Mapping the soft city: using cognitive mapping to respond to London-based literature and explore the construction of teenage place-related identity

ABSTRACT

Raban (1974. Soft City: What Cities Do To Us, and How They Change the Way We Live, Think and Feel. London: Hamish Hamilton, 2) distinguishes between the ‘hard’ city of statistics and maps, versus the ‘soft’ city of the ‘creative play of urban living’, ‘an art’ which enables urbanites to mould cities in their desired image. This case study reviews approaches to conceptualising urban space, exploring practical tasks through which London students can engage with, and write about, their place-related identities in order to enhance their readings of the rich range of literature set in their city. Developing an unconventional approach to teaching two A-level (16–18 years old) English Literature coursework texts – John Gay’s (1716) Trivia and Geoff Nicholson’s (1997) Bleeding London – it was hoped that students might be helped to ask whether a comprehensive (‘hard’) knowledge of London can ever be achieved. This case study is primarily an account of the students’ own London maps, a creative task designed to help them engage thematically with the coursework texts.     

Books of Life: Biography and Memory in a Bronze Age Barrow

An important round barrow with a primary Beaker interment and numerous secondary burials was excavated at Barnack, Cambridgeshire, in 1974–6. Reading the published report gives the impression that many of the secondary interments, by their location and attitude, reveal a memory of the primary rite. It is argued that the sequence of burials at Barnack reflects the genealogical history of the group which used the site. A series of events emerges, structured primarily by the concept of 'difference', which both retain the unique identities of the buried individuals and form a constructed narrative of society. Similar sequences are evident at other Bronze Age barrows in the east Midlands and elsewhere. Such sites seem to represent our closest approach to the 'embodied experiences' of prehistoric actors.     

Gender for the 99 per cent (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

This article looks at the ways elite actors – men and women – try to reinforce gender inequality in order to justify class inequality. In class societies, elites try to naturalize inequality. They often use race or religion, but they always use gender. Gender buttresses class inequality so well because of the way it is embodied – it brings inequality into the most intimate, treasured and loving parts of our lives.     

Foregrounding the Muslim periphery (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

This guest editorial considers the implications of Akbar Ahmed's latest book –The Thistle and the Drone: How America's war on terror became a global war on tribal Islam, which was the centrepiece of several panel discussions in London.