The taming of psychoanalysis in geography

In the last decade, social and cultural geography has experienced a 'psychoanalytic turn': geographers have used insights from Freud, Lacan, Klein, Winnicott, Kristeva and others to deepen and re-orient our understandings of subjectivity and socio-spatial formations. In this paper, I argue that in the process, psychoanalytic geography has tended to render psychoanalysis compatible with the imperatives currently driving social and cultural geography (such as the demand to theorize resistance and develop particular understandings of politicized subjectivities and spatialities). Many of Freud's founding insights, however, work at odds with such imperatives: Freud's formulation of the unconscious points to a realm that is not malleable in terms of cultural resignification, and that conceives the individual as subject as much to inertia and repetition as to progressive transformation. The paper demonstrates how geography has worked to tame psychoanalytic theory by downplaying its more politically unpalatable aspects. In so doing, it argues that the time is now right for those aspects to be brought to light.     

The incommensurability of psychoanalysis and history

This article argues that, although psychoanalysis and history have different conceptions of time and causality, there can be a productive relationship between them. Psychoanalysis can force historians to question their certainty about facts, narrative, and cause; it introduces disturbing notions about unconscious motivation and the effects of fantasy on the making of history. This was not the case with the movement for psychohistory that began in the 1970s. Then the influence of American ego-psychology on history-writing promoted the idea of compatibility between the two disciplines in ways that undercut the critical possibilities of their interaction. The work of the French historian Michel de Certeau provides theoretical insight into the uses of incommensurability, while that of Lyndal Roper demonstrates both its limits and its value for enriching historical understanding.     

Micronesia: The politics of the colonized

Carl Heine. Micronesia at the Crossroads: A Reappraisal of the Micronesian Political Dilemma. Honolulu: The University Press of Hawaii, 1974. xvi + 210 pp. Notes, appendices, bibliography, and index. $10.00 (cloth); $2.95 (paper).

Daniel T. Hughes and Sherwood G. Lingenfelter, eds. Political Development in Micronesia. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1974. 333 pp. Tables, charts, references, and index. $15.00.     

Saudi Arabia: The politics of education

Since 11 September Saudi Arabia's religious education system and its underlying ideology have been accused of contributing to anti–western sentiments and of providing fertile ground for Islamic extremism. While recognizing the economic necessity for educational reform, many Saudis have come out to defend their school system and officials adamantly reject any link between their curriculum and extremism. This article looks at the extent to which the Saudi education system has been shaped and used by religious, political and socio–economic forces and the factors that are undermining the current system. It also examines the content of the message propagated in the kingdom's schools and abroad and to what extent it may encourage anti–western sentiments.     

The religious and romantic origins of psychoanalysis

The Religious and Romantic Origins of Psychoanalysis. By Suzanne Kirschner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 212 pp., $27.95 cloth, $15.95 paper.     

Changing electoral politics: The local level

This article explores contemporary notions of Italian kinship—procreation, the family, biological and social relatedness—as they are shaped by programmes of gamete donation (these are programmes that require the use of third‐party egg and semen to achieve conception). The research was carried out in Italian clinics of assisted conception and presents the views of heterosexual couples suffering from impaired infertility. The overall material reveals the power of kinship as a cultural form.     

The politics of migration

This editorial introduces the Virtual Special Issue on the Politics of Migration by presenting a review of migration and refugee related articles published in Political Geography. We have identified two major shifts in scope during the last 30 years. First, the scalar focus has changed from nation-state policies to supranational migration agreements and transnational migrant experiences. Second, the theoretical focus has moved from geopolitics to biopolitics. Ten selected articles illustrate three central themes: regulation of migration, practices of border enforcement and migrant experiences.     

The politics of hydropower: developing the Mekong

With renewed economic interest in the Southeast Asian region following the `peace dividend' of the early 1990s, numerous hydrodevelopment plans have been initiated in the Mekong basin. The river-as-resource, in a glibly bioregional metaphor, has been transformed from a Cold War `front line' into a `corridor of commerce', drawing six riparian states together in the pursuit of sustainable development through economic and infrastructural integration and cooperation, promoted by multi- and bilateral donors and lending institutions. Through a brief examination of the discursive framing of Mekong hydrodevelopment, this paper uncovers some of the implications of an emerging regional geopolitical imagination centred on the naturalising metaphor of the watershed. Through a discussion of the increasing involvement of private capital, and the politicisation of resource use, the implications of hydrodevelopment for Laos, an upstream state currently undergoing major hydrodevelopment, and Cambodia, a downstream state, are explored.