A tale of ambiguity: citizenship,nationalism and democracy in Turkey

ABSTRACT. We argue that historically the official Turkish nationalism and citizenship regime have been marked by an ambiguity that arises from the simultaneous existence of – and repeatedly occurring swings between – the ethno‐centric and civic‐political understandings of citizenship. We also suggest that the concept of territoriality, which took precedence over other factors in the creation of a new state in 1923, has functioned as a hegemonic reference in the official conceptualisations of the Turkish nation and self. The territorial focus, over time, has been conflated with the ethnic conceptualisations of the nation: both become the underlining elements of the discourse of official nationalism in Turkey, and are utilised in the successive reformulations of citizenship into the 2000s. Through the analysis of schoolbooks and curricula, we further argue that the major oscillations in nationalism nevertheless coincided with the ruptures that characterised the making of modern Turkey: modernisation, democratisation, globalisation and Europeanisation.     

Sexual citizenship in Latvia: geographies of the Latvian closet

This study examines sexual citizenship in Latvia. It investigates the process by which political narratives have heterosexed the nation since regaining independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. My aim in exploring this process is to develop a deeper understanding of non-heteronormative identities and counter-hegemonic spaces in this heterosexist society. Drawing on discourse analysis of political media statements I argue that despite the legalizing of homosexuality, political narratives have continued to sex the nation as heterosexual, forging the national closet. I then explore how these narratives become experienced in lives of sexual minorities through the state's failure to prevent sexual discrimination. Drawing on participant observation and a decoding of the urban landscape, I investigate how the Latvian closet is materialized in the bodies and places of the everyday lives of ‘gay’ men living in the capital, Riga. Examined in this way insights are given to the spatial forms of political resistance to heterosexism in Latvia and how it differs from western models.     

Situating banal nationalism,the culture wars,and civil religion: governing localized geographies of national identity in Indiana

Various material forms of national identity have become ubiquitous features of the post-9/11 American cultural landscape. This research specifically examines the ‘In God We Trust’ (IGWT) license plate in the state of Indiana as a material expression and territorialized form of national identity. While conceptually anchored in banal nationalism research, exploring the spatial patterns of adoption or non-adoption of IGWT license plates by Indiana residents is only possible through situating this research through the mediating lens of the culture wars and civil religion. Although the IGWT license plate project legislatively materialized through the localized spatial networks of non-state actors in the context of a new and conservative state–citizen relationship firmly anchored in the culture wars, adoption behavior is also mediated through the much broader influence of civil religion. We conduct a quantitative analysis to determine license plate spatial distribution by county, but more importantly to explore the sociodemographic dimensions of IGWT license plate adoption and non-adoption. While our results generally mirror the sociodemographic findings of social issue-based electoral geography, the imbrication of banal nationalism, the culture wars, and civil religion as materially expressed by the IGWT license plate yields an ideologically different and broader dynamic when compared to culture wars defined by national identity.     

Becoming public: public pedagogy,citizenship and the public sphere

This paper explores the question what kind of educational work can be done in attempts to reclaim or reinvigorate the public sphere. Through a discussion of the intersection of public sphere and public space, it engages with the work of Hannah Arendt in order to outline a conception of the public sphere as a space for civic action based on distance and the conservation of a degree strangeness rather than on commonality and common identity. The discussion of the educational work that can be done to support the public quality of common spaces and places focuses on three interpretations of the idea of public pedagogy: that of public pedagogy as a pedagogy for the public, that of public pedagogy as a pedagogy of the public and that of public pedagogy as the enactment of a concern for the public quality of human togetherness. The latter form of public pedagogy neither teaches nor erases the political by bringing it under a regime of learning, but rather opens up the possibility for forms of human togetherness through which freedom can appear, that is forms of human togetherness which contribute to the ‘becoming public’ of spaces and places.     

The geographies of UK university halls of residence: examining students' embodiment of social capital

Recent investigations into ‘student geographies’ have recognised the complex ways in which students from different backgrounds go about ‘fitting in’ among their peers within university-managed accommodation. Halls have been characterised in the literature as highly pressurised spaces in which multiple (and potentially conflicting) identities can perpetuate disadvantage through incongruous accessibility to student-centric social activities and behaviours. This paper joins these debates by critically examining universities' ‘Student Accommodation’ web pages alongside qualitative interviews in order to question notions of halls being inclusive and encouraging a cultural mix. Using Bourdieu's reading of social capital this paper suggests that, while these spaces may perpetuate disadvantaged access to social capital, some students may transcend this, drawing on other forms of non-student social capital which legitimises their position among their peers in halls. This adds to previous discussions of ‘difference’ by highlighting the power of social capital in transforming individuals' positions within social groupings.     

Family leisure,family photography and zoos: exploring the emotional geographies of families

In this paper we explore the significance of the zoo as a place for family leisure and the emotional work of sustaining a positive family life. Zoos are understood as culturally laden places, widely identified as locations for family-friendly leisure and as stages for practicing family and then capturing and memorializing this behavior in and through family photographs. Zoo family photos become souvenirs of quality family time, depicting the time and emotional investment made in the social relations captured in the images. We draw on an interdisciplinary mix of literatures and use this as context for the interpretation of a sample of family zoo photographs, illustrating our findings with examples drawn from public and personal sources. In so doing we seek to better understand the significance of family leisure environments, and specifically zoos, as places facilitating the emotional work of building and maintaining family connection and interaction.     

Moon,mud, and cell phones: geographies of race and construction of difference through normalization

How does the meaning of space emerge and get negotiated when individuals of diverse backgrounds interact with each other? Studies reporting that African Americans tend not to spend time in outdoor space attribute this finding to limited access to resources, cultural values, degree of assimilation to mainstream practices, discrimination in outdoor space, or a perception that outdoor recreational space is “white space”. Little research has addressed how such meanings relate to other meanings attached to outdoor space, let alone how this happens through interactions between people with different views on outdoor space. This article, based on interviews and participant observation of college students on an alternative break trip from the Northeastern U.S. to New Mexico in 2014, shows how students of various backgrounds experienced nature differently, how differences were articulated and explained, and how they subverted normalization processes that render not “being in tune with nature” as deficiency. Suggesting that geographies of race are fluid and influenced by individuals’ agency, this article calls for encouraging students to examine the ways their subject positions have shaped their experiences and challenge cultural bias in what is deemed universally desirable.     

Feminist geopolitics,everyday death,and the emotional geographies of Dang Thuy Tram

Women's everyday experiences in war remain occluded; moreover, the bodily impacts of war remain hidden, masked by masculinist accounts of warfare that too often glorify heroic male combatants. In this article, we contribute, first, to the ongoing project to understand violence in everyday life and, second, to the understanding, specifically, of women's experiences in warfare. We do so through a reading of the diaries of Dang Thuy Tram, a female Vietnamese doctor who lived and died in the Vietnam War. By drawing on feminist geopolitics, coupled with the insights from emotional geographies – and specifically, those of love – we focus on two main themes: the emotional transformation of death and life, and the care of life amidst pervasive death. We conclude that an emotionally grounded feminist geopolitics is necessary to challenge masculinist accounts that normalize, naturalize, and glorify war.     

Energy geographies: thinking critically about energy issues in the classroom

Energy issues are becoming increasingly common subjects of instruction in undergraduate- and graduate-level classrooms across a variety of disciplines. The interdisciplinary character of energy studies provides geographers with a great opportunity to present different applied and theoretical approaches to help students conceptualize energy issues from a critical perspective. This article presents a class intervention as an example of how to incorporate geographic concepts and political economic theory into the classroom to help students understand the social, political, economic, and environmental implications of energy production, distribution, and consumption at multiple scales from a critical perspective.     

Farming in the troposphere: drawing together affective atmospheres and elemental geographies

This paper focuses on the much-neglected contribution of weather to research encounters. Affective atmospheres and elemental geographies are used as a platform to examine the vibrant materialities of the troposphere. The weather encapsulates human and non-human bodies, moods and actions in an enveloping space and I trace how these materialities and immaterialities are transmitted between bodies in the research setting. In a (post)phenomenological sense, certain atmospheric and meteorological events figure as lively participants. Through three research moments with farmers, I discuss how various weather conditions such as a warm balmy spring, wet muddy winter and the suffocating heat of summer enables thinking on the relational weight of atmospheres. By following participants throughout the circadian rhythms of farming over a year, seasonal fluctuations were recorded. Thus, researcher effort to comprehend how bodies become attuned and sensitive to the causal powers of the troposphere is foregrounded within share-farming experiences.     

Food,feeding and the material everyday geographies of infants: possibilities and potentials

This paper forges an agenda for researching geographies of infants. Scholars have tended to overlook the everyday geographies of very young children. However, outside of geography, infancy is seen as a specifically dynamic period of life, and is subject to sustained research and policy intervention. In particular, early childhood is viewed as a key point in which to intervene to transform enduring, interconnected, societal, educational, and health-based inequalities. Food and feeding are seen as critical both to the health of infants now and of the children and adults they become . However, much policy and research under-theorizes the importance of socio-spatial contexts and the subjectivity/agency of infants. There is, then, an urgent need for geographers to put infants onto the agenda, to inform and challenge these dominant accounts. Researching with infants necessitates not just critiquing modern, liberal notions of an autonomous subject/agent, but developing a new way of understanding subjectivity and agency. Drawing upon Lupton’s (2013) notion of infant–carer interembodiment, I suggest a way forward with reference to the material geographies of infant feeding.     

Competing models of nationalism: an analysis of memorial ceremonies in schools

ABSTRACT. By analysing school memorial ceremonies in Israel, this article demonstrates how dominant groups in Israeli society (upper‐ and middle‐class, secular, educated Jews of European origin) exploit their historical monopoly over the Israeli warrior ethos in order to retreat from their unconditional commitment to the state and the military, which stands at the very core of traditional ‘heroic nationalism’. Nonetheless, despite their withdrawal from the military ethos, analysis of the school ceremonies shows that rather than distancing themselves from the national collective, they are promoting a different kind of nationalism – one that I term ‘traumatic nationalism’. This model departs from the warrior ethos and places mourning and a feeling of victimhood at its centre. Thus, through the arena of education, the dominant groups – which mark out the global as their sphere of action – promote a model of nationalism that meets the demands of the post‐national discourse.     

Miniaturisation and the representation of military geographies in recreational wargaming

Miniaturisation affects space in many ways: projecting it, transforming it and co-producing it with those who make and gaze upon models. This paper draws on Stewart's work On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection (Durham: Duke University Press, 1993) to demonstrate how concepts of miniaturisation have the ability to contribute to geographical study. The empirical focus for the paper is a study of scale models deployed in the hobby of miniature or figure wargames in which players fight battles on the table top using model terrain and miniature figures. In this paper, I use examples of scaled terrain and figures to explore the process of miniaturisation and how this represents and transforms space. In doing so, the paper contributes to understanding the ways in which military geographies are represented through the media of models and performances of playing with them.     

Celebrating 30 years of feminist geographies in the German-speaking countries Germany,Switzerland* and Austria

Abstract

In this paper, we present the development of feminist geographies in the three German-speaking countries Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Since the emergence of feminist approaches in German-speaking geography in the 1980s, feminist geographers situated in these countries have worked closely together within the context of the Working Group “Geography and Gender”. The overview highlights cornerstones of the development of feminist geographies in Germany, Austria and Switzerland such as the Feminist Geography Newsletter (Feministisches GeoRundMail), the Doreen Massey Reading Weekends, the feminist geography student meetings (Feministisches Geograph_innentreffen) and the current DFG-research network “Feminist Geographies of the New Materialism”. By doing so, we try to appreciate both the historical development of feminist geographies and the current situation in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Highlighting both informal and institutionalized pillars of feminist geographies in these countries, we show how feminist geographies have moved from a marginalized position towards a vibrant field that gains more and more attention within the German-speaking geography community as a whole.     

A feminist perspective on digital geographies: activism,affect and emotion,and gendered human-technology relations in Australia

Feminist digital geographies are an important part of the digital turn currently underway in geographic scholarship. At the same time, feminist movements are taking advantage of, and emerging from, digital spaces. This article considers how the digital intersects with gender and what opportunities the digital affords feminist movements. We do so by drawing on a case study of feminist activism within Destroy the Joint (DTJ), an online social media activist group, and build a qualitative analysis of a dynamic, reflexive digital space. Qualitative studies of emotion, affect and the power of digital geographies, including social media spaces populated by groups like DTJ, demonstrate how cultural and social practices are changing along with technologies. This research does not draw on a techno-deterministic approach to digital geographies but forwards a feminist perspective that critically engages with the constraints and possibilities of the complex, paradoxical and contingent within the digital.     

Harraga and Europe: The emotional geographies of undocumented migrants in Tunisian filmmaking

European concern over undocumented migration is conventionally told as a story of unwitting migrants risking their lives to reach the European shores to escape poverty and/or war. We are interested in further opening up and contributing to a more nuanced discussion of the multiple drivers behind migration though a focus on emotions. We do so by mapping out the emotional geographies of Tunisian harraga captured by five Tunisian filmmakers. Our visual analysis of the Tunisian harraga as transmitted by the documentaries and feature films reveals that the migrant's journey across the Mediterranean is motivated by a set of complex and contradictory emotions. Hopes for a better future in the form of individual and societal dignity are mixed up with fear of the dangers of the crossing and of bringing shame to the family. We find that the migrant's desire to up and leave their home country is propelled by the differential between the emotions tied to our-place and their-place.     

Eye in the sky: visual geographies and emotional topographies of First World War airmen

Although the First World War highlighted human vulnerability through the terrors of a mechanised warfare ravaging the male body in new ways, it also fostered moments of intimacy and tenderness that privileged commonality, mutuality, and generosity, and encouraged friendship and comradeship as cornerstones of martial masculinities. This article explores such intimacies through analysis of letters and diaries written by British Royal Flying Corps airmen during combat on the Western Front. Informed by history of emotions approaches, I discuss the ways the sensual geographies of aerial combat and their promise of mastery and expanded vision shaped the emotional topographies of airmen’s combat lives. Following Santanu Das’s scholarship on the claustrophobic haptic geographies of trench warfare, this article addresses the following question: If the claustrophobia of the trenches and the impoverishment of visual experience facilitated certain geographies of senses that shaped male intimacies, what might similar emotional terrains look like for airmen exposed to more expansive visual practices?     

Nation‐freezing: images of the nation and the migrant in citizenship packages

ABSTRACT. New nationalism differs from classical nationalism in terms of its content and focus. Whereas classical nationalism distinguishes itself from other nation‐states in defining its national identity, new nationalism distinguishes the ‘native’ national identity from that of its current and prospective citizens of migrant origin. The terms of integration thus become conditions of membership in the national community. Citizenship and integration policies emerge as central arenas where the discourse of new nationalism unfolds. This study looks into the discourses of cultural citizenship by studying the content of the official ‘citizenship packages’ – materials designed to welcome newcomers and assist them in their integration – in three Western European countries: The Netherlands, France and the UK. What images are depicted of the nation‐state and the migrant in citizenship packages, and (how) do these images freeze the nation?