Pathways of confinement: the legal constitution of carceral spaces in France’s social housing estates

This paper analyzes the enactment and evolution of article L.126 of the Code of Construction and Housing (CCH) in France and demonstrates the careful ways lawmakers have redefined ‘common areas’ in social housing estates as carceral spaces. It argues that such transformation has inserted these areas into a ‘carceral continuum’ that facilitates the arrest, prosecution and confinement of young people ‘hanging out’ in ‘common areas’. Drawing on the work of legal geographers on the co-constitutive relationship of law and space, and urban and carceral geographers exploring the criminalization of urban space and the extension of the carceral state, the paper illustrates how the pathways of confinement are legally constituted. The legal process documented here seeks to highlight the law’s meaning-making capacity and the complex legal practices – by actors and institutions located at multiple scales – which significantly condition urban practices and relationships. The analysis suggests, finally, that law’s constitutive power has limits that are brought to the fore by anti-police violence struggles. Pathways of confinement are, thus, fragile networks dependent upon the ongoing enactments, discourses, and practices by lawmakers and law-enforcers.     

Emotional geography of education for history learning

ABSTRACT

This conceptual paper explores two empirical examples to illustrate the need for ‘emotional geographies of education’ in relation to history learning at the level of primary education. It uses discursive analysis to analyse a specific WW2 history project, from a public school in England, to highlight the necessity to bridge formal environments of learning such as educational institutions, and informal spatialities of learning like the home and the community which provide the ‘funds of knowledge’ that students bring into the classroom. The article then discusses emotionality in the classroom (as a formal space of learning) by analysing pedagogical tools, such as testimonial literature used to facilitate emotional understanding of events like the Holocaust. Drawing from the literature on safe space, this article presents the nuances that have been raised with regard to power, dialogue and emotion, in relation to the discussion of classrooms as spaces of critical engagement with history.     

For the love of cuddly toys

ABSTRACT

This essay reflects upon a particular moment at the end of Chris Philo’s Children’s Geographies lecture [see Philo 2016. “‘Childhood is Measured Out by Sounds and Sights and Smells, Before the Dark Hour of Reason Grows’: Children’s Geographies at 12.” Children’s Geographies 14 (6): 623–640. doi:10.1080/14733285.2016.1187896], when discussion turned to cuddly toys. I recall a particular mood constituted in and by this moment: of apparent bashfulness, hesitancy, things-left-unsaid, and disinclination to discuss cuddly toys within the formal space of an academic conference. I suggest that this incident might be understood as indicative of three sets of silences which, still, characterise a great deal of work within the fantastically vibrant sub-disciplines of Children’s Geographies and Cultural Geographies. This argument is accompanied by photographic portraits of three particular toys: Angus, Arnold and the B.B.D. I hope that the presence of these portraits helps bring to the surface something of the often-silenced geographies – of memories, affects, intimacies and vulnerabilities, of play, fun and care, and of material and popular cultures – upon which my argument is focused.     

信息时代的地理学研究——NCGIA对若干理论问题的探索

本文以美国国家基金委员会资助美国国家地理信息与分析中心(NCGIA)进行的瓦伦纽斯(Varenius)研究项目有关信息时代地理学研究的一系列中期研究报告与论文为基础,介绍了中心一些著名学者以地理学家独特的地理哲学思维,对信息时代的地理学研究若干理论问题所作的新探索与阐述,旨在为国内学者了解、追踪地理信息科学的新发展,开展地理信息科学的跨世纪研究提供借鉴。     

Utopian Promise or Burdensome Responsibility? A Critical Analysis of the UK Government's Building Schools for the Future Policy

Abstract: This paper critically analyses a nationwide school‐building programme in England: Building Schools for the Future (BSF). It is argued that, between 2003 and 2010, the UK Government's policy guidance for BSF represented a (re)turn to utopian discourse in governmental policy‐making, mobilised in order to justify a massive programme of new school building in the UK. In doing so, BSF connected with the promise of three further discourses: school(‐children), community and architectural practice. It anticipated that new school buildings would instil transformative change—modernising English schooling, combating social exclusion and leaving an architectural “legacy”. However, it is argued that BSF constituted an allegorical utopia: whilst suggesting a “radical” vision for schooling and society, its ultimate effect was to preserve a conventional (neo‐liberal) model of schooling. The paper highlights the critical role that notions of utopia might have in negotiating—and challenging—promise‐laden mega‐building policies like BSF. In doing so, it develops recent geographical research on utopia, education and architecture.     

“They hate pigs,Chinese farmers … everything!” Beastly Racialization in Multiethnic Malaysia

Abstract: This paper details the construction of the pig and the pig industry in Malaysia. It argues that a pattern of “animal‐linked racialization” continually polices the boundary between the dominant, elite Malay‐Muslim hegemony and the comparatively less powerful Chinese pig farmers. Often subtle and implicit, such beastly racialization, drawing frequently from religious and nationalist tropes, renders visible the taboo subjects of race and racism in Malaysia. While a simplistic form of beastly racialization in relation to the pig industry is held by the political elites and non‐Chinese community, one cannot say that such a racialization has produced or sustained distinct racisms. Nonetheless, it is through the process of beastly racialization that we unravel the seemingly random acts of coercive policies that, taken in their entirety, threaten to stymie the future viability of the industry and continue to accentuate the visible social‐cultural disjuncture between the two biggest ethnic groups in Malaysia.     

Family leisure,family photography and zoos: exploring the emotional geographies of families

In this paper we explore the significance of the zoo as a place for family leisure and the emotional work of sustaining a positive family life. Zoos are understood as culturally laden places, widely identified as locations for family-friendly leisure and as stages for practicing family and then capturing and memorializing this behavior in and through family photographs. Zoo family photos become souvenirs of quality family time, depicting the time and emotional investment made in the social relations captured in the images. We draw on an interdisciplinary mix of literatures and use this as context for the interpretation of a sample of family zoo photographs, illustrating our findings with examples drawn from public and personal sources. In so doing we seek to better understand the significance of family leisure environments, and specifically zoos, as places facilitating the emotional work of building and maintaining family connection and interaction.     

On plantations,prisons, and a black sense of place

The complexities of black geographies—shaped by histories of colonialism, transatlantic slavery, contemporary practices of racism, and resistances to white supremacy—shed light on how slave and post-slave struggles in the Americas form a unique sense of place. Rather than simply identifying black suffering and naming racism (and opposition to it) as the sole conceptual schemas through which to ‘understand’ or ‘know’ blackness or race, it is emphasized that a black sense of place, black histories, and communities are not only integral to production of space, but also that the analytical interconnectedness of race, practices of domination, and geography undoubtedly put pressure on how we presently study and assess racial violence.     

Between crime and colony: interrogating (im)mobilities aboard the convict ship

Recent literature in carceral geography has attended to the importance of mobilities in interrogating the experience and control of spaces of imprisonment, detention and confinement. Scholars have explored the paradoxical nature of incarcerated experience as individuals oscillate between moments of fixity and motion as they are transported to/from carceral environments. This paper draws upon the convict ship – an example yet to gain attention within these emerging discussions – which is both an exemplar of this paradox and a lens through which to complicate understandings of carceral (im)mobilities. The ship is a space of macro-movement from point A to B, whilst simultaneously a site of apparent confinement for those aboard who are unable to move beyond its physical parameters. Yet, we contend that all manner of mobilities permeate the internal space of the ship. Accordingly, we challenge the binary thinking that separates moments of fixity from motion and explore the constituent parts that shape movement. In paying attention to movements in motion on the ship, we argue that studies of carceral mobility must attend to both methods of moving in the space between points A and B; as micro, embodied and intimate (im)mobilities are also played out within large-scale regimes of movement.     

Foucault and museum geographies: a case study of the English ‘Renaissance in the Regions’

This paper explores the subject of museum geographies, focusing particularly on the development of museum policies in a changing political context. The empirical focus is the emergence and transformation of the museum programme Renaissance in the Region, which is linked to the concepts of primary, secondary and tertiary spatialisations presented by Michel Foucault. The paper discusses the development of the programme and how it transformed aspects of the primary, secondary and tertiary spatialisations of museums in England, before focusing attention on the geography of school visits to museums. The results of two extensive studies of school visits to museums in the programme suggest that large numbers of visits come from schools located in areas with high indices of multiple deprivation and income deprivation affecting children. It is argued that this social geography reflects the tertiary spatialisation of museums linked to their emergence in areas of past industrial development, although practices linked to reconfigurations of the primary and secondary spatialisation as part of the Renaissance in the Regions programme may also have played some role. The paper concludes by discussing recent changes in government policy and the degree to which the ‘New Renaissance’ policy may signify reductions in the social reach of museums into areas of social deprivation and exclusion.