“Teaching Against Culture” in Geography of Islam

This article explores various ways of how to challenge the “otherness” of Islam and Muslims when teaching geography of Islam. It suggests a critical project of “teaching against culture,” which challenges essentializing notions of Islam as a monolith, and rather demonstrates the complexity of Muslim geographies and “lived” Islam. Furthermore, it implies examining the various identity categories and binaries such as secular–religious and West–East that come about in the classroom itself in the secular academic context of an urban state university. As such, the article engages in questions of significance to a wider set of courses on social and cultural geographies, geography of religion, and postcolonial geographies     

“Doing Good Work”: Feminist Dilemmas of Volunteering in the Field

In this article, I argue that there is a need to examine the feminist ethics of volunteering in the field, specifically as it relates to issues of positionality, power and reciprocity, and participatory methods. Reflecting on dilemmas I experienced as a volunteer with the Girl Scouts of San Diego while conducting research on their annual Girl Scout cookie sale, I debate the relationship between volunteerism and fieldwork more broadly and question the effectiveness of volunteerism within a feminist geographic methodological framework. In light of the dilemmas that arose in the field as a volunteer and researcher, I question whether we can consider volunteering as “good work.”     

Women in the Field: Critical Feminist Methodologies and Theoretical Perspectives*

Feminist scholars have traditionally emphasized the importance of incorporating “the everyday” worlds of women into the historically masculinist theoretical and empirical foundations of the social sciences. Such emphases have commonly resulted in smaller-scale research projects and more interactive kinds of research methods and methodologies. Feminist geographers have uniquely contributed to the body of feminist scholarship through drawing out the importance of place in everyday constructions of gender and, more recently, sexuality. Critical field-based research has therefore from the beginning been the mainstay of subdisciplinary research. Like the discipline as a whole, however, little explicit attention has been given in publications or pedagogically to the politics of fieldwork (including how a “field” is defined and the politics involved in choosing and working in a particular “field”) or the politics of representation (which includes considerations of the partiality of knowledge and how and to whom we represent our work, ourselves and others in various kinds of texts). These “Opening Remarks” show how these issues are addressed in the papers that follow and how feminist geography has much to contribute to critical analyses of global and multinational processes, including patriarchy, capitalism, and racism.     

Size Matters to Lesbians,Too: Queer Feminist Interventions into the Scale of Big Data

How can we recognize those whose lives and data become attached to the far-from-groundbreaking framework of “small data”? Specifically, how can marginalized people who do not have the resources to produce, self-categorize, analyze, or store “big data” claim their place in the big data debates? I examine the place of lesbians and queer women in the big data debates through the Lesbian Herstory Archive's not “big” enough lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer (LGBTQ) organizing history data set—perhaps the largest data set known to exist on LGBTQ activist history—as one such alternative. In a contribution to critical data studies, I take a queer feminist approach to the scale of big data by reading for the imbricated scales and situated knowledge of data.     

Relational Agriculture: Gender,Sexuality, and Sustainability in U.S. Farming

Although 97% of U.S. farms are “family-owned,” little research examines how gender and sexual relationships – inherent in familial dynamics – influence farmers’ practices and livelihoods. Gender and sexual dynamics – shaped by race and class – affect who is considered a farmer, land management decisions, and access to resources like land, subsidies, and knowledge. We use feminist and queer lenses to illuminate how today’s agricultural gender and sexual relations are not “natural,” but when left uninterrogated are constructed in ways that harm women and queer farmers while limiting potential to develop sustainable practices. Women and queer farmers also resist, “re-orienting” gender and sexual relations in ways that expand possibilities for achieving food justice and ecological sustainability. We offer “relational agriculture” as a tool for making visible and re-orienting gender and sexual relations on farms. Relational agriculture brings sexuality into food justice and demonstrates the centrality of gender and sexuality to agricultural sustainability.     

Troubling Positionality: Politics of “Studying Up” in Transnational Contexts

Drawing on research conducted in India's software industry in Bangalore, this article explores the multiple positionalities of differently situated people in the project—state officials, software firm managers and owners, software professionals, and researcher as critic. Challenging conventional notions of positionality centered on individual scholars' negotiations of their own identities, I trace the institutional, geopolitical, and social relations within which all participants are embedded. I argue that moments of tension and uncertainty are not just symbolic of multiple positionalities of both researcher and researched but also indicate the fraught nature of information technology–led development in neoliberal India. This article thus provides a particular opportunity to trouble notions of power, positionality, reflexivity, and feminist commitment to untangling the politics of knowledge production while “studying up” in transnational contexts.     

BAVARIAN LEAVENWORTH AND THE SYMBOLIC ECONOMY OF A THEME TOWN

ABSTRACT. Theme towns are an often‐overlooked but significant form of tourism in rural areas. Many a small town across the United States, faced with a declining resource‐based economy, has turned to “theming” as an economic‐development strategy. In hopes of creating an alluring landscape, the built environment is radically transformed, and a variety of invented traditions are instituted. This article explores one such place‐Leavenworth, Washington‐that “went Bavarian” in the 1960s and is widely viewed as a success story. We examine four interrelated concepts that produce the symbolic economy of Leavenworth: emulation of other theme towns, authenticity, visual difference, and place marketing. After discussing each, we turn to the questions of how residents are affected by tourism and what it is like to live in Leavenworth.     

Unpopular Archives

This article explores the “unpopular” archived life of Charles P. Daly, thirty-five-year president (1864–1899) of the New York–based American Geographical Society. This one-time highly prominent judge and civic leader popularized geography among professionals and the public alike. Daly's popular geography, along with his subsequent containment within the archives, suggests explanations for his dismissal among geographical audiences of today. It is a useful and necessary exercise to trace the neglect of Daly within histories of geography and recapture him for today's audiences, not only because of his influence on post–Civil War American geography but also because his story can shed light on how “disciplinary remembering” functions in geography.     

The Retention,Revival, and Subjugation of Indigenous Fire Knowledge through Agency Fire Fighting in Eastern Australia and California

This article explores the potential impact of training and employment with wildfire management agencies on the retention of Indigenous fire knowledge. It focuses on the comparative knowledge and experiences of Indigenous Elders, cultural practitioners, and land stewards in connection with “modern” political constructs of fire in New South Wales and Queensland, Australia, and California in the United States of America. This article emphasises the close link between cross-cultural acceptance, integration of Indigenous and agency fire cultures, and the ways in which knowledge types are shared or withheld. While agency fire fighting provides an opportunity for Indigenous people to connect and care for country, it simultaneously allows for the breaking of traditional rules surrounding what knowledge is shared with whom in the context of Indigenous cultural burning. By highlighting how privilege intersects with ethnicity, class, gender and age, this article demonstrates how greater cross-cultural acceptance could aid ongoing debates on how to coexist with wildfire today.     

What is urban about critical urban theory?

This essay takes as its provocation a question posed by the feminist philosopher Nancy Fraser: “What’s Critical about Critical Theory?” In urban studies, this question has been usefully reframed by Neil Brenner to consider what is critical about critical urban theory. This essay discusses how the “urban” is currently being conceptualized in various worlds of urban studies and what this might mean for the urban question of the current historical conjuncture. Launched from places on the map that are forms of urban government but that have distinctive agrarian histories and rural presents, the essay foregrounds the undecidability of the urban, be it geographies of urbanization or urban politics. What is at stake is a critical urban theory attentive to historical difference as a fundamental constituting process of global political economy and deconstruction as a methodology of generalization and theorization.     

Migration and Development? The Gendered Costs of Migration on Mexico's Rural “Left Behind”

Governments, civil society, and policymakers assert the potential of international migration to foster development and alleviate poverty. Often such claims are rooted in macroscale geopolitical analyses of migration and development, which mask the localized, uneven, and embodied ways family members “left behind” bear the costs and subsidize the U.S./Mexico (inter)national integration project. Informed by feminist geopolitics, this article demonstrates how the left behind disproportionately bear the hidden costs of neoliberal restructuring and migration. We draw upon Mexican Migration Project (MMP) ethnosurvey data to frame the narratives of migrant family members left behind. Narratives were constructed through in‐depth interviews conducted in rural Veracruz. We conclude that in the absence of geographically specific examinations of the hidden costs associated with neoliberal development and migration it is possible that “migration for development” programs and policies may exacerbate inequities that will perpetuate migration and further weaken Mexican origin communities.     

技术创新对黄河流域城市绿色发展的影响研究

创新是推动黄河流域高质量发展的重要途径之一。利用2006—2018年黄河流域79个地级以上城市的面板数据,首先构建指标体系对各城市技术创新及绿色发展水平进行分析,其次通过面板计量模型深入探究技术创新对城市绿色发展的作用机理。研究表明：① 2006—2018年,黄河流域城市技术创新与绿色发展水平均得到明显提升,但空间差异显著,总体呈“下游>中游>上游”阶梯式递减特征。② 黄河流域城市技术创新对绿色发展总体上没有显著影响,但在加入技术创新的二次项后,两者之间呈现显著的“U”型非线性关系,即技术创新先抑制后促进城市绿色发展,这也验证了技术的“回弹效应”假说;③ 技术创新对黄河流域城市绿色发展的影响可以通过直接效应和间接效应共同体现,但这两种效应正好相反,即一个城市技术创新能力的提升对该城市绿色发展存在显著的“U”型（先抑制后促进）关系,但对邻近城市的作用呈现倒“U”型相反的关系。根据研究结论,从技术创新对城市绿色发展的直接效应和间接效应2个方面提出了相应的政策建议。     

Who Is “Forest‐Dependent”? Capturing Local Variation in Forest‐Product Sale,Eastern Honduras

How researchers describe groups living within or near the world's tropical rain forests has important implications for how and why these groups are targeted for assistance by conservation and development organizations. This article explores how data about market behavior can be used to assess one aspect of forest peoples’ livelihoods: their “dependence” on forest resources as a source of market income. With the intent of revealing the importance of methodology to how we describe forest peoples’ livelihoods, I draw from a multiyear survey of market activity among the Tawahka Sumu of Honduras and distinguish nested measures of the Tawahkas’ engagement in forest‐product sale. Results indicate that whether or not the Tawahka —or any forest group — can be considered financially “dependent” on forest resources depends on the spatial and temporal scales at which data are aggregated. As a group, the Tawahka earned 18 percent of total market income from forest‐product sale, but their group profile masked a high degree of heterogeneity at the village and household level. Similarly, multiyear data indicated that while group‐level generalizations adhere from year to year, they belie considerable change in households’ market behavior across years. I discuss three ways in which the findings are relevant to the theory and practice of conservation and development in the humid tropics. I emphasize the importance of spatial scale in interventions, how market‐oriented conservation schemes can benefit from a broader conceptualization of the economic context in which forest‐product sale occurs, and how longitudinal analysis can reveal the dynamism of forest peoples’ livelihoods.     

Voice Under Scrutiny: Feminist Methods,Anticolonial Responses,and New Methodological Tools

“Giving voice” to participants has been an important element of qualitative feminist research projects in geography. In this article, I explore scholarship that has questioned qualitative research's reliance on voice, arguing that implicit connections between voice, authenticity, and empowerment are beginning to be unpacked, particularly by scholars engaged in anticolonial work. I draw on anticolonial scholarship to build on and extend feminist debates centered on voice and participation. Feminist attention to voice must be situated within the colonial frameworks and histories of social science research. Scholarship focused on ongoing settler colonial relationships highlights methods both for cautiously proceeding with and consciously refusing incorporating voice within qualitative research. I draw on anticolonial approaches to frame research decisions, voice, and the ethical and methodological dilemmas of its use.     

Post-Soviet urban renewal and its discontents: gentrification by demolition in Baku

ABSTRACT

Gentrification is being increasingly discussed as a driver of urban change globally, including in the former Soviet Union. However, the translation of the gentrification phenomenon into post-Soviet cities like Baku remains poorly understood. This article explores how a particular form of state-led “gentrification by demolition” is unfolding in Baku. We assert the ongoing relevance of using the framework of gentrification to analyze the processes. We go on to use the case of the recently demolished Sovetsky district to carefully expand the geography of the gentrification discourse. We argue that Baku’s own “landscape of gentrification” is shaped by anumber of preconditions. It bears the marks of the legacy of post-socialist cities. However, it more resembles muscular state-led “gentrification by demolition” that is characteristic of Chinese cities. It also echoes Soviet city-building legacies in its use of spectacle and “grand gesture” to legitimize and buy support for gentrification policies.     

PRODUCTIVITY RATINGS BASED ON SOIL SERIES: A METHODOLOGICAL CRITIQUE

How researchers describe groups living within or near the world's tropical rain forests has important implications for how and why these groups are targeted for assistance by conservation and development organizations. This article explores how data about market behavior can be used to assess one aspect of forest peoples’ livelihoods: their “dependence” on forest resources as a source of market income. With the intent of revealing the importance of methodology to how we describe forest peoples’ livelihoods, I draw from a multiyear survey of market activity among the Tawahka Sumu of Honduras and distinguish nested measures of the Tawahkas’ engagement in forest-product sale. Results indicate that whether or not the Tawahka —or any forest group — can be considered financially “dependent” on forest resources depends on the spatial and temporal scales at which data are aggregated. As a group, the Tawahka earned 18 percent of total market income from forest-product sale, but their group profile masked a high degree of heterogeneity at the village and household level. Similarly, multiyear data indicated that while group-level generalizations adhere from year to year, they belie considerable change in households’ market behavior across years. I discuss three ways in which the findings are relevant to the theory and practice of conservation and development in the humid tropics. I emphasize the importance of spatial scale in interventions, how market-oriented conservation schemes can benefit from a broader conceptualization of the economic context in which forest-product sale occurs, and how longitudinal analysis can reveal the dynamism of forest peoples’ livelihoods.     

Measuring What? “Success” and “Failure” in Ghana's Oil Industry

This article analyzes the dominant ways in which questions of oil prospecting, exploration, and production are framed and outcomes measured. Using the case of Ghana, a critical institutional approach, and drawing on multiple sources of data, it shows how existing policy overlooks the structural complexities of distribution, empowerment, and corruption. Willing local institutions can make a difference, but they too have structural impediments to overcome. Thus, for now, grand statements about “success” or “failure” in the management and use of oil economies need to be taken with caution.