Ascetic existence in Salford

It's day 2.5 of the iGov2008 summer institute at the University of Salford, and last night I took the plunge and stayed at the Halls of Residence with the rest of the group. Even though I had brought my own sheets for the less than inviting single bed (elitist, I know, but after having showered this morning I wish I had brought my own towel as well) , it was still a bit of an ascetic experience. I say no more.

The institute consists of 20 students from all over the world, but notably none from the UK (apart from myself, that is, but I'm not originally from the UK either). The institute focuses on Greater Manchester with a strong theme on urban management issues, whilst some of the students seem a little critical about the lack of focus on e-government in a more purist sense, personally I find it refresing (read: I don't think I'd have an entire week of e-government in me).

This morning we had a keynote address from the venerable Stephen Coleman, whom I had the privilege of hearing also at the Politics 2.0 conference back in March, for some reason I found his address this morning more resonant than the previous time. Professor Coleman offered insighful analysis on the state of democracy, politics and citizenship in the digital/information age. Personally what I took away from it was his analysis of the concepts of trust vs. efficacy (in goverment-to-citizen relationships). Professor Coleman put forward the view that trust creates dependency which is inseparable from the flip side of the coin: let-down or disappointment; whereas efficacy would suggest a more proactive approach with people influencing the outcomes which affect them, a more engaging approach than "blind" trust.

I made a mental note of this and in my head hyperlinked this notion to that offered by Nikolas Rose (2000) in his essay on citizenship, New Labour and the Third Way. Rose talks about "a double movement of autonomization and responsibilisation" where the government off-loads responsibility onto the citizen-consumer coupled with increased autonomy in their drive for (double) devolution and "empowering communities". I am greatly enthused about Rose's analysis on "sociological determinism" [remember New Labour mantra "what works is what matters"] and "therapeutic individualism" [I hardly need to refer to user empowerment, "choice" and all the rest...].

I expressed some of these thoughts in the informal discussion over a cup of coffee after the keynote address, and somehow managed to rope in my notions of the global-local complexities in the network society, particularly how nowadays frustrations at the local level are often derived from global flows of information and conflicts (multicultural societies and all that). To my surprise Prof Coleman said he had just written a piece about this which was about to come out (next week in fact) and added that he would like to read some of my stuff, a huge compliment to a nobody such as myself. Incidentally, I am presenting a paper at a conference in Liverpool next month but don't think I'll have the nerve to send it to Stephen Coleman, it's just not quite good enough, I don't think completing that paper just before shooting off to Helsinki was my finest hour.

I am finding this institute nevertheless a welcome distraction to help me ease my way back into academic-analytical thinking after my 7-week long (empirical) rampage in Finland, which I have to write up before the end of August. (yikes)