Can we share an us-feeling with a digital machine? Emotional sharing and the recognition of one as another*

ABSTRACT

To share an us-feeling means to acknowledge one another. Can we share such a feeling with an extreme form of the other, for instance with a digital machine? The answer that is given in this article is ‘no’. Relevant tests like the Turing Test are based on a third-person perspective, whereas a second-person perspective would be needed.     

Trans objects: materializing queer time in US transmasculine homes

Emerging from a participatory research project, this article draws on in-depth, semi-structured interviews, and home tours with trans masculine individuals and couples in the US Northeast to examine how homes come to function as spaces of both grounding and disidentification for transmasculine participants. In this article we argue that photographs and items of décor–particular, meaningful objects in trans homes–function to materialize the queerness of transition, and thus constitute a material expression of queer time. They provide a means for trans folks to acknowledge the queerness of the multiple life course temporalities co-present in the intimacy of private space, and we suggest that through these objects trans bodies engage in a process of becoming through moments of ‘co-substancing’ with the objects that are cherished, displayed, or hidden, in trans homespaces. In this article we suggest that objects on display in the home allow not just for a stretching of normative temporalities of the self, but also for the performance of home space as trans. We argue that more scholarly attention needs to be paid to the everyday, mundane geographies of transgender lives.     

‘God was with me everywhere’: women’s embodied practices and everyday experiences of sacred space in Czechia

In this paper, we approach religion and spirituality through the analytic lens of the everyday and examine how ordinary women make sacred space through their embodied, emotional, and spatially varying practices. Our research is grounded in Czechia where about 80% of inhabitants do not declare any religious affiliation and ‘new’ religions are on the rise. We deploy auto-photography as a method that invites participants’ own visual representations and interpretative narrations of their quotidian experiences. Thirty-eight Christian, Buddhist, and non-religious women participated in this study in 2016. Our analysis of photographs and interviews shows that our participants turn places that are not primarily associated with religion or spirituality (such as a kitchen sink or a bus stop) into sacred or spiritual places while at the same time integrate officially sacred spaces (such as churches and meditation centers) into their daily lives through social activities. Thus, we argue that a mutually transformative process is taking place in contemporary Czechia. In this process, religiously affiliated and non-affiliated women alike transform everyday spaces into sacred sites through their embodied and emotional practices that seek calmness, peace, and transcendence. At the same time, women who participate in organized religions remake the sacrality of officially sacred sites through their emphasis on social connections and feelings of communal belonging and shared identity. Our findings underscore that sacred space is not fixed in any one location and its production involves the continual emotional and material investment by ordinary women.     

City with or without God? Features of post-secularism in religious landscape of post-communist Prague

The religious climate caused significant changes over the last few decades which led to intense debates about post-secularism in Western Europe. However, there is particularly a distinct lack of analyses of the features of post-secularism in post-communist cities. The paper draws on the case study of Prague where the religious landscape is in many ways unique in a European context because of its highly secularized society. Nevertheless, Prague also experienced a revival of religious life, which has found expression in the religious landscape (not only) through the emergence of new sacral structures, pluralization of religion and post-secular rapprochement in religious institutions. The paper examines the convergent and contradictory processes shaping the religious and non-religious landscape in Prague and therefore opens the discussion about post-secularism in post-communist context. The results point to the importance of historical, social, and urban development for the new geographies of religion. New areas of research should also draw attention on the new religious movements and alternative spirituality which helps to explain the relationship between sacred and secular phenomena in current European society and space and the re-definition of the minority role of religion in the secular society.     

(Just) a walk with the dog? Animal geographies and negotiating walking spaces

In this paper, we present findings from interviews conducted with people who walk with dogs. Drawing on new walking studies and animal geographies as our theoretical framework, we adopt the view that walking is more than just walking; it is often a highly sensual and complex activity. We argue that walking with dogs represents a potentially important cultural space for making sense of human–animal relations. We show how the personalities of both dog and walker can shape not only walking practices, but also the human–animal bond. We contend that the walk is a significant arena where relations of power between animal and human are consciously mediated. We also provide evidence which indicates the contested nature of walking practices and spaces. We conclude that the dog walk is a useful practice through which to examine human–animal relations and thus to contribute to the field of animal geographies.     

Digital geographies of grassroots securitisation

Digital surveillance and securitisation technologies are becoming an increasingly ubiquitous part of everyday lives. Constellations of hand-held devices, smartphone applications and partnerships between police, the security industry and civil society shift responsibility for preventing and recording risk and crimes onto citizens. This development suggests substantial changes to the relationship between state and citizens and is likely to have profound effects on socio-spatial relationships and experiences in place. Until this point, geographers have demonstrated little engagement with these developments. This provocation focuses on particular strengths of theoretical and empirical research traditions in social and cultural geography to suggest ways in which the discipline might constructively engage with the digitisation of citizens’ securitisation practices. It foregrounds four areas in which empirical work on digitally inflected surveillance and securitisation practices will enable a rethinking of key geographical concepts in ways that will further the conceptualisation of digital technology and security. The provocation calls on social and cultural geographers to be mindful of the potential of grassroots securitisation to empower disfranchised communities while considering that these technologies and cognate policies might facilitate the further hollowing out of the state under ongoing processes of neoliberalisation.     

Moon,mud, and cell phones: geographies of race and construction of difference through normalization

How does the meaning of space emerge and get negotiated when individuals of diverse backgrounds interact with each other? Studies reporting that African Americans tend not to spend time in outdoor space attribute this finding to limited access to resources, cultural values, degree of assimilation to mainstream practices, discrimination in outdoor space, or a perception that outdoor recreational space is “white space”. Little research has addressed how such meanings relate to other meanings attached to outdoor space, let alone how this happens through interactions between people with different views on outdoor space. This article, based on interviews and participant observation of college students on an alternative break trip from the Northeastern U.S. to New Mexico in 2014, shows how students of various backgrounds experienced nature differently, how differences were articulated and explained, and how they subverted normalization processes that render not “being in tune with nature” as deficiency. Suggesting that geographies of race are fluid and influenced by individuals’ agency, this article calls for encouraging students to examine the ways their subject positions have shaped their experiences and challenge cultural bias in what is deemed universally desirable.     

Dimensions of remapping: Heinrich Schiffers and his mental map of Africa

ABSTRACT

At the beginning of the 1960s, the Athenäum publishing house in Germany planned a revised and extended edition of Heinrich Schiffers’ (1901–1982) successful book Wilder Erdteil Afrika (English translation: The Quest for Africa). The bestselling author had published several monographs about Africa since the 1930s, and authored and edited numerous works after World War II. Nearly all of these works, whose substantial print runs are testament to their popularity, are characterized by an engaging combination of text, images, and cartographic material, creating narratives and mental maps about Africa, its history, and the colonial past. In his later writings, he stressed the importance of “relearning” with regard to Africa and struggled to remap the imaginative geography of Africa. In this paper, I examine the characteristics of Schiffers’ imaginative geography and the change in his writings and maps. I explore whether his concept of “relearning” was an epistemological decolonization or if there were any continuities found in his imaginative geography. In order to grasp the specifics of his thinking, his geography will be briefly compared with that of his contemporary, Frankfurt zoo director Bernhard Grzimek.     

No Place for the Political: Micro‐Geographies of the Paris Climate Conference 2015

Building upon post‐foundational political philosophies, this article scrutinizes the Paris Climate Conference in December 2015 from a micro‐geographical perspective. The analysis suggests that three different spaces exist at the site of the summit and reveals how their constituting practices and material arrangements rendered “Paris” post‐democratic. We begin with exposing the staged statements of the world's political elites in the meticulously orchestrated Leaders Event as different phenotypes of the post‐democratic condition. We then investigate the formal negotiations in the cordoned‐off backrooms, where positions within the system were at stake, but not the system as such. Finally, we wander through the strictly policed “trade fair” and unveil attempts to entice delegates into techno‐managerial solutions to the climate crisis. In the conclusion, we ponder over the prospects of environmental activism at the COPs in the light of their massive depoliticization.     

Fucking geographers! Or the epistemological consequences of neglecting the lusty researcher’s body

This article investigates the dichotomy within research on sexuality between the desiring body of the informant on the one hand and the non-desiring body of the researcher on the other. Despite earlier calls to acknowledge and include the eroticisms of the researcher, accounts where the desiring researcher’s body is a central focus remain exceptions to the rule. The main goal of this intervention is to investigate why the absence of the lusty researcher’s body seems to endure. I will first explore some of the reasons researchers might feel inhibited to self-disclose their desires, to continue with uncovering some of the techniques used to sustain the cover of the asexual, disembodied researcher. Afterwards, I will discuss my own experiences as a (junior) researcher in the field, mainly my own discomfort and embarrassment to be perceived as a desiring woman-researcher, and trace how this has informed my own research trajectory. I conclude by suggesting that writing down our negotiations between the validity of our research versus how much we are willing to self-disclose might be a first step towards an improved inclusion of lust and desire in sex research.