A Waste of Space? Towards a Critique of the Social Production of Space…

This paper outlines a framework for a critique of Henri Lefebvre's notion of the social production of space, undertaken around five intersecting themes: language and meaning, the separation of space and time, the processes of production and construction, empowerment and value, and space and place.     

Discourses of Mobility and Polycentric Development: A Contested View of European Spatial Planning

This article carries out an analysis of the European Spatial Development Perspective (ESDP), a policy document which represents a critical moment in the emergence of a new discourse of European spatial development. The analytical approach probes at the power relations which have shaped the ESDP framework and its contents, focusing on the twin core themes of spatial mobility and polycentricity. The analysis concludes that in the contested policy process a new spatial discourse of economic competitiveness is emerging at the expense of social and environmental interests. This new discourse will be further contested as implementation takes place in an uncertain policy environment.     

Embodiment, Power and the Politics of Mobility: The Case of Female Tramps and Hobos

Mobility and travel have recently attracted the interest of many people, both inside and outside geography. This interest has often focused on issues of gender. Mobile women, in particular, have been seen to be indicative of wider social and cultural themes of power, exclusion, resistance and emancipation. In this paper, I consider the gendered dimensions of a moral panic in the United States between 1869 and 1940, known as the 'tramp scare'. I argue that the construction of the panic around threats to women's bodies and the actual experience of female tramps illuminates a clearly gendered and embodied politics of mobility.     

Beyond Dichotomy: Concepts of the Nation and the Distribution of Membership

Abstract. Globalisation, fragmentation and the emergence of identity politics challenge the myth of the homogeneous nation-state. They also lend increasing importance to processes of national boundary construction. This article argues that the dichotomy of ethnic and civic nations which traditionally informs much of social science discourse on nations and nationalism is inadequate to analyse how nations distribute membership. The same is true of the Meineckean distinction between cultural and political nations. Both typologies fail to account for some actually existing types of national boundary construction and they suggest that, in any instance, the process of boundary construction is homogeneous, universal and generic. As a consequence of these shortcomings, the ethnickivic dichotomy needs to be revised, by disentangling different organising principles at work in defining the boundaries of ethnic and civic nations: ancestry, race, culture and territory.     

Diet and seasonality in the Lower Pecos: evaluating coprolite data sets with cluster analysis

This article presents an analysis of three previous coprolite studies from Hinds Cave (41VV456), Val Verde County, Texas (Edwards, 1990; Stock, 1983; Williams-Dean, 1978). Patterns of dietary consumption related to season, microhabitat exploitation and diet breadth are explored with the statistical techniques of the cluster analysis and Canonical Discriminant Function Analysis (CDA). Shafer (1988) has proposed a model of seasonal mobility for the Lower Pecos that suggests that Hinds Cave would be predominantly occupied in the late summer/early fall. The results of the current analysis support the view that the site was also occupied intermittently during the rest of the seasonal cycle, suggesting a flexible mobility strategy that responded to annual and seasonal fluctuations in resource availability.