Ideas or Interests: Privacy in Electronic Communications

This article examines why the idea of privacy failed to structure policymaking in the case of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA). Although the relatively quick passage of ECPA might appear to be a case of the politics of ideas, the model of interest group politics more simply explains policy making. The analysis of this case suggests several factors as important in establishing the conditions under which a politics of ideas will be realized.     

Fannie Lou Hamer's Freedom Farms and Black Agrarian Geographies

This paper examines Fannie Lou Hamer's Freedom Farms, a 1969 farming cooperative in Sunflower County, Mississippi. Specifically, this paper interrogates how Hamer's identity as a Black southern woman influences her formulation and daily activities at Freedom Farms. Theoretically, this paper situates Hamer as an expert agrarian labourer and knowledge producer who exists within a history of Black women who have always been utilised for their agrarian knowledge, but given little credit. Hamer's knowledge is a part of her body. This paper argues that Freedom Farms is a Black radical geography operating at three scales: the body, the farm and the southern agrarian landscape. This paper utilises Hamer's speeches, interviews and other archival documents to understand Hamer's efforts. Hamer's agrarian landscape is wrought with pain, but also the insistence in the economic opportunity that exists for Black people in agrarian spaces.     

You’re not welcome at my table: racial discourse,conflict and healing at the kitchen table

In this article, we reflect on the need for, and geography of, embodied cross-racial talk in the current political context. We reflect on our 2015 article ‘Kitchen Table Reflexivity: Negotiating Positionality through Everyday Talk’ to question whether we were too optimistic in our advocacy of the kitchen table as a space for racial reconciliation through interracial dialogue. We draw on our own experiences to explore multiple tables at which we may or may not both be present. In conclusion, we encourage everyone to do the hard work of determining which tables are the right ones for them to be present at to have the hard, but necessary, conversations about race and racialization in our contemporary society.