Withered Geography

This commentary is a response to an article by Jay R. Harman in the November 2003 issue of The Professional Geographer. I argue that Harman's claim that scholarly disciplines offer social “returns” in a competitive “market” obscures the fundamentally political nature of how social resources are allocated and how social needs are defined. Harman would have us subordinate scholarly research to agendas set elsewhere, by politicians and other powerful interests, but I argue that such a vision would turn geographers into mere technicians. A healthier role for the discipline is for geographers to seek ways of asserting intellectual leadership and of shaping social agendas along more humane and socially just lines.     

Thinking critically and creatively about focus groups

Focus groups are now widely used by human geographers conducting qualitative research, and are clearly recognised as an established research method within the discipline. Despite this, there is a lack of discussion about the various methodological issues involved in using focus groups. This paper aims to open up discussion by suggesting that there is a need to think critically and creatively about using focus groups in human geography. I draw upon my experience of conducting focus groups with young Muslim men in order to suggest some of the ways in which human geographers might think critically about using focus groups. Some of the issues discussed include group size, location, context and timing, sensitivity of topic, the age of research participants and the positionalities of the researcher.     

Making Space for Community-Engaged Scholarship in Geography

Geography has a long tradition of community-engaged research and teaching. Conventional institutional and departmental norms in many U.S. universities and colleges, however, often discourage such engaged scholarship and teaching, especially among junior faculty. We argue that geographers are well poised to unravel society's twenty-first-century intractable problems if engaged scholarship is more intentionally supported. As community geographers in junior faculty positions at research-intensive universities, we discuss our experiences with placing community engagement at the core of our scholarship, highlighting opportunities for a more robust integration of engaged scholarship in academic geography.     

“噪”起来：广州音乐现场的文化地理研究

将广州的音乐现场看作一个承载制造“噪音”的场所,以6个现场音乐酒吧为具体案例,通过定性分析的方法探讨音乐现场如何连结不同人和不同的地方,以及如何被建构成一个“动态”的空间和“越轨”的地方。研究结果表明：音乐现场作为一种动态的物质文化空间,由经营者、组织者、音乐人和乐迷通过社会实践共同建构而成,成为所有音乐演出参与者之间的关系及其与不同地理尺度之间关系的节点;音乐现场作为一个“越轨”的地方,将音乐现场的“局内人”和“局外人”区分。上述结论回应和丰富了现有音乐地理研究的内容和成果,并对中国超越“看的方式”进行文化地理研究提供了新的切入点。     

A Long Way to Go: Collective Paths to Racial Justice in Geography

Despite decades of recognition and worry about diversity, our discipline remains persistently white. That is, it is dominated by white bodies and it continues to conform to norms, practices, and ideologies of whiteness. This is a loss. At best, it limits the possibilities and impact of our work as geographers. At worst, it perpetuates harmful exclusions in our discipline: its working environments, its institutions, and its knowledge production. This remains deeply concerning for many geographers, and there has been important research, commentary, and institutional activity over the years. Yet, research shows us that little meaningful progress has been made. We know that mentoring is one vital part of the journey toward change. As such, we reflect here on our experience developing a research collective built on a transformative mentoring practice. We outline the key challenges, strategies, and tentative successes of the collective in supporting women of color undergraduate, graduate, and faculty geographers, arguing that such feminist formations are a vital part of the path to intellectual racial justice in our field. Key Words: diversity, feminist geography, higher education, mentoring, race.     

Grappling with Geography's Existential Dilemma: The Legacy of William Torrey Harris

Geography's existence as a school or college subject has never been a given. While geographers make cases for geography's importance, acceptance of those cases rests not on impassioned rhetoric but on the social and intellectual contexts into which disciplines fit. Contexts are contested and they change. From a seemingly secure position at the beginning of the twentieth century, geography's role in American schools has been eroded and diminished by corrosive forces. Geographers need convincing answers to the existential question lest the subject disappear entirely. Geography's enviable position was in large measure the work of William Torrey Harris. Harris made a compelling existential case for geography and his vision, its implementation, its rejection, and its fate offer a model from which geographers can learn. Understanding how to respond to a social and intellectual context is crucial to geography's future.     

HYPHENATED GEOGRAPHIES: THE DEINDUSTRIALIZATION OF NATURE‐SOCIETY GEOGRAPHY*

As visions of ecological crisis mark the daily headlines, industrial spaces of intensive energy and material consumption become a more intense object of political and social concern. In this article, I attempt to situate geography's relative neglect of the ecological underpinnings of industrial capitalism within the context of the history of geographical thought. I argue that the ways in which geographers read the hyphen in the phrase “nature‐society” reveals epistemological limits to their object of study. I then offer three dramatically different readings of the hyphen and discuss how they have affected the lineages and trajectories of geographical research—Barrows's human ecology, Sauer's cultural landscape, and critical theories of social nature. I conclude by suggesting that geography needs to let go of its empirical and conceptual fixation on “nature”.     

去中心化和（逆）全球化背景下中国人文地理学的批判性理论探索与方法创新

文章以去中心化和（逆）全球化为背景评估中国的人文地理学研究现状与未来去向。笔者认为近年贸易保护主义和中美争端的不断升级会减缓但不会扭转知识全球化的长期趋势。中国人文地理学者不应该对进入世界舞台失去信心,而应该勇敢正视当前理论和研究创新的重要机遇和挑战。文章通过对比中国人文地理学科与西方同行的研究,发现两者有不少共同的历史和传统,包括研究命题、研究框架和解释方式。比较而言,中国人文地理学更加规范统一、富有组织和系统性,并积极支持国家发展议程;而西方人文地理学强调个人自由、多样性、天马行空（“Blue-sky enquiry”）以及独立于政府的批判性视角。文章指出三种不同的价值观作为供中国人文地理学者进行理论批判的重要视角。其他可能的理论探索方式包括将问题置于不同的时间和空间,使用不同的数据和方法进行多重验证,从基本假设出发来进行理论解构,批判性地辨析因果关系,以及在不同的尺度下重新检视研究问题等。中国人文地理应通过更好地理解三种不同的地理知识,建立有利于激励研究创新的评估体系,探索国际研究和跨学科研究的前沿领域,促进比较研究,以及融合利用不同风格的研究方法等策略来促进研究创新。文章结尾提出三种可能的（逆）全球化情景供中国人文地理学者思考如何迈向充满新挑战和新机遇的未来。     

Back to Revolutionary Theory Through Racialized Poverty: The McGee Family's Utopian Struggle for Milwaukee∗

In this article, I consider possible political action that can reverse deepening racialized poverty in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. At its core, this article uses the efforts of the McGee family, an important activist family spanning three generations within Milwaukee, to offer insights into conceptualizing alternative strategies for confronting racialized poverty in Milwaukee. I also use the McGees's story to reconsider the ways geographers might generate revolutionary theory. The article is based on more than thirty interviews and several focus groups with a mixed array of people related to a broad temporal, spatial, and political research project on poverty, race, and inequality within Milwaukee.     

Geographic perspectives on urban sustainability: past,current, and future research trajectories

ABSTRACT

The 21st century has been called the “century of the city” and compounded concerns that current development pathways were not sustainable. Calls for scholarship on urban sustainability among geographers cites strengths in the human-environment and urban subfields that positioned the discipline to make unique contributions to critical research needs. This special issue reflects on the contributions that geographers have made to urban sustainability scholarship. We observe that that integration across human-environment and urban subfields reflects broader bifurcations between social theory and spatial science traditions in geography. Piggy-backing on the rise of sustainability science, the emergence of urbanization science compels geographers to reflect upon the ways in which we are positioned to make unique contributions to those fields. We argue that those contributions should embrace systems thinking, empirically connect social constructs to biophysical patterns and processes, and use the city as a laboratory to generate new theories.     

On Geographic and geography

New Zealand Geographic is one of a number of geographical magazines published in the English‐speaking world that make little or no reference to work by academic geographers. It recently launched a New Zealand Geographic Trust to promote research into ‘New Zealand's life, culture and sciences’ and collaborated with four other publishers of geographical magazines to raise awareness of climate change: the work of academic geographers is again ignored. This exclusion of academic and school geography from such enterprises raises important issues regarding the discipline's public profile in New Zealand and suggests the need for greater public engagement activity by the country's geographers.     

身体、身体观以及人文地理学对身体的研究

1970年代以来,伴随着消费主义和女权运动,身体研究在人文社会学科中兴起,一个被布莱恩·特纳（Bryan Turner）称之为“身体社会崛起”的时代来临了。身体研究成为西方人文与社会科学研究的“新大陆”,众多哲学家、社会理论学家纷纷投身于身体研究,重新解读了身体在认识世界和知识生产中的重要性。身体转向作为文化转向的一部分,同样受到了人文地理学家的关注。许多批判地理学家,如女性主义、马克思主义、反种族主义、后殖民主义、酷儿地理学家认为,身体研究是改善社会、文化、经济关系的可能途径。在“身体转向”的影响下,身体研究逐渐渗入到情感地理学、旅游地理学、乡村地理学等众多研究领域。与此同时,人文地理学家从人文社会科学中引入多种理论,如表演理论、精神分析法、非表征理论等对身体研究进行了探讨和阐释。基于这样的背景,梳理了西方人文地理学中有关身体研究的文献,归纳了人文地理学中身体研究的主要议题和理论,以及由此而展开的一系列具体的研究成果,此工作具有切实的学术意义并对后续相关研究的展开具有指导意义。     

Renaissance City Singapore: a study of arts spaces

The study of 'arts spaces' has generally focused on physical spaces for the arts in the form of arts districts, cultural infrastructure and museum spaces. Apart from the provision of such physical spaces, we argue that the study of the arts should also focus on such aspects as the social environments and the creative spaces in which artists operate. Such a holistic approach not only facilitates an understanding of the myriad challenges artists face in society, but also opens greater research opportunities to geographers interested in the arts. Our case study of Singapore as a 'Global City for the Arts' provides insights into physical spaces of the arts as well as the social and creative environments in which the arts operate.     

经济地理学视角下创新网络与区域增长研究述评

创新是引领经济发展的第一动力，创新与区域增长之间的关系成为经济地理学者关注的重点领域。文章通过梳理近年来有关创新网络测度、创新网络与区域增长关系、创新网络作用于区域增长方式等方面的文献发现：网络资本可以弥补社会资本在解释企业创新结网经济价值方面的不足，区域增长呈现出网络化特征已成为学界共识，知识流与邻近性能较好地解释创新网络与区域增长的关系机理。然而，当前研究对社会资本如何促进区域增长，网络资本与区域增长关系模型如何构建，不同类型的邻近性与知识对区域增长的影响有何差异等问题尚不明确，建议重视网络资本对区域增长的作用并实证检验二者的关联，同时还应重视创新网络中企业家精神、创新个体心理行为特征等因素对区域增长的影响。     

Learning about Feminism in Digital Spaces: online methodologies and participatory mapping

Collaborative online research offers opportunities and constraints for geographers. This article critically appraises a collaborative research process that we used to illuminate spatial and political dynamics of feminism contained within the online group ‘Destroy the Joint’ (DTJ). A mostly Australian initiative of over 74 000 Facebook members, DTJ aims to end sexism and misogyny in multiple ways. It operates as a meeting place, discussion forum, and umbrella organisation for numerous micro-campaigns that change in response to broader social, cultural and political contexts, and occur in online and offline spaces. We formed a collaborative research agreement with the moderators of DTJ to reflect on its work, asking participants to put themselves on a map and complete a survey. Participatory GIS and survey-based research operated in the real and the more-than-real spaces that contain paradoxical possibilities. We use the term more-than-real to highlight the excesses of digital spaces: the affect that social media generates, and is generated by, characterises the more-than-real, where extremes in productive and corrosive relations can permeate. Survey results showed diverse appreciations of DTJ's multiple activist tactics (across seemingly ‘superficial’ and ‘meaningful’ interventions), and creative ideas for future campaigns. Mapping revealed both dispersed networks and urban activist concentrations. Nevertheless, after an initial peak of interest and enthusiasm for reflecting on DTJ, the reporting back of research findings to DTJ followers did not garner significant interest. This article tracks that collaborative research trajectory. Intentions to build a hybrid research collective were not realised because of how the more-than-real affords possibilities and limitations. The politics of ‘giving-back’ within the more-than-real are critically engaged with in this appraisal of an experimental online collaboration.     

Think globally and act locally: Voices of Chinese human geographers in the international arena

With the help of the mapping software Citespace and based on analysis of international human geographers’ journal outputs in terms of countries of residence, institutions, journals and key topics, this article demonstrates Chinese scholars’ contributions to both top and regional journals in the field. The analysis shows that Anglophone geographers have been leading the development of human geography. It also demonstrates that human geographers have taken a more micro and dynamic perspective to explain environmental and social phenomena, rather than a macro and narrative approach. Scholars tend to focus more on daily life, with research topics such as home, food, body and other micro-material matters. The analysis further finds that emotional geography, geography of embodiment, food geography as well as non-representational theory have drawn increasing attention from researchers. People's perceptions of nature have been constructed through the development and negotiation of social relations. As China becomes more visible internationally in the context of a highly globalized and mobile world, increasing numbers of Chinese geographers have become involved in research on human geography. Some representative scholars and institutions, especially those based in Hong Kong, act as academic leaders by articulating their own voices to tell the unique Chinese story internationally through the publication of their research.     

The Implications of Psychoanalysis for Qualitative Methodology: The Case of Interviews and Narrative Data Analysis*

In this article I ask to what extent geographers can draw on psychoanalytic theory when examining interview data. I consider Freud's theory of the mind and its unconscious processes to ask how bringing the unconscious to bear on identity studies potentially impacts qualitative research on subjectivity and identification. Existing geographic debate on psychoanalytic theory and methods provides an organizing framework for my argument. Although the article advocates an ontology of the psychoanalytic subject, I suggest that researchers must avoid psychoanalyzing research subjects. This distinction limits the ways in which scholars can “read” personal narratives for unconscious processes.     

Gendering Climate Change: Geographical Insights

Although climate change is expected to increase vulnerabilities, marginalization, and sufferings of many in the Global South, impacts will be unevenly felt across social strata. Intersectionalities of social difference, especially along gender and class lines, differentiate the ways in which impacts of climate change are experienced and responded to. Feminist political ecology and feminist geography insights can explain how different groups of people understand, respond to, and cope with variability and uncertainties in nuanced and critical ways, thereby elucidating the gendered implications of climate change. With a regional focus on South Asia, the article underscores the key issues that can be applied geographically elsewhere. Gendered implications of climate change in South Asia are particularly poignant as patriarchal norms, inequities, and inequalities often place women and men in differentiated positions in their abilities to respond to and cope with dramatic changes in socioecological relations but also foreground the complex ways in which social power relations operate in communal responses to adaptation strategies. This is particularly evident in water-related productive and reproductive tasks in agrarian societies that constitute the majority of South Asia. As climate change is expected to exacerbate both ecological degradation (e.g., water shortages) and water-related natural hazards (e.g., floods, cyclones), thereby transforming gender–water geographies, it becomes imperative to undertake careful multiscalar and critical analyses to better inform policymaking. This article elucidates the complex ways that climate change will affect gender and social relations, thereby highlighting the ways that existing policy narratives and adaptation programs might be better informed by geographical insights. To this end, the article encourages feminist and critical geographers to more forcefully and fruitfully engage with global debates on climate change.     

Russia's Far East: A Region at Risk

Abstract

In this article I ask to what extent geographers can draw on psychoanalytic theory when examining interview data. I consider Freud's theory of the mind and its unconscious processes to ask how bringing the unconscious to bear on identity studies potentially impacts qualitative research on subjectivity and identification. Existing geographic debate on psychoanalytic theory and methods provides an organizing framework for my argument. Although the article advocates an ontology of the psychoanalytic subject, I suggest that researchers must avoid psychoanalyzing research subjects. This distinction limits the ways in which scholars can “read” personal narratives for unconscious processes.

     

A critical analysis of objective criteria and methods in conflict and land-use mapping

In geography, as in other types of social science, the discussion of objectivity has been a long-standing issue. This article is mainly about concept definition and analysis. It discusses the problem of objectivity in science and planning, and shows how it functions in planning activities, with a focus on conflict-mapping and land-use mapping in particular. All specific planning applications face certain meta-theoretical considerations of how to deal with different types of knowledge and how to use them in planning. Different professionals carry out planning activities, and geographers are important contributors in this field. It is argued that criteria and methods that often are taken to be objective hide value systems and conflicts. There needs to be a broader understanding that what are called facts change through time, and thus their validity cannot be taken to be absolute. There are different ways of 'knowing' the world and constructing answers to problems. Often criteria and methods are used to present definitive solutions, when different propositions should have been matters for discussion and negotiation among the different interest groups during the process.