Showing papers in "Progress in Human Geography in 2006"

The lines that continue to separate us: borders in our `borderless' world

Abstract: The study of borders has undergone a renaissance during the past decade. This is reflected in an impressive list of conferences, workshops and scholarly publications. This renaissance has been partly due to the emergence of a counternarrative to the borderless and deterritorialized world discourse which has accompanied much of globalization theory. The study of borders has moved beyond the limited confines of the political geography discourse, crossing its own disciplinary boundaries, to include sociologists, political scientists, historians, international lawyers and scholars of international relations. But this meeting of disciplines has not yet been successful in creating a common language or glossary of terms which is relevant to all scholars of borders. Central to the contemporary study of borders are notions such as 'borders are institutions', the process of 'bordering' as a dynamic in its own right, and the border terminologies which focus on the binary distinctions between the 'us' and 'them', the 'included' and the 'excluded'. Borders should be studied not only from a top-down perspective, but also from the bottom up, with a focus on the individual border narratives and experiences, reflecting the ways in which borders impact upon the daily life practices of people living in and around the borderland and transboundary transition zones. In positing an agenda for the next generation of border-related research, borders should be seen for their potential to constitute bridges and points of contact, as much as they have traditionally constituted barriers to movement and communication.

Material worlds? Resource geographies and the `matter of nature':

Abstract: Concepts of `materiality' are increasingly invoked in human geography. This paper discusses several recent and influential workings of materiality, and examines their implications for resource geographies. First, we identify a set of analytical questions at the heart of resource geography and characterize the dominant approaches to these questions - the `production of nature' and the `social construction of nature' - as yielding diminishing returns. Second, we survey recent work on materiality relating to commodities, corporeality and hybridity and advance the claim that this work provides a number of fresh perspectives with which to revive resource geography. Third, we highlight three specific themes within this research: a radical redistribution and decentering of agency; a revitalization of the concept of `construction'; and an acknowledgement of the political-economic implications that flow from a world that is biophysically heterogeneous. Finally, we draw on this analysis to explore how progress migh...

Primitive accumulation, accumulation by dispossession, accumulation by ‘extra-economic’ means

Abstract: David Harvey's adaptation and redeployment of Marx's notion of ‘primitive accumulation’–under the heading of ‘accumulation by dispossession’–has reignited interest in the concept among geographers. This adaptation of the concept of primitive accumulation to different contexts than those Marx analyzed raises a variety of theoretical and practical issues. In this paper, I review recent uses and transformations of the notion of primitive accumulation that focus on its persistence within the Global North, addressing especially the political implications that attend different readings of primitive accumulation in the era of neoliberal globalization.

Notes towards autonomous geographies: creation, resistance and self-management as survival tactics:

Abstract: This paper’s focus is what we call ‘autonomous geographies’ -spaces where there is a desire to constitute non-capitalist, collective forms of politics, identity and citizenship. These are created t...

Trading routes, bypasses, and risky intersections: mapping the travels of `networks' between economic sociology and economic geography

Abstract: In economic geography the notion of the network has come to play a critical role in a range of debates. Yet networks are rarely construed in an explicit fashion. They are, rather, assumed as some sort of more enduring social relations. This paper seeks to foreground these implicit assumptions - and their limitations - by tracing the selective engagement of economic geography with network approaches in economic sociology. The perception of networks in economic geography is mainly informed by the network governance approach that is founded on Mark Granovetter's notion of embeddedness. By embracing the network governance approach, economic geography bypassed the older tradition of the social network approach. Economic geography thus discarded not only the concerns for network position and structure but also more calculative and strategic perceptions of networks prevailing in Ron Burt's work. Beyond these two dominant traditions, economic geography has, more recently, started to tinker with the poststructural...

Beyond household economies: articulations and spaces of economic practice in postsocialism:

Abstract: While there has already been an engaged critique of the `transition to capitalism', less work has explored the limits of the dominant capitalocentric accounts of postsocialism. In this paper, we argue that capitalist development in postsocialist societies should be seen as one part of a diverse economy, constituted by a host of economic practices articulated with one another in dynamic and complex ways and in multiple sites and spaces. To make this argument, we develop three interlinked points. First, we suggest that many of the prevailing conceptualizations of diverse economic practices in postsocialism fail to address adequately the multiple geographies within which such practices are constituted, enabled and constrained. Second, we argue that in much of the literature only limited attention has been paid to the articulation of capitalist and non-capitalist economies and to the mutually constitutive sets of social relations that underpin the diverse economies of postsocialism. Lastly, we focus on the po...

Geography and Ethics: Everyday Mediations Through Care and Consumption:

Abstract: Some months ago, in preparation for compil-ing the next three geography and ethicsreports, I registered with one of the commonelectronic database services to receive thetitles of journal articles focused on ethics.There are two things that I found noteworthyabout this exercise. The first is the sheer vol-ume of contemporary work on ethics – by myrather unscientific reckoning, something ofthe order of 1500 articles dealing with ethicsare published in academic journals each year.The second is the presumed audience formuch of this work. It seems that the vastmajority of recent ethical writings are aimednot at the readers of social science journalslike this one, but rather at the mundane worldof institutions, organizations and public policy.In recent months, articles have addressed theethical dimensions of a wide range of socialand organizational practices, from auditing tozoo keeping. Ethics are being discussed bybankruptcy lawyers, money managers, judgesand dentists, and applied to our sportingevents, our militaries, and even our spaceagencies. Ethical conversations, it seems, aretaking place at a multitude of sites across thesocial domain.This state of affairs should probably beapplauded. But it does not necessarily ensurethat our social institutions function ethicallyor responsibly, or even that we can easilydetermine what that might mean. At issuehere is a common challenge of ethical think-ing: how do we bring normative demands tobear upon the social world of order, rules, andpublic policy? One well-known theorist whograppled with this challenge is EmmanuelLevinas, who often admitted that his concep-tion of ethics, based as it was on a one-to-onerelation with the singular Other, was ratherdifficult to translate into a social world ofcitizen-subjects:

Governmentality, Geography, and the Geo-Coded World

Abstract: A growing number of geographers are beginning to explore Foucault’s later work on ‘governmentality’, which examines the relations between the production of governmental rationalities and the technologies of modern power. The current paper traces this critical engagement between geographical scholarship and governmentality studies. Many geographical accounts consider governmentality in terms of the mechanisms of knowledge production that states have used to constitute their subjects and territories as ‘governable’. While this line of inquiry has produced considerable insights, I argue that analyses of governmentality should also explore how various non-state actors have utilized technologies of government in myriad ways. I further suggest that geo-coding was one of the main spatial prerequisites for the larger biopolitical projects of census-taking and mapping at least since the eighteenth century. A critical spatial history of the ‘geo-coded world’, therefore, is required if we are to understand the geogr...

Political ecology: where is the policy?

Abstract: To political ecologists today, it might seem odd – ridiculous perhaps – to ask whether political ecology is sufficiently political. It has been the better part of two decades since Michael Watts complained that the dominant expressions of political ecology of the 1980s displayed ‘a remarkable lack of politics . . . There is almost no sense of contest, struggle, and conflict and how the rough and tumble of everyday life’ shapes human relations with the environment (Watts, 1990: 128–29). Since then, there has been a veritable explosion of scholarship (far too numerous to cite) in political ecology that has taken up the challenge to deal in a more sophisticated way with the role of politics in shaping humanenvironment relations. In comparing political ecology to other intellectual traditions that attempt to explain environmental problems (such as ecoscarcity and environmental modernization), Robbins (2004) notes that the defining characteristic of the field today is ‘the difference between a political and an apolitical ecology’. So central has politics become in the field that serious critiques have been made that political ecology has become ‘politics without ecology’ (Vayda and Walters, 1999). Yet, it is possible to question whether, by its own definitions of the word ‘politics’, political ecology fully lives up to its promise to take politics seriously. In their article ‘Locating the political in political ecology’, Paulson et al. (2003: 209, emphasis added), define politics as ‘the practices and processes through which power, in its multiple forms, is wielded and negotiated’. The authors observe that one of the key challenges of political ecology is ‘to develop ways to apply the methods and findings [from political ecology research] in addressing social-environmental concerns’ (p. 208). Indeed, this concern to make politics not only a research subject but a practice has long been an explicit and central goal of political ecology. Peet and Watts (1996: xi), for example, state that political ecology ‘is driven naturally in our case by a normative and political commitment to the liberatory potential of environmental concerns’. Similarly, Robbins (2004: 13) observes that political ecology is explicitly and unapologetically normative, seeking ‘to plant the seeds for reclaiming and asserting alternative ways of managing [resources] . . . The goal . . . is preserving Progress reports

Building Trust in Economic Space

Abstract: While there is widespread recognition of the importance and role of trust in facilitating regional development, technology transfer, and agglomeration economies, the concept remains rather undertheorized within economic geography and regional science This paper reviews and assesses the literature on the role and constitution of trust for economic and industrial development and presents a conceptualization of the trust building process that accounts for the influences of agency, institutions, materials, and interpersonal expression In doing so, geographic concerns about the role of space and context are linked to economic and sociological conceptualizations of trust and to scholarship from actor-network theory (ANT) and social psychology regarding the influence of power, non-human intermediaries, and performance on social outcomes and network configurations The result is a heuristic framework for analyzing trust-building processes as temporally and spatially situated social phenomena shaped by context-s

Drunk and Disorderly: Alcohol, Urban Life and Public Space

Abstract: This paper shows that, despite receiving significant attention, the relationship between alcohol, drunkenness and public space has been undertheorized. We show that where drinking has been considered it has generally been as a peripheral concern of political-economy accounts that have sought to conceptualize the development of the modern city, or more recently the impact of global economic restructuring on urban life and public space. Moreover, such work has posited the relationship between drinking and the political, economic, social, cultural and spatial practices and processes bound up with, for example, social control in modern city or with contemporary gentrification, corporatization, fragmentation and regulation of the night-time economy, public space and revanchist urban policy in very general terms. While drawing on evidence from around the world, this paper focuses on the UK and highlights the need for a research agenda underpinned by a more specific consideration of urban drinking. We suggest that such a project must seek to unpack the connections and differences between supranational, national, regional and local drinking practices and related issues, and in particular pursue a more nuanced understanding of the social relations and cultural practices associated with the emergence of particular kinds of urban drinking spaces.

Lost in translation? International migration, learning and knowledge

Abstract: There are changing but increasingly important ways in which international migration contributes to knowledge creation and transfer. The paper focuses on four main issues. First, the different ways in which knowledge is conceptualized, and the significance of corporeal mobility in effecting knowledge creation and transfer in relation to each of these types. Second, the significance of international migration in knowledge creation and transfer, and how this is mediated by whether migration is constituted within bounded (by company structures) or boundaryless careers, and as free agent labour migration. Third, the situating of migrants within firms, and the particular obstacles to their engagement in co-learning and knowledge translation: especially positionality, intercultural communication and social identities. Fourth, a focus on the importance of place, which is explored through theories of learning regions and creativity, and notions of the transferability of social learning across different public and private spheres. The need to view migrant learning and knowledge creation/transfer as widely dispersed, rather than as elite practices in privileged regions, is a recurrent theme.

Cultural ecology: at the interface with political ecology - the new geographies of environmental conservation and globalization

Abstract: © 2006 Edward Arnold (Publishers) Ltd 10.1191/0309132506ph591pr I New conservation geographies amid globalization: introduction The worldwide expansion of conservation management areas is often showcased as a major success of modern global environmentalism. Protected-area coverage in particular has undergone extensive enlargements that are being coordinated, financed, implemented and monitored through global organizations (Brechin et al., 2003; Zimmerer et al., 2004). The global institutions supporting protectedarea conservation include the UN (especially UNESCO and the UNDEP, the United Nations Development and Environment Program); the World Bank and regional development banks (eg, the IDB, Inter-American Development Bank); and international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). The latter range from European-based NGOs that coordinate and promote protected-area conservation, such as the IUCN (the World Conservation Union), the WCMC (World Conservation Monitoring Centre) and the WCPA (World Commission on Protected Areas), to influential Washington-based counterparts, including Conservation International, The Nature Conservancy, the Worldwide Fund for Nature, and the World Resources Institute. The latter’s World Resources reports and those of the IUCN have regularly updated the global status of protected areas, providing valuable sources to those interested in environmental conservation (eg, IUCN, 1985; 1992; WRI and IIED, 1986; WRI, 1990; 1992; 1994; IUCN and WCMC, 1998; IUCN and WCPA, 2001; see also Lightfoot, 1994). This essay explores how cultural ecology and related fields, particularly the cognate approach of political ecology, are developing a variety of interdisciplinary perspectives to offer fresh insights into the worldwide expansion of conservation areas. (The present essay is the second on topics unfolding at the interface of cultural ecology and political ecology; see also Zimmerer, 2004.) A variety of new geographical conditions is integral to the growth of conservation areas through globalization, with the ensuing intensification of nature-society interactions in this arena (Zimmerer, 2000; 2006; Neumann, 2004a; 2005). Recent contributions suggest that the worldwide expansion of the conservation Progress reports

From dropping out to leading on? British counter-cultural back-to-the-land in a changing rurality:

Abstract: Counter-cultural back-to-the-land experimentation is a very long-standing social phenomenon across the global North but has been little studied by geographers. This paper provides a critical overvi...

Geographies of Production: Growth Regimes in Spatial Perspective 3 – Toward a Relational View of Economic Action and Policy

Abstract: The version of record [Bathelt, H. (2006). Geographies of production: Growth regimes in spatial perspective 3 – Toward a relational view of economic action and policy. Progress in Human Geography, 30(2), 223-236.] is available online at: http://phg.sagepub.com/content/30/2/223 [doi: 10.1191/0309132506ph603pr]

Geographical information science: critical GIS

Abstract: © 2006 SAGE Publications 10.1177/0309132506071528

Religion, place and space: a framework for investigating historical geographies of religious identities and communities:

Abstract: Despite a well-established interest in the relationship between space and identity, geographers still know little about how communal identities in specific places are built around a sense of religious belonging. This paper explores both the theoretical and practical terrain around which such an investigation can proceed. The paper makes space for the exploration of a specific set of religious groups and practices, which reflected the activities of Methodists in Cornwall during the period 1830-1930. The paper is concerned to move analysis beyond the `officially sacred' and to explore the everyday, informal, and often banal, practices of Methodists, thereby providing a blueprint for how work in the geography of religion may move forward.

Uncritical critical geography

Abstract: Critical human geography: A diverse andrapidly changing set of ideas and practiceswithin human geography linked by a sharedcommitment to emancipatory politics withinand beyond the discipline, to the promotion ofprogressive social change and the developmentof a broad range of critical theories and theirapplication in geographical research andpolitical practice. (Painter, 2000: 126)[I]tOs increasingly difficult to define what,substantively, it means to be a thinker of theLeft. (Castree and Wright, 2005: 6)

Rural geography: alternative rural economies -the search for alterity in forests, fisheries, food, and fair trade:

Abstract: © 2006 SAGE Publications 10.1177/0309132506071530

Research assessment and the production of geographical knowledge

Abstract: This Forum examines the research assessment systems (RASs) that affect professional human geography, and offers perspectives on the whole idea of formal research assessment. The Forum aims to assist professional geographers in their reflections on present and future research assessment in their own countries. It comprises two parts. The first offers highly succinct and detailed descriptions of the RASs currently in place in a range of countries -be they highly centralized, standardized and formal systems, or devolved and relatively informal ones. Many professional geographers know little about the assessment procedures outside their own countries and the first part allows a comparative understanding to be developed. The second part (‘Whither research assessment?’) offers reflections on the whole notion of research assessment beyond the ‘normal’ assessment offered by peer review of papers, books and chapters; considers whether actually existing systems of research assessment in one or more countries embody...

Critical moments in the production of 'rigorous' and 'relevant' cultural economic geographies

Abstract: While many commentators have recently argued forcefully for increased `rigour' and `relevance' within cultural economic geography, they have offered relatively less guidance on how we might achieve that in practice, according to criteria that are methodologically and epistemologically appropriate to the cultural turn. Within this context, I outline a series of feasible concrete strategies that researchers (especially those with limited resources of finance, status and power) might employ in the pursuit of these twin research ideals across five commonly experienced moments in the research process, namely: (i) development of research questions; (ii) research design and case study selection; (iii) data collection; (iv) empirical analysis and theory-building; and (v) write-up and communication.