Neoliberalising Education: New Geographies of Private Tuition,Class Privilege,and Minority Ethnic Advancement

Geographic research on neoliberalism has explored the restructuring of educational landscapes wrought through marketisation of preschool, school and higher-education provision and considered the responsibilisation of parents and children for educational outcomes. This study develops understanding of the contingent emergence of neoliberal educational reform, and its progressive and regressive impacts, through an examination of the burgeoning private tuition market in England and Wales. The paper outlines the contours of the previously hidden supplementary education industry, demonstrating that it reinforces regional and classed inequalities, while opening possibilities for ethnic minority advancement. Conceptually, the paper advances debate about socio-spatial specificity in neoliberal change, showing that the intersection of policy, free markets and consumer behaviour reshapes the educational landscape in ways that extend beyond state intention and control. Through these processes, contingent market forms are produced that offer social mobility for some, but ensure the social reproduction of enduring regimes of power.     

“合”与“分”的地理效应及民族个性差异

本文从人文地理学的角度剖析了地理环境对于中国历史上国家统一与分裂的重大影响,暨阐述了通常所说的自然与人文的历史的辩证的关系。高山大川的“长城效应”与各区域民族个性差异形成对国家统一的威胁。但同时也是多民族国家统一体的再造与地域文化发展的前提条件之一。     

Britische Politiker als Liebhaber der Wissenschaft (ca. 1850–1914) — Zur Ideologie des Amateurismus

The various scholarly and scientific endeavours — comprising both arts and sciences —, which British statesmen persued in their leisure time, transcend the mere biographical aspect. In the light of the slow, yet steady professionalisation of educational and political institutions, many of them modernised or newly created in order to achieve what came to be called “National Efficiency”, the literary and scientific pastimes of men, like Gladstone, Morley, Salisbury, Balfour or Haldane, seemed soon to become somewhat obsolete. Yet, it is argued, that the often professedly amateurish activities did not merely display the traditional hobby attitude to the sciences, so characteristic of the wealthy aristocrat, but in some cases revealed a good understanding of the scientific and educational needs of society, leading up to their active advancement. The British amateurs, it would seem, were pleading for providing a balanced higher education and training, rather than going for the technical excellence of the political rival Imperial Germany, which dazzled and, at the same time, intimidated some of them.     

“In Front of the World”: Translating Beatriz Nascimento

This collection translates some of the work of the influential Black Brazilian thinker and activist Beatriz Nascimento (1942–1995) for the first time into English, in collaboration with her only daughter, Bethânia Gomes. Historian, poet, theorist and organiser, Beatriz Nascimento was a key figure in Brazil’s Black Movement until her untimely death in 1995. She dangerously wrote at the height of Brazil’s Military Dictatorship (1964–1985), and theorised extensively on the Black condition in Brazil; the unique experience of Black women; and quilombos—Brazilian maroon societies that she imagined as spaces of both historical and contemporary fugitivity. Following Alex Ratts, this introduction outlines her contribution to radical geography, in particular Black geographies, territoriality and embodiment. It also positions Nascimento within the trans‐Atlantic Black radical tradition. We present two of Nascimento’s essays in translation here. The first, “The Concept of Quilombo and Black Cultural Resistance”, introduces a crucial strand of her scholarly work, on the history and socio‐political significance of quilombos (maroon communities). The second, “For a (New) Existential and Physical Territory”, shows Nascimento in a different mood: philosophical, reflective and iconoclastic. In addition, two of her poems—“Dream” and “Sun and Blue”—are also translated here for the first time.     

A missing link? Network analysis as an empirical approach for critical physical geography

Critical physical geography (CPG) calls for integrative research on material landscapes and the socio-political dynamics of scientific knowledge production. Network analysis, a rich tradition of tools and approaches for analyzing relational information, has seen little use in the CPG literature to date. This represents a fruitful opportunity, as many of CPG's core interests—knowledge politics, histories of scientific concepts, and ecosocial relations—can be effectively analyzed using network techniques. In this article, I argue for adapting network approaches to CPG. First, I provide an overview of various network concepts, approaches, and their origins. I then discuss bibliometric network techniques for “science mapping” including co-word, co-authorship, and citation analyses. Next, I describe discourse network analysis, a recent mixed-method approach from political science. Finally, I discuss overlaps with emerging approaches from qualitative and visual network analysis. In each section, I provide existing and hypothetical examples, as well as software and visualization techniques, that demonstrate how network approaches could add new insights to CPG and related scholarship. Linking CPG with the diverse traditions of network analysis has the potential to produce new empirical understandings and bring the field into conversation with a growing body of research that spans the social sciences, natural sciences, and humanities.     

Rediscovering regional science: Positioning the field's evolving location in science and society

This study aims to provide a comprehensive examination of the evolution of regional science, a scholarly domain in the social sciences that applies analytical and quantitative approaches and methods to understand and address urban, rural, or regional problems. We conducted a bibliometric analysis of 8509 articles published in six regional science flagship journals (including the Journal of Regional Science, Annals of Regional Science, Regional Science and Urban Economics, Papers in Regional Science, Regional Science Policy and Practice, and International Regional Science Review) from 1958 to 2021. The analysis presents an objective data-driven and unprecedented visualization of the field's intellectual, social, and conceptual structure and trends from the beginning to the present. It also provides a rich portrayal of the epistemology of regional science and illuminates matters related to regional science education and training. We find that regional science has moved well beyond its origins, shifting away from a heavy focus on theory and abstraction to modeling/simulation, empirical analysis, and policy research. We also find that there has been increasing attention to “people” in regions and the spatial characteristics of social problems, and some important shifts in the regional science community itself, particularly in terms of patterns of collaboration and the geography of scholarship. The findings of this paper provide implications for future directions of research and education for regional science.     

The coming of age of the history of archaeology

Publications and organizational developments relating to the history of archaeology from 1989 until June 1993 are critically examined. Attention is paid to the changing motivations for producing such publications, their shifting intellectual orientation, controversies, especially as they relate to internal vs external approaches and the epistemological status of explanations, problems of verification, and the status of these studies as a subfield within archaeology.     

Reproduction, Representation and Authenticity: A Rereading

This essay argues for the moral necessity of retaining connections between the practices of representation and the ideal of authenticity. Using the example of racial representation, the author finds in the political philosophy of Charles Taylor and the cultural criticism of George Steiner resources for engaging in a creative dialogue with the history of our own tradition.     

Feminist digital geographies

At a moment when disciplinary attentions are turning to the digital as a subject and object of geographic inquiry, we consider enduring contours and new directions in feminist digital geographies scholarship. We revisit the centrality of feminist critiques of Science to critical digital geographies and their predecessors, identifying axes of scholarly engagement that have emerged from feminist theory and praxis. Simultaneously, we acknowledge the resounding whiteness and heteronormativity of these theoretical origins. In the second half of the article, we trace new horizons of contemporary digital geographies scholarship that engage queer and critical race theory, postcolonial feminism, and black and queer code studies. These theoretical moves give voice to longstanding silences and are indispensable to a political and ethical digital geographic scholarship and praxis, as well as to re-making our technologies and ourselves as digital subjects.     

The white essential subject: race,ethnicity, and the Irish in post-war Britain

This article focuses on the history of Irish migrants in Birmingham in an attempt to enhance historical understanding of race, ethnicity and ‘whiteness’ in post-war Britain. To do so, it will look at two Birmingham histories: the Young Christian Workers’ Association’s report on the Welfare of Irish migrants in 1951, and anti-Irish violence in the aftermath of the Birmingham Pub Bombings of 1974. It will consider the extent to which Irish immigrants were victims of racism, what this meant in terms of discrimination and identity, and, in particular, how Irish experiences corresponded to that of black and Asian migrants.