‘The terrible twos’: Gaining control in the nursery?

‘The terrible twos’ are often described as a time of ‘gaining control’, usually thought of as adults asserting control over children, who learn to control themselves. However, toddlerhood is as much about children learning to take control for themselves. This paper is an attempt to detail something of the social geography in the toddler room of a Scottish nursery, considering both styles of adult control and the ways in which toddlers attempt to appropriate and reconfigure space and time for themselves. That is, the ways in which space and time are negotiated in the course of day-to-day nursery life.     

唐长安商业空间形态分析

通过对长安城市外商业点空间分布、存在时间和经营业种的分析,重新认识长安城商业空间发展演变的特点。早期都城的商业空间形态呈封闭对称的双核心结构,中唐以后,随着城市经济的发展和居民生活的需要,商业点突破市坊限制,在朱雀街东以皇城景风门外诸坊和以东市为核心的部分坊里内相对集中分布,形成了以东市为核心的商业区,在朱雀街西则分布较少,在外城城关处仅有零星商业点的分布,没有形成综合性的商业功能空间。所以唐代中后期长安城商业空间形态表现为“一核、一区型”结构特征。     

Mothers in the making? Exploring liminality in cyber/space

This paper makes a case for cyberspace and geographical space coexisting simultaneously as an interconnected dyadic cyber/space combining the virtually real and the actually real. Based on empirical evidence from a study examining the role of the Internet in the life of new mothers, we investigate the simultaneity of online/onsite experiences through an exploration of cyberspace as a performative liminal space, one where the women 'tried out' different versions of motherhood. We suggest that liminality, as a concept that can denote both a space and time of 'betweenness', is a useful tool in the virtual geographers 'conceptual handbag' as it enables a more lively understanding of cyberspace. But although cyberspace can result in the production of new selves, these selves have residual attachments to embodied experiences and practices. This suggests that new theorizing about cyber/space must combine a consideration of liminality with everyday corporeality.     

Convergence space: process geographies of grassroots globalization networks

This paper considers grassroots globalization networks, which comprise a diversity of social movements working in association to engage in multi-scalar political action. Drawing upon David Harvey's notion of militant particularism (regarding the problems of effecting politics between different geographical scales), and recent research on networks and their relationship to places, the paper analyses People's Global Action, an international network of social movements opposing neoliberal globalization. From an analysis of the process geographies of People's Global Action, the paper proposes the notion of convergence space as a conceptual tool by which to understand and critique grassroots globalization networks. The paper argues that contested social relations emerge in such convergence spaces and considers the implications of these for theorizing such networks, and for political action.     

A city of sanctuary: the relational re-imagining of Sheffield's asylum politics

In June 2007, the city of Sheffield officially declared itself to be the UK's first 'City of Sanctuary', a gesture that sought to instil a spirit of 'welcome and hospitality towards asylum seekers and refugees'. Drawing on a series of interviews and ethnographic work, this paper critically examines this gesture by considering how City of Sanctuary sought to enact a relational account of place through which the responsibilities of Sheffield towards both proximate and distant strangers were highlighted. The paper argues that while the City of Sanctuary movement integrates both relational and territorial political practices, it also actively pursues a relational imaginary through presenting the city as a space of political connections and responsibilities. This is achieved through a twin focus upon the role asylum seekers and refugees play in constituting the city and the role that Sheffield might come to play in national discussions of asylum. Following this discussion, the paper looks to the implications of City of Sanctuary's work for a relational account of spatial politics, arguing that a dual orientation of spatial responsibilities 'within' and 'beyond' place may be more easily articulated in reference to some networks and flows than others. The experiences of City of Sanctuary therefore suggest that relational accounts must present a space of negotiation between territorial practices, political networks, spatial responsibilities and geographical imaginations. The development of City of Sanctuary into a national network of towns and cities promoting hospitality indicates the importance of such negotiations for developing a culture of refuge across British cities.     

Regulating Regional Uneven Development and the Politics of Reconfiguring Belgian State Space

Abstract: This article mobilises a strategic‐relational approach to state spatial restructuring to overcome the weaknesses of the conventional “New Regionalist” account in economic geography of the resurgence of the region as a strategic site for economic governance. Focusing on hegemonic projects and the shifting nexus of spatial dependencies and engagements through which these are reproduced, undermined and transformed, the role and geography of political agency in state spatial restructuring is highlighted. To illustrate this point, I analyse the construction of new regional state spaces in Belgium, paying particular attention to the hegemonic projects that create a social basis for particular state spaces, the construction of collective agency on different scales (Belgian‐national and Flemish‐regional) and the various ways in which these processes are informed by pre‐existing state spatial and scalar selectivities.     

Flies,manure, and window screens: medical entomology and environmental reform in early-twentieth-century US cities

This paper traces responses to house flies in US cities as health departments attempted to control pollution and disease in the early twentieth century. It speaks to other historical geographies about the state, citizens, and the urban environment by showing how medical entomology prescribed contradictory changes to civic and domestic space, and how urban people and nature resisted these changes. With the advent of medical entomology, health reformers came to see house flies as agents that wove the entire city together as an interconnected ecology, carrying diseases from neighborhood to neighborhood and across the threshold of the home. But different reformers argued for quite distinct exercises of power in the urban landscape and ecological processes. Some physicians and entomologists argued that the state must modernize networks of fly-breeding organic matter, most notably horse manure and human waste. Such interventions were intended to be preventive and holistic, and aimed to protect all city dwellers. Other reformers, however, doubted the capacity of the state to tame material flows of waste, and instead sought changes to domestic space that would require householders – especially women – to shore up the boundaries of the house against flies. When city governments adopted these distinct interventions they encountered quite distinct sorts of resistance because of the house fly's tight links with urban nature and domestic practices.     

The tyranny of gendered spaces – reflections from beyond the gender dichotomy

This article argues critically that the consequences of a binary system of gender norms is experienced as a kind of gender tyranny both for those who transgress gender in their daily lives, but also for those whose lives are lived within such constraints. Feminist geographers and urban theorists have argued that space is gendered and that gendering has profound consequences for women. This article extends this analysis and shows how rigid categorizations of gender fail to include the intersexed and transgendered populations, a small and highly marginalized segment of the wider population. This article uses autoethnographic methods to illustrate the ways that those who transgress gender norms experience a tyranny of gender that shapes nearly every aspect of their public and private lives. The nature of these consequences is explored using citations from the transgender and queer literature as well as the lived experience of this tyranny by the author in a continuum of public to private spaces, including: parking lots, public restrooms, shopping malls, the workplace and the home.     

基于场域理论的文化遗产旅游地多维空间生产研究——以江南水乡周庄古镇为例

本文以皮埃尔点布迪厄的"场域理论"和列斐伏尔"空间的生产理论"为视角,以深度访谈和参与观察为基础,对周庄古镇从"一元同心并置结构"到"多元同心嵌套结构"转变过程中的多维空间生产进行了分析,结果表明:旅游场域形成之前的空间属于"内源性自生式本体空间",以"物理属性"为主;旅游场域形成后的空间属于"外源性嵌入式构建空间",倾向于"社会属性";旅游开发使物质空间景观化、文化空间多元化和社会空间复杂化,空间的分异和碎化趋向表明古镇社区正由"差序格局"转向"团体格局",进而表现为一种混合性"属地格局"。空间生产的动力机制主要是全球化背景下的地方怀旧情结、空间生产背后的政治力量博弈和空间生产中社区精英示范效应三种原因所致。本文指出在旅游快速发展背景下,古镇空间不是空洞的空间,空间的生产方向应该成为关注的焦点,这对理解古镇旅游空间场域的形成、生产及包容性发展具有重要导向。     

基于活动类型的郊区大型居住区居民生活空间重构——以回龙观为例

本文基于550份调查问卷和第一手的访谈资料,以北京著名的郊区大型居住区——回龙观文化居住区为研究对象,探讨了包括居住空间、工作空间、购物空间和游憩空间在内的郊区大型居住区生活空间重构的特征与机制,分析了居民生活空间重构与郊区化的关系。研究表明,近10年来,居民对远距离居住-工作空间错位有较强的承受能力,以回龙观为代表的郊区大型居住区在形成居住空间郊区化、商业和休闲空间的分散化和多中心化方面发挥了重要作用,也验证了过去10年中北京郊区化发展的高强力度。回龙观社区职能由单纯卧城向综合型社区的演变成为居民多种生活空间重构的背景,另外,不同类型的生活空间之间相互联系,某种生活空间变化往往导致另一种或几种生活空间跟随发生变化。回龙观的案例给郊区的城市规划工作带来一定的启示。