Rethinking electoral geography: spaces and practices of democracy in Nicaragua

Despite engagements with Foucauldian and Deleuzian insights by many geographers, concerns remain that we are still failing to understand the difference geography makes to the exercise of power. This article, which focuses on the 2006 Nicaraguan elections, has three main aims. The first is to explore the relationship between power and space through the lens of an electoral campaign. The second is to contribute to recent attempts to theoretically reinvigorate electoral geography. The third is to provide an alternative reading of democratisation in Nicaragua. Ultimately, this article focuses on how ordinary people in the interests of creating a better life for themselves make do with the circumstances in which they live.     

Rethinking Cultural Genocide: Aboriginal Child Removal and Settler‐Colonial State Formation

This paper examines the use of the concept of cultural genocide to understand one particular episode in Australian legal, political and social history, the removal of Aboriginal children from their families, mostly during the 20th century. After outlining the approach of Australian courts to the idea of cultural genocide, the paper examines the construction of the UN Genocide Convention, particularly the clause concerning the forcible removal of children, which illustrates the underlying instability of the boundary between a cultural and a physical understanding of genocide. It then explores how this instability was manifested in the development of early 20th century Australian legislation concerning the ‘protection’ of Aborigines, indicating the underlying racially‐oriented coerciveness of conceptions of Aboriginal ‘welfare’, and concludes by reflecting on the wide range of ways in which the concept of genocide can and should be used, especially in capturing the experience of Indigenous peoples under settler‐colonialism.     

Aboriginal reconciliation as religious politics: Secularisation in Australia

The characterisation of the Australian polity as a strikingly ‘secular’ polity is in certain respects misleading. Australian political debate continues to be marked by a religious element. For example, the language of Aboriginal ‘reconciliation’ had several distinctly Christian resonances and ambiguities, including the difficult relation of justice and forgiveness. This paper considers the Aboriginal reconciliation process in the light of three different ideas of secularism: secularism as a doctrine of the two ends of humanity; secularisation as disenchantment or rationalisation; and secularisation as the transposition of theology into a mundane or earthly idiom.     

Rethinking Retail Theory: Circuits of Power as an Integrative Paradigm

Retailers have gained substantial market advantage from the use of locational modeling. This paper suggests that the wider context to their trading should also be borne in mind. A mix of corporate and regulatory influences situates retailers in a system where the concept of power can be very fluid. This paper suggests that the work of Stuart Clegg may help unravel some of the complexities and it utilizes case studies to illustrate particular strategic power plays in retailing.     

Barcelona as imagined community: Pasqual Maragall's spaces of engagement

This paper looks at how cities can function in much the same way as nations in the construction of political projects. Taking Pasqual Maragall's mobilization of Barcelona during his period as mayor of the city (1982–97) as an example, it explores how locally dependent politicians attempt to exploit 'spaces of engagement' (Cox 1998) to escape from the territorial and scalar limitations which city councils have to operate within. It argues that mayors can embody cities, and explores how Maragall located himself within a set of performatively, discursively and institutionally constructed visions of Barcelona embedded in wider economic, political and cultural spaces.     

Womyn's separatist spaces: rethinking spaces of difference and exclusion

This paper rethinks geographical explorations of social difference by interrogating ameliorative and pleasurable aspects of marginal spaces. Re-introducing womyn's separatist spaces contests feminist geographical writing in this area, requiring an examination of both the alternative ways of living that are created, and the pain of producing 'womyn-only' spaces in order for such spaces to exist. The paper draws on qualitative research with 238 attendees at the 31st Michigan Womyn's Music Festival. Womyn spoke of the pleasures of the festival and positive affinities with other womyn, as well as the festival's herstory of conflict, negotiation and compromise. Although accounts relay 'growing pains' that constitute the festival's current form, the current temporal and spatial segregations of 'womyn', through the womyn-born womyn policy, has resulted in something of an impasse. Rather than reductively posing 'the latest problem' of feminist separatism as the exclusion of trans women because of this policy, or unequivocally celebrating the festival's role in womyn's lives and herstory, these polarised conceptualisations are held in tension. This enables a consideration of the paradoxes and juxtaposition of womyn's space and Camp Trans (a protest camp that opposes the womyn-born womyn policy) as productive. In this way, the paper argues for an engagement with marginalised and alternative spaces of difference that allow for positive affectivities and productive tensions that do not neglect relations of power.     

原真性与完整性:质疑、新知与启示

在世界遗产理论发展路程中,对遗产原真性及完整性的质疑和思考是推动理论不断丰富完善的一股重要动力。完整性适用于所有遗产地,整体保护政策正是对完整性这一命题的呼应和阐释。对遗产原真性的质疑主要表现在非物质文化遗产方面,特别是活态遗产,现在遗产界已经越来越认识到非物质遗产不能简单套用物质遗产的原真性,非物质文化遗产环境的原真性要素也可以表现为一种"演进中的原真性"。因质疑而思考,进而获得新知。这一途径启示我们,应以一种开放性的、持续完善的思维和态度来对待遗产事业。     

Flirtatious geographies: clubs as spaces for the performance of affective heterosexualities

This article addresses the (hetero)sexualized, sensuous and affective nature of straight club spaces in Singapore. By attending to the theoretical intersections between affect studies and feminist perspectives, I argue that straight clubs are sites for the performances of affective heterosexualities that may and may not end up re-inscribing asymmetrical gendered power relations. In so doing, I hope to contribute to the growing literature on affectual geographies by expounding on the numerous technologies of affect which are being deployed in order to incite, transmit and sustain (hetero)sexual desires between bodies. Flirtatious (hetero)sexual practices thus give rise to, and are a result of, the political manipulation of intensely felt affects. Furthermore, I suggest that we should not overlook how becoming (hetero)sexual ‘feels like’ because these ‘feelings’ work to crystallize (hetero)sexual spaces and subjectivities. Nonetheless, we must also be careful not to discount the salience of ‘heterosexuality’ as a representational device that serves to codify and categorize sexual desires between bodies.     

Strategy as practice: interactive governance spaces and the corporate strategies of retail transnationals

There is growing interest in the role of corporate governancesystems within the strategy-making process of firms. Using a‘strategy as practice’ perspective, we conceptualizethe governance system as a contested space in which managementand security analysts mutually adapt/transform and enact corporatestrategies vis-à-vis argumentation. Synthesizing thismicropractice perspective within corporate governance research,the supple role of securities analysts’ arguments in shapingcorporate strategies assumes a new significance. It also providesa basis for observing and understanding the contested natureof the retail internationalization process. The implicationsand opportunities for management studies and economic geographyare considered.