‘How do the American people know…?’: embodying post-9/11 conspiracy discourse

Conspiratorial thought has been highly visible in post-September 11th America, manifest through the continued growth of a public ‘9/11 Truth Movement’ as well as at the state-level, through the Bush administration’s conspiracy rhetoric of Islamic terrorists intent on infiltrating the US homeland. In this paper, I demonstrate how conspiracy can be understood as a ‘knowledge-producing discourse’; dialectically engaged across multiple subject positions and through which geopolitical narratives are performatively produced and contested at interconnected scales of bodies, homes, city streets and national ‘homelands’. Through drawing on, and challenging, the conceptual and methodological approaches of a burgeoning feminist geopolitics, I ground my analysis in the embodied performances of ‘patriotic dissent’ by members of the 9/11 Truth Movement in New York City, as well as through my own situated and ethical engagement with positions of political difference.     

Grassroots “flexible specialisation” in Brisbane’s West End: towards a politics of economic possibility

The focus on ‘flexible specialisation’ in the 1980s and 1990s marked an important turning point in framings of economic agency and diversity within economic geography. This article deconstructs the ways in which subjects were framed as ‘flexible’ in both the flexible specialisation literature and later work on the Diverse Economy (Gibson-Graham 1996, 2002, 2006), seeking out particular examples of the ways in which different projects of subjection appear to frame different views of economic possibility. Drawing richly on a case study of residents in an inner-city neighbourhood of West End, Brisbane (Australia), this paper uses resident’s articulations of their everyday practices to reinvigorate some of the ideas of the flexible specialisation literature and challenge, defamiliarise and rework existing ideas of economic life in “First World”, urban contexts.     

Dodging alligators,rattlesnakes, and backyard docks: a political ecology of sweetgrass basket-making and conservation in the South Carolina Lowcountry,USA

There is growing recognition among political ecologists of the need to examine shifting natural resource regimes and their effects on livelihoods in “First World” places. This emerging literature has variously examined the “Third World within,” the persistence of “subsistence activities” in the “First World,” and the “reterritorialization” of land tenure and access. However, much of this work has tended to focus on traditional extractive industries in the American West, indigenous claims to lands and resources in the U.S. and Canada, and non-timber resources on public lands. In contrast, we use a case study of African-American sweetgrass basket-makers, associated with the Gullah culture, in South Carolina’s lowcountry to examine the ways in which ongoing amenity-driven residential development is fundamentally reshaping resource access on private lands. Historically, basket-makers harvested the materials (primarily sweetgrass or Mulenbergia filipes) needed for their culturally important art form from accessible, rural, and privately held tracts of land in close proximity to their communities, but development pressures and changes in resident interpretation of property rights has decreased access to basket-making resources. The case is particularly illuminating, as it examines the emergence of ‘conservation subdivisions’ in the region and raises important questions about what “rural uses” and users are being conserved through responses to exurban, suburban, and urban development in formerly rural areas.     

The ethnographic spectacle of the ‘other’ Filipinos in early cinema

My paper aims to ask what space characterizes the various constructs of orientalism and othering in the early short films of Thomas Edison. Using Lefebvre’s concept that social space “subsumes things produced, and encompasses their interrelationships in their coexistence and simultaneity” in these early shorts, I will look at three Biograph actualities found at the Library of Congress-American Memory page to show how space is manifested and negotiated onscreen. I will examine Edison’s “Filipinos Retreat From Trenches”, “Capture of Trenches at Candaba” and “U.S. Troops and Red Cross in the Trenches Before Caloocan” which were all released in 1899. These reenacted short films were shot during the tumultuous years of the Spanish-American War. In the Biograph shorts, the privileged positions of both Spanish and American forces in relation to the annexation of a foreign land in world history books is indicative of the tendency to de-emphasize the contribution of the native population in the war. Manthia Diawara has said that “space is related to power and powerlessness, insofar as those who occupy the center of the screen are usually more powerful than those in the background or completely absent from the screen.” The spatial hierarchies and spatially situated images in Edison’s short films show how historically configured power relations encrypted oppression to its external “others” through the cinematic apparatus.

Redox environment effect on redox sensitive elements in surface sediments of the Changjiang Estuary hypoxia zone

The grain size and element (including redox sensitive elements and terrigenous elements) concentration of surface sediments from the Changjiang Estuary hypoxia zone and its adjacent sea area were measured in this research. Based on the obtained data, the hypoxic environment’s influence on the distribution of elements in surface sediments was further studied. We believe that the “redox environment effect” greatly influences the distribution of the RSE, which reveals the “patchy enrichment pattern” offshore in the hypoxia zone, while the distribution of the terrigenous elements which shows the “stripped enrichment pattern” near shore is mainly affected by “granularity effects”. Due to the existence of the hypoxia zone of the Changjiang Estuary, the distribution of the RSE such as Mo, Cd and V in the study area exhibits the characteristics of “redox environment effects”. __________ Translated from Marine Geology & Quaternary Geology, 2007, 27(3):1–8 [译自: 海洋地质与第四纪地质]     

Validating a Tsunami Vulnerability Assessment Model (the PTVA Model) Using Field Data from the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami

The “PTVAM” tsunami vulnerability assessment model [Papathoma and Dominey-Howes: 2003, Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci. 3, 733–744; Papathoma et al.: 2003, Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci. 3, 377–389], like all models, requires validation. We use the results from post-tsunami surveys in the Maldives following the December 26, 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami to ‘evaluate’ the appropriateness of the PTVAM attributes to understanding spatial and temporal vulnerability to tsunami damage and loss. We find that some of the PTVAM attributes are significantly important and others moderately important to understanding and assessing vulnerability. Some attributes require further investigation. Based upon the ground-truth data, we make several modifications to the model framework and propose a revised version of the PTVAM (PTVAM 2).     

The Changing Face of US-Europe Relations: Geopolitical Causes and Possible Consequences

Relations between the United States and Europe have been quite volatile over the past five years. This volatility is not just a product of disagreements over the American invasion of Iraq. It is tied to a set of fundamental challenges to the geopolitical arrangements and understandings that emerged in the wake of World War II. Three challenges were of particular importance: the fall of the Iron Curtain, the Balkan crisis of the 1990s, and the election of a presidential administration in Washington, DC, which adopted a neoconservative geopolitical agenda. The global impacts of this agenda were heightened by the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States of America. The U.S. response exposed fundamental differences between the U.S. and Europe on the use of international military forces in the “war on terrorism,” the role of NATO, and the U.S. government’s effort to force “regime change” in Iraq. Europe’s reaction to U.S. policy has not been uniform, however. At the governmental level, fundamental differences have emerged among European countries. The United States has sought to highlight those differences, suggesting that the U.S. favors “disaggregation” in Europe, even as it trumpets the virtues of a uniform response to the threat of terrorism. The future trajectory of U.S.-European relations is likely to be shaped by intersections between Europe’s struggles with integration and the U.S.’s evolving global geopolitical posture, which could move in either a hegemonic or a globalist direction.     

Survival of the thinnest: rediscovery of Bauer’s (1898) ichthyosaur tooth sections from Upper Jurassic lithographic limestone quarries,south Germany

During the late Early Cretaceous, the shallow-water domains of the western Tethys are characterized by the widespread deposition of Urgonian-type carbonates rich in rudists, corals and other oligotrophic, shallow-marine organisms. In the Helvetic Alps, the Urgonian occurrences have been dated by ammonite biostratigraphy as Late Barremian and Early Aptian. For the more proximal occurrences in the western Swiss Jura, a recent age model based on bio-, chemo- and sequence stratigraphy has been proposed, which allows for an improved correlation with the Helvetic counterparts. In order to corroborate the recently proposed age model for the Jura, a set of well-preserved rhynchonellids collected from five different lithostratigraphical formations and members (“Marnes bleues d’Hauterive”, “Marnes d’Uttins”, basal marly layers within the “Urgonien Jaune”, “Marnes de la Russille”, “Urgonien Blanc”) has been analysed for its strontium–isotope ratios (⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr). In addition, K–Ar dating was performed on well-preserved glauconite grains from two different levels (“Marnes d’Uttins” and a basal layer within the “Urgonien Jaune”). The correlation of the Sr–isotope data set with a belemnite-based, ammonite-calibrated reference curve provides an age model which is coherent with recently published ages based on calcareous nannofossil biostratigraphy and the correlation of trends in chemo- and sequence stratigraphy. K–Ar dating on well-preserved glauconite grains from the “Marnes d’Uttins” and lowermost part of the “Urgonien Jaune” delivered ages of 127.5 ± 2.3 and 130.7 ± 2.6 Ma, respectively. Whereas the age of the glauconitic level near the base of the “Urgonien Jaune” is chronostratigraphically meaningful, the K–Ar age of the “Marnes d’Uttins” appears too young relative to the presently used time scale. This may be related to rejuvenation of the K–Ar chronometer due to post-depositional Ar loss, most likely during hardground formation. The ages obtained here confirm the Late Barremian age for the onset of the Urgonian platform, an age which is conform with ages obtained in the Helvetic Alps and elsewhere along the northern Tethyan margin.     

<Emphasis Type="Italic">Conjunto</Emphasis> culture: celebration and racialization in the German-Texan “Borderlands”

Sustained migration of Hispanics and Anglos into Texas’s historical “German belt” has contributed to a significant decline in the proportion of Central Texans claiming German ancestry. Under these circumstances, ethnic festivals are playing an increasingly important role in maintaining the German-American identity of many of the region’s people and places. Organizers and participants frequently tout the events’ inclusiveness, claiming that anyone can temporarily cross ethnic boundaries to become “German for a day” within the festival context. However, participant observation and surveys of festival participants in three historically German-American communities (Brenham, Fredericksburg, and New Braunfels) suggest that ethnic-themed events mirror processes of racialization that have persisted in the region for more than 150 years. In this paper, I argue that, in helping to construct “German” identities for the region’s people and places, German-themed events in Central Texas are implicitly involved in the construction of “non-German” and, by extension “non-white,” ethnic identities. Further, event participation patterns reflect a long-standing black-white racial dichotomy in the region. Within this ethnoracial hierarchy, Hispanics have long occupied a liminal status that is reflected by their involvement in the production and consumption of German-themed events. I contend that Hispanics’ participation in German heritage festivals reflects not only a historical process of “whitening” their racial status but their increasing presence and power within the region.     

It's a long way to the other geographers and geographic knowledges

Geographic knowledge is usually understood as the knowledge produced by geographers. Yet, it is also produced by people outside of the academia. But as Western science claimed for its exclusive self the status of ‘knowledge’, others have long been denied the production and possession of a true knowledge, and recognised merely the mastering of practical skills. The binary opposition between scientific and other forms of knowledge has been central to the construction of academic geography until the late 1980s, when postmodern thought cast some doubt on the universality of scientific knowledge. This led to critical analyses of academic geography, revealing its situatedness, as well as to a new interest for the geographies of the ‘Others’. Examining how geographers have dealt with other knowledge sets so far, and how they have labelled them, this paper argues that other geographies should be given more attention. This means focusing on the knowledges themselves, and considering implementing a true dialogue between these and academic geography. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

New political violence in Africa – Secular sectarianism in Sierra Leone

Mary Douglas (1993) has indicated some of the shared concerns that keep voluntary enclaves together as ‘social movements’. The present paper describes a rather different kind of enclave politics, being concerned with the ‘new violence’ of groups enclaved by social exclusion and force. The paper focuses on the emergence and subsequent development of dissidents in the civil war in Sierra Leone. The RUF was at the outset a tiny but conventional guerrilla force, modelled on one of the militias in the Liberian civil war, and seeking to overthrow a decayed neo-patrimonial ‘one-party’ regime. Gaining little popular support, its members became marooned in forested isolation on the Liberia-Sierra Leone border. Recruits were mainly school children seized by force and ‘converted’ through having to take part in atrocities against rural civilians. Unable to return to the larger society on pain of summary execution, captives have had little option but to adjust to the political fantasies of a violent and unstable leadership. They were enclaved by force. Indicating the predictive strength of Douglas' arguments about the cultural dynamics of the enclave, the subsequent atrocity-drenched story of the RUF suggests that it is not the content of belief that determines institutional culture but vice versa. To survive, the enforced enclave develops the concerns of the classic ‘sect’ - a doctrinaire ‘rationality’ (expressed in crude acts of ‘subtractive’ violence), rejection of magic, decision making by lots, preoccupation with defection, otiose leadership style. If the rest of the world is to come to terms with violent enclave organizations such as the RUF and Algerian GIA it may have to pay more careful attention to the way enclave institutions think. They may not respond ‘rationally’ to the kinds of incentives offered by mainstream groups organised around hierarchical and/or individualist systems of social accountability. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Chemodynamics of trace metal fractions in surface sediments of the Pandoh Lake,Lesser Himalaya,India

The seasonal variation in the trace metals’ concentrations (Cd, Co, Cu, Fe, Mn, Ni, Pb, and Zn) were investigated in surface sediments of the Pandoh Lake. The horizontal distribution of TC, TN, and TP reflects spatial and temporal differences in sedimentary organic production. The chemical sequential extraction of heavy metals was carried out by seven-step fractionation scheme (Leleyter and Probst in Int J Environ Chem 73:109–128, 1999). The significant concentrations of Ni and Cd were associated with “water soluble (Eua)” fraction in the monsoon and winter, respectively, while “exchangeable (Exch)” and “carbonate-bound (Carb)” fractions for Ni and Cd were abundant in winter and summer. The Cd, Cu, and Pb associated with “Exch” fraction in the summer season support their availability on exchange sites due to oxidized nature of surface sediments. Enrichment of Co, Fe, Mn, and Zn in “AFeO” fraction showed poor bioavailability, while Cd, Cu, and Mn in the monsoon, Co in the winter and summer, and Zn in the winter season showed significant “organically bound (Org)” fraction. The ANOVA was significant for chemical fractions of trace elements except “Carb” fraction of Pb and Zn and “CFeO” fraction of Pb. Factor analysis revealed that the “Eua”, “Exch”, and “Carb” fractions together control the metal enrichment of “MnO”, “AFeO”, and “CFeO” fractions in the summer season.     

Comparison of Mathematical Methods of Potential Modeling

Various attempts are known to turn the “catalogue” of mineral deposit models compiled by Cox and Singer (1986) operational, and have initiated activities called “potential mapping”, “potential modeling”, or “targeting”. The common ultimate objective is to estimate the probability for a given location that a mineralization of a given type occurred. The mathematics range from “weights of evidence” and others featuring a Bayesian approach to logistic regression by maximum likelihood, and include other realizations by means of fuzzy methods, genetic programming, and artificial neural nets. Once developed and coded, applications are not restricted to mineral prospection and exploration but include any kind of occurrences and their estimated probabilities, e.g., risk assessment of land slides and many others.     

Resource control,revenue allocation and petroleum politics in Nigeria: the Niger Delta question

The Niger Delta question represents one of the most intractable sources of political destabilization, constitutes a profound threat to national security, and economic development of the Nigerian state. Therefore, the study of the intricate dynamics among multinational oil corporations, the Nigerian State, and insurgent militias illuminates the root causes, societal schisms and the political economy of resource induced conflicts in Africa’s major oil producing nation state. This case study illustrates and explicates the “paradox of plenty”, the “resource curse”, the “shadow state syndrome”, and the debilitating effects of petroleum politics in Nigeria. Economic exploitation of the region’s vast crude oil reserves by multinationals and government authorities is juxtaposed with the specter of environmental devastation, excruciating poverty, and recurrent rule of impunity. National elite contestations concerning the legalities of resource control, internecine squabbles over revenue allocation formulas and derivation principles have been compounded by incessant disruptions of crude oil pipelines, necessitating drastic reduction in the country’s petroleum output and revenues derived from the global economy. Due to the multi-layered dimensions of the effects of crude oil, guns, profits, and geo-territorial instability, the protracted problems of the Niger Delta thus, provides us with pertinent analytical and contextual frameworks for the study of the dynamics, volatility and transparency issues in global extractive industries. In the muddled rivers and creeks of the Niger Delta, characterized by regional destabilization, there has emerged a clandestine economy of protection syndicates, marked exponential increase in kidnappings and targeting of expatriate workers, as well as state sponsored military reprisals against self-styled insurgents, warlords, and militia movements.     

Contesting Chinatown: Place-making and the Emergence of ‘Ethnoburbia’ in Brisbane,Australia

This paper juxtaposes the actual areas of settlement and settlement activities of Chinese migrants in Brisbane’s southern suburbs since the mid-1980s, with the concomitant, ‘government planned’ construction of the city’s Chinatown as an ‘exotic,’ ‘ethnic,’ and ‘cosmopolitan’ landmark. It argues that while the latter, as with Chinatowns in other Australian and world cities, has continued to appropriate the symbols of so-called ‘Chineseness’ to sell the locale to non-Chinese, the former, in recalling the notion of ‘ethnoburbia,’ significantly evinces actual Chinese migrants’ agency and role in place-making. In the process, these migrants have not only established a local, ethnically meaningful environment, but also challenged the still current metonymic Western image of the Chinese as preferring life in ‘ethnic’ urban enclaves that had its origin from early Chinese settlement and fundamentally detached from the lives of other ethnic groups per se. Indeed greater recognition and comprehension of such locales may go a long way to illustrate that many Chinese living in Australia today do not fit the territorial, place-based identity often associated with them in the imagination of mainstream society.     

From brain drain to brain gain: reverse migration to Bangalore and Hyderabad, India’s globalizing high tech cities

This paper assesses the mutual impact of returning Indian-origin skilled workers on the cities of Bangalore (Bengaluru) and Hyderabad, which have emerged as India’s leading “tech cities”. During the 1970s and 1980s, there was concern that India was losing its educated workforce to the West, particularly to the United States through a phenomenon known as “brain drain”. More recently, there is evidence that reverse brain drain is occurring, as U.S.-trained Indian professionals are returning to their home country in increasing numbers to take advantage of new growth and employment opportunities. The effects of this skilled, transnationally active labor force on various sectors of the economy, on the social and physical infrastructure of Bangalore and Hyderabad and in forging and solidifying transnational linkages between India and the United States are explored in this paper. This study also investigates the reasons why successful US professionals of Asian-Indian origin are returning to their home country via a series of personal interviews. The paper offers Bangalore and Hyderabad as “worldwide leading cities” with a niche status in the global Information Technology (IT) sector.     

Desert knowledge: integrating knowledge and development in arid and semi-arid drylands

Globalisation presents particular challenges for deserts given that their sparse populations, which are amongst the world’s poorest in an absolute economic sense, tend to be remote from major markets and have only a distant, marginal voice in political and policy decision making. Here we are defining deserts as the arid and semi-arid drylands that encompass 70% of Australia and 25% of the world’s land surfaces. The value of the knowledge that local traditions and science have generated about living sustainably in deserts is being promoted and extended through the ‘desert knowledge’ movement in Australia. The Australian research reported here, together with a contribution from Niger that offers a contrast and some lessons for Australia, is largely underpinned by a neopopulist paradigm of development stressing respect for local knowledge, participatory practice and empowerment. Research in partnership with desert Aboriginal groups is contributing to their engagement with new livelihood opportunities. The local knowledge of livestock graziers is also being engaged to support sustainable management of desert water sources and landscapes for multiple values. The research reported here also addresses opportunities and challenges for local norms, identities, knowledge systems, governance and livelihoods from broader scale processes and institutions. In doing so it contributes to a ‘neo-ideographic approach’ wherein desert people might better harness their locality, knowledge and diversity in adaptations that shape their encounters with globalisation. It also points to considerable scope to mature such an approach.     

The dynamics of vulnerability: some preliminary thoughts about the occurrence of ‘radical surprises’ and a case study on the 2002 flood (Germany)

This paper develops a view of vulnerability attempting to capture a constitutive dimension of most disasters, that is their radically surprising moment. Therefore, it builds a conceptual framework, which captures the moment of surprise itself, as well as, its consequences for people by developing a dynamic and actor-oriented understanding of vulnerability. It begins with an outline about how to observe and explain vulnerability by offering a brief overview of how the discussion on vulnerability has evolved over the last 30 years or so. In a second step, the interrelation of knowledge, ignorance and vulnerability is specified. Therefore, a basic understanding of surprises is developed, which is then further distinguished in everyday surprises and ‘radical surprises’. The theoretical argument is substantiated by a case study on a city in Germany, which was severely affected by the 2002 August flood. The paper concludes with some more general implications for the discussion on the interrelation of local knowledge, the dynamics of vulnerability and the occurrence of ‘radical surprises’.     

Producing/consuming memoryscapes: the genesis/politics of Second World War commemoration in Singapore

Despite the salience of the Second World War in paving the way for Singapore to attain formal independent status in 1965, it was not until the 1990s that war events were inserted into the state’s narratives, and ‘mapped’ onto its spaces as visible national fodder to bind citizens together. Since then, memoryscapes in many forms have proliferated over the state’s cityscape. After tracing the genesis of official war commemorative gestures within Singapore, the paper examines the ways in which Singaporeans have responded to them. Specifically, the paper argues that, while Singaporeans recognize the importance of remembering the war as nationally significant, this has not translated into any physical attempt or desire—beyond the discursive—to participate in the state’s commemorative endeavours. In analyzing factors that may have hindered the actual bodily practice of war remembrance in Singapore, nationalized war memoryscapes are also seen as embodying numerous politics due to tensions arising from a collision between what the state and its people perceive to be ideal means of remembering and representing the war within national discourses in the context of the present.     

Towards a better understanding of the Oulmes hydrogeological system (Mid-Atlas,Morocco)

Located in the Mid-Atlas (Morocco), the Oulmes plateau is famous for its mineral water springs “Sidi Ali” and “Lalla Haya” commercialised by the company “Les Eaux minérales d’Oulmès S.A”. Additionally, groundwater of the Oulmes plateau is intensively exploited for irrigation. The objective of this study, essentially performed from data collected during isotopic (summer 2004) and piezometric and hydrogeochemical field campaigns (spring 2007), is to improve the understanding of the Oulmes hydrogeological system. Analyses and interpretation of these data lead to the statement that this system is constituted by a main deep aquifer of large extension and by minor aquifers in a perched position. However, these aquifers interact enough to be in total equilibrium during the cold and wet period. As highlighted by isotopes, the origin of groundwater is mainly infiltration water except a small part of old groundwater with dissolved gas rising up from the granite through the schists.