Traffic

Marion Näser-Lather, Dr. phil., is postdoc researcher at the Institute of European Ethnology/ Cultural Science at Philipps University Marburg, Germany, and board member of the “Society for Social Responsibility in Science” (GVW e.V.). Her research interests include activist movement studies, Mediterranean studies, net cultures, and infrastructure.Christoph Neubert, Dr. phil., is lecturer for media history at the Department of Media Studies at the University of Paderborn, Germany, and senior member of the research training group “Automatisms.” His research interests include media theory and history, traffic and logistics, and the history of ecology.

• Marion Näser-Lather and Christoph Neubert: Traffic – Media as Infrastructures and Cultural Practices: IntroductionSection 1: Theorizing TrafficJohn Durham Peters: Infrastructuralism: Media as Traffic Between Nature and CultureGabriele Schabacher: Traffic as ‘Dirt Experience’: Harold Innis’s Tracing of MediaJana Mangold: Traffic of Metaphor: Transport and Media at the Beginning of Media TheoryHartmut Winkler: Traces: Does Traffic Retroact on the Media Infrastructure?Section 2: Traffic of ConceptsGrant David Bollmer: Technobiological Traffic: Networks, Bodies, and the Management of VitalityNorm Friesen: Dewey’s Cosmic Traffic: Politics and Pedagogy as CommunicationRichard Cavell: McLuhan, Turing, and the Question of DeterminismMartina Leeker and Michael Steppat: Data Traffic in Theater and Engineering: Between Technical Conditions and IllusionsSection 3: Time, Space, and PowerMenahem Blondheim and Elihu Katz: Communications in an Ancient Empire: An Innisian Reading of the Book of EstherPeter Krapp: Nomads of the Technical SublimeWolfgang Suetzl: Street Protests, Electronic Disturbance, Smart Mobs: Dislocations of ResistanceWolf-Dieter Ernst: Performing Traffic: On Mobile Aesthetics in Contemporary Theater and Travel