ATTENTION AND THE PHENOMENOLOGICAL POLITICS OF LANDSCAPE

This article argues that the inherent directedness of attention is a central and pervasive condition of politics across a wide range of social fields. The subfield of landscape geography serves as an occasion to illustrate what can be gained by attending to attention. The argument begins by reflexively placing the problematic of attention within a brief genealogy of constructions of modern perception. Within this frame, the article takes a closer look at the ambivalent and hesitant response to the problem of attention in phenomenology. This field is best positioned to give a foundational account of the political character of attention and to explain the sense in which its relevance transcends the era in which it was first clearly formulated. However, a strong upsurge of phenomenological interest in attention has only appeared in recent years. A review of this work, particularly in the writings of Bernhard Waldenfels, shows how attending to attention can deepen critical analyses of capitalism and spectacle offered by Benjamin, Debord, Rancière and Beller. The final section of the article illustrates key points by staging an imaginary trip through the corporate agricultural landscapes of California.     

Popular Economies In,Against, and Through the Platform

Behind the conjunctural growth of popular economies in Brazilian cities lies a set of entangled disputes over urban density with important political consequences. While popular economic agents are repressed by local governments, informal work hired through digital platforms grows exponentially and engenders new precarious forms of assembling labour relations in, and extracting value from, global South cities. The contrasts and indirect relations between digital platforms and popular economic agents are important in understanding the growth of platforms, which hinges on accessing low-wage workers whose attempts to make an independent living are otherwise prohibited. This dynamic has resulted in the political mobilisation of popular economy agents and their alliances with urban social movements. Through this paper, I examine how their networking and particular disputes for a right to the city hold potential for the emergence of other economies.     

Excavating Racial Capitalism in London's West India Docks

Focusing on the construction of London's West India Docks in 1802, I argue that this project established a feedback loop with conditions of production in the Caribbean. Through an analysis of committee minutes, letters, parliamentary papers and visual art, I move beyond economic accounts of slavery's impact to demonstrate how geographies of security and surveillance—first developed on the sugar plantation—were imported into the design and function of London's port. As such, I argue that London's docks produced a geography of segregation which offers a unique insight into the workings of racial capitalism and its exploitation of group-differentiated vulnerabilities. Positioning my discussion alongside London's contemporary landscape, I excavate Britain's repressed memories of slavery to illustrate how they still scar the urban environment.     

The Catholic Neoconservative Misreading of John Paul II's Centesimus Annus Revisited

ABSTRACT

In the twilight of the twentieth and beginning of the twenty-first century, Catholic theologians and journalists who identified as members of the neoconservative political movement crafted a narrative of John Paul II's encyclical Centesimus Annus as a representing a sea-change in Catholic social teaching. In this neoconservative reading, the Catholic Church embraced a specifically American style of late twentieth century laissez-faire capitalism. However, an examination of Centesimus Annus reveals that the text is consonant with the teaching of twentieth century popes. What is more, recent publications enable us to get a clearer view of how neoconservatives were able to craft their narrative of the encyclical.     

The novel spaces and power-geometries in tourism and hospitality after 2020 will belong to the ‘local’

Abstract

The global crisis we have experienced due to the COVID-19 pandemic emergency challenges our perception of the global and local context in which we live, travel, and work. This crisis has spread novel uncertainties and fears about the future of our world, but at the same time, it has also set the ground to rethink the future scenario of tourism and hospitality to bring about a potentially positive transformation after 2020. Such a scenario can be understood in light of the work of Doreen Massey and the pivotal theorisations on ‘space’ and ‘power-geometry’ she presented in her book For Space (2005). Massey conceives space as the product of multiple relations, networks, connections, as the dimension of multiplicity, the result of an ongoing making process, and in a mutually constitutive relationship with power. Interweaving Massey’s theorisations with a critical examination of the neoliberal capitalism approach to the conceptualization of space, the COVID-19 global crisis prompts us to rethink the space inside and outside of tourism and hospitality by re-focusing on the local dimension of our space as the only guarantee of our own wellbeing, safety, and security. While the global dimension seems more broken than ever, the urgency of belonging to the local is more and more evident. Hence, we propose a critical reflection on the implications of such a scenario in the space of tourism and hospitality, foreseeing a potentially positive transformation in terms of activation of local relations, networks, connections, and multiplicities able to open up such space to multiple novel functions designed not just for tourists and travelers but also for citizens.     

Drafting the Nineteen Propositions,January–July 1642*

This article analyses the drafting of the document eventually printed as the Nineteen Propositions. Section two addresses certain issues regarding the methods and concepts employed in the subsequent analysis, focusing on consensus‐building, constitutional leanings and the drafting of parliamentary declarations in early 1642. Section three examines the origins of the Nineteen Propositions in the draft Declaration of Ways and Means (January 1642) (hereafter cited as the Ways). Section four traces the emergence of the Declaration Concerning Grievances and Remedies (hereafter cited as the Grievances) from the Ways (January–February). Section five examines the junta's efforts to overcome the Lords' prevarication over passing the Grievances (February–May). Section six examines the emergence of the initial draft of the Nineteen Propositions from the Grievances (24–7 May). Section seven analyses the 28 May draft, while section eight explores the amendment of that draft (31 May and 1 June). Section nine examines parliament's abortive attempts to revise the Nineteen Propositions in light of His Majesty's Answer to the XIX Propositions (21 June–2 July). It is concluded that, contrary to the received view, the text of the Nineteen Propositions began to emerge in January rather than May 1642, and that the junta in the Commons rather than the Lords drove this process. The three appendices identify, respectively, the constitutional leanings of the relevant parliamentarians, the parts of the text of the Ways that were repeated in the Grievances, and dates on which the various parts of the final text of the Nineteen Propositions were written.     

Post COVID-19 ecological and social reset: moving away from capitalist growth models towards tourism as Buen Vivir

Abstract

Tourism has been one of the industries most highly affected by COVID-19. The COVID-19 global pandemic is an ‘unprecedented crisis’ and has exposed the pitfalls of a hyper consumption model of economic growth and development. The scale of immediate economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic has shattered the myth of ‘catch up development’ and ‘perpetual growth’. The Crisis has brought unintended degrowth, presenting opportunities for an economic and social ‘reset’. In terms of long-term thinking post COVID-19, it is time to change the parameters of how we imagine a trajectory going forward, to prefigure possibilities for contesting capitalist imperatives that ‘there is no alternative’. In relation to tourism, the pandemic provides an opportunity for reimaging tourism otherwise, away from exploitative models that disregard people, places, and the natural environment, and towards a tourism that has positive impacts. Non-western alternatives to neo-colonial and neoliberal capitalism, such the South American concept of ‘Buen Vivir’, can help us to shift priorities away from economic growth, towards greater social and environmental wellbeing, and meaningful human connections. Taking a Buen Vivir approach to tourism will continue the degrowth momentum, for transformative change in society within the earth’s physical limits. Yet Buen Vivir also redefines the parameters of how we understand ‘limits’. In limiting unsustainable practices in development and tourism, a focus on Buen Vivir actually creates growth in other areas, such as social and environmental wellbeing, and meaningful human connection. Buen Vivir can reorient the tourism industry towards localised tourism, and slow tourism because the principles of Buen Vivir require these alternatives to be small-scale, local and benefiting host communities as well as tourists to increase the wellbeing for all.     

3D打印技术在龙门石窟金刚经洞修复中的应用

为了缓解龙门石窟金刚经洞因局部坍塌引起的水害、微生物等病害发育问题,利用3D打印技术对坍塌部位进行修复:修复部件以光敏树脂为打印材料,修复部件为空心结构以减轻荷载；对修复部件进行光场、温度场仿真设计,使洞窟内日光辐射强度降低至日光直射的50%~56%,窟内温度分布差值由6.6℃降低到1.9℃；修复部件采用S8801涂覆内外表面,S8801老化实验后主要性能保持率均大于90%,并采用玄武岩纤维与玻璃纤维增强修复部件内表面。经多次降雨后观察,龙门石窟金刚经洞由缺失导致的雨水倒勾等问题得到有效缓解。该工作为3D打印技术与不可移动石质文物修复工作结合奠定基础。