CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY, ICTs
AND SOCIO-CULTURAL
AND SPATIAL CONSEQUENCES
University of Waikato Hamilton, NZ, 22 Jan 2010
VLADIMÍR IRA
Institute of Geography,
Slovak Academy of Sciences,
Bratislava, Slovakia
e-mail: [email protected]
The essential unit of geography is
not spatial, it lies in regions of
time-space and in relations of
such units to the larger spatiotemporal configurations.
Geography is the study of these
configurations. ....
The frozen
circumstances of space only
come alive when the melody of
time is played.
Nigel THRIFT (1977): Time and theory in human
geography. Part 2, Progress in Human
Geography , 1, p. 448
Aims
Cultural geography (geographies)
• to present how (new) cultural geographies
inquire also into the impact of new
technologies or techniques on local, regional
or global environment
• to present a time-geographical approach that
enables to explore how people’s use of time
and space is affected by changing access to
the information a communication
technologies (ICTs)
• to examine the impact of (ICTs) on everyday
lives of citizens in Bratislava (Slovakia)
through the integration of time-space budget
data and qualitative interviews
• Cultural geography has come to be a diverse,
enigmatic subdiscipline.
• At its most experimental edge, cultural
geography continues to work with elementary
problems about human existence, and our
position in the world.
• We can identify a recent ´culturalization´ of
many branches of geography, rather than
simply a field of ´cultural geography´ (Gregory
et al., eds 2008).
Cultural geography (geographies)
Cultural geography (geographies)
• Cultural geographies inquire also into the
impact of new technologies or techniques on
local, regional or global environment.
• The virtual access offered by information and
communication technologies (ICTs) has
entered our everyday life to an unprecedented
degree with socio-cultural and spatial
consequences.
• Because ICTs are loosing the traditionally
close links between activity, place, and time,
physicalist models such as the space-time
path and prism of time-geography may need to
be re-examined in light of the new realities.
• An important part of these new realities is the
fact, that virtual communications depend on
specific kinds of material means (computers
and mobile phones, in particular).
• These now compete with and complement a
fundamentally different kind of material means
(of physical transportation) which have
traditionally been at the basis of the timegeographic analysis.
1
Time-geographic representation
of human activity
• Describing daily human activities and
accounting for activity related behaviour has
been a major objective of behavioural
geography.
• Recently, a number of researchers have sought
to adapt several these approaches to the
changing space-time conditions under which
people´s daily activities increasingly take place
in the age of information and communication
technology (ICT).
Time-geographic representation
of human activity
• We are witnessing phenomena that are novel
and we use novel concepts (such a cyberspace,
the shrinking and shrivelling world, and
individual extensibility) to talk about these
(Adam 1995, Janelle 2003).
• A strong renewed interest in time-geography
and substantial recent theoretical extension of
its hallmarks, are one outcome of this research.
Researches correctly identify an emphasis on
time (or rather time-space) as being key
understanding ICT-age phenomena.
Internet users and mobile cellular subscribtions
(per 100 inhabitants) in 2008
Internet users
(per 100 inhabitants)
Mobile cellular
subscribtions
(per 100 inhabitants)
Australia
71.98
104.96
Korea (Rep.)
76.50
94.71
New Zealand
72.03
109.22
Slovakia
66.05
102.23
United Kingdom
76.24
126.34
USA
70.00
86.79
World
23.44
59.74
Time-geographic representation
of human activity
• The complex of often surprising ways in which
ICTs are becoming an integral part of today
post-industrial society have fascinated
researchers for some time. Empirical findings
on the multiple roles that ICTs already play in all
aspect of (urban) life are beginning to
accumulate.
ICTs and the World in 2010 (ITU 2010)
• Mobile cellular has been the most rapidly
adopted technology in history.
• Today it is the most popular and widespread
personal technology on the planet, with an
estimated 4.6 billion subscriptions globally by
the end of 2009.
• Mobile broadband subscriptions overtook fixed
broadband subscribers in 2008, highlighting
the huge potential for the mobile Internet.
• In 2009, more than a quarter of the world’s
population are using the Internet.
Expectations related to ICT supported
activities spread in a society
• Weakening association between activity and
place (the same activity may be performed at
many different places, the same place may
temporarily harbour many different activities
• Weakening association between activity and
time (the absence of a need to travel to another
between activities is drastically reduced
• An activity becomes more likely to be
performed in discontinuous chunks at
arbitrary time.
• The basis for the „fragmentation of activity“
hypothesis (Couclelis 2000).
2
The fragmentation of activity and ICTs
The time-geographical approach
(Couclelis 2009)
• The time-geographical approach focuses on
individuals.
• It highlights how they use their knowledge,
objects and tools.
• It investigates how they are involved in social
relations and perform activities in the physical
real-world environment.
• The approach studies how people use these
resources in order to perform activities related
to the wants and wishes of the individual.
• All activities performed by an individual
constitute her/his everyday life (at the micro
level).
(a) before ICTs: 1 of 4 activities is carried out at 1 place during 1 time interval
(b) after ICTs : same activity is carried out at 2 different places during 3 distinct time intervals
The time-geographical approach
• When individuals perform activities in their
everyday life, they participate in the factual
creation of different contexts.
• All of them are derived from the totality of
activities performed by individuals in their
geographical and social settings.
• There are four contexts that can be dealt with
in this time-geographical methodological
framework: everyday context, project
context, social context, geographical
context.
Project context
• The project context is defined as the activities
performed in order to achieve a certain longterm or short-term goal of one or more
individuals.
• A project context thus, is a configuration of
activities where many different types of
activities are combined and related to a longor short-term aim.
• The activities in a project context do not
necessarily follow sequentially one after the
other without interruption, like links in a chain.
On the contrary, most important project
contexts must be interrupted by activities
belonging to other project contexts.
Everyday context
Social context
• Everyday context is a mix of activities related
to different projects.
• The activities performed in an everyday
context constitute an uninterrupted flow of
activities, the sequence of activities during a
given time period, e.g. a day.
• The everyday context does not, however,
consist of arbitrarily appearing activities.
• There is an underlying structure of the
everyday context given by the individual’s
rhythm of the physiologically necessary
activities (meals and sleep, etc.) and by the
constraints of social timetables set by others
(working hours, shopping hours, etc.).
• Social context includes all individuals whose
activities in one way or another are intertwined
with those of other persons.
• The number of people involved in the social
context of an individual may grow if the
individual arranges many appointments; the
number is limited if the individual mostly lives
in isolation.
• The social context of an individual shows
when s/he is together with other individ´s.
• The social context gives a picture of how
people meet each other in everyday life,
performing activities to satisfy the individual
wants and needs for ‘living one’s life’.
3
Geographical context
• Geographical context is indicating that each
activity takes place, not only time, to perform.
• In the time-geographical framework, one can
describe and analyse the relation between
activity, location and movements of
individuals.
• At the individual level, a rhythmic pattern may
occur, which shows the central role of the
dwelling, the workplace and, for shorter visits,
the places where friends and relatives live and
where shops/basic services are located.
Slovakia - Member State of the EU
Everyday, geographical and social contexts
everyday context
geographical context
social context
(activities – teaching, cooking, ...) (stations – places of activities)
(persons in interactions)
Slovakia
• Total area: 48 845 km²
• Population: 5.4 million
• Slovakia became an independent state in
January 1993 after Czechoslovakia split into its
two constituent parts.
• The country is in the heart of central Europe, linked to
its neighbours by the River Danube. The Carpathian
Mountains extend across the northern half of the
country (the High Tatras – a popular skiing destination,
the country’s highest peak – the 2 655 m). The lowlands
of the Danube plain provide a fertile farming region.
• Ethnically, the population is 86% Slovak; Hungarians are
the largest minority.
Bratislava
• Bratislava, with a population of 0.43 million, is
one of the smallest capitals in Europe
bordering on Hungary and Austria.
• Slovakia's largest city as well as its
administrative,
economic,
financial
and
cultural centre.
• Rapid growth of the city since the 1950s, due
to rural migration, has affected the quality of
life in the city.
4
Bratislava
Bratislava
• Construction of large housing estates in the
1960s, 1970s and 1980s (e.g. large-scale
housing estate Petržalka in the 1970s - 110
thousand
inhabitants)
have
caused
transformation in the life style and spatial
pattern.
• After 1989, fundamental transition was
followed by shifts in demographic behaviour,
in economic, social, cultural and political life.
• Bratislava
with
its
dynamic
sociodemographic, economic urban structures
makes an interesting case study for timegeographical research on QoL.
Survey conducted in Bratislava
• The key point of the time-geographical
approach was the spatio-temporal record of a
rich complexity of everyday life.
• The individuals (531 respondents from
Bratislava, capital of Slovakia) were asked to
keep an open diary.
• The individual diary writers were expected to
respond to questions related:
- to the time when an activity started,
- to the character of the activity performed,
- to the place where it was performed,
- and to the persons with whom it was
performed.
Survey conducted in Bratislava
Time-space budget - Database
of human activities identified in time and space
• In addition, they were expected to record
precisely the activity related to the ICT usage.
5
Empirical basis
and activity categorization scheme
• Some everyday life phenomena of the real
world are hard to deduce theoretically due to
their rich complexity.
• The scheme for categorizing activities, is
generated empirically.
• Before defining the activity categories, 531
diaries were collected.
• In diaries, about 450,000 notes on unique
activities performed were written.
• Open diary (time-space budgets)
•
•
•
•
•
when an activity starts/ends (time)
what kind of activity is performed
where the activity is performed (place)
(together) with whom it is performed
comments (compatibility with sustainable way of living)
Activity categorization scheme
(Ellegård K. 1999)
An example following the line
from the sphere household care
in the hierarchical category
scheme. On each level there are
some alternatives. The straight
line followed is:
household care (sphere),
‘take care of the house /apartm´t’
(category),
‘tidy up’ (class),
‘clean up’ (sort)
and on the most detailed level
there are four alternative
activities (specification).
Time, space, ICTs and geography of everyday life
Time, space, ICTs and geography of everyday life
• Critical role of time in shaping the
geographies of everyday life in the
information age.
• The increasing use of ICTs leads to
changes in timing and location of
people´s activities.
• Time is a significant dimension for
understanding the geographical
situation in urban areas.
• The use of ICTs will be associated with
distinctive pattern of human activities in
space-time.
• Analyses of these patterns could provide part
of the empirical basis and /or behavioural
foundation for enhancing of the interaction
between ICTs, everyday life and (urban)
geography.
Three types of human spatial behaviour
Time, space, ICTs and geography of everyday life
( Urry 2000, Larsen et al. 2006, Vilhelmson and Thulin 2008)
• Any socio-spatial change triggered by ICT use
is first discernable in changes at individual
level, by people changing their daily use of time
and place.
• Certain activities and locations may come to be
displaced by virtual ones (e.g. people may
spend more time at home and online
consuming films, and music instead of going
to cinema or concert hall, teleworking instead
of commuting to regular place of work, eshopping instead of going to shopping centre,
chat with fiends instead of hanging out in
pubs/cafes
•
•
•
Physical (corporeal)
mobility - in situ
interaction (transportation
by car, bus, train, foot, ...)
Virtual mobility – two way
interpersonal interaction
(computers, Internet,
mobile phones, …)
Media related
communication – one way
mass communication (by
means of TV, radio, …)
6
ICTs usage (in %)
Time, space, ICTs and geography of everyday life
• Such displacement would affect everyday life
and particular balances, such as (Vilhelmson
and Thulin 2008):
- Inhome vs. out of home activities,
- Social vs. Solitary activities
- Local vs. Regional, or global interaction
- Virtual contact vs. Physical movement
- ICTs use vs. media consumption
70,00%
60,00%
50,00%
40,00%
ICT usage
30,00%
20,00%
10,00%
0,00%
00.00
Time, places and activities
related to usage of ICTs
02.00
04.00
00.60
08.00
10.00
12.00
14.00
16.00
1%
350
0%
9%
6%
1%
1%
public transportation
pedestrian path
250
school
200
0%
0%
public transp. point
0%
0%
46%
3%
150
100
work
the home indoors
50
31%
24
.0
0
22
.0
0
20
.0
0
18
.0
0
16
.0
0
14
.0
0
12
.0
0
10
.0
0
08
.0
0
00
.6
0
04
.0
0
02
.0
0
0
00
.0
0
20.00
22.00
24.00
Share of places related to ICT usage
400
300
18.00
Results of survey conducted in Bratislava
• The time-space activity budget survey
conducted in the urban environment enabled
to investigate how people use ICTs in time
and space.
• The interval between 7 a.m. and 10 p.m. (max.
at 8 p.m. – 63.8%) was the one when
performed activities were most frequently
related to ICTs usage.
• Min. at 4 a.m. – 1.3%)
0%
the home indoors
the home outdoors
work
school
grocery market
furniture store
clothes shop
postoffice/bank
remaining places
place for carrying, treatment
place for meals
relatives
friends
neighbours
playground
leisure
workout place
childrens friends
waste, garbage point
public transportation point
pedestrian path
public transportation
private transportation
Results of survey conducted in Bratislava
• Above all
- TV (9.8%),
- PC+related technologies (9.0%),
- radio (5.1%),
- mobile phone (1.6%+2.0% SMS),
- phone (1.4%),
- MP3 (1.4%)
were used by respondents (% of 24 hours).
Share of the ICTs usage - 36.7%
7
Results of survey conducted in Bratislava
Conclusions
• Significant differences between young
generation (15-30) and the 30+ generation,
and between M (PC) and F (TV) .
• Some challenges for future research on the
impact of ICT on the geography of everyday
life:
- Individual-level analyses are able to identify
relationships that are not apparent at the
aggregate level (lack of individual-level data
at fine spatial and temporal scales).
- Collection of geo-referenced data of
individual´s activities that allow the
construction of space-time pictures/images.
• Households (the home indoors), places of
work, schools, private transportation means,
public transportation means, were the most
frequent places of ICTs usage.
Conclusions
- Impact of ICT on the quality of life for
different individuals (in households,
institutions).
- The role of social and geographical context
in shaping the impact of ICTs on particular
social groups in particular (urban) areas
(gender, culture, socio-economic status,
social network, land-use pattern, transport
system, ...).
Conclusions
• Ongoing transformation of the home from
being a place of close contact and joint
activity, to more of a node of virtual
communication and remote contact, from
being a place of physical proximity to a
„space of flows“ (Castells 1996).
• The need to explore the meaning of virtual
proximity (or cyber accessibility – Kwan 2002)
along with other aspects of proximity, e.g.
distinctions between cognitive, organizational,
social, institutional, and geographical
proximity.
Conclusions
Conclusions
• Virtual mobility offered by ICTs is beginning to
blur the relationship between in-home and outof-home activities and the tensions between
local and the non local.
• ICTs use adapts to the available free time.
• Simplistic theories of technological
determinism and propositions of uniform
implications should be avoided when analysing
the temporal and spatial dimensions of virtual
mobility.
• The empirical findings supported by survey
data indicate that significant proportion of total
population’s daily time is spent on spacetranscending activities in general.
• Young generation in particular spends much
time in activities related to ICTs use.
• ICTs use is associated with a more homebased life-style.
8
Conclusions
Conclusions
• Evidently there are significant differences in
people’s time-space use that can be associated
with their acquisition of some ICT and Internet
connection.
• It suggests that lifestyle transitions may trigger
adoption of ICTs and, simultaneously, changes
in domestic time use.
• The contribution demonstrates that ICTs
usage is a significant instrument for sensible
analysis of everyday life.
• It contributes to the understanding of how
ICTs are bonded with everyday life activities of
urban people in physical space and
chronological time in concrete cultural, social,
institutional and geographical contexts.
Thank you for your attention
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