280
Neighborhood Social Boundaries – New Challenges for Studies on Communication, Knowledge and Culture

Saturday, 21 July 2018: 12:30-14:20
Location: 713A (MTCC SOUTH BUILDING)
RC14 Sociology of Communication, Knowledge and Culture (host committee)

Language: English

In contemporary global condition unprecedented expectations are directed toward neighborhoods. Already the Chicago school portrayed neighborhoods in ambivalent terms. On the one hand, neighborhoods were cohesive social units that existed without formal organization; on the other hand, they were considered unstable arenas of tensions and interest conflicts, and realms of segregated racial, cultural and vocational groups. This session addresses the questions concerning neighborhood knowledges and social group formation.  We are interested in finding out how social group and neighborhood boundaries are drawn, how conflicts and processes of balkanization (aggressive segregation) emerge or are solved, how people constitute knowledges on who “they” are and who “we” are, how do they draw boundaries between “us” and “them”, and what are the forces influencing upon the boundary work.

 

Recently digital communications surpass territorial boundaries and make available cultures and knowledges linking local and remote parts of the globe. These developments pose challenges to efforts to build social cohesion, and sometimes modern societies have seen to be undergoing a shift towards polarization as a result of diversifying localities, uncontrolled media landscapes, and consequent socio-political developments. Notions like second modernity or transmodernity and superdiversity acknowledge anyhow a possibility for the increased reflexivity and aim to enable a revitalization of both modernity and traditions. New insights also stress the importance of neighbourhood life and communities, which are transnationally connected and socio-economically differentiated. We open the question of transmodern neighborhoods and the new fabrics of social groups under global condition and intensified media sphere.

Session Organizer:
Ilkka ARMINEN, University of Helsinki, Finland
Oral Presentations
The Native Finns and the Finnish Somali – Imitation Game Experiments
Otto SEGERSVEN, University of Helsinki, Finland
The Power of Talk: Reducing the Potential for Conflict through Constructing Common Ground
Daria BAHTINA, Finnish Centre of Excellence in Research on Intersubjectivity in Interaction, Finland
The "Elementary Forms" of Mobile Communication: The Social Uses of the Mobile Phone Among Portuguese Adolescents
Tiago LAPA, ISCTE-IUL Avenida das Forças Armadas, 1649-026 Lisboa, VAT Nº PT 501510184, Portugal
Social Media and Social Order: A Comparative North European Study
David HERBERT, Kingston University London, United Kingdom
Distributed Papers