ON MODERN VERNACULARS AND J. B. JACKSON

ABSTRACT. J. B. Jackson's seemingly straightforward prose in fact represents a subtle intellectual strategy that combines critique with celebration. Affirming the craft of great narrative storytellers, he critiqued jargon and other vain displays of theoretical and historical knowledge (though he greatly valued both kinds of knowledge) and challenged the rigid categories of academic disciplines. This essay uses Jackson's ideas to subvert the artificial dichotomy between modernity and tradition, demonstrating instead how both concepts are in flux and dependent on one another. The domain of the everyday or “vernacular,” never static or sentimental, embodies a hybridity based on ingenious adaptations to multiple constraints.     

‘Tropical’ cosmopolitanism? The untoward legacy of the American style in postindependence Ceylon/Sri Lanka

Using Homi Bhabha's discussion of vernacular cosmopolitanism as a starting point this paper attempts to reinterpret its thesis through an architectural reading of postindependence social transformations in Ceylon that coincided with the emergence of a new middle class. Inspired by American examples, suburban domestic architecture that was modest and repetitive and employed systematized construction methods made a break from a long history of labour intensive processes. This created channels through which American influences entered the local industry and were disseminated within it as an alternative ‘tropical’ modernism. This paper studies the location and marginalization of these influences within architectural discourse.     

J. B. JACKSON AS A CRITIC OF MODERN ARCHITECTURE

ABSTRACT. Understanding what the American landscape meant to J. B. Jackson requires an exploration of his background, education, and antagonism to the International Style. No full critique of modernism appears in Jackson's mature published work. However, knowledge that the first issues of Landscape magazine in 1951 and 1952 were the work of a single author leads to discovery of Jackson's pseudonyms, especially H. G. West, P. G. Anson, G. A. Feather, and A. W. Conway. This article examines Jackson's pseudonymous writings and links them to his well-known essays on the landscape: “The Westward-Moving House,” “Other-Directed Houses,” and “Southeast to Turkey.”     

Human geography and its relationship to GIS: a perspective from the vantage point of GIS

Concern abounds over what is a never ending sequence of paradigm shifts within human geography. One result is the marginalisation of previous work. Considerable concern has been expressed among those working with geographical information systems (GIS) over the relationship of this area of work to human geography. Behind much of this turmoil is the ascendancy of post‐modernism, an approach with which many human geographers are unable to actively engage in debate. At a time when the other social sciences are incorporating space into their research, human geography and GIS are parting company with the two facing very different futures.