Exclusion and inclusion in the suburb: The centripetal and centrifugal forces of locality and place.

In collaboration with the local newspaper Akers Avis Groruddalen, the project has organised a series of public meetings at the municipal library at Furuset, where researchers from the project have presented their findings for a general public in the community where the research took place. Several of the researchers have, moreover, participated in seminars, public meetings and other events where they have presented and discussed their research (see also publication information). The public dissemination of the research has emphasised network types, social capital and formal/informal forms of organisation in Alna, apart from the overarching theme of local belonging. Researchers from the project have presented to and given advice to relevant parts of the public sector and city bureaucracy, both at the city and borough levels, with the explicit aim to be relevant to the local community. On 24 November 2015, the project organised a final conference at the House of Literature in Oslo, where the most important results were being presented. In connection with this event, the PI was interviewed by the newspaper Dagsavisen, and took part in the radio programme Dagsnytt 18. Several of the researchers (including Rysst, Eide, Eriksen, Vestel and Morken) have given several media interviews about topics from the project. Website: http://www.sv.uio.no/sai/forskning/prosjekter/alna/

Seven senior researchers, four postdoctors, two Ph. D. candidate and five MA students from six academic disciplines (social anthropology, media studies, education, theology, history and consumption research) collaborate in this interdisciplinary project, which aims to study a locality in Grorud Valley (eastern Oslo), using qualitative methods in order to identify and analyse conditions for cohesion and sustainability (and, by implication, non-local forms of identification). Methods include ethnographic f ieldwork (participant observation), qualitative interviews and archival studies, plus some surveys. The theoretical framework is defined by network theory, mobility theory, urban studies and current theories of social identification. The component project s will focus on (i) the residential environment, (ii) mobility and immobility, (iii) public spaces and meeting-places, (iv) school mobility and school change, (v) the role of local media, (vi) electronic communication and transnational media, (vii) cultur al hybridity and mixing, (viii) narratives of the past and social memory, (ix) religion. The sub-projects are complementary and relate to the overarching research questions, which are: - Which are the social and cultural processes that contribute to inte gration and sustainability in the suburb, and how are they embedded institutionally? Which are the processes encouraging non-local forms of belonging (ranging from virtual communities to national/ethnic loyalties and transnational ties), and how do they a rticulate with locality-enhancing processes? -How do different social arenas and fields of discourse (ranging from sport and school to consumption and kinship) relate to each other with respect to "the production of locality"? -In what ways are local iden tifications confronted with nonlocal ones, through e.g. work mobility, transnational ties and commitments, ethnic or religious loyalties? Prosjektets hjemmesider: http://www.sv.uio.no/sai/forskning/prosjekter/alna/