MIDDLE EAST URBAN STUDIES: IDENTITY AND MEANING

Addressing Wacquant in the symposium on the book Urban Outcasts, the commentator (Western) notes in introduction certain parallels in both their academic approach and their international experience, and expresses admiration for Wacquant's work. Then, a summary is provided of Wacquant's comparison of the U.S. inner city with the French banlieue (suburban zones of public housing), in particular of two neighborhoods in Chicago and Paris. Strong contrasts emerge along five dimensions: scale/location, race, relative deprivation, criminal violence, and state intervention/inaction. In conclusion, Wacquant's call for engagement, his insistence on agency, and his refusal to submit to seemingly determinant structural-historical factors is appreciatively noted.     

Urban Underclass: The Wayward Travels of a Chaotic Concept

This commentary critically engages with arguments made by Loïc Wacquant in his book Urban Outcasts on the nature of public discourse regarding concentrated urban poverty in the United States. In particular, it elaborates a critical reading of the international circulation of social-scientific analyses of urban poverty—in particular the concept of the "urban underclass"—which rose to prominence through research on Chicago neighborhoods. This concept has subsequently influenced scholarly and public policy approaches to characterizing and combating entrenched urban poverty and long-term unemployment in Europe, Asia, and elsewhere. I challenge the appropriateness of the concept as well as the direction of public policymaking that has downplayed, if not ignored, questions of job availability and job quality in urban areas.     

Public places and empty spaces: dislocation,urban renewal and the death of a French plaza

This article examines the dislocations produced when competing understandings of public space come into contact. Focusing on Montpellier, France, where an urban renewal program has seen portions of the city-centre renovated, the article considers the breaking apart of a North African commercial cluster under the guide of French heritage protection. Arguing that such action is tiedto municipal urban politics and wider trajectories that place diverse identities in a separate category, I trace the process through which a plaza encompassed in the urban renewal program has been labelled as “empty” and “dead” space. Suggesting that the relocation of a well-used outdoor food market is an instance of public space being deliberately emptied of its social and civic function, I argue that such sites are better defined as “municipal spaces”, entities that are firmly in the realm of the state, rather than ones within the purview of diverse publics.     

Loose threads: The translocal making of public space policy in Hanoi

This paper analyses the recent developments in public space policy in the city of Hanoi, Vietnam. It has three aims. The first is to look at a potentially progressive urban policy in contrast to most work on ‘policies in motion’ that has primarily been concerned with neoliberal policies. The second is to put the process of public space policymaking in Hanoi in historical and cultural perspective. We therefore describe public space in Hanoi as historically constituted by different layers of meaning and physical urban patterns. The paper's third aim is to analyse the translocal connections involved in a policy that is still in the making, and therefore characterized by a series of ‘loose threads’. We show how different types of connections – policy mobility, topological relations and inter‐referencing – relate Hanoi to multiple locales elsewhere. The conclusion reflects on the ‘politics of reception’ showing how analysing a policy in the making develops a critical analysis of policies in motion.     

政治性民意集团及其利益博弈：缅甸国内长期冲突的一个分析视角

文章首先提出了一个国内政治性行为主体影响国家政局的分析框架,然后从“民意”“民意政治”“政治性民意”的视角,依据各民意集团的构成主体、利益诉求、行为方式等要素对缅甸国内的政治性民意集团进行梳理和划分,分析了缅甸政治性民意集团形成的时空环境,并对其形成的过程与机制进行探讨。。研究发现,在缅甸特殊的历史和地理环境背景下,形成了基于利益诉求而相互博弈的六大主要的政治性民意集团。各政治性民意集团或采取平等协商签订协议,或软硬兼施诱使妥协,或使用强力打击迫使接受等手段、方式进行权利博弈,成为缅甸国内主要的政治性行为主体。各政治性民意集团的借力博弈对缅甸政局产生了深远的影响,民意集团之间冲突的实质是其集团利益超越国家利益,这是缅甸国内长期冲突的主要致因。从“民意”“民意政治”的视域来研究一国内部的民主问题、民族问题、宗教问题和冲突问题是富有尝试性和探索性的,缅甸的实证研究也为研究特定国家的相关问题提供一个新的视野和参考借鉴。     

NEOTRADITIONAL DEVELOPMENTS: THE ANATOMY OF A NEW URBAN FORM

Built at a small scale and incorporating many features of certain old-city neighborhoods, such as narrow streets and small setbacks, neotraditional developments have been designed by architects and built by a small number of developers on suburban greenfield sites since the early 1980s. The distinctive neotraditional urban form represents the convergence of certain aspects of two planning traditions—urban aesthetics and social utopianism. In this paper I outline the two traditions and show how they have been selectively appropriated by neotraditional architects and planners. I suggest that the recent restructuring and fragmentation in the suburban housing market has led to the creation of niche markets, such as the market for neotraditionalism. Using Pierre Bourdieu's concept of habitus, I argue that the commercial success of neotraditional developments can be explained when recognition is given to the role of relatively affluent house buyers intent on creating a habitus and appropriating symbolic capital. Habitus is defined as the system of values, dispositions, and practices that constitute and are constituted by a societal group.     

Where rights begin and end in Puerto Rico's gated communities

In 1992, Puerto Rico's governor and police superintendent incorporated the National Guard with local police in a militarized battle against crime. Mano dura contra el crimen (strong arm/iron fist against crime) policies led to the gating of 82 public housing communities in the island. Simultaneously, privileged private communities organized and petitioned municipalities to retrofit their neighbourhoods with gates in the name of safety. These enclosures followed the privatized management of all public housing communities in the island only a few years before. Based on ethnographic research, I examine the sociospatial outcomes of these policies, how they reframe community participation and deploy a discourse of self‐responsibility that distributes power unequally across private and public housing communities. While in the privileged communities these policies have cultivated community leaders and invigorated social life as residents take control over public space, the gates in the communities of the poor reflect a skeletal structure of democracy. Private management companies impose increasingly restrictive regulations in attempts to organize the community and the only recourse to participation is to engage in small acts of everyday resistance, from apathy to subversion. As part of larger neoliberal tendencies to retrench the ‘public’ in favour of the ‘private’, the mano dura policies curtail democracy as the voices of the poor are silenced and the scope of efficacy of the rich expands.     

Constructing Alterity in Ile De France?

Abstract

The aim of the article is to determine whether the Walt Disney Company has manufactured a landscape “other” to French culture around its parks in the Eastern Paris Basin. Val d'Europe is contentiously constructed by three main groups, not just one enterprise: the French state, the Walt Disney Company and local and regional governments, as well as by present and future residents, within the constraints of a contract based on French laws. The Company's investment has been a tremendous boost to the French state's project but did not lead to Disneyfication of the Briard landscape of agricultural lands in the Eastern Paris basin. In Val d'Europe the French state did not abdicate its authority in favor of commoditization of Paris as a global metropolis. The French state and French culture were never “weak” and overwhelmed.     

GEOGRAPHIC CATEGORIES OF SETTLEMENT AND THE 2000 CENSUS: A CHALLENGE FOR GEOGRAPHERS

Through a close examination of the case of Virginia v. Hicks—from Kevin Hicks's arrests for trespassing on streets near a Richmond, Virginia, public housing project in 1998 and 1999 to the unanimous Supreme Court decision upholding these arrests on the grounds that no harm was done to the First Amendment—this paper explores how the rights of private property are made, through the judicial process, to "trump" other kinds of rights and interests. It examines the implications of both dominant property practices and discourses and a more general judicial anti-urbanism for city life. The paper shows that one of the things at risk given the judiciary's love affair with private property rights is the right of some people simply to be present in public space. By implication, the paper argues that legal geographies need to examine more than just final court decisions (as is often the case), but also uncover the full legal history—the strange twists and turns—of the cases examined.     

Women in agriculture: advocates for a gendered sustainable agriculture

A gendered consideration of rural geography has been barely discernible within Australian and New Zealand literature. The notable exceptions in this case have illustrated the complexity and merit of studying the gender patterns and relations of rural life. Outside geography, there is an expanding literature on rural women in Australia. These works parallel significant developments in the lives and politics of rural and agricultural women themselves. This paper reports selected findings from a study of the women in agriculture movement in Australia. As such, it illustrates the increased awareness of the gendered conditions of farming. The women in agriculture movement works to increase the recognition of women's contribution to agriculture. In doing so it affirms the legitimacy of women farmers’ voices and perspectives. There will be no sustainable rural systems while half the rural population is unseen or unheard. Women in agriculture demonstrate a social dimension of sustainability. They highlight the need to integrate gender equity and a ‘wider‐than‐economic’ conceptualisation of sustainable agriculture. Their actions can stimulate rural geographers to further consider the social and political aspects of rural sustainability beyond the conventional farm/industry and community service sites we usually consider.     

Teaching Controversial Topics: Iconography and the Confederate Battle Flag in the South

Abstract

This article examines various strategies for teaching controversial topics. As a case study, I present examples from my experience teaching about the cultural/political geographic concept of iconography in southern classrooms using as an example recent debates over whether governments in the region should sanction the flying of the Confederate battle flag. First, I discuss the recent literature on the teaching of controversial issues. Second, I examine the concept of iconography and the debates over flying the flag. Third, I present different strategies that can be used to approach this controversial icon in a classroom setting. I conclude by arguing that there is no perfect solution to the teaching of controversial topics that will succeed for every topic, irrespective of time and place.     

Man and Nature: George Perkins Marsh and Alexander Von Humboldt

George Perkins Marsh's book Man and Nature was the first work of natural history to fundamentally influence American politics. This paper establishes the powerful impact that Alexander von Humboldt's writings had on Marsh. Marsh took ideas that Humboldt introduced across his books and synthesized them into a single powerful argument regarding the dangers of deforestation. These warnings eventually led to policies that sought to more carefully manage forestland, plant trees, and spawn the 20^th century conservation movement.     

A Tripartite Conceptualisation of Urban Public Space as a Site for Play: Evidence from South Bank,London

Public space is a feature of the urban built environment that has received increasing attention in recent years. Discussion has focused on the theoretical decline of public space, as private and institutional forces take on increasing influence. At the same time, many such “in-between spaces,” even privately owned ones, are used and experienced as public on a daily basis. Few studies, however, have explored how spaces understood as public are used and practised as such. To address this gap in the literature this paper draws upon ethnographic data collected on the “South Bank” in London (United Kingdom) to argue that “play” is a recurrent trait of sociospatial practices enacted in public space. Three interrelated typologies of playful practices in public space are discussed: child's play, plays on meaning, and play as simulation.     

NODAL HETEROLOCALISM AND TRANSNATIONALISM AT THE UNITED STATES‐CANADIAN BORDER*

ABSTRACT. Since the late 1990s Wilbur Zelinsky's theory of “heterolocalism’ has provided human geographers and other social scientists with a new approach to analyzing the spatial patterns and ethnic identities of recent immigrants in the United States. Zelinsky's heterolocal model suggests that, to a degree unknown in the past, new migrants in North American cities may choose to settle in widely dispersed places, rather than in more concentrated ethnic enclaves, while maintaining their ethnic identities. This article expands on and critiques prior work on heterolocalism in Oregon by examining the spatial patterns, ethnic and religious identities, and transnational relationships of two recent refugee groups in three urban areas in the Pacific Northwest. Using data from U.S. and Canadian census records, refugee resettlement agency files, survey questionnaires, structured and unstructured interviews, and participant observation with post‐Soviet Russians and Ukrainians in the Vancouver, British Columbia, Seattle, Washington, and Portland, Oregon metropolitan areas, I analyze the spatial patterns and related social networks that define the identities and residential and religious spaces of these groups to test the efficacy of relating heterolocalism and transnationalism across an international boundary.     

The Unbearable Closeness of The East: Embodied Micro-Economies of Difference,Belonging, and Intersecting Marginalities in Post-Socialist Berlin

Abstract

This article examines the micro-politics of belonging in the post-socialist outskirts of Berlin, in Marzahn, one of many new urban immigrant settlement areas in Europe. More specifically, it focuses on what locals perceive as an acceptance-precluding conspicuous presence of nominally white immigrants of German ancestry from the former Soviet Union, the Aussiedler (resettlers). Long-term residents read and interpret these immigrants’ everyday embodiments by constructing what I call micro-economies of embodied difference in order to mark immigrants as non-belonging Eastern-European. In order to make sense of such practices and local antipathy towards the Aussiedler, I analyze the embeddedness of this suburban locality in the regional politics of belonging, showing how Marzahn and its long-time residents have themselves become post-wall Berlin's (and Germany's) internal Others, saturated with uncommodifiable traces of now-denigrated state-socialist Easternness. I suggest that in such a context these residents’ practice of ascribing the unwanted Easternness to recent immigrants works to deflect it in order to buttress their own claims to full membership citizenship in the unified Germany from which they have long been excluded. [Key words: belonging, immigrants, embodied difference, Othering, Easternness, Berlin.]     

Killing Animals for Recreation? A Quantitative Study of Hunters’ Motives and Their Perceived Moral Relevance

Hunters in the Western world today do not need to hunt to obtain food and other animal products. So why do they hunt? This paper examines the motives of hunters, the motives ascribed to hunters by members of the general public, and the role motives play for the moral acceptability of hunting among members of the general public. It draws on a nationally representative survey of the general public (n?=?1,001) and hunters (n?=?1,130) in Denmark. People with a negative attitude to hunting are more likely to take motives into account when they consider the acceptability of hunting. Three clusters of motives defining distinctive hunting motivational orientations were identified: action/harvest, management/care, and natural and social encounters. The general public ascribed action/harvest motives to hunters more than hunters did. In a policy perspective, if hunters’ motives are misperceived, improved dialog may be needed to protect the legitimacy of recreational hunting.     

Tropicality,the unruly Atlantic and social utopias: the French explorer Henri Coudreau (1859 − 1899)

This paper addresses the works of Henri Coudreau, a little‐known French explorer of Guiana and Amazonia who was later forgotten by the ‘heroic’ histories of exploration because of his unruliness and nonconformist attitudes. Drawing on the literature of postcolonialism and tropicality as well as on recent studies of anti‐colonialist geographies, I address for the first time Coudreau's geography from the perspective of anarchist and critical thinking. My main argument is that Coudreau's work is a further example of the complexity and heterogeneity of the European intellectual field during the imperial age. Despite having come of age intellectually among all the European racist and ethnocentric prejudices of his day, Coudreau developed a different outlook thanks to two factors, viz., his personal experience in living for years with the indigenous communities of Amazonia, and his exposure to anarchist anti‐colonialist ideas through his collaboration with Elisée Reclus. Coudreau's tropical utopia of an independent Amazonia, and his endorsement of the stateless nature of local communities, ran counter to French imperial politics, occasioning Coudreau's dismissal from the French administration and his professional exile in Brazil at the time of the Franco‐Brazilian border dispute (1897?1900).     

"Creating a Personality for Downtown": Business Improvement Districts in Milwaukee

This paper uses a case study of Business Improvement Districts in downtown Milwaukee to illustrate two key trends in contemporary urban revitalization. First, it highlights the ways in which the relationship between the public and private sectors continues to be reconfigured in the governance of cities. Second, it considers the roles of Business Improvement Districts in light of the current emphasis among urban policymakers and practitioners on delivering "cool" and "liveable" cities. I argue that Business Improvement Districts play a central role in overseeing the contemporary restructuring of urban space in many U.S. cities.     

School Names as Cultural Arenas: The Naming of U.S. Public Schools after Martin Luther King,Jr.

The commemoration of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. (MLK) is a growing movement in many American cities and towns. School naming is an important yet underanalyzed part of this project. A recent struggle in Riverside, California over naming a high school for MLK is used as a springboard for: (1) conceptualizing school names as cultural arenas for debating student and community identity and (2) conducting a general study of the types of U.S. public schools named for King. As illustrated in California, school naming can be interpreted by one social group as a means of integrating and inspiring students historically and viewed by another group as a means of drawing boundaries around students in terms of race and local heritage. According to 1997-1998 data, 110 public schools bear King's name. They are located most often in the central cities of large and mid-size urban areas. King's name is most frequently found on schools that teach early and middle grades. Schools named for Martin Luther King do not necessarily denote a "Black" school in terms of the racial characteristics of students, although they do not fully integrate Whites with African Americans or Whites with minorities in general. Naming schools for King is part of a larger refashioning of the urban cultural landscape as racial and ethnic groups increasingly seek public recognition of their historical achievements.