Table Of ContentDisentangling
Disentangling
The Geographies of Digital Disconnection
Edited by
André Jansson and Paul C. Adams
1
3
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DOI: 10.1093/ oso/ 9780197571873.001.0001
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Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Editors ix
Contributors xi
Introduction: Rethinking the Entangling Force
of Connective Media 1
Paul C. Adams and André Jansson
PART I: POWER GEOMETRIES OF CONNECTIVITY
1. Disconnection and Reconnection as Resistance to
Geosurveillance 23
David Swanlund
2. Locational Technologies in Post- disaster Infrastructure
Space: Uneven Access to OpenStreetMap in Post-
earthquake Haiti 41
Mimi Sheller
3. Disconnection as Distinction: A Bourdieusian Study of
Where People Withdraw from Digital Media 61
Karin Fast, Johan Lindell, and André Jansson
4. Digital Disconnection as Othering: Immersion,
“Authenticity” and the Politics of Experience 91
Neriko Musha Doerr
PART II: (DIS)CONNECTED LIVES
5. Automating Digital Afterlives 115
Robbie Fordyce, Bjørn Nansen, Michael Arnold,
Tamara Kohn, and Martin Gibbs
vi Contents
6. Senses and Sensors of Sleep: Digital Mediation and
Disconnection in Sleep Architectures 137
Bjørn Nansen, Kate Mannell, and Christopher O’Neill
7. Digital Ruins: Virtual Worlds as Landscapes of
Disconnection 163
Gonzalo C. Garcia and Vincent Miller
8. “Think on Paper, Share Online”: Interrogating the Sense
of Slowness and Disconnection in the Rise of Shouzhang in
China 189
Yan Yuan
PART III: RETHINKING DISCONNECTION IN A
DISRUPTED WORLD
9. Disconnect to Reconnect! Self- help to Regain an Authentic
Sense of Space Through Digital Detoxing 227
Gunn Enli and Trine Syvertsen
10. R etreat Culture and Therapeutic Disconnection 253
Pepita Hesselberth
11. N etworked Intimacies: Pandemic Dis/ Connections
Between Anxiety, Joy, and Laughter 273
Jenny Sundén
12. P aradoxes of Disconnected Connection 295
Paul C. Adams, Vivie Behrens, Steven Hoelscher, Olga Lavrenova,
Heath Robinson, and Yan Yuan
Index 325
Acknowledgments
This book is the result of several years of deliberation on digital disconnec-
tion or, as we eventually came to call it, disentangling. We started with a
shared interest in studying how, why, where, and when people are able to
get away from things like e-m ail and Skype. However, we relied on those
digital technologies to stay in touch despite living some 8000 km (5000
mi) apart. This sort of long-d istance collaboration hardly merits attention
at this point— a fact that indicates how far so many of us have come over
the past several decades in normalizing long-d istance work routines and so-
cializing. Still, Skype calls and e- mail only maintained the impetus brought
to this project by our opportunities to travel abroad for a mix of collabor-
ation and sightseeing. Paul got to visit the retreat where André unraveled
digital entanglements, and André got to visit the retreat where Paul unrav-
eled digital entanglements. These places, where each of us felt connected to
the slow rhythms of life—m ore in touch with material objects, animals, and
the weather— played a role in prompting us to reflect on what we meant by
disentangling and the limits of this endeavor.
André is grateful for the seed funding he received in 2019 from the
Geomedia Research Group for traveling to the United States and developing
trans- Atlantic collaborations, of which this book is one of the outcomes.
Paul benefited from funding by the Anne-M arie and Gustaf Ander
Foundation for Media Research which allowed him to visit Karlstad
University as Ander Visiting Professor in Global Media Studies from 2016
to 2017, as well as a Supplemental College Research Fellowship from the
College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin. This research visit
planted the seeds for the project.
Both authors also wish to express their appreciation for the interest and
support of Oxford University Press, particularly Sarah Humphreville whose
initial visit in Austin helped get this project going. It seems odd to thank a
pandemic, but it must be admitted that COVID-1 9 did serve as a cattle-p rod
to make us painfully aware of certain things that made it into this book.
viii Acknowledgments
André wants to thank Karin for making everyday companionship so ex-
citing, even during the current period of social enclosure, liquid home of-
fices, and remodeled logistics.
Paul is grateful, as always, to Karina for putting up with him when his
head is in the clouds, which is always the case when working on a project like
this. Paul is also grateful to his brother, Steve, for helping make his writing
retreat a bit more habitable.
Austin, Texas, USA, April 2021
Karlstad, Sweden, April 2021
Editors
André Jansson is Professor of Media and Communication Studies and
Director of the Geomedia Research Group at Karlstad University, Sweden.
His most recent books are Transmedia Work: Privilege and Precariousness in
Digital Modernity (with Karin Fast, Routledge, 2019) and Mediatization and
Mobile Lives: A Critical Approach (Routledge, 2018).
Paul C. Adams is Professor of Geography at the University of Texas at
Austin. He is the author of Geographies of Media and Communication
(Wiley- Blackwell, 2009), co- author of Communications/ Media/ Geographies
(Routledge, 2016), and co- editor of the Research Companion to Media
Geography (Ashgate, 2014).
