A location of one’s own: A genealogy of locative media

Abstract

In this article, I confront locative media not as a technology or thing, rather, as a field of cultural production, that is, as a field of forces, regulated by both power relations and symbolic struggles, which sustain or subvert the reproduction of a specific social order. The intent of the piece is to expose the manner in which the field of locative media is constituted through multiple forces and struggles. I trace its emergence through a genealogical lens, and revive and reintegrate older debates, so as to include these tensions in the ongoing conceptualization of locative media. In tracing the discursive events of the field, which encompass both formations and tensions, it will be made apparent that locative media is not happenstance. Rather, it is a field of cultural production that is perpetually evolving and continuously reproduced vis-à-vis struggles between technological interpretations and different visions of future use.