“But it's Alright,Ma, it's Life,and Life Only”: Radicalism as Survival

Hunger stole upon me so slowly at first. I was not aware of what hunger really meant [emphasis added]. Hunger had always been more or less at my elbow when I played, but now I began to wake up at night to find hunger, staring at me gauntly … this hunger baffled me, scared me, made me angry and insistent … I would grow dizzy and my vision would dim. I became less active in my play, and for the first time in my life I had to pause and think of what was happening to me. ( Wright 1977 )

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Eric Voegelin as a Teacher's Teacher

ABSTRACT

Eric Voegelin was never interested in forming a school—his quest for truth was so Socratic that the last thing he wanted was people simply commenting on his own work. At the same time, his approach to the key texts of Western experience—and in his later years, of Eastern and archaic Neolithic and Paleolithic—blazed the way for his readers to get out there into that wide field of the human quest for transcendence and expand on his work in their own way. What this essay attempts, however sketchily, is to record his impact on my own teaching, with five samples of Voegelin-inspired courses I've developed. I begin with headlines from a philosophical effort at articulating an Irish Neolithic experience at Newgrange (3200 BC)—elsewhere, and following Voegelin, I've pushed that work back through Lascaux to Chauvet (32,000 BC). Then a brief mention of a Voegelinian reading of the beautiful Hindu Bhagavad Gita, followed by interpretations of Dostoevsky and Solzhenitsyn, and finally, a critique of Richard Dawkins' God Delusion. While, over the years, my classes also expanded on The World of the Polis and Plato and Aristotle, what Voegelin always seemed to demand was for us to engage in what he calls ‘the quest of the quest,' rather than simply repeat him. That's why I see him as the teacher's teacher: he wanted you, as a philosophy lecturer, to get on with your own search, and to awaken in your students what he called ‘the Question as a constant structure in the experience of reality.’     

A lone ranger: My journey towards becoming a feminist geographer in Nairobi,Kenya

Abstract

Very few Kenyan universities offer modules on Gender or Feminism in their courses. Women are largely under-represented and very few hold senior positions. Due to the few numbers of female faculty, mentorship for young female scholars is lacking. Feminist writing by Female Kenyan geographers in professional geography journals is limited. Collective action among female geography faculty is also largely absent. This is largely due to the lack of feminist advocacy and policies in the universities. My journey to becoming a feminist geographer has received little or no support from the university. I have taken personal initiatives to link up with local and transnational gender associations in order to get insights on current feminist scholarship issues. My lived feminist experience and observations of the struggles of ordinary women in everyday livelihood negotiation have been my main motivation for continuing to do feminist work. Thus, my feminist work has concentrated on women in marginal economic informality. This paper presents my journey as a feminist geographer. It begins with a discussion on the state of feminist geography in three universities in Kenya namely, University of Nairobi, Kenyatta University and Egerton University. This is followed by a presentation of my journey toward becoming a feminist geographer in the absence of a supportive infrastructure. My journey has been inspired by my lived experience. The paper concludes with a call for a concerted effort for feminist advocacy in Kenyan Geography departments.     

我与中国历史地理学的不解之缘(上)

我从1933年接触中国历史地理到现在已65个春秋。60多年来,我与中国历史地理学结下不解之缘。在这篇文章中,我从十个方面简单回顾了自己研究中国历史地理学的历程,进一步阐发了自己的一些主要学术观点。我始终认为中国历史地理学是一门有用于世的学科,深望这门学科能够发扬光大。     

OBSERVATION: REDISCOVERING HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY IN THE LAND OF NORUMBEGA

Recent appraisals of historical geography range widely in their assessment of the field. Donald Meinig (1989), writing of 'The Historical Geography Imperative,' concludes: 'historical geography is not, has never been, just another item in the proliferating diversity of our grand enterprise. Rather, like physical and environmental geography, it is one of the foundations of the whole enterprise. In its own way historical geography encompasses and contributes to all of geography. Micheal Dear (1988) disagrees. In 'The postmodern challenge: Reconstructing human geography,' he states that historical geography is 'overde-termined,' and 'an empty concept' conveying 'few (if any) significant analytical distinctions …. He concludes that historical geography does 'little more than confirm what geography is about. Both writers agree on the pervasive and comprehensive nature of historical geography, but Dear sees this inclusiveness as more of a cincture, whereas Meinig conveys the fundamental and embracing understanding of geography inherent in the practice of historical geography.     

Economic Globalization and Institutions of Global Governance: Comments and Debate (I)

Reading Keith Griffin is like listening to a Frenchman presenting his ideas in three parts and ten minutes. It is clear, brilliant, and a delight for the ear, but once it is over you scratch your head and wonder what exactly the meaning of it all was. In the recent article by Griffin published in this journal ( Griffin, 2003 ), there were two instances where I scratched my head. The first instance was when he pleaded in favour of mobility of the factor labour, not only of labour in general, but of unskilled labour in particular in order to reduce global income inequalities. The second instance occurred when he argued in favour of a compulsory tax and transfer mechanism in replacement of the old‐style foreign aid that is ‘nearly obsolete’.     

To Make the Personal Political: The Use of Testimony as a Consciousness-Raising Tool Against Sexual Aggression in Puerto Rico

Four years ago, I was kidnapped, taken to an isolated sugarcanefield, and raped by a gang of three men. My intention in sharingthis information is not to make you feel sorry for me in a condescendingattitude that would only undermine the seriousness of such adevastating experience rather, I would like to change your wayof feeling and thinking about what that experience representsfor a woman. If ever you are forced to confront a person whohas survived such aggression, this may help you to understandwhat she has gone through and what still awaits her     

What future for feminist geography?

Drawing primarily on my own work, speculations are offered on a range of possible futures for feminist geography. It is suggested that the most likely trajectory is one of incorporation as feminist geography is dismissed, regarded with indifference or included within a pluralist, but basically unaltered discipline. While a contentious and depressing suggestion, an alternative trajectory is offered by a feminist geography which actively engages with other progressive developments in the discipline and creatively incorporates new developments in feminist scholarship on, for example, the body, deconstruction and post‐colonialism. A third future builds on such engagements to offer various transformations of the subject, power relations and conceptual baggage which presently constitute feminist geography, through a process of self‐reflection and critical positioning. These three trajectories of incorporation, engagement and transformation I see as simultaneously operating in my own work. Reflections on them are offered for others to consider and to stimulate debate.     

2. THE PUBLIC RELEVANCE OF HISTORICAL STUDIES: A REPLY TO DIRK MOSES

I am grateful to Dirk Moses for taking the time to study my work so assiduously and to comment on it so perspicuously. His essay is eminently well‐informed and even‐handed, and I have little to add to or correct of his characterization of my many, long on‐going, and admittedly flawed attempts to deconstruct modern historical discourse. He understands me well enough and I think that I understand his objections to my position(s). We do not disagree on matters of fact, I think, but we have different notions about the nature of historical discourse and the uses to which historical knowledge can properly be put.     

西方经济地理学文化转向的哲学思考

在西方经济地理学宽泛的文化转向浪潮中文化因素从"常量"转而成为"变量",文化等非经济因素对经济活动的影响及它们之间的相互作用已成为新的研究焦点。在此过程中,新经济地理学家解释世界的理论不再强调镜射世界的能力,不再将"无视角视界"作为隐喻的蓝图,反而强调将自身置于作者地位的重要性,承认科学家的背景和它能影响其所知的及其诉说的内容,即"有视角视界"。后现代主义解释学认为科学家是以感兴趣的方式以社会环境限制的方式参与知识的理解、创造过程,新经济地理学受其影响强调探讨,认为理论一直是处于争论的状态,一直是处于探讨过程中的。新经济地理学不主张提出客观唯一的叙事,也难以做到,这也正是其兴起的重要原因。     

Archives and care: Caring archival research practices in geography

Archival research has been long recognized as a key method in geography, and such research continues to appeal to scholars excavating historical influences on contemporary places. At the same time, geographical literature on care is growing rapidly. However, while geographers have often implemented care into their archival research and practice, these literatures have remained largely distinct from each other. In this paper, I bring archives and care into closer conversation. Drawing on existing geographical literature on care and on archival methods, work in archival studies, and my own research and ethnographic experiences in archives, I show how the socio-material practices of geographers in the archives help generate spaces of care, where ethical caring practices exist, and caring relationships flourish. I demonstrate how archival work in geography and beyond includes relationships of care between archivists, researchers, and archival records. I share some examples and strategies that geographers and other researchers can—and do—follow in maintaining, continuing, and repairing archival relationships, even in times of precarity and uncertainty.     

Practice What You Teach: Facilitating Anarchism In and Out of the Classroom

Abstract: In recent years, human geographers have criticized the increasing corporatization, commodification, and objectification of knowledge production, and have looked to critical pedagogical frameworks that seek to counteract these forces. Anarchism, as a body of theories and practices, has a long history of engagement with radical pedagogical experimentation. Anarchism and geography have much to contribute to one another: anarchism, through its support for creative, non‐coercive, practical learning spaces, and geography, for its critical examination of the spaces of education. In this paper, I evaluate the prospects for anarchist‐geographic pedagogies theoretically, as well as through my own experiences teaching and learning about anarchism over the past decade in a liberal arts, higher education US environment. I argue for a combined critical anarchist‐geographic pedagogical approach that appreciates the challenges of building alternative learning models within existing neoliberalizing institutions, provides the necessary tools for finding uniquely situated opportunities for educational change, and emplaces a grounded, liberating, student‐led critical pedagogy.     

《今水经·浈水》考释

北江是珠江的三大支流之一, 对广东省有着重要的意义。黄宗羲《今水经》以“浈水”的名义, 对其加以记载, 但其中错误甚多。本文试图通过考证的方式, 对北江的源头、支流、入海情况一一辨正之, 试图把一个完整的北江水系呈现在读者面前, 为进一步进行对北江的历史地理研究做基础性的工作。     

Playing and affective time-spaces

In this paper I have two objectives. The first is to critically explore definitions of playing that have underpinned a great deal of research in children's geography. In so doing I want to highlight some of the assumptions that various authors within geography have made (often implicitly) about the ontological status of playing. This will in turn, lead me to work with, between and sometimes against three authors who have tried to theorize playing. In following this route, I hope to come to some tentative conclusions about the status of playing, which paradoxically will eschew any (strong) ontological commitment at all. This leads to my second objective, which is to explore four particular aspects of playing—embodiment, affect, objects and time-space—to examine how they are interleaved with spaces and spacing. In necessarily situating this work within my research at Hilltop Primary School1 1. This is a pseudonym, used as part of a confidentiality agreement signed with the school. View all notes in the summer of 2001, I hope to show that geographical studies can contribute to definitions of playing as much as playing can inflect certain notions of space.     

Marginalia of a revolution: naming popular ethnography through William W. Bunge's Fitzgerald

Having recently been writing about the geographies of survival, here in this brief essay I extrapolate a methodological and ethico-political sensibility from the scattered fragments of my personal interactions with foundational radical geographer William W. Bunge. This essay is intended to reconcile the marginalization that Bunge experienced, and experiences today, within geography, with the methodological approach he pioneered, even as he is often not recognized for doing so. An exploration through a pile of notes, electronic voice files, and faxes helped me to think through lived forms of intellectual marginalia via the life and methods of William Bunge and possibilities that exist for recovering his method of ‘popular ethnography’.     

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.     

Transport Geography: A bit of a caveat here and there1

But you must also be aware of another distinct bias nearly all of the examples are from the United States, Canada, Britain and Sweden. Is it fair? Are the new ideas to be found almost exclusively in these four countries —what the French call les Anglo-Saxons. Is this where the explosion in modern geography started, and continues to gather its strength? Now I am probably going to make myself extremely unpopular around the world but I am going to answer Yes to those three questions with a bit of a caveat here and there—which is the Latin word for a loophole you can wriggle out of if you have to     

Authors, Editors and Authority in the Postmodern Academy

Textbooks are presented, by their authors and publishers, as authoritative statements regarding the nature of a scientific discipline or sub-discipline: in Kuhn's words, they are the "vehicles for the perpetuation of normal science." One of the main contributions of postmodern and poststructuralist thought, however, has been to challenge the nature of power and authority in the academy, a challenge that has been widely taken up in contemporary geographical research. There has been much less impact on textbook production and other teaching resources, however, where the "authority of the disembodied scholar" still holds sway. This is illustrated with respect to readers, collections of both original and reprinted pieces (the latter often in abridged form) where editorial authority ("this is what I think you should read") is frequently as firm as its predecessor, authorial authority. The reasons for this are sought in contemporary developments in higher education.     

The birth of biometric security

We are currently witnessing a rapid rise in biometric security. Borders are apparently becoming 'smart'; passports are becoming e-passports, and when you set out on your travels your data double is already at your destination. Access to airports and even continents will increasingly be determined not by your national citizenship but by the security of your identity. Biometric security has received little anthropological attention despite historical associations with the discipline. Here I wish to outline a brief genealogy of biometric security in order to argue that, beyond the apparent newness of the technology, key biometric technologies owe their origins to 19th-entury deployments and then as now they may be understood as a form of bio-governmentality in which the security of identity opens possibilities for population control.