The 3L Mantra to live by!

Dr. Payal Arora, a member of The Erasmus Centre of Media, Communication and Culture (ERMeCC) has received € 135,000 from the EUR fellowship grant scheme for 2012-2014 to study the conceptualizing of leisure spaces in the digital age. For the next two years, the recipient of this grant Dr Arora will be investigating how real and virtual leisure spaces can be comprehensively framed through a historical, transnational and cross-cultural lens. This project has also procured a book contract with the Studies in Science, Technology & Society Series of the Routledge/ Taylor & Francis Group. The forthcoming book will be published under the title, "Virtual and Real Leisure Spaces: A Comparative and Cross-Cultural Analysis." In essence, the early 20th century birthed a radical phenomenon across several cultures and nations- the demarcating of certain public space for primarily leisure purposes. From India to the United States, urban parks became a symbol of democracy, openness,...

How sentimental we can get of the good old days where you could ring the bell of your neighbor for a cup of sugar or stop the policeman to ask how his family is doing. Actually, this is the marketed nostalgia many of us have grown up with; a world of yesteryear where what is now seen as impossible was once, possible and for all probably reasons, true and genuine. We yearn for a packaged past that has been sold to us. Today, we crave community and desperately glorify city youth intermingling and dependencies as a new “ urban tribe ” behavior– a reassembling of family affiliations and sentiments into a more channeled and contemporary neo-familial relationship based on raw and selfish need. Social networking sites resemble an online tribal dance. But the underling premise here is that these “old” community patterns have been reinvented on cyberspace. Yet, if you stop and think, perhaps you may struggle like myself to remember the warm sentiments and comfort of the strangers of the past; ...