Voluntary regions and the case of Las Vegas

A shifting American cultural geography, stemming from clustering of like-minded people, has been much-discussed in recent years. The “voluntary region”, proposed by Wilbur Zelinsky in his path-breaking The cultural geography of the United States, is a regional construct relatively unexplored by cultural geographers that may help in their contributions to such conversations. As described by Zelinsky, voluntary regions are places that attract individual, like-minded people away from long-standing “traditional regions” based on a desire for amenity and economic opportunity. I review the concept and its sparse embrace in the literature and suggest that it has much to offer our discipline. Using Las Vegas as a paradigmatic example, I explore methods that can be used to explore the formation and character of voluntary regions. I argue that the voluntary region framework is an encompassing lens through which cultural geographers can examine the complex nature of place and regional construction at the hands of dynamic forces that lead people to resettle in new places.     

Diva Las Vegas: queering space in the entertainment capital of the world

After a spate of demolitions and a 1990s building boom, the values of neoliberalism – deregulation, privatisation and innovation through competition – have shaped an entirely new topography in Las Vegas, developing in perfect harmony with the former’s rise to global dominance. The Strip, however, has come to capture more than free market economics in building form. The fabric of this desert suburb is also unmistakably gendered, and embodies normative sexuality throughout its unique arrangement of casino-hotels. This article proposes that neoliberalism and heteronormativity are closely intertwined and manifest through the spatial composition of Las Vegas Boulevard. It uses the area’s orientation towards entertainment to consider performance as a central element to this spatiality, and thus as a lens through which to approach analysis of the Strip in spatial terms. Under the Strip’s twin spatial regimes, queer entertainers, and drag performers in particular, have historically marketed both themselves and their acts in order to attract revenue from a conservative, heterosexual audience. Despite its all-pervasive heteronormativity, however, I also argue that the Strip contains a queer disruption at its core. The drag revue Divas Las Vegas hosted by the Strip’s longest-running headliner, Frank Marino, marks a break with local drag traditions, and provides a queer interrogation of gender politics for its audience of predominantly heterosexual tourists.     

Review Article: Nordic Exceptions in War and Cold War

PHILIP GILTNER. ‘In the Friendliest Manner’: German-Danish Economic Cooperation during the Nazi Occupation of 1940–1949. New York: Peter Lang, 1998. Pp. xii, 258. $49.95 (US); T. MICHAEL RUDDY, ed. Charting an Independent Course: Finland's Place in the Cold War and in US Foreign Policy. Claremont: Regina Books, 1998. Pp. 223. $32.95 (US), cloth; $14.95 (US), paper; MAX JAKOBSON. Finland in the New Europe. Westport: Praeger, 1998. Pp. xiv, 176. $19.95 (US), paper; TEIJA TIILIKAINEN. Europe and Finland: Defining the Political Identity of Finland in Western Europe. Aldershot and Brookfield: Ashgate, 1998. Pp. 185. $68.95 (US). Reviewed by Thomas Munch-Petersen     

Review Article: Soviet Behaviour in the Cold War

JACQUES LÉVESQUE. The Enigma of 1989: The USSR and the Liberation of Eastern Europe, trans. Keith Martin. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Pp. ix, 267. $35.00 (US);

JEFFREY T. CHECKEL. Ideas and International Political Change: Soviet/Russian Behavior and the End of the Cold War. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1997. Pp. xv, 191. $26.00 (US);

MIKE BOWKER. Russian Foreign Policy and the End of the Cold War. Aldershot: Dartmouth Publishing, 1997; dist. Brookfield, Vt.: Ashgate. Pp. xi, 297. $72.95 (US);

VOJTECH MASTNY. The Cold War and Soviet Insecurity: The Stalin Years. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Pp. xi, 285. $44.50 (CDN).     

Review Article: The Beginning and Ending of War

DALE C. COPELAND. The Origins of Major War. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000. Pp. xi, 322. $45.00 (US); H. E. GOEMANS. War and Punishment: The Causes of War Termination and the First World War. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000. Pp. x, 355. $19.95 (US), paper.     

Review Article: The Military Orders in War and Peace

MALCOLM BARBER. Crusaders and Heretics, 12th-14th Centuries. Aldershot, UK: Variorum; dist. Brookfield, Vt.: Ashgate Publishing, 1995. Pp. x, 289. $77.50 (US);

MALCOLM BARBER, ed. The Military Orders: Fighting for the Faith and Caring for the Sick. Aldershot, UK: Variorum; dist. Brookfield, Vt.: Ashgate Publishing, 1994. Pp. xxvii, 399. $99.50 (US).     

Reinhold Niebuhr and the US War on Terror: A Response to Dr Gilkey

Abstract

Building upon Langdon Gilkey's reflection on Reinhold Niebuhr's Moral Man and Immoral Society, this article examines Niebuhr's enduring contribution in relation to two pressing international concerns: religious terrorism and the US War on Terror. As these two issues are characterized by their suppression of reason, I argue that Niebuhr's critical understanding of reason, a human rational capacity to consider interests other than one's own, offers an important resource in rectifying the disorder created by the two issues. Despite his stringent critique of a liberal idealistic view of reason, Niebuhr refused to completely deny the value of reason; although reason is always tainted by sin, it is not entirely ineffectual. This critical notion of reason is a necessary antidote to the unilateralism of the Bush administration and religious fundamentalism which altogether reject a dialogical, reflective value of reason. In an increasingly interdependent global society, a critical use of reason is indispensable for the achievement of global peace and justice.     

War Dead and the Restoration of Military Cemeteries in Eastern Europe

This article examines the rebuilding of World War II cemeteries and mass graves. It compares the cult of the war dead in Germany, Romania and Russia and analyses examples of restorations of war cemeteries by these countries in Moldova. This reveals how the former war allies and adversaries now collaborate, as well as their attempts to overcome the political and ideological divides of recent decades through the reburial and remembrance of the war dead. The search for the war dead occurred at a time when each of these countries was “coming to terms” with its recent totalitarian past and, at the same time, was looking for recognition in a new international context. The convergence of the private and the political in the remembrance of the dead led at times to reconciliatory discourses and at others to a restatement of the “sacredness” of the past or of exclusivist national ideals.     

Review Article: The General History of the Second World War

MARTIN KITCHEN. A World in Flames: A Short History of the Second World War in Europe and Asia, 1939–1945. London and New York: Longman, 1990. Pp. xii, 377. $24.95 (CAN);

R.A.C. PARKER. Struggle for Survival: The History of the Second World War. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990. Pp. xii, 328. £5.95;

H.P. WiLLMOTT. The Great Crusade: A New Complete History of the Second World War. New York: Free Press (Macmillan), 1989. Pp. xii, 500. $24.95 (us);

JOHN KEEGAN. The Second World War. Sydney: Hutchinson, 1989. Pp. vii, 608. Aus $39.95;

JOHN ELLIS. Brute Force: Allied Strategy and Tactics in the Second World War. London: André Deutsch, 1990. Pp. xxii, 643. £19.95;

ALAN F. WILT. War from the Top: German and British Military Decision Making during World War II. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1990. Pp. x, 390. $35.00 (us).     

‘Las Vegas is not where we are’: Queer readings of the Civil Partnership Act

This article interrogates the United Kingdom's new Civil Partnership Act, which is intended to create a new legal status of ‘civil partner’. The Act confers benefits and imposes legal responsibilities on those same-sex couples who register their relationships. Analysing the Governmental material produced in support of the legislation, as well as Parliamentary debates, the article provides a critical analysis of the ideological underpinnings of civil partnership. A series of dichotomies—marriage/not marriage; sex/no sex; status/contract; conjugality/care; love/money; responsibilities/rights—informs the Government's construction of the category of ‘same-sex partner’. Those dichotomies lend themselves to a deconstructive analysis, applying the insights of queer theory. The result is a skepticism regarding the Act's replication of a marriage model for same-sex couples. Instead, the article concludes by advocating the search for more pluralistic and flexible legal models that better represent the diversity of relationship forms found today.