Social exclusion and network geographies Margaret Grieco, Professor of Transport and Society, Napier University

Social exclusion and network geographies Conceptual presentation Based upon recent primary research including amongst others: Road User Charging, Workplace Parking Levies and Social Inclusion/Exclusion - Gender, Ethnicity and Lifecycle Perspectives for NEAT grassroots transport forums

Social exclusion and network geographies and past research into social network structures and long distance travel: Keeping it in the family: social networks and employment chance. Tavistock 1987 Worker's dilemmas: recruitment, reliability and repeated exchange. Routledge, At Christmas and on rainy days: transport, travel and the female traders of Accra. Edited with N. Apt, and J. Turner, Avebury, 1996.

Social exclusion and network geographies Our knowledge of the subject is extremely limited and very partial in its character Our maps of social networks are very imprecise and tend to be focused on personal stars. Mapping the social network structure of a total community or neighbourhood or any substantial structure has never been undertaken.

Social exclusion and network geographies Our understandings of the interrelationships between process and geographical barriers in social exclusion is weak. We have some broad brush understandings of extreme situations such as the Catholic/Protestant divide in Northern Ireland but the detail of how territorial discourses operate and are maintained in social network and travel geography terms is scant.

Social exclusion and network geographies The task is to take advantage of the new information communication technologies in constructing more precise overall network records of neighbourhood functioning rather than simply focusing on the personal social networks of interviewed individuals.

Social exclusion and network geographies Moving the HATS approach developed at TSU Oxford into an electronic format which enables network information to be stored, related and connected would permit a view of the presence or absence of deeper connections which govern social exclusion. Put simply the individual‘s knowledge of their network geography is never complete.

Social exclusion and network geographies In case this suggestion of the move to the electronic is regarded as outlandish, it is worth pointing out that the use of new technologies is being to used track travel patterns for the whole of Graz, Austria „> Real-Time Graz Mobile Landscape Graz in Real Time harnesses the potential of mobile phones as an affordable, ready-made and ubiquitous medium that allows the city to be sensed and displayed in real-time as a complex, pulsating entity. Because it is possible to simultaneously 'ping' the cell phones of thousands of users - thereby establishing their precise location in space at a given moment in time - these devices can be used as a highly dynamic tracking tool that describes how the city is used and transformed by its citizens. The polis is thus interpreted as a shifting entity formed by webs of human interactions in space-time, rather than simply as a fixed, physical environment. Mobile Landscape provides a platform upon which the contemporary city can register the flux and traces its self-constructing and open-ended nature. „

Social exclusion and network geographies Graz indicates that there are new methodologies abroad which are relevant to the issue of social exclusion and network geographies. The Dft Social and network travel project makes a good case for studying network geographies as a robust base for transport and travel policy but its scope was limited.

Social exclusion and network geographies The linking of activity and mobility biographies to the network geographies now establishable by modern ict methodologies appears to be a useful next step. There is unlikely to be simply one relationship between social exclusion and network geography. Long distance migrants in the inner cities are likely to have international network geographies but these geographies are not the same as those of a businessman nor do they represent inclusion.

Social exclusion and network geographies Hypermobility at one income level is likely to denote engagement in different social processes to hypermobility at another. We have no good benchmarks on social exclusion and network geographies: it is time we began to focus on developing methodologies to do so in order to address the issues of social exclusion which have already featured so prominently in France.

Social exclusion and network geographies In terms of network geographies and social exclusion, we need to address the issue of direct and indirect accessibilities. It may be that where indirect accessibilities exist – others perform the functions associated with travel for the individual, household or group – a limited personal network geography is not an indication of social exclusion.

Social exclusion and network geographies It is at this point I would challenge Granovetter‘s characterisation of the strength of weak ties: indirect accessibility, I would suggest, is rarely the product of weak ties. The performance of a service for another, in line with classic anthropological thinking, is an indicator of the strength of a tie and a tie strengthening exercise. Ties may commence as weak but in the context of the performance of services they strengthen. The greater the service, the greater the obligation of reciprocity whether it be direct or take the form of generalised net exchange.

Social exclusion and network geographies To summarise, our existing knowledge base is weak and requires strengthening through the commissioning of direct research. There are new tools available and being developed that should be harnessed in the charting of the relationship between social exclusion and network geographies. We should be careful to make sure that we move beyond personal network geographies, that we address issues of direct and indirect accessibilities and that we do not get too captivated by an ideology of free and open contact or a shallowly characterised world of weak ties. In a world of well functioning weak ties, social exclusion should disappear not persist.

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