Encountering The Night with Mobile Methods

Nightlife settings both facilitate urban sociality and act as sites of social conflict, however little research has focused on experience and encounter in these places. This paper addresses this gap in the context of night‐time economic planning and recent research on encounter. The use of mobile methods in nightlife spaces is shown to garner a more nuanced understanding of how forays into planned night‐time spaces are experienced and understood by people using those spaces. I argue that emplaced, mobile methods unveil complex narratives of place, revealing prejudices and discourses at play in place. These narratives begin to erode privileged images of the city shaped by increasingly neoliberal governance and other cultural intermediaries, and draw out the potential of these methods to improve the lived inclusivity of place.     

A Comparison of the International Charters on Geographical Education

This article uses discourse analysis techniques associated with Foucauldian archaeology to examine the two international charters developed by the International Geographical Union Commission on Geographical Education (IGU-CGE), the original one in 1992 and the revised version endorsed in 2016 at the Beijing conference. The examination considers the consultation and development processes before outlining similarities and differences in the messages communicated and how discourses have changed through time. The article concludes with recommendations for the geography education community for the future.     

Oil ‘futures’: Shell’s Scenarios and the social constitution of the global oil market

This article explores the relationship between the oil industry’s representation of operating conditions in key sites of extraction and the constitution of oil futures markets. An analysis of Shell Oil’s recent Scenarios publications, the ‘Trilemma Scenarios to 2025’ and subsequent ‘Scramble and Blueprints Scenarios to 2050’, provides insight into both the (global) social construction of oil prices and the oil industry’s reaction to social resistance in its operating environment - whether in the form of movements for resource sovereignty or climate change activism. Examining the implications of these two Scenario publications for key sites of Shell investment, the Nigerian Niger Delta and the Canadian Tar Sands, the article demonstrates that understanding the discursive implications of ‘peak oil’ for the petroleum industry requires contextualizing discussions of ‘scarcity’ within business agents role in shaping oil futures markets, and private industry’s interest in the ongoing development of unconventional fossil fuel sources. While the role of deregulated futures trading receives little attention in the Shell Scenarios, speculative trading - and thus perception concerning supply among business agents - is central to shaping global oil prices and thus the social conditions of the oil market.     

Ontologies of geographic information

This article explores the notion of a system of ontologies specifically designed for the needs of an information science. A framework for geographic information ontologies is outlined that focuses on geographic information constructs rather than on the direct representation of real-world entities or on linguistic terms. The framework takes the form of a generative hierarchy anchored by the notion of intentionality at one end and of a spatiotemporal field of potentially relevant information at the other. Two theoretical notions are used in the generation of the hierarchy. The first is the principle of semantic contraction, whereby, starting from a level of geographic information constructs specified so as to reflect user intentionality, semantically coherent domains of properties are removed over several steps until only the rudiments of a spatiotemporal information system are left. The second notion is that of object of discourse, which allows entities to be represented as the composites of geographic information constructs at the higher levels of the hierarchy, explicitly reflecting the connections between the purpose, function, appropriate internal constitution, and ensuing categorization of the entities represented. The framework's main contribution is thus twofold: first, it allows the notions of user purpose and object function to be directly built into geographic representations; second, it proposes a hierarchy of ontological levels that are linked by systematic semantic relations. Further, the framework presents an integrated view of object and field representations. It may also provide a novel perspective on a number of issues of ongoing interest in geographic information science.     

古镇文化身份脆弱性的社会建构及其意义——多元话语分析模式的尝试

在建构主义研究范式的指导下选择多元话语分析方法,以江南水乡古镇周庄为案例地,对古镇文化身份的脆弱性进行社会建构分析。结果表明不同阶段政府旅游发展政策的改变、开发商的本质、传媒与专家系统的推力、游客凝视及对文化的态度、外来人群及其影响下原住居民的交往方式和价值取向共同建构了古镇文化身份脆弱性的形成过程。最后提出改造物质与生活环境、营建文化共同体、提倡理性交往等古镇文化身份脆弱性的治理对策,以期为文化遗产保护与可持续发展政策制定提供参考。     

FDI policy and political spaces for labour: The disarticulation of the Bolivian petroleros

Recent literature asserts that labour movements worldwide have been disempowered as a result of the various processes and discourses linked to economic globalisation. But there is a need to explore more carefully the mechanisms by which these processes and discourses affect resources for and constraints on effective union organisation. The purpose of this paper is to understand the construction of political spaces for organised labour and how these have been influenced by one such discourse: the policy discourse on foreign direct investments (FDI). It analyses the relationship between this policy discourse and political spaces for Bolivian petrolero unions through a case study of the period from 1984 to 2006. The policy discourse shifted the function of the state, fragmented symbols of collective identity, introduced flexible contracts, decentralised negotiations, rewarded individual achievement, and fostered competition rather than cooperation between employees. The shift towards an internationally integrated, FDI-driven economy shapes political spaces that allow collective action to be restructured from the workplace-based demands of unions to demands for democratic and indigenous rights of NGOs and other non-labour civil society organisations.     

Negotiating nature: exploring discourse through small group research

The full potential of discussion groups to further geographic interest in the relationship between discourse, individual and society can still be developed further. This paper briefly reviews previous applications of discussion group methodologies before suggesting a new discourse-centred approach that explores how broad social discourses impact everyday conversations. The approach is demonstrated through a case study involving supporters of environmental movements in Australia. It is concluded that small groups can be used in new ways that provide important methodologically unique insights into the reception of transient, but powerful, discourses upon everyday lives.     

Media Constructions of Aboriginality: implications for engagement with coal seam gas development in Australia

Recent neo-liberal policy frameworks in Australia advocate economic development opportunities for Aboriginal Australians as a viable strategy to redress the marginalisation and social disadvantage that appear to characterise many Aboriginal communities. In New South Wales (NSW), Aboriginal peoples are currently negotiating with industry for the chance to participate in coal seam gas (CSG) development opportunities. Based upon research focusing on CSG development in the Northern NSW region, this paper argues that certain constructions of Aboriginality inhibit successful Aboriginal engagement with the economic opportunities provided by CSG. This paper illuminates the role of the media in facilitating dominant discourse about Aboriginality and the implications of those constructions for Aboriginal engagement with the mainstream economy. Findings demonstrate that the media are complicit in constructing Aboriginal peoples in a way that could prejudice their attempts to engage in economic opportunities that do not align with the dominant constructions of Aboriginality.