Alex Jeffrey

Bio: Alex Jeffrey is an academic researcher from University of Cambridge. The author has contributed to research in topics: Civil society & Politics. The author has an hindex of 18, co-authored 53 publications receiving 1105 citations. Previous affiliations of Alex Jeffrey include Newcastle University & National Chemical Laboratory.

Rethinking Enclosure: Space, Subjectivity and the Commons

Abstract: While concepts of “enclosure” and the “commons” are becoming increasingly popular in critical geography, there have been few attempts to think them together. This paper sets out a dialectic of enclosure–commons as a means for thinking through contemporary processes of exclusion, violence and alterity. We examine what is at stake through a geographical reading of enclosure, that is, the processes through which neoliberalism works through—and summons into existence—certain forms of spatiality and subjectivity. In doing so we confront the spatialities of enclosure's “other”: strategies and practices of commoning which assemble more inclusive, just and sustainable spaces. We examine the materiality of enclosure across a range of sites, from processes of walling to a more substantial assessment of the diverse assemblage of materials and subjectivities drawn into modalities of enclosure. We go on to explore the inscription of enclosure on the human body through an examination of, first, law, and second, biopolitics. In conclusion, we explore the implications of this argument for critical geographical scholarship.

Geographical Thought: An Introduction to Ideas in Human Geography

Abstract: 1. Geographies of Empire: The Imperial Tradition Introduction Empire, imperialism and colonialism Defining terms Portuguese and Spanish empires British Empire The institionalisation of geography From 'fabulous' to 'militant' geography The Royal Geographical Society The Societe Geographie de Paris (SGP) Environmental determinism: climate and race Environmental determinism and the Panama Canal Criticisms and dissent Conclusions 2. The Quantitative Revolution Introduction The origins of the quantitative revolution Political reasons The quantitative revolution Positivism The assumption of neutrality The absence of politics The uniformity of human subjects The legacy of the quantitative revolution Conclusions 3. Humanistic Geographies Introduction Humanistic geography and the challenge to positivism Extension Revision Phenomenology and existentialism Phenomenology Existentialism Humanistic geography in focus: the work of Yi-Fu Tuan The challenge to humanism Structure agency Feminist geography Conclusions 4. Marxist Radical Geographies Introduction Karl Marx Key Marxist ideas Historical materialism The economic base The superstructure Ruling ideas Class struggle Class consciousness Commodity fetishism Radical geography The 'turn' to Marxism Marxist geography and spatial constructions of class The political ecology of Marxism The limits of Marxism Future horizons Conclusions 5. Human Geography and the Cultural Turn Introduction The meaning of culture Early traditions of cultural geography New maps of meaning: British Cultural Studies Working-class histories Youth subcultures Race, ethnicity and nationalism Popular culture and media theory The new cultural geography Landscape as text The cultural turn from the margins to the centre Institutionalising cultural geography Recasting political and economic geography through the cultural turn Rematerialising culture, reclaiming the social Conclusions 6. Feminist Geographies Introduction First and second wave feminism First wave feminism Second wave feminism Political perspectives of feminism Radical feminism Socialist feminists Establishing feminist geography Making women visible Absence from departments and publications The enduring masculinist rationality of geography Divergent strategies of resistance Practicing feminist geography Qualitative methods Research position Collaborative practice Rethinking gender 7. Geographies of Sexuality Introduction Engaging with the object of research Heteronormativity Psychoanalysis: Sigmund Freud Discursive: Michel Foucault Performativity: Judith Butler Geographies of sexuality Mapping sexuality Sexuality and space Heterosexuality The politics of sexuality The politics of the discipline Sexual citizenship Conclusions 8. Geography, Ethnicity and Racialisation Introduction The idea of race Cultural racisims Geography and the shadow of empire Mapping and monitoring race Urban cultural geographies of 'race' Geographies of rural racism Turning to whiteness Anti-racist geographies: subverting a white discipline Conclusions 9. Post-modern Geographies Introduction Modernism and modernity Post-modernity: an historical moment Post-modernism: a critical practice Jean-Francois Lyotard -- grand narratives Michel Foucault -- discourse and power Jacques Derrida -- deconstruction Jean Baudrillard -- simulation, simulacra and hyper-reality Post-modernism: a stylistic phenomena Art, commercialism and the cult of celebrity Architecture and the built environment Geographical engagements: theory, method and practice Theory Method Practice Post-modern criticisms Conclusions 10. Critical Geo-politics Introduction Origins of geo-politics Mackinder Haushofer Bowman Decline of geo-politics Critical geo-politics Political context Formal, practical and popular geo-politics Beyond critical geo-politics Anti-geo-politics Normative geo-politics Conclusions 11. Post-colonial Geographies and the Colonial Present Introduction Understanding post-colonialism Post-colonial geographies Imaginative geographies: the work of Edward Said Critiquing Orientalism Splitting race objects: the work of Frantz Fanon Blackness, whiteness and psychoanalysis Undoing race Geographical contribution Hybridity and the third space: the work of Homi Bhabha Colonial stereotypes Cultural hybridity Critiquing hybridity Doing post-colonial geographies Visual methods and post-colonial spectacle Post-colonial economic geographies Conclusions 12. Emotions, Embodiment and Lived Geographies Introduction A crisis of representation? Cultural geography and non-representational theory Understanding affect Towards 'more-than-representational-' geographies Reinvigorating landscape The problem of performance Conclusions

Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality

Abstract: Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality. Aihwa Ong. Durham, NIC: Duke University Press, 1999. ix. 322 pp., notes, bibliography, index.

Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire

Abstract: Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. 2004. New York. Penguin Books. 448 pages. ISBN: 0143035592 (paper).

Postmodern Subjects, Postmodern BodiesThinking Fragments: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and Postmodernism in the Contemporary WestYearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural PoliticsGender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity

Abstract: Preface (1999) Preface (1990) 1. Subjects of Sex/Gender/Desire I. 'Women' as the Subject of Feminism II. The Compulsory Order of Sex/Gender/Desire III. Gender: The Circular Ruins of Contemporary Debate IV. Theorizing the Binary, the Unitary and Beyond V. Identity, Sex and the Metaphysics of Substance VI. Language, Power and the Strategies of Displacement 2. Prohibition, Psychoanalysis, and the Production of the Heterosexual Matrix I. Structuralism's Critical Exchange II. Lacan, Riviere, and the Strategies of Masquerade III. Freud and the Melancholia of Gender IV. Gender Complexity and the Limits of Identification V. Reformulating Prohibition as Power 3. Subversive Bodily Acts I. The Body Politics of Julia Kristeva II. Foucault, Herculine, and the Politics of Sexual Discontinuity III. Monique Wittig - Bodily Disintegration and Fictive Sex IV. Bodily Inscriptions, Performative Subversions Conclusion - From Parody to Politics

Acts of Faith: Explaining the Human Side of Religion

Abstract: Acts of Faith: Explaining the Human Side of Religion. By Rodney Stark and Roger Finke. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. 343 pp. $48.00 (cloth); $18.95 (paper). At a recent American Academy of Religion meeting, after a brilliant paper was presented on God and religious experience, the speaker was asked this question by an academic: "But how can you say these things in our postmodem, anti-enlightenment, pluralistic age?" Acts of Faith secures the thesis that not just talk about, but devout belief in, God is rational, widespread, and shows no sign of abating. For a vast number of well-educated, articulate human beings talk of God is not very difficult at all. Acts of Faith is an important treatment of the sociology of religious belief and should be considered required reading by anyone interested in the social standing and assessment of religion. It overturns the conventions of a great deal of earlier sociological inquiry into religion and stands as a model of clarity and rigor. Rodney Stark and Roger Finke begin by documenting the social and intellectual history of atheism, noting how history, sociology, and psychoanalysis have been employed to exhibit the irrationality of religious belief. They underscore how many of these projects have done little more than presup- pose the credulous nature of religion. There is something darkly humorous about the many techniques employed by "intellectuals" and social scientists to explain why religion persists and even grows amidst "modernity." Stark and Finke's analysis is devastating. From the outset through to the last chapter the writing is crisp and at times quite amusing. Here is a passage from the introduction, lamenting the fact that many sociologists focus their work on fringe religious groups: A coven of nine witches in Lund, Sweden, is far more apt to be the object of a case study than is, say, the Episcopal Church, with more than two million members. Some of this merely reflects that it is rather easier to get one's work published if the details are sufficiently lurid or if the group is previously undocumented. A recitation of Episcopalian theology and excerpts from the Book of Common Prayer will not arouse nearly the interest (prurient or otherwise) than can be generated by tales of blondes upon the altar and sexual contacts with animals (p. 19). Stark and Finke have written a text that abounds in technical case studies, while at the same time giving us a book that is a pleasure to read. The introduction and first three chapters alone are a tour de force. They expose the blatant inadequacy of sociological work that reads religious belief as pathology or flagrant irrationality. They challenge the thesis of impending, virtually inevitable secularization, for instance, in part by refuting the claim that in the distant past almost everyone was religious. …