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.     

Intimate Distance: The Unconscious Dimensions of the Rapport Between Researcher and Researched

To explore how psychoanalysis might contribute to the methodology of human geography, this article returns to Freud's experiences of psycho-logical analysis before he develops psychoanalysis as a distinct understanding of the mind, identity formation, and subjectivity. Going back over the early history of psychoanalysis, Freud's psychoanalysis can be seen as an attempt to solve a set of problems inherent in late nineteenth-century psycho-logical analysis. Thus, it is possible to cast his methodological solutions in a new light. In particular, this article explores the problems associated with the unconscious rapport that developed in the therapeutic use of hypnotism in the cure of hysterical symptoms, for both doctor and patient. Freud's techniques can be seen as a way to produce an appropriate detachment—or intimate distance—between himself and his clients. This intimate distance is instructive. As a corrective to certain trajectories within human geography, this article identifies five methodological propositions that might inform future research.     

Interviewing Enjoyment,or the Limits of Discourse

This article addresses how psychoanalytic methodologies can be used to conduct and analyze semistructured interviews. Drawing on my work as a research assistant during the summer of 2006, I discuss the process of interviewing soccer fans who attended televised broadcasts of the FIFA World Cup soccer matches in cafés in Vancouver, British Columbia. The research examined the emotional geographies of nationalism and consumption using the Lacanian psychoanalytic concept of enjoyment. Reflecting on the intersubjective and embodied dimensions of the interview process, this article discusses the difficulties of capturing and conveying interviewees' enjoyment. Specifically, I explore how enjoyment, which is partially extradiscursive, disappears when articulated and represented through speech. I assert that psychoanalytic attempts to methodologically grasp enjoyment must be attentive to not only how subjects represent their enjoyment through discourse but also to their tears, ecstatic chanting, and celebration; that is, to the enactment of enjoyment itself.     

Dialogue, metaphors of dialogue and understandings of geography

Increasingly, human and physical geographers alike describe their research practices as involving dialogue of some kind. However, the widespread popularity of the term belies some very different understandings of its meaning and methodological implications. In this paper we reflect on these different conceptions of 'dialogical' geography as a way, first, of illustrating the broad range of understandings of research methodology now current in the discipline and, second, of identifying their implications for three long–standing controversies in the discipline: relativism and the truth of geographical knowledge, the associated dualisms between subject/object, nature/society, and realism/constructionism, and the potential for unity between human and physical geography. We argue that, while dialogue is a potentially fruitful way of understanding and practising geography, that the defence of it, like the attacks on it, is often misconceived.     

Sense of place and migration histories Idiotopy and idiotope

The aim of this article is to explore a methodological approach relevant to the study of population mobility. The approach considers not only the whole migratory process and the sequence of connected movements, but also what happens between each of them. The study of mobility is considered inseparable from the study of passage, permanence and settlement. This paper establishes the interest in elaborating concepts that express the interaction between people and places, and how these interactions contribute to an understanding of migratory processes and of 'place histories'. In this sense, geographical identification (idiotopy) and place identification (idiotope) are put forward as useful concepts.     

Reexamining the Montgomery Bus Boycott: Toward an Empathetic Pedagogy of the Civil Rights Movement

Geographers have assessed the success and failure of the U.S. Civil Rights Movement in terms of the African American struggle for justice, social identity, and economic survival. Conspicuously absent from the geographic literature are pedagogically oriented studies of the historical geography of the Civil Rights era. The Movement's popular image has congealed into a celebratory collection of names and dates, the sum of which is a vague, nearly mythic retelling that students might recognize but not necessarily care about. As a result, the Movement is at once contemptuously familiar yet bewilderingly strange for our students. This article offers a sympathetic critique of conventional Movement narratives, introducing the notion of empathetic pedagogy and presenting a case study of the Montgomery bus boycott. Our pedagogical approach stresses the role of empathy, both as a factor in shaping the actual sociospatial development of the Movement, as well as a strategy for encouraging students to appreciate the everyday courage and sacrifice that animated so many of its participants. Our study brings together two burgeoning literatures that have the potential to cultivate empathy among students: the critical reevaluation of mobility and explorations of subjectivity from a psychoanalytic perspective. Here mobility is understood in both its literal and figurative sense: in the case of the bus boycott, the intricate network established to literally move African Americans around the city, as well as the figurative movement of sympathy and solidarity that “moved” people to support their efforts and now informs popular, selective understandings of the protest.     

Locating art worlds: London and the making of Young British art

The international prominence of Young British art (YBa) in the 1990s gave London a contemporary art movement to match its role as one of the world's key centres of art exchange. Examining the rise of YBa in retrospect, this paper is concerned with the difference place makes in helping to shape the (hi)story of art. It is argued that London's established role as an international art centre was crucial in providing the density of networks, associations and facilities necessary to sustain an international art movement. At the same time, YBa's success can be linked to London's changing status as a cultural capital, as well as profound changes in the business of contemporary art. Attention is drawn to the ways in which the international art world is dominated by networks formed within and across a limited number of world art cities.     

Locating a Politics of Knowledge: struggles over intellectual property in the Philippines

Intellectual property is increasingly a key item on the US–Japanese–European trade agenda, and the globalisation of the US patent standard, which includes patents on plants and processes, has become a key objective of ‘information-rich’ corporations and countries. While social movements act against the legal structures and spaces of knowledge associated with privatised knowledge, they also work to construct alternatives both through the development of practical alternatives such as seed-saving networks and the articulation of new discourses such as Farmers’ Rights. In doing so, farmers’ organisations are actively creating and maintaining spaces of alternative knowledges and formulations of property. The articulation of Farmers’ Rights by social movements as a response to intellectual property is a way both of resisting regimes of intellectual property and of creating a normative framework within which claims to intellectual property are made obsolete. Drawing from empirical work based in the Philippines, I propose a concept, woven space, which refers to the diverse and overlapping alternatives and resistances that emerge from the situated and embodied struggles taking place around the world to form a differently imagined and realised global. This is a decentralised, networked space, rich with experience, shared belief, and possibilities for shared action.     

自然灾害遗址型黑色旅游地参观者动机研究——以汶川地震北川遗址公园为例

黑色旅游是当前国内外研究的热点之一,黑色旅游开发是自然灾害发生地灾后恢复的一种重要方式。以往研究较多关注战争与事件型黑色旅游地,对自然灾害遗址型旅游地的研究较少。本文以汶川地震北川遗址公园为案例,构建了参观者动机测量量表;通过因子分析得到了教育与纪念动机、社交与亲情动机、感受与见证动机、认同与求新动机和好奇心动机五大类参观者动机类型。为分析和比较不同来源地参观者动机的特征,探究事件关注度和认知欲望对不同类型动机的影响程度差异,分别以全体参观者和四川参观者为样本构建了结构方程模型。结果显示:全体参观者模型中,事件关注度对教育与纪念、社交与亲情等动机影响较大,而对好奇心动机影响较小;认知欲望对教育与纪念、感受与见证以及好奇心等动机影响较大,而对认同和求新动机影响较小。在四川参观者模型中,参观者对汶川事件的关注度不能激发感受与见证动机,认知欲望对社交与亲情动机的影响也不显著,而对于汶川地震地区的认同感和集体认同感较强。     

Understanding the Science and Art of Ecoregionalization

Although the need for unique spatial entities—regions—is generally agreed on within the discipline of geography, the philosophy and practice of regionalization—the process of identifying and demarcating regions and their borders—is still subject to great debate. To some, regionalization is a strict science, subject to demands for rigorous, rational, and replicable rules that make the process as objective and deductive as possible; to others, it is a subjective art that requires perspicacity, perseverance, and cultivation of inductive skills. This commentary reviews the concepts and uses of ecoregions and the process of ecoregionalization to illustrate and illuminate rich and varied traditions and philosophies within the discipline of geography.     

The Study of Human Action in the Physical Environment

Scientists have been formally studying the consequences of human action at least since Buffon and Humboldt in the 1700s. In 1864, Marsh published Man and Nature, a comprehensive synthesis documenting how people had been transforming Earth. This prominent catalogue of how people disturb Nature's harmonies was updated by Marsh in 1874 and by geographers in 1956 and 1990. Today the leading conceptions of human-environmental interaction are similar to Marsh's theme that people are the disturbers of Nature's harmonies. Effects of human action are considered using conceptions such as direct/indirect, intentional/accidental, and beneficial/detrimental. For a fresh approach, physical geographers could consider action more directly. Human action can be studied as any other process is. Systems concepts and energy flows used to evaluate natural forces can also be used to evaluate human forces. The centennial of the Association of American Geographers is an appropriate time to reflect on how physical geographers have been studying human-environmental interactions and to consider new approaches.     

Gender Issues in the Use of Interviewing as a Research Method*

The open-ended interview is gaining widespread acceptance within human geography as a research method. Frequently, such interviews can provide researchers with a richer account of events than can larger scale, standardized statistical approaches. However, researchers using interviews as part of their information gathering practices need to be aware of the social relations within which the interviews are conducted. In this paper I argue that gender relations are an important dynamic shaping the interview process which can significantly influence the sorts of data obtained using this particular research methodology.     

区域经济地理学方法论建设初探

区域经济地理学方法论建设落后于学科实践和理论研究的进展,有必要处理好方法论与实践、理论及相邻学科的关系,寻求一般研究方法与学科具体方法的有机结合,健全并规范学科分支内容的研究方法,使之形成面向实践的方法体系。应通过借鉴吸收横断学科、相邻学科方法,应用现代技术手段,建设符合学科实践和理论发展要求的方法论。     

空间与经济地理学理论构建

空间是地理学的核心概念之一,长期以来在地理学的研究中占据核心地位。地理学对于空间的认识由于受到多学科的影响和启示也在不断演变和发展,其中哲学和社会学对空间的理解对地理科学的影响极为深刻。经济地理学作为地理学的重要分支学科之一,短短百年历史就经历了数次研究思潮的变迁和学科地位的崛起。这一切都离不开经济地理扎根于空间。空间是经济地理理论创新的源泉。本文通过对地理学中的空间概念与经济地理发展脉络的对应阐释,进一步印证了上述观点。同时,本文指出空间不能被沦落到和地方、区位、区域等概念并列的地位,空间包含着后者,须进一步强化空间的第一位性。但是也不能忽略经济地理学中的方法论的创新,每一次空间理解的突破都伴随着研究方法的创新,但是方法的创新始终是第二位的。因为方法创新的背后隐含着空间理解的改变。     

Reflections on the iconography of environmental justice activism

The United States environmental justice movement has grown in the last 20 years from tactical cooperation between civil rights and environmental activists on hazardous waste issues into a broad-based movement for social change. As dozens of organizations invest resources in an environmental justice agenda, it is important to examine how such organizations portray their stance toward the goals of the larger movement in order to better understand tensions within the movement between social justice and environmental protection, diversity and commonality, and localized and broader movement agendas. This paper explores what contemporary environmental justice imagery tells us about this social movement through a critical discourse analysis of environmental justice organizations' logos. The conceptual approach used here links a tradition of critical discourse analysis of textual materials with elements of a critical visual methodology. The paper examines how the social grievance of environmental injustice is constructed in relation to the social and natural world, and considers what these images tell us about the identities, relationships and modes of authority that constitute the contemporary environmental justice movement.     

Spatial order through the family: the regulation of urban space in Singapore

This article examines the regulation of urban public space through a study of the role of the family unit in past and present urban development in Singapore. Since the founding of modern Singapore 50 years ago, the nuclear family has remained the preferred social institution for state policies and subsequent regulation of education, housing, employment, health, leisure, social welfare and even neighborhood development. Drawing on primary government documents and field work and interviews with current and displaced small business owners on a commercial street in Chinatown, the article demonstrates how a “softer” version of spatial regulation emerged from an intersection of state commercial development policies that favored small, family-owned businesses and the extension of a family-based moral social order applied to the surrounding public spaces. The result is the regulation of Chinatown’s streets and sidewalks became inextricably bound up with the everyday operations of family-run businesses. More recently, state interest in creating an entertainment-based global Singapore has jeopardized this arrangement, as corporate gentrification threatens to displace family ownership of small businesses.     

农用地转用价格评估方法研究

文章以土地管理法的相关法律条文为依据,分析了农用地的转用价格组成。农用地转用价格由农用地质量价格、农用地社会价值量、地面附着物及青苗补偿费三部分组成。在此基础上,提出新的农用地社会价值量评估方法。结合我国的社会保障体系,考虑土地的社会价值量在整个社会价值量中的比重,可以确定农用地的社会价值量,进而可以对农用地转用价格进行评估,并以宝应县为例就此评估方法做介绍。评估结果分析表明,该评估较好地反映了农用地的转用价格。     

距离欲对旅游者目的地选择影响的解释框架

距离是影响人类各种空间行为的重要因素,也是探索旅游者行为规律的重要变量。然而,现有的旅游者目的地决策模型多将其作为约束条件处理,充分讨论了距离的阻力机制,却忽视了对其引力机制的探索,也因此导致了理论与营销实践层面的不足。本文提出“距离欲”来表述距离的引力作用,基于其审美情感基本属性,将其细分为认知维度、情感维度和旅游动机维度3个维度;根据旅游者旅游审美需求特点,从现代性审美视角切入,将其细分为游戏的距离欲、时尚的距离欲、冒险的距离欲3个层次,并进行了理论阐述。研究进一步指出,距离欲是旅游者对距离意义的解读,距离欲概念的提出为旅游者外出旅游的动机提供了新的解释,旅游者对诗意“远方”的追求,是旅游者基本的审美需求,也是人类超越自我的本质追求,还是高速发展的流动性社会中个体抵御异化的审美救赎。距离欲同时为我们进一步认识旅游的本质提供了新的解读视角,旅游活动带来的距离的审美体验能够参与建构和重塑旅游者的心理结构,在帮助旅游者更好的重返现实世界的同时,还积极的促进旅游者以和谐、宽容、独立的美学境界来重塑现实世界。本文从距离视角切入,进一步证实了旅游活动在旅游者个体、群体乃至全人类生存品质提升过程中所发挥的积极作用。通过对距离欲与其他行为变量的关系的进一步梳理,最终形成了距离与旅游者目的地选择的基本解释框架。对距离欲的深入探索能够为全球化的流动时代下旅游者外出旅游动机分析提供新解释,为旅游本质的解读提供新线索,具有一定的理论意义;同时为进一步提升旅游者目的地选择模型的解释力与预测力提供了可能性,为目的地营销机构针对感知距离的精准营销战略的制定提供新思路,具有一定的实践意义。