PDF(1642 KB)
Passing border checkpoint: Cross-border flows and border infrastructures as apparatus of obstruction
MAO Wanxi, LIN Ziyu
Chinese Journal of Journalism & Communication ›› 2023, Vol. 45 ›› Issue (3) : 67-91.
PDF(1642 KB)
PDF(1642 KB)
Passing border checkpoint: Cross-border flows and border infrastructures as apparatus of obstruction
Border infrastructures have been key logistical media for cities for millenniums, and have taken on an increasingly crucial role in coordinating urban movements since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the mediality of border infrastructures has rarely been discussed by communication and media studies. This article investigates urbanites’ daily experience of passing Zhuhai-Macao borders, and explores how border infrastructures function as a logistical medium to mediate intercity flows with the method of Rhythmanalysis through participatory observation and in-depth interviews. It is found that border infrastructures are a set of technological apparatus that regulate urban flows by creating and operating obstacles at the intersection between two cities: by setting obstacles and making differences between two sides of the border, border infrastructures stimulate intercity flows and generate polyrhythmia; by imposing resistance that change constantly on intercity flows and maintaining differences, border infrastructures frequently disturb the polyrhythms of the flows, which change between arrhythmia and eurhythmia. Compared with previous literature’s understanding of mediality as connectivity, the mediation mechanism of border infrastructures highlights the importance of obstructivity of media. It also demonstrates that the medium is a continuum between the two poles of connectivity and disconnectivity, and the degree of connection of two parties that media relates changes dynamically in the encounter between the medium and the flows it mediates, which reflects the limits of the binary “door” logic, and provides a new model to understand media.
border infrastructure / mediality / obstruction / cross-border flows / rhythmanalysis
| [1] |
澳门劳务网(2020). 澳门活跃水客两万人, 本地人及外雇各占一半.检索于 https://www.sohu.com/a/430992124_476397.
|
| [2] |
澳门日报(2022年8月12日). 关闸青茂四日截73宗走私. 《澳门日报》,A05.
|
| [3] |
曹璞, 方惠(2022). “专注的养成”:量化自我与时间的媒介化管理实践. 《国际新闻界》,(3),71-93.
|
| [4] |
陈雪薇, 张鹏霞(2021). “不在线是一种奢望”:断连的理论阐释与研究进展. 《新闻与传播评论》,(4),39-48.
|
| [5] |
何丽苑, 钱文攀(2021). 珠海―澳门怎么走?七大通道逐个看.检索于 https://static.nfapp.southcn.com/content/202109/07/c5719337.html.
|
| [6] |
胡翼青(2022). 作为媒介性的可供性:基于媒介本体论的考察. 《新闻记者》,(1),66-76.
|
| [7] |
黄典林, 刘晨宇, 杨润苗(2022). 弹性断连、专注力管理与数字化时代的自我边界工作. 《新闻与写作》,(6),14-26.
|
| [8] |
姜红, 龙晓旭(2022). 在“可见”与“不可见”之间: 微信运动中的个体生活与数字交往. 《现代出版》,(3),11-20.
|
| [9] |
梁涵, 何丽苑, 蒋欣陈,曾美玲(2021年9月9日).青茂口岸正式启用, 粤澳距离以“秒”计算. 《南方日报》,A03.
|
| [10] |
刘国强, 颜廷旺(2022). 底层群体为何拒用智能手机?——基于重庆棒棒的扎根研究. 《国际新闻界》,(7),74-96.
|
| [11] |
刘海龙, 谢卓潇, 束开荣(2021). 网络化身体:病毒与补丁. 《新闻大学》,(5),40-55+122-123.
|
| [12] |
彭兰(2019). 连接与反连接:互联网法则的摇摆. 《国际新闻界》,(2),20-37.
|
| [13] |
彭兰(2022). 新媒体技术下传播可供性的变化及其影响. 《现代出版》,(6),60-73.
|
| [14] |
王月, 高再红(2022). 作为一种仪式的“数字断连”:创造、共享与修正. 《新闻知识》,(9),3-10.
|
| [15] |
肖爱玲, 周霞(2012). 唐长安城城门管理制度研究. 《陕西师范大学学报(哲学社会科学版)》,(1), 65-71.
|
| [16] |
袁艳(2021). “慢”从何来?——数字时代的手帐及其再中介化. 《国际新闻界》,(3),19-39.
|
| [17] |
张杰, 马一琨(2022). 从情境崩溃到情境再分离:社会-关系情境中的用户社交媒介实践——基于微信朋友圈“仅三天可见”的研究. 《国际新闻界》,(8),28-48.
|
| [18] |
赵婧洁, 邓磊(2020). 粤港澳大湾区背景下内地与澳门税制对比分析. 《财政科学》,(12),17-23.
|
| [19] |
周执前(2009). 中国古代城市管理法律初探. 《河北法学》,(7),52-56.
|
| [20] |
|
| [21] |
|
| [22] |
|
| [23] |
|
| [24] |
|
| [25] |
|
| [26] |
City of Zhuhai. (2018, Oct 26). China’s frontier for connection and cooperation. Retrieved from http://www.cityofzhuhai.com/2018-10/26/c_286198.htm.
|
| [27] |
In this article, we develop a definition of the digital border as an assemblage of mediations that articulates digital and other technologies with symbolic resources to draw boundaries of inside/outside both on the ground (territorial border) and in narrative (symbolic border). We subsequently sketch the contours of this assemblage through an emphasis on its dynamics of mediation, its dialectics of resistance and its trajectories of historicity and argue for the significance of this conceptualisation of the digital border in migration research.
|
| [28] |
|
| [29] |
This paper argues that contemporary processes of extended urbanisation, which include suburbanisation, post-suburbanisation and peri-urbanisation, may result in increased vulnerability to infectious disease spread. Through a review of existing literature at the nexus of urbanisation and infectious disease, we consider how this (potential) increased vulnerability to infectious diseases in peri- or suburban areas is in fact dialectically related to socio-material transformations on the metropolitan edge. In particular, we highlight three key factors influencing the spread of infectious disease that have been identified in the literature: demographic change, infrastructure and governance. These have been chosen given both the prominence of these themes and their role in shaping the spread of disease on the urban edge. Further, we suggest how a landscape political ecology framework can be useful for examining the role of socio-ecological transformations in generating increased risk of infectious disease in peri- and suburban areas. To illustrate our arguments we will draw upon examples from various re-emerging infectious disease events and outbreaks around the world to reveal how extended urbanisation in the broadest sense has amplified the conditions necessary for the spread of infectious diseases. We thus call for future research on the spatialities of health and disease to pay attention to how variegated patterns of extended urbanisation may influence possible outbreaks and the mechanisms through which such risks can be alleviated.
|
| [30] |
|
| [31] |
|
| [32] |
|
| [33] |
|
| [34] |
|
| [35] |
|
| [36] |
|
| [37] |
|
| [38] |
|
| [39] |
|
| [40] |
|
| [41] |
|
| [42] |
|
| [43] |
|
| [44] |
Looking at the work performed by infrastructures when they become part and parcel of the security governance, in this paper, I contend that a closer look must be paid to the infrastructural context of emergence and possibility of algorithms applied in “smart border technologies”. I focus on the explanatory and productive power of an analytical concept derived from the practice: the “security/mobility nexus”, which refers to the stitching of security to mobility to make governance possible. I illustrate how through the security/mobility nexus the Canadian State has capitalized on the promises of infrastructures–such as biometric algorithms–to innovate and deploy the affordance power of the digital to connect people’s data to spaces and physical sites. To analytically reflect on how it comes to mediate bodies as a “border infrastructure” with the security/mobility nexus, I first focus on the algorithmic mediation before turning to the biometric imaginary and its limits.
|
| [45] |
|
| [46] |
|
| [47] |
|
| [48] |
|
| [49] |
|
| [50] |
|
| [51] |
|
| [52] |
|
| [53] |
|
| [54] |
|
| [55] |
|
| [56] |
|
| [57] |
|
| [58] |
|
| [59] |
|
| [60] |
|
| [61] |
This Special Issue examines the relationship between imaginaries and infrastructures. Through a specific focus on the Asian region, the four articles contained herein demonstrate how these imaginaries span, transform and proliferate various boundaries. They also create new regimes of visibility and present a range of ethical dimensions for those who use them and the companies and governments that regulate the infrastructures. These include dating and video sharing apps, digital money transactions and diverging historical accounts of communications technologies. Such diverse examples demonstrate how media infrastructures and the media content they carry enable the production of imaginaries and meaning.
|
| [62] |
|
| [63] |
Through its focus on the City of London as a particular work sector and setting, this paper emphasizes the symbolic and material significance of place to understanding the lived experiences of power relations within organizational life. The socio-cultural and material aspects of the City are explored through an analysis of the rhythms of place, as well through interview data. Using a methodological approach based on Lefebvre’s Rhythmanalysis in order to develop an embodied, immersive sense of how the City is experienced as a workplace, the paper makes a methodological, empirical and theoretical contribution to an understanding of the way in which rhythms shape how place is performed. Using rhythmanalysis as a method, the paper shows the relationship between rhythms and the performances of place, foregrounding a subjective, embodied and experiential way of researching the places and spaces of organizing.
|
| [64] |
|
| [65] |
|
| [66] |
|
| [67] |
|
| [68] |
This paper scrutinizes the interrelation between technology and processes of bordering. In particular, it addresses the ways through which biometrics, dataveillance, predictive analytics, and robotics enlist the human body, networks, and human–machine assemblages in practices of inclusion and exclusion at the contemporary dislocated and ‘smart’ border. Through a description of the sociotechnical apparatuses underlying biometric, algorithmic, and automated border work, the paper develops the term iBorder, and connects its specific affordances to an emergent late-modern regime of security. With reference to the notion of cultural technique, the paper argues that contemporary technologically facilitated practices of bordering coconstitute, rather than merely process, contingent subjectivities and frames for practice.
|
| [69] |
|
| [70] |
|
| [71] |
This article asks methodological questions about studying infrastructure with some of the tools and perspectives of ethnography. Infrastructure is both relational and ecological—it means different things to different groups and it is part of the balance of action, tools, and the built environment, inseparable from them. It also is frequently mundane to the point of boredom, involving things such as plugs, standards, and bureaucratic forms. Some of the difficulties of studying infrastructure are how to scale up from traditional ethnographic sites, how to manage large quantities of data such as those produced by transaction logs, and how to understand the interplay of online and offline behavior. Some of the tricks of the trade involved in meeting these challenges include studying the design of infrastructure, understanding the paradoxes of infrastructure as both transparent and opaque, including invisible work in the ecological analysis, and pinpointing the epistemological status of indictors.
|
| [72] |
|
| [73] |
|
| [74] |
In this paper I provide a description and preliminary analysis of the current ‘technological unconscious’. I use this term to signify the basic forms of positioning and juxtapositioning which make up the basic ‘atomic structure’ of contemporary Euro-American life. Because of the potential vastness of the topic, I concentrate on just one form of positioning and juxtapositioning, namely the construction of repetition. The paper is in three parts. The first part provides a capsule history of how a very few templates of position and juxtaposition have become powered up into a capacious and effective background. In the second part of the paper I argue that in recent years the practice of these templates has been changing as a full-blown standardisation of space has taken hold. This standardisation is gradually leading to the crystallisation of a new kind of technological unconscious. In the third part of the paper I argue that the traces of this new kind of unconscious are taking hold in social theory as well, leading to the assumption of a quite different event horizon which can be thought of as a different kind of materiality.
|
| [75] |
|
| [76] |
|
| [77] |
|
| [78] |
|
| [79] |
As geospatial information seemingly moves from users' personal computers to ‘the cloud’, the use of the phrase ‘geographic technologies’ has increasingly indicated things beyond desktop GIS. With these shifts in the distribution of geospatial data and practices, and the rise of the geoweb as a site of inquiry, new concepts are needed to better understand the conditions of geographic technologies. In this paper I conceptualize one such element of interactivity: Connection. Here, I argue that a logic of continuous connectivity underlies the development of digital spatial media and influences the contemporary production of spatial knowledge. For those lives lived that are presumed to be ‘always connected’, interactions are figured by these connections to digital media. Many of these digital devices (especially mobile ones) become functional only through a series of connections to data and communication networks. For instance, mobile phones are in continuous communication regardless of direct use, ‘listening’ to cellular towers and analyzing proximity to deliver the best possible connection. From these system-level codes that maintain device connectivity to software-level codes that push and pull data to and from ‘the cloud’, being always connected is part of a cultural milieu that has diverse implications not only for attention but also for the development of collective, spatial knowledge. Here, I situate the emergence of continuous connectivity in the marketing of handheld computers in the late 1990s, to historicize the importance of connection for understanding geospatial practices.
|
| [80] |
|
| [82] |
|
1. 百度地图截图（2022年12月1日 ），检索于
2. 代购与走水之间的界限模糊，前者强调代买，后者强调代运。因代购必须将货物运出关口，故也具有走水的性质，且与水客存在合作。不少受访者既从事代购也从事走水（11号，13号）。
3. 珠海市香洲区人民政府（2020）。拱北口岸。检索于
4. 正文中括号内所引用的编号与受访者基本信息概览中的编号相对应。
/
| 〈 |
|
〉 |
