(Re)creating places and spaces in two countries: Brazilian transnational migration processes

Brazilian immigration to the United States is a relatively recent phenomenon that gained momentum in the 1980s in unprecedented numbers. Today an estimated 1.2 million Brazilians live in the United States. Brazilians (re)create transnational places and spaces through social, cultural, and economic practices, within the immigrant receiving communities of Marietta, Georgia, and Framingham, Massachusetts, in the United States. They also incorporate and add new elements to their livelihoods in the respective sending communities of Piracanjuba, in the state of Goiás, and Governador Valadares, in the state of Minas Gerais, in Brazil. How are these Portuguese-speaking Brazilian immigrants shaping and (re)creating new places and spaces? In what ways and spheres do transnational exchanges affect two places of destination in the United States and two places of origin in Brazil after migration occurs? Using multiple methods, which include in-depth interviews and participant observation, this paper addresses these questions by evaluating the changes incurred by migration. I use a framework perspective that is largely from outside the Latino/Hispanic context. Migration processes are just as much about those who leave Brazil for the United States as it is about those who return to Brazil (i.e. returnees) and what happens to those respective receiving and sending communities in both countries.     

The Archaeology of Slavery at the Van Cortlandt Plantation in the Bronx,New York

Excavations at the Van Cortlandt Mansion, the central structure of an eighteenth-century plantation located in Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, New York, highlight the difficulty of using archaeological evidence to document the story of enslavement in early America. While the documents indicate the extent of the Van Cortlandts' involvement in the slave trade and in the reliance on enslaved labor to build and run their enterprise, the excavations carried out over several years have not yielded concomitant evidence.     

Bodies over borders: The sized body and geographies of transnationalism

This article connects the study of transnationalism with the growing area of fat studies. It proposes that a ‘trans-sizing’ approach to the body has the potential to illuminate both accounts of transnational migration and the body. I conclude by outlining two research agendas with the aim of expanding the focus of work on fatness and transnationalism; first, through focusing on (anti)obesity discourse in China, and second, on the relational experiences of migrant encounters in global cities.     

The $15 Wage Movement Moves South: Politics of Region in Labor Union Campaigns

The North American labor movement continues to wrestle with the challenges of organizing workers in the US South. This article explores the contradictory position of the South in the contemporary labor movement, using the circulation of the $15 minimum wage to ground the analysis. By problematizing the place of the South in US labor, this article contributes to efforts to complicate the geographic imaginaries of the South and to our understanding of the contemporary labor movement's expansionary projects. Drawing on qualitative interviews and participant observation in Greensboro and Durham, North Carolina, and Richmond, Virginia, I trace the abstract circulation of organizational resources, strategies, and tactics of the $15 wage movement into, throughout, and back out of the South.     

The spatialities of intersectional thinking: fashioning feminist geographic futures

In this article, we highlight the inherent spatialities of intersectionality and its pivotal importance for feminist geographic thought. Intersectionality was, at its inception, already a deeply spatial theoretical concept, process and epistemology, particularly when read through careful and serious engagement with Black Feminist Thought and the writings of radical women of color. We do so here, revisiting Cooper, Crenshaw, Collins and other key scholars to demonstrate that the interlocking violence of racism, patriarchy, heteronormativity, and capitalism have always constituted a spatial formation. Drawing on feminist geographic thought from the 1990s onwards, we highlight the influence of intersectional thinking on our discipline particularly concerning how racial, gendered and classed power operates in place and through space. These pieces have inspired and driven our work, and we extend them here, recognizing newer scholarship that extends and enriches feminist geography through a postcolonial intersectionality. We close by arguing that intersectional thinking is indispensable to feminist geography. Working in solidarity, across and through the interrogation of difference, with agreement and discord, we encourage a deeper feminist geographic engagement with intersectional thinkers, contributing to more critical (and hopeful) futures for our scholarship.     

Friedrich Ratzel and the nature of (political) geography

It is impossible to understand Ratzel's Politische Geographie without placing the figure of its author in the perspective of the critical bourgeois geography of the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth century. From this point of view, Ratzel is the last representative of this bourgeois movement born in the first part of the eighteenth century in Germany with the name of “pure geography” or “natural geography”, and developed in the following century thanks to the great works of Karl Ritter and Alexander von Humboldt. The purpose of bourgeois critical geography was to create a geographical discourse (a reasoning) able to transcend the identification between geographic knowledge and cartographic representation that was maintained by the Staatsgeographen—that is by the state geographers who defended the feudal aristocratic regime. But it is precisely this identification that German bourgeois geographers appropriated in the second half of the nineteenth century, after the bourgeoisie came into power through a compromise with its ancient political opponent. Only Ratzel, direct heir of the Erdkunde tradition of Ritter and von Humboldt, was an exception by opposing the new bourgeois state geography with his own state-based geography.     

Contesting captive cetaceans: (il)legal spaces and the nature of dolphins in urban Singapore

Drawing on the debate over dolphin captivity in Singapore, we examine the ways in which human–animal relationships are contested. Departing from most animal geography studies which often focused on the conflictual spatial transgressions of animals into human spaces, we use the idea of ‘captivity’ as a heuristic to posit that human–animal relationships are necessarily moral, spatially enmeshed in contestations over what is (un)natural and increasingly entwined in legal geographies. While such an argument mirrors other sites of animal captivity (for example, zoos), dolphin captivity sits in a more ambiguous legal terrain than most other captive animals in zoos. Moreover, the very ‘nature’ of dolphins makes debates over their ‘authenticity’ ever more complex. The moralities of cetaceans are simultaneously underpinned by questions of the spatial (‘captive sites’ and ‘open seas’), the socio-cultural (‘charismatic animals’) and the legal (‘regulatory frameworks governing their welfare and whether they are endangered or not’). Hitherto, cetaceans are less researched (compared to terrestrial creatures) in animal geographies with even fewer studies focusing on cetacean captivity. We call for an expanded notion of ‘captivity’ that is relative, relational and non-absolute and underpinned by the notions of ‘nature’. In so doing, we align ourselves more with the anti-captivity camp.     

(Re)assessing Parliamentary Policy Impact: The Case of the Australian Senate

A recent article in this Journal suggested that assumptions about the legislative influence of the Australian Senate may overstate its de facto power. Stanley Bach indicated that compromise with the Senate was relatively rare, and pointed out that most successful Senate amendments were government amendments. This paper provides an alternative view. We suggest that legislative influence is more subtle than Bach acknowledged, and that it is necessary to dig deeper in the data to fully understand the Senate's role. We therefore supplement his analysis in two ways: (1) through tracking the ultimate outcome of government defeats in the Senate; and (2) through analysis of two case study bills. We find that in confrontations with government the Senate ‘wins’ the great majority of the time. This shapes government behaviour in the chamber, such that many government amendments actually respond to non-government concerns. The most important element of Senate influence is therefore ‘soft power’– exercised through negotiation – backed up only in extremis by the ‘hard power’ of government defeat. This holds important lessons for the study of legislative influence more broadly, as well as demonstrating the true power of the Australian Senate.     

Measuring Fatness, Governing Bodies: The Spatialities of the Body Mass Index (BMI) in Anti-Obesity Politics

Abstract:  The Body Mass Index (BMI) is the dominant means of defining and diagnosing obesity in national and international public health policy. This paper draws on geographical engagements with Foucault's work on biopower and governmentality to question the power afforded the BMI in obesity policy. With reference to a UK public health intervention involving the measurement of children's bodies within schools, the paper questions the multiple materialities and spatialities of the BMI with reference to both its role in the construction of geographies of obesity and its (in)ability to capture the fleshy, material, and experiential bodies of those individuals involved in the process of measurement. The paper contributes to poststructuralist health geographies through writing fleshy, active bodies into a Foucauldian reading of health and illness, thus questioning the justifications and implications of an obesity politics focussed on the BMI.     

The PalaeoEnvironments and ARchaeological Landscapes (PEARL) project: Recent findings from Neolithic sites in Northern Oman

The PalaeoEnvironments and ARchaeological Landscapes (PEARL) research project is a joint German–British project with the principal objective of developing a framework of past human occupation and landscape change in south-eastern Arabia. Fieldwork during 2018 and 2019 involved the systematic survey and excavation of sites in the Rustaq and Ibri regions of Northern Oman, with the aim of establishing the nature and timing of human occupation and landscape change during the Early Holocene period (c. 10,000–7,000 years BP). Further to the findings previously reported, results from recent excavations of the site Hayy al-Sarh in Rustaq revealed the presence of animal remains, stone and shell beads and stone structures, indicating a large Neolithic settlement with burial areas. In addition, preliminary excavations at a rock shelter site near Ibri have revealed stratified archaeological remains, including a Fasad-type assemblage. Future fieldwork will further develop archaeological and palaeoenvironmental records to help build a framework for studying cultural and natural developments in Northern Oman.     

Dental Modifications in a Skeletal Sample of Enslaved Africans Found at Lagos (Portugal)

An archaeological intervention in Valle da Gafaria (Lagos, Portugal) allowed the excavation of a deposit of waste dating from the 15^th to 17^th centuries. Among discarded objects, an important amount of human skeletal remains was exhumed (N = 158 individuals). The archaeological and historical context, as well as the morphometric analysis of the skulls, led us to attribute them an African origin. While historical sources document the trade of slaves by the Portuguese since the 15^th century, so far no slave cemetery was excavated in Portugal. The study of their lives and deaths has been accomplished by historical documents. Therefore, this sample provides a unique opportunity to learn more about captive individuals who were brought to Portugal in the modern period. The present work focuses in the intentional dental modifications presented by several of these individuals. A total of 113 subjects have teeth that can be evaluated for the presence of intentional modifications. Of these, 55.8% individuals present dental modifications on their anterior dentition, 42.9% exhibiting modifications on both upper and lower teeth. The incisors were the most frequently modified teeth, followed by the canines. Both men and women as adults and sub‐adults have dental intentional modifications. In most individuals, dental modifications involved the removal of the mesial and distal angles, which is comparable with sub‐Saharan African practices. However, we cannot infer a more specific origin for these slaves only based on dental modification's type and pattern because several ethnic groups modify teeth in the same way. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The legal (de)construction of geography: race and political community in supreme court redistricting decisions

This article examines the different conceptions of racial identity and ‘geography’ in two landmark Supreme Court decisions, Shaw v. Reno (1993) and Easley v. Cromartie (2001). Both decisions evaluated similar Congressional redistricting plans in North Carolina, but reached opposite conclusions. In Reno, the Court based its reasoning on the ‘objective’, ‘natural’ and ‘rational’ geography of North Carolina. Such geographic relationships create political communities and constrain the way in which state legislatures can draw electoral districts. In contrast, the Easley decision based its reasoning on voting behaviour, and makes an implicit appeal to deliberative democratic principles. From this perspective, political relationships create the geographic relationships defined by Congressional district boundaries. Where the Reno decision treats race as an arbitrary social distinction that the state should not use as the basis of political representation, the Easley opinion argues that the state can consider differences in racial voting behaviour during the redistricting process. More fundamentally, the Easley decision implies that racial identity is formed by deliberative political communities, rather than being an objective, static characteristic. This suggests that disputes over spatial relationships are critical to the construction of hegemonic racial identities, and that space is fundamental to the conception of racial difference.     

Caviar matter(s): The material politics of the European caviar grey market

The last quarter of a century saw the international political community make concerted efforts to regulate global caviar trade and prevent illegal harvesting of critically endangered sturgeon. Ironically, the regulations have enabled the emergence of novel forms of illicit trade which intertwine legal and illegal streams of caviar on the international marketplace. This paper foregrounds these licit-illicit interfaces and argues that the international caviar trade constitutes a ‘grey market’ characterized by a host of laundering practices that entangle legal and illegal caviar flows. Drawing on geographical scholarship on political animals and fleshy geopolitics, the paper theorises how the fleshy material properties of caviar, namely its chemical-isotope profile and composite form, directly shape the European caviar grey market. By highlighting how the materiality of caviar creates grey interfaces between legal and illegal caviar economies, the paper unsettles dominant dichotomized representations of illegal caviar trade which tend to foster overwhelmingly securitized policy-enforcement approaches in Europe. In pointing to the hidden ‘fleshy geopolitics’ surrounding EU enforcement strategies, the paper calls for a reshaping of policy and enforcement which better attends to the grey dimensions of the caviar market and provides increased protection for wild sturgeon populations and marginalised communities located at the Eastern borders of Europe.     

Landscapes of (neo-)liberal control: the transcarceral spaces of federally sentenced women in Canada

This article maps the racializing, classing and gendering cartographies of cross-spatial marginalization and social control experienced by women who were formerly federally incarcerated in Canada. By investigating women's criminalization, prison and post-prison experiences, this article traces practices of racialization, gendering and classing that underwrite liberal to neo-liberal forms of social control. Results from 68 interviews with women released from federal prisons in Canada show that women's criminalization cannot solely be traced to shifts from liberal to neo-liberal governance, but rather to the ways in which structures of oppression have influenced women's criminalization across liberal to neo-liberal rationalities. This analysis shows how liberal ‘welfarist’ ideas and ideals are embedded in neo-liberal reforms and provide the discursive platforms of an extended and widened network of social control of criminalized women beyond prison walls, across institutions, including a variety of (non-)government actors and the women themselves. This widened web of (neo-)liberal social control constitutes practices that have formed carceral spaces beyond prison walls and have perpetuated and exacerbated women's marginality after their release from federal prisons in Canada.     

White Settler Society as Monster: Rural Southeast Kansas,Ancestral Osage (Wah‐Zha‐Zhi) Territories,and the Violence of Forgetting

This article provides a critical analysis of the practices and discourses of white settler “men” in Southeast Kansas (Ancestral Osage Territories) by examining the inextricable links rural masculinity has with settler colonialism. I begin by underscoring how efforts in erasing Indigenous histories have been sanctioned through processes of dispossession, bordering, and nation‐state building. I then explore how hetero‐patriarchal rural hierarchies are assembled via capitalistic desires for private property; conservative Christianity's rhetoric of altruism and good intentions; white supremacist conceptions of race; and masculinist perspectives regarding work and gender. Next, I highlight how the spatial assertion of white settler masculinity reproduces colonial oppressions based upon interlocking subject positions and notions of difference. I continue by suggesting denial and disaffiliation are banal exercises of disavowal employed by white settler societies as attempts to forget colonial violence. I then finish by illustrating how a masculinist status quo might be disrupted, resisted, and transformed.     

Mabo and Museums: ‘The Indigenous (Re)Appropriation of Indigenous Things’

In this paper I extend upon the categories of appropriation identified by Beings, land and people. Using the work of Nancy Munn (1984) and Annette Weiner (1992), I argue that the relationship between objects, place, Beings and people is of a consubstantial and inalienable nature. Following on from this argument, I propose that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander rights and interests in land or waters, as defined by the recent Native Title legislation, cannot be alienated from rights and interests in other cultural possessions. These other cultural forms include tjurunga, as well as songs, ceremonies and paintings. As this suggests, in the post-Mabo landscape museums represent important collecting sites for indigenous people; a somewhat different identity to the former status of museums as sites of indigenous collections.     

Manganese Black Pigments in Prehistoric Paintings: the Case of the Black Frieze of Pech Merle (France)

Different black pigments of natural origin (mineral or organic) have been examined by means of several analytical methods (colour measurements, elemental analysis and structural analysis). The results, after being compared with each other, then served as reference points in the study of the ‘Black Frieze’ of the cave of Pech Merle (Lot). After that, colour measurement was investigated in situ on the paintings as a means of displaying small differences (in hue or chroma) between the black colours. The aim of this study was to verify several hypotheses concerning the techniques used by the painters of Pech Merle, and specifically by the one(s) of the Black Frieze. A first objective was that of identifying the nature and, if possible, the origin of the black pigments used in these figures. A second objective was that of determining in which parts of the frieze one or the other (or one and the other) had been used; and the final objective was to provide new technical information that might help us better to understand how the Pech Merle frieze was produced, whether by a single painter and in one episode, for the most part, or, on the contrary, in several episodes and by a succession of different painters.     

Dirty dancing: the (non)fluid embodied geographies of a queer nightclub in Tel Aviv

This paper examines the (non)fluid embodied geographies of a queer nightclub in Tel Aviv, Israel. The nightclub is considered to be a space of sexual liberation and hosted the Friendly Freedom Friday party. Yet, the space of the nightclub is also divided by gender and sexuality. We draw on individual in-depth interviews and participant observations to examine the tensions that arise from, and between, gay men, transwomen and club spaces. A number of paradoxes are present in the club. We argue that the fluidity of subjectivity—espoused by queer theorists—evaporates when confronted with the materiality of actual sweating bodies. We are interested in the visceral geographies of how and where sweat, and other body fluids, becomes matter out of place or ‘dirty.’ Three points structure our discussion. First, we outline the theoretical debates about body fluids and fluid subjectivities. Second, we examine gay men's and transwomen's bodily preparations that occur prior to attending the nightclub. The spatial, gendered and sexed dimensions of participants’ subjectivities are embedded in desires to attend the club. Finally, we argue that the spaces gay, partially clothed and sweating male bodies occupy are distinct from, and in opposition to, transwomen's clothed and non-sweating bodies.