The Innes Street Underpass: An Actor Network analysis of the role of family snapshot photography in community identity in contested spaces.

Innes street, in Inverness, is separated from the town by the harbour area, a railway line and a dual carriageway. There are few direct routes to the town centre and the key one is through the dual carriageway underpass. The underpass has recently been decorated with family ‘snaps’ taken by local people, representing the social history of the street, collected and reproduced by an artist under commission from the Community Council. The underpass is a classic piece of urban contested space and the project involves the reclaiming of this space through the assertion of community identity. As a consequence it engages a number of ideas in social psychology and identity theory which are explored within the framework of Actor Network Theory. ANT examines the way in which social networks are mobilised and includes the study of the ‘object’ within a network. ANT is an expression of material semiotics and has been used extensively in sociology and education but has only recently been acknowledged by the psychology community. It offers a great deal of scope as a framework for debate and discussion about the complexity of identity in contemporary built environments. The purpose of this project is to gain insight into the way people construct and re-construct meaning through family photographs in such environments and use these constructs to mobilise communities.