Domestic Spaces as Public Places: An Ethnoarchaeological Case Study of Houses, Gender, and Politics in the Ecuadorian Amazon

In an ethnoarchaeological case study, we take a gendered perspective on the house as a locus of political life in Conambo, a village of about 200 Achuar- and Quichua-speaking peoples in the Ecuadorian Amazon. In this small-scale society, women and men engage actively in political practice in independent yet complementary ways, and the domestic context is a place where political life is conducted on a daily basis. In this article, the house is examined as a politicized context at three scales of materiality: the organization of settlement in the community, the spatial relationships in the house, and the scale of painted designs on pottery bowls used in the house. At each scale, we identify material correlates of women's and men's participation. Our goal is to bring attention to potential archaeological correlates of women's political involvement in past societies, to question assumptions about women's political lives and domestic spaces, and to expand the ways in which anthropological archaeology may contribute to understanding cross-cultural variation in women's and men's domains of power.     

Overview of the Disability Movement: History, Legislative Record, and Political Implications

This article presents a brief history and legislative record of the disability movement, along with their political implications. Beginning with the mid-nineteenth century efforts of Samuel Gridley Howe, the history of disability policy is reviewed. The impact of the field of eugenics is assessed. Notable achievements of the disability movement over the last two decades are presented, culminating in the Americans with Disabilities Act. The basic paradigm of disability policy is presented. The political and policy implications facing the disability movement are discussed.     

Spaces and Scales of African Student Activism: Senegalese and Zimbabwean University Students at the Intersection of Campus,Nation and Globe

Abstract: African university students have long engaged in political activism, responding to changing political, social and economic circumstances through protest that has at times exerted considerable influence on the national stage. Student activism employs highly spatialised strategies yet has received minimal attention from geographers. Drawing on case studies from Senegal and Zimbabwe, we identify four phases of activism in which students have mobilised distinctive relational spatialities in responding to changes in the spatial expression of dominant political power. In so doing, we highlight the inadequacies of approaches to resistance that give excessive emphasis to a power/resistance dualism or to questions of scale.     

Affective politics and colonial heritage,Rhodes Must Fall at UCT and Oxford

ABSTRACT

The article analyses the spatial entanglement of colonial heritage struggles through a study of the Rhodes Must Fall student movement at the University of Cape Town and the University of Oxford. We aim to shed light over why statues still matter in analyzing colonial traces and legacies in urban spaces and how the decolonizing activism of the RMF movement mobilizes around the controversial heritage associated with Cecil Rhodes at both places – a heritage that encompasses statues, buildings, Rhodes scholarship and the Rhodes Trust funds. We include a comparative study of the Facebook use of RMF as it demonstrates significant differences between the two places in the development of the student movements as political activism. Investigating in more detail the heritage politics of RMF at UCT we fledge out what we call an affective politics using non-representational bodily strategies. We argue that in order for actual social movements to mobilize in current political controversies, they need to put affective tactics to use.     

The contentious politics of hydropower dam impact assessments in the Mekong River basin

Since the 1990s, many large hydropower dams have been built in the Mekong River Basin. There has been considerable concern about resettlement and compensation linked to reservoir flooding, as well as the impacts of dams on wild-capture fisheries, riparian livelihoods, and aquatic biodiversity and ecosystems. Anti-dam activists in the Mekong Basin have contested these impacts by claiming that dam impact assessments limit the spatial scale of recognized impact areas in order to reduce both the political backlash against projects and the costs of dam development. In this article, we consider the contentious politics of hydropower dam impact assessments in order to understand how the spatial strategies of anti-dam activists influence the recognized scale of dam impacts. We analyze three of the most contested hydropower projects in the Mekong River Basin: the operational Pak Mun dam in northeastern Thailand, the recently completed Lower Sesan 2 dam in northeastern Cambodia, and the planned Sambor dam on the mainstream Mekong River in Cambodia. We argue that the recognized scale of impacts is in part an outcome of anti-dam activists’ different spatial imaginaries and associated scale frames—along with those of state actors, business interests, and project consultants—that inform activist strategies for mobilizing geographically dispersed people to make claims about dam impacts. Although activists have sometimes challenged the spatial extent of project impact assessments, they have also sometimes inadvertently adopted strategies to contest dams that have reproduced project scale frames favorable to dam proponents.     

Sunflowers,youthful protestors and political achievements: lessons from Taiwan

ABSTRACT

In 2014, an interesting youth movement collective started small p political and big P Political action and resistance in Taiwan. Their protest was against the way a major trade agreement proposed between China and Taiwan was being non-democratically pushed through the Taiwanese legislature. In this article, we provide an analysis of the activities of the Sunflower Student Movement (SSM) as a means to record a relatively little-known youthful and youth-centric successful uprising. It serves to place the SSM, and other East Asian-based protests, on the map of young people’s political geographies, and explores the paradoxical political and spatial practices pursued by young Taiwanese. This case study makes visible the interconnectedness of big P/small p politics of everyday youth geographies within an Asian context.     

Fragments from many pasts: layering the toponymic tapestry of Milan

In the recent literature on the cultural politics of naming, toponyms and street names are increasingly read within the wider social–historical context upon which naming is contingent. In this perspective, naming is often seen as an act of power and a way to inscribe an ideological discourse into the landscape. In this article, we analyze the street names currently inscribed in the historical center of the Italian city of Milan, Italy as a reflection of its long and contested social and political history. Fragments of all the different toponymic regimes and hegemonic discourses that took over one after the other over time have remained inscribed in Milan’s street network, originating a complex tapestry in which different pasts revive and conflicting ideologies co-exist. In this context, we examine the role Geographical Information Science (GIScience) methods and technologies play in quantifying, revealing, and visualizing the spatial patterns of downtown Milan’s toponymic texture at the urban scale and at the scale of the six historical neighborhoods.     

Destroying the Joint and Dying of Shame? A Geography of Revitalised Feminism in Social Media and Beyond

Has feminist geography really lost all relevance? This paper examines what the revitalisation of interest in feminist thought and practice, especially in Australia, means for geography. We illuminate the trajectory of the feminist revitalisation in new media and beyond through developing a spatial analysis influenced by Rose and Fincher. Notions of paradoxical space and issue publics inform this reading of two pivotal moments in the feminist revitalisation: first, the creation of Destroy the Joint, a campaign launched and maintained in Facebook and Twitter spaces; and second, the Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard's speech against sexism and misogyny in Parliament in October 2012. Both these moments, coming from political and public spaces, received worldwide interest, and we critically examine the context and ramifications of these instances while situating the institutional processes surrounding them within the growing feminist revitalisation. In so doing, we argue that these Australian‐based cases indicate a growing feminist movement that is open and multiply focused, connecting personal politics to public campaigning, and achieving material impacts. We conclude that developing a feminist geography of new media is a challenging task, as these spaces circumvent and renegotiate traditional spatial dimensions – including scale and place – through their dynamic networks. It is, nevertheless, a task worth doing.     

The States and the Differing Impetus for Divergent Paths on Same-Sex Marriage, 1990–2001

Using a regression model of pooled time series data from the 50 states in the United States in the period 1990 to 2001, we look at the political, demographic, and social movement factors that provide the impetus for the enactment of state laws that proscribe the celebration of marriages involving lesbian and gay couples. In doing so, we consider the validity of existing indicators that have been previously associated with the introduction of policies concerning sexual orientation at the state and local level, as well as introduce new factors that might apply uniquely to the area of same-sex marriage laws.     

不同模型在镇域空间相互作用中的应用与比较分析——以湖北省大冶市为例

镇域尺度的空间相互作用研究对促进城乡统筹和城镇体系规划具有重要意义。本文借鉴最新研究成果,从理论及实践层面对镇域空间相互作用研究进行了探索,提出一种基于空间可达性的辐射模型,并与传统重力模型进行比较分析。以大冶市16个乡镇为例进行实例研究,结果表明:1辐射模型与实测数据的相似度较高,可以更好地反映镇域空间相互作用的客观规律;2两种模拟方法在体现空间相互作用的方向性以及结构特征方面具有显著差异;3辐射模型中影响范围的引入以及空间可达性对区域异质性的体现是其与重力模型的主要区别。     

基于不同尺度的关天经济区人口格局时空变化特征与差异

以关天经济区为案例地,运用空间统计工具,将市、县、镇三个尺度的人口空间变化纳入统一的分析框架,探究不同尺度的人口时空格局及影响机制,分析尺度间差异。研究表明：①在人口空间格局上,市级层面西安市是经济区人口分布的核心;县级层面区域人口沿渭河呈带状分布格局;镇级层面人口以西安为中心沿交通轴线向外围递减;②经济区人口格局整体呈现空间集聚趋势,并在各尺度间表现出明显差异。在市级层面,区域人口加速向西安集中;在县级层面,人口主要向地级市市区集中;在镇级层面,出现两种人口集聚路径：一是地级市市区内,人口大量向近郊集聚,中心城区人口快速缩减,郊区化特征明显,二是在市区外围,人口明显向各县城集聚,绝大多数乡镇人口下降。     

Understanding the Bahujan Samaj Prerna Kendra: Space,Place and Political Mobilisation

On the tenth anniversary of its first term in state government, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) opened the Bahujan Samaj Prerna Kendra in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh. The Kendra is a majestic, temple-like building designed to commemorate and celebrate the achievements of the Dalit movement in India. In this article I examine its symbolic and political features, which I argue must be understood against the backdrop of caste prejudice and the ongoing exclusion (social, spatial and economic) of Dalits in India. The Kendra prompts consideration of how the design and use of public space implicitly or explicitly excludes lower classes and castes, and the way in which the BSP has both challenged and used spatial strategy in its political discourse. I further suggest that the Kendra signals a new phase in the cultural politics of Dalits, articulating a new vision of moral, political and spatial order.     

Inside Checkpoint 300: Checkpoint Regimes as Spatial Political Technologies in the Occupied Palestinian Territories

As a part of the architecture of the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian Territories, the Israeli government introduced in 2005 a series of so‐called terminal checkpoints as “neutral border crossings”, to minimise the impact of these barriers on Palestinian lives through a different design and the use of several machines, such as turnstiles and metal detectors. In this article, we analyse terminal Checkpoint 300 in Bethlehem, framing it as a spatial political technology aimed at controlling the movement of Palestinians. More specifically, we investigate the interactions between Palestinian commuters, Israeli soldiers/security guards and the machines operating inside Checkpoint 300. We conclude by suggesting that Checkpoint 300 is a porous barrier whose regime is produced, reproduced but also challenged by such interactions, and that, despite the new “neutral design”, Checkpoint 300 is a place still filled with tension and violence, often exercised by the machines and their “decisions”.     

Battles in Seattle Redux: Transnational Resistance to a Neoliberal Trade Agreement

Abstract: This paper examines the possibilities and complexities of transnationalism through an analysis of political protests organized in Seattle against the Korea–US Free Trade Agreement, arguably the most significant bilateral trade negotiations involving the US state today. By studying the political practices of the Korean farmers' movement through participant research in Seattle from 4 to 9 September 2006, and revisiting the analysis of the 1999 “battles of Seattle” in recent work by Hardt and Negri, we argue that the concept “transnationalism” is potentially applicable to activists and subaltern social groups as much as states and elites, although these groups do not transnationalize through the same practices or in the same spaces. Our analysis of the protests aims to clarify the essentially spatial nature of political articulation (in Laclau's sense) that make the transnationalization of social movements possible.     

Exploring patterns of movement suspension in pedestrian mobility

One of the main tasks in analyzing pedestrian movement is to detect places where pedestrians stop, as those places usually are associated with specific human activities, and they can allow us to understand pedestrian movement behavior. Very few approaches have been proposed to detect the locations of stops in positioning data sets, and they often are based on selecting the location of candidate stops as well as potential spatial and temporal thresholds according to different application requirements. However, these approaches are not suitable for analyzing the slow movement of pedestrians where the inaccuracy of a nondifferential global positioning system commonly used for movement tracking is so significant that it can hinder the selection of adequate thresholds. In this article, we propose an exploratory statistical approach to detect patterns of movement suspension using a local indicator of spatial association (LISA) in a vector space representation. Two different positioning data sets are used to evaluate our approach in terms of exploring movement suspension patterns that can be related to different landscapes: players of an urban outdoor mobile game and visitors of a natural park. The results of both experiments show that patterns of movement suspension were located at places such as checkpoints in the game and different attractions and facilities in the park. Based on these results, we conclude that using LISA is a reliable approach for exploring movement suspension patterns that represent the places where the movement of pedestrians is temporally suspended by physical restrictions (e.g., checkpoints of a mobile game and the route choosing points of a park).     

旅游系统的空间分层拓扑结构研究

旅游业的发展离不开旅游系统,因此掌握旅游系统要素的空间分布规律就十分必要。本文结合图论及计算机网络拓扑结构的知识,联系计算机网络中的分层理论,提出旅游系统要素分布的空间分层拓扑结构。通过对陕西省的旅游景点、交通线路、客源地的区域空间结构的分析,将旅游系统的空间拓扑结构分为客源地层和景点层两层。并利用旅游空间分层拓扑结构对陕西省的旅游景点、交通线路、客源地的空间分布规律进行了探讨,初步提出了分层空间旅游系统的计算分析方法。     

Another Kind of Gold: an Introduction to Marijuana in Papua New Guinea

Widespread as marijuana has become in Papua New Guinea (PNG), little ethnographic investigation has been done on problems raised by its cultivation, consumption and traffic there. In this essay, we survey the legal contexts of its production and circulation both in PNG and throughout the Pacific. We assess how the drug has been depicted in the regional literature. While our primary focus is on PNG, our point in offering these broader perspectives is to begin to outline political and comparative issues suggested by the arrival of this substance on Pacific shores. Our overall goal is to encourage rigorous and comprehensive discussion of the ambiguous relationship among society, the state and global capitalism that the drug constitutes, in addition to the many other, rather smaller‐scale problems raised in each of our four essays about the ongoing construction of and debate about its meaning at the local‐level.     

Human geography without scale

The concept of scale in human geography has been profoundly transformed over the past 20 years. And yet, despite the insights that both empirical and theoretical research on scale have generated, there is today no consensus on what is meant by the term or how it should be operationalized. In this paper we critique the dominant – hierarchical – conception of scale, arguing it presents a number of problems that cannot be overcome simply by adding on to or integrating with network theorizing. We thereby propose to eliminate scale as a concept in human geography. In its place we offer a different ontology, one that so flattens scale as to render the concept unnecessary. We conclude by addressing some of the political implications of a human geography without scale.