Decolonizing geographies of travel: Reading James/Jan Morris

Travel writing can produce critical 'in-between' spaces, which contribute to broader cultural politics of postcolonialism, by transgressing and in a preliminary sense deconstructing imperial binaries. These imperial binaries structure subjectivities, on the one hand, and material geographies, on the other. This paper examines such a project, through a reading of travel writing by James/Jan Morris, which shows how processes of decolonizing subjectivities and material geographies may be recursively related. Morris is known for newspaper coverage of the 1953 Everest expedition, for a trilogy on the British Empire, for the autobiographical account of a sex change, and for many travel books and articles; all of which foreground themes of gender and imperialism. The paper argues that Morris's decolonizations have charted and created in-between spaces of subjectivity and material geography, ambivalent spaces with critical potential. The ambivalence of these spaces can constitute a critical limitation, but also an opportunity; in response, the conclusion redirects some critical attention away from writers and textual spaces to readers and interpretations, and thus points towards a postcolonial (and wider) politics of reading.     

Because Pigs Can Fly: Sexuality,race and the geographies of difference in Shyam Selvadurai's Funny Boy

This article explores the ways that the popular diasporic novel Funny Boy, set in Sri Lanka but written from Canada by an exiled Sri Lankan born Tamil, intervenes in the country's contemporary geographies of difference. The novel itself explores a Tamil boy's struggle to negotiate life in Sinhala-dominated Colombo while also coming to terms with his emergent same-sex desire. By focusing specifically on the writing of two familiar middle-class Sri Lankan spaces central to the novel's narrative—the family home and the school—the article shows how these everyday geographies regulate and normalise carnal desire in a society which still operates anti-homosexual legislation. It also suggests how the erosion of the meanings of these familiar spaces is a tactic central to the main protagonist's sexual liberation. By reading these sexualised geographies through the polemic racialised Sinhala/Tamil divisions in contemporary Sri Lankan society, the paper shows how the novel makes an important political intervention in contemporary Sri Lankan politics where devolution and federal solutions to recent civil unrest have produced territorialised geographies of difference that prescribe ‘places for races’. By evoking the Funny Boy's fictive and sexualised geographies of exclusion and resistance, this article unsettles the logic that binds intra-racial solidarity, its cognate geographical modelling, and instead highlights the exclusions that exist at all levels in Sri Lankan society.

Amma held up her hand to silence us. ‘That's an order,’ she said.     

Pocock,Machiavelli and Political Contingency in Foreign Affairs: Republican Existentialism Outside (and Within) the City

SUMMARY

In this essay, inspired by J.G.A. Pocock's appropriation of Machiavelli's theory of political contingency, and building upon my previous engagements with Pocock's ‘republican existentialism’, I focus on the role played by ‘accidents’ in Machiavelli's analysis of war and foreign affairs within The Prince and the Discourses. In so doing, I consider the following issues: the ways through which a potential imperial hegemon might consolidate control over nearby lesser powers—and, conversely, how such less powerful polities might resist imperial encroachments on their autonomy; the contrasting military modes and orders characteristic of ancient and modern republics; and the extent to which Machiavelli actually thought that accidents in foreign affairs were ever truly ‘accidental’ in light of his determinations concerning well- versus badly ordered domestic institutions.     

Indian Objects,English Body: Utopian Yearnings in Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South

Focusing on the representation of Indian shawls and Indian tea in Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South, this article has two aims: first, it argues that the novel creates its ideology of domesticity and proper femininity through the creation of a readable object world. It is evident that one of the consequences of the empire was to Indianise its English subjects, thereby making them more cosmopolitan and making the English home a monument to imperial Britain’s success in the global system of commodity production, distribution, and consumption. These links then brought together the materiality of the empire and the Victorian preoccupation with material culture, constituting an imperial culture based on domestic interiority, visual and tactile pleasure, and political economy. Second, the article attempts to show how the ambiguities that enter the text along with these foreign objects unsettle the status quo established by the novel’s middle-class ideology and propose utopian alternatives to it through a mobile, boundary-crossing female body and a more porous domestic setting. These alternatives are entirely speculative, incomplete, and restrained, but significant nonetheless, precisely because they turn this ideology’s emphasis on the middle-class female body inside out, so as to recompose this body and its habitual spaces in new ways.     

Between the lodge and the meeting-house: Mapping Irish Protestant identities and social worlds in late Victorian Toronto

The urban lives of Irish Protestant immigrants and their descendants are a neglected feature in geographies of the Irish diaspora. Prominent settlers from the early nineteenth century, they played a key role in the shaping of a host culture in Anglophone Canada. The social and spatial processes that moulded Irish Protestants into a wider loyal British identity are examined at a number of scales in Toronto, 'the Belfast of North America'. After initially exploring the rhetoric and practices of city-wide institutions that served many Irish Protestants, the autobiographical reflections of John McAree are used as a case study on the micro-geographies of everyday lives experienced within local space as well as an empirical test for Bourdieu's ideas of practice and 'habitus'.     

Imperial Geographies of Home: British Domesticity in India, 1886–1925

This paper considers the translation of domestic discourses over imperial space as middle-class British women established homes in India from 1886 to 1925. Unlike studies of imperial domesticity that delineate separate spheres of home and empire, I consider the exercise of imperial power on a domestic scale, by examining advice given in household guides on managing servants and raising British children in India. Rather than view the household merely as confining, I also explore the advice given to British women regarding travel outside their homes in India. The domestic roles of British women reproduced imperial power relations on a household scale, and the political significance of imperial domesticity extended beyond the boundaries of the home.     

Geographies of youth – a generational perspective

ABSTRACT

Twenty years ago the publication of Cool Places created visibility for emerging research on geographies of youth. Yet in comparison with Children’s Geographies geographical work on youth has failed to mature as a sub-disciplinary field. In this contribution I explore the reasons why this may be so highlighting the way youth geographies has struggled to define its own identity, and its lack of a strong founding, globally relevant, theoretical approach. Instead, I argue that the development of intergenerational geographies has led thinking about youth to be absorbed into wider framings of geographies of age, or geographies of family life.     

Rentiers,teachers and workers: Greek women in late nineteenth-century Odessa

Abstract

This article sheds light on a neglected aspect of the Greek paroikia of Odessa, its female component, in the late imperial period. By revisiting the 1897 All-Russian Census, it offers an insight into the demographic and social features of Greek women, and depicts their occupational position. It shows that middle-class and working women formed the majority of the Greek female workforce and suggests that their participation or non-participation in the labour market depended on the ability of the male breadwinner to support his household financially.     

Youthful geographies: from Cool Places to hyper-dynamic Asia

ABSTRACT

Cool Places: Geographies of Youth Cultures published in 1998 effectively launched young people's geographies and provided interesting examples of the ‘cultural’ and ‘feminist turns’ through its engagement with cultural studies. It placed young people as central and showcased young arts students through their printmaking self-portraits. This article looks back to 1998 and forward beyond 2018 to explore the concept of ‘youthful geographies’. It reflects on the starting points for this edited collection and explores the ways in which scholarship focusing on young people worked to establish the space to pursue a challenge to the youthful ‘present absence’ in Geography. It poses the question: ‘Where are young people in the sub-disciplines of Geography’? and acknowledges the value and innovation that youthful scholars bring to geographies of young people. In the final section I reflect on a decade of the nascent growth of scholarship located in, and focused on, Asian youthful geographies.     

Twenty-five years of children's geographies: a planner's perspective

ABSTRACT

This paper considers the key trends and changes that have taken place in my 25 years of children's geographies research. I reflect on the growing awareness of children in research but also the continued marginalisation of children and children's concerns in my own planning profession, and the continuing need for a greater presence for Majority world children in research. I ask if we as children's geographers can rise to the growing global challenges children face. To do so will require greater interdisciplinary work and recognition of the ever more complex and dynamic nature of societies if we are to create a robust forward-looking research agenda with and for children.     

Tocqueville on Pantheism,Materialism, and Catholicism

Abstract

It is widely acknowledged that Leo Strauss was an extraordinary scholar and teacher who strove to open up forgotten vistas of philosophical inquiry. Gigantic controversy rages, however, about the sorts of political and social changes, if any, that he hoped to promote. The fire has been fueled by the alleged contributions of Straussians to the Iraq War—and by the publication of Strauss's 1933 letter that commended “fascist, authoritarian, and imperial” principles. This article reviews and then updates the assessments proffered in my 2009 book (Straussophobia) about the state of the “Strauss Wars.” Critics such as Shadia Drury continue to embarrass themselves in prestigious venues, but newer voices are using innovative strategies to argue that Strauss was attempting to undermine the principles of American democracy. Whereas William Altman relies on “esoteric interpretations” of Strauss's writings, Alan Gilbert illuminates Strauss's behind-the-scenes efforts regarding policy disputes. Although I maintain that Gilbert and especially Altman have made invaluable contributions, I argue that they both overreach.     

The imperial governors of Dyrrakhion in the reign of Alexios I Komnenos

Abstract

This article considers the conclusions that we can draw about the imperial governors of Dyrrakhion in the reign of the Emperor Alexios I Komnenos. It looks at why Dyrrakhion became increasingly important in the course of the 11th Century and, above all, after Alexios' usurpation of the throne in 1081. Careful attention is paid to establishing the identity of the various individuals whom we know to have held the position of doux of the town in the period between 1081–1118, and the chronology of and context for the appointments looked at in detail. The significance of Dyrrakhion is further highlighted by drawing attention to the fact that only the very closest intimates of the Emperor – and indeed only senior members of the imperial family itself – were made governors of the town in this period. This study represents a fresh examination of Dyrrakhioii, and establishes several new conclusions about the identities and careers of the imperial governors of the town in the reign of the Emperor Alexios I Komnenos.     

Geographies of gender and sexuality in Australia,from 1994 to 2018

Abstract

Corresponding with Gender, Place and Culture’s twenty-fifth anniversary, this country report surveys geographies of gender and sexuality in Australia over the last twenty-five years, from 1994 to 2018. It is a necessarily selective, rather than comprehensive, review. We map out some broad areas tackled by geographers of gender and sexuality in Australia, and accordingly scaffold our survey through themes that include the geographies of women, feminist approaches across the discipline, geographies of masculinities and geographies of sexualities. We highlight research that has investigated gender and sexuality in relation to private and public spaces, workplaces and leisure spaces, urban and rural spaces, digital spaces, and disasters, inter alia.     

The Imperial End: How Empire Overtakes Refugees in Jeremiah

ABSTRACT

Refugee studies, postcolonial studies, as well as political theory is used to argue that the portrayal of the Judeans who flee to Egypt, rather than those deported to Babylon, occupy the social space of the everyday conception of refugees in Jeremiah. By examining the narratives of chapters 42–44 in relation to the oracles against the nations (chs. 46–51), I show how the exclusion of the Egyptian group shores up the imperial turn represented in the OANs. After explaining the oracles' imperial character, a discussion follows of how reading them as imperial produces the Egyptian group as refugees in chs. 42–44. An exploration of contemporary discussions regarding refugees follows, enabling the claim that refugees are produced by the state. Finally comes, a broader discussion on how various discursive strategies excludes the Egyptian group of refugees in favor of the Babylonian deportees, supportive of an imperialized agenda.     

Unsettling Migrant Reintegration: The Serial Risk-Taking of Returning Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) to Cordillera,Philippines

In 2017, the Philippine government boosted its campaign on Overseas Filipino Worker (OFW) reintegration, a set of programmes designed to aid returning Filipino labour migrants. In this paper, I examine migrant reintegration through the case of returned migrants to the province of Benguet, Philippines. Rather than use “sustainability of return” as main focus of assessment, I foreground instead the historical geographies undergirding the current reiteration of this migration policy. By doing so, I demonstrate how the “gambling” practices of returned migrants can be read as not an easy acquiescence to the neoliberal imperative for self-entrepreneurship encouraged by the Philippine state. In highlighting gambling as an embodied strategy emerging from and through imperial histories, I argue that migrant reintegration gets revealed as rehearsal of certain colonial logics that have oriented certain peoples to the labour of serial risk taking for survival. Close attention to return migrants’ gambling practices raises urgent questions regarding the relentless push for entrepreneurship as development solution.     

The landscape of Metztitlan,Mexico: Power and control in a sixteenth century Spanish administrative painting

ABSTRACT

The concept of landscape has been studied mostly as the view of a space with particular interest in its aesthetics, originating at the turn of the sixteenth century. However, I argue that in fourteenth century northern Europe, the concept was focused on polity rather than aesthetics. This article examines this lesser-known tradition by analysing the painting of Metztitlan, a sixteenth century town in Mexico, and arguing, first, that unlike all the other representations in the Relaciones Geográficas to which it belongs, it is the only landscape, and second, that this painting is associated with an administrative procedure common in Spain to gain control over imperial lands. I review European practices regarding the representation of towns under the Spanish Crown. Then, I present the results of the fieldwork carried out to locate several heights which probably served as vantage points to paint the landscape. Based on this research, I analyse the intentions of the painter to argue that it should be considered within the same tradition as the paintings made in Spain by Flemish painter Anton van de Wyngaerde, as part of the Spanish Empire's Germanic tradition of describing places with the intention of exerting control over them.     

From the Holiday to the Academy: Implications for physical geography in higher education arising from 'popular' field-based geography in Dorset

The popularity of physical geography at all levels of formal education is declining. This paper argues that a key factor in the decline may be the disparity between geographies studied within formal education and the popular geographies encountered during leisure pursuit. Through the example of the Jurassic Coast Project, an initiative for the interpretation of Dorset's coastal landscape, approaches towards the integration of popular and academic geographies are explored. Drawing explicit links between popular experiences and academic knowledge may benefit physical geography, improving its status amongst public and student audiences, and addressing the concerns that surround its decline within higher education.     

The ‘youth-fullness’ of youth geographies: ‘coming of age’?

ABSTRACT

The 21st anniversary of Cool Places (Skelton, T., and G. Valentine, eds. 1998. Cool Places: Geographies of Youth Cultures. London: Routledge) provides an opportunity to reflect on the direction of travel in youth geographies and map out future journeys. Here, we argue that scholarship on youth geographies is increasingly dispersed across sub-disciplinary niches of Human Geography. A more conspicuous point of coalescence would be beneficial for the advancement of conceptual and theoretical understandings of youth geographies. It is suggested that the journal Children’s Geographies, offers a meaningful place for the publication of further, dynamic and increased work on youth geographies. To illustrate the exigent research agendas of youth geographies, some exemplars of the ways in which the contemporary lives of young people are being transformed are highlighted. We conclude by asserting that it is an exciting time for researching youth geographies, to grapple with the complex and diverse contested meanings and lived experiences of youth across the Global North and South.     

Gender,Imperialism and Domesticity: British women repatriated from India, 1940‐47

In this article, the author draws on women's personal accounts to explore the repatriation processes of white, British, middle-class wives of army officers and civil servants who returned to Britain from India between 1940 and 1947. Conventional images overwhelmingly constructed departure from the subcontinent and arrival in Britain as a time for celebration. However, women's personal sources suggest that both their expectations and experiences of repatriation were often, at best, equivocal. Feelings of uncertainty and unease about their return were coupled with a more positive anticipation connected to the idea that Britain was home. Once in Britain, women were shocked by the unfamiliarity of life there—at both national and household scales—and they struggled to construct a sense of belonging or self. Considering memoirs and oral histories, the author focuses on imperial domesticity and explores the influences of gender on expectations and experiences of repatriation. In so doing, she reflects on the ambiguous position that repatriates can occupy between forced and voluntary movement and highlights the problems in attempting to define either a beginning or an ending to journeys home.