“Compassionate” Strategies of Managing Homelessness: Post‐Revanchist Geographies in San Francisco

Abstract: After almost 30 years of Federal retraction from anti‐poverty initiatives, many American cities have been left with the dual burden of intensified poverty and far fewer resources to combat the problem. At the same time, such devolution has afforded cities the authority to forge poverty policy at the local level, such that the familiar neoliberal imperatives of state retraction and the mobilization of territory for capitalist expansion are frequently tempered by more progressive political imperatives at the local scale. What has thus emerged is a deeply ambivalent policy landscape, of which “kinder and gentler” poverty management strategies are a central feature. Using the example of a recent homeless program in San Francisco, “Care Not Cash”, this paper argues that such poverty management strategies, while less punitive than their revanchist predecessors, nonetheless introduce a new set of exclusions to the service delivery system, many of which are obscured by the language of compassion. In order to illustrate those new exclusions, I describe the city's homeless geographies—the public spaces, shelters, service sites, and housing models—that have been produced and reconfigured according to a logic of managing homelessness through the provision of care.     

Partisan gerrymandering and population instability: Completing the redistricting puzzle

How can partisan mapmakers enact a partisan gerrymander in the presence of risk-averse co-partisan incumbents who wish to keep most of their constituencies intact? Until now the literature on redistricting has focused on how redistricting affects the geography of partisan support, that is, the underlying partisan balance of electoral districts. We posit that this emphasis on partisanship misses half of the story. Partisan mapmakers have another tool at their disposal: the fostering of population instability that may not affect a district's partisan balance. By examining all redistricting plans enacted in 2001–2002, as well as three case studies, we show that partisan mapmakers strategically foster population instability, which poses problems for incumbents in a way that may not be apparent when looking exclusively at the effects of redistricting on partisanship. Our results show how partisan mapmakers simultaneously achieve two goals: enacting an “optimal gerrymander,” which strengthens some opposition-party incumbents, while inducing instability and reducing the personal vote of those same incumbents. We also show that so-called “neutral” redistricting plans are successful in disregarding incumbency. Finally, our results suggest another mechanism that explains why the 2002 congressional elections in the U.S. produced little competition.     

The African Queen? Republicanism and Defensive Decolonization in British Tropical Africa, 1958-64

This article focuses on a neglected aspect of the transfer ofpower in British tropical Africa from 1958 to 1964. It suggeststhat, from around 1962, the British government actively encouragedAfrican states to move straight to republican status on independence,rather than retaining the Queen as their head of state. Ministersand officials feared that the subsequent adoption of republicanconstitutions by states that had initially retained the monarchymight prove an embarrassment to the Queen. This determinationto shield the monarch from embarrassment appears to have beenthe overriding factor in British calculations. In this respectthe monarchy was, perhaps, an excessively fragile instrumentfor the promotion of Britain's relations with its former colonies.     

Numéro Spécial La Gestion Touristique dans les Villes d'Accueil

Les articles qui apparaissent dans ce numéro spécial ont ďabord été présentés àľassemblée annuelle de ľACG en mai 1979 lors ďune séance intitulée « Le Tourisme au Canada: recherche et planification >>.