Positionality and Praxis: Fieldwork Experiences in Rural India

This paper provides a reflexive account of conducting fieldwork as a graduate student in the Sunderban area of West Bengal state, India, in the mid‐1990s. Reflecting on my personal experiences of research in a setting that was simultaneously familiar and foreign, I use frames of positionality to understand the impact of explicit and implied power structures on the research process, the relationships between the researcher and those researched, and the transfer of knowledge. This paper argues that the multiple subject positions and identities of both scholar and subjects as presented in the field vary with setting, and that these positionalities affect access to informants, the tenor and outcomes of encounters, and knowledge production. While self‐reflexivity is endorsed as a strategy for critically informed research, active measures such as openness about the agenda and activities undertaken, self‐disclosure, making conscious accommodations for the research subject's work schedule and time constraints, mutual sharing of information, and explicit recognition of the research subjects' expertise through lived experiences are proposed as strategies for equalising the power balance between scholar and subject.     

THE SOVIET WAR MEMORIAL IN TREPTOW,BERLIN*

ABSTRACT. The Soviet War Memorial in Treptow, Berlin, was an important emblem of political power and ideology during and after the cold war. Designed as the Soviet Union's premiere extraterritorial battlefield shrine, the site combines a veterans' cemetery with a large‐scale memorial complex celebrating the Soviet victory in World War II. The monument was intended for use in Soviet military commemorative activity and became a key sacred space in the Cult of the Soviet War Dead, but its location in Berlin meant that it served other political purposes. By avoiding definitive statements on key issues the memorial attained a semantic flexibility that enabled it to remain a focal point of commemorative activity for decades. The memorial continues to play a part in contemporary Berlin, though the political overtones are now overshadowed by its role as a shrine to the war dead.     

AMERICAN NATIONAL IDENTITY AND THE PROGRESS OF THE NEW SOUTH IN NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE*

ABSTRACT. This article examines how National Geographic Magazine's coverage of the U.S. South contributed to the production of an exalted American national identity. The framework of internal orientalism is employed to explain the role of the South as an internal other in the national discourse and to show how even positive representations of the South are often implicated in this othering. In the pages of National Geographic, the New South's progress is measured by the steps it takes away from the Old South. In highlighting the improvements made within the South, the articles provide subtle hints that the legacy of segregation, intolerance, racism, and poverty continues to haunt the region. The articles set up a spatial distinction that construes these evils as inherently southern problems, which implies that however far the New South moves away from the problematic legacy of the Old South, it will never quite reach the American ideal.     

Response to Thrift's “The future of geography”

Reviews and observations about the status of the discipline of geography, no matter how positive, invariably raise programmatic concerns. These concerns have a long history that arise from geography's struggles to find an identity that embraces its many parts and yet are consistent with the logic by which the academy partitions knowledge. Pedagogy and research historically claimed by geography is currently being reinvented and relabeled under such headings as “integrated environmental science” and “spatial science”, and these developments have the potential to change the breadth of the “geographic imagination”. Several observations about dominant explanatory perspectives and substantive domains of geographic enquiry are also provided.     

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.     

Competing space and place identity with landscape change analysis using Web GIS through Singapore historical maps (1828–2015)

The investigation of historical maps is fundamental to understanding the dynamics of landscape changes. In this study, we propose Web GIS tools as a way to compare historical maps efficiently for knowledge production. A key impetus of this article is to contribute to the ongoing efforts to broaden the appeal of ‘mixed‐methods research’ by bridging the epistemological and methodological gaps between GIS and qualitative methodologies in knowledge production. This article proposes a new visualization method for historical landscape change analysis by comparing multiple maps simultaneously with the mash‐up of Web GIS. Based on the analysis of exterior facts represented on the maps, four developmental footprints were investigated, namely, surviving place identity, disappeared place identity replaced by new identity, waning place identity overlapped with new identity, and waning identity by disconnected spatial relationships. To this end, the study argues that Web GIS applications have more potential in spatial knowledge production than traditional desktop GIS.     

城市行政区划调整背景下城郊居民地方认同的重构与机制研究——以广州番禺小龙村为例

快速城市化带来了行政区划的调整及城市土地、空间和边界的改变,也重构了传统的地方与地方认同。以广州市番禺小龙村为例,分析城市扩张和地方重构下影响地方认同的因素、机制与过程。研究发现：① 城市扩张过程中,居民户籍身份上的改变最为突出,农民对于其市民身份及新的行政地方的认同度不高,最终产生了一定程度的身份与区域的隔离;② 认同是多维度影响、深层次和动态变化的过程,地方认同需要从身份和地方双重维度进行分析,居民多元的自我身份感知与对地方的认知及其切实的个体需求共同影响其最终的身份归属和地方认同。因此,城市行政区划调整过程中需了解、重视区划调整变化后城郊居民的生产生活,同时注重社会基础福利的提升,以促进居民对于新的地方和身份的认同,进而促进城乡融合。     

空间认同:城市空间研究转向中的知识前沿、趋势与启发

中国城市化进程的快速发展,促使人们不断解构、调整和重构对城市空间的认同,这是城市化发展中不容忽视的新问题。以Web of Science（WoS）为数据源,对国外城市空间认同研究进行了分析和知识再现。研究发现：① 城市空间认同是人们对城市发展中社会经济认同、文化认同、集体认同、身份认同与情感认同的集合。作为重要的国民意识,城市空间认同主题是国外学者关注的重要领域,对该领域研究的本质上是对城市空间实践中人文主义空间诉求的知识表征;② 在2008~2017年的国外城市空间认同研究中,美国、英国、澳大利亚等国家具有明显优势,国际合作研究网络主要在美洲-欧洲、欧洲-澳洲,以及澳洲-欧美之间;国外城市空间认同研究高被引文献注重对“空间多中心性”“地方与连续性”“城市社区”“城市公民身份”“空间绅士化”“地方主义”等方面的讨论。③ 未来研究更加倾向在“认同”“空间”“城市”“地理”“政治”“地方”,以及“社区”等新主题方面。相比较而言,国内对城市空间认同的研究较为欠缺,随着中国城市空间实践不断推向纵深阶段,需要强化城市空间认同研究的“理论自觉”。     

工业用地转型下地理想象与地方意义构建 ——广州广钢新城案例

在城市化进程中工业用地转型背景下,选择广钢新城为案例进行实证分析,从地理想象的视角,探讨周边村民、旧广钢职工以及新进入者等主体对广钢新城地方意义和文化内涵进行解构和重构的过程,并进一步解析地方建构与身份认同的联系。研究发现：1）由于主观性和空间实践体验的差异,不同社会群体对于广钢的地方意义有着截然不同的想象;2）周边村民、广钢旧厂职工集体记忆的嬗变,反映了空间形态、社会结构变化与在地群体的想象构建以及身份认同的耦合关系;3）新进入者的地方身份认同建立在排除在地群体的地方文化想象之上,二者对于广钢新城的地方意义和身份认同是断裂的,2个社会群体对于地方意义的感知与认同在未来还需要进一步的交流与融合;4）在社会话语构建的文化冲击以及权力和资本的支配下,外界群体逐渐产生对广钢新城地方文化意义的多元想象。广钢片区的大规模空间重塑以及由此衍生的地方意义重构说明经济、社会和文化因素对地方建构具有直接而深刻的影响。