- Convenors:
-
Emmi Holm
(University of Helsinki)
Wagner Guilherme Alves da Silva (University College Dublin)
Marie Heřmanová (University College London)
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- Formats:
- Panel
- Network:
- Network Panel
Short Abstract
In this panel we explore the interplay between performance and becoming by focusing on aspirational projects and identities that emerge through digital practices, and how these reconfigure social capital, lived possibilities and the formation of self.
Long Abstract
This panel explores how contemporary selves and identities are formed and generated through aspirational practices that unfold across digital and social worlds. We consider how digital flows, aesthetics, and rhythms are embedded in everyday modes of imagining and enacting “the good life”. Lifestyles and identities enacted in the digital world generate and disrupt aspirations, shaping how people perform, contest, and become themselves in relation to others. Digital platforms do not simply stage performances but rather cultivate the conditions under which the process of becoming itself is (per)formed, where aspiration, self-making, and self-branding are connected. Drawing on the cultivation of aesthetic, moral, and affective repertoires, from “old money” sensibilities to renewed spiritualities and the “millionaire mindset”, participants craft aspirational selves that blur the line between performance and becoming. These processes reveal the tensions between visibility, vulnerability, and value in the ongoing work of self-formation (cf. Duffy 2015; Bishop 2025).
We want to explore questions such as: How do digital platforms mediate the interplay between performance, aspiration, and becoming? How are selves and identities crafted, sustained, and negotiated through digitally mediated aspirational practices? How do individuals navigate the tensions and contradictions between the selves they perform and the realities they inhabit, when the promise of transformation or mobility remains unevenly realised? We invite ethnographic, theoretical, and methodological papers that explore aspirational projects, lifestyles, and identities as they emerge through digital practices. By tracing the strategies, negotiations, and disruptions through which these aspirations take shape, the panel seeks to understand how digital practices reconfigure social capital, lived possibilities and the process of becoming ourselves.