What Has the Geography of Sleeping Arrangements Got to Do with the Geography of Our Teaching Spaces?

As geographers we are used to researching and teaching about those other than ourselves and it is timely to turn our gaze on the social and spatial practices of our own teaching spaces. One particular teaching space is the overnight geography field trip, a context in which geography fieldwork is ostensibly the main focus for two or more consecutive days. Teaching spaces such as classrooms and field trips, like all social spaces, are imbued with spoken and unspoken assumptions about sexuality, gender and 'race'. Geography field trips are one site in which to examine how social space is constituted via spoken and unspoken assumptions and how these assumptions shape field trip participants' understandings of themselves within these spaces. Simultaneously, field trips offer a site for the consideration of the socio-spatial relations of the reproduction of contemporary geographic knowledge. This article is one response to what Jon Binnie identified as an urgent need for geographers to understand how geography is being taught. Although sleeping arrangements are 'not formally notified' as part of fieldwork activity, the author demonstrates how sleeping arrangements conveyed important messages about sexuality, gender and cultural practices during seven overnight field trips held by two universities and two high schools in New Zealand. The concern is how apparently mundane arrangements such as the organisation of sleeping might reveal the ongoing hegemonic social and spatial relations of teaching and learning geography, as these are shaped by sexuality, gender and 'race', so that we might be better informed to challenge and change these practices.     

Myth of the Triad? The Geography of Trade and Investment 'Blocs'

The notion that the world is increasingly divided into a triad of economic regions based on North America, the European Union and Japan has become a form of conventional wisdom across a range of disciplines. However, despite the near ubiquitous use of the idea of a triadized world, it remains a somewhat normative assertion, the empirical existence of which has yet to be demonstrated. By using the intramax method to analyze the intensity of international trade and foreign direct investment flows during 1985 and 1995, we examine the changing shape of trade and investment 'blocs' globally. We find that while international trade is increasingly organized around fewer world regions, the presumed outcome of a triad-based world economy remains questionable. We further show that investment intensity patterns do not currently conform to any bloc-like formation, but exhibit instead, globally diffused network regions.     

Engaging with Economic Geography in the ‘Real’ World: A Central Role for Field Teaching

Debates concerning how to engage students with economic geography have ignored the important role of field teaching. This paper argues that fieldwork must remain a key component of economic geographical teaching and that it offers a variety of advantages to overcoming student disinterest in the sub-discipline. It goes on to argue that field teaching must be developed, not neglected, in economic geography and illustrates its pedagogical advantages with reference to the example of a field class in north-east England.     

The New Cinema Going to the Dogs? The Encounter with Animal Otherness in the Film El aura

This paper explores the topic of animal alterity in Argentinian cinema in general, but primarily in Fabián Bielinsky's El aura. Through one of its much overlooked main characters, a wolfish dog, and her relationship with the human protagonist, this thriller develops a dialogue with the excluded and repressed visual subject status of animals. Historicizing this visual paradigm as originating in Renaissance perspectivism, and theorizing it alongside the gendered category of castration anxiety and the representation of women as to-be-looked-at-ness in film, this essay proposes that El aura reworks these traditions and comes to an innovative, even radical, conclusion about the possibilities of the human in relation to other, non-human forms of subjectivity. The dog fills the gap, and alters the parameters, of the missing femme fatale, if we read the film as pertaining to the noir (or neo-noir) genre. In its treatment of the relationship between the canine and human protagonists, it also reorients the viewer, thematically as much as esthetically, with regards to hegemonic binary categories such as active/passive, good/evil, predator/prey, and strong/weak. This article engages centrally with recent scholarship on human-animal relations.     

The Creative Economy: Vision or Illusion in the Structural Change?

This contribution discusses the hopes associated with the rise of the creative industries and gives explanations for the debates in politics, science and the media. In doing so, our underlying thesis is that the culture and creative economy is a virtual sector and that a uniform promotion—also by means of staged events that attract a lot of media attention—needs to be challenged. In a further step, the scientific implications will also be outlined on the basis of the term's “career” in the public debate. A brief analysis of the empiricism of the creative economy will provide further insight into its real significance and demonstrate possible definitional weaknesses of the term. The creative industries are an essential element of modern economic infrastructure. They will play an important role in the future, especially for cluster strategies. However, the scientific research so far is not able to reach more accurate conclusions regarding the effects of governance on the culture and creative industry. Therefore, this contribution shows future research fields. We will conclude by venturing an outlook on the further development of the sector and demonstrate its social and economic effects using the example of the Ruhr Area in North Rhine-Westphalia.     

Whither Geography? A Response to Finlayson's Concerns

Prompted by Brian Finlayson's editorial, titled ‘Whither (or Wither?) Geography’, I am reminded that a review of the discipline's status and directions would be timely, using the 2002 Australia‐wide reviews in this journal as benchmarks. I welcome the thoughtful proposal for a disciplinary report to the Academy of Science recently prepared by Alaric Maude on behalf of the National Committee for Geography. I take the view that the three central issues are: firstly, flux in the discipline's ‘external relations’ in an era of interdisciplinarity, cross‐disciplinary mergers, instrumentalism, and budgetary constraints; secondly, flux in ‘internal relations’ involving subdisciplines and subcultures: and thirdly, flux in ‘vertical relations’ involving the links between secondary and tertiary Geography. It is instructive to note that the earliest disciplinary reviews, up to the 1980s, were solely directed towards bibliographic celebrations of research directions whereas recent reviews, of necessity, have been focussed on pressing issues concerning ‘Whither Geography?’. Alaric's proposal will also be issue focussed, with its emphasis on relevance and on contributions of national significance.     

Best practice? Geography, learning and the institutional limits to strong convergence

According to many, we live in an age in which convergence betweenformerly distinct national ‘models’ is taking place.Central to this process is a learning dynamic in which bestpractices originating from within one model—Japan in the1980s, United States in the 1990s—are supposedly adoptedby firms elsewhere. This paper addresses two key questions concerningthis process. First, what are the actual mechanisms or processesthrough which this learning-driven convergence might occur?Second, what role do institutions play in shaping, influencing,or constraining firms' choice of practices and their abilityto ‘learn’? The paper examines eight specific channelsof convergence representing a continuum of opportunities forlearning-through-interacting. It then assesses critically arange of competing arguments about the role of institutionalinfluences at three different scales: the region, the nation-state,and the firm. It concludes that while regional and firm-levelarguments, on their own, do not provide an adequate explanatoryframework for understanding how firms' practices are determined,national level theory needs to be made supple enough to accommodatea significant role for regional institutions and the agencyof the firm.     

From the Atlantic to the Bug,from the Arctic to the Tigris? The Transformation of the EU and NATO

Both the European Union and NATO are now committed in principle to substantial enlargement. It remains doubtful, however, how far member governments are making a success of further enlargement, let alone thinking through its strategic implications. Yet the process of dual enlargement will define the future security, political and economic structures of the European region. During the past year west European governments have extended promises of eventual membership to the western Balkan states and to Turkey; while the future positions of Ukraine, Russia, the Caucasus states and the southern Mediterranean associates all raise delicate policy issues. Hard choices remain to be made about the adaptation of these organizations to eastern enlargement, and about the management of relations with the near neighbours who will remain outside.     

The Cultural Turn: Fashion or Progress in Human Geography?

The cultural turn marks a reorientation of human geography's interdisciplinary concerns toward the wide field of cultural studies. It is argued that this reorientation has been mediated by distinctive forms of commercial academic book publishing. These have been the medium for the internationalisation of cultural studies upon which human geography'sserious engagement with the field has depended. It is argued that the combination of a greater reliance upon work drawn from the humanities and the imperatives of publishing have led to the contemporary proliferation of cultural theory being associated with new forms of academic celebrity. The critical questioning of the cultural turn is therefore located in relation to the formsof authority and evaluation that it has the potential to promote.     

Against the Odds: Does Geography make a difference?

In this article, the author examines her experiences in one geography department, as a black scholar and mother from a working class background, to ponder whether geography has helped or hurt her odds of success in academia. The odds against the author are briefly reviewed through a consideration of work relevant to the success of mothers and women of color graduate students and faculty members. The retelling of the author's experiences reveals a general lack of sensitivity to and acceptance of difference on the part of some geographers attributable to issues of visibility and cultural goodness of fit. Though geography has not made a difference in assisting her in beating the odds of success in academia, the author concludes that doing so is achievable and begins with a sense of respect for difference, making the discipline relevant to a broader cross-section of the population, and improving relationships within and between disaffected groups, such as women of color scholars, inside and outside the discipline.

¿Contra las probabilidades: Hace un diferencia la geografía?

En este artículo el autor, como erudita negra y madre de la clase obrera, examina sus experiencias en un departamento de geografía y reflexiona si la geografía las ayudó o las dañó a sus oportunidades de éxito in la academia. Las posibilidades contra el autor se revistan a través de una consideración de trabajo relevante al éxito de madres y de mujeres de color como estudiantes graduados y miembros de la facultad. El re-contando de las experiencias del autor revela una falta generalmente de sensitividad y aceptación de la diferencia de la parte de algunos geógrafos y que se atribulan de cuestiones de visibilidad y “bondad de apropiado” cultural. Aunque geografía no ha hecho una diferencia en ayudando el autor para superar a las probabilidades de éxito en academia, el autor concluyó que la posibilidad de superarlas existe y se empieza con un sentido de respeto de la diferencia, haciéndose la disciplina relevante para una porción más extenso de la población, y mejorando las relaciones dentro y entre grupos desafecto como las eruditas que son mujeres de color, adentro y afuera de la disciplina.     

The evolution of the responsibility to protect: at a crossroads?

The Responsibility to Protect doctrine (R2P), now ten years old, has been widely accepted at the international level. As the books under review demonstrate, debates around its legitimacy are over. Instead, we see a developing second generation of literature focusing on how the R2P needs to be understood more concretely in both academic and policy terms, as well as how it affects the linked issues of humanitarian intervention and state‐building. Within this literature, we see new and important questions emerging. These include how and when we should intervene and whether we can be successful at it; how we can assist states to ensure they fulfill their own responsibilities towards their populations; and where international authority lies. Unfortunately, the answers to these questions are hard ones. Implementation, and how it reflects embedded culture at the international level, may be as hard—if not harder—as introducing the doctrine originally.     

What has Iberia to do with Jerusalem? Crusade and the Spanish route to the Holy Land in the twelfth century

In spite of repeated papal injunctions forbidding them to abandon their homeland, Iberian Christians, like their co-religionists throughout Europe, were energised by a desire to participate in the Holy Land crusades. The most significant and creative attempt in the first half of the twelfth century to respond to this Spanish desire was the development of the idea of the iter per Hispaniam, which was fostered by Iberian archbishops and monarchs such as Diego Gelmírez of Santiago de Compostela and Alfonso I of Aragon. This Spanish route was intended to unite the conflicts in the peninsula and the Holy Land, forming a single Mediterranean-wide crusading theatre and thereby granting the Iberian conflict a deeper connection with the struggle for control of the holiest sites in Christendom. This article explores the development of crusading ideology in Spain and the difficulties of doing so in a venue outside of the Holy Land. Additionally, the development of the Spanish route idea provides a unique opportunity to contextualise recent historiographical discussions about the essence of the crusades and to highlight the way in which different perspectives helpfully offer insight into various aspects of peninsular crusading.     

Guilt by Association? The Hazards of Linking the Concept of the State with Violence

The last 30 years have seen an increasing acceptance of an apparently ubiquitous link between the state and the use of force, with violence now seen as a defining attribute of the state. Few have questioned this approach, but it constitutes a significant shift that contrasts with that of previous eras, where violence was a symptom of failure. This unquestioned link would appear to be deepening our problems in considering the difficulties facing liberal democracies at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

Résumé:?Les trente dernières années ont vu le renforcement du lien entre l'état et l'usage de la force et la violence comme un attribut essentiel de l'état. On a peu contesté cette approche bien qu'elle soit en contradiction avec des interprétations précédentes qui considérait la violence comme l'admission d'un échec. Remettre en question ce lien entre état et violence permet de reconsidérer les difficultés des démocraties libérales au début du vingt et unième siècle.