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GEOMEDIA SPEAKER SERIES - TELL IT TO THE BEES: REFLECTIONS ON DIGITAL CONTINUUMS AND RURALITY.

NATASHA WEBSTER, DEPARTMENT OF HUMAN GEOGRAPHY AT ÖREBRO UNIVERSITY, SWEDEN

• 6 May 2024, 13.15-15.00
• 11C269 (house 11)

ABSTRACT

This lecture explores the concept of ‘rural’ through the lens of digital geography. It will begin with a larger discussion of rural and digital issues before turning to the example of bees. Drawing on exploratory field work and her own beekeeping practice, Natasha will explore how urban hegemonies may limit understandings of rural digital life. Beekeeping is at once a highly localized practice and resource with ‘stationary’ hives regulated by local climate, weather, regulations as well as cultural practices. The bees themselves are foragers covering great distances –physically and symbolically making linkages to mobility and change – while honey is stored in place.

Digital practices and tools, for example platforms, online courses, social media groups etc., increasingly common and may be reshaping beekeeping practices. Digital spaces in beekeeping highlight the ways in which lived experience is interwoven with the digital, simultaneously in the hand and as flowing through continuums. Thus, beekeeping offers an interesting opportunity to explore what is meant by digital geography and to further understand how rural practices are a ‘sticky’ issue in digital social-technical relations. This is an exploratory lecture which will unpack and explore the links between honey and different forms of geographies.

READINGS

Zhang, Q., Webster, N.A., Han, S., Yilma Ayele, W. 2023. Contextualizing the rural in digital studies: A computational literature review of rural-digital relations, Technology in Society,75, 1- 17.

Zhang, Q and Webster, N.A. 2024. Positioning rural geography into platform economies: Why we need to ask new questions when researching the rural platform economy.  In (eds) Vale, M., Ferreira, D., and Rodrigues, F. Geographies of the Platform Economy: Critical Perspectives. Springer Books

BIO

Natasha Webster is Assistant Professor at the Department of Human Geography at Örebro University, Sweden. As a feminist geographer, Natasha is interested in the complexities of social-technical-spatial relations in work(ing)-life practices. She is interested in the role of emotions and affect in everyday common activities in work and play. She is a researcher in the project, “Digital Nature: Everyday social-technical relations and practices within Sweden’s rural agriculture and wild harvesting industries”, funded by Vetenskapsrådet. Natasha is an Associate Editor at the journal, Emotion, Space and Society  and is on the editorial board for Digital Geography and Society.