Historians and friends: reflections on some contemporary historians*

ABSTRACT

This article is based on the text of a talk at the University of Athens in October 2018, in which I drew brief cameo portraits of five historians who inspired me and whose lives I admire: David Herlihy (1930–1991), Michael Baxandall (1933–2008), Marino Berengo (1928–2000), Hans Baron (1901–1988), and Marvin Becker (1922–2004). It is difficult to find strong common methodological or ideological ground shared by all five. Their priorities were different, their guiding lights in each case came from an internal dialogue between their own passions and the inspiration they received from teachers and readings, not by the methodological preferences that dominated the profession in their lives. What, in the end, left a deep imprint on me was their character. Their commitment was to ideas and to dialogue. National, religious, ideological, or methodological differences did not cloud their judgment of others, especially of young scholars. All five, growing up in the Fascist era, were portents of the more level tones of the liberal democracy that slowly, amid myriad obstacles, set root in the decades following 1945.     

Fields of gold: reflections on the research relations of the cultural policy researcher

ABSTRACT

This article discusses the methodological implications of the relations we have to our object of study as cultural policy researchers. We ask: What research relations we typically are part of and what social dimensions structure these relations? These questions are discussed by comparing field experiences from two cultural forms that can be characterized as polar opposites when it comes to the degree to which they are legitimized: contemporary opera and dance bands. We suggest that four dimensions are especially relevant to help ‘unpack’ the relations we typically find ourselves in as cultural policy researchers; cultural hierarchy, research conditions, geography and, gender and age. The coexistence of these dimensions means that the cultural policy researcher regularly finds him/herself in complex situations that we suggest should be analysed in terms of the ways in which, and the extent to which, we develop roles as insiders – or outsiders – in the field     

Advancing ethical research with children: critical reflections on ethical guidelines

This viewpoint article reflects upon the recent surge of formal and institutional ethics requirements, particularly for research with children. Drawing on our experiences of researching with children and communities in economically poor contexts, we critically discuss three interrelated perspectives that help shift the focus of attention about the ethics of research in the global south from the geographical and conceptual margins to the center. First, we explore the interface between ethical research and the wider agenda of achieving social justice for/with children. Second, we highlight the ways in which research takes place within the context of broader social and personal relationships. Third, we highlight the need for researchers' understand, respect and incorporate appropriately local ethos of relationships in order to not only bridge the gap between formal ethical standards/guidelines and informal ethical practices but also promote participatory ethics.     

Follow the Thing: Data

This research starts its journey from a video that failed to be published during the 2009 uprising in Iran. By following data outside the common trajectories of data circulation in the global North, this paper offers new geographical and data imaginations neglected by the universalised understandings of data and its political economy. Consequently, data’s behaviour as a thing is thoroughly investigated in the “follow the thing tradition” by scrutinising data as a commodity, its meanings and its associations. Using actor-network-theory, the paper highlights data’s open and contested character as well as the breakdowns throughout its journey. Following an uncirculated video via its traces sheds light on data’s agency in evoking different assemblages and spatialities. It also reflects on the epistemological importance of not treating the Southern data as exceptional and calls for a theoretical landscape that does not leave many realities of data out in its homogenised universal narrative.     

Follow the Thing: Papaya

In a recent round table about Antipode 's radical geographies, contributors argued that the journal needed more papers which stimulated debate, were accessible to academics and non-academics alike, didn't "preach to the cognoscenti", were written to fit into radical teaching agendas, and were diverse and eclectic in style ( Waterstone 2002 :663; Hague 2002 ). This paper has been written to fit this bill. It outlines the findings of multi-locale ethnographic research into the globalization of food, focusing on a supply chain stretching from UK supermarket shelves to a Jamaican farm, and concluding in a North London flat. It addresses perspectives and critiques from the growing literature on the geographies of commodities, but presents these academic arguments "between the lines" of a series of overlapping vignettes about people who were (un)knowingly connected to each other through the international trade in fresh papaya, and an entangled range of economic, political, social, cultural, agricultural and other processes also shaping these connections in the early 1990s. The research on which it is based was initially energized by David Harvey's (1990 :422) call for radical geographers to "get behind the veil, the fetishism of the market", to make powerful, important, disturbing connections between Western consumers and the distant strangers whose contributions to their lives were invisible, unnoticed, and largely unappreciated. Harvey argued that radical geographers should attempt to de-fetishise commodities, re-connect consumers and producers, tell fuller stories of social reproduction, and thereby provoke moral and ethical questions for participants in this exploitation who might think they're decent people. This paper has been written to provoke such questions, to provide materials to think through and with, for geography's ongoing debates about the politics of consumption.     

Forty‐Five Years of Pacific Island Studies: some reflections

Looking back on our own times, we have seen a rise and fall of interest in Pacific Island studies. Our careers, which have led us currently to the Centre for Samoa Studies at the National University of Samoa, retrospectively illustrate transformations in Pacific Studies over the past half century.     

Understanding change in cities: a personal research path

At the invitation of the editor, this article offers an overview of my personal research trajectory in one thematic area—the study of urban form, structure and growth. The purpose of the article is not to assign prominence to any particular research style or approach but to illustrate how ideas and priorities in research evolve over a given time period and under specific conditions, as viewed through the lens of my own experience. The article traces the sequential evolution of my research activity and publications from an initial emphasis on understanding change in inner-city land use and built form, through studies of decision making and the behavioural bases of urban form, to analyses of social change, income inequalities and spatial polarization, and then to issues of planning, policy and governance in emerging city regions. The review highlights lessons learned and concludes with an argument for more inclusive and comparative research.