Guest Editorial: Does Anglophone hegemony permeate Gender,Place and Culture?

This editorial is seen as a comment on the on-going concern expressed in several Anglophone geography journals about the hegemony of Angloamerican production and its role in formulating the terms of international academic debate. We examine the extent to which Angloamerican dominance is equally true with regard to feminist geography, by looking at how/whether Gender, Place and Culture (GPC) deals with this bias. Finally we forward some suggestions for positive action towards enhancing the international character of the journal.

¿La hegemonía Anglosajona impregna Gender, Place and Culture?

Esta nota editorial trata de un tema que en la actualidad es motivo de preocupación en algunas revistas anglosajonas, la hegemonía de la producción anglosajona en geografía y su papel crucial en la formulación de los debates académicos internacionales. A través del anàlisis de la revista Gender Place and Culture, se discute cómo esta situación se da también en la geografía feminista. Finalmente, se proponen una serie de acciones positivas para potenciar el carácter internacional de la revista.     

Tradeoffs between Local Taxes and Government Spending as Determinants of Business Location*

Abstract. This paper investigates the effects of local fiscal policy on the location decisions of 3,763 establishments that began operations in Maine between 1993 and 1995. Empirical results, estimated from Poisson and negative binomial regression models, indicate that businesses favor municipalities that spend high amounts on public goods and services, even when these expenditures are financed by an increase in local taxes. This suggests that a local fiscal policy of reduced government spending, to balance a tax cut, may attract fewer new businesses than a policy featuring additional spending and higher taxes.     

Active by Design: Promoting Physical Activity through School Ground Greening

Green school grounds exhibit a greater diversity of landscaping and design features than conventional school grounds, thus enhancing the quantity and quality of physical activity among elementary school children. Through greening, school grounds diversify the play repertoire, creating opportunities for boys and girls of all ages, interests and abilities to be more physically active. This paper builds on a 2006 study (Bell and Dyment, 2006 Bell, A. C. and Dyment, J. E. 2006. Grounds for Action: Promoting Physical Activity through School Ground Greening in Canada, Toronto, Ontario: Evergreen. Available at http://www.evergreen.ca/en/lg/lg-resources.html [Google Scholar], Grounds for Action: Promoting Physical Activity through School Ground Greening in Canada, Toronto, Ontario: Evergreen) and explores factors related to school ground design and culture that both limit and enable opportunities for physical activity. Questionnaires (N = 105) were completed by teachers, parents, and administrators associated with 59 schools across Canada. Results indicate that in order to stimulate active play, school grounds should be designed to provide adequate space, diverse play opportunities and interaction with natural elements. Safety, comfort and maintenance issues also need to be taken into consideration at the design stage. With respect to school ground culture, children are more active when rules, policies and supervision allow for non-competitive, open-ended play, as well as opportunities to care for the garden or green space. The implications of these findings are discussed and recommendations are offered for policy makers.     

Co-becoming with angophora: performing more-than-human belongings in Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park

Belonging in Australian national parks has long been associated with universal ideas of nativeness or naturalness. However, these delineations have been critiqued as rooted in western, dualistic understandings of nature and culture that do not allow for other ways of conceptualising the world or for the agency of nonhumans. This paper argues for reconceptualising belonging as an ontological co-becoming where multiple contingent belongings co-emerge with bodies, worlds and place. To show how belonging co-becomes, I examine human–tree relations surrounding a special and sacred tree in Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park, Australia, the Angophora costata. I tell three stories that shed light on the multiple ways performances of belonging are entangled with histories, stories, spirits, and present and absent humans and nonhumans. In doing so, I show how belonging is a more-than-human practice where ideas of native and natural are questioned.     

A mosque event: the opening of a purpose-built mosque in Copenhagen

This paper explores the opening of a purpose-built mosque in Copenhagen, treating it as a case of cross-cultural encounters in urban public space. The encounters explored, then, take a specific form; they are mediated through the architecture and materiality of the mosque and the symbolic signs and public imaginations attached to it. And they are connected to a specific event – the opening of the mosque. In the first part, a conceptual framework is presented bringing together literature on three notions: encounters, visibility and the event. Following this, the paper explores the opening event, the public debate that surrounds it, the process leading up to it and some reactions in the months that followed. The paper concludes by showing how the opening event expresses several paradoxes. The controversies over the visibility of Islam in public space push stereotypical imaginations and Islamophobic feelings to the extremes. At the same time, however, they bring together different groups in unprecedented ways and create new constellations over political, religious and cultural boundaries.