Stories of space and subjectivity in planning the Multimedia Super Corridor

The Malaysian government has embarked on an ambitious refashioning of the nation called Vision 2020 in pursuit of its goal of becoming a ‘developed country’. A pivotal component of this ‘vision’ is the planning and provision of information technology (IT) infrastructure in a multi-billion dollar urban mega-project called the Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC). The purpose of my paper is twofold. First, I situate an official planning document for the MSC entitled Physical Design Guidelines for the Multimedia Super Corridor in the activity of transnational planning practice. Second, I argue that a thematic series of organizing planning concepts and practices can be identified in this document. These concepts and practices work in two ways: first, by representing highly positioned notions of sub-urban, middle-class urban design conventional in specific North American cities as universally applicable to, and desirable for, the broader national development goals the MSC is intended to lead; second, by creating a ‘total image’ for the MSC that suggests an apparently seamless relationship between the MSC and the proper citizens for it at every imaginable scale. One important effect of these plans is the material transformation of a rural landscape of and for production into an urban landscape of and for consumption. This transformation raises the question of who can belong to the ‘nation’ being (re)imagined via the MSC.     

‘Competing Regionalisation’ Through Territory and Cluster Networks: Experiences from Post-Socialist Eastern Germany

‘New regionalism’ has become a buzzword in current debates on regions and regional governance. Much of this discussion revolves around the ‘right’ scale and structure of regional governance, implying changes to the ways in which the conventional main variables institutions, hierarchy and territoriality interact to circumscribe ‘regions’. The main difference between ‘old’ and ‘new’ regionalism is the degree of variability and responsiveness to locational strategies by businesses, i.e. essentially relative regional competitiveness, and thus by implication the question of territoriality and boundedness. Evidence ‘on the ground’ among policy makers, however, suggests that the changes may go further than theoretical arguments with their emphasis on territory and scale (Brenner, 2000, 2003) are suggesting. Much of the difference revolves around the distinction between technocratic, planning focused and firmly institutionalised understandings of territorially fixed regions within a government structure on the one hand, and more purpose driven, flexible, and inherently temporary and variable arrangements outside fixed government structures, whose territoriality is composed of the varying spatial background of the participating actors. Here, regional territoriality is an incidental rather than determining factor. The cleavage between ‘old’ and ‘new’ regionalism has become particularly obvious in post-socialist eastern Germany, where staid forms of traditional institutionalism and territorial governance had been transferred from ‘west’ to ‘east’. Increasingly, these arrangements appeared inadequate to respond to the vast and spatially widely varying challenges of post-socialist restructuring. The result has been a tentative emergence of new forms of regionalisation in between, and in addition to, the established ‘old regionalist’ approaches. Evidence from eastern Germany suggests that ‘new’ is not necessarily replacing ‘old’ regionalism’ in the wake of a shift in paradigm, but rather that the two coexist, with new forms of regionalisation sitting within established conventional territorial-administrative arrangements. This points to the emergence of a dual track approach to regionalisation, sometimes covering the same territory, more often relating to variably sized areas that overlap. Both forms of regionalisation aim at an internal and external audience, using varying images and employing different sets of actors when dealing with the two main sources/directions of consumption: internal (local) and external (corporate, competitive). By their very nature, however, these processes are varied and differ between places, rooted in particular local-regional constellations of policy-making pressures, actor personalities and established ways of doing things. This paper examines such processes for two regions in eastern Germany, both with distinctly different economic traditions and geographical contexts, aiming to illustrate the multi-layered process of regionalisation and region making. Inevitably, within the scope of this paper, the study cannot cover all possible models and regionalisation approaches across eastern Germany, because they not only differ between places, but also over time.     

Ecological restoration, cultural preferences and the negotiation of ‘nativeness’ in Australia

The paper addresses cultural assumptions about ‘nativeness’ and ‘belonging’ to place as they are implicated in notions of ‘ecological restoration’. Given the centrality of complex notions of ‘indigeneity’ to the issue of what ecological ‘restoration’ means in Australia, this is a rich area for cultural and historical analysis. Case materials illustrate the negotiated and ambiguous nature of Australian ideas about what ‘belongs’ ecologically and culturally across the broad continent of this relatively young post-Settler nation. We seek to foreground these issues through consideration of what ‘restoring’ nature might mean in the context of debates about native plants, the re-introduction of an iconic species of ground dwelling bird, the removal of cane toads that are demonised as highly ‘alien’, and the multiple ways in which the dingo is regarded ambiguously as both native and a ‘pest’ that needs to be controlled and culled. By showing how ‘restoration’ can be understood and mobilised in a variety of ways – in terms of the ‘re-naturing’, ‘re-valuing’ and/or ‘repatriating’ of indigenous species, as well as impassioned rejection of ‘exotics’ – we emphasise the importance of social science for building a well-grounded sense of how environmental management priorities and approaches are informed by a wider set of cultural assumptions.     

Living through the tsunami: Vulnerability and generosity on a volatile earth

How might geographers respond ‘generously’ to a disaster on the scale of the Indian Ocean tsunami? Critical geographers and other left intellectuals have chosen to stress the way pre-existing social forces conditioned human vulnerability, and have implied that ordinary people ‘here’ were implicated in the suffering of others ‘there’ through their positioning in chains of causality. Critics have also sought to expose the bias, unjustness and inappropriateness of post-tsunami patterns of donation and programs of aid and recovery. A supplement to this mode of critique is offered in the form of a view of disasters and human vulnerability that hinges on the idea of the self as ‘radically passive’: that is, as inherently receptive to both the stimuli that cause suffering, and to the demands of others who are suffering. All forms of thought – including geography and disaster studies should themselves be seen as ‘vulnerable’ and responsive to the impact to disasters. The idea that every ‘self’ bears the trace of past disasters – and past gifts of others – forms the basis of a vision of bodies and communities as always already ‘fractured’ by disaster – in ways which resist being ‘brought to light’. This offers a way of integrating human and physical geographies through a shared acknowledgement of what is unknowable and absent. It is also suggestive that gratitude might be an appropriate response to a sense of indebtedness to others – for who we are, as much as for what we have done.     

‘It’s more than just what it is’: Defetishising commodities, expanding fields, mobilising change…

Commodity geographies are politically weak. Geographical pedagogy isn’t particularly engaging. Radical geography should make connections. But it rarely leaves room for interpretation. Too much seems to be too didactic. And to preach to the converted. That’s a problem that needs attention. So, is it possible to develop a radical, less didactic, geography? With research funding, publication and teaching the way they are? To engage more students, more heartily, in the issues studied? To promote social justice, critical citizenship, and participatory democracy? But not by setting out the right ways to think, be, or act. Some film-makers, artists and writers have been able to do this. It seems. Subtly and cleverly. Through projects attempting to de-fetishise commodities. But their politics have been placed largely in the background, between the lines of, or separated out from, the presentation of scenes, things, relations, bodies, lives and voices. Seen and unseen elements of their audiences’ lives. Re-connected. Perhaps. Through communication strategies giving audiences something to think about and to think with, to argue about and to argue with. Putting themselves in the picture, in the process. These less didactic materials may be difficult to master for an exam or an essay. They may not make it clear who or what’s right or wrong or what audiences are supposed to do. But they could engage them in less direct ways. When they’re shopping for petrol or fish, or when they’re doing or thinking about completely different things. Things that may not even come under the heading of ‘production’ or ‘consumption’. This approach might be labelled as ‘weak’, ‘relativist’, a bit too ‘cultural’ ‘post-modern’, or ‘defunct’. But it’s an approach that may be radical in effect because its ‘politics’ aren’t so straightforward or ‘up front’. This paper is about changing relationships between research, writing, teaching, learning and assessment; expanding fields of commodity geographies to include classrooms as sites not only of ‘instruction’, but also of learning, for researchers and their students¹; showing how such learning might usefully shape research and writing elsewhere in these fields for those engaged in this defetishising project.     

Boosted bodies: Genetic techniques, domestic livestock bodies and complex representations of life

This paper focuses on the burgeoning application of genetic techniques in livestock agriculture, examining how these are changing livestock breeding knowledge-practices and the representation of animal life. Conventional livestock breeding relies on visual appraisal of animals and maintaining performance records, whereas genetic and genomic techniques offer the potential to assess particular aspects of animals’ genotypes. Advertising and promotional material produced by organisations involved in developing genetic techniques, and reportage and discussion of such techniques in the agricultural media, are used to examine the ways in which the production and value of living bodies in the future is being mapped out in emerging knowledge-practice networks which centre around particular visions and representations of what livestock bodies are and should do or be. The paper argues that bodies should be understood in part in terms of the wider spatial relationships in which they are entangled. A process of’circulating reference’ [Latour, B., 1999. Pandora’s Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA] is identified in which rounds of simplification occur in relation to the representation of the genetic qualities of livestock animals. However, these attempts to simplify produce new complexities when livestock breeders attempt to make use of genetic knowledge-practices. Identifying different modes of complexity, the paper discusses their spatiality in terms of differences between genetic abstractions from animal bodies and breeders ‘multi-layered ‘lay’ knowledges of their livestock animals.     

New insights into the origin and migration of brines in deep Devonian aquifers, Alberta, Canada

Analysis of hydraulic heads and chemical compositions of Devonian formation waters in the west central part of the Alberta Basin, Canada, characterizes the origin of formation waters and migration of brines. The Devonian succession in the study area lies 2000–5000 m below the ground surface, and has an approximate total thickness of 1000 m and an average slope of 15 m/km. Four Devonian aquifers are present in the study area, which form two aquifer systems [i.e., a Middle–Upper Devonian aquifer system (MUDAS) consisting of the Elk Point and Woodbend–Beaverhill Lake aquifers, and an Upper Devonian aquifer system (UDAS) consisting of the Winterburn and Wabamun aquifers]. The Ireton is an effective aquitard between these two systems in the eastern parts of the study area. The entire Devonian succession is confined below by efficient aquitards of the underlying Cambrian shales and/or the Precambrian basement, and above by overlying Carboniferous shales of the Exshaw and Lower Banff Formations.The formation water chemistry shows that the Devonian succession contains two distinct brine types: a ‘heavy brine,’ located updip, defined approximately by TDS >200 g/l, and a ‘light brine’ with TDS <200 g/l. Hydraulic head distributions suggest that, presently, the ‘light brine’ attempts to flow updip, thereby pushing the ‘heavy brine’ ahead. The interface between the two brines is lobate and forms large-scale tongues that are due to channeled flow along high-permeability pathways. Geological and hydrogeochemical data suggest that the following processes determined the present composition of the ‘light’ and ‘heavy’ brines: original seawater, evaporation beyond gypsum but below halite saturation, dolomitization, clay dehydration, gypsum dewatering, thermochemical sulfate reduction (TSR), and halite dissolution. The influx of meteoric (from the south) and metamorphic (from the west) waters can be recognized only in the ‘light brine.’ Albitization can be unequivocally identified only in the ‘heavy brine.’ The ‘heavy brine’ may be residual Middle Devonian evaporitic brine from the Williston Basin or the Elk Point Basin, or it may have originated from partial dissolution of thick, laterally extensive Middle Devonian evaporite deposits to the east of the study area. The ‘light brine’ most probably originated from dilution of ‘heavy brine’ in post-Laramide times.     

Geostatistical estimation of chemical contamination in stream sediments: The case study of Vale das Gatas mine (northern Portugal)

Based on an environmental geochemistry case study carried out in the neighbourhood of a W–Sn abandoned mine, the pollution in stream sediments was modelled through a Global Contamination Index. Such an index permits one to summarize the combination of deleterious elements in a single variable, obtained by the projection of samples onto the first axis of a PCASD (Principal Components Analysis of Standardized Data) applied to the entire n × p matrix containing the available concentrations of p = 16 elements in the set of n = 220 collected samples.In order to provide a sound basis for a coherent planning of the remediation process which will be put in operation in the affected area, it is necessary to balance the costs of reclaiming with the probabilities of exceeding the upper limits accepted for concentrations of environmentally harmful elements in sediments. Given these limits, they are back-transformed in the index values, providing a practical threshold between ‘clean’ and ‘contaminated’ samples. On the other hand, the minimum dimension of the cell to be reclaimed is restrained by the selected remediation process to be applied in the affected area. Hence, to meet the constraints of such a remediation process, it is required to estimate the probabilities of exceeding the index threshold in technologically meaningful sub-areas. For this end, the Indicator Block Kriging technique was applied, producing a series of maps where sub-areas to be reclaimed can be spotted for different probability levels. These maps, on which the decision making remediation agency can rely for its cost-benefit analysis, take into account both the spatial structure of ‘clean’ vs. ‘contaminated’ samples and the constraints of the reclaiming process.     

New media, the new economy and new spaces

This paper counters proponents of the ‘weightless economy’ who have suggested the ‘death of distance’ in relation to economic and social activities that use the worldwide web (WWW). An analysis of new media developers in New York’s ‘Silicon Alley’ demonstrates that place and distance are still important. The most important aspect of this co-location is the possibility of social interaction. This paper points to the value of analysis of the material practice of the social (and the economic and cultural). The notion of ‘untraded dependencies’ is developed through looking at its manifestation and constitution in the specificity of space, time and economic activity.     

Deep-rooted piercement structures in deep sedimentary basins — Manifestations of supercritical water generation at depth?

Deep-rooted enigmatic piercement structures in sedimentary basins, including ‘mud volcanoes’, ‘shale diapirs’, ‘salt diapirs’, and ‘asphalt volcanoes’, range in size from less than 1 km², surface area, up to 64 km², and have often an unknown depth of penetration due to incomplete imaging. We propose that they form a family associated with fluid flow. Our argument is based partly on their inferred location (above deep faults) and on the chemical analysis of emitted products, which includes liquid clays, brines and other substances from salt diapirs, and asphalt and light oils from the asphalt volcanoes. We explain these compositions by chemical alteration caused partly by supercritical water, a phase of water existent at high pressure and temperature, locally and temporarily achieved at depths generally beyond 10 km below surface, i.e., at the sediment–crust boundary. Our hypothesis overcomes some of the problems with interpreting fluid flow products, which are otherwise very difficult to explain. In case this hypothesis can be further verified, the family could perhaps be called ‘hydrothermally associated piercement structures’.     

Monumental space and the uncanny

This paper takes up the attempt to theorize the relation between the subjectivity of the political actor and the ideological aura of the monumental site. It does this with reference to the spatial history of Strijdom Square in Pretoria, South Africa, a cultural precinct and monumental space which was the site of a series of brutal racist killings committed by the Square’s unrelated namesake, militant right-winger Barend Strydom. This troubling intersection of subjectivity, space and ideology represents something of an explanatory limit for spatio-discursive approaches, certainly in as much as they are ill-equipped to conceptualize the powerfully affective, bodily and fantasmatic qualities of monumental spaces. In contrast to such approaches I offer a psychoanalytically informed account which grapples with the individualized and imaginative identities of space, with space as itself a form of subjectivity. I do this so as understand the ideological aura of monuments as importantly linked to the ‘intersubjectivity’ of subject and personified space. I then turn to Freud’s notion of the uncanny as a theory able to explain a series of disturbing affects of monuments, such as those of ‘embodied absence’ and ‘disembodied presence’. These and similar affects of ‘ontological dissonance’ (such as unexplained instances of doubling or repetition) may function in an ideological manner, both so as to impose a ‘supernaturalism of power’, and to effect an uncanny form of interpellation.     

Albian and Cenomanian palaeobathymetry in the Pieniny Klippen Belt Basin, Polish Carpathians

During the Albian and Cenomanian, the Pieniny Klippen Belt Basin, a part of the Carpathian geosynclinal domain, showed a clear differentiation into an axial deepest part represented by the Pieniny and Branisko successions and two marginal zones, a southern (Nizna and Haligovce successions, in Slovakia) and a northern zone (in Poland and Slovakia) represented by the Niedzica, Czertezik and Czorsztyn successions, becoming progressively more shallow towards the north. Five palaeobathymetric foraminiferal associations have been distinguished in the axial and northern marginal zone sediments of the Klippen Basin, corresponding to: ‘A’ shelf and upper slope: relatively large proportion of nodosariids and miliolids (Czorsztyn succession); ‘B1’ middle part of slope; oligotaxic planktonic assemblage dominant (Niedzica through Branisko successions and northern part of the Pieniny succession); ‘B2’ middle part of slope: larger proportion of agglutinated foraminifers, association characteristic of sediments influenced by turbidites (submarine flyschoid channels in the Branisko succession); ‘Cl’ middle and lower parts of slope: scarce microfauna, Hedbergella and textularids dominant (Pieniny succession, middle part); ‘C2’ slope/abyssal plain transition, close to foraminiferal lysocline (probably about 3500m below sea level): scarce specimens corroded and slightly dissolved (Pieniny succession, southern part).     

The Caesura: remarks on Wittgenstein’s interruption of theory, or, why practices elude explanation

This paper aims to bring the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein into contact with the growing interest and concerns over the status of practice, performance and non-representational ‘theory’ within human geography. Drawing predominantly on Wittgenstein’s later work, the aim is to use Wittgenstein’s comments to illuminate how certain presuppositions and idealisations over the nature of understanding and meaning are or have been built into our (social scientific) modes and methods of explanation. Thus Wittgenstein’s work is used as a diagnosis––a diagnosis of how the modus operandi of giving an explanation can, and often does, prevent us from acknowledging the practical and the performative, from witnessing the taking-place of meaning and understanding. The paper carries out this task by focusing first on Wittgenstein’s critique of the role of ‘rules’ and ‘rule-following’ in the construction of social scientific accounts and secondly, through a consideration of the implications of Wittgenstein’s ‘scenic’ style of writing through which he attempts to deconstruct the epistemo-methodological idealisations and representationalist desires of social analysis. The claim here is not that Wittgenstein’s work provides the solution to the problematics which confront us in considering the status (or otherwise) of practice, but rather that his work may provide us with other ways of going-on, ones more sensitive to the eventful, creative, excessive and distinctly uncertain realms of action.     

Translocal assemblages: Space, power and social movements

In this paper, I deploy an analytic of ‘translocal assemblage’ as a means for conceptualising space and power in social movements. I offer a relational topology that is open to how actors within movements construct different spatial imaginaries and practices in their work. In using the prefix ‘translocal’, I am signifying three orientations. First, translocal assemblages are composites of place-based social movements which exchange ideas, knowledge, practices, materials and resources across sites. Second, assemblage is an attempt to emphasise that translocal social movements are more than just the connections between sites. Sites in translocal assemblages have more depth than the notion of ‘node’ or ‘point’ suggests – as connoted by network – in terms of their histories, the labour required to produce them, and their inevitable capacity to exceed the connections between other groups or places in the movement. Third, they are not simply a spatial category, output, or resultant formation, but signify doing, performance and events. I examine the potential of assemblage to offer an alternative account to that of the ‘network’, the predominant and often de facto concept used in discussions of the spatiality of social movements. I draw on examples from one particular translocal assemblage based in and beyond Mumbai which campaigns on housing within informal settlements: Slum/Shack Dwellers International.     

Towards an understanding of man-firewood relations in Freetown (Sierra Leone)

This paper examines ‘folk’ evaluation and classification of firewood as a means towards understanding man-firewood relations in Freetown. It demonstrates how access to ‘wood views’ renders comprehensible identifiable spatial and temporal patterns in firewood exploitation and utilisation. It is argued that the extension of the ethno-scientific approach beyond mere identification of wood categories to the examination of the relationship between cognition and action generates information capable of informing efforts towards short-term gains and/or long-term development policy aimed at a more efficient management and utilisation of the firewood resource. The article concludes by emphasising the need for an understanding of the view both from ‘above’ (technological forestry) and ‘below’ (folk ecology) of man-firewood relationships in the Freetown area in order that meaningful co-operative modifications based on a blend of sodo-cultural and ecological considerations, on the one hand, and economic and technological factors on the other, can be effected.     

Everywhere different? Globalisation and the impact of international migration on Sydney and Melbourne

Using a new approach to classifying migrant group concentrations, we test for evidence of the effects of globalisation, associated by some with ‘protopostmodernity’, on two Australian cities. Sydney is characterised as an emergent world city and a focus of ‘new economy’ activities. Melbourne is associated with ‘old economy’ activities, dominated by manufacturing. In the Australian context, the onset of globalisation also coincided with significant changes to immigration policy: the end of a ‘white Australia’ policy in the early 1970s in favour of a skills-based policy, regardless of race or ethnicity. We argue that the evidence of the spatial behaviour of ethnic groups for these two cities highlights the essential continuity of ethnic segregation and spatial assimilation processes in two cities where segregation levels and experience are fundamentally different from many overseas examples. We further argue for a need to recognise that context, and the ethnic experience, are everywhere different, both intra- and internationally.     

Institutional power-geometries: enduring and shifting work relations in cleansing depots

Institutions are objects of study that raise questions about the relationship between continuity and change. Employment is changing and for this reason it presents an opportunity to explore how it is that paid work might be thought of as an institutional ‘space’ that is made up of enduring and shifting power relations. This paper views institutions through a lens of ‘power-geometries’, that is, as complex webs of relations of domination and subordination (Massey, D., 1992. New Left Review 196, 65–84). The paper illustrates these power-geometries by exploring employment in local authority cleansing depots in South East England. I concentrate on how the inequity of employment relations enables the institutionalisation of work practices. Employment relations were found to have shifted to different degrees according to the particular geographies and histories of labour markets, employer strategies, local politics and worker solidarities. Despite these variations the asymmetry of employment relations is seen to have endured. I conclude by arguing that whilst power-geometries are not fixed, when ‘institutionalised’ they are not easily changed during ‘everyday’ interaction.     

Isotope provinces, mechanisms of generation and sources of the continental crust in the Central Asian mobile belt: geological and isotopic evidence

The available geological, geochronological and isotopic data on the felsic magmatic and related rocks from South Siberia, Transbaikalia and Mongolia are summarized to improve our understanding of the mechanisms and processes of the Phanerozoic crustal growth in the Central Asian mobile belt (CAMB). The following isotope provinces have been recognised: ‘Precambrian’ (T_DM=3.3–2.9 and 2.5–0.9 Ga) at the microcontinental blocks, ‘Caledonian’ (T_DM=1.1–0.55 Ga), ‘Hercynian’ (T_DM=0.8–0.5 Ma) and ‘Indosinian’ (T_DM=0.3 Ga) that coincide with coeval tectonic zones and formed at 570–475, 420–320 and 310–220 Ma. Continental crust of the microcontinents is underlain by, or intermixed with, ‘juvenile’ crust as evidenced by its isotopic heterogeneity. The continental crust of the Caledonian, Hercynian and Indosinian provinces is isotopically homogeneous and was produced from respective juvenile sources with addition of old crustal material in the island arcs or active continental margin environments. The crustal growth in the CAMB had episodic character and important crust-forming events took place in the Phanerozoic. Formation of the CAMB was connected with break up of the Rodinia supercontinent in consequence of creation of the South-Pacific hot superplume. Intraplate magmatism preceding and accompanying permanently other magmatic activity in the CAMB was caused by influence of the long-term South-Pacific plume or the Asian plume damping since the Devonian.     

Entangled exchange: Reconceptualising the characterisation and practice of bodily commodification

Richard Titmuss’ classical 1970 study of blood donation has provided a powerful conceptual model for characterising transactions involving human bodily materials. This now paradigmatic model suggests that such transactions are typically organised in accordance with one or other of two dichotomous, and mutually exclusive, modes of exchange: gifting or commodification. In this paper I utilise findings from my own and others’ empirical research to illustrate the range of complex, multiply constituted, and contested modes of commodification that now typically attend the exchange of human body parts and tissues of which Titmuss’ model can take no effective account. Drawing on work by Radin, Callon, and Miller I illustrate the complex justificatory work that those involved must perform to fit their lived experiences of tissue exchange into this now outmoded paradigm. I then consider how the protagonists themselves ontologise their practices and with what effects. In the second part of the paper I consider how neo-liberal ideologies and instruments are being employed to suborn a variety of highly differentiated and geographically distinct practices of bodily commodification to the ‘logic of the market’. I explore here what the operative effects of defining the global circulation of body parts and tissues as a new ‘economy’ might be. I then consider how, if at all, a market logic could ‘Value’ all those ‘calculations of interest’ and ‘values’ that underpin exchanges of human body parts and tissues in specific national, communal or institutional settings. I conclude by reflecting on the desirability or possibility of performing normative assessments of the ethicacy of highly geographically and culturally differentiated practices of bodily commodification.     

The genesis and significance of ‘hummocky moraine’: Evidence from the Isle of Skye, Scotland

The range of genetic and climatic interpretations of Scottish ‘hummocky moraine’ is reviewed, and new data are presented from the Isle of Skye, western Scotland, which are used as the basis of a genetic classification. ‘Hummocky moraine’ on Skye is shown to consist of three principal sediment-landform associations: (1) recessional moraines; (2) chaotic ice-stagnation moraines; and (3) drumlins and fluted moraines. The recessional moraines consist of transverse moraine ridges and chains of mounds, and were formed by a combination of glaciotectonics and debris accumulation at active ice margins. Second, chaotic moraines consist of randomly-distributed hummocks, mounds and rim-ridges and record deposition in contact with inactive ice. Finally, drumlins and fluted moraines are longitudinally-oriented subglacial bedforms formed by a combination of lodgement and sediment deformation. Individual occurrences of ‘hummocky moraine’ may comprise one, two or all of these associations. The detailed study and differentiation of Scottish ‘hummocky moraine’ provides a valuable source of information on former glacier dynamics and landscape change.