Less talk more drone: social research with UAVs

There is a growing body of work in geography and sociology on the impact of drones on warfare, surveillance and civil protest. This paper assesses the challenges of using drones for teaching human geography and spatial social sciences. Affordable and expensive drones are now available in the market place; however, there has been next to no reflection on how drones might impact upon the social sciences as a research tool. Yet, unmanned flying vehicles pose some profound possibilities for social and cultural inquiry and aerial data collection.     

Interventions on Europe's political futures

Europe is facing challenging times. The so-called ‘migration crisis’ has seen the hardening and militarisation of Europe’s borders. Nationalist politicians are framing European states as being under siege from Islamist terrorists and economic migrants, which has led to a rise in xenophobia and casual racism on the streets of European cities. Meanwhile the Euro-zone has seen a series of employment crises and economic bailouts. Alongside such political and economic turmoil, the European Union is facing unprecedented pressures, not least from the ‘Brexit’ result of the UK's referendum on EU membership in June 2016. In reflecting on these manifold challenges to the idea and space of Europe these interventions focus on three themes that have long animated political geography scholarship: borders, power and crises. Cross-cutting the interventions are two calls to action: to rethink our analytical approaches to Europe, and to reframe our role as critical scholars.     

What the drone saw: the cultural optics of the unmanned war

The dramatic growth of drone warfare in the last decade has meant the arrival of a new kind of war imagery in civilian life: the view through the drone camera. As such, the drone is not simply a weapon, but also an emerging medium for representing conflict. This article explores the ways this imagery has been selected, interpreted, framed and put to use in public and popular culture. In addition to exploring how these practices of looking fit within the larger history of war imagery, two prominent features of ‘drone vision’ are identified: the promotion of consumer interactivity in the drone war and the militarising of domestic space.     

Living the cruel futures of industrial change

Industrial change is related to and experienced by those affected by such changes through particular sets of relations with futures. However, engagements with industrial change have in large part included futures only in the role of the temporal, and often teleological, background of industrial change rather than addressing futures in their own right. Through an engagement with the closure and later reopening of a steelworks within Teesside, UK, this paper argues that attending to futures allows the complex relationships through which industrial change comes to be rendered present, related to and lived to be brought into accounts of the experience of industrial change. Through diverse modalities such as phone calls, tones of voice, news reports, rumour and soundscapes a future of works closure was rendered present by and for the steelworkers of Teesside. In addition to this, the paper also goes on to exemplify how such relationships with futures of industrial change can be theorized through the example of engaging with pension entitlements through the concept of ‘cruel optimism’ after the work of Lauren Berlant.     

历史逻辑进程中的存在意蕴

从历史逻辑进程中存在意蕴的内在张力去理解历史和阐释存在,以其发现历史和历史存在的运行规律,多维度的探求未来视野中的存在。     

Unpacking climate services: Knowledge politics,beneficent humanitarianism and the realpolitik of risk management in China

In the last four decades, climate services (CS) have moved from being limited forecasting tools in their predictive capacity to becoming involved in the shaping of risk assessment instruments with global reach affected to enhance adaptation to climate change. Yet, they have been relatively overlooked by human geographers and critical risk theorists, whose interests have been to document the political processes involved in shaping climate change and the global scientific enterprise it has generated. By looking at the ways in which CS have been developed and exported to countries deemed as climate-vulnerable, the paper sheds light on two simultaneous kinds of knowledge politics that are occurring at the interstices of global human security aspirations and the realpolitik of local practices. The first emerges from the ways in which CS political relevance has been secured by climate scientists in the midst of grand developmentalist and humanitarian ambitions, what we have called beneficent knowledge politics. The second comes from the nitty-gritty of risk management practices in countries to which CS are exported, in this case China, and highlights how a myriad of knowledge and sensitivities involved in shaping risk and science have been overlooked by the superseding ideals underpinning the production of CS and their application to wider climate adaptation agenda. By doing so, the paper contributes to the geographies of risk and emergencies as well as to the geographies of science by enhancing our understanding of the knowledge politics at play in the development of and resistance to technocratic climate governance.     

The futures of ethnic groups in the Russian Federation

The changes, sometimes dramatic, in the size and structure of the ethnic groups of the Russian Federation (RF) raise questions about their possible futures. The paper presents simulations of how ethnic groups of the RF could develop in the future and discusses the demographic aspects of the predicted changes. The simulations cover a 25-year period, from 1 January 2011 to 1 January 2036 and were prepared for the 22 most numerous ethnic groups using a multistate cohort-component population dynamics model. To prepare the assumptions for the simulations, ethnicity-specific data (no longer collected) on fertility, mortality, and international migration were used. The results indicate that in the coming 20 years Russia will face numerous challenges related to the changes in the size, age structure, and ethnic composition of its population. The population of the RF will age and, except in the “Modernization” scenario, will shrink. Non-Slavic and Muslim populations will increase their share in the total population at the expense of Slavic and Orthodox ethnic groups and will age more slowly.     

Looking Forward,Looking Back

This paper surveys the disparate literatures on time, and the relative paucity of metaphors available (based on spatial analogues or mirroring past and future onto one another). Parallels between approaches to the past and future are considered and different intellectual traditions surveyed in futurology, memory, history (chronotopes), archaeology and philosophy. Causation across time, how the past affects the present, how the future may affect present and the past are considered as ways of better understanding how tensed statements in time and of time are essential elements of history and of anthropology. Pluralizing is suggested as a positive step: we should be talking of pasts, futures and even of presents. This has consequences, for example, the Thin Red Line of actuality must be broadened to be perhaps the Thick Reddish Braid. As introduction to a special issue of History and Anthropology I consider the papers that follow and how they contribute to the theme.     

Blue governmentality: Elemental activism with conservation technologies on plundered seas

For the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, the atmosphere and ocean are channels for movement that are to be used and overcome in direct actions to protect marine environments. To accomplish these missions, they deploy a fleet of ships, helicopters, and drones that intervene to stop violations of conservation laws. In this way, oceanic elements—waves, winds, icebergs, and storms—mediate conservation and conservation technologies. The elements and the technologies that Sea Shepherd exploit both inhibit and make conservation possible.This paper argues that the drone is an exteriorization of the human body whose liberatory potentials are mediated by the atmosphere and ocean. Through ethnographic, textual, and videographic analysis, this article explores blue governmentality—how the azure sky and cyan ocean and the technologies that flow through these elements at once afford and constrain the control of biopower. Understanding blue governmentality means appreciating how the elements mediate movement, communication, and life itself. It requires comprehending how technologies emerge from the body, extend political intentionality, work across the elements, and network with other technologies. This article challenges conservation geography to see governmentality not as a totalizing force but one that is tempered by elemental mediations, technological affordances, and human fallibility.     

In defence of utopian urbanism: imagining cities after the 'end of utopia'

What is the role of utopian visions of the city today? What is their use at a time when, for many people, the very concept of utopia has come to an end? Taking a wide perspective on contemporary debates, this paper addresses the general retreat from utopian urbanism in recent years. It connects it with the so–called crisis of modernist urbanism in the capitalist West as well as forms of 'utopic degeneration', and assesses some of its implications. Arguing against the abandonment of utopian perspectives, it advocates a rethinking of utopianism through considering its potential function in developing critical approaches to urban questions. The authoritarianism of much utopian urbanism certainly needs acknowledging and criticising, but this need not entail a retreat from imagining alternatives and dreaming of better worlds. Instead, it is necessary to reconceptualise utopia, and to open up the field of utopian urbanism that for too long has been understood in an overly narrow way. The paper suggests the potential value of developing, in particular, modes of critical and transformative utopianism that are open, dynamic and that, far from being compensatory, aim to estrange the taken–for–granted, to interrupt space and time, and to open up perspectives on what might be.     

The spatialities of intersectional thinking: fashioning feminist geographic futures

In this article, we highlight the inherent spatialities of intersectionality and its pivotal importance for feminist geographic thought. Intersectionality was, at its inception, already a deeply spatial theoretical concept, process and epistemology, particularly when read through careful and serious engagement with Black Feminist Thought and the writings of radical women of color. We do so here, revisiting Cooper, Crenshaw, Collins and other key scholars to demonstrate that the interlocking violence of racism, patriarchy, heteronormativity, and capitalism have always constituted a spatial formation. Drawing on feminist geographic thought from the 1990s onwards, we highlight the influence of intersectional thinking on our discipline particularly concerning how racial, gendered and classed power operates in place and through space. These pieces have inspired and driven our work, and we extend them here, recognizing newer scholarship that extends and enriches feminist geography through a postcolonial intersectionality. We close by arguing that intersectional thinking is indispensable to feminist geography. Working in solidarity, across and through the interrogation of difference, with agreement and discord, we encourage a deeper feminist geographic engagement with intersectional thinkers, contributing to more critical (and hopeful) futures for our scholarship.     

Picture Perfect: Using Drone Technology and Photogrammetry Techniques to Map the Western Stone Forts of Ireland

The Western Stone Forts form some of the most spectacular archaeological monuments in Ireland and include well known sites such as Dún Aonghasa in Co. Galway and Cahercommaun in Co. Clare. The group comprises a number of heterogeneous forts characterized by their exceptionally thick and high stone walls and other distinctive architectural features such as terraces, steps, guard chambers, and chevaux de fries. It is clear, however, that they form a loosely defined group of monuments that have a broad chronological span ranging from the Late Bronze Age to the Early Medieval period. The aim of this project is to create a complete suite of high resolution three-dimensional models of the Western Stone Forts on the Tentative List of UNESCO World Heritage Sites, and assess the applicability of photogrammetry techniques to landscape studies and heritage management.     

A Principle of Hope: Recorded Music, Listening Practices and the Immanence of Utopia

In this paper I draw a set of partial connections between ways of using recorded music and utopia. The first half of the paper draws upon the process philosophy of Ernst Bloch to argue that utopia is not located else–where or else–when in a transcendent realm separate from the present but is paradoxically immanent to 'everyday life'. This argument revolves around the novel 'open' experimental ontology that Bloch elaborates through the operator the 'not–yet'. Bloch's work enables the beginnings of an immanent utopianism that is able to discern, rather than critique, the dimly vibrating figures of hope that exist within rather than outside 'everyday life'. The second half of the paper sets this thought in motion by connecting two of Bloch's concepts, the 'trace' and 'novum', to the logic of one particularly common way of using recorded music: the use of music to 'feel better'. Drawing on in–depth case study research with seventeen lower–middle–class households I describe how this practice enables people to momentarily enact two forms of hope that are both based around the geographies of affect and affection: how something better might feel and an ability to forget. I conclude by speculatively describing the practice of a Blochian 'immanent utopianism' that itself embodies 'a principle of hope'.     

A Principle of Hope: Recorded Music, Listening Practices and the Immanence of Utopia

In this paper I draw a set of partial connections between ways of using recorded music and utopia. The first half of the paper draws upon the process philosophy of Ernst Bloch to argue that utopia is not located else–where or else–when in a transcendent realm separate from the present but is paradoxically immanent to 'everyday life'. This argument revolves around the novel 'open' experimental ontology that Bloch elaborates through the operator the 'not–yet'. Bloch's work enables the beginnings of an immanent utopianism that is able to discern, rather than critique, the dimly vibrating figures of hope that exist within rather than outside 'everyday life'. The second half of the paper sets this thought in motion by connecting two of Bloch's concepts, the 'trace' and 'novum', to the logic of one particularly common way of using recorded music: the use of music to 'feel better'. Drawing on in–depth case study research with seventeen lower–middle–class households I describe how this practice enables people to momentarily enact two forms of hope that are both based around the geographies of affect and affection: how something better might feel and an ability to forget. I conclude by speculatively describing the practice of a Blochian 'immanent utopianism' that itself embodies 'a principle of hope'.     

In defence of utopian urbanism: imagining cities after the 'end of utopia'

What is the role of utopian visions of the city today? What is their use at a time when, for many people, the very concept of utopia has come to an end? Taking a wide perspective on contemporary debates, this paper addresses the general retreat from utopian urbanism in recent years. It connects it with the so–called crisis of modernist urbanism in the capitalist West as well as forms of 'utopic degeneration', and assesses some of its implications. Arguing against the abandonment of utopian perspectives, it advocates a rethinking of utopianism through considering its potential function in developing critical approaches to urban questions. The authoritarianism of much utopian urbanism certainly needs acknowledging and criticising, but this need not entail a retreat from imagining alternatives and dreaming of better worlds. Instead, it is necessary to reconceptualise utopia, and to open up the field of utopian urbanism that for too long has been understood in an overly narrow way. The paper suggests the potential value of developing, in particular, modes of critical and transformative utopianism that are open, dynamic and that, far from being compensatory, aim to estrange the taken–for–granted, to interrupt space and time, and to open up perspectives on what might be.     

Remote sensing,GIS, the geospatial technologies,and Unmanned Airborne Vehicles at Aberdeen University

ABSTRACT

Aberdeen University has a long history of using aerial photography, photogrammetry, cartography, remote sensing and surveying in Geography teaching and research. The development of an MSc in Environmental Remote Sensing (ERS) in 1987 offered students a new opportunity to specialise further in this rapidly evolving area of technology. The programme has continued to thrive and the MSc in GIS celebrated its 30th Anniversary in 2017. Recently the degree has included courses on current applications of GIS and web-GIS. The introduction of UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) remote sensing broadened the appeal and competitiveness of the degree, ensuring students have access to cutting edge remote sensing technology. Alongside PhD studies, applied academic research in the Aberdeen Institute for Coastal Science and Management (AICSM), and the Unmanned Airborne Vehicle (UAV)/Unmanned Airborne System (UAS) Centre for Environmental Monitoring and Mapping (UCEMM), make widespread use of GIS and remote sensing. As the geospatial technologies continue to evolve and are integrated with drones the role of education, training and research utilising these technologies will become integral to the Geography degree. Geospatial technologies have and will continue to provide valuable tools and techniques for graduates.     

From historical chains to derivative futures: Title registries as time machines

For centuries, transferring ownership of land under common law was a slow, complex process requiring the construction of a chain of paper deeds evidencing multiple decades of prior possession. In 1858, colonist Robert Torrens developed a new system for the transfer of land in South Australia, where the land was understood by colonial powers as ‘new’ and without history. With the intention of making land a liquid asset, Torrens’ system of title registration shifted the legal basis of title from a history of prior possession to a singular act of registration. Analysing the structure and effects of title registration, engaging with interdisciplinary work on time, and taking H.G Wells’ iconic time travel novella as a point of departure, I argue that title registries can usefully be understood as time machines. Like the machine H.G Wells imagined, title registries use fiction to facilitate fantastical journeys in which the subject is radically temporally dislocated from the material constraints of history. As with time machines, it tends to be a transcendental white male subject who is most likely to survive this dislocation. While based on fiction, the impacts of title registries are very much real, facilitating humanity’s arrival at racist, dystopic landscapes in the here and now.     

Ethics Ex Machina: popular culture and the plural futures of politics

ABSTRACT

The articulation of ethical responsibility can be conceived as a condition of ethical practice that brings into being a human subject to whom we owe consideration, and the reverse must also hold: we are brought into being – subjectified – through these relational connections. But can these connections exist between human and non-human subjects? In this short paper, we analyse the representation of artificially intelligent machines in the popular television series Westworld and the movie Ex Machina and elaborate on the boundary between human and non-human as a complex and contested ethical space. We argue that taking popular cultural representations of machine learning seriously can offer significant insight into how futures of human subjectivity and ethicopolitical responsibility might unfold. (117 words)