EUROPEAN INTEGRATION AND THE TERRITORIAL‐ADMINISTRATIVE COMPLEX

Detractors of European integration and many of its protagonists invoke state territoriality where the social and the spatial come together in a “Territorial‐Administrative Complex”. Like the military‐industrial complex claiming once to procure security, protagonists claim to guarantee democratic legitimacy. At the same time, the interests of the territorial constituencies prevail over others. The underlying notion of space is absolute and of territory that of a container. Costs and benefits are calculated in terms pertaining to it. The underlying “meta‐geography” is one of boxes‐in‐boxes, but rather than viewing space as a container, based on academic literature in the matter, planners now pursue soft planning for soft spaces. In the face of the apparently incontestable claim of the Territorial‐Administrative Complex to a monopoly on the production of democratic legitimacy, the article points out, albeit rare examples of constitutional theorists challenge this monopoly. Voting in territorial constituencies, they claim, has never been properly argued for, making it an arbitrary institution.     

Hybrid territorialisation: A reconfiguration of rural spaces through gold mining in Upper Guinea

In this article, our aim is to analyse the process of territorialisation in the region of Upper Guinea following the rapid increase in gold mining exploitation since the 2000s. Territorialisation is analysed as a new way of doing space and creating boundaries in an area where boundaries have historically been negotiable and where artisanal and small-scale mining is plurisecular and gives rise to ephemeral spaces. Our first objective is to retrace changes in gold mining activities and spaces over the last decade, and to analyse the expansion of the mining industry as an extractive territorialisation, involving processes that lead to the fixation of the gold diggers’ mobility. Secondly, this article shows how this extractive territorialisation can in fact be analysed as a hybrid one, since it seems to lay the groundwork for state territorial control: first, it formalises spaces linked to and surrounding the exploitation area; second, it seems to correlate to a more general tendency of appropriation under the territorial model by local communities. Territorialisation, understood as both a political and a spatial process, serves thus as a starting point for the analysis of space formalisation in a peripheral region where the state is often seen by locals as mainly absent.     

Terror and Territory

Abstract: While geographical aspects of the “war on terror” have received extensive discussion, the specifically territorial aspects have been less well explored. This article engages with the relation between territory and terror through three main angles. First, the relation between terrorist training camps and the absence of sovereign power over territory in particular places is examined through a broadening of Agamben's notion of a “space of exception”. Second, the portrayal of al‐Qaeda and militant Islam more generally as a deterritorialised organisation is interrogated, noting the territorial aspects of its operations. Third, the territorial responses are studied, particularly looking at the way the international legal term of territorial integrity, with its dual meanings of territorial preservation and territorial sovereignty is under increased threat. This is illustrated with a study of Afghanistan and Iraq and particularly through an analysis of the 2006 war in Lebanon.     

The Environmental History of Mass Graves

ABSTRACT

The author presents an ecological-necrological perspective on the ontology of the human dead body and remains in the context of Holocaust studies. The article examines the environmental history of mass graves and reflects on the ontological status and condition of human remains. The author proposes an approach that combines humanities and soil sciences while thinking about post-genocidal spaces and sites of mass killings in order to discuss the issue of protecting human remains from politicization and commercialization and to prefigure appropriate long-term approaches to the preservation of sites containing human remains. The article suggests focusing on humus while examining the process of dehumanization through decomposition (organic decay) and unbecoming human by “becoming-soil.” To enrich and problematize the humanities’ conception of humus, the article draws on conceptions of humus proposed by soil scientists. What is argued here is that the ecological perspective becomes a necessary and essential element in managing post-genocidal (and post-Holocaust) sites, particularly when it comes to planning their conservation and preservation.     

FOUCAULT'S ‘HALL OF MIRRORS’: AN INVESTIGATION INTO GEO‐EPISTEMOLOGY

In this article we aim to single out a part of Foucault's trihedrals of spatialization – discourses and practices, that is, technologies of power that have their spatialized frames. In order to analyse them we use the concept of a trihedral, not a triangle, because we noticed that several lines can be drawn from any angle and can form new spaces. In such a manner we are able to see their multiplication, separation and parallelisms. Using the trihedrals of spatialization we detect in Foucault's work, besides the demands for a certain (spatialized) ontology, the existence of no less significant geo‐epistemology as knowledge and discourses that are formed in spaces and as the space formed through knowledge/power/discourses. We face a polyvalent character of the angles of the trihedrals and try to avoid the labyrinth into which their multiplication pulls us. The article pays special attention to Foucault's elementary trihedral, life–work–language, in which man came to life as a being who works, speaks and reproduces in a new shape – as population. In this trihedral the angles/concepts are only seemingly separated: they overlap, mix, collide and intertwine in a game that cannot end. That is why this is only a snapshot of the many trihedrals; a possible aggregate of combinations, yet in no case coherent and homogenous. In that sense this article is not an attempt to systematize Foucault's thought but to identify one of the many possible models/matrices for understanding the meaning of his spatial turn and his analysis of power.     

Airborne prawns and decayed rice: food politics in Wartime Chongqing

ABSTRACT

This article explores the multilayered dimensions of food politics in wartime Chongqing. A substantial number of wartime Chongqing dwellers were migrants who flocked to the city, having evacuated from coastal China to follow the Nationalists after the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War. They could not simply be called refugees. Rather, they were sophisticated urbanites known by Chongqing natives as “downriver folks” who brought their political awareness and cultural tastes to the new wartime capital. Some introduced their sumptuous dining culture to Chongqing, thereby provoking a public sense of deprivation, while others brought organizational skills with which to turn public discontent into a political issue. This article argues that an increasing sense of deprivation stemming from the deterioration of the food situation in the city, if seemingly less significant than massive rural famine, became more consequential in the long run than any other political issue in the subsequent Civil War years.     

Migrant masculinities in-between private and public spaces of reproductive labour: Asian porters in Rome

Abstract

This article explores the construction of migrant masculinities in the context of reproductive labour. It focuses on Asian Christian men working as porters in upper middle-class residential buildings in Rome (Italy). This masculinised niche of reproductive labour combines differently gendered chores: feminised tasks (cleaning and caring) - mainly performed in the most private spaces of the home - and masculinised tasks (maintenance and security), carried out in the public or semi-public spaces of the buildings. The analysis addresses the dearth of studies on the sex-typing of jobs in the context of migrant men’s work experiences. It also contributes to ongoing debates on the geography of reproductive labour, by exploring how gendered practices of migrant reproductive labour construct private and public places. The construction of masculinities and place is shaped by the gendered racialisation of migrant men at the wider societal level, which materialises in the construction of ‘dangerous’ and ‘respectable’ urban areas. The article suggests that widespread concerns over religious difference and public security play a key role in defining migrant men’s access to the workplace and in shaping work relations.     

Neoliberalizing state spaces in postwar Western Europe: The emergence of a new integrative regime of sovereignty

Contrary to recurrent statements that neoliberalism was implemented from the late 1970s in the United Kingdom and United States, this article shows how in fact, this political ideology was rolled out in Western Europe much earlier, in the years following World War II. The experiences of Italy, West Germany and France reveal how some neoliberal reformers took advantage of postwar geopolitical crises to impulse a new spatial regime of sovereignty based on macroregional economic integration and submission of domestic policies to international economic competition. Far from being hegemonic, this neoliberal opening up of state spaces is implemented within the framework of a composite, flexible and ever evolving policy regime. A multifactorial and complex explanatory framework is used to show how neoliberalization in Western Europe takes the shape of a systemic process of macro-regional economic integration.     

Structural boundaries that effect the representation of gender and disability in works of fiction from the United States and United Kingdom

Abstract

Discussions of intellectual disability are found in medical journals, published biographies, and disability research. However, outside the realm of medicine or personal reminiscence intellectual disability struggles for spaces of social, historical, cultural and imaginative representation. This article addresses these struggles for space and specifically focuses on the imagined space of narrative fiction. Being imagined spaces they should easily be able to accommodate people with disability, and yet, very few characters with intellectual disability are represented or more importantly have agency in narrative fiction. Drawing on work from feminist geographies and literary geographies this article addresses the limiting narrative structures that have been used against fictional characters who have a disability and ways authors may move beyond these limitations. Reconciling feminist geographies and literary geographies allows new critical spatial knowledge around disability to emerge. It is not enough to write characters with disabilities into narrative fiction if the structures surrounding them remain limiting and prejudiced. This article discusses the three main limiting structures in narrative fiction: character representation, narrative voice and genre. Looking at narrative fiction through feminist and literary geographies reveals how these limiting structures function as power hierarchies, and importantly, shows how these imposed structures can be subverted and changed.     

日常消费空间中的情绪产生与作用机制——基于南京的实证研究

本研究引入消费者行为学的"认知-情绪-行为"模型，并加入空间要素建立整体框架，采用结构方程模型与质性研究相结合的方法，探讨消费空间中影响消费者情绪产生的因素以及情绪对居民生活满意度的作用。研究表明，积极情绪的产生主要受到个人价值观的鲜明度、消费场所物质环境的宜人度和消费场所中社会交往的深度影响；消极情绪的产生主要受到个体经济地位和个人价值观的鲜明度影响；积极情绪与消极情绪均显著影响消费者的生活满意度，积极情绪会导致较高生活满意度的产生。本研究从情绪的角度阐释消费空间和人的关系，是从微观尺度上对情绪地理学研究的新探索，同时也为城市消费空间研究与规划提供了人本主义的新视角。