Feminism and the new multi-scaling in employment policy

In the last decades, employment policy design and implementation partly shifted from the national to local and regional scales in most European countries. In addition, the European Union appeared as an important new actor in this policy field in the late 1990s. We argue that the new geographical multi-scaling of employment policy can be used strategically by feminists to promote different aspects of gender equality simultaneously: Feminist claims related to gender equity, i.e., demands to secure equal participation of women and men in the labour market, should be advocated at the national scale. Claims related to the recognition of gender difference, i.e., demands related to typical female and male employment needs and their social recognition should be promoted at the local scale. The regional scale is the most appropriate one to advance gender plurality, i.e., non-traditional employment of women and men. In the empirical part of the paper we discuss how the ideal leverage of claims at different spatial scales and inter-linkage between scales could operate. We will show that the link to EU policy strengthens feminist claims in the highly gender-differentiated societies and political settings of Austria and Germany. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Steppin' in it: postcoloniality in northern Pakistan

This paper examines the transcultural relations between researchers and research subjects in a postcolonial research setting. I draw from my experience doing dissertation research in northern Pakistan to discuss how my research subjects' effectively constructed me as a sahib, or what I saw as a colonial subject position. I examine the ways that my research subjects and I co-constructed, although unequally, my position and location as a researcher. The asymmetries of power relations in research are exacerbated by postcolonial relations in this contact zone. The contribution of those I researched is significant towards understanding our locations as postcolonial subjects in this research setting, and the location from which I produced the research. While it was difficult to do research as anyone other than a sahib during my research, the stories I tell and metaphors I employ in this paper attempt to destabilize my location as a colonial sahib, an authority. The scatological references that run throughout this paper are an attempt to write against the inherently colonial epistemologies that underpin geographic research more generally.     

Masculinist Epistemologies and the Politics of Fieldwork in Latin Americanist Geography*

Given the importance of fieldwork in Latin Americanist geography, it is intriguing to note the absence of a dialogue about the politics of fieldwork within the subdiscipline. Drawing from feminist theories about the production of knowledge, this article suggests that the silence about fieldwork is rooted in masculinist epistemologies that predominate in Latin Americanist geography. After analyzing the epistemological and pedagogical implications of masculinism, I argue for increased attention to the nexus of power and knowledge and in particular, to how the researcher's geographic location, social status, race, and gender fundamentally shape the questions asked, the data collected, and the interpretation of the data. Dialogue about these issues in our teaching and writing not only will better prepare students for fieldwork, but also has the potential to foster research that subverts rather than reproduces power inequalities.     

Maintaining family values? Cleansing the streets of sex advertising

The Criminal Justice and Police Act 2001 makes it an offence to place an advertisement for sex work in public telephone boxes. In this paper, I discuss the background to this Act, exploring the reasons why the presence of sex advertising in a public space has provoked a classic piece of 'moral panic' legislation. Highlighting the role of this new legislation in policing the boundaries between public and private space, the paper thus engages with key debates in social and cultural geography concerning the maintenance of socio–spatial order.     

重新认识人类与动物:西方新动物地理学研究进展

选取并分析585篇与新动物地理学相关的西方文献,进一步梳理了理论起源及研究议题,发现：① 1995—2005年是新动物地理学的探索起步阶段,2005年至今则是蓬勃发展阶段;② 英国是该研究领域的中心地区;③ 当前新动物地理学研究主要通过“以人类为中心”（动物空间）和“以动物为中心”（兽性地方）两大线索展开,前者重点关注于人类世界,研究话题涉及人类社会不平等、作为人类社会生产要素的动物和人类对动物的生命管治,后者则在新的认识论与方法论的基础上,发展形成了其主要议题,包括动物主体性和能动性、动物伦理再思考以及人类动物和谐共存的实践探索。     

Major sporting events and geographies of disability

Major sporting events for athletes with disabilities have become part of a strategic agenda to create positive social legacies for those typically marginalized in their communities. These events are subject to strict guidelines set forth by the International Paralympic Committee to deliver broad-based accessibility. In some cases, changes to accessibility are temporary, wherein other upgrades remain as permanent fixtures for venues, transportation, and public spaces. However, the temporality at the heart of major event projects can also work against long-term, sustainable improvements to the material conditions persons with disabilities face as they experience the urban realm. In this paper, we draw upon case studies of the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games and the Toronto 2015 Parapan American Games to explore the value of major sporting events in delivering urban accessibility improvements and offer a critical commentary on the limitations of the event project to herald sustainable change.     

Making Space for Community-Engaged Scholarship in Geography

Geography has a long tradition of community-engaged research and teaching. Conventional institutional and departmental norms in many U.S. universities and colleges, however, often discourage such engaged scholarship and teaching, especially among junior faculty. We argue that geographers are well poised to unravel society's twenty-first-century intractable problems if engaged scholarship is more intentionally supported. As community geographers in junior faculty positions at research-intensive universities, we discuss our experiences with placing community engagement at the core of our scholarship, highlighting opportunities for a more robust integration of engaged scholarship in academic geography.     

Narratives of Safety on Social Media: The Case of #mysafetyselfie

This article draws on the case of #mysafetyselfie as an example of how social media can be used to highlight the social and spatial factors affecting women's experience with safety. In particular, I consider the ways in which media technology mediates embodied practice through an examination of the selfie as a form of relational place making. In the first section, I situate #mysafetyselfie as a node along a continuum of sociospatial work by Jay Pitter—the project's initiator—stemming from her personal and professional engagement with safety. I then draw from mobile interface theory to argue for the selfie as a practice of embodied implacement, which situates experience as contextually informed. In the next section, I conduct a close reading of three safety selfies from the project, in which safety is framed by the subject in intelligent and creative ways. I conclude by reflecting on the outcomes of #mysafetyselfie and the ethical responsibility of curating stories both offline and online.     

旅游发展对古村落村民公民性建构的影响——以开平古碉楼群为例

中国古村落是一个相对稳定和封闭的微社会,但当古村落作为世界文化遗产地得到旅游开发后,新的经济方式的介入以及大量游客的进入,对古村落村民的思想、生活等产生了重大冲击。研究发现,世界文化遗产地开平碉楼群随着旅游开发程度的不同,所在地村民呈现出公民性的差异。研究借助所建构的“公民性”指标,在证明旅游作为3个已开发古村落的主要经济驱动力的情况下,指出旅游开发越充分的古村落,村民的公民性越强。从而揭示出旅游作为一种改变古村落经济模式的主要驱动力,在中国3个地理位置毗邻、治理模式一致、风土民情相似的古村落中,因其发展带来了“公民性”普世伦理的出现。该研究回答了“公民性”这一普世的人类文明标尺在中国传统社会中产生的过程和机制,研究价值层面或对中国尚显薄弱的道德地理学的发展具有一定裨益。     

西方超越人类的地理学研究进展

随着现代科技发展与社会环境变化,人类与非人类的边界日益模糊,这使得以往研究中未能引起足够重视的非人类生命与物质逐渐引起学者们的关注。21世纪以来,在西方地理学界兴起的“回归唯物主义”思潮中,超越人类的地理学（MTHG）应运而生,并成为探索人类与非人类共同构成的世界的重要途径之一。通过对298篇相关期刊论文及著作的分析发现,超越人类的地理学主张“关系本体论”,其产生受到行动者网络理论、生物哲学与非表征理论的深刻影响,现有研究议题聚焦于新动物地理学与自然保护、城市社会文化与生态政治、物质性与商品经济、身体与生命健康、气候变化与环境问题等方面。本文通过梳理超越人类的地理学的理论源起并剖析各议题的经典研究案例,以期为中国地理学研究提供新的视域。