Inter- and Transdisciplinarity in Urban-Environmental Research: A Subjective Inventory over Twenty Years

Abstract

The growing call for problem-oriented and practice-relevant research in the public and political debate has its origins in complex problems, for which society expects solutions. This call is echoed in parts of the science community and uses the key argument that complex real-world problems demand cooperation between science and society in terms of inter- and transdisciplinary research. Using the example of urban research at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, I sketch my experiences in developing scientific cooperation between researchers coming from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds and by stakeholder involvement. The target is to deepen mutual understanding of the scientific challenges and to provide system solutions adequate to the societal context. After over twenty years of facing the need for collaboration among a variety of social and natural scientists as well as with relevant stakeholders, and recognizing its advantages and limits, the topic of inter- and transdisciplinarity has, finally, become mainstream in environmental research.     

Oriental borrowings in Medieval Greek: new evidence from the BnF manuscript Supplément persan 939

Abstract

The topic of this article is the historical evolution of Greek foreign policy in the Middle East over the past thirty-five years. It essentially seeks to explain the broad framework of conditions and objectives within which Greek foreign policy has been made towards the Arab Middle East and Israel. It argues that the amount of involvement of Greek foreign policy in the area was relatively little. Though much has changed in Greece's approach towards the Middle East since the 1990s, there is also a significant continuity of attitude, in the sense that serious attention has not been paid to this part of the world.     

The Actions of Abraham: A Life of Ethical Contradictions

ABSTRACT

Taking my point of departure in questions of ethnogenesis within the regions of Yehud and Idumea in the pre-Hasmonean period, I analyze the interrelationship of the themes of conflict and reconciliation in the composition of Genesis. I pay particular attention to perceptions of Idumea in narrative reiterations which tie the Cain story to the narratives about the destruction of Sodom and the Jacob-Esau conflict story in order to raise the question of whether the narrative strategy reflected in these stories might justify a further analysis of the Jacob and Joseph stories as contributions to a larger mnemonic discourse, bearing a utopian trajectory aimed at a realization of Ezekiel 16's reconciliation between Idumea, Yehud and Samaria.     

Children's agency and Islam: unexpected paths to solidarity

This ethnographic study analyzes the experiences of Palestinian children's agency of religion and its manifestation in religion as resistance while it is fighting the globalized hegemony. Children's agency of religion as resistance is cultivated within the debate of Islamist movements and the evolution of Palestinian national identity while it serves as a call for global solidarity. It is this creative construct of agency of religion that transcends borders and distinguishes itself from the old generation method of resistance. The differences between generations on this construct, as described by children's agency and their ability to transform, is constructed by particular meanings of Islamist symbols and rejects the assumption that children's roles are defined. The agency of religion as resistance evolves as the role of religion in national discourse is deliberated in secularism and sectarianism. In 2005/2006, I was awarded the Rockefeller Fellowship in the Anthropology Department of Johns Hopkins University. The award was for my work on children's political socialization in the Middle East. I also have been active with international studies: in 2009, I collaborated with the Children's Rights Unit, Institut Universitaire Kurt Bösch, Switzerland on the research project, Living Rights: Theorizing Children's Rights in International Development. I am serving as research member on the Joint Learning Initiative on Children and Ethnic Diversity (JLICED), Division of Children's Rights. My work has been published in the Journal of Qualitative Inquiry, Childhood, Children's Geographies, Journal of Mix Method Research and others. View all notes     

‘Like it,don’t like it,you have to like it’: children’s emotional responses to the absence of transnational migrant parents in Lombok,Indonesia

ABSTRACT

This article explores the experiences and emotions of children in rural East Lombok, Indonesia, who stay behind with relatives or neighbours while their parents leave the country for work. The article contributes to recent scholarship of children’s experiences of transnational migration in Southeast Asia by drawing out the complex emotions of children who stay behind. Based on research conducted in four ‘sending’ villages, the article describes children’s lived experiences of their parent’s transnational migration, and their intense feelings that whether they ‘like it or don’t like it’, they have no choice but to acquiesce to their parents’ long, often indeterminate absences. The research suggests that stay-behind children are entangled in community anxieties pervading the emotional economy of transnational migration, including the embodied emotion of shame (malu) which shapes children’s responses to parental absence. By focusing on children’s own views and experiences, we contribute to growing debates about the implications of migration for children’s rights and well-being in Southeast Asia.     

Grief as method: topographies of grief,care, and fieldwork from Northwest Arkansas to New York and the Marshall Islands

Abstract

When we grieve during fieldwork, our grief forms new geographies of knowledge production and emotion. In this article, I use autoethnography to theorize my grief during fieldwork following the death of my sister. I examine grief’s methodological implications using the concept of ‘grief as method,’ an emotionally-inflected practice that accounts for the vulnerability produced by grief. By centering vulnerability, ‘grief as method’ also urges researchers to consider the practices and politics of ‘caring with’ our research subjects and caring for ourselves, raising larger questions about the role of care in research. Furthermore, this article demonstrates how grief’s geographical features—its mobility, its emergence in new sites and landscapes, and its manifestation as both proximity and distance—shape ‘grief as method’ profoundly. I examine grief’s spatial implications by building on Katz’s ‘topography’ to theorize a ‘topography of grief’ that stitches together the emotional geographies of researchers, blurring both spatial divisions (‘the field’ vs. ‘the not-field’) and methodological ones (the ‘researcher-self’ vs. the ‘personal-self’). If we see grief as having a topography, then the relationships between places darkened by grief come into focus. Moreover, by approaching grief methodologically, we can better understand how field encounters—relationships between people—are forged through grief. ‘Grief as method,’ in offering a spatial analysis of grief’s impact on fieldwork, envisions a broader definition of what engaged research looks like and where it takes place.     

Identity,contingency and the urban geography of 'race'

Traditional research in urban geography concerned with issues of 'race' has focused on a series of substantively important issues, yet with conceptual foundation inadequate to the task. Specifically, this body of work has employed outdated and theoretically limited conceptions of identity without sufficient consideration to the importance of historical and geographic contingency. I argue in this essay that topics of traditional concern to urban geography gain new relevance and importance when they are reconsidered and reworked from a social constructivist perspective that takes seriously the importance of identity and contingency. I illustrate my argument with discussions of two aspects of my current research agenda. First, I discuss how research on urban residential segregation gains considerably from a more sensitive encounter with multifaceted notions of identity that explicitly address geographic contingency. Second, I review recent empirical research on US mortgage-lending markets that demonstrates the geographic and class contingency of discrimination. The paper ends with a call for research that employs multiple methodologies.     

The evolution of maritime Chinese historiography in the United States: toward a transnational and interdisciplinary approach

ABSTRACT

Once considered a marginal side-story to the Fairbank-inspired narrative of an agrarian-centered, land-bound China, Chinese maritime history has received increasing attention in the United States as a research field in its own right. Through sustained engagement with trends in regional, comparative, military, and global histories, and dialogue with European and Asian academia, the efforts of several generations of scholars after Fairbank have slowly broken down his paradigm. Studies of maritime China are increasingly showing a broad, integrated maritime East Asian region comprising the seas and their littoral from the Sea of Japan to the Strait of Melaka. This article surveys the historiographical development of the field. It also highlights my work-in-progress on autonomous overseas Chinese polities along the Gulf of Siam littoral in mainland Southeast Asia during the eighteenth century as one possible future path for the study of maritime Chinese history.     

‘Knowledge that moves’: emotions and affect in policy and research with young migrants

ABSTRACT

Migration is an emotional experience, and so is the policy and research work associated with it. Yet, discussions on emotions and affect remain largely absent from the literature on children and youth migration. Writing auto-ethnographically, I revisit my research with/about young Lao migrants with the aim of teasing out how emotions, of young migrants, of my own and in policy making emerged in relation to various dimensions of young people’s migration. On this basis I make the case for appreciating emotions as knowledge. While emotions are ‘moving’ in an affective sense, I proceed by arguing the productive dimension of emotions through the idea of the emotive as ‘knowledge that moves’. I substantiate this point by discussing instances in which emotions as a particular form of knowledge ‘move’ research decisions, policy making processes, theorizing the youthful dimension of migration as well as the interpersonal relations through which ethnographic research is realized.     

Christianity and Secularisation in the West and the Middle East: A Theological Stance

In this article I argue that Christianity is essentially secular. Hence, secularisation not only has a theological connotation concerning Christian faith but also it is the highest and most perfect realisation of Christian religion, since it signifies the cross that is in the centre of Christian faith. As Christians take upon themselves secularisation as an existential choice, namely the powerlessness of God and of the human being, they simultaneously take the worldly‐human existence as “here” and “now” upon themselves. I will argue that this is the culmination of Reformation. Further, I want to demonstrate that secular Christianity, in the sense given in this article, remains a challenge for both Western and Eastern worlds. In order to accomplish this I will reflect in the first part of this article — from a theological point of view — upon some sociological interpretations or theories concerning mainly secularisation in Western Europe and also the contemporary socio‐political scene in the Middle East. In the second part of the article I will present several Western and Eastern theological positions that defend secularisation, and through their contributions I will construct my own theological stance for secular Christianity.     

Refugees in the Arab Middle East: Academic and Policy Perspectives

The field of Refugee Studies is relatively unfamiliar to Middle East area specialists despite the significance of refugees in the region. The strong policy orientation of much of the work in the field has often shaped the way refugee issues are framed by scholars as well as practitioners. Concerns and discourses about refugee‐producing regions in general, and the Arab Middle East in particular, have tended to reflect Western notions of belonging, citizenship, and the state; and in recent years, have been seen through a lens of securitization in the region. This article addresses the development of the field, the subject of displacement and dispossession in the Arab Middle East from a Western perspective, the significant role that Arab cities play as sites for hosting refugees, and the challenges presented by the continued existence of Palestinian refugees.     

Jacob Vernet and ‘The Religious Enlightenment’: ‘Rational Calvinism’, the Pastors of Geneva and the French philosophes

Summary

In this article I react to dismissive remarks made about my Jacob Vernet, Geneva and the philosophes (1994) in a recent book by David Sorkin, The Religious Enlightenment (2008). Vernet, a distinguished Genevan pastor and theologian, who fell foul of d'Alembert, Voltaire and Rousseau, is one of six figures studied by Sorkin, who claims that the religious dimension of the Enlightenment has been much underestimated and that the philosophes were considerably less significant than has usually been thought. Reacting to the accusation that my treatment of Vernet's theology was superficial and unreliable, I reconsider the latter's major theological works (including his Traité de la vérité de la religion chrétienne, Instruction chrétienne, and Pièces fugitives sur l'eucharistie) in an attempt to validate my previous interpretation, and illustrate that Vernet refused to acknowledge ideas that he had actually published. The second part of the article draws more general conclusions, pointing out spectacular errors in Sorkin's depiction of eighteenth-century Geneva and arguing that he has a clear agenda, which, in my opinion, is wrong-headed, easy to refute and—above all—often based on gratuitous accusations and statements lacking any evidence.     

The Middle East Synchrotron Facility can bring Regional Cooperation

Over three years ago, Germany decided to gift the BESSY‐I, a 800MeV synchrotron, fully functioning since 1982 in Berlin, to the region of Middle East. The Middle East Synchrotron better known by the acronym SESAME (Synchrotron‐light for Experimental Science and Applications in the Middle East) will be the upgraded reincarnation of BESSY‐I. SESAME, the first synchrotron in the Middle East, is envisioned as a seed for a regional international research center, open to scientists in the region and beyond. The founders of the SESAME Project see a facility similar in purpose to the European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN) in Geneva, which brought together numerous scientists from countries that had fought each other during the two World Wars. Scientific collaboration beyond the national boundaries has been a force for peace in the cold war. An account of events leading to these very significant developments is presented.     

International geography field courses: practices and challenges

Abstract

This paper introduces a special issue of the Journal of Geography in Higher Education on the practices and challenges associated with taking undergraduate geography students abroad on field courses. I argue that geography is positioned to benefit from both the internationalization of higher education and the demand by students for global experiences. The papers in this special issue focus on three aspects of international field courses: curriculum design and international partnerships, student engagement during short-duration field courses, and how encounters with place can be aided through reflection and play. I conclude with suggestions for future research on international field courses.     

Dialectical movements with the Toba people in the Argentine Chaco

Since 1998, I have undertaken fieldwork with the Indigenous peoples of the Argentine Chaco, focusing initially on their dances and embodied practices. After this ethnographic research, I began to think more deeply about the relationships between fieldwork and reflexivity and the possibilities of redefining analytical categories in the global South. The purpose of this article is to revisit my emphasis on a ‘dialectical approach to embodiment’ as a starting point for analysing cultural transformation in Latin America. I argue that this methodological approach has been closely linked to the interweaving of conflicting embodied experiences and peripheral geopolitical locations. In this regard I analyse how the contradictory experiences identified in my fieldwork with the Toba people, and also in my intersubjective and geopolitical positions as a Latin American academic woman, led me to a critical re-examination of dialectics. Further, I describe how this methodological approach, while well received among Latin American scholars has to some degree been resisted by (North) American and British scholars, and I explore the geopolitical implications of these disparate academic positions. Through these critical movements, I hope to contribute to rethinking dialectics in postcolonial contexts, adding some embodied voices from the Latin American South.     

Getting personal while narrating the ‘field’: a researcher's journey to the villages of the Narmada valley

In this article, I discuss my experiences, dilemmas and emotions following my field surveys conducted in the rehabilitated villages of Sardar Sarovar. The Sardar Sarovar Project (SSP) is a multi-purpose river valley project that has dislocated thousands of Adivasis and non-Adivasis from their traditional lands. I have used the narrative method to research and gain insights into the lifestyle changes of the Adivasis displaced by the SSP. Accordingly, I reflect critically on the negotiation of ethics and insider–outsider status in international field research and pay close attention to the importance of reflexivity, positionality and power struggles.     

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.     

Trans/national knowledge production through difference: dilemmas of doing research on veiling in Amman,Jordan

Abstract

This article examines some dilemmas I experienced while doing research on fashionable veiling in Amman, Jordan. My fieldwork experience and the knowledge I co-produced with the participants were shaped by each layer of my identity as a Jordanian, Muslim, non-veiled woman, with a particular classed, spatialized Ammani heritage and affiliation with western feminist academia. The article engages with the implications my positionality had on my insider-outsider status and the knowledge the participants and I co-produced. I argue that the research setting, while fraught with difference, constituted a site for transnational solidarity and knowledge production. The participants and I had divergent understandings of, and aspirations for, Jordanian Muslim femininity shaped by our varying positions within the Global North-Global South. I argue that we practiced solidarity by collaborating and co-constructing a transnational site to unpack and defend their viability. I found that our collaboration was not fuelled by a shared sense of injustice and did not produce a shared outlook on Islam, Jordanianness or femininity. Rather, it created a site where we were able to emphasize our divergent sense of these paradigms as women positioned differently within the trans/national, cultural, and religious spaces we shared.     

Generation as a social variable

ABSTRACT

In this short paper, I start with a case study – about how elementary school children in the early twentieth century in England understood their responsibilities vis-à-vis family (and school). This example provides a window into a past which deeply contrasts with present-day children’s and adults’ understandings and lives. I go on to consider (very briefly, for the field is vast) how ideas about childhood changed in the interwar years and how, since then, children have become locked into educational establishments – as well as into families. It seems to me that in these circumstances we are not used to thinking of children as thoughtful and active members of society. So it is no surprise to me that adults do not look to inter-relations with children as key variables towards understanding the social order. I note that my emphasis is on the UK, since I know most about that!     

The Compulsory Exchange of Populations : Greek-Turkish Peacemaking, 1922–1930

Abstract

As a precedent in the resolution of Middle Eastern crises, the settlement of the embittered Greek- Turkish conflict of 1919–1922 constitutes a landmark. The swiftness and comprehensiveness of the settlement was hailed from the moment it was formally achieved by the Lausanne Peace Treaty of 23 July 1923. It has been rendered even more impressive since World War II by what, until recently at least, has seemed like the intractable Arab-Israeli dispute.