内华达不仅是拉斯维加斯

泛舟于湛蓝的太浩湖面,挥杆于碧绿的高尔夫球场间,驰骋于黄沙漫漫的沙漠中,滑行于白雪皑皑的雪山上,在神秘的金字塔湖畔探访印第安人的部落。     

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.     

Dead Hookers and Las Vegas: A Response to the Critics of my Article and the War in Iraq

Abstract

America and its allies took a bold step in launching a pre-emptive strike hoping to create a safer and better world. They did not possess a complete knowledge of the facts. They did not present a simple calculus to justify the action. They decided it was better to act than twiddle their thumbs wondering when and how a menacing regime would fulfill its threats. Their critics might prove them wrong. The pretext for going to war was questionable. The attempt to change the political landscape seems doomed to failure. But foolish people are the ones who dare to dream and act. Their activity is less than perfect and their success never guaranteed, but sometimes the God of all mercy uses what cannot stand on its own merit and effort and blesses it through the omnipotence of his will.     

A critical perspective on socially embedded cultural policy in France

This paper aims to show how in France, the synthesis of cultural policy and social concerns throws up a number of tensions and pitfalls. These tensions are perhaps most acute because these sorts of cultural policies are not merely about socio‐economic issues but are actually tied to France’s colonial legacy and the presence of a large and often marginalised population of migrants and their descendents. The pitfalls stem from the universalist starting point of French cultural policy, which, although designed to integrate “new” and migrant/postmigrant publics, emergent artists and cultural practices, seems to simultaneously marginalise them since it is already premised on a binary that opposes art as aesthetic expression and art as an expression of cultural (anthropological) identity or social cohesion.     

‘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.     

The world archaeological congress from a critical and personal perspective

Este trabajo trata sobre el contexto epistemológico y político que regula la organización del congreso arqueológico mundial y su historia. WAC introdujó una serie de puntos políticos renovadores, como por ejemplo el código de ética, la participación de los representantes indígenas y regionales, llevando a la arqueología a un nuevo contexto mundial. Como un ex secretario WAC, el autor argumenta por una democracia más profunda en la organización.

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Résumé Cet article aborde le contexte épistémologique et politique qui a mené à l'organisation du Congrès mondiale de l'archéologie et l'histoire de la discipline subséquente. Le CMA a introduit une série de positions politiques, comme un code d'étiques, une représentation régionale et autochtone, ainsi que l'aboutissement de l'archéologie dans une nouvelle étape mondiale. Comme ancien secrétaire du CMA, l'auteur plaide en faveur de l'approfondissement des aspects démocratiques de l'organisation.

     

Global aspirations and local (dis-)connections: A critical comparative perspective on tramway projects in Casablanca and Jerusalem

This article puts emphasis on the political representation of tramway projects in Casablanca, Morocco, and Jerusalem, Israel/the Palestinian territories. In this paper, we discuss both tramway projects as flagships of national worlding strategies that try to promote the respective city on global markets of attention, competing for international investors and tourists. As such, they are majorly driven by national political interests, fostering the hegemonic position of the central state in cooperation with private actors. The tramways are aimed at portraying modernity as well as political and economic stability, while aspiring to a supposed international urban world-class. At the same time, governments frame tramways as tools to promote socio-urban integration and to improve local transport systems. However, the paper shows that although governments are eager to stress the integrative role of tramways, they continue with violent politics of urban exclusion at the same time. Thus, the integrative wording behind tramway planning has to be understood against political (and economic) pressures to regain political legitimacy in a moment of crisis - both domestically and internationally. Consequently, the paper uses interview data and applies methods of discourse analysis to shed light on the worlding of tramways and its ambivalent practices of symbolic inclusion and exclusion.     

Global supply chains and networking: A critical perspective on learning challenges in the New Zealand dairy and sheepmeat commodity chains

Vertical and horizontal networks in food chains and rural areasinteract on rural development through a potentially global reach.This paper adopts a knowledge systems framework incorporatingnetworking dimensions to explore problems of supply chain reorganisation.In New Zealand this framework is being applied in agri-industriesthrough the input of research institutes, partly in responseto buyer-driven pressures for supply chain realignment and productionto more precise specification. The paper reports on networkinginterventions by AgResearch in the farmer-processor relationin two New Zealand export food chains (dairy and meat). Findingsfrom the Learning Challenges Project where focus groups areused to conceptualise and define aspects of the chains and toascertain knowledge networking dimensions point to the potentialof networking methodologies as policy tools.