Decentring poverty studies: Middle class alliances and the social construction of poverty

Editors' Note: The following is the tenth in the Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography Lecture Series. It is based on the plenary presentation of 13 April at the AAG held in Seattle in 2011. In this essay I explore relational poverty analysis to take seriously the spatially varied intersections of political‐economic, social ordering and cultural‐political processes in shaping understandings of poverty. My work as part of the Middle Class Poverty Politics Research Group employs a relational comparative methodology to theorize where, when and under what circumstances those framed as ‘middle class’ act in opposition to or in solidarity with those named as ‘poor’. Our approach focuses on the exploitative effects of capital accumulation, processes of unequal sociospatial categorization and political and discursive systems that limit or exclude the poor. Our research focuses on places experiencing capitalist crisis because intense periods of restructuring highlight material and discursive struggles over poverty. We conclude by identifying a research agenda focused on the ways in which poverty politics are constituted by the nonpoor through place and in the articulation of places with processes of political economy, governance and cultural politics.     

Scalar politics and strategic consolidation: The Norwegian Gas Forum's quest for embedding Norwegian gas resources in domestic space

Underthun, A., Kasa, S. & Reitan, M. 2011. Scalar politics and strategic consolidation: The Norwegian Gas Forum's quest for embedding Norwegian gas resources in domestic space. Norsk Geografisk Tidsskrift–Norwegian Journal of Geography Vol. 65, 226–237. ISSN 0029-1951.

The article discusses political initiatives and networks that aim to enhance the use of Norwegian natural gas resources in domestic space. Through perspectives on state rescaling and scalar politics, the authors explore the strategies of the Norwegian Gas Forum (NGF). This political network serves as an umbrella organization for regional political initiatives for local distribution and exploitation of natural gas along the Norwegian coast. It is argued that the initiatives demonstrate a scalar politics that counter tendencies of state rescaling in the realm of petroleum politics, where the state is less willing to invest and intervene in domestic natural gas utilization. The article examines the NGF's policy work, organizational composition, and ‘networks of association’ with other organizations. This is framed in the analysis as ‘scalar politics’ aiming to secure the member regions’ current and future dependence on domestic gas supplies. The important networks of association in relation to the Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions (LO) and the Confederation of Norwegian Enterprise (NHO) implied compromise and consolidation among the regional members of NGF, but also empowered NGF on important policy issues.     

Mapping Human Terrain in the Joint Army–Navy Intelligence Study of Korea (1945)

The concept of human terrain has become a prominent element of U.S. military strategy. It is a means to capture the cultural–geographical qualities of an enemy or target population. An early effort to map human terrain is found in the Joint Army–Navy Intelligence Study (JANIS) of Korea (1945). We argue that the JANIS report on Korea was paradigmatic for the U.S. military's contemporary geographical work and offers insights into the cultural politics of human terrain mapping. This explains why the JANIS text is cited by the National Geospatial-Intelligence College (NGC) today as an historical model. This article not only offers a window into the history of geography counterinsurgent but also shows that geography has been entwined with empire.     

Musical Words, Musical Worlds

The recent ‘cultural turn’ in human geography has neglected music and its impact in the construction and understanding of landscape and the politics of place. Using the songs of the rockgroup U2 to show how geographic imagery is used for political purposes, this paper attempts to ‘breakthe silence’ of contemporary cultural geography.     

FRIENDS OR FOE? INVASIVE SPECIES AND PUBLIC GREEN SPACE IN TORONTO

ABSTRACT. Environmentalists and ecologists typically regard invasive species as ecologically detrimental and undesirable. Although the ecological impacts of invasive species are well documented, less attention has been devoted to the sociocultural contexts guiding responses to species invasion. In this study the roles of invasive species are reconsidered through three prominent green spaces in Toronto, Canada: the Don Valley Brick Works, High Park, and the Leslie Street Spit. The case studies challenge popular negative assumptions about invasive species and suggest that they can serve important functions both for local ecosystems and for human communities. The case studies also provide lessons on the tension between and within different environmental imaginaries informing invasive species management. Invasives are often compatible with recreational interests, whereas naturalization efforts are ecologically sensitive and costly. Invasives can help restore human‐made wastelands, and naturalization efforts often benefit wealthy rather than poor neighborhoods.     

Palaeoenyironments and human impact at Burraga Swamp in Montane rainforest,Barrington tops National Park,New South Wales,Australia

Palaeoecological studies have identified the broad patterns of environmental and climate change in highland south‐eastern Australia, but the detail of human impact on a variety of parameters and their interlinkages is largely missing. This study compares the erosion, productivity, fire and vegetation history in prehistoric and historical times at Burraga Swamp in montane rainforest in New South Wales. The known human impact is meagre; the major presently sustained impacts involve forestry in the surrounding sclerophyll forests and a low level of visits to the swamp by day‐walkers. While no significant changes in the largely oligotrophic conditions or in fire frequency were detected, changes in erosion rates and some vegetation change can be attributed to impacts since European settlement. There has been a small decline in eucalypts and a loss of fern cover, while grasses, Urtica and exotic species have expanded. It is clear that upland sites are sensitive to environmental change including low‐level human impact.     

Slums,Ghettos, and Urban Marginality

This paper gathers potent visual images of one city, Los Angeles (L.A.), by examining three contemporary films— L.A. Story (1991), Boyz N the Hood (1991), and Grand Canyon (1991). It argues that popular culture, and in particular popular film, is an integral part of the portrayal of the cultural landscape. This paper primarily uses the assorted visual images of the urban landscape in considering how this one city has been recently depicted. The three films reveal a city shaped by rapid changes in urban America, depicting Los Angeles as an urban area composed of a fragmented landscape divided into many geographies: L.A. as a realm of simulations and void of consequences; L.A. as a city under siege, a place of epidemic violence and fear; L.A. as a place obsessed with security and control; L.A. as an increasingly ambiguous and chaotic place. Far from concluding that cities have become so fragmented that they are ageographic, these films reveal various geographies that are rooted in economic, political, and cultural contexts. Attention to the “restlessness” of cities and the postmodern focus on the instability and chaotic nature of urban experience actually challenge geographers to uncover the multitude of geographies of place. Interpreting the many geographies of Los Angeles shows that film can reveal a uniquely visual catalog of human experience of place, supplementing the ways in which we decipher place image and representation. This paper suggests that film is one way by which previously marginalized groups, such as blacks, can disseminate ideas from the margins and provide alternative experiencesof place. Geographers should add film to the cache of qualitative data that constructs an urban experience through images and representation, widening the discussion of what is place     

The Value of Autoethnography for Field Research in Transcultural Settings*

Mary Louise Pratt uses the term autoethnography to refer to those instances in which members of colonized groups strive to represent themselves to their colonizers in ways that engage with colonizers' terms while also remaining faithful to their own self‐understandings. This paper extends Pratt's conceptualization of autoethnography and describes how it may be used to inform field research in transcultural settings in the formerly colonized world. Drawing from research in a village in northern Pakistan, we argue that approaching fieldwork with an “autoethnographic sensibility” can yield important epistemological, methodological, and political insights into our research practices. The paper concludes by suggesting that these insights extend beyond a postcolonial, or even cross‐cultural, research context, to inform more general debates in human geography about how to achieve a critical and reflexive research practice.     

Urban geography as pretext: Sociocultural landscapes of Kuala Lumpur in independent Malaysian films

Current independent filmmaking in Malaysia has the potential to be an alternative and viable space for creative and political expression, relative to mainstream national cinema (Malay cinema) and to the state. I focus on alternative imagery and sociocultural mappings of Kuala Lumpur in three ‘indie’ films. All three films contain documentary elements capturing social geographies of the city not represented in mainstream Malay cinema, or even if represented not subjected to a critical gaze by the filmmaker. The Big Durian centres on the perspectives of the city's urban middle class of all ethnicities; Bukak Api portrays the daily struggles of Malay transsexual sex workers in Chow Kit, a predominantly working‐class Chinese neighbourhood and red light district; and 18? highlights the opinions of the nongovernmental organization community, bohemians, artists, anarchists and media activists mostly in the cosmopolitan suburb of Bangsar. These representations of the Malaysian urban landscape are pretexts for and politicize the national landscape through a discussion of ethnicity and race politics, sexuality, and the lack of space for freedom of creative expression and critical thinking.     

全球文化转变的理论背景与方法论框架——兼论中国文化的跨国实践

当今世界正在经历百年未有之变局,全球文化的格局也在经历二战以来最深刻的转变。本文包含三个目的：首先,本文勾勒了全球文化转变的脉络和轮廓。文章首先回顾了有关文化全球化的理论,指出这是经济全球化的一个重要结果。同时,本文指出以资本主义现代性、个人主义和消费主义为基本前提和假设的文化全球化在21世纪、尤其是911事件以来受到了强烈的挑战。其次,本文基于行动者网络理论提出一个文化跨地方实践的“转译”模型,试图将微观尺度的文化实践与宏观尺度的地缘政治关系和过程,以及中观尺度的区域背景结合起来进行整体性考察。最后,本文结合孔子学院和李子柒网络文化实践等案例,对本文提出的理论语境和方法论工具的有效性和适用性进行证明,并对中国跨国文化实践的挑战和机遇进行了简要的述评和分析。     

陕西传统村落文化遗产景观基因识别

文化遗产景观是地域文化的符号表征,文化遗产景观基因则是地域文化代际传承的基本“遗传”单位和文化遗产景观形成的决定性因子。目前文化遗产景观基因研究已成为文化地理学的重要方向之一。通过识别与提取隐藏在文化遗产景观内的文化基因,可反映出地域文化的基本特质。传统村落是最具代表性的地域文化遗产景观,整体上延续和传承了中国优秀的传统文化,并集中体现在传统村落内的文化遗产景观之中,对传统村落进行遗产性景观基因识别研究可揭示地域文化的人文地理性和传统村落的社会文化性。基于地域文化遗产景观基因理念,以陕西省35个代表性传统村落为例,首先从宏观和中观尺度,分析了传统村落遗产性景观的文化环境特征;其次从微观视角,建立了传统村落文化遗产景观基因识别指标体系,综合运用景观基因识别与提取方法,对传统村落文化遗产景观的基因特征进行分析,识别出传统村落的地域文化特质。本文旨在从文化地理学的视角认识和保护传统村落文化遗产景观,为实现传统村落的文化复兴提供科学依据。     

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.     

Prediction of Anopheles minimus habitat in India—a tool for malaria management

This paper reports research to predict the distribution of An. minimus, a malaria vector in forest fringe areas using GIS to support precision surveys for malaria control. Because An. minimus is a forest‐associated species, generalized thematic maps (1:6?000?000) of forest cover, soil type, altitude, rainfall and temperature were used. Digitization, overlaying, integration and analysis of thematic maps were done using Arc/Info 8.1 NT and Arc/View 3.2 (GIS, ESRI) software. GIS delineated favourable areas for An. minimus where the species is likely to be found, and precision surveys can be conducted. Precision field surveys in selected locations of favourable/non‐favourable areas were carried out. The species could be found in all locations designated as a favourable area and was absent in non‐favourable areas. In two districts, one where the species is reported to have disappeared in the early 1950s and the other where it was not reported in earlier surveys, GIS helped in precision surveys, and An. minimus was found. The technique can quickly cover vast and inaccessible areas and is easy to duplicate in other parts of the world to assist cost‐effective control of malaria. It can also delineate areas favourable for any species of flora and fauna to help precision surveys.     

The world is sound? Geography, musicology and British-Asian soundscapes

This paper contributes to recent geographical engagements with sound and music by exploring the benefits of a geographical approach conversant with musicological and ethnomusicological tools and agendas within a specific political and empirical context: British-Asian cultural politics and contemporary dance music. Doing so, it suggests, sheds new light on an existing body of anthropological and cultural studies literature that critically highlights the commodification of exotica in this type of dance music. The paper shows how analysing the spatial politics of British-Asian musicality evokes the dynamic complexities around identity, belonging and the geographies of British popular culture and British-ness generated through this mode of cultural production.     

行政建置变更对海南岛区域文化历史发展的影响研究

一个区域文化的发展除了受历史时期科技发展水平、移民、国家开拓方略等因素的影响外,也因为行政建置的不同而产生很大的不同。不少地方因为长期隶属于同一个行政区,在文化上就表现出非常明显的趋同性。而历史期海南岛区域文化的发展进度则与反映中央王朝重视程度的行政建置的级别、深入岛内实质管理的辖区大小等要素紧密相关。行政建置变更某种程度上已经成为海南岛历史文化发展进程中重要的导向标。在探讨了历史期海南岛行政建置变更对海南岛文化发展带来的影响,以期对海南岛区域文化的生成和发展寻求上层建筑方面的依据。     

Building a Global Sense of Place: The Community Networking Movement in the United States

Community networks help build place-based community by offering individual citizens and organizations access to the Internet, the ability to post information online, and opportunities to discuss community affairs. Community networks are inspired by a dynamic vision of community that incorporates a global sense of place. A global sense of place is valuable because it helps to illuminate a place's connections with the world and may therefore enable scale-jumping forms of activism. This article analyzes interviews with participants in four U.S. community networks to explore how networks combine a politics of mobility, a politics of access, and a politics of place to construct a global sense of place. The degree to which each network emphasizes mobility, access, and place varies. This variation has implications for both community activism and issues of diversity in community. Networks that fail to link mobility, access, and place may increase, rather than decrease, inequalities in access to electronic communications as well as to forms of political power.     

Biocultural nationalism? Bananas and biosecurity in Northern Queensland

ABSTRACT

The Cavendish banana is Australia’s most popular fruit and marketed as emblematic of Australian nationalisms. In July 2017, the disease-causing fungus Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. cubense was confirmed present on Australia’s largest Cavendish banana farm, in the worst disease incursion that Northern Queensland Cavendish monocrop plantations have yet faced. Confronted with the potential collapse of the industry, banana growers and Biosecurity Queensland officials have deployed a biosecurity response centred on measures of border control and containment. This paper examines the othering of the disease vector Panama Tropical Race 4, revealing biosecurity attempts as embroiled in cultural preoccupations with invasion. In so doing, this paper establishes that the biosecurity concerns regarding Northern Queensland bananas are not just with the economic and biological productivity of nature, but entangled in post-colonial anxieties over who belongs within the landscape. Following the entangled relations between the disease and Cavendish bananas reveals cultural nuances and multispecies relations. These shape and are shaped by industry and government efforts as experts attempt to maintain governance over entities as they appear to slip from human control. This paper finds that the anxieties and narratives of Australian post-colonial politics are deeply imbricated with the logics of ecological protection, agricultural productivity and the banality of everyday nationalisms.     

国际上的政治地理学研究进展与启示————对《Political Geography》杂志2005-2015年载文的分析

通过对国际上的政治地理学旗舰性杂志《Political Geography》2005-2015年期间391篇成果的分析,总结出国际政治地理学研究的主要研究议题为:边境与边界,环境政治,空间与尺度,领土和主权以及安全问题,选举地理,社会和文化政治,其中空间与尺度,领土和主权以及安全问题,社会和文化政治几个方向研究成果占较大比例,而其他三个方向则相对较少.通过研究方法分析发现,国际政治地理学主要采用定性分析的方法,尤其是民族志和文本分析的方法,定量分析的使用存在一定的局限性.最后,从该杂志的研究对象和研究机构两个方面的分析归纳出:欧美主导的发达国家(尤其是英国和美国)对世界政治地理学话题的学术霸权与世界南,北差异发展具有一定的相关性.在中国综合国力日渐增强,参与国际事务能力不断提高以及作为新兴的地缘政治力量崛起的社会历史背景下,政治地理学经世致用之能亟待被展现.因此,中国政治地理学发展作为发展中国家的声音势必将越来越洪亮.     

文化城市群的时空演进及其动力机制——以粤东城市群为例

以文化城市群为角度、潮汕文化为切入点、粤东文化城市群为案例,系统梳理其城市群发展脉络并分析其动力机制。研究发现：1）粤东城市群的空间形态随潮汕文化发展和社会生产生活实践而发生改变,呈现从西北逐渐向东南拓展的特征,单个城市空间形态表现为精细化、密布局的特征,城市群空间格局则经历了“带状—人字状—梳状—圈层式”的演变;2）“精细、重商、外向、融合”等潮汕文化要素分别在粤东城市群发育的4个阶段发挥着不同影响力,其中,“精细”和“重商”深刻影响着城市群个体化发展阶段的空间特征,“外向”和“融合”引领城市群集团化发展结构;3）文化城市群的演变实际是农耕文化、商业文化、工业文化、信息时代复合型新文化等多种要素在不同空间尺度下实现梯度式推演的结果;4）在不同时期,文化要素作用尺度从微观建筑建设层面逐渐扩大至中观城市景观层面,最终形成基于地方文化认同的城市群层面。