Interrogating Madrid's “Slum of Shame”: Urban Expansion,Race, and Place‐Based Activisms in the Cañada Real Galiana

Following the spontaneous occupation of Madrid's Puerta del Sol in 2011, many academic accounts have found these mobilizations new and noteworthy for their technological savvy and networked capabilities. In this article, I argue that such depictions fail to capture both the influence of Spanish urbanism's material conditions on certain disadvantaged populations, and the broad diversity of these contemporary activisms. Looking to struggles over the proposed demolition of a squatter settlement in Madrid, I demonstrate how Madrid's planning has propagated racial imaginaries to legitimate dispossession and subvert anti‐poverty policies. Second, I examine how resistance and contestation emerge out of specific urban experiences of inequality, and transcend traditional modes of activist organizing through the formation of broad coalitions between various civil society actors. In doing so, I argue that Madrid's mobilizations have paradoxically opened new avenues for the inclusion minority voices, against popular understandings that read rising xenophobia during crisis.     

The sky is the limit: reconstructing physical geography from an aerial perspective

In an era of rapid geographical data acquisition, interpretations of remote sensing products are an integral part of many undergraduate geography degree schemes but there are fewer opportunities for collection and processing of primary remote sensing data. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) provide a relatively inexpensive opportunity to introduce the principles and practice of airborne remote sensing into field courses, enabling students to learn about image acquisition, data processing and interpretation of derived products. Two case studies illustrate how a low-cost “DJI Phantom Vision+” UAV can be used by students to acquire images that can be processed using Structure-from-Motion photogrammetry software. Results from a student questionnaire and analysis of assessed student reports showed that using UAVs enhanced student engagement and equipped them with data processing skills. The derivation of bespoke orthophotos and Digital Elevation Models has the potential to provide students with opportunities to gain insight into various remote sensing data quality issues, although additional training is required to maximize this potential. Recognition of the successes and limitations of this teaching intervention provides scope for improving future UAV exercises. UAVs are enabling both a reconstruction of how we measure the Earth’s surface and a reconstruction of how students do fieldwork.     

Improving Sanitation in the Slums of Mumbai: An Analysis of Human Rights-Based Approaches for NGOs

Human rights-based approaches (HRBAs) can challenge the underlying structures and power relations that perpetuate poverty. They have thus emerged in the development field as a prominent instrument for addressing development issues. Access to clean water and sanitation are now internationally acknowledged as human rights, and have become a stand-alone Sustainable Development Goal of the international community’s commitment to international development. This paper analyses the potential use of HRBAs by local Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) working on sanitation issues in slums in Mumbai. It is argued that it is more productive for local NGOs to build (i) partnerships with duty-bearers (in this case the state and the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai) and (ii) the capacity of rights-holders, in particular women, than to rely on litigation strategies to create momentum for change. HRBAs are more useful as a political tool for NGOs for establishing good working relationships with government agencies rather than as a legal instrument, which can be counter-productive to the poverty reduction objectives of NGOs.     

Suffolk Place,Southwark, London: a Tudor palace and its terracotta architectural decoration

Suffolk Place (c. 1518–22), Southwark, was the London residence of Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk. This majestic palace is visible in the foreground of Wyngaerde’s London panorama (c. 1544), from which it can be inferred that it possessed a double courtyard plan. The southern and eastern ranges of the outer courtyard of Suffolk Place were apparently adorned with architectural terracottas at both entablature and parapet level. As the palace was demolished in 1557–58, the finds of ex-situ terracottas are a key source of information concerning the decorative scheme of this vanished palace. Petrological study and other research indicates that the terracottas were locally manufactured, implying the existence of a London-area workshop.     

Sex work and exclusion in the tourist districts of Salvador,Brazil

Salvador, capital of the state of Bahia, in the Northeastern region of Brazil, is composed of racialized, gendered, and sexualized spaces in which certain people are welcome, while others are marginalized and excluded. Praça da Sé, in the Centro Histórico, is a major site of both the local commercial sex industry and the tourist industry in Salvador. With their public visibility in sites heavily frequented by tourists, sex workers in Salvador reveal how sexuality is public, politically contested, economically charged, and, most significantly, racialized. If, as Tom Boellstorff argues, ‘globalization resignifies the meaning of place rather than making place irrelevant’ (2007, 23), how does one then study racialized sexualities in the context of the globalized tourism industry? How do class, space, and race influence practices of sex work and sex tourism in Salvador? This article offers a critical analysis of racialized sexualities in the study of the sexual economies of tourism in Salvador. I conceptualize Salvador as a ‘site of desire’ (Manderson and Jolly 1997) where issues of socioeconomic inequality, racism, and sexism coexist alongside celebratory affirmations of Afro-Brazilian cultural production in Salvador. This article explores how the touristic cityscape of Salvador is divided into carefully demarcated zones where class and race are crucial factors in determining who ‘belongs’ and who is ‘out of place.’     

Iron isotope analysis of red and black pigments on pottery in Nasca,Peru

The Nasca culture of the south coast of Peru developed during the first millennium ad and is known internationally for its elaborately decorated polychrome pots. Despite decades of iconographic analysis, little is known about the more technological aspects of Nasca pigment production and application. We present results from a pilot study on iron isotopes as a potential line of inquiry into the differences between red and black pigments in Nasca pigments. As well, we conduct a small firing experiment to examine potential changes in isotope composition. Our analyses show three significant results. First, firing does not change the isotopic ratios of Fe in pigments. Second, red and black pigments show differences in their iron isotope composition, which relate to differences in the minerals used to make the different colors. Third, naturally available hematite samples show greater isotopic variation than pigment samples, suggesting that people selected a limited range of iron oxides to produce pigments.