Challenging Hegemonies through Connecting Places,People and Ideas: Jan Monk's contribution to international gender geography (with particular reference to Spain)

The main goal of the paper is to study Jan Monk's contribution to the development of international gender geography, in particular in Spain. Our aim is also to explain the experiences and numerous connections among places, people and ideas that she has been weaving to foster international scholarship and, in this way, how she has challenged hegemonic approaches in feminist geography. Jan Monk comes originally from the Southern hemisphere and therefore she is well aware of the extent to which ‘Northern’ (or Anglo-American) ways of seeing the world define concepts, theories and ideas in geography (and also in feminist geography). Being an ‘insider’ and an ‘outsider’ as well as her sensibility to the important of place has permeated Jan's contribution to international gender geography.     

Absolute chronology of fluvial events in the Upper Dnieper River system and its palaeogeographic implications

A set of 121 radiocarbon and OSL dates has been compiled from the Upper Dnieper River and tributary valleys, Western European Russia. Each date was attributed according to geomorphic/sedimentological events and classes of fluvial activity. Summed probability density functions for each class were used to establish phases of increasing and reducing fluvial activity. The oldest detected reduction of fluvial activity was probably due to glacial damming at LGM. Within the Holocene three palaeohydrological epochs of millennial-scale were found: (1) high activity at 12,000–8,000 cal BP marked by large river palaeochannels; (2) low activity at 8,000–3,000 cal BP marked by formation of zonal-type soils on -floodplains; short episodes of high floods occurred between 6,500—4,400 cal BP; (3) contrasting hydrological oscillations since 3,000 cal BP with periods of high floods between 3,000–2,300 (2,000) and 900–100 cal BP separated by long interval of low floods 2,300 (2,000)-900 cal BP when floodplains were not inundated — zonal-type soils were developing and permanent settlements existed on floodplains. In the last millennium, four centennial-scale intervals were found: high flooding intervals are mid-11–mid-15^th century and mid-17–mid-20^th century. Intervals of flood activity similar to the present-day were: mid-15–mid-17^th century and since mid-19^th century till present. In the context of palaeohydrological changes, discussed are selected palaeogeographic issues such as: position of the glacial boundary at LGM, role of changing amounts of river runoff in the Black Sea level changes, floodplain occupation by Early Medieval population.     

Ian Hunter's Civil Philosophy

Summary

Ian Hunter's normative commitment is to civil philosophy. His sustained critique of metaphysical philosophy is to be understood in the context of his proposition that civil and moral philosophy are at war. Since civil philosophy is the only guarantor of social peace, the stakes are high.     

Hospital Drama: Visual Theatres of the Medical Rendezvous from Asylum to Hospital with Reference to Specific Works by Anna Furse

Abstract

This paper is informed by Furse’s practice as a theatre maker in two fields of output that are connected by two factors: first, the presence of the woman patient — hysteric/subfertile respectively — within the clinical gaze; second, the significance of the womb to each pathology. In the treatment of each (explored in Furse’s theatre), lens based technologies play their part, whilst the cultural and medical can be seen to have overlapped to produce specific meaning with regard to Her body and its spectacularity. The article presents an overview of some of the key issues in precisely how the woman’s body becomes spectacular within this prosthetic medical gaze and how the medical — and theatrically designed spaces to represent these — become meaningful and potent proxemics that in turn inform medical/ theatrical spectatorship. Overarching nineteenth-century protocols at the Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris (where Furse’s Augustine (Big Hysteria) is set) to contemporary imaging technologies used in the treatment of subfertility with Assisted Reproduction Technologies (the topic of her Art of A.R.T. projects), it examines the way in which photography develops through cinema to X-Ray, ultrasound and then 3D/4D ultrasound to ‘capture’ the woman’s body in ways by which she becomes muted and exposed. These occular technologies that extend the gaze, first to an exterior subject and then, eventually, traversing the flesh without knife, lend specific performativity to the ‘patient’ women, within the context of hysterias and reproductive impairments respectively. Finally, issues of suspension of disbelief are addressed. The spectator’s faith in the screen-based image of Her spectacular body is interrupted in Furse’s work, which is also keenly interested in the effect of such imagery on the woman’s sense of Self. The historical and cultural leaps in this article argue that there is indeed a trajectory through the history of medical imaging since the first application of photography to anatomy to the more advanced scoping technologies of medical imaging today, and that in each era, the production of these images remain fraught with cultural implications.     

Developing geographies of intersectionality with Relief Maps: reflections from youth research in Manresa,Catalonia

The conceptualisation of intersectionality has been one of the most important contributions to feminism, as it allows for theorisation about multiple and intersecting oppressions. This contributes to a more complex and dynamic understanding of social relations and power structures, and it acknowledges the differences between categories, but it has no methodological direction. I try to take this debate a step forward, by developing what I have called Relief Maps: a new way of collecting, analysing and displaying intersectional data. I consider Relief Maps to be a sound tool for studying the Geographies of Intersectionality, as they show the relationship between three dimensions: power structures (the social), lived experience (the psychological) and places (the geographical). By showing some examples of them, I demonstrate how Relief Maps make empirical work on intersectionality possible and how they are able to take into account both privilege and oppression without using categories in a fixed and rigid way. Taking the spatial dimension as a central part of the analysis, they show how the relationship between power structures varies depending on places and also illustrate how subject formations are done and undone through everyday spaces. Relief Maps aim to take the potentialities of intersectionality and minimise its limitations: they intend to disrupt homogeneous categories while pointing towards the material consequences of oppression. Finally, Relief Maps also provide some insights on intersectionality itself, as they help to think about how power structures relate to each other and the role that experience and place play in these processes.     

Ex-Ante Analysis of the Regional Impacts of the Common Agricultural Policy: A Rural–Urban Recursive Dynamic CGE Model Approach

A recursive dynamic regional Computable General Equilibrium model is developed to assess the economic impacts of two Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) scenarios in six NUTS-3 (Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics) (NUTS-1: major socio-economic regions, NUTS-2: basic regions for the application of regional policies, NUTS-3: small regions for specific diagnoses) regions of the European Union (EU). The main goal of the analysis is to assess the scenario effects (change in production, prices, income, employment) in the rural and urban parts of these regions as well as on the different sectors. The two scenarios analysed are related to a 30% reduction in Pillar 1 (market measures and direct support to farmers) support and the introduction of an EU-wide flat rate level of Pillar 1 support complemented by a 45% increase in Pillar 2 (Rural Development Policy) funds. Results show that the overall gross domestic product effects are not significant, due to the relatively low importance of both the agricultural sector and CAP spending in the regional economies. However, impacts on the agricultural sector are quite important and differ according to the nature of the policy shock. Also, the structural characteristics of each case study influence the rural–urban and sectoral spillovers, including impacts on region-specific agricultural activity.     

Houses,Objects, and the Politics of Inheritance in Josep Maria de Sagarra's Vida privada

Josep Maria de Sagarra's novel Vida privada (1932) portrays an upper-class Catalan family, the Lloberolas, as unable to adapt to the new economic and political situation taking place in the city of Barcelona at the end of Primo de Rivera's dictatorship and at the beginning of the Second Republic in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Through a close reading of this family's houses, furniture, and personal belongings, I argue that material elements in this novel are central to the narrator's ethical critique and moral judgment of Barcelona's elite. The Lloberolas treat humans as objects and objects as humans, and I contend that, in an ironic emulation, the narrator also objectifies the Lloberolas and equates them with their objects. This comparison elucidates the family's superficiality and corrupted morals. Objects are also essential in destabilizing public and private boundaries because they often transcend the private domain and expose—to the readers and to the other inhabitants of Barcelona—the protagonists’ personality. Moreover, in Vida privada, houses, furniture, and surnames are understood as an inheritance that transfers very specific ideals of social status from parents to children. By presenting this material heritage with the exemplifying case of the Lloberola family, Sagarra offers a sharp critique of the Catalan upper classes and their superficial values. Their necessity to cling to an inherited world centered on material possessions finally results in their loss of power and evidences their economic and moral decline.