Rethinking the place of emotions in the field through social laboratories

The insights of feminist science and technology studies (STS) into the constructed and situated nature of knowledge have proved crucial to informing feminist geography. Since the rise of emotional geographies, feminist methodologies no longer simply reflect on questions of positionality, partiality, and power relations, but also on the role of emotions in the field. In this article, we argue that a feminist STS perspective has much to offer when thinking about the way emotions are engineered, controlled, and negotiated in research processes. Our engagement with what we call ‘social laboratories’ – i.e., spaces in everyday life where (experimental) research is conducted with human beings – advances debates in feminist geography, as these laboratories crystallize the emotional entanglements feminists encounter in the field. Looking at economic experiments in Ghana and fertility clinics in Mexico, we discuss the difficulties of doing feminist fieldwork in these experimental research spaces. We argue that the constant negotiation of emotions and ethics is crucial to access, assess, and do fieldwork in research settings that do not adhere to feminist ideals, but nevertheless have gendered effects on women's and men's lives. Rethinking ‘the place of emotions in research’ (Bondi 2005, in Emotional Geographies, edited by Joyce Davidson, Liz Bondi, and Mick Smith, 231–246, Aldershot: Ashgate) through social laboratories forges instructive links across feminist/emotional geographies and social studies of science.     

Civil Liberty in Hobbes's Commonwealth

Hobbes has been long accused of providing a political philosophy that threatens individual liberty. While some commentators have tried to rescue him from this criticism, little attention has been paid to the specifics of his statements on such topics as freedom of speech, censorship, and property rights. In this paper, I examine what Hobbes says on these issues and conclude that his overwhelming priority is to defend liberty once peace has been secured. I conclude by suggesting that Hobbes's political project has some similarities with current liberal proceduralist theories of justice.     

Slavery discourse before the Restoration: The Barbary coast,Justinian's Digest,and Hobbes's political theory

Seventeenth-century natural-law philosophers participated in colonizing and slave-trading companies, yet they discussed slavery as an abstraction. This dispassionate approach is commonly explained with the “distance thesis” that the practice of slavery was at some remove from Northwest Europe. I contest the thesis, with a specific focus on pre-Restoration English discourse and Hobbes's political theory. By laying out the salient context — English experience of Barbary-coast slavery and an inherited neo-Roman intellectual frame — I argue, first, that slavery was hardly a distant phenomenon and, second, that Hobbes's discussion of slavery expressed ideas familiar in ordinary discourse. The conclusion contrasts the English neo-Roman outlook with Spanish neo-Aristotelianism.     

Slavery discourse before the Restoration: The Barbary coast, Justinian's Digest, and Hobbes's political theory

Seventeenth-century natural-law philosophers participated in colonizing and slave-trading companies, yet they discussed slavery as an abstraction. This dispassionate approach is commonly explained with the “distance thesis” that the practice of slavery was at some remove from Northwest Europe. I contest the thesis, with a specific focus on pre-Restoration English discourse and Hobbes's political theory. By laying out the salient context — English experience of Barbary-coast slavery and an inherited neo-Roman intellectual frame — I argue, first, that slavery was hardly a distant phenomenon and, second, that Hobbes's discussion of slavery expressed ideas familiar in ordinary discourse. The conclusion contrasts the English neo-Roman outlook with Spanish neo-Aristotelianism.     

The archaeology of place

It is suggested that if archaeologists are to be successful in understanding the organization of past cultural systems they must understand the organizational relationships among places which were differentially used during the operation of past systems. This point is illustrated by observations made among the Nunamiut Eskimo. Against this background it is demonstrated that the two most common forms of archaeological systematics, “assemblage”- versus “type”-based systematics, are not appropriate for the study of places. In the latter case, it is not possible to analyze places as such, while one cannot see places with different “content” as part of a single system in the former. It is concluded that current archaeological systematics are totally inappropriate for studying past systems of adaptation and their evolutionary modification.     

Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan and the Theological Origins of Secular International Politics

Abstract

Recent years have seen a resurgence of interest in Reinhold Niebuhr's scholarship. Many scholars have drawn upon Niebuhr's work in the run up to World War II when drawing analogies to the contemporary struggle with Islamic radicalism. This article explores Niebuhr's writings on Communism in the run up to Vietnam as another possible source for analogies to the current struggle. It concludes with an analysis of contemporary Islamic radicalism using the categories of Niebuhr's analysis. While neither period in Niebuhr's work provides a perfect analogy to the present, there are significant insights to be drawn from this later period in Niebuhr's writing.     

From central place to central flow theory: an exploration of urban catering

ABSTRACT

The research shift from central place theory to central flow theory has demonstrated the influence of information technology on cities. The study explores this shift at the city scale of urban catering industry in Nanjing, China. A comprehensive set of indicators of E-WoM for the catering industry has been established. Based on this, the spatial distribution patterns of catering industry in Nanjing, China have been discussed to examine the relationship of restaurants distribution and the central place theory or the central flow theory using a data analytical approach. The results revealed that the spatial distribution of restaurants’ density in Nanjing follows a traditional central place theory, but the spatial distribution of restaurants’ E-WoM in Nanjing rather follows the central flow theory. In addition, different characteristics could be found in different types of restaurants’ E-WoM distribution. Mainstream cuisine follows central place theory but is inconsistent in urban business districts, which demonstrate some characteristics of central flow theory. The distribution of E-WoM of non-mainstream cuisine is similar to the E-WoM distribution of overall restaurants, showing a central flow pattern. Finally, the implications of the study are drawn.     

Relational concepts of space and place: Issues for planning theory and practice

This paper seeks to conceptualize and explore the changing relationships between planning action and practice and the dynamics of place. It argues that planning practice is grappling with new treatments of place, based on dynamic, relational constructs, rather than the Euclidean, deterministic, and one‐dimensional treatments inherited from the ‘scientific’ approaches of the 1960s and early 1970s. But such emerging planning practices remain poorly served by planning theory which has so far failed to produce sufficiently robust and sophisticated conceptual treatments of place in today's globalizing’ world. In this paper we attempt to draw on a wide range of recent advances in social theory to begin constructing such a treatment. The paper has four parts. First, we criticize the legacy of object‐oriented, Euclidean concepts of planning theory and practice, and their reliance on ‘containered’ views of space and time. Second, we construct a relational understanding of time, space and cities by drawing together four strands of recent social theory. These are: relational theories of urban time‐space, dynamic conceptualizations of ‘multiplex’ places and cities, the ‘new’ urban and regional socio‐economics, and emerging theories of social agency and institutional ordering. In the third section, we apply such perspectives to three worlds of planning practice: land use regulation, policy frameworks and development plans, and the development of ‘customized spaces’ in urban ‘regeneration’. Finally, by way of conclusion, we suggest some pointers for practising planning in a relational way.     

旧金山之美

<正>彩虹飞架大洋岸,巨龙衔起两青山;西海波涛连天际,东湾碧水映白帆。红桥出浴晚霞天,轻纱薄雾彩云端;三藩景色多妖娆,金门桥头最好看。如果你还活着,旧金山不会使你厌烦;如果你已经死了,那旧金山会让你再度起死回生。     

The reinvention of terroir in Danish food place promotion

ABSTRACT

This paper conceptualizes place branding narratives that mobilize local food and contemporary gastronomic trends by revisiting the notion of terroir (taste of place) as a strategic marketing asset. In particular, it explores how rural tourism destinations with little or no gastronomic heritage exploit the discourses of New Nordic Food to create a distinct sense of place. An extensive review of the literature identifies two conservationist strategies by which terroir narratives are constructed (accreditation and patrimonialization), neither of which fully captures the particular rhetorical approaches shaping the Nordic terroir. Drawing on empirical illustrations from Danish rural destinations, the paper argues that terroir can be reproduced and invented through manipulative rhetorical approaches and identifies two novel, transformational strategies framing terroir narratives (exoticizing and enterprising). The paper contributes with a conceptual model conceived through a unique combination of place-specific (typicality) themes and market-specific ideologies, which has the explanatory power to distinguish Nordic terroir narratives from earlier articulations of taste of place.