The use of space-time to construct identity and context

Points of view: reconceptualising literacies through an exploration of adult and child interactions in a virtual world

“…Identifying an event as a unit of analysis depends on establishing fixities – on who is present and where they are, and this contributes to a sense of context as something in which literacies occur. However, seeing context as a ‘static container’ (Burgess, ) is problematic. It may be more appropriate to see it ‘as a dynamic process of contextualisation in which language and context continuously co‐construct each other’ (Burgess, , p. 19).…”

“…However, seeing context as a ‘static container’ (Burgess, ) is problematic. It may be more appropriate to see it ‘as a dynamic process of contextualisation in which language and context continuously co‐construct each other’ (Burgess, , p. 19). If this is worthwhile in the study of literacies associated with digital technologies, we suggest that it is equally applicable to other literacy practices.…”

“I don’t want to become a China Buff”: Temporal dimensions of the discoursal construction of writer identity

“…(I explain these categories in Section 4 below, in relation to my data.) In parallel with this Ivanič and I developed the framework presented in Burgess and Ivanič (2010) (see below) through extended discussion of the significance of time and timescales for the discoursal construction of identity, and of the implications of this theoretical link for data generated by our own research on writing in a variety of contexts (see for example Burgess, 2008Burgess, , 2010aBurgess, , 2010bIvanic, 2005Ivanic, , 2006Ivanic et al, 2009). I subsequently used the updated framework to re-analyse data about a specific act of writing by one student and it is the findings of that analysis which I discuss here.…”

The Council Estate and “Being Placed”: Everyday Resistances to the Stigmatization of Community

“…Through the evocation of landscape, Massey argues for space "imbued with time", that "could be imagined as provisionally intertwined simultaneities of ongoing, unfinished, stories" (2006: 46). This theorisation of space has informed a body of work uncovering the dynamics of identity construction through analysis of "space-time" relations (Burgess, 2010), specifically, the centrality of space and place in representations and formations of classed identities (Skeggs, 2004). Skeggs (2004) highlights the embodied connections between people and place, where place is inscribed onto the bodies of the people who inhabit it, a mark which they carry as a signifier of their "valuelessness", a placing visible on their body beyond the landscape of their place.…”