Showing papers in "Environment and Planning D-society & Space in 1999"

Selling Nature to save It? Biodiversity and Green Developmentalism

Abstract: New supranational environmental institutions, including the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the ‘green’ World Bank, reflect attempts to regulate international flows of ‘natural capital’ by means of an approach I call ‘green developmentalism’. These institutions are sources of eco-development dollars and of a new ‘global’ discourse, a postneoliberal environmental-economic paradigm. By the logic of this paradigm, nature is constructed as a world currency and ecosystems arc recoded as warehouses of genetic resources for biotechnology industries. Nature would earn its own right to survive through international trade in ecosystem services and permits to pollute, access to tourism and research sites, and exports of timber, minerals, and intellectual property rights to traditional crop varieties and shamans' recipes. I contend that green developmentalism, with its promise of market solutions to environmental problems, is blunting the North-South disputes that have embroiled international environment...

Learning and Adaptation in Decentralised Business Networks

Abstract: In this paper we address two problems related to what can be claimed about the powers of decentralised business networks. The first concerns the role of tacit knowledge and proximity in securing co...

Governing Cities: Notes on the Spatialisation of Virtue:

Abstract: This paper represents a series of speculations concerning the imagination of the city as a space of government, authority, and ‘the conduct of conduct’ . The authors argue that it is possible to un...

Gender, Class, and Gentrification: Enriching the Debate

Abstract: In this paper I take up the debate about gender, class, and gentrification. I accept the importance of class formation in understanding the relationship between gender and gentrification, and seek to supplement existing empirical studies by further exploring gender and class practices in a range of neighbourhoods, Through a combination of quantitative and qualitative sources I present a detailed analysis of social change in two inner-urban neighbourhoods and one suburban neighbourhood in Edinburgh, Scotland. I emphasise the importance of the patterning of life courses in the articulation of class and gender practices, and draw attention to the different ways in which gender, class, and life course arc interwoven in particular cities and neighbourhoods.

Self-Organisation of Society by Scale: A Spatial Reworking of Regulation Theory

Abstract: The scaling of social systems gives rise to a 'vertical' ordering that combines with the more familiar 'horizontal' ordering by place. But so far this phenomenon has been examined mainly from a political standpoint, and has not as yet received an adequate regulationist treatment. The regulation approach is at heart a systems theory, whereby innovations in accumulation and regulationwhatever their originswill tend to be selected and woven into a stable pattern if they contribute to the expanded reproduction of capital. It is argued here that the viability of regimes of accumulation, and of modes of regulation, depends in part upon whether an appropriate scale division of labour is established between their component activities. It is suggested from the analysis that it is possible on this basis to develop a regulationist account of the fundamental tendency towards the integration and division of societies at different scales, and the emergence of dominant societal units in each epoch.

Explorations in Heterotopia: Local Exchange Trading Schemes (LETS) and the Micropolitics of Money and Livelihood:

Abstract: In this paper I examine the politics behind the establishment of Local Exchange Trading Schemes or LETS. By deploying concepts of the ‘heterotopia’ and of ‘micropolities’, I examine the extent to which advocates of LETS as a resistant space have developed a micropolitical tool that enables the realisation of resistant conceptions of money and exchange, of livelihood, community, and cooperation. A fourfold conception of the heterotopia is developed to examine, first, the multiplicity of resistant conceptions of money and work developed by participants. Second, LETS is held to be effective micropolitics if these benefits are realisable, irrespective of the attitudes of elites, for any length of time within this resistant space. Third, I consider whether participation in LETS transforms the values of network members who do not initially share these changed cultural codes, and, if not, whether, fourth, LETS is consequently best thought of as a vision of a presently ‘impossible’—that is, unrealisable—space. In...

A Corporeal Geography of Consumption

Abstract: In this paper I outline a corporeal geography of consumption. By using the example of food I explore how our bodies are linked to wider consumption spaces and the ways that they are inflected by these sociospatial relations, Although discourses around eating in western cultures tend to privilege self-discipline, there are other meanings around food that emphasise its pleasurable qualities. Because our bodies are a product of the complex interaction of different discourses, social relations, and practices constituted in relation to wider locations, including other bodies, the home, and the workplace, these constellations of relationships do not always serve to produce our bodies in a coherent way. I therefore explore some of the tensions and conflicts individuals experience between different” discourses around food, bodily ideals, and sets of regulatory practices in different locations. In doing so I consider the extent to which individuals produce the space of their bodies in accordance with the disciplin...

(Re)Shaping ‘Chinese’ Business Networks in a Globalising Era:

Abstract: Globalising tendencies have transformed the forms and organisation of business networks. This is particularly true in the rapidly developing Asia-Pacific region where ethnic-based modes of business organisation prevail. Chinese business networks, for example, are posited to play a leading role in propelling the forces of regionalisation in the Asia-Pacific. In this paper, we explore the relationships between globalising tendencies and the changing form of Chinese business networks. We discuss how Chinese business networks, traditionally conceptualised as closed and internally shaped owing to a variety of historically and geographically specific factors, are being (re)shaped by an array of actor-networks with an international business dimension. Groups of actor-networks associated with international finance, the international business media, and multilateral institutions are engaging with Chinese business networks. Through their capacity to enrol relevant Chinese firms into their actor-networks, the intern...

Space for Gender: Cultural Roles of the Forbidden and the Permitted

Abstract: In this paper I analyze gender as cultural construction and reconstruction of space amongst Bedouin society in the Negev Desert in Southern Israel I focus, in particular, on changing meanings and b...

Embassies and Sanctuaries: Women's Experiences of Race and Fear in Public Space

Abstract: Women's fear in public space has received considerable scholarly and popular attention. Such fear is typically constructed from a white perspective, which reinforces prejudice and ignores the role of race in the experience of fear. Women's race prejudice and race fear are shaped and reflected in their use of the physical environment. Characteristics of the physical environment further shape these experiences. In this paper I investigate middle-class white, black and Hispanic women's experiences of race and fear in public spaces in Orange County, California. I present a typology of public spaces in which women encounter racialized others, and I map race fear onto these spaces. Experiences of fear and comfort in public space are examined, and I consider the interaction of race, class, and gender with place type and location. Particular attention is given to the form of these interactions in a post-suburban landscape.

The Maritime Mystique: Sustainable Development, Capital Mobility, and Nostalgia in the World Ocean

Abstract: Three images of ocean space are becoming increasingly prevalent in policy and planning circles and popular culture: The image of the ocean as an empty void to be annihilated by hypermobile capital;...

Delusional geographies: the experiential worlds of people during madness/illness

Abstract: In this paper I contribute to recent writings concerning geographies of health, geographies of the therapeutic, and geographies of the self. By paying attention to the ‘delusional’ experiences of p...

To Boldly Go? Place, Metaphor, and the Marketing of Auckland's Starship Hospital:

Abstract: In this paper, we place the naming of the Starship Children's Hospital in Auckland, New Zealand, within the context of increasingly consumer-oriented health care provision. This use of metaphor alludes to the hospital's distinctive design features and represents an attempt to de-emphasise connotations associated with institutionalised medicine, thus normalising the place for children. However, those naming the hospital had more than children in mind. Rather, there was a dual intent: to market the hospital as a distinctive place for monetary donors, as well as promoting a more therapeutic environment for youthful users. Through the vehicle of our case study, we raise questions concerning the competition by health care services for public and private funds. We conclude that there is a need to move beyond viewing hospitals as service entities and equating health care consumption with utilisation behaviour. Rather, a merging of insights from the political economy of health care and new cultural geography lite...

Making Sense of Men's Lifestyle Magazines

Abstract: In this paper we document the rapid growth of the British men's ‘lifestyle’ magazine market and explore its significance in terms of men's changing identities and gender relations. By drawing on focus-group discussions with men of different class, age, and regional and ethnic backgrounds, we contrast two ways of thinking about these magazines. The first employs a distinction between ‘surface’ and ‘depth’, and suggests that the magazines signal only superficial changes in contemporary masculinities. The second approach identifies a series of discursive repertoires on which men draw in ‘making sense’ of the magazines. Four such repertoires are highlighted, which involve notions of ‘honesty’, ‘naturalness’, ‘openness’, and ‘harmless fun’. The analysis suggests that although some respondents saw the magazines' commercial success in terms of a backlash against ‘feminist extremism’ and ‘political correctness’, most denied their wider political significance. We conclude that the magazines provide their readers w...

Hearing Places, Making Spaces: Sonorous Geographies, Ephemeral Rhythms, and the Blackburn Warehouse Parties

Abstract: In this paper we provide a consideration of sound and space. Much of the early literature on this topic, we argue, failed to conceptualise sound adequately. More recent literature has begun to explore more carefully the nature of sound and the aural sensing of the environment in its social, political, economic, and cultural contexts. Here we contribute to this exploration not solely by offering a theoretical consideration of sound but also by providing a detailed analysis of the ways in which one particular place, over a particular period of time, became involved in a new set of relations centred on sound. The place in question is Blackburn in Lancashire, England, where, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, 'warehouse parties* revolving around 'acid house* music and the drug Ecstasy (*E*) had a major impact on the town, in all manner of ways. By offering an empirical study as well as a more theoretical discussion on the relations between sound and space, we hope to demonstrate the significance of these relations to themes that have traditionally been regarded as central to geo­ graphical enquiry.

Reregulating a Regional Rustbelt: Institutional Fixes, Entrepreneurial Discourse, and the ‘Politics of Representation’:

Abstract: During the mid-to-late 1980s, a number of theoretical approaches were deployed to account for some major changes in the sociospatial form of capitalist development. One influential approach—which drew loosely on French regulation theory—chronicled a shift from Fordism to a post-Fordist flexible accumulation, which is characterised, in part, by the rise of ‘new industrial spaces’ . Such accounts were criticised for playing down the constitutive effects of social and political factors in energising such regional prosperity. As debates in the 1990s have sought to address this weakness, much research has demonstrated a greater readiness to address the social and institutional regulation of these new industrial spaces, and more recently, of old (rustbelt) industrial regions. In some respects, though, what we are witnessing is the replacement of a one-dimensional reading of regional transformation—that based on production—by an ‘institutional turn’, which is variously guided by some new directions in the regula...

Human Geography at the End of Time? Some Thoughts on the Notion of Time—Space Compression:

Abstract: In this paper I look at the suggestion that time-space compression is changing our experience of time and space. In particular, the extent to which it is seen as raising the importance of a spatial...

Where Do You Want to Go Tomorrow? Connecting Children and the Internet

Abstract: In the late 1990s, use of either of the words ‘childhood’ or ‘internet’ is enough to signify at a stroke many of society's contemporary hopes and fears about what it means to be modern. By providing a critical review of the burgeoning (popular, policy, and academic) literature that is emerging as debates about ‘childhood’ and ‘the Internet’ take centre stage in the ongoing struggle to define the future of our ‘virtual geographies’, what we seek to do in this paper is to unpack some of the assumptions that underpin both terms. Specifically, we argue that there is now a dominant story in circulation concerning what has been called the rise of a ‘digital generation’, albeit one, as we show, that can be read in two diametrically opposed ways. In the central part of the paper, by characterising the Internet as the latest in a long line of ‘frontier’ technologies, we identify three senses (in terms of time, in terms of space, and in terms of competence) in which this dominant story acts to construct discursivel...

Postcolonialism and the Deconstructive Scenario: Representing Gayatri Spivak:

Abstract: The reputed ‘difficulty’ of the texts of Gayatri Spivak poses an obstacle to potentially productive reflection on, and debate surrounding, her critical positions and analyses. Motivated by the attempt to address this situation, I offer this discussion as an exegetical account of some of Spivak's principle categories and arguments. I demonstrate how certain themes, such as the aporia, catachresis, subalternity, and the relationship between the narrow and the general, function in Spivak's work as signposts en route to her formulation of postcolonialism as a deconstructive scenario. Crucial to this formulation is a type of political economy of intellectual production and academic work and the situating of the latter with respect to the international division of labour, informed by a Marxian critique of capital and, in particular, Marx's concept of value. Spivak demonstrates, via Marx, that an economic logic underwrites the practice of representation, in general, and, hence, all intellectual and academic work...

Between the woof and the weft: a response to Loretta Lees

Abstract: Between the woof and the weft: a response to Loretta Lecs* Like Lorcttn Lees, I often yearn for intellectual discussion that is open to, and inclusive of, diverse contributions, rather than forms that exclude and marginalise some in the aggrandisement of others. This yearning entails an act of imagination, which, I would argue, has been made possible in part by feminist critiques of dominant forms of academic knowledge, and here again there is some common ground between myself and Lees. But, adopting a very widely used device in academic debate, I want to follow these points of connection by sketching out a series of doubts I have about Lees's argument. In short, while there is a good deal in the spirit of Lees's account to which I am sympathetic, I think she tends to 'bark up the wrong trees'. I discuss some general issues concerning the production of academic knowledge before focusing on the topic of gentrification in particular. Lees identifies the gatekeeping role of journal editors as a key means through which the fabric woven by academic discourse, including that concerned with gentrification, is maintained intact. As I will elaborate in due course, I am not convinced that journal editors arc quite as important as Lees implies, but, even if they are, her account of the book review process (and by implication the process of refcrccing manuscripts) is wide of the mark. The reviewing of books and the refcreeing of manuscripts arc activities valued little if at all in the various systems of measuring academic output under which most of us labour, whether in the form of the tenure system or the British Research Assessment Exercise. Consequently, journal editors rely upon a largely unrewarded and increasingly squeezed commitment to an ill-defined 'academic community on the part of the individuals they enlist. Reviewers and referees are drawn from the ranks of the willing and I could (but won't) name a few very senior academics who do not belong to that group. There are many more, myself included, who show willing some of the time but who often deliver late or who periodically plead that they are temporarily too overburdened. The journal that I edit—Gender, Place and Culture—has found that postgraduate researchers or those in junior positions are often the most reliable as well as the most interesting book reviewers. This may be a good way of incorporating new voices, but it might equally be viewed as a form of exploitation. Of course Gender, Place and Culture may be an unusual journal. I have certainly found my work as journal editor a deeply contradictory, as well as rewarding, process. Committed to critiques of 'mainstream' geography, the journal endeavours to open up spaces for contributors who might be excluded elsewhere. But it does so within the conventions of manuscript review through which some academic conventions are upheld, even if others are not. This may rework the boundaries of academic knowledge to some extent, but it is akin to modifying the shape or the texture of the cloth woven through academic discourse rather than abandoning weaving altogether. Put another way, those who publish in Gender, Place and Culture may well wish to contribute to the

The Power of Distraction: Distraction, Tactility, and Habit in the Work of Walter Benjamin

Abstract: In this paper I seek to examine a set of tactile, habitually grounded, bodily modes of perception which lie at the centre of Walter Benjamin's analysis of urban experience under modernity. On first reading of Benjamin's later writings, particularly his various interpretations of Baudelaire, these tactile, distracted modes of perception appear to represent a profound experiential entropy; a dilution of real affective experience which Benjamin sees as defining modernity, However, it is possible to trace the outline of a richer and more far-reaching phenomenology of perception within Benjamin's thought. This is what I seek to do. In seeking to trace out this phenomenology I argue that although such tactile, distracted, habitually grounded modes of perception are intertwined in an economy of self-defence, they also contain within them a whole range of capacities for knowing and getting hold of the urban, Following the lead of earlier interpreters of Benjamin such as Marleen Stoessel, Miriam Hansen, and Jurgen...

The International Critical Geography Croup: Forbidden Optimism?:

Abstract: At the end of the fulcrum year of 1989 Casper W. Weinberger, Reagan's exsecretary of Defence, rejoiced over the “enormously heartening, daily rejection of Communism” in Eastern Europe and issued an appeal (Weinberger, 1989). As publisher of the business magazine Forbes, which subtitles itself “Capitalist Tool,” Weinberger admonished his readers that the United States could “profit in every sense of the word” from these events, but that it all “starts with geography” (Weinberger, 1989). Less than a decade later, 1997 proved to be as pivotal as 1989 – this time economically more than politically – as the neo-liberal globalization from which Weinberger eagerly sought to profit showed the first signs of fatal weakness. Overproduction in Asia after an extraordinary 30-year industrial revolution transformed with lightening efficiency into a global stock market meltdown. But in geographical circles, 1997 may turn out to be significant for other reasons: it was also the year in which a very different vision of global geography was launched, one which puts a radical twist on Weinberger‟s assertion of the importance of geography.

Money Cultures after Georg Simmel: Mobility Movement, and Identity

Abstract: It is well known that Georg Simmel observed a series of parallels between the circulation of money in a mature economy, in particular its pace and rhythm, and cultural forms of interaction in early...

The End of Consensus? The Impact of Participatory Initiatives on Conceptions of Conservation and the Countryside in the United Kingdom

Abstract: In recent years, local participation has come increasingly to the forefront of the strategies, language, and practices adopted by conservation organisations in the United Kingdom In this paper I explore what impact the process of participation is having in reshaping conceptions of conservation and the countryside Based on empirical research in Southeast England, I argue that participation may reveal a new, but contradictory, arena of conservation concern centred on the relevance of place In laying claim to its own knowledge, language, and values, this concern for place provides a legitimate authority for local people to challenge outside representations of their space As a result, I suggest that the practice of participation may be bringing about a retreat from the national vision of traditional conservation and a fragmentation of conservation ideas

A Strategic Sign: The Geopolitical Significance of ‘Bosnia’ in US Foreign Policy

Abstract: Why did the United States government eventually intervene decisively in the Bosnian war in the summer of 1995, first with sustained NATO bombing, subsequently by forging the Dayton Peace Accords, a...

Against ‘Globalization from Above’: Critical Geopolitics and the World Order Models Project

Abstract: In the last decade numerous arguments have been developed in critical geopolitics concerning the limitations of conventional spatialities of global politics These themes have raised numerous questions about how one might work to reimagine global politics One source of reimaginings has been the World Order Models Project (WOMP) For the last three decades WOMP has developed models of desirable futures for a global polity of humane governance most recently posited as an alternative to current processes of ‘globalization from above’ By engaging with activists in social movements over the 1980s and 1990s on peace, justice, and environmental matters, the scholars of the project have developed a series of ‘world order values’ to guide normative considerations of global politics I suggest, after my reading these documents in the light of contemporary writing in critical geopolitics, that by thinking ethically about politics in the 1990s one may further challenge the geographical assumptions about place and s

Dark Panopticon. Or, Attack of the Killer Tomatoes

Abstract: In the wake of claims that much of critical human geography has succumbed to the dreaded postmodern fatigue syndrome—symptoms include unrelenting tiredness, uncritical social somnambulance, spectral hallucinations, an unnatural preoccupation with the dead, and a tendency to submit to passive and reactive forces—the authors offer a paper that came to them during a dream dreamt alongside insomnia. Borne of exhaustion rather than tiredness, the dream-work lends consistency to a host of fragments drawn from the milieux of spatial science, political economy, poststructuralist philosophy, postmodern sociology, twentieth-century literature, and popular culture. As a work composed in the dead of night, the authors follow Deleuze and Foucault in affirming not the omniscient light of Bentham's generalised, ‘all-seeing’ Panopticon, but the ‘dark light’ of the blind power lurking in the shadowy world of the Dark Panopticon. Surprisingly, the exemplary mise-en-scene for the resulting foray into the Heart of Darkness t...

'Good to think': social constructions of Celtic heritage in Wales

Abstract: The adoption of Celtic themes in the presentation of heritage sites in Wales builds upon identifiable features of British history and the belief that ‘Celtic-ness’ has some basic appeal to modern visitors. Whereas such presentations have significant economic impacts, particularly through tourism, they rest more firmly on the bases of myth and nostalgia rather than upon any dynamic vision of a Welsh heritage. Visitors, who are often not Welsh, are drawn to such places as a means of knowing the past and encounter an experience that engenders interest and may help them relate to their own identity, Visiting heritage places is a meaningful act of consumption which asserts the importance of roots and the attractions of a representable past.

Skeptical Realism: From Either/or to Both-And

Abstract: In this paper a rapprochement is attempted between epistemological skepticism and ontological realism, two positions hitherto understood to be incompatible by most sociospatial theorists. It is done by recontextualizing key aspects of these two positions within an analysis of individual human finitude. Avoiding both individualism' and ‘decisionism’, and taking full account of poststructuralist insights concerning fragmented or multiple subjectivity, the analysis calls attention to the constraints imposed upon discourses concerning what is real and how we can know the real by the inherent limitations of the human individuals through which such discourses are unavoidably mediated. After arguing for the continuing relevance of ‘the epistemological subject’, I present an abstract heuristic model of this subject in order to clarify the concepts of ‘finitude of scope’ and finitude of faculties', which are defined with reference to the work of David Harvey, Marcus Doel, Noel Castree, and Donna Haraway. These two...

The New Global Command Economy

Abstract: Globalization is becoming one of the most widespread catchphrases attempting to grasp the post-Cold War international reality. In this paper I argue that, although the process of globalization has brought about more liberalization and decentralization of political economies at the national level, it has also created a far more regimented and centralized economy and polity at the international level. This shift of the center of gravity of political economy from the national to the international level is what the phrase the new global command economy attempts to grasp. First, I begin with a definition of geopolitical economy as a conceptualization of the complex interaction between states and the world economy. Second, I show how a few global institutions de facto command the world economy with a level of centralization and regimentation similar to that which the centrally planned economies used to exercise at the national level during the Cold War era. Third, I analyze how the new global command economy co...