Bilingualism and geographical knowledge: A case study of students at the University of Wales,Aberystwyth

This paper explores the role of languages in the constitution of geographical knowledge. We argue that the fact that people speak different languages is significant to the ways in which they engage with geography as a subject. We unpack some of the processes through which languages make a difference to geography through an empirical project based on students at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, where geography is taught bilingually through Welsh and English. Student geography is a particularly interesting arena to further this theme, because of students' mediating role in translating professional geography into the popular sphere, which in the case of students at Aberystwyth is also a different linguistic sphere. Our empirical work suggests that the use of Welsh creates a particular linguistic culture of geography, because of the shared experience of specific practices and politics in bilingual education. This makes a difference to the kinds of geography consumed and produced by bilingual students. Through a discussion of the linguistic identity of Welsh geography, we address some of the implications and limitations of this social formation. We conclude by arguing that a focus on language has the potential to open up new ways of talking about geography.     

Chubut,Argentina: a contested Welsh ‘first-place’

Abstract

In an attempt to escape British hegemony, the Welsh established a Patagonian colony in 1865, in what is now the Chubut Province of Argentina. The historical struggles the immigrants faced upon settling the land are rooted in the landscape and commemorated in different versions of Patagonian regional history through provincial museum narratives that serve as a method of solidifying Welshness in Chubut. Contemporarily, the local tourism industry constructs the Welsh as the first settlers in the region, while minimally representing predecessor groups like the indigenous communities or Spanish colonials. Curiously, the representation of these other heritage communities throughout heritage displays actually serves to bolster the Welsh ‘first-place’ claims over the region. These tensions are seen throughout community-based museums in the region that assert a locally rooted hybrid identity by acknowledging local historical diversity, while simultaneously recalling and emphasising the [Welsh] homeland heritage. This paper explores how ‘first-places’ can be a source of symbolic conflict, while simultaneously serving as a dynamic, heritage construction mechanism. This research investigates how the Welsh diaspora negotiates its identity through the mobilisation of heritage, to make claims about the Chubut Province as a symbolic Welsh first-place, as well as broader Argentine heritage.     

Entangled allegiances: Ottoman Greeks in Marseille and the shifting ethos of Greekness (c. 1790–c. 1820)

Abstract

An attempt is made here to consider ‘the Greek experience of Ottoman rule’ beyond the frontiers of the Empire itself, by focusing on the resilience of the Ottoman aspect of collective identity among the Greeks in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Marseille. Beyond the classic questioning of political, social and cultural categories and labels, this article makes a plea for taking this resilience seriously, as part and parcel of a broader process of identity formation in a diaspora context. Making the case for a richer and more complex analysis of the phenomenon of ‘entangled identities’ among the Greeks in Marseille, some suggestions are made for what this claim might bring to the analysis of identity formation in the context of diaspora communities.     

Urban Morality and the Great City in the Book of Jonah

Abstract

This paper reads the book of Jonah through the lens of moral geography. It focuses on the topic of the Great City, treating Nineveh as a character within the text, seeking to explore the question as to whether there is an urban morality which can be identified by reading the text of Jonah alongside key works from the field of cultural geography. In particular the paper discusses the parallelism between human and social embodiment as channels for exploring urban identity. In this study urban evil takes its place within a wider concept of city morality when it is measured by the tension between city-state as a powerful political force and the vulnerability and finitude of urban populations.     

Heirs to Byzantium: identity and the Helleno-Romaic dichotomy amongst the Istanbul Greek migrant community in Greece

Abstract

The Istanbul Greek migrant community resident in Greece exists in the space between two homelands and two identities, expressed in the dichotomy between the Hellenic and the Romaic. The migrants exploit this flexibility and ambivalence in Greek identity to contextually navigate a range of social pressures – diaspora, discrimination, alienation, and even financial collapse. At times they pursue assimilation with their host population as the most Hellenic of the Hellenes, whilst at other times they assume a Romaic identity to distinguish themselves from the mainland Greeks. Deploying an identity rooted in Byzantium, the Istanbul Greeks are able to be Greek but more than simply Hellenic.     

Forging a ‘Good Diaspora’: Political Mobilization among Somalis in the UK

This article is about a campaign that was initiated by Somalis in London in 2013 against Barclays Bank's decision to shut down the accounts of four Somali remittance companies in the UK. It explores how young Somalis mobilized politically around the issue, and how, in the process, they created and reified a particular ‘imagined community’. By drawing on multicultural notions of community, and development idioms of diaspora engagement, they fashioned themselves around a notion of ‘good diaspora’ based on generation, pan‐Somali unity, and ideas of ‘professionalism’. In so doing, they were able to mobilize politically as both national and transnational actors, but were also confronted with some of the limits of the ‘good diaspora’ identity category. This article establishes a dialogue between the literature on diaspora engagement and that on migrant political mobilization by exploring how young Somalis navigate across these different national and transnational conversations, discourses and social categories.     

Mobile diasporas,postcolonial identities: the Green Line in Cyprus

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the scope for understanding postcolonial and hybrid identities through the theory of ontological security in International Relations. It examines the circulation of identity for a dispersed postcolonial population, namely Cypriots. This circulation happens amongst a deterritorialised public, through media and movement of people. It carries meaning that is formative of the identity of the diaspora and of the identity of the home state, implicating both in a complex and relational ontological security comprising identity, memory, state and society. The Green Line dividing North from South in Cyprus represents the bifurcation of the island, rupturing the possibility of a territorially unified Cypriot identity. The line also represents a rupturing of contiguous ethnic identities, marking the creation of refugee populations and Cypriot diasporas. The Green Line is both a physical location and circulating symbol of ontological insecurity. On one hand, the Green Line marks the creation of Cypriot refugees and diasporas. On the other, it marks a gateway to Europe for asylum seekers attempting to enter the Southern part of the island. I theorise the Green Line as an emblem of ontological insecurity whose meaning is (re)constituted in the lived experience of Cypriot diaspora and migrants seeking security, revealing a hybrid and fluid identity.     

Style and Subversion: Postwar Poses and the Neo–Edwardian Suit in Mid–Twentieth–Century Britain

This essay examines the emergence of the Neo–Edwardian look in postwar London. It traces a network of styles which took their meanings from the immediate environment and from broader social, economic and cultural trends, and suggests that the arising connections between place, class and gender identities provided an important precedent for the reinvention of London as a centre of fashion innovation in the 1960s. Utilising contemporary sociological accounts and the content of trade periodicals, this reading challenges some of the more reactionary interpretations of Neo–Edwardianism which have dominated the established literature and refocuses the attention of the fashion historian on the sartorial activities of young men.     

地方与认同:欧美人文地理学对地方的再认识

地方是现代人文地理学研究的重要视角之一。以人本主义地理学为代表,现代欧美人文地理学界对地方性意义以及地方在建构个人与社会的文化身份认同的作用进行了深入的探讨与研究。地方对于个人与社会来说,不啻是一个意义的中心,同时也是构建社会关系与权力关系的媒介。因此,地方意义在身份认同的建构过程中有着十分重要的作用。本文从地方-空间的关系、地方认同的多样性与动态性、地方认同与权力的关系以及全球化背景下的地方认同四个方面对欧美人文地理学关于地方与认同之间辩证关系的研究进行系统的述评。     

Where Do You Belong? Identity,New Guinea Islanders,and the Power of Peles

Peles is a Melanesian concept related to the grounding of a person's Indigenous origin in a particular place. This notion is especially important in Papua New Guinea where, upon first meeting, people are likely to ask, ‘Where are you from?’ Ascertaining someone's peles enables the rapid establishment between previously unknown people of social connections and obligations, kinship, and identity. Despite the increasing influences of westernisation, globalisation, urbanisation, and migration, peles remains steadfast at the centre of Papua New Guinean social identity construction. This article addresses the current and emerging ways in which people of New Guinea Islander descent – both at ‘home’ or in the diaspora – connect to peles, whether physically or otherwise and details the social politics of these assertions.     

Sound and identity explored through the Indian Tamil diaspora and Tamil Nadu

Sound is very much a part of identity. While identities are neither singular nor stable, they can be expressed through sound in daily life. Scholars have used soundscapes in geography to understand urban environments within cities, rural national park systems, and provide musical insights into cultural landscapes. However, furthering discussion on the role of sound in identity can move concepts of soundscape and cultural landscape forward. The goal of this paper is to investigate how identity and culture, though they are dynamic, can be performed and stabilized through sound in particular moments and yet also exist banally. Soundscapes through both spoken language and music can give geographers further insights on identity and place. Sound can also show how non-dominant identities distinguish themselves from larger national identities. With research in Tamil Nadu, India and Cleveland, OH, this paper examines sound’s role in identity, belonging, and community through lived experience and performance. Focusing on intersections and tensions between soundscapes, this paper investigates how the Tamil soundscape is used to assert and perform identity.     

A Roma Nation? Constructing Romani identity in the context of extreme displacement

The process of displacement has affected the articulation of collective identity among the Romani diaspora. The nation state persists as the main vehicle through which diasporic identities are formulated. A challenge to this is when a diaspora has lost its homeland as its territorial reference point. This article reflects on the way in which the Romanies – a 1,000‐year‐old diaspora – confront traditional understandings of diasporic identity as combining the ideas of a loss and longing for a homeland. It explores the limits and possibilities of building a collective Romani identity in the context of extreme displacement, with reference to narratives of identity and belonging articulated by the Romani diaspora in Britain.     

The ‘Iranian Diaspora’ and the New Media: From Political Action to Humanitarian Help

This article looks at the shifting position of the ‘Iranian diaspora’ in relation to Iran as it is influenced by online and offline transnational networks. In the 1980s the exilic identity of a large part of the Iranian diaspora was the core factor in establishing an extended, yet exclusive form of transnational network. Since then, the patterns of identity within this community have shifted towards a more inclusive network as a result of those transnational connections, leading to more extensive and intense connections and activities between the Iranian diaspora and Iranians in Iran. The main concern of the article is to examine how the narratives of identity are constructed and transformed within Iranian (charity) networks and to identify the factors that contribute to this transformation. The authors use the transnational lens to view diasporic positioning as linked to development issues. New technological sources help diaspora groups, in this case Iranians, to build virtual embedded ties that transcend nation states and borders. Yet, the study also shows that these transnational connections can still be challenged by the nation state, as has been the case with recent developments in Iran.     

Bodies (and Spaces) do Matter: The limits of performativity

This article explores the insights and limitations within geography of Judith Butler's concept of 'performativity'. As a processual, non-foundational approach to identity, many feminist and post-structuralist geographers have incorporated performativity into their work on the intersections between gender, sexuality, ethnicity, space and place. Yet few have explicitly undertaken a close and critical reading of Butler's theory. The author argues that performativity ontologically assumes an abstracted subject (i.e. abstracted as a subject position in a given discourse) and thus provides no space for theorizing conscious reflexivity, negotiation or agency in the doing of identity. Butler posits a subject abstracted from personal, lived experience as well as from its historical and geographical embeddedness. Uncritically transcribing this abstracted subject into geography limits how we can conceptualize the linkages between emerging identities, social change and spatially-embedded, intentional human practice. A more thoughtful and nuanced use of performativity would allow geographers to map how concrete subjects (individual or collective) do identity in relation to various discursive processes (e.g. those that constitute race, class, sexuality and gender), to other subjects, and to layers of institutions and practices.     

‘Why can't I get married?’—Denmark and the ‘Twenty-four year law’

Jackson (2000) proposes a 'rematerialization' of social and cultural geography. He argues for the grounding of geographical analysis in the concrete world of actual physical objects. Examining the work of Jackson (2000) and Miller (1987, 1998) this paper interrogates this return to the physical. In particular, this paper argues that current articulations of physicality rely on a universal metaphysics of matter--positing matter as a universally undifferentiated conditionality. This reliance is problematic in that it signifies an essentialist dichotomy between the objective (the material) and the subjective (the textual). Also this dichotomy necessitates a linear dialectics of matter subjugating the material to the determinative action of form. In subjecting Jackson's notion of rematerialization to a critical philosophical reading, the aim is to disturb the unquestioned metaphysical implications of this return. Indeed it is to suggest that a rematerialization of social and cultural geography must account for the wayward expressiveness of matter--its representative and active capacities outside its relation with the subject.     

Geographies of asylum, legal knowledge and legal practices

Law and legal discourses are an integral part of social life, a central means of producing social identities and exercising social power in day to day life. Critically informed geographical perspectives on law have illustrated in a number of ways how the legal and social (and therefore the spatial) are mutually constitutive. This paper argues that perspectives from critical legal geography can offer insights into the operation of asylum and immigration law in the UK in the late 1990s. This paper argues that legal practices and relations are organised in hegemonic and counter-hegemonic ways in different places and institutional contexts in London. In addition law and legal practices comprise a particularly important way in which ‘community’ can be constructed simultaneously across a variety of different scales in ways that can marginalise and exclude relatively powerless groups like asylum seekers. Thus refugee identities offer a particularly clear example of how social realities are constituted by law and legal practice.     

Making and remaking Tibetan diasporic identities

The fifty-year long Chinese occupation of Tibet has resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands and has produced a refugee flow that continues today. Although the plight of Tibetans commands international attention, this diaspora remains understudied and undertheorized. To speak to this silence, we follow Patterson and Kelley (2000) and argue that the Tibetan diaspora can be analysed as both a condition and a process. Diaspora as condition emphasizes the structural features of an exile population, such as race, gender, class and religion. Diaspora as process draws attention to lived refugee experiences--the making and remaking of diasporic identities. In the Tibetan diaspora, His Holiness the Dalai Lama holds a central position. Through his global profile, and a transnational nationalist political structure, he creates images of Tibet, builds community and works toward Tibetan self-determination. Within this nationalist frame, Tibetan identities assume a singular, unified and homogeneous form. Further analysis that focuses on individual voices, however, shows how Tibetan diasporic identities are contested, complex and embedded in not one but multiple narratives of struggle.     

THINGS THAT ARE ALMOST BUT NOT QUITE WELL KNOWN IN PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY

The author, a physical geographer, sees no need to despair about the present state of the discipline and the future of geography. He places geography in context among the sciences and finds a need for a synthesizing discipline that pulls together the findings of the particular disciplines. Such a function might be performed by landscape science and regional geography. In general, geographers are found to go too far afield in their research and there is a need to define the focus of the disciplines to eliminate the present centrifugal tendencies. Such a unifying focus might be found in geographical prediction. Geographers should be aware of the limits and capabilities of their discipline; geography is most effective in fostering solutions in conjunction with other disciplines. Fieldwork per se is criticized; some geographers make a fetish of fieldwork, spending their life in the field without ever writing up the results as a contribution to science. The language of geographical exposition must be cleansed of pseudoscientific jargon; too much geographical writing is incomprehensible. The use of mathematics in geography should be placed in historical perspective; it is not the panacea for all that ails geography.     

Identifying Scotland and Wales: types of Scottish and Welsh national identities

Abstract. How are national identities and the ‘imagined communities’ ( Anderson 1991 ) upon which they are based linked? This article demonstrates that Q‐methodology, which allows each participant to express his or her own ‘personal nationalism’ ( Cohen 1996 ) while simultaneously highlighting how these individual assessments aggregate into coherent, shared types of national identity, provides a means of empirically assessing the linkage between the micro‐ and macro‐components of national identity. When applied to the cases of Scotland and Wales, the six types of national identity – three each in Scotland and Wales – highlight distinctions that reflect, as well as challenge, the ubiquitous academic division between civic and ethnic national identities. They also illuminate the differing natures of contemporary Scotland and Wales, with particular emphasis on the observation that the Welsh imagined community appears to be fundamentally more contested than the more easily forged Scottish imagined community.     

National sustainabilities

In this paper, we examine the potential for developing a stronger connection between the two significant discourses of sustainable development and nationalism. While there has been limited academic enquiry into the relationships that might exist between these two discourses, we draw on the case study of Wales since 1999 to show how policy-makers are increasingly examining the potential for promoting a more fruitful dialogue between them. We examine how nationalist discourses in Wales have led to the development of a form of sustainable development that is allegedly more attuned to Welsh national values and identities. We also show how sustainable development is being used to imagine new and possibly more inclusive kinds of futures for the Welsh nation. We conclude by reaffirming the fruitful synergies that might exist between sustainable development and nationalism while acknowledging the tensions that arise in seeking to make connections between them.