Immigration, the internet, and spaces of politics

This paper examines the kinds of politics that are enabled by the Internet with respect to immigrants to the United States; its primary concern is whether the political spaces created through the Internet can foster incorporation of immigrants in the political community or whether the political activity on the Internet seems likely to lead to a more fractionalized political community in which the position of immigrants remains marginal. This exploration is based first on a random sample of web-sites about immigration and second on a more targeted sample of sites aimed specifically at two immigrant groups. The analysis of web-sites indicates that there is a great deal of information about immigrants on the Internet, and that most of it seems to be directed to service providers, policy makers, and researchers. There is relatively little discussion by or about immigrants, and beyond a few notable sites, there is almost no sign of mobilization. To the extent that the Internet is used to create new political spaces, it may not be spaces for deliberation and discussion. Rather, the political spaces seem to be informational spaces in which the politics are not easily or directly read.

A-Awda, The Palestine Right to return Coalition, is a broad-based, non-partisan, global, democratic association of grassroots activists and organizational representatives. Our objective is to educate the international community to fulfill its legal and moral obligations vis-à-vis the Palestinian people. Al-Awda develops, coordinates, supports and guides, as needed, global and local grassroots initiatives for action related to Palestinian rights. Al-Awda, http://www.al-awda.org as visited 11 July 2002.

“Why I won’t serve Sharon.”

“Maaad Abu-Ghazalah, Arab-American Candidate for US Congress, San Francisco.”

“A Statement on the ‘War on Terror’ from Prominent Americans.”

“What Bush Doesn’t Know about Palestine.”

“Memorial to 418 Palestinian Villages Which Were Destroyed.”

Headlines on Café Arabica, http://www.cafearabica.com as visited 11 July, 2002.

The Internet is widely heralded as opening spaces for a wide variety of politics and political voices. But as it is praised for its inclusiveness, it is also pilloried for enabling the fragmentation of political opinion without providing a forum in which common political ground can be identified or consensus achieved. In the former view, the Internet fosters greater inclusion in democratic debate and political community. In the latter view, it contributes to a weakening of the bonds that are necessary for a political community to reach consensus and to provide guidance for democratic governance.Consider the examples in the epigraph to the paper. Al-Awda is a political movement devoted to securing the right of return for Palestinian refugees and their families. It organizes marches and demonstrations in cities across the US and Western Europe. One reason for the apparent mismatch between the locations of the “problem” and of the “action” is that many – though by no means all – of the participants in the marches are immigrants from the Middle East or they are of Arab descent. While the organization is based in Massachusetts, most of the mobilization through it occurs on-line, and it is not clear that there is either a permanent staff or regular meetings, other than the marches. Café Arabica provides a venue for discussion of a wide range of topics related to Arab culture and politics. Much like the romanticized café society, discussion can be lively and seems to include a wide range of participants and viewpoints. Café Arabica includes an on-line discussion forum, again with many of the participants apparently either being from the Middle East or the descendants of immigrants from the region. It labels itself as an Arab-American on-line community.These two web-sites were not chosen at random. They both relate to immigrants – social groups that are often not able to participate in political discussion and debate in their host countries. As such, these sites exemplify both the possibilities and the limitations that commentators have identified when they discuss the Internet and its role in fostering political dialogue. Some people would see these sites as signs of a group that wants to use the political process in one country to influence events in another country. Some people will read these sites as a an indication that at least one immigrant group – if not all immigrants – refuse assimilation, which is the basis of incorporation into the American political community. Still others will view these sites as attempts to incorporate a set of political voices and agents into a more inclusive political community. This paper examines the use of the Internet in political debate and mobilization around immigrants in the United States. It considers the nature of political discussion on the Internet and the agents involved in it. The overarching concern is whether the Internet fosters a more inclusive political community or whether it leads to alternative political spaces that remain unincorporated with respect to the political community of the host society.The paper is organized in four sections. The first provides a background for the debates about immigrants, the Internet, and politics. The second section is an overview of the theoretical debates about the public sphere as a political space in which members of a polity can participate and the ways in which the Internet may transform that space. The third section highlights some of the key issues that condition migrants’ acceptance into a polity, focusing primarily on the United States. With these sections serving as background, the final section of the paper explores political discussion on the Internet by and about immigrants. This exploration is based first on a random sample of web-sites about immigration and second on a more targeted sample of sites aimed specifically at two immigrant groups. The goal in these examinations is to evaluate the extent to which the Internet can provide the basis of a political space in which issues related to the incorporation of immigrants can be debated or whether it is a space that fosters a more fractionalized politics unlikely to lead to greater political incorporation of immigrants.     

Friedrich Ratzel and the nature of (political) geography

It is impossible to understand Ratzel's Politische Geographie without placing the figure of its author in the perspective of the critical bourgeois geography of the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth century. From this point of view, Ratzel is the last representative of this bourgeois movement born in the first part of the eighteenth century in Germany with the name of “pure geography” or “natural geography”, and developed in the following century thanks to the great works of Karl Ritter and Alexander von Humboldt. The purpose of bourgeois critical geography was to create a geographical discourse (a reasoning) able to transcend the identification between geographic knowledge and cartographic representation that was maintained by the Staatsgeographen—that is by the state geographers who defended the feudal aristocratic regime. But it is precisely this identification that German bourgeois geographers appropriated in the second half of the nineteenth century, after the bourgeoisie came into power through a compromise with its ancient political opponent. Only Ratzel, direct heir of the Erdkunde tradition of Ritter and von Humboldt, was an exception by opposing the new bourgeois state geography with his own state-based geography.     

Reanimating Anarchist Geographies: A New Burst of Colour

Abstract: The late nineteenth century saw a burgeoning of geographical writings from influential anarchist thinkers like Peter Kropotkin and Élisée Reclus. Yet despite the vigorous intellectual debate sparked by the works of these two individuals, following their deaths anarchist ideas within geography faded. It was not until the 1970s that anarchism was once again given serious consideration by academic geographers who, in laying the groundwork for what is today known as “radical geography”, attempted to reintroduce anarchism as a legitimate political philosophy. Unfortunately, quiet followed once more, and although numerous contemporary radical geographers employ a sense of theory and practice that shares many affinities with anarchism, direct engagement with anarchist ideas among academic geographers have been limited. As contemporary global challenges push anarchist theory and practice back into widespread currency, geographers need to rise to this occasion and begin (re)mapping the possibilities of what anarchist perspectives might yet contribute to the discipline.     

Banal Nationalism 20 years on: Re-thinking,re-formulating and re-contextualizing the concept

This introduction considers the significance of Michael Billig's (1995) Banal Nationalism to geographers, and how this fits into broader trends of nationalism research in the social sciences. Through an analysis of Web of Science citation trends for the book, we illustrate its spatial and temporal reach in terms of the countries where it has been cited and how its impact has developed since 1995. We also briefly examine how political geographers have engaged the concept of banal nationalism in their research, and what sort of questions it has raised for those conducting research on nationalist discourses and territorial identity narratives more broadly. Considering how political geographers might creatively advance this scholarship, we introduce the individual papers included in this special issue and conclude with a brief gesture to future directions for research beyond Banal Nationalism.     

TENURE SECURITY INTERVENTIONS IN CAMBODIA: TESTING BEBBINGTON'S APPROACH TO DEVELOPMENT GEOGRAPHY

The relationship between the development industry and the problems it claims to address is problematic. Development studies have often found development practice systematically misrepresenting its context with the result that interventions are out of kilter with reality and fail. In a series of articles in the early 2000s Antony Bebbington suggested development geographers attend to the spatial distribution of development interventions by mapping and explaining immanent development, mapping and explaining intentional development and studying the relationships between them. This article uses the case of property rights interventions in Cambodia to examine the extent that Bebbington's approach might explain development interventions and their relationship to the contexts into which they are inserted. Primary data consist of interviews with key actors involved in decisions over the locations of these interventions. Secondary data consist of reports and databases showing their geographical spread, and political and social science literature explaining the main transitions in recent Cambodian history. The main empirical finding is that the interventions, land titling and community forestry, have not been implemented in the places where the problems they are claimed to address are located. The methodological reflection is that Bebbington's approach valuably challenges policy narratives that tend to smooth space and conceal unevenness. However, it provides only a broad theoretical framework rather than any theoretical content. The approach may only realize its potential when Bebbington and others begin to apply it to generate hypotheses and theory. A new hypothesis emerging from the Cambodian case is briefly introduced in this regard.     

东西对话：中国政治地理学研究展望

中国政治地理学的发展尚处于起步阶段。中国与西方政治地理学者的学术交流相对有限,这主要是由于语言的障碍,以及中国学者对于研究课题政治敏感性的担忧,普遍缺乏对政治地理学研究内涵的理解。本文基于对中西方政治地理学发展现状及相关研究可能性的理解,指出以下五个在中国具有进一步拓展空间的政治地理学课题：广域行政与空间政治;国际关系与地理想象;边界冲突与划界研究;边界与边界区域研究;环境政治地理学。这些课题的开展不仅可以加强中国自身的政治地理学研究,而且对西方正在进行的政治地理学研究也会起到积极的推动作用。     

The emigration state and the modern geopolitical imagination

This article systematically reviews how a large number of states relate to their diasporas. It shows how states constitute various extra-territorial groups as members of a loyal diaspora, through a diverse range of institutions and practices. The article distinguishes two types of diaspora mechanism: one which cultivates and recognizes diaspora communities, and another which draws them into reciprocal ties with their homeland. The article demonstrates that, contrary to the common wisdom, it is normal for states to have a variety of such mechanisms protruding beyond their borders and impacting on a variety of extra-territorial groups. It is useful to view these institutions and practices collectively as “the emigration state”. The article argues that the emigration state has been overlooked by what John Agnew calls “the modern geopolitical imagination”, in which territorial nation-state units, locked into competition at a fixed international scale, are thought of as the highest form of political organization.     

Historical geography and the society/nature “problematic”: the perspective of J. F. Schouw,G. P. Marsh and E. Reclus

The “retreat” of the recent past within geography to a conception of the discipline as an ahistoric science which is either spatial or ecological is seen to be an atavism—a throwback to a disciplinary framework or “problematic” which dichotomizes human society and nature into fixed exclusive categories. This essay explores an alternative “problematic” which integrates society's spatial and ecological dimensions in a study of the historical process of “dialectical” interaction between society and its geographic environment, and the political and economic consequences of this interaction. The significance of this alternative approach is elucidated through an examination of its emergence, at the time of the origins of modern geography in the early nineteenth century. Its developing importance for the present-day position of the discipline is exemplified in the work of three prominent, socially engaged, nineteenth-century geographers. Although these geographers have tended to be either ignored or misunderstood in the recent literature, their approach has much to offer the field at a time when its division into ahistoric spatial and ecological disciplines is being questioned.     

Remapping Tutira: contours in the environmental history of New Zealand

Although members of the first generation of professional geographers in New Zealand identified the ousting of the indigenous plant cover and the partial establishment of an exotic (mainly European) vegetation in its place as an essential theme in the history of that country, and Alfred Crosby made a brief case study of the islands in hisEcological Imperialism, scale problems have made it difficult to develop a microgeographical perspective on the often intricate and incremental processes of environmental transformation. To this end, this paper explores a detailed account of the natural history of a single North Island sheep station written by its owner, W. H. Guthrie Smith, in 1921. By readingTutira, an idiosyncratic but fascinating work, with a geographical eye, the local dimensions of the floral and faunal invasion of New Zealand are revealed. “A record of minute alterations noted on one patch of land” illuminates the biogeographical processes by which New Zealand was transformed and offers insight into an important distinction between ‘natural’ and ‘environmental’ history.     

Fleshing out the geographies of social movements: Colombia's Pacific coast black communities and the ‘aquatic space’

The intersections between the concepts of space, place and resistance have recently received increasing attention from geographers dedicated to the study of social movements. Space and place are not merely seen as providing a physical background for mobilisations but as mutually constitutive of social movement agency. Yet, critics of theoretical frameworks drawn up by geographers have often rightly pointed to the lack of convincing empirical evidence presented in their support.This paper addresses these critiques by offering a theoretically informed and empirically grounded account of recent mobilisations by the social movement of black communities in the Pacific coast region of Colombia. Drawing on both the objective aspects of place and the subjective feelings that are derived from living in a place, I will show how these mechanisms have impacted on the specific spatial organising forms adopted by black communities. In particular, I will propose the concept of ‘aquatic space’ as a set of spatialised social relationships among Afro-Colombians, and show how these concrete everyday geographies have been drawn upon by black communities in the establishment of community councils along river basins.The paper argues that to make a strong point for more spatially sensitive analyses of social movements, geographers have to sustain their theoretical frameworks with concrete empirical data that not only illustrate spatial processes at play, but also convincingly demonstrate their very embeddedness in social practice. I thus argue for a strong consideration of ethnographies as a privileged research methodology to flesh out the geographies of social movements.     

Health geography in Canada: where are we headed?

This paper overviews the emergence of medical/health geography in Canada. The paper discusses the key questions that Canadian health geographers have explored in the past two decades, how these enquiries have featured in the field and how they contribute to the wider discourse of human geography. It also addresses questions on emerging themes and where Canadian health geography will go in the years ahead. With shifting health landscapes in terms of changes in social, political and physical environments, and changes in health care restructuring, Canadian health geographers are entering a new phase of research, teaching and policy. The complexity of the questions that health geographers seek to address means it is necessary to continue to highlight the policy implications of their findings. Health geographers need to emphasize the public agenda through interdisciplinary research and by continuing to work with geographers in other subfields.     

The Swiss foreign service and Bernese reform politics in the late eighteenth century

The political system of Berne during the enlightenment era was dominated by landowning patricians who represented a “republican type of gentry.” These landowners promoted agriculture, traded in grain, wood, wine, invested in cottage industries, and also were involved in foreign military service. In the debates about republican political economy in the 1760s, there was a cleavage within the Bernese aristocracy. On one side, conservatives defended the mercenary service as part of existing political obligations, above all towards France. Against this, the Economic Patriots combated corrupting influences from abroad and censured military service. Socio-moralistic principles, condensed in the term “civic virtue,” ranked higher in the patriots’ eyes than economic or political interests; in a virtuous and frugal republic, there should have been no place for mercenaries. The paper reconstructs these arguments over key decades in the eighteenth century.     

The Bang Beggars of Derry city: borough policing in Londonderry,c.1832–70

Was Derry's independent city police force wholly inadequate, was it just inefficient for the suppression of riots; or was it the demonstration of politico-religious partisanship that ensured the force's abolition in 1870? This paper will attempt to explore and answer these three questions. It will also look at the borough force in some detail, examining issues with regard to the force's pay, discipline, its duties and conditions of service. It will not attempt to analyse Derry's nineteenth-century riots or the political and sectarian issues surrounding these riots, except where aspects of these directly affected the borough police.     

Geography: a different sort of discipline?

Debate continues about the inter-relationships between human and physical geography and their different research and publication practices. Relatively little data about these are available, however. Using an analysis of all publications submitted by UK geographers to the 2001 Research Assessment Exercise, this paper identifies a substantial difference between human and physical geographers in their publication strategies. Most physical geographers place their research papers in specialized inter-disciplinary journals and make relatively little use of geography outlets: most human geographers, on the other hand, publish in geography journals. Comparisons with other disciplines – in the earth and environmental and social sciences respectively – also identify differences between geographers and their peers. The overall conclusion is that, with regard to research and publication at least, UK geography cannot be presented as a single academic community with strong internal ties, but rather as a conglomerate of separate communities writing for different audiences.     

Early Cotswold woodland

Many “wold” names are derived from the OE wald, meaning “woodland”. In a recent paper Everitt examined the evidence for Kent and suggested that areas of wold downland had been wooded in the Anglo-Saxon period. They had also been territorially linked to river-estates as areas of outlying wood-pasture. The present paper examines the evidence for the Cotswolds. Here the name “wold” is applied to an area which was largely open pasture by the medieval period and the use of the term in its later sense of “high, open country” would not have been out of place. Yet the evidence from early place-names and pre-Conquest charters suggests that a great deal of woodland was present in the Anglo-Saxon period, especially in the valleys dissecting the escarpment and along the scarp face. Although this was a watershed area, divided between adjacent valley-based estates, as in Kent, there is little direct evidence here of an early interest in woodland-pasture. The importance of the area seems to have arisen in the middle and later Anglo-Saxon period as a result of an increased use of the upland for sheep pasture. Nevertheless, the term “wold” seems to date from an earlier period when woodland was indeed extensive.     

The persistence of white ethnicity in New England politics

There was a consensus among earlier students of New England politics that the political influence of European ancestry was fading by the latter half of the 20th century. We examine this proposition in recent times by exploring the role of ethnic ancestry in explaining the political divide in the region's presidential voting in over 1500 New England towns. Contrary to earlier predictions, ethnic origin does retain some explanatory power in models of recent voting behavior, and ethnic cleavages have not been entirely replaced by economic divisions in the electorate. Although the settlement patterns of the more established and numerous nationality groups (i.e. Irish and Italians) are less associated with partisanship than they were 50 years ago, the political salience of white ethnicity persists, suggesting that ethnic groups do not simply dealign or politically “assimilate” over time. Some groups maintain a strong identity in spite of upward mobility because movement from city to suburbs is selected not just on housing, income or school characteristics, as is usually the case, but on ethnicity too. Towns with significant concentrations of specific European ancestry groups lean Republican, even after we have accounted for the presence of other sources of political leaning and past voting tendencies, while Democratic attachments are undeniably strong in towns where the newer immigrant groups have settled. The “new ethnicity” (i.e. racial minorities) and the “old ethnicity” (i.e. white ethnics) clearly carry distinct political implications for this region's presidential politics.     

Archbishop Scrope's Manifesto of 1405: ‘naïve nonsense’ or reflections of political reality?

In 1405 Richard Scrope, archbishop of York, rebelled against Henry IV and was executed. He has been seen by historians as being easily led into rebelling against the king by other rebels and also as rather a fool. Although it survives in no contemporary copy, a Manifesto containing 10 charges against Henry's government was attributed to the archbishop by contemporaries. Contemporary chroniclers and historians alike have disparaged this document as having little to do with political reality and as such reflects the simple-mindedness of its author; Archbishop Scrope. This article discusses six of the charges (grouped in pairs) contained in various versions of the Manifesto that centre on Henry IV's alleged abuses of government, specifically: 1 and 2) that the king had oppressively taxed both his lay and clerical subjects; 3 and 4) that the king had replaced experienced government officials with new men who had lined their pockets and that the king had subverted the appointment to the office of sheriff; finally 5 and 6) that he subverted the selection process for knights of the shire and subverted their rights to ‘act freely’ in parliament. The article demonstrates that the archbishop's charges were not ‘naïve nonsense’ but reflected political reality and resonated with those who read them.     

Nationalist geographies in interwar Yugoslavia: manoeuvring between national and transnational spaces

Taking into consideration several seemingly contradictory characteristics of Yugoslav geography, this article examines the employment of transnational spaces by the competing nationalist geographical narratives in interwar Yugoslavia. Though preoccupied with Yugoslavia and its political crises, at the beginning and the end of the interwar period Yugoslav geographers were concerned with international political developments, especially in East Central Europe. There were tensions between a geographical region and a national space as a preferred framework of research as well as between the belief that the political, economic and cultural development of Yugoslavia was unique and that it was comparable to development of other parts of East Central Europe. The determinist understanding of the nation as shaped by the physical landscape emphasized not only the ability, but also the necessity, of nationalist geographies to function on multiple spatial levels. Yugoslav geographers used the conceptual apparatus developed by French and German geographical traditions to establish a comparative framework in which they elaborated on various geographical characteristics of Yugoslavia, especially those politically significant, by referring to other European countries because it seemed difficult to describe the new country in terms of itself. German Geopolitik became particularly influential and, although taking different stands on it, several Yugoslav geographers pointed to geopolitical similarities with Czechoslovakia and Poland to draw conclusions regarding Yugoslavia. But geographical comparison had ambiguous implications, as it was used both to fortify and challenge the interwar Yugoslav state.     

Preparation for teaching in a research degree: a model to prepare geographers for academic careers

This paper considers the possibility of overt political disagreement between human geographers and their students. Recent literature suggests that geographers should encourage their students to become more politically engaged through innovative teaching methods that could include frank discussion of the various positions taken by lecturers and students alike. Yet this same strategy could easily run against established pedagogical arguments about how teacher neutrality gives students the space to develop their views in whatever direction they choose. This paper investigates the practical management of this tension by drawing on qualitative interviews with a sample of current practitioners that centred on the occasions when personal politics have previously featured in their undergraduate teaching. It describes why overt political discussion is often squeezed out of these encounters, the careful ways in which these academics manage their political views during the times when such discussion occurs along with the degree to which they felt they should reveal them, and how students themselves commonly seemed to perform opinion in a relatively superficial way because doing so could be much less stressful. The conclusion that follows reflects on the broader implications of these findings for current debate and future practice in the discipline where it particularly emphasizes the importance of being sensitive to the interpersonal dynamics at hand.