The rise of new media networks in general and the widespread appropriation of “web 2.0” applications in particular have not only altered the agenda of media studies, but also contributed to the growing osmosis between the discipline and its surroundings. Although it is relatively easy to identify the technological affordances of these media, especially in terms of global connectivity, the social consequences are notoriously ambiguous to pin down, and cannot be conceptualized without venturing into the broader interdisciplinary discourses of surveillance and community making.
Let us, as a case in point, consider Andreas Wittel’s (2001) assertive analysis of “network sociality”; a concept pointing to the distinctly new forms of disembedded sociality allowed by the affordances of networked means of communication. Wittel’s work is grounded in empirical data gathered in urban middle-class settings around the heydays of the “new economy” and depicts an order directly opposed to Gemeinschaft. Network sociality is based on an “exchange of data” rather than on mutual experience and narration—which, however, is not to be understood as an entirely pessimistic diagnosis: “Instead of perceiving this process as de-socialization, I suggest a shift away from regimes of sociality in closed social systems and towards regimes of sociality in open social systems” (Wittel 2001, 64). Clearly, Wittel’s study in many ways foresaw what was to come in terms of growing opportunities for (commodified) social networking and increasingly deterritorialized forms of coordination. However, through the combination of converging (online) media industries, diversified genres of social media, and the pervasive, yet socially stratified everyday saturation of these media, Wittel’s claim as to the more general shift towards “sociality in open systems” seems to be increasingly problematic to sustain, and also deserves further sociological contextualization.
Three types of complexity have surfaced since Wittel published his analysis. First, there is evidence that the “exchange of data” that occurs at social networking sites such as Facebook (not invented when Wittel conducted his study) is just as much about “narrational” relation building, and the maintenance of communities, as it is about ephemeral encounters. Online interaction unfolds through diverse channels within a broad social spectrum, attaining the signs of durability (time bias) as well as expansion (space bias). This means that social control in the traditional sense of Gemeinschaft is still an influential social desire, even fuelled by growing experiences of insecurity (Abe 2009).
Second, to the extent that network sociality does occur, in Wittel’s sense, it is usually entangled with processes of social exclusion and closure. Although social “networking” per se attains an expansive bias, it always takes place within more or less institutionalized social fields (Bourdieu 1972/1977, 1979/1984) where the quest for influence and status necessitates various forms of symbolic boundary maintenance and distinction (Christensen 2011; Jansson 2011). There is also a technological side to this: whereas the diversification and sophistication of digital networking tools ensure increasingly global forms of connectivity, the very same development allows for refined regimes of closure, and the making of (deterritorialized) enclaves.
Finally, the expansion of online social networks is inherently dependent on commoditized forms of interactive surveillance, meaning that media users are commercially monitored and targeted through their own representational activities (here, referring to actions and transactions taking place within the online realm) (Andrejevic 2007). This condition has established a new complexity of gazes, where the “data subjects” may enjoy the sights of the simulated “data doubles” of themselves and others (Deleuze 1992; Bogard 1996, 2006; Best 2010), while the same data is also accumulated and processed for further monitoring purposes within the industry. Integral to the participatory, even emancipatory, expressions of convergence culture advocated by Henry Jenkins (2006) and others, is thus the rise of complex “surveillant assemblages” (Haggerty and Ericson 2000), often critically assessed in terms of for instance “digital enclosures” (Andrejevic, 2007).
Altogether, whereas “network sociality” seems a valid theoretical concept, the current developments of “web 2.0” call for a deeper problematization of the social interdependency of surveillance and community within a regime of mediated networking. This becomes a particularly critical challenge in a world marked by the multiplication of global mobility, where the bonds and bridges between people must often be regained and reformulated at new geographical locations, either by free will or out of coercive necessity. Here, the everyday saturation of online media and interactive surveillance is both a driver and a social response (see Urry 2003)—mediating between the exhilarating prospects and possibilities of a freewheeling cultural identity and the fears of community loss and dissolution.
The key for thinking about these approaches together, we argue, is to pay closer attention to the moral and ideological spaces within which people negotiate the various affordances of interactive technologies and manage the tension fields between community making, networking, and surveillant practices. In addressing the three areas of inquiry in all their complexity and in the context of web 2.0 surveillance, we adopt a theoretical approach based on both political-economic and more postmodern considerations in order to account for the dualistic character (i.e., technologies of freedom and control) of late-modern surveillance practices and processes. Whereas Andrejevic (2007) points to a growing pre-eminence of, for example, digital enclosures, Haggerty and Ericson (2000), with their metaphor of “surveillant assemblages” draw attention to the diffuse and disconnected (or rhizomatic) nature, hence potentially democratizing, potential of surveillance systems. Lyon’s (2003) analysis makes reference to systems of social sorting, and Jenkins (2006) stresses new potentials for community building and creativity in the interactive era.1 These moral and ideological spaces are the spaces (always socially materialized, see Silverstone et al. 1992) through which various degrees of “complicity” (Christensen 2011) or resistance to different forms of surveillance emerge (compare: Best 2010). Here, we will in particular incorporate Bourdieu’s (1972/1977, 1979/1984) theory of social fields as an intermediary realm for making sense of the social construction of online territories and the associated expressions of symbolic capital. In doing so, we will weave together theoretical assessments and empirical findings from fieldwork conducted in two transnational contexts.
The first study deals with transnational migrants (of Turkish/Kurdish origin) residing in urban Sweden and involves qualitative, in-depth interviews conducted in 2008 and 2009. The interview data utilized in this chapter from this study involves six individuals (three men and three women), who are either professionals or students of higher education institutions, and who have either lived in Sweden their entire lives (second-generation immigrants) or moved to Sweden for professional/educational purposes. Their ages range between mid- to late-20s to early 40s, and they are well-educated, well- to fairly well travelled, and have considerable cultural and social capital. All six individuals are long-time media technology users and are active in diasporic representative formations (offline formal institutions and/or online identity-based groupings) either in more formal capacity (for example, as institutional board members) or as administers of/active users in online social media groups.
The second study was conducted in 2008 within a Scandinavian expatriate community in Managua, Nicaragua, that was linked to a global development business. One of the authors of this chapter spent four months working and living in Managua and experienced the expatriate life conditions. The interview data referred to in this chapter consist of six individual interviews with persons working for non-governmental organizations, and thus represent a formal structure and ethico-political project in which cosmopolitan ideas are ingrained (see Nowicka and Rovisco 2009, 7). As the informants are part of a well-educated class faction tied to the “global civil society” (Kaldor 2003), their affluence resides in cultural capital rather than economic capital (as seen from a Western perspective). In addition, they all have substantial previous experience working and living abroad. Demographically, the group includes three men and three women within the age-span of mid-20s to mid-50s.
At their first level, these studies provide comparative views of how online interaction in general, and the everyday management of surveillance (through personal communication technologies) in particular, pertain to the constitutive logic of (transnational) social fields.2 Together, these case studies exemplify the ways in which surveillance operates at the “subjective level”—a lesser explored area in studies of surveillance—in an interactive media environment, and how individuals regard various key notions such as privacy and visibility vis-à-vis surveillance. The examples also provide a basis to consider how online social networking, personal management of individual data, and various surveillance practices function as mechanisms of both deterritorialization and reterritorialization through re/construction of and prying into a variety of digital spaces.
Parallel to the global-scale rise of trans-border activity and penetration of technologies of virtual mobility, both situated, geographically demarcated experiences of “elsewheres” and technologically mediated communicative exchange have become central elements underlying social relations and social playing fields across the board. Within transnational and transmigratory contexts, where social reality is further marked by various forms of multiplicities (of spatial belonging; of political representation; of identity), the adoption and use of communication technology takes on a more intense meaning. Most recent research on transnational groups and their media use centre on the significant role played by ICTs and diasporic media in the management of identity and social relations (compare Georgiou 2005, 2006; Bailey et al. 2007; Titley 2008).
Whereas the globalization paradigm has provided a convenient discursive tool in articulating both the fundamental macro dynamics and social instances of such multiplicities and virtual and actual border-crossings, scholarship within its scope has tended to adopt an overly generalizing, at times poetic, discourse that has been counter-productive in capturing particularities. We are reminded here of Bourdieu’s antagonism to “theoretical system building” (in Calhoun 1993, 44) or “theoretical theory”, which involves conceptualizations that have no or little practical and analytical purchase. For one, in relation to human and labour flows, globalism has strived to draw attention to (a) discontinuities and ruptures in the social order by way of underscoring areas and processes where the nation state (as a meta-field) is presumably absent, and (b) the realm of social imaginaries (Taylor 2004) that feed from such flow and flux. Here, in an attempt to locate and articulate the ensemble of new modes of sociality, structural elements and industry-pushed practices that (re)produce both systems of social control/monitoring and new arenas of social dynamism, first, we take on board conceptual apparatus from two distinct veins of thought: the paradigm of transnationalism and Bourdieuian sociology.
Transnationalism, which we take as a departure point here (and, despite its own shortcomings which we hope to alleviate in our larger study), allows for social analysis in which the puzzling role of the nation-state, alongside other social actors and in the grand scheme of mobilities, is understood more precisely and in relation to specific social instances of both its absence and ambiguous presence. The discourse of transnationalism also enables an analytical lens to pinpoint cross-locational elements that go into forging and maintaining socio-political formations beyond the confines of nation-state-centric frameworks and methodological nationalism (Beck, 2004/2006), which dominated social-scientific research over the decades. Most importantly, unlike in many accounts produced by the globalization paradigm, spatio-temporal and contextual specificity and “difference” remains integral to social analysis in transnationalism—and, as such, complements the Bourdieuian transhistoricity and lack of attention to epochal, spatial, and cultural particularity in his discussion of capital.3
This said—and, without following transnationalism into the depths of its analytic/paradigmatic confines—this vein of research has produced its own reductionisms and rigidities. It remains the case that in the body of literature produced on diasporas and migrant groups, the multiple complexities that structure transnational existence and everyday sociality are often explored in terms of geographic dualities. Such an approach is based on a linear logic of origin/destination paradox readily attributed to migrant or transient (as in the case of development workers) subjects and their (assumed) cultures/identities: home vs. host; sending country vs. receiving country; and, home culture (or national identity) vs. adopted culture are only a few of such categorizations that go into the formulation and operationalization of research agendas. An adjacent shortcoming of research on transborder/translocal groups has been the pervasive inclination towards defining transmigrant communities based on their ethnicity and presumed embracement of their national/cultural identity—considering those who do not fit in these frames exceptions to the rule.
Apart from the general problem of epistemological reductionism inherent in dichotomizing logics, such an understanding of migrant or transient subjectivities and their territorial multiplicity in terms of an attribute of absolute ontological interruptedness also maps onto methodological approaches to the geography of technology and mediation in transnational and diasporic contexts (i.e., the analysis of reception/consumption of transnational media). Although it does hold true that media (broadcast and print media, in particular) from the migrants’ geo-linguistic region play a significant role not only in their capacity as information and entertainment sources but also in structuring sociality and power relations in social fields, the complexity of (new) media use by far exceeds the analytic potential that can be accommodated by the simple home vs. host duality.
A multiplicity of spatialities (the home departed, the city of residence, neighbourhood, home, school/work, places of social togetherness/passtime), and a multiplicity of individual positionalities (class, gender, race/ethnicity, generation, sexual preference, politics/ideology, cultural taste, shopping habits, to name but few) shape technology use. And, each constituent, with its own morality, ideology, and economy, adds an autonomous dimension to the shape sociality takes. One good example was provided by a young Turkish man when he described how he created different groupings on his Facebook page to prevent his relatives from seeing photos tagged by his friends in Sweden and elsewhere and vice versa (in this case, to protect his privacy about his sexual preference and lifestyle), thereby creating different embodiments of his public and private self (male in his 20s), as we will further discuss later in the chapter. Similar tendencies were found in the Nicaraguan study, where the embedded code of Facebook, the fostering of peer-to-peer surveillance, was even considered too problematic to manage, and thus (implicitly) a threat to the autonomy of the social field. In some cases these experiences eventually led to passive uses of Facebook, in order not to get too involved.
As such, “the subjective geography of technology” (in Morley 2007, 250) as a structured and structuring force in transnational social fields remains key (yet under-researched) in understanding mediated social practice. Added to this are other forms of complexities brought about by systems of sorting and practices of web 2.0 surveillance that are increasingly part and parcel of the quest for belonging and positioning engaged in by individuals. In order to make sense of the social construction of online territories, accompanying expressions of symbolic capital and the structuring character of digitality, we turn to Bourdieu’s (1972/1977; 1979/1984) theory of social fields as an intermediary realm. And, we do so for two reasons: first, the Bourdieuian conception of field is based on an understanding of power, its unequal distribution and the forms of domination/subordination it enables. Such a configuration of power and power relations remains key in constituting society, social relations and sociality. Second, although Bourdieu himself did not address “the transnational” per se as a realm where non-nation-state-centric fields take shape, his notion of the field allows for a construction of transnational social formations as fields with flexible boundaries, making room for the kind of multiplicities (rather than dualities) we discussed above. In terms of how they qualify as “fields”, in the strict sense of the word, there are differences between the social realms represented by the two studies. Whereas the construct of field could be more directly associated with the domain of international development work that, in our case, involves the Scandinavians in Nicaragua, employing the term in discussing the diasporic spatio-social realm constituted by the Turkish groups in Sweden necessitates further elaboration.
A two-tiered approach encapsulates our inclination towards seeing clear linkages between how fields operate and the ways in which community-building and sociality structure, and are structured by, deeply ingrained codes and regimes in diasporic contexts—hence, engendering field-like struggles and positionalities. First, despite the fact that diasporas and the mobility that precedes their formations are not instigated by institutionalized, formal fields, if we are to take fields, akin to Jenkins (1992, 85), as social arenas defined by “the stakes that are at stake”, then the similarities between any differentiated field and the specific spatialities and regimes of being/becoming generated by diasporic dynamics become obvious ones. Diasporic constellations, which are constituted of very complex, intricately embedded aggregates of networks (and, networks of networks) operate every bit as arenas characterized by collective and individual struggles (based on various conventions and individual/group tactics for capital conversion towards symbolic accumulation) to achieve power and domination through legitimatization, affirmation,and representation (in the meta-field of the nation state; internationally and transnationally; and, amongst the subgroups within the diaspora). Second, despite the wide-ranging differences in economic, social, and cultural, hence symbolic, capital that exist between the individuals and the groups that constitute transmigrant/transient groups (a point we try to underscore throughout the chapter), their agents, in general, are stakeholders to similar goals and aspirations and similar motives: a collective quest for dignified image and recognition in the larger social field (representative power) on the one hand; and, inter/intra group and individual struggles for symbolic power accumulation within the field itself. Further, the individuals interviewed for this study are active members in the diasporic arena and they embody a heightened sense of reflexivity about the inner workings of this particular diasporic group.
In short, the findings from the two empirical studies highlight how communicative, networked sociality is simultaneously delimited and enhanced by structural elements inherent in the transnational field/s (strategies) and by reflexive modulations and technologically induced interventions at the subjective level (tactics),4 ultimately giving way to highly complex modes of surveillance and encapsulation.
The concepts of territory and field provide different, but also overlapping, connotations of spatial production. Whereas territory is most prominently associated with spatial enclosure, achieved through sharp boundaries that separate the rules and regimes of the inside from those of the outside, field tends to be associated with open space; an open-ended area of social possibility, agency and change. The field attains no distinct boundaries, and thus remains more or less open towards its vicinities, which also implicates that the division between “insiders” and “outsiders” becomes more diffuse, a matter of symbolic negotiation and visibility (see e.g., Tuan, 1977). This is to say that territory and field (within the present sociological context) signify different spatial orders of interaction and control. In directly observable social contexts, however, the relationship between these two horizontal understandings of space is much more complex. On the one hand, archetypal territories, such as nation states and institutionalized social enclaves, are never entirely sealed and homogenous entities, but marked by various, more or less regulated, in- and out-flows of people and information, as well as internal struggles for defining the means, ends, and limits of the territorial construct as such. Territories are thus always contested by various forces of deterritorialization, which destabilize pre-existing regimes of spatial control. On the other hand, in a social space such a thing as a completely open field can never exist, because social interaction always brings with it the establishment of codes and conventions, which in turn have a tendency to agglomerate into more or less compartmentalized sets of rules. As the competition for spatial order and control increases, fields (and parts of fields) may thus successively attain more territorial characteristics.
Although the concepts of field and territory can be analytically applied as separate spatial orders of interaction, the relationship between them must be understood as a social continuum rather than as a dichotomy. This point is comprehensively illustrated in Bourdieu’s (for example: 1980/1990) discussions of the social field, which attains an intermediary position between the bounded social territory and the more open-ended system of exchange and flow. Whereas the social field provides a common ground for the circulation, exposition, and exchange of certain mutually recognized assets, that is, symbolic capital of a certain kind, it also constitutes a social battle-ground where different actors compete for centrality and power. Gaining access to a certain field is not a matter of crossing any absolute borders but rather about successively internalizing the rules and schemes of classification through which the power structures of the field are maintained. Bourdieu (1980/1990, chapter 4) has famously described this process of accommodation in terms of acquiring the “feel for the game”—a process of symbolic naturalization that comes easily to those with the right social habitus, whereas others are effectively prevented from accessing, or even imagining themselves as part of the field. This underscores not only that social fields attain certain territorial qualities, in the sense that they are “the products of a long, slow process of autonomization” (Bourdieu 1980/1990, 67), but also that boundary maintenance and remaking is an ever enduring socio-cultural battle.
Furthermore, territories and fields can coexist and overlap in complex ways. Analyzing any spatial construct, such as a village or a city—or for that matter a seemingly coherent and bounded online community—always involves the risk of making simplified claims as to what kinds of spatial orders actually prevail, and how different forms of social change, such as transnational mobility or the appropriation of new means of surveillance, influence those orders. The problem is particularly critical as such claims are always bound up with the representation of power. In the case of global, linked cities (Sassen 2001), for instance, the expansion of communication networks and the parallel rise of an online realm of network sociality cannot be separated from the logic of territoriality. In our case studies of transnational spaces of interaction there is evidence of how the deterritorializing affordances of new means of mobility and networking are paralleled by a socio-spatial development towards “software-sorted geographies” (Graham 2005) and what De Cauter (2004) calls “capsularization” (see also Jansson 2011). These mechanisms of segregation, which are to be seen as integral to the expansion of surveillant assemblages (Haggerty and Ericson 2000), imply that different mobile class factions are separated from one another, not only when travelling, but also when dwelling and interacting online as well as offline.
Our study of Scandinavian development workers in Managua, which will be discussed in the remainder of this section, confirms that expatriate professionals are typically targeted by relatively little, or “soft”, administrative surveillance, whose purpose is primarily to ensure smooth passages, frictionless mobility, secure home environments, and a sense of “exitability”, that is, the opportunity to leave the country if things would get too risky or complicated (Urry 2007, 201). Even though the professional, cosmopolitan ethos of development workers makes them inclined to engage with the poor, “motionless” areas of cities like Managua, their day-to-day presence in the city thus largely converges with the bounded routes and capsules of the global just-in-time city (compare Ciccolella and Mignaqui 2002, 322).
The logic of this condition can be further explicated through Bourdieu’s conception of the social field (for example, Bourdieu 1972/1977, 1979/1984, 1980/1990). Although Bourdieu’s writings do not provide any account of the role of globalization and transnational flows in relation to the (re)production of social fields, one can certainly argue that the logic of certain fields, such as the above-mentioned field of international development aid, is constituted precisely through the premise of global mobility, and thus follows a transnational set of rules.5 The various actors and organizations that operate within the development sector all contribute to the consecration and legitimization of certain practices, competencies, and possessions as markers of symbolic capital (here broadly understood as the capacity to define and influence international development practices in a variety of transitional contexts), through which, in turn, the social positions of the actors and organizations are themselves classified. Typical indicators of capital are those skills and experiences that express individual mastery of cross-cultural interaction and translation, not least language skills and the experience of having worked in a variety of transitory societies (compare Eriksson Baaz 2005). For those in possession of such qualities the field operates as a vehicle and an arena for transnational mobility, as well as “motility” (Kaufmann 2002; Kaufmann et al. 2004), and thus for the further accumulation of the type of symbolic capital through which the field reproduces itself.
Through a closer scrutiny of the everyday practices of this group we can also grasp how the use of networked media implies the continuous interplay, at different spatial levels, between boundary maintenance and transcendence. On the one hand, Internet use tends to reinforce the transnational logic of the field—a tendency that is unambiguously expressed among those with longer experience of transnational professional mobility, that is, those who attain well-established positions within the field. These individuals testify to a slow process of accommodation, through which regular environmental changes and an increasingly globalized network of friends and acquaintances are turned into a natural part of one’s biography, and thus an embodied expression of habitus. Here, networked media attain a key function for the time-space coordination of everyday job-related tasks; the monitoring of potential career opportunities within the field; and the maintenance of a global social network. For example, several informants mention that they often keep a chat window open via Skype or a webmail account when working in their offices, in order to enable swift communication within the professional context. In spatial terms their everyday work space thus expands from the local Nicaraguan setting to the rest of Central America, and to significant nodes in the rest of the world. There is no explicit mentioning of being under surveillance; on the contrary, these professional peer-to-peer monitoring practices, which might be subsumed under the term ‘interveillance’ (Jansson, 2010) to indicate their horizontal character, contribute to a deepening sense of integration within the field.
On the other hand, the opening of those transnational media spaces is paralleled by specific regimes of enclosure. First, whereas mediated interaction within the social field is experienced as smooth and liquid, many efforts to interact beyond the field are successively being compartmentalized, positioned as exceptional, ritualized events. Such a thing as “keeping in touch” with family and old friends is partly experienced as a social obligation and a pressure that has to be reflexively managed. One informant mentions that she has ritualized a Saturday Skype call with her parents in Sweden. Another informant describes how she sometimes opens the chat function in order to lower the threshold for making contact:
The continuous communication gets more spread out the longer you are away. After a while you get immersed into this new world and then it becomes less important to communicate everything. [ … ] For some reason it’s also nice sometimes to keep the worlds apart. There might be a pressure to keep in touch [with those back home], and when you’re finally ready to do that there must be something really exciting and emotionally precious to tell—but you may not feel that way, it may be a pressure actually, and then it’s sometimes easier just to open a chat. It can take the edge of all that—that ‘now I have to call home and inform them about everything’. (Female project leader in her 30s)
When Sofia talks about immersion it is to be understood not only in terms of local immersion, the experience of leading one’s life under everyday conditions that are radically different from those of one’s old friends and family, but perhaps more prominently in terms of field integration. Among those informants who are most thoroughly integrated within the field, for whom the prospects of returning to their home country is becoming an increasingly obscure idea (as the very idea of the “home” loses its significance) the social pressure of connectivity also loses its strength. The social trajectory of transnational professionals implies that the social network converges with the structures of the field, which means that the social network, together with an ensemble of other (mediated) relations and practices, increasingly operates as symbolic capital.
This brings us to the second point, which has to do with the mediated territorializing processes that occur within the field. Engaging with relevant blogs, e-mail lists, and online news flows are key symbolic practices that not only manifest the logic of the field, the “rules of the game”, but also produce distinct online territories of belonging. As expressed by one of the informants, when reading the blogs of people he trusts and identifies with, he can “read between the lines” and thus gather a more nuanced picture than through mainstream media. By contrast, the margins of the field, and the socially restricted applicability of the rules of the game, become evident when the informants describe their experiences of networking platforms such as Facebook. Part of the problem with Facebook, as they describe it, is that it is too difficult to territorialize, and too complicated to manage the socio-technological imperatives of the surveillant assemblage:
About Facebook … I was invited and signed up, but I have a problem with Facebook. [ … ] One thing I find especially clever about digital media is that you don’t have to be simultaneous. That pertains to email or a blog—I can write when I want to, and somebody can comment when he or she has the time. Facebook does also work a bit like that, but I also feel that people try to drag me into things I don’t have time for nor any interest in. [ … ] Facebook takes away parts of what I see as the good things about digital media—that I control my filters! (Male consultant in his 50s)
This approach appears to be typical. Other informants have even tried to restrict their profiles, activate filter functions, etc, but still find Facebook problematic. A woman in her 30s stated that she was “in two minds for a start” and decided to include only those she knew well, “so that not just anybody should be able to enter and see pictures, or that others should be able to publish pictures [of her]”. Since then she has also realized that most of her job-related friends do not use Facebook very much.
This does not mean that Facebook is non-significant among those working within the development sector. But one obvious dilemma is that interaction through Facebook cannot occur within the practical sense, “social necessity turned into nature”, of the field (Bourdieu 1980/1990, 69). Instead, the confrontation with diverse logics of practice leads to negative experiences of peer-to-peer monitoring (‘interveillance’ as social control), boundary transgression, and the mixing of worlds that preferably should be kept apart. Our findings in this regard underscore the ambiguous spatial nature of surveillant practice, and may be compared to the conclusions that Abe (2009) reached in a study of the Japanese social networking site mixi, where the users (whose social features are not specified in the study) were found, on the one hand, to “joyfully consume the peer-to-peer surveillance enabled by the system”, but, on the other hand, seemed to be “obsessed with ascertaining security concerning their interactions with strangers” (Abe 2009, 86). We argue that a further scrutiny of how the logics of different social fields are played out within online spaces is needed in order to reach beyond too broad, and sometimes techno-deterministic, claims as to what orders of interaction social media sustain, and how users cope with various extensions of the surveillant assemblage (which would then also involve a critical problematization of the situated phenomenological meaning of surveillance and social control).
The picture is equally (if not more) complicated if we turn to our second case study. Although there is no professional field, as we discussed earlier, that precedes the agentic quest for mobility, and pursuits of representation and community building in diasporic contexts, the very acts of everyday, mundane online activity and social networking are bound up with in-group positioning, seeking belonging and identification (or the rejection of it), and creating alternative proximities through (virtual) geographic enclaves, as will be exemplified in the next section. In such cases, when “actual” (Morley 2011) spaces of being and living do not/or do partially map onto places of identification and physical territories of belonging, virtual geographies may end up embodying more closure and more rigorous regimes of border and activity control, thereby attracting certain groups and individuals who crave security through such closure and repelling certain others who merely seek the ontological comfort and practicality that come with online socialization (social network attributes) but wish to avoid structuring regimes of naturalization and control (field attributes). In the case of the Turkish diaspora in Stockholm, the two realms seem to be highly intertwined.
As we argue throughout this chapter, whereas web 2.0 affords new forms of communal/interpersonal interaction and creative sociality, such social formations need to be understood within the broader context of social control, processes of social exclusion and closure, and the complex forms of surveillance that they lead into. The transformation of existing norms and regimes and the emergence of new ones is always part and parcel of a social negotiation process that takes shape in moral and ideological spaces with both “complicity” (Christensen 2011) and resistance (compare: Best 2010) involved, hence various forms and scales of power relations always play a restructuring role. In this section, in addressing questions related with technologically enhanced communicative sociality and freedom vis-à-vis surveillance and closure in transmigratory contexts, we offer a discussion of online territorial constructions in specific contexts and perceptions of privacy and visibility.
Our fieldwork on Turkish diasporic subjects in Sweden illustrates a highly complex scenario of technology use and subjective positioning through which (a) existing identificatory categories are enforced and maintained; (b) new categories of identification and inclusion are instigated; and, (c) strategies for less-overt association/identification are made possible. The interviews reveal intensely contested notions of communal identity that mark social relations and power struggles within the larger diasporic field. Although offline institutions such as Turkiska Riksförbundet (Federation of Turkish Workers) Turkiska Ungdomförbundet (Turkish Youth Federation) have taken on representative roles over the decades, relatively new social constellations on online networking sites such as Facebook reflect the dynamic process of a quest for new spaces of belonging and identification, particularly amongst the younger individuals.
“Isvecli Turkler (Swedish Turks)”, “Isvec Turkleri (Turks of Sweden)”, “Turkar i Stockholm (Turks in Stockholm)”, “Isvec’te Yasayan Turkler (Turks living in Sweden)”, “Isvec’teyiz (We are in Sweden)” moderated by the offline Sweden Idea and Culture Association, and “A Group for the Swedish Turkish” constituted some of the popular Facebook groups at the time of the fieldwork. In addition, offline institutions such as Turkiska Student och Akademikerföreningen (Turkish Students and Academics Association) also have their own Facebook groups, carrying their existing offline networks to a larger field with more visibility. All the groups noted here incorporate spatial and ethnic signifiers in their titles.6 Yet, there is a wide range of sentimentality and various degrees of identification with the labelling amongst the informants. Whereas some informants noted that they joined certain groups for the very purpose of seeking belonging and “like-minded company” (female in her 40s) beyond what the offline institutions can provide, some others commented that they avoid becoming members (yet, use the posts and information that is circulated within the group) as they “don’t want to take on an identity like that” (female in her 20s).7
Merely being involved and active in one of many these domains bring with it symbolic assets that structure social relations and positions in intricate ways. Mediation takes the form of both practical resource and symbolic means (i.e., status marker through mere visibility and/or social influence). Activity online (or carving communicative space, as we discussed earlier); that is, profile maintenance, posting of information, clips, photos, messages, announcements, etc., equals symbolic capital actualization and accumulation. As such, activity online always translates into mis/recognition, is an immediate signifier for status, and inevitably coterminous with surveillance both at a vertical, and horizontal, subjective, and desired level.8 This is particularly the case with younger and/or (cultural)capital-rich individuals in diasporic/transnational settings who, by moving into domains of “virtual togetherness” (Bakardjieva 2003) to either enhance offline status quo and visibility or to bypass various forms of coerced allegiances (for example to national identity, territorial/ethnic origin, religious identification) and symbolic violence, de facto enter into playing fields structured by a complicit form of surveillance and where a different “feel for the game” (Bourdieu 1980/1990, 66) is needed to mobilize capital conversion (into power) to pursue symbolic struggle. One informant who administered a Facebook group noted an overt example:
When I took over I sent information about [this new group] to the other existing groups. But one of them seems to delete all the messages I have been sending so I stopped sending them. … (Female in her 40s)
The complicity in question here, beyond the incriminating connotations it carries, is in referring to the agentic character of current modes of surveillance that is conceded (or ignored) by the users. In the Turkish study, most of the individuals (despite being long-time, savvy users) had little to no awareness about the perverseness of surveillance on social networking sites9 and commodification of private data. Yet, most were very critical of more visible forms of surveillance: “I am not a luddite. … but I don’t buy the arguments put forth by politicians to promote applications like security cameras. … I believe they shouldn’t be used” (male in his 40s).
I lived in London and there are CCTV cameras everywhere. Actually, the fact that there are cameras everywhere makes you feel that there is a security issue. When there are no cameras, it implies that you live in a safe and secure society and that surveillance is not needed. (Male in his 30s)
The attitudes towards horizontal visibility and monitoring online ranged between indifference and knowing approval amongst the informants. More interestingly, the mediated deployment of various sets of private, digital data as a symbolic pursuit emerges as a tactic commonly used to both offset borders and avoid exclusion, and to create “wittingly or unwittingly” (Bourdieu 1977, 79) new enclosures.
One informant noted that although he was aware of the privacy issues on online social domains, paying too much attention to it would cripple his ability to socialize, thus creating spatial limitation (male in his 20s). Likewise, other informants expressed preferences (based on different criteria) toward modulating who, in their circles, sees their private information and to what extent, rather than considering total withdrawal of personal data.
| MC | What does privacy mean to you? |
| I: | That I, as an individual, have control over … well, … that I have a sense of control over what people know about me and about my private life. So it’s sort of like I have a private sphere and a public sphere and some facts about me can be accessible publicly and I guess I usually know what depth of information is available about me in public. And whatever is not available is in my private sphere. … And, I have to be careful in certain contexts. About what people know about me. I am member of a Turkish association for example and there people can be very curious. They ask questions about you and talk to each other about you. |
| MC | How do you feel about privacy and surveillance on social networking sites? |
| I: | I heard a discussion about it a year and a half ago in Sweden. That’s when I became aware of it. But I must say that I am not that knowledgeable about the terms and conditions [on Facebook]. I haven’t read them properly. I must say that if they use it [private data] for commercial purposes, then I guess I am OK with it. But, I mean if it has my name on it, if they use my name, then it’s a different matter. (Male in his 30s) |
Based on our broader concern with surveillance on the one hand and networked communicative practice on the other, we have in this chapter explored two cases of mediated community making in transnational contexts. Such contexts of mobile life biographies and long-distance sociality could be predicted to incorporate this tension field in a particularly pregnant way, both at the general level, and at the level of distinct forms of situated transnational practice (here Scandinavian expatriate professionals in Nicaragua and Turkish diasporic subjects in Sweden). Implementing Bourdieu’s theory of social fields our field-work has demonstrated not only the enduring need to analyze the intersecting logics of surveillance and networking within a framework of social place-making and territorialization, but also that an understanding of the distinct, yet overlapping, logics of symbolic struggle and boundary maintenance must be empirically grounded at the local, even phenomenological, level.
Above all, our studies have unveiled how the management of converging social media reproduces segregating modes of community maintenance. In referring to Scannell (1989), Barnett (2004) suggests that “broadcasting cultivates a form of reasonable subjectivity, characterized by a willingness to listen and openness to other viewpoints that is essential to the maintenance of a shared public life” (65, emphasis added). By contrast, as we have showed in this chapter, new online social media cultivate an exclusivist subjectivity marked by a desire to control the inflow and outflow of public utterance, engendering a paradoxically traditional and novel sense of Gemeinschaft. Here, our studies reveal the existence of complex norms and dynamics that govern privacy control at the user end in the face of expanding surveillant practices: In that privacy (as well as various connectivities) emerges as an asset, akin to symbolic capital, which is (often creatively) modulated for the purposes of border control, thus maintenance of power and status—and hence, complicity in surveillant practice. This form of subjectivity and reflexivity (expressed through various modulations of information) stands in sharp contrast with the kind of subjectivity and public intimacy engendered through the older, few-to-many applications (such as portals) for communal interaction that are imbued with a broadcasting style publicness.
What must also be noted here, however, is that the very articulations of this form of subjectivity vary significantly between different social fields, and that reflexivity as such is not always the desired logic of practice. On the contrary, as told particularly by the case of expatriate professionals, the technologically imposed management of online social networks (such as Facebook) and accompanying surveillant spaces is often regarded with great scepticism, even seen a threat to the socio-spatial order and practical sense of the field. In the case of the Turkish diaspora, by contrast, such practices of spatial remediation and reflexive negotiation were rather shown to entail the promise of more field-like structures to evolve, taking on a new relevance beyond the confinements of territorial communities. Although one should be wary of extrapolating the findings of these two case studies, our analyses clearly indicate a need to consider the transnational condition in close relation to surveillance. For mobility, home-making, and the simultaneous transcendence and craving of everyday mundane fixity (all of which are part and parcel of transnational life) are increasingly managed and negotiated through personal technologies that de facto lead to a social context deeply marked by a surveillant logic and personal management/appropriations of it. We could further suggest that the ease, speed, and ephemerality of mediated proximity and boundary maintenance conceal both the temporal (for example the persistent longevity of data) and the spatial (for example the presence of data in multiple digital locales) aspects of surveillance and systems of sorting, even in cases where a heightened sense of reflexivity is demonstrated by the users, thus raising further questions. Larger scale, phenomenologically informed studies would help illuminate the complex nature of the ways in which surveillance operates at subjective, contextual, everyday levels.
1 Whereas these considerations (that both complement and stand in stark contrast with each other) provide a starting point for our overall thinking of web 2.0 surveillance in its complex forms, we do not necessarily closely follow or empirically employ each and every one of these terms in our analysis.
2 This study is part of the ongoing research project Secure Spaces: Media, Consumption and Social Surveillance, conducted by André Jansson and Miyase Christensen with funding from the National Bank of Sweden. The authors are grateful to the persons who volunteered to participate as interviewees within the two case studies, as well as to the anonymous reviewers for their comments on the first version of this chapter.
3 Due to lack of space, we cannot offer a detailed discussion of the relative richness and analytic impasses in Bourdieuian theory of field. Taken together, transnationalism and field provide a more holistic account of the issues at stake here. The latter helps illuminate the workings of in-group dynamics and subjective positionalities in transmigratory contexts. The former contextualizes a discussion of both moments of transformation and culturally/locationally specific practices of conversion of capital into power.
4 In the sense of De Certeau (1984).
5 Even though the international development sector clearly shows qualities that make it possible to analyze it in terms of a field, this is of course a tentative conclusion. The more precise dynamics, boundaries, and capital forms of such a field will not be assessed in this chapter.
6 For some groups, the convenience of using an ethnic label as an interactionstarter and an easy marker for a meeting point for individuals with the same general transnational background is one practical reason. For some other groups, the label harbours deeper sentiments.
7 This informant, a university student, occupies an active position at one of the largest representative institutions.
8 This has to do with the fact that (a) social networking sites are ultimately marked by a top-down surveillant logic (industry/state surveillance of users for various gains and purposes) regardless of the degree to which users are aware of such monitoring, and (b) what underlies user practices is a regime of personal data management to allow for various degrees of visibility and peer-monitoring.
9 By the industry, the state, and other social actors. The informants also had little knowledge of the possible longevity of personal data on social networking sites; of the various degrees of privacy that can be modulated through use of privacy settings; and of the fact that their online social network friends and their privacy settings can have serious consequences for their own privacy of personal data.
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