In a nutshell, Asia's Civil Spheres: New Media, Urban Public Space, Social Movements zooms in on creative re-imaginings of what 'political action' means in our Global Information Age and on how people continue to create worlds that are worth living in. Focusing on social and political activism as one particular area of cultural activities, the project examines how people (so-called 'activists') use the Internet to spread thoughts and ideas, create and re-create meaningful institutions and social movements, and bring about visible (measurable) social change. The Why (a.k.a. 'individual and shared aspirations/ agency/ activisms') and the Where ('space' and 'place') are adopted as equally important and mutually informing interpretive categories for understanding.

Clearly, the Internet has shifted how we utilize and think about space. As geographer I remain particularly interested in understanding and conceptualizing (new forms of) spatialities around awareness and consciousness, collective sense-making, learning, and action.

Asian cities are some of the key sites where everyday life takes place (sometimes indeed literally!) and where new urban spaces and social practices are negotiated. In this setting, a vast variety of civic groups and organisations have emerged as societal actors aspiring to influence the rapid transformation of urban spaces and practices. Not coincidentally, many renowned nongovernmental organisations are based in capital cities, close to the centres of political power. From there they address a wide range of challenges, including air and water pollution; energy conservation and efficiency; labour issues; legal reform; human rights; sustainable technologies; biodiversity protection; education; environmental justice; and so forth.

Asia's Civil Spheres endeavours to create thick descriptions as well as comparative angles between selected Asian capital cities with vibrant Internet and new media cultures, such as Bangkok, Beijing, Hong Kong, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Manila, New Delhi, Seoul, Singapore, Taipei and Tokyo (maybe also Moscow and Tehran). These cities can be grouped into clusters that can be compared well.

The core focus however is on people—activists—living in specific places. On their aspirations and actions, and on related empirical phenomena and events that concurrently span virtual and material worlds. For it is often through participation in online networks that individual agency, shared meanings, and social action are constructed, both independent of and in interaction with state and corporate actors. Utilising the Internet as extension of the so-called 'real world', through diverse forms of actions and interactions, media-savvy citizen-activists play crucial roles in advancing state and corporate accountability and transparency as well as the rule of law within various political systems. At the same time, agents of the 'state' actively negotiate and often resist attempts to initiate political transformation.

How does media-augmented activism (on- and offline) shape urban governance, planning, and place-making in diverse urban settings in Asia?

How should we capture the ever-shifting meanings and roles of concepts such as 'public space', 'public sphere', 'civil society', and 'social movements' in an Asian context and beyond?

How do new forms of cyburban institutions and networks emerge, and how do these alter the meanings of urban spaces?

To what extent do these institutions and movements have the substance and impetus to sustain broader societal change?

How can organically grown aspirations, initiatives, movements and institutions inform and influence urban planning, policy, laws, and governance?

How do the contested dialectics of cyburbanity create Asia's civil (and uncivil) spheres?

Can our empirical findings facilitate our understanding of how the way we feel structures the way we think and ultimately the way we act?

What can we learn from comparing cities in Asia?

In what ways do different sets of intentionalities and social-historical conditions provide breeding grounds for cross-pollination and encourage mutual social learning and development?

What is the shape of a comparative cyburbanism of tomorrow?

Through putting human experiences in concrete urban places and situations at the centre of exploration and analysis while retaining a critical openness to a multiplicity of disciplinary perspectives and conceptual-methodological underpinnings, this research aspires to contribute preliminary answers to some of these questions.

Asia's Civil Spheres is geared at understanding three core components of mediated activism in Asian cities:

1) The emplaced, contested struggles of urban place-making through which new meanings (values), institutions, and movements come into being, and the specific and geographical nature and circumstances of the related Internet production and consumption;

2) The significance of local new media histories and geographies and their historical precedents for these struggles;

3) Related processes of social learning, leading from free thinking and expression to the intentional production of shared meanings (values), to the ways in which such (mental or verbal) action stimulates physical, social action and leads to visible and lasting societal change.

     [Update: Student involvement is no longer possible.]

Environmental Activism and the Internet in Asia (the topically more narrowly defined predecessor and subcategory of Asia's Civil Spheres) has been approved as part of the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Programme (UROP) of NUS's Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS). Please click here for a complete list of UROPs advertised for the Academic Year 2010-2011. If you are an NUS undergraduate student in the departments of Geography, Communications and New Media (CNM), Political Science or Sociology and are interested in conducting research on the aforementioned topics, this may be for you:

Depending on your background and interest, you could focus on one language and city (say, English and Singapore, Chinese and Taipei, Malay and KL, etc.), surf the net and identify relevant local environmental organisations, events, and movements. You would follow and analyse the online activities of the key actors involved, track visible contestations and networks of support (online and offline), and map out regulations and other historical and cultural specificities. Activities include regular team discussions of research directions and challenges. Student assessment will follow the FASS guidelines.

I am happy to answer questions and discuss specific suggestions that help shape your involvement; please don’t hesitate to contact me!

     [Update: Student involvement is no longer possible.]

A research fieldtrip to Beijing from mid-June to mid-July 2010 has yielded a network of potential participants and a wealth of empirical knowledge. During the process of analysing and writing about the findings, reality has caught up with me. While I still hope to refine and pin down a conceptual-empirical angle from which things make (more) scholarly sense, the recent political backlash in China compells me to put my Beijing-based empirical research on hold so as to protect my research participants.

Generally, my activities as Research Fellow here at ARI's Asian Urbanisms Research Cluster are divided into a joint-collaborative and an individual part:

In a joint-collaborative manner, I weave collaborative networks; co-organise project-related international workshops or conferences; co-edit emerging publications; and contribute to preparing joint grant proposal applications.

Individual activities include conducting empirical fieldwork in Beijing, Singapore, and other Asian capital cities; publishing the findings; preparing grant applications for workshop and field research funding; and contributing to the development of conceptual underpinnings.

The project’s scope and shape, as well as the time and effort I can expend, depend on the resources allocated to it as well as on the specifics of emerging collaborative projects.

In light of this, please do contact me if you have questions or suggestions or would like to get involved or collaborate!