The security exception: Development and militarization in Laos’s protected areas

Because of the role that peripheral forest landscapes played in postwar nation-building, the Lao military has long played a significant, even if often hard-to-see, role in the administration of the country’s protected areas. This role is becoming increasingly apparent as transnational market-based forest governance efforts begin to threaten military administration of protected areas. As a consequence, the multi-dimensional nature of security – both defensive in the classic military sense, but also increasingly economic and complex – is coming to light through uses of what we describe as the security exception: the invocation of national security, in this case by military actors, to manage the reach and efficacy of emerging forest governance efforts. Projects to reduce climate-related emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) have been especially prone to trigger the security exception due to their focus on forest measurement and change over time, and are examined here in two cases from protected areas in western and southern Laos. We suggest that even as conflicts over forest management may be interpreted through the lens of foreign domination and the loss of domestic sovereignty – indeed the security exception feeds on such interpretations – these conflicts are better understood as struggles within the Lao state and society over the how to manage and use forest resources in a context of economic uncertainty and persistent underdevelopment. In such a context, the role of conservation NGOs and Western donors as gatekeepers to ongoing transnational governance efforts is nonetheless highly significant.     

Imagining Strawberry Fields as a place of pilgrimage

This paper examines the significance of Strawberry Fields, the memorial to John Lennon in Central Park, New York City, as a place of secular pilgrimage. Situated within postmodern conceptualizations of secular pilgrimage, Strawberry Fields is shown to be the spatial focus of a variety of discourses related to John Lennon's life and music. Furthermore, this paper illustrates how autobiography as a qualitative research method can reveal the sentiments that motivate particular pilgrims to places associated with major figures in popular music.     

Emerging Memorial Landscapes of Labor Conflict in the Cotton Textile South

While research into the formation of memorial landscapes in the American South has focused on those resulting from racial conflicts, a new landscape memorializing labor conflict and class consciousness is also emerging in the region's textile-producing Piedmont. This memorialization poses significant challenges to dominant regional discourses of economic development and class mutuality in a region in which labor organizing and radical politics remain anathema. This paper examines this emerging landscape for what it can tell us about class relations in the region and the process by which memorial landscapes are formed.     

Naming rights,place branding,and the tumultuous cultural landscapes of neoliberal urbanism

ABSTRACT

In recent decades, urban policymakers have increasingly embraced the selling of naming rights as a means of generating revenue to construct and maintain urban infrastructure. This practice of “toponymic commodification” first emerged with the commercialization of professional sports during the second half of the 20th century and has become an integral part of the policy toolkit of neoliberal urbanism more generally. As a result, the naming of everything from sports arenas to public transit stations has come to be viewed as a sponsorship opportunity, yet such naming rights initiatives have not gone uncontested. This special issue examines the political economy of urban place naming through a series of case studies that consider how the commodification of naming rights is transforming the cultural landscapes of contemporary cities. In this introductory article, we provide an overview of the geographies of toponymic commodification as an emerging research focus within the field of critical urban toponymies and propose several theoretical approaches that can enhance our understanding of the commodification of naming rights as an urban spatial practice. We then discuss the main contributions in this special issue and conclude by exploring potential directions for future research on the geographies of urban toponymic commodification.     

ALEXANDER THE GREAT'S MOUNTAIN*

ABSTRACT. The metaphorical power of natural landscapes and geographical objects has attracted an increasing amount of critical interest. The myth of Dinocrates planning to carve Mount Athos into the figure of Alexander the Great epitomizes the complex relationship between the insistent materiality of prominent geographical features such as mountains and imagination. Through an iconographic reading of different renderings of the Dinocratic myth in western Europe, this article explores the way Mount Athos turned into a powerful emblem circulating across space and time. While considering the continuity of a Classical vision projected on rock, the article focuses on its constant reappropriations and transformations in different historical and geographical contexts. Dinocratic Athos becomes a metaphor of egotism, power, and desire but also a free‐floating referent, reflecting a shifting relationship between the microcosm of the human body and the natural macrocosm.     

孔子故里文化景观发展的历史层累及其机制效应

曲阜是中国历史文化名城,拥有“孔子故里”“东方圣城”“儒家文化发源地”等多个文化符号。然而,曲阜今日的景观格局是在历史发展过程中逐渐形成的。在这一过程中,为什么有些景观保留了下来,且影响日益扩大,而有的却湮没无闻？其背后的运行机制是什么？这些便是文章要探索的问题。已有关于文化景观的研究对景观的层累特性以及形成原因多有涉及,但较少分析层累过程中景观的筛选问题以及具体的机制效应。采用文献分析法,利用历史文物、历史文献和规划资料,以曲阜为例分析了城市文化景观的历史层累过程及其机制。结论如下：1）国家文化认同需要是造就曲阜文化景观历史层累及演变的主要原因。历史上,国家对儒学正统的不断强化,使曲阜与孔子和儒学有关的景观地位被不断抬高,而其他人文景观则被有意无意地忽略,导致最终消失。2）经济动机是当代曲阜文化景观维护与建设的重要标准。在当代,曲阜人文景观建设以服务旅游经济为目的,儒家文化的物质表征成为招揽游客的招牌和被消费的对象。3）鉴于曲阜在中国传统社会中的特殊地位,其人文景观被贴上了孔子与儒学的标签;但从另一方面看,这也限制了其城市景观多元化发展的可能性。