‘Danger building site—keep out!?’: a critical agenda for geographical engagement with contemporary construction industries

In this paper, I seek to develop a more direct, sustained and critical engagement between social and cultural geography and contemporary construction industries. In setting out this agenda, I focus on the UK construction industry and a body of work outside of geography describing how the UK construction industry evidences and maintains a problematic array of working practices that are socially consequential. However, despite such potent critiques, recent geographical work on architectural practices, including that focused on the UK, has remained rather detached from the people, places, politics, and indeed problems, of contemporary construction industries. Nevertheless, recent geographical studies of architectural practice possess a significant potential to directly inform critical analysis of construction industries. It is only through such direct engagement with the contemporary lives of building practitioners that I argue geographical studies of architecture, and especially architectural practices, can recognize and realize its political and ethical contribution.     

Exploring the vertical: science and sociality in the field among cavers in Venezuela

Recent scholarship on vertical geographies has lead to a critical reexamination of the relationship between space and power. In this paper, I develop a vertical geographies approach in an unexplored context and with a less tested method: that of cave explorers and scientists in the field in Venezuela, from an ethnographic perspective. Ethnographic analysis of exploration in practice, viewed in relation to a multi-dimensional environment and the social dynamics, bodies, and technologies involved in traversing it, illustrates the ways vertical geographies are constructed and experienced. For the Venezuelan Speleological Society, a group dedicated to cave exploration and science since 1967, examining these geographies highlights culturally specific ways the tension between sports and science in speleology play out and how new members are socialized in the field. Specifically, attention to verticality highlights the role that age, masculinist heroics, and other embodied dimensions play in the construction of speleological geographies. More broadly, an ethnographic focus on exploration, with humans probing the earth's sinuous contours, guards against thinking of verticality abstractly—doing so risks simplifying and even misrepresenting multi-dimensional and processual engagements among humans, their technologies, and the environment.     

Music in French geography as space marker and place maker

For several decades, there have been broad research developments on the links between music and geography in the English-speaking world, initially in the USA, then in Europe and also in Asia, the Middle East and Oceania. In the French-speaking world, although developments are more recent, research bringing together music and geography is well developed, too. However, it was not until the end of the last decade that Francophones began to take Anglophone work into account and even this was inconsistent. In Anglophone publications, the work of the Francophones is almost completely absent. With this commentary, a Francophone–Anglophone dialogue could open new perspectives.     

Miniaturisation and the representation of military geographies in recreational wargaming

Miniaturisation affects space in many ways: projecting it, transforming it and co-producing it with those who make and gaze upon models. This paper draws on Stewart's work On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection (Durham: Duke University Press, 1993) to demonstrate how concepts of miniaturisation have the ability to contribute to geographical study. The empirical focus for the paper is a study of scale models deployed in the hobby of miniature or figure wargames in which players fight battles on the table top using model terrain and miniature figures. In this paper, I use examples of scaled terrain and figures to explore the process of miniaturisation and how this represents and transforms space. In doing so, the paper contributes to understanding the ways in which military geographies are represented through the media of models and performances of playing with them.     

Balancing spirituality and secularism,globalism and nationalism: the geographies of identity,integration and citizenship in schools

Geographies of education have drawn more research attention in the last decade. The varied motivations for geographical attention to education have led to divergent approaches. First, a macro, political economy or “outward looking” approach has examined educational provision and what it tells us about wider social, economic and political processes. Second, a micro, social-cultural or “inward looking” approach has emphasised social difference within school spaces, and the links between home and educational spaces. This latter approach has also acknowledged the importance of the voices of children and young people in understanding educational experiences. In this paper, l take stock of existing research in the geographies of education and then make a case for the examination of two types of schools that have received little or no geographical attention thus far, namely international schools and faith-based schools. I propose a multi-scalar framework for analysing the former and a relational framework for understanding the latter.     

西方经济地理学文化转向的哲学思考

在西方经济地理学宽泛的文化转向浪潮中文化因素从"常量"转而成为"变量",文化等非经济因素对经济活动的影响及它们之间的相互作用已成为新的研究焦点。在此过程中,新经济地理学家解释世界的理论不再强调镜射世界的能力,不再将"无视角视界"作为隐喻的蓝图,反而强调将自身置于作者地位的重要性,承认科学家的背景和它能影响其所知的及其诉说的内容,即"有视角视界"。后现代主义解释学认为科学家是以感兴趣的方式以社会环境限制的方式参与知识的理解、创造过程,新经济地理学受其影响强调探讨,认为理论一直是处于争论的状态,一直是处于探讨过程中的。新经济地理学不主张提出客观唯一的叙事,也难以做到,这也正是其兴起的重要原因。     

Have sex will travel: romantic ‘sex tourism’ and women negotiating modernity in the Sinai

Since the 1970s, studies on western women's ethnosexual tourist–local relationships have tended to focus on the beaches of the Caribbean and have come to one of two main conclusions – either they are no different from the overtly exploitative relationships of heterosexual male sex tourists or they are different because they involve a softer, caring element of romance. This article proposes that both positions have led to constrictive, circular research that highlights the racialised and economically disparate nature of these exchanges but mostly ignores the importance of imaginative and emotional geographies caught up in such relationships. Based on fieldwork interviews with men and women in the resorts of the South Sinai, Egypt, I argue that these encounters can be seen as examples of a modern subjectivity that are defined by and take place within imagined (fixed) constructions of landscapes, native third world masculinity (in this case Arab/Bedouin), femininity (white, heterosexual, western), freedom and love (spiritual and physical): all presented in some form of opposition to a particularist idea of modernity and viewed through a filter of selective (and spatially circumscribed) histories. By adding a geographical dimension, this article aims to open up the current debate on female sex tourism to a wider range of issues and reveal more of the conflicts, tensions and imaginations that make up these encounters.     

青年类家消费空间的生产——家的批判地理学视角与YOU+青年社区案例

家的缺失以及消费时代青年文化发展促使以“家”为营销主题的青年类家消费空间应运而生。本文基于家的批判地理学,以YOU+国际青年社区为例,从家的日常生活实践以及家的归属感与身份认同两方面探讨了青年类家消费空间进行“家”的再造过程。研究表明,青年类家消费空间通过物质空间与想象、青春化的日常生活实践以及社会网络的拓展与重构,将住房建构为充满社会与情感意义的地方,以“类家庭”的形式弥补了都市青年家庭生活和眷属关系的缺失,促进其身份认同和归属感的形成与表达。结合本土社会文化语境,本文从青年视角对家的批判地理学进行补充,亦弥补了地理学对家与青年文化空间研究的不足。     

The geographies of crisis: exploring accessibility to health care in Canada

There is increasing concern in Canada that the health care system is in a state of crisis. It is argued that reductions in federal government transfers to the provinces have resulted in a health care system characterized by under‐funding in key areas and policy decisions based more on provincial fiscal concerns than the health needs of their constituents. Provincial governments have responded to reduced levels in federal funding by undertaking aggressive restructuring tactics such as the closure of hospitals and the deinsuring of medical services from provincial health plans. The end result of this restructuring, as argued by the media, consumer groups and indeed some health researchers, is a state of crisis' (i.e., lower levels of accessibility, long waiting lists, overcrowding in hospitals and increasing costs of medication). One crisis theme often mentioned is that fiscal decisions of various kinds are reducing economic and geographic accessibility, one of the five principles of the Canada Health Act (CHA) that defines the very essence of the Canadian health care system. Using data from the 1998‐99 National Population Health Survey (NPHS), this paper explores the extent to which an accessibility crisis exists within the Canadian health care system by examining access to health care services and the barriers encountered in trying to access services in each of the ten provinces. The results show that approximately 6.0 percent of Canadians report access problems, with values ranging from 4.5 percent in Newfoundland to 8.3 percent in Manitoba. Regional variations in barriers to accessing care were also observed. In particular, geographic accessibility appears to be a main barrier to care in Atlantic Canada while economic accessibility emerges as a main barrier to care in Western Canada. We discuss these findings in the context of the current debates on the Canadian health care system ‘crisis’. De plus en plus de Canadiens s'inquiétent que leur systéme de soins de santé soit en état de crise. On défend l'idée selon laquelle la réduction des paiements de transfert aux provinces par le gouvernement fédéral serait responsable de l'état d'un systeme de santé caractérisé par un sous‐financement dans les domaines‐clés et des décisions politiques de santé basées, non pas sur les besoins des membres de la société canadienne, mais sur la fiscalité provinciale. Les gouvernements provinciaux ont réagi à la réduction du financement fédéral par une tactique de restructuration agressive (fermeture d'hôpitaux et retrait de services médicaux des programmes d'assurance de santé provinciaux). Selon les médias, les groupes de consommateurs et même les chercheurs en soins de santé, cette restructuration a eu pour effet un système en état de ‘crise’ (diminution de l'aecès aux services, longues fetes d'attente, hôpitaux surchargés, augmentation des coûts des médicaments etc). Un des thèmes récurrent est celui des décisions flscales de toutes sortes qui entraînent une baisse de l'accessibilité financière et géographique. Cette accessibilité est pourtant un des cinq principes de la Loi canadienne sur la santé définissant l'essence même du système de santé au Canada. Utilisant les données tirèes de l'Enquête nationale sur la santé de la population, 1998‐99 et examinant l'accès aux services de santé et les obstacles rencontrés dans les 10 provinces canadiennes, cet article évalue dans quelle mesure une crise d'accessibilité existe au sein du système de santé canadien. Les résultats démontrent qu'environ 6.0 pour cent des Canadiens ont rencontré des problèmes d'accessibilité, avec des variantes allant de 4.5 pour cent à Terre‐Neuve jusqu'à 8.3 pour cent au Manitoba. On observe aussi des variantes régionales dans les obstacles rencontrés. L'accessibilité géographique en particulier semble un obstacle mqjeur dans les régions de l'Atlantique, alors que l'accessibilite financière semble être un obstacle majeur dans l'Ouest du Canada. Ces résultats sont présentés dans le contexte des débats actuels sur l'existence dune, ‘crise’ dans le système de santé au Canada.