Towards a political geography of hotels: Southern Rhodesia, 1958–1962

This article sets out the case for taking account of hotels in political geography. It argues that hotels, as key spaces of welcome, association, and entertainment between public and private, are important political sites. They provide space for the performance of political ideologies and identities, where political campaigns can be made visible, where political relations can be illuminated and translated for international audiences, and where the ‘little things’ (Thrift, 2000, Thrift, 2004) that construct political geographies can be examined. Drawing on theoretical discussions of hospitality, as well as work in political geography, it explores the politics of multi-racial hospitality in the hotels of Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia, between 1958 and 1962 in order to understand late colonial politics in Southern Africa. Considering three individual hotels, the paper elaborates their role as keys spaces in the landscape of exclusive ‘European’ sociability; as crucial sites in the enactment of and resistance to the colour bar; and as vantage points on Southern Rhodesian racial politics for international guests. The papers shows that far from being peripheral to the ‘real’ politics of diplomacy and government, hotels and the hospitable practises within them can be seen as crucial elements in the construction of local, national and international politics.     

The ‘Australian settlement’ and Australian political thought

Arguments for reshaping political agendas invariably begin from an appraisal of past errors and achievements. Paul Kelly's notion of the ‘Australian Settlement’ attempts such a task. Kelly identifies a particular ideological and institutional tradition in Australian politics that dominated much of the twentieth century and that is now deemed to have broken down. This article accepts that the notion of a Settlement provides certain insights into the evolution of Australian political thought. Nonetheless, the paper takes issue with the specific content of Kelly's version of the ‘Australian Settlement’ and indicates how it may be reformulated. It argues that, to the extent that we can speak of a ‘Settlement’ in Australia, it was one reached on a wider range of key conflicts or cleavages than those to which Kelly refers.     

Housing Vancouver, 1972–2017: A personal urban geography and a professional response

The forum includes a research paper, preceded by a brief introduction and followed by five short responses from Pablo Mendez, Loretta Lees, Margaret Walton-Roberts, Ilse Helbrecht, and Alison Mountz. Mountz's introduction sets the context for the paper and makes some framing remarks on David Ley's career. The main paper examines the housing question in Vancouver, in the period from 1972 to 2017. Re-examining a number of Ley's research projects over this period, three broader themes are explored: the continuity of the housing crisis, and its reconfiguration over the period under study; the contrast between innovative and interventionist housing policy in the 1970s, with the later withdrawal of the state from significant intervention while endorsing market solutions; and the new centrality of housing as an empirical and analytical category in current human geography. This period saw upscaling from the 1970s welfare state to neoliberal globalization, including wealth immigration and off-shore property investment that accelerated serious metropolitan affordability problems. Following this research paper, colleagues and former students respond to the paper and locate the contributions in David Ley's broader career. Their commentaries address Ley's key contributions to debates in human geography, including his work on gentrification, urbanism, urban activism, global migration, art, aesthetics, and ethnography.     

Political geography and climate change: Introduction to a virtual special issue of Political Geography on climate change and political geography,November 2015–February 2016

Climate change is a major issue in global politics, one that has profound implications for the future of the planet, and one that political geographers have been addressing in recent years. This special virtual issue of Political Geography highlights the contributions made in the journal to addressing both the empirical questions of how climate change might cause conflict and human insecurity and the larger questions of how climate is represented in political discourse and policy discussions.     

Australian geography: The next 10 years (and beyond)?

Geography: Shaping Australia's Future (2018) provides a ‘strategic plan’ for geography aligned with the national research priorities, as well other key areas where Australian geographers are addressing environmental and societal challenges. To provide context, we first describe the state of geography in Australian universities. We then articulate ways forward for strengthening Australian geography—both within the discipline and how we interact externally. We describe how geography may better contribute to policy agendas, capitalising on our unique perspectives of space, place and the environment, but also highlight how we might improve these contributions through a more unified approach across human and physical geography. Third, we discuss opportunities for geographers to build the reputation of the discipline and ways to advocate for its importance in the wider academy, school curricula and community. We conclude with some preliminary suggestions on how Australian geographers may better engage and contribute to the United Nations Agenda 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.     

The ‘secular’ settlement and Australian political thought

This paper challenges the tendency among contemporary historians and political scientists to read secularism and religion in Australian political history in binary terms. It is argued that this framework is anachronistic, creating a barrier to a proper appreciation of religion in Australian political history. In keeping with much British Enlightenment thinking, religion through much of Australia’s history was deemed to have great social utility and its promotion was of central secular significance. This understanding framed the education debates of the second half of the nineteenth century as well as the social welfare reforms and institution building around the Federation period. Such developments cast doubt on claims that secularism of an exclusionary kind is a key element of the now widely invoked category of the Australian settlement.     

Halford Mackinder's “new” political geography and the geographical tradition

This article re-examines Halford Mackinder's conception of geography in general and his practise as a political geographer in particular by placing his work in the context of the history of geography. The nature and politicisation of early modern (c.1600–1850) geography are depicted, and used as a contextual standard against which to assess Mackinder's claims to have propounded a “new” geography and a “new” form of political geography. Mackinder's conception of geography is found to have been a substantial departure from the early modern one, in terms of its definition of geography, its textual format and its placing of geography in a broader educative structure. By contrast, Mackinder's political geography is shown to effect a far less radical break, for whilst Mackinder's rhetoric suggests that geography will drive his political analysis, it is in fact his pre-existent politics as a tariff-reforming conservative which drove his political geography. To the extent that geography acted as a container for politics, Mackinder was still in the tradition of the early modern period, although he did change the form of that argument.     

Where is Chinese nationalism? The political geography of a moving project

ABSTRACT. Since the rise of Chinese nationalism at the end of the nineteenth century, different political groups have sought to mobilise regional support by identifying with the national agenda of regional preferences. There have been changing contestations appealing to north, south, center, west and east. By analysing these moving identities, one can escape a misleading homogenisation of actual multi‐strandedness and better understand the nature and potential consequences of ongoing political struggles using conflicting nationalisms on behalf of diverse political agendas, some more war‐prone than others.     

Red outposts in a hostile landscape: People's houses,People's parks and the reconstruction of rural southern Sweden's political geography, 1889–1909

Organizing rural workers has always proved to be a challenge for the labour movement. This was especially the case in Scandinavia where well into the industrial era, labour and property relations in the agricultural countryside remained essentially feudal in character. Nonetheless, and especially in the rich agricultural districts of the southernmost province of Skåne, the Swedish labour movement had succeeded spectacularly by the interwar years. Perhaps unintuitively, a key to its success was that it focused as much money and energy on constructing new spaces of culture and leisure – so-called People's Houses and People's Parks – as it did to direct workplace organizing. Drawing on Kevin Cox's concepts of “spaces of dependence” and “spaces of engagement,” this paper explains how and why Sweden's labour unions succeeded in remaking Skåne's political geography and transformed the region into one of the strongest social-democratic districts in early-twentieth century Sweden.     

Conservative instinct in Australian political thought: The Federation debates, 1890–1898

Many historians of Australian political thought have attributed its pragmatic and anti-speculative tendencies to a Benthamite influence. Without denying the influence of Bentham and Benthamism on Australian thought and institutional development, this article challenges the assumption that the abovementioned tendencies necessarily betray a Benthamite heritage. By analysing the theoretical justifications for pragmatic, anti-speculative approaches to institutional design in the Federation debates (1890–1898), this article shows that there was a very strong Burkean impulse behind the sort of pragmatism that is usually attributed to Bentham. If the argument of this article is correct, then it is an invitation for historians and political scientists to reconsider significantly the nature of Australian political thought.

研究澳大利亚政治思想的史家将澳大利亚政治思想的实用、反思辨倾向归之于边沁的影响。本文并不否认边氏对澳大利亚思想以及制度发展的影响,但对上述倾向为边氏遗产的说法不能赞同。笔者分析了联邦辩论（1890—1898）中实用的、反思辨的制度设计,指出通常被归到边沁的实用主义,其背后跃动的实乃伯克的思想。如果此论不谬,历史学者和政治学者就应好好考虑澳大利亚政治思想的性质了。