Journal articles on the topic 'Guerilla tactics'

Gamification, as a technique to engage members of the millennial generation, has gained considerable traction at workplace. The purpose of this study is to provide a contextual overview of gamification as an effective mechanism aligned with the learning preferences and characteristics of the millennial cohort. The suggested framework helps organizations effectively design and incorporate learning mechanisms appropriate to new cohort entering and dominating the workforce. The insights developed are critical for learning and development professionals and instructional designers in enabling them to create effective and gamified training modules for this cohort.

Frontier violence is now an accepted chapter of Australian history. Indigenous resistance is central to this story, yet little examined as a military phenomenon (Connor 2004). Indigenous military tactics and objectives are more often assumed than analysed.Building on Laurie’s and Cilento’s contentions (1959) that an alliance of Aboriginal groups staged a ‘Black War’ across southern Queensland between the 1840s and 1860s, the author seeks evidence for a historically definable conflict during this period, complete with a declaration, coordination, leadership, planning and a broader objective: usurping the pastoral industry. As the Australian situation continues to present elements which have proved difficult to reconcile with existing paradigms for military history, this study applies definitions from guerilla and terrorist conflict (e.g. Eckley 2001, Kilcullen 2009) to explain key features of the southern Queensland “Black War.”The author concludes that Indigenous resistance, to judge from southern Queensland, followed its own distinctive pattern. It achieved coordinated response through inter-tribal gatherings and sophisticated signaling. It relied on economic sabotage, targeted payback killings and harassment. It was guided by reticent “loner-leaders.” Contrary to the claims of military historians such as Dennis (1995), the author finds evidence for tactical innovation. He notes a move away from pitched battles to ambush affrays; the development of full-time ‘guerilla bands’; and use of new materials.

Abstract Carl Philipp Gottfried von Clausewitz is recognized as one of the most influential military theorists of all time. His ideas and theories represented in “On War” and their relevance in the 21st century are recurring debates as irregular warfare and asymmetric warfare is on the rise since World War II. While Clausewitz did not write extensively about irregular or asymmetric warfare in “On War”, he did hold lectures on as at the time was called “small war”, where he shared his views about the war on the Spanish guerilla war against Napoleon. In this study, we will examine the nature and tactics described by Clausewitz and draw a comparison regarding modern tactics.

STS scholars studying anti-nuclear activism in the context of nations in the Global North have observed the critical role of science to mediate relations of domination and resistance. Through a historical examination of anti-nuclear activism in India, this article investigates the instrumentalization of science as a liberal democratic rationality. In doing so, the article shows how elite Indian activists – many of whom are scientists, engineers, journalists and academic professionals – will never be seen as scientifically knowledgeable in nuclear matters, because of their non-state educational pedigrees. If activists cannot hold the state accountable through science, they have attempted to anticipate what other kinds of arguments and modes of contention may gain traction. As such, they have deployed more ‘guerilla’ tactics grounded in bureaucratic rationalities in the hopes of installing themselves as alternate sources of expertise in India’s nuclear landscape.

Arbitration today is turning into a quagmire of clashing cultures and conflicting ethical rules. Opinions differ on whether and how to address this situation. One approach is to level the global playing field by means of best practices, rules and guidelines, such as the IBA Guidelines on Party Representation in International Arbitration. Institutions can also issue their own particular rules, such as the LCIA General Guidelines for the Parties' Legal Representatives. This article takes a contrary approach by exploring how the general principle of good faith can guide arbitration proceedings and help fend off guerilla tactics. A comparative analysis of selected legal systems suggests that the principle of good faith permeates both litigation and arbitration, increasingly also in common law jurisdictions. It applies to all participants - parties, counsel, and arbitrators alike - and allows for bespoke solutions. The aim is to keep arbitration informal and flexible, in the interest of the users. Good faith may not be a panacea for all real or perceived ills afflicting arbitration, but it is arguably the closest substitute we have available.

Introduction. The article analyzes the battle on the Ingour river on November 6, 1855 from the political perspective in order to establish its role in the Caucasian campaign of 1855 of the Crimean war (1853-1856). Methods. Using the approach created by Carl von Clausewitz and developed by Alexander Svechin, the author views war as the continuation of politics and explores the political impact of the Ingour battle regarding its connection with the development of guerilla war in Mingrelia against the Turkish army under Omer-pasha (Ömer Lütfi Paşa). Analysis. Tactical analysis of the battle demonstrates that its organization and conduct on Russian side included considerable flaws. However, political analysis allows understanding that the impact of the Ingour battle went beyond its immediate tactical outcome. Political instability in Mingrelia demanded imperatively that major-general I.K. Bagration-Mukhranskiy, who commanded Russian Gurian force, would confront Omer-pasha at Mingrelian border in order to confirm the political credibility of Russian authorities among the local population. Discussion. Russian readiness to fight for Mingrelia influenced the political situation positively and contributed to the development of guerilla war against Omer-pasha. It was especially beneficial in the difficult conditions of Batum operational area and made a significant contribution to the outcome of the campaign. Thus, it is established in the article that one should view the Ingour battle not as a woeful defeat, but as the sensible tactical sacrifice for political ends that yielded considerable results and influenced the outcome of the 1855 Caucasian campaign in an important way.

A singular and modest activist action, a temporary park created in San Francisco, grew into the global urban Park(ing) Day (PD) phenomenon. This tactical urbanism event not only expanded to be annually celebrated in thousands of parking lots all over the world but became an inspiration for urban planning and policy changes. The permanent rendition of Park(ing) Day, parklets, resulted from the movement but did not stop the spread of PD itself. This article presents case studies from New Zealand and Poland, two geographically and culturally distant locations where PD has further developed and evolved gaining local qualities. Through research methods such as research in design, secondary data analysis and expert interviews we study the trajectory of PD evolution and the role and interpretation of it in different parts of the globe. The results show a narrative of successive popularisation and institutionalisation as well as diversification. Departing from its grassroots, guerilla and assertive traits, PD has grown to become an artistic, creative and urban planning tool. As an established, recognised action and an ‘attractive’ idea, PD has great potential for designer education, allowing a venue for implementing methods such as design-build and live project.

This article will be focused on Prince Diponegoro’s War Strategy that implemented Total War Strategy through Guerilla Warfare tactic. The purpose and objectives of this article are analyzing the Prince Diponegoro’s War Strategy as the form of People’s Total War to be comprehended as the Indonesia’s total war strategy in facing threats so the readers will gain knowledge and deep information regarding the implementation of total war strategy. The qualitative method was conducted to create this article through historical research approach in designing the content of this article. The Total War theory was also implemented on this article. Based on the research result, it was found that the Indonesian War conducted by Prince Diponegoro is essentially a picture of the People’s total War which are not only carried out by taking up arms, but also engaged in political, social, economic, and cultural fields. The Total War Strategy has applied by fighters both in armed struggle, which Total War values characterized by: populist, territorial, the total, has been embedded in every breath of struggle. Whole community participation in accordance with their respective roles, and empowering all resources maximum national power to be further combined with military power, become a form of "totality" that is powerful in dealing with various forms of threats. From the history of the Indonesian War by Prince Diponegoro which gave birth to the Total War concept, has demonstrated and proven that the involvement of all components of the nation, both military and civilian (non-military) have an important role in accordance with their respective fields.

The main idea of this article is that the Supreme Otaman Symon Petliura School (alias "Svitlana") attached to the "Sich" (later Ivan Bogun) Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) Detachment was one of the first non-commissioned officers schools within the UPA created to reinforce its troops with combat leaders independently. The author's purpose was to understand how the partisan army trained its NCOs at early stages of its development. The article illustrates that the Symon Petliura NCOs School was established on May, 30 1943 and operated until January, 18 1944. In the course of this period, it managed to train two classes of cadets of about 150 men, who subsequently became section and platoon leaders, and military instructors. The training was conducted in Svynaryn Forest on the edge of Verba and Turiysk districts in Volhynia Oblast (guerilla camp "Sich"), and lasted for 10 hours daily. It included: drill, marksmanship and weapon studies, tactical training, guard service, military discipline and army regulations studies. Cadets with best results were taken to continue their studies in UPA officers schools. Not only did cadets study theory but also they had to engage in warfare along with UPA combatant forces. The "Svitlana" School took part in fights of Antonivka, Koniukhy and Radovychi (with Nazi troops); Stavky (with Soviet partisans) and Dominopol, Zasmyky and Kupychiv (Kupiczów, with Polish partisans). When the tension of warfare was at its peak, the NCOs School stopped its educative process and operated as fighting element. During its lifetime, the NCOs School was subordinate to the "Sich" Detachment staff, Prince Sviatoslav Battalion of the Ivan Bogun Detachment and Ivan Bogun Detachment staff directly. After the detachment had been defeated by the Soviet partisans in January, 1944, the NCOs School ceased to exist. Supreme Otaman Symon Petliura NCOs School became a part of UPA training system and provided combat leaders for insurgent units operating within Volodymyr and Gorokhiv OUN District area.

The article challenges traditional notions of war and war ethics from the standpoints of a terrorist attack victim and of a drone strike victim, of the decentralized opposition of “old” and “new” wars, “major” wars and “small” ones, combatants vs. non-combatants, soldiers vs guerilla fighters, friends vs enemies, victors vs defeated. Accordingly, the authors consider the political status and social role of ethnographic, anthropological and ethical research within the context of “new wars,” which include guerilla warfare and resort to terrorist tactics. Building on current research in sociology, anthropology, ethics and political studies (Hugh Gusterson, Mary Kaldor, Jeff McMahan, Lucy Sachman, Emran Feroz, Grégoire Chamayou, Kirill Martynov, Victor Vakhshtayn et al.), the authors regard whether drone technologies and other automated weapons conform to the Russia’s military ethics. They also speculate upon prospects of some technologies being socially adapted in different world cultures. The article brings up to date critique of violence by Walter Benjamin and problematizes the concept of the political by Carl Schmitt through the lens of the present-day military ethnography (see Nikolai Ssorin-Chaikov’s Hybrid Peace: Ethnographies of War in this issue of Logos). Analyzing historical transformations and inversions of guerillas, suicide pilots, UAV operators and suicide bombers deconstructs the notion of “hybrid war” as well as “hybrid peace.” Finally, the authors introduce a project of a less rigoristic and not purely prohibitive ethical program (“drone ethics”) which might serve as a basis for automated systems’ algorithms to make decisions during military crises and states of emergency. The article continues to address the range of problems brought up in the Logos issue on war (Vol. 29 #3 2019).

Small war became popularly used in irregular warfare when a more considerable force dominated the opponent. Small wars but troublesome opposing forces are known as guerrillas. Since war architects popularized the guerrilla theory, it has also been frequently used in wars between forces. The psychological impact of most of the war's success can influence both state and group leaders to apply this model. It has been practiced and applied for a long time in various parts of the world until today. The very popularity of this model of warfare has prompted the author to produce an article that aims to compare the three guerrilla architects' frameworks from the point of view of a comprehensive strategy, tactics, and social aspects using the method of collecting data through document study. The results show that the framework of Mao Tse Tung, Vo Nguyen Giap, and Che Guevara about guerrilla warfare has its characteristics and perspectives.

Terayama Shuji is one of the most prominent Japanese avant-garde artists of the 20th century. This paper explores Terayama’s experimental film Emperor Tomato Ketchup (1971), dealing with children’s rebellion against (masculine) authority. With an apparent lack of conventional narrative, this 16mm tinted black and white feature, shot in documentary style, was filmed in public without permission, demonstrating the guerilla tactics of Terayama’s experimental approach. Reflecting the turbulent times of Japan’s 1960s, when the quest for reinvention of national identity was compellingly engaged both right and left, Emperor Tomato Ketchup illustrates a dystopian Japan where the brutal revolution of ‘innocent’ and immature takes place. The focus of this paper is on the notion of carnality and politics of postwar Japan, as film’s transgressive graphic content of pre-pubescent children’s sexual encounter with women can still be perceived as radical. Article received: December 26, 2017; Article accepted: January 10, 2018; Published online: April 15, 2018; Original scholarly paper How to cite this article: Došen, Ana. "Emperor Tomato Ketchup: Some Reflections on Carnality and Politics." AM Journal of Art and Media Studies 15 (2018): . doi: 10.25038/am.v0i15.230

<p><em>Like a number of serious problems in our world terrorism is also one of them. Now what do we mean by; ‘terrorism’? It is a political phenomenon, where violence and bloodshed are brought upon the innocent citizens in order to shaken up the Government as it exploits the so-called terrorists. This is a set up which runs parallel with the main stream to devastate the main stream, in a secretive or clandestine method. Thus any violent bloodshed such as killing in robbery or insurgency cannot be called terrorism as there either the cause is not political as in case of killing in robbery; or common men are not targeted as in case of insurgency (although its cause is political). Again Guerilla tactic although is a clandestine or secretive method still it is not terrorism as here the units of the Government, that is innocent citizens are not killed. Revolution also involves violence but unlike terrorism it gains public support. The terrorists claim that they are actually waging a war against the Government, but in a war certain just rules are followed which states that proportionality between the means and end should be maintained, there should be a legitimate authority waging a war, it goes on within a particular territory, it should have a consistent success rate and most importantly it protects the immunity of the innocent mass. But in terrorism such rules of just war are lacking. Thus terrorism is a political violence between the mighty and the weak, for which it can also be called a class struggle or power struggle, where the weak sect shake the mighty by attacking upon those who are part and parcel of the mighty. This ‘ism’ is thus different from war, insurgency, revolution, crime and guerilla tactic because of its distinct feature that it does not attack its direct victim but attacks its indirect victim. In other words instead of destroying the Government which is guilty to them it attacks the innocent citizens of the Government because they are the units of the Government. Thus if the part is destroyed then the whole would automatically be shaken up. This unique mentality is found only in this ‘ism’ thus it differs from all other instances of violence. Terrorism is of two types—Terrorism from Above and Terrorism from Below. The former is also known as ‘State Sponsored Terrorism’ where the state is found to torture its citizens. The latter is termed ‘Non-State Terrorism’ where the exploited lot terrorizes the state for having been oppressed by it for years. The Non-State Terrorism is formed by the private parties such as Al Qaeda, Aum Shinrikyo, Maoists of India and so on.</em></p>

Engaging students in large classes can be challenging for educators. In this study, we implemented a guerrilla tactic in an effort to engage our students. Guerilla tactic is a pedagogical approach where one teacher (the “guerrilla”) enters into a colleague’s class that is in session, sits for a while, takes over the teaching for about ten minutes, then leaves the classroom. There is an element of student surprise with guerrilla pedagogy because students are not informed in advance about the guerrilla visit and the host instructor has no prior knowledge on what the visiting guerrilla instructor would talk about. For this study, two practical nursing instructors who teach the same courses (i.e., anatomy and physiology, and pathophysiology) to different sections collaborated as guerrilla instructors. Four sections of students; two from anatomy and physiology and two from pathophysiology participated in the study. Each section had about one hundred students. The disruptive guerrilla pedagogy was implemented during the 2019 winter semester. At the end of the semester, students completed a survey about their experiences that had both Likert scale and open-ended questions. The instructors critically reflected on their experiences. Thematic analysis and descriptive statistics were used to analyze the data. Overall, students and the instructors had positive experiences with the instructional strategy. In our reflective analysis, we answer Hutchings's (2000) taxonomy of scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) inquiry questions. We found that students appreciated being exposed to two experts who have different instructional strategies. Educators have to trust and respect their peers in ways that allow them to be vulnerable and enhance their practice. The surprise and instructor collaboration brought by guerrilla pedagogy enhanced students’ engagement in large classes.

Whenever a people can be mediatized, they are.Paul Virilio In one of its most popular works – Electronic Civil Disobedience and Other Unpopular Ideas, the Critical Art Ensemble (CAE) outlines what it views as a major power shift characterizing the present, namely, the traditional public space – the street, has turned into ‘dead capital’. Borrowing from Guy Debord’s ideas on spectacular society, CAE theorizes that the spectacle has appropriated all, while power has mutated into a nomadic form of pure absence – ‘power itself cannot be seen; only its representation appears.’ To counter this, the activist movement must of course appropriate the same tactics of nomadic absence – eluding mediatization by the virtual power, staying below the radar and yet creating and altering the spectacle by poetic/symbolic acts of absence that will (hopefully) open cracks in the edifice of the monolith. Another strategy would be to perpetuate standard tactics of public space occupation where the _public _is dispensed with, in favor of a virtual counterpart – the ‘controlled deployment of information’. In this Marxist scenario, the activist gains power by attaining control of the means of production of an elusive and virtual ‘semiotic power’ (16). Thus, where Umberto Eco’s semiological guerilla warfare aimed to win the battle ‘not where the communication originates, but where it arrives’ (142), CAE argues that ‘no power base benefits from listening to an alternative message’(17), in effect abolishing the basic tool for communicating public dissent – the channeling of an alternative vision through some sort of public media. The reason for this is, according to CAE, twofold. First, when brought to its extreme, its power analysis leads it to believe that the capitalist means of production are nowadays virtual, and moreover, still worth seizing. Second, the spectacle inevitably appropriates all alternative public messages for its own uses, thus rendering oppositional movements powerless – ‘since mass media allegiance is skewed toward the status quo… there is no way that activist groups can outdo them’ (15). As a consequence of this order, CAE argues for the subversive and the covert while preaching ‘abhorrence of public space as a theatre of action’ (25). A quasi-ontological beta-utopian order emerges, marked by the homogenous essence of all actors, including history, and their dissolution into power-bases interested in self perpetuation. The activist avant-garde is the only actor able to ‘maintain at all times a multi-dimensional persona’, thus not losing its own identity to a mediatized image. The avant-garde fights for the rights of the oppressed but is not and cannot be known to them – a force ex nihilo, an alter ego to the elusive power. The avant-garde of Electronic Civil Disobedience (ECD) is moreover predestined to be the eternal significant other of power. CAE’s vision of this struggle insists that ‘authoritarian structure cannot be smashed; it can only be resisted’, therefore creating a dialectical condition of ever-shifting nomadic identities of resistance and oppression. A more or less similar beta-utopian order is framed by Peter Lamborn Wilson (aka Hakim Bey) in A Network of Castles – a quintessential text expanding on his earlier ideas of the Tong and the Temporary Autonomous Zone (TAZ) with regard to the virtual condition. Starting with the TAZ, Hakim Bey claimed its existence as utopia somewhere, preferably here and now, appearing and disappearing, a paradoxical identity without image, beyond the spectacle yet spectacular – in effect virtual. Similar to the ECD, the TAZ is built around the concept of staying below the radar of power and countering nomadic capital with nomadic dissent. The activist ”nomadic war machine” conquers without being noticed and moves on before the map can be adjusted.’ The Tong in turn – a term borrowed from Chinese secret societies – is similar to the ECD’s avant-garde – an invisible-virtual activist force, united by a dissenting identity and ‘devoted not to one project but to an on-going “cause”’. Here beta-utopia is seen as a necessary edifice, what Bey calls ‘the legend of the Tong’, which creates meaning through its paradoxical absence/presence – it is not (as in does not exist as an image) but it could and must be taken as physically present. The purpose of the Tong, like ECD’s avant-garde, is to escape mediatization and thus sublimate a perfect identity free from desire: ‘it will call a world into being – even if only for a few moments – in which our desires are not only articulated but satisfied.’ The virtual Tong can be implemented through a Network of Castles – existing on the border between the real and the virtual, inaccessible to power, ‘rooted partly in the imaginaire…in the image of mysterious inaccessibility and danger.’ In what presents itself as the synthesis of the TAZ and Tong, the Network of Castles is both physical utopia here and now, and a construct of perfectly fluid virtual identity, by nature inaccessible to mediatization. The Net is to elevate the TAZ and the Tong into a potent possibility to escape mediatization and thus be real again. The Network of Castles is the answer to the problem of virtual identity and real action. As Bey puts it – ‘the tactical problem consists of the need (or desire) to stay ahead of representation – not just to escape it, but to attain through mobilization a relative invulnerability to representation.’ In effect, Bey sublimates from the virtual a physical reality without mediated desire. In this beta-utopian order of fluid (dis)appearance, the icon of the image is abolished, public space is exorcised from mediated desire and the void left by the spectacle presents itself as a fulfilled identity. Thus framed, the activist struggle against oppression looms as a utopian quest for the perfect self – a symbolic and aesthetic paradoxical order. I consider the ECD and the Network of Castles to represent a desire for beta-utopian order, where beta stands for the discourse of an unfinished project, the pre-release that will test the waters for the real thing. A resolution to this order is by definition not supposed to come; utopia is now, in an eternal pre-release form, demanding eternal debugging. Utopian order is seen here as a virtual meta-narrative, thriving around an obfuscated central absence. This order can be also reconstructed as, paraphrasing Mark Dery, a modified ‘ejector seat’ condition, where instead of the utopian task of Cartesian mind escaping matter, virtual identity escapes desire. The imagined order of an unmediated space constantly re-created by unmediated acts is an expression of the need for an identity that is real in itself, beyond history. For, is it not that ‘the fantasy of a social world free from mass media of any kind, ancient or modern, is really a fantasy about being free from desire, by being free from the fantasy space mass media create for collective desire’? (Wark 324). Isaiah Berlin outlines three pillars of utopian belief: that the central problems of humans are the same throughout history; that they are in principle soluble; and that the solutions form a harmonious whole (Rothstein, Muschamp and Marty: 84). CAE’s and Bey’s beta-utopian order characteristically fulfills the first and the third condition, but drops the second. The clash with the oppressive spectacle is universal – in that sense history is homogenous. This clash however will never be solved and this condition precisely enables the harmonious existence of a fluid identity – the pure and eternal virtual dissent. In their beta-utopian order CAE and Bey create and obfuscate an other, their projects thrive around a central absence – the fleeing virtual capital, the hollow body of the State, the overwhelming spectacle. In this, they are inescapably modernist, struggling to escape the historical and touch the unperturbed real. ‘The Modernist narrative establishes a process of liberation at the heart of history which requires at its base a pre-social, foundational, individual identity. The individual is posted as outside of and prior to history, only later becoming ensnared in externally imposed chains. The insistence on the freedom of the subject, the compulsive, repetitive inscription into discourse of the sign of the resisting agent, functions to restrict the shape of identity to its modern form’ (Poster: 213-14). Indeed, history is viewed as a layer of oppressive power representations, ensnaring a primordial and foundational identity, which the dissenting activist, the TAZ and the ECD aim to rediscover. History is perceived to have turned into ‘nothing more than a homogeneous construct that continuously replays capitalist victories’ (17). The real, in contrast, is perceived to be marked by the titanic struggle of a liberation movement in opposition to power. However, if the modernist project can be considered as an obfuscation of a central absence, the postmodern by comparison, exposes the arbitrary character of the object and its created, rather than found, relation to the subject. Postmodernism ‘consists not in demonstrating that the game works without an object, that the play is set in motion by a central absence, but rather in displaying the object directly, allowing it to make visible its own indifferent and arbitrary character.’ (Wright: 41) References Bey, Hakim. A Network of Castles. 1997. Available: http://www.hermetic.com/bey/. 21 June 2004. ———. “Temporary Autonomous Zones.” 1992. Autonomedia. Available: http://www.hermetic.com/bey/. 21 June 2004. ———. Tong Aesthetics. 1997. Available: http://www.hermetic.com/bey/. 21 June 2004. CAE. “Digital Resistance.” 2001. Autonomedia. Available: http://www.critical-art.net/books/. 21 June 2004. ———. “Electronic Civil Disobedience and Other Unpopular Ideas.” 1996. Autonomedia. Available: http://www.critical-art.net/books/. 21 June 2004. Dery, Mark. Escape Velocity: Cyberculture at the End of the Century. New York: Grove Press, 1996. Eco, Umberto. “Towards a Semiological Guerilla Warfare.” Travels in Hyperreality. Ed. Umberto Eco. London: Picador, 1987. 135-44. Poster, Mark. “Cyberdemocracy: The Internet and the Public Sphere.” Virtual Politics: Identity and Community in Cyberspace. Ed. David Holmes. London: Sage, 1997. 212-25. Rothstein, E., H. Muschamp, and M. Marty. Visions of Utopia. Oxford University Press, 2003. Wark, McKenzie. Celebrities, Culture and Cyberspace. Pluto Press, 1999. Wright, Elizabeth. The Zizek Reader. Blackwell, 1999. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Mitew, Teodor. "Beta-Utopian Order." M/C Journal 7.6 (2005). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0501/04-mitew.php>. APA Style Mitew, T. (Jan. 2005) "Beta-Utopian Order," M/C Journal, 7(6). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0501/04-mitew.php>.

Our challenge for this special issue was to describe and analyse the zones we live in and to a large extent take for granted. There are micro zones. These are small intimate spaces that are very temporary and circumscribe activity between two or three people. The second category of zone is we might call mezzo or mid-range zones. These are zones wherein activities that occupy us for several hours take place. These could include bars, restaurants, playgrounds, and of course the rooms in a house or workplace. Finally there is the city level macro zone. Most of us live in cities. This is an aggregation of time and space we relate to and identify with over a long period of time. We identify with city sports teams and landmarks. For various reasons to do with cultural evolution cities are symbolically important to how we live and form our identity. City zones are meaningful to us. Zones proscribe and prescribe, but usually without any visible rules. They enable and govern complex social routines without anyone being able to explicitly explain how. They encode narratives spatially. That is, zones as spaces, have material, social and symbolic layers. The material environment is the most basic layer of a zone, that is, buildings, furniture, roads and so on. However zones have two other important layers. The first is the social layer—that is, the people that are in the zone. In addition zones have a symbolic layer—that is the meanings that are found or created in the zone. This includes the aesthetic style; the actual and implicit messages in the space, as well as any personal associations the place may have or invoke. Clearly zones operate at different scales, in different time frames, and with different symbol systems. However, they no longer need be actual spaces at all, because many zones we now inhabit are purely virtual or purely discursive. Zones can be virtual too, such as Facebook. Zones can be an area of conversation as implied in the phrase “Lets not go there!” We now think and talk as if our mind was spatial. Perhaps a zone might be defined as a bounded system of agents and resources, governed by a unified and discoverable set of rules, which determine relationships that dictate how agents and resources are linked. Or perhaps you prefer the dramaturgical metaphors of front and back stage, actors, roles, scripts, and choreographies. But the truth is, there is no agreed definition or theorisation, although many disciplines use the term freely (e.g. cultural geography; urban planning; human ecology). Papers were invited therefore to interrogate the notion of zone from any disciplinary perspective, or which reflected on a particular zone, either fictional or actual, to uncover the alchemy of its operation. Jeremy Hunsinger invites us to think about a street-corner, as an “interzone,” a complex assemblage of meanings, things, and people. Here the material infrastructure, the road, the sidewalk, the streetlights with their cabling and electrical grid, the sewers, and their gutters, intermix within semiotic and governmentality politics. He argues zones are inscribed by codes and conventions to form pragmatic regimes through which we enact our lives and our roles. Though these zones are integral to our lives, we are “zoned out” about the zones in which we live. That is, dispersal of these zones has impeded our awareness of them and disguised the meanings we can assign to them. Through this dispersal they are alienated from our subjective experience within our day-to-day experiences of integrated world capitalism. The challenge of knowing an interzone is a challenge of territorialisation, and thus of subjective awareness. To operate with subjective awareness within these zones is form of semiological guerilla warfare, allowing us to interpret, and influence the governance of, our techno-semiological existence. The paper seeks to “challenge us to rethink our subjective positions in relation to zones, their aesthetics, and their legitimation as functions of semiological warfare … to find new opportunities to make a mess of these spaces, to transgress and create new spaces of autonomy for ourselves and future participants in the zones.” Suneel Jethani takes a similar point of theoretical departure and describes a new media project which does just this, by injecting various “voices” and subjectivities into a digital cartography of Bangalore. By focusing on the social relations embedded within the cartographic text(s), the project demonstrates the kind of politically oriented tactical media that Jeremy Hunsinger calls for in his paper. This “praxis-logical” approach allows for a focus on the project as a space of aggregation and the communicative processes set in motion within them. In analysing such projects we could (and should) be asking questions such as—“Who has put it forward? Who is utilising it and under what circumstances? Where and how has it come into being? How does discourse circulate within it? How do these spaces as sites of emergent forms of resistance within global capitalism challenge traditional social movements? How do they create self-reflexive systems?” The focus on the integration of digital affordances within the social/spatial realm continues with Adam Ruch and Steve Collins’s examination of the nature of the architecture of social media and their influence on definitions of identities and relationships. What are the effects on one’s social relations and therefore social identity of, for example, whether one chooses to use friends lists on Facebook or “circles” of different social categories as on Google+. The paper investigates the challenges involved in moving real life to the online environment and the contests in trying to designate social relational zones. They argue that in contrast to early utopia visions of social identity online, we are increasingly obligated to perform identity as it is defined by corporate monoliths such as Facebook and Google+. They suggest the new social practice of “being online” is just as pervasive as “being elsewhere”. Put another way we could ask: “Are social media an instance of the primacy of technological mediation of identity over social constructions of identity?” To remind us that identity is still thoroughly spatial—as well as digital—we next examine Michelle Hall's autoethnography of identity making in the intimate zone of a neighbourhood bar. Bars provide a shifting space where identifications are fluid, unpredictable, and thus open to opportunistic breaches. This unpredictability, and the interaction strategies we adopt to negotiate it, suggest ways in which a certain kind of third place experience can be developed and maintained in the contemporary inner city, where consumption based socialising is high, but where people are also mobile and less tied into fixed patterns of patronage. Nevertheless this process still involves a significant amount of emotional work. Establishing “a place where everybody knows your name” may not be likely. However Michelle's paper suggests that in consumption driven inner city zones, regular identification that operates at the boundaries of social realms can support a version of the easier friendship and congeniality that “third places” are hoped to offer. Giovani Semi describes and analyses the kinds of neighbourhoods in which such activities might take place, describing them as zones of authentic pleasure. His case study of gentrification of a Milanese neighbourhood—the Isola crossroads—argues that the multiple activities of small entrepreneurs and social actors can create zones of pleasure and authenticity—a softer side of gentrification. He in effect argues for a different kind of intervention to advance semiological warfare we referred to earlier, one in which local actors and passers-by contribute to the local making of atmosphere via daily consumption routines. The production of “atmosphere” in a gentrifying neighbourhood goes together with customers’ taste and preferences. The supply-side of building the aesthetic for a “pleasant” zone needs a demand-side, consumers buying, supporting, and appreciating the outcome of the activities of the entrepreneurs. Similar themes are explored by Donell Holloway and David Holloway who examine everyday routines and social relationships, when moving through and staying in liminal or atypical zones of tourist locales. Their key question is to ask how domestic zones are carried into, and maintained in tourist zones. In the case of the “grey nomads” they interview, mobile living quarters play a key role. More specifically, “the ‘everyday zone’ refers to the routines of quotidian life, or the mundane practices which make up our daily, at-home lives. These practices are closely connected with the domestic realm and include consumption practices (clothing, cooking, mass media) and everyday social interactions. The ‘tourist zone’ is similarly concerned with consumption. In this zone, however, tourists are seen to consume places; the culture, landscape, and peoples of exotic or out-of-the-ordinary tourist locales.” The next paper provides us with a link between zones which are first and foremost spatial and those which a more purely discursive. Deb Waterhouse-Watson and Adam Brown introduce Levi’s notion of “The Grey Zone” (published in 1986), based on Jewish prisoners in the Nazi-controlled camps and ghettos who obtained “privileged” positions in order to prolong their survival. Reflecting on the inherently complex power relations in such extreme settings, Levi positions the “grey zone” as a metaphor for moral ambiguity: a realm with “ill-defined outlines which both separate and join the two camps of masters and servants”. They then apply this to the issue of sexual assault within football culture in Australia and the representation of this in broadcast media. They argue that “Levi’s concept of the ‘grey zone’ helps elucidate the fraught issue of women’s potential complicity in a rape culture, a subject that challenges both understanding and representation. Despite participating in a culture that promotes the abuse, denigration, and humiliation of women, the roles of [the women involved], cannot in any way be conflated with the roles of the perpetrators of sexual assault. These and other “grey zones” need to be constantly rethought and renegotiated in order to develop a fuller understanding of human behaviour”. Our final paper similarly tackles a zone which is primarily discursive in nature namely “media spin zones” in political campaigns. In their examination of the American presidential elections Kara Stooksbury, Lori Maxwell, and Cynthia Brown usefully deploy the zone metaphor to analyse the pragmatics of a political communication system that has enormous stakes for the world. Using examples from the two most recent presidential elections, they draw attention to two separate, yet interrelated spin zones integral to understanding media/presidential relations—what they term the presidential spin zone and the media spin zone. The interplay between these zones determines the fate of elections. They discuss how the presidency can use image priming—that is ameliorating negative media portrayals and capitalising on positive portrayals, to effectively counterattack the media spin zone. From the intimate to the macro-urban; from the geographic to the discursive, the range of investigations in this issue shows that the idea of zones in social life can be applied meaningfully. They demonstrate the link between the way we think about our environment and the environments themselves. They also demonstrate the role of the media—both old and new—in refracting and morphing the operation of zones. The underlying theoretical architecture is eclectic, and the implied praxis at times, seemingly at odds, but as a whole they provide us with new insights into how the zones we live in effect our identity, community, ethics and politics. We commend these papers then, as an insightful response to our provocation to consider the concept of zone and its impact on our lives.