Teaching (Political) Economic Geography: Some Personal Reflections

Teaching economic geography is not a matter of replicating textbook models. It requires engagement with the ever-changing global economy, which often puts the lie to existing theory. It demands that the teacher break down the economy into its major parts, in a way that students can grasp. This does not mean abandoning theory; on the contrary, it means getting beyond static exchange models to grasp the dynamics of commodity systems, divisions of labour, technology and capital flows. To this, add how geography matters to the way economies work. And always maintain a critical stance toward the world and toward received wisdom.     

Urban Political Ecology, Justice and the Politics of Scale

This and the subsequent papers in this special issue set out the contours of Marxian urban political ecology and call for greater research attention to a neglected field of critical research that, given its political importance, requires urgent attention. Notwithstanding the important contributions of other critical perspectives on urban ecology, Marxist urban political ecology provides an integrated and relational approach that helps untangle the interconnected economic, political, social and ecological processes that together go to form highly uneven and deeply unjust urban landscapes. Because the power-laden socioecological relations that shape the formation of urban environments constantly shift between groups of actors and scales, historical-geographical insights into these ever-changing urban configurations are necessary for the sake of considering the future of radical political-ecological urban strategies. The social production of urban environments is gaining recognition within radical and historical-materialist geography. The political programme, then, of urban political ecology is to enhance the democratic content of socioenvironmental construction by identifying the strategies through which a more equitable distribution of social power and a more inclusive mode of environmental production can be achieved.     

Academic Freedom,Intellectual Diversity,and the Place of Politics in Geography

Abstract: This paper examines the conservative critique of higher education in the USA. I argue, first, that the right's call for greater “intellectual diversity” in American higher education should be understood as an attack on the professional self‐regulation and disciplinary autonomy that are central to academic freedom in this country. Second, I suggest that the right's politicization of politics in the academy brings to light the importance of our developing a vision of the university that accounts for rather than disavows the political nature of the work we do.     

Political Geography and its Problems

Political geography has no separate standing in the Soviet Union as a research or teaching discipline. An advocate of political geography calls for acceptance of this subject as a full-fledged member of the geographical sciences by outlining some of the problems with which such a discipline might deal in the Soviet Union. It would be concerned with the historical evolution and current changes in the political map of the world and the factors that give rise to both quantitative changes (in territory and boundaries) and qualitative changes (in political systems). Wars, diplomatic actions, dynastic alliances and territorial purchases are listed as some of the factors that result in boundary changes of national states. Revolutions and national liberation movements account for changes in political systems. Heavy emphasis is given to the study of internal political developments that may ultimately result in changes on the political map of the world. Political events throughout the world are analyzed in the light of Marxist-Leninist ideology, and political and social processes in the capitalist and socialist (communist) parts of the world are sharply differentiated.     

Interaction between Nature and Society and Modern Geography

This paper, delivered by one of the leading Soviet philosophers at a plenary session of the Fourth Congress of the Geographical Society USSR, is the latest authoritative statement on the relationship between physical and economic geography. The author balances the fact of increasing differentiation and specialization and the continued existence of separate physical and economic-geographic groups of disciplines against the need for more synthesis in geographic research. He thus echoes ideas expressed by V. A. Anuchin earlier this year in the philosophical journal Problemy Filosofii [see Soviet Geography, April 1964]. Konstantinov, in preparing the paper, made use of the materials of the Combined Conference of Philosophical [Methodological] Seminars of the Academy of Sciences USSR on the theme “The problem of the interaction of nature and society and the place of the geographic sciences in its solution” [see Tezisy dokladov (Abstracts of Papers), Moscow, 1964], especially the paper by A. G. Doskach, Yu. P. Trusov, and Ye. T. Fadeyev on “The interaction of nature and society and some problems of modern geography.” Konstantinov also acknowledges suggestions from Academician I. P. Gerasimov, V. Zh. Kelle, a philosopher, and Academician Ye. K. Fedorov, a geophysicist.     

Political Theology,Religious Diversity and the Nature of Democratic Citizenship

ABSTRACT

Driving this essay is a question central to political theology; that is, how can I keep faith with my distinctive commitments while also forming a common life with neighbors who have a different vision of life to me? My response has four parts. First, I develop a normative definition of politics within which to situate an account of citizenship and the political implications of deep religious plurality in a shared polity. Second, I examine how citizenship is not just a legal status that entails certain rights and duties, but also denotes an identity, a performance of politics, and a shared rationality. Third, I identify the dominant ways in which citizenship is understood in the contemporary context, namely, through either a nationalist or cosmopolitan framework, contrasting these with a consociational conception of citizenship. And lastly, I lay out how a consociational framework provides a more generative basis for conceptualizing religious diversity.     

Social Justice and Women of Color in Geography: Philosophical musings,trying again

This paper is a collection of thoughts regarding women of color in geography. It advances a social justice argument for why women of color should be in geography. I suggest that the cultural turn in geography has not yielded what many hoped for and what is missing in the miasma of postmodernist debates is a consideration of right and wrong; more importantly who benefits and who loses?

Justicia y Mujeres del Color en la Geografía: las reflexiones filosoficas, intentando otra vez

Este artículo es una colección de pensamientos con respecto a las mujeres de color en geografía. Esta artículo avanza un argumento de justicia social para que las mujeres de color debe estar en geografía. Sugiero que la inclinación cultural en geografía no ha producido lo que muchos geógrafos hubieran esperado y lo que falta en la niebla de debates post-modernistas es una consideración de bueno y malo; mas importante, de quien beneficia y quien pierda?