Final Paper Proposal

Our class about imagined networks has included investigations into how to understand the labeling or composition of spacial forms. The network has become a predominant framework for explaining interaction, but has also given rise to the flash mob – the physical manifestation of many nodes in one place simultaneously without obvious purpose. The questions about spacial patterns, and our understanding of those implications, have led me to question two patterns of interaction. My question is: when is it a crowd and when is it a camp?

In Fassin’s Humanitarian Reason, the line between the crowd and the camp is blurred, as social and political factors push people into a common space that is semi-regulated by external forces. The two spaces are juxtaposed in the Wachowski’s V for Vendetta, in which camps are oppressive and crowds are liberating. The relationship between mass movement and non-human factors is further investigated in Rafael, which illuminates how crowds can be defined by their tools. When the seemingly organic factors that lead to a mass of people in one imagined space, what role do control, identity and location have?