purely physiological conception of comfort would fail to explain fully why practices such as always-on-ness emerge, and thus we theorise comfort as an accomplishment comprised of inseparable temporal, bodily, spatial, and material elements. Ultimately, we argue here that comfort needs to be understood as a multivalent imaginary that is itself bound up in broader idealised notions of family and home in order to comprehend shifting practices, computing ecologies, and rising energy consumption.

How Everyday Life Became Virtual Mundane work at the juncture of production and consumption

This article takes as its starting point the mundane work of constructing ‘virtual identities’ and ‘virtual’ cultural practices in the course of ‘everyday’ participation in virtual reality technologies. The article explores how participation takes place, detailing in particular the work practices of staff and the interactions of staff with participants, which make ‘virtual reality’ possible. The article seeks to demonstrate the crucial role of staff as mediators translating technology into culture, and techno-culture into economics, in the distribution and institutionalization of virtual reality in everyday life. As such, the article argues that staffembody the juncture of technology production and consumption and perform key roles that embed new technologies of culture in ongoing social interaction.