Showing papers in "Social & Cultural Geography in 2015"
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that social networks of friendship and kinship are critical determinants for students deciding to study overseas, not just a complementary factor, as has hitherto been suggested, building upon recent work on higher education mobility.
Abstract: Building upon recent work on higher education mobility, this paper contends that social networks of friendship and kinship are critical determinants for students deciding to study overseas, not just, as has hitherto been suggested, a complementary factor. It uses original data collected through interviews and focus groups with thirty-eight higher education international students studying at three UK universities and argues that students who choose to study overseas do not operate within a vacuum but rather draw upon extended networks of individuals who have chosen to do so themselves or advocate studying abroad. While this encouragement may be of an explicit and unequivocal nature – telling students that they ought to study overseas – for the majority it is rather more implicit. The students interviewed invariably related that higher education overseas or mobility more generally was an accepted practice among their peers, thereby leading to a normalisation of the mobility process. The paper concludes that...
131 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, Huber's Lifeblood: Oil, Freedom, and the Forces of Capital offers a theoretically rich alternative explanation for "oil addiction" in the USA, which is the received wisdom is that the dependency of t...
Abstract: Mathew Huber's Lifeblood: Oil, Freedom, and the Forces of Capital offers a theoretically rich alternative explanation for ’oil addiction’ in the USA. The received wisdom is that the dependency of t...
99 citations
TL;DR: In this article, Ahmed et al. investigate violent public encounters from the point of view of female Muslim citizens and show how frequent such gendered and Islamophobic violence occurs in public spaces of Sweden.
Abstract: Encounters between strangers, as different users of public spaces, are one of the core subjects for discussion in relation to orders in the public space. The empirical material presented in this article illustrates power relations in public spaces of Sweden, which gives a specific national and nationalist framing. This article is based on interviews with 19 Muslim women, all of whom wear the hijab. The aim of this article was to illuminate the neglected violence Muslim women are exposed to and to investigate violent public encounters from the point of view of female Muslim citizens. This recounting of encounters strives to understand the ‘lived experiences of pain’ [Ahmed, S. (2001). The organisation of hate. Law and Critique, 12, 360] and what hate is doing in terms of the effects of hate crimes. First, the concept of affect and economy of hate is elaborated on, after which the meaning of violence is developed in relation to place and space. By showing how frequent such gendered and Islamophobic violence...
75 citations
TL;DR: The authors examined the role of race in the development of the US political economy as well as implications for understanding the way race and capitalism in the USA are co-constituted with one another.
Abstract: This paper examines the US-based ‘Southern Strategy,’ an electoral scheme which created conditions that resurrected a broadly conservative agenda in the USA during the 1970s. While scholars have long studied the Southern Strategy from the standpoint of the electoral and political geography of the USA, its role in transforming the political economy of the USA is underappreciated. By reworking the nature of racism from the overt white supremacy of previous eras the Southern Strategy speaks to the changing socio-spatial manifestations of racism in the USA and the workings of the US political economy. By connecting the Southern Strategy with a broad economic argument this paper crystallizes the role race plays in the development of the US political economy as well as implications for understanding the way race and capitalism in the USA are co-constituted with one another. Through an examination of the Southern Strategy we can trace both the changing coordinates of the US political economy and race as the USA ...
66 citations
TL;DR: Sarmento is generally suspicious of the kinds of capitalist practices that play into the hands of a cosmopolitan postcolonial amnesia that occludes the violence of the imperial/ colonial past, and that is either disconnected from or fosters an exploitative relationship with local communities as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: ambivalence and conflict over how or indeed whether these markers of imperial expansion and colonial power should be remembered and preserved today. Sarmento is generally suspicious of the kinds of capitalist practices that play into the hands of a cosmopolitan postcolonial amnesia that occludes the violence of the imperial/ colonial past, and that is either disconnected from or fosters an exploitative relationship with local communities (as in tourist resort development on and around fort sites in Morocco and Cape Verde). And he is in two minds about state-centred museum and heritage initiatives, for while they can promote new forms of postcolonial agency they often obfuscate local struggles within postcolonial nations over questions of poverty, inequality and identity, and bind fort histories to narratives of national development (as in postcolonial Kenya). In a nuanced reading of post-colonial voices at Fort Jesus, for example, he reveals how the local museum guides are generally ‘unable to decolonise their own performances for tourists’ (p. 55). He finds this a ‘painful’ recognition, and not least he intimates here and elsewhere in the book, since academic postcolonial writing and critique have a propensity to be aloof from the ethic of decolonisation with which it is affiliated. Sarmento’s mixed emotions of ‘promise, danger and possibility’ are most evident in the chapter on the islands of São Tomé and Prı́ncipe, one of the world’s smallest nations. Here, with reference to two stone monuments (a fort relic and a memorial built in postcolonial times), he discloses how ‘memory work’ (including his own photographic work) can both dispel and perpetuate ‘former injustices’ (p. 107). In short, the book’s overall message – at least as I read it – that forts are neglected and truly polyglot sites of postcolonial meaning, is a profoundly melancholic message. As the Caribbean thinker and poet Derek Walcott wrote in 1964 (and Sarmento uses the statement as an epigraph, p. 1): ‘Decadence begins when civilization falls in love with its ruins.’
61 citations
TL;DR: This paper explored the opportunities for an MTH political project that works in solidarity with and learns from Indigenous communities, and examined how Ngāi Tahu have worked within a new water management regime in the Canterbury region of Aotearoa New Zealand to articulate a relational ethics with the Hurunui River.
Abstract: Scholars working in (post)colonial settings have called for more-than-human (MTH) and post-human geographies to shift their gaze beyond Anglo-European ways of knowing the world. In this paper I explore the opportunities for an MTH political project that works in solidarity with and learns from Indigenous communities. I begin by examining the considerable synergies between MTH theorists’ understandings of nonhuman agency and kinship, and the worldviews of Ngāi Tahu (a Māori tribe). I then examine how Ngāi Tahu have worked within a new water management regime in the Canterbury region of Aotearoa New Zealand to articulate a relational ethics with the Hurunui River. In navigating multiple tensions and advocating for the lively river, the political space of the new catchment committee was expanded to (begin to) include the river. However, non-Māori who attempted to describe an understanding of a river-kin were less successful. This unevenness, I argue, highlights the complementary contributions to be made by e...
59 citations
TL;DR: In recent decades, mobility researchers have paid increasing attention to the flows of relatively privileged individuals whose mobility practices are largely understood to be lifestyle-motivated, c... as discussed by the authors,.
Abstract: In recent decades, mobility researchers have paid increasing attention to the flows of relatively privileged individuals whose mobility practices are largely understood to be lifestyle-motivated, c ...
49 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors developed a vertical geographies approach in an unexplored context and with a less tested method: that of cave explorers and scientists in the field in Venezuela, from an ethnographic perspective.
Abstract: Recent scholarship on vertical geographies has lead to a critical reexamination of the relationship between space and power. In this paper, I develop a vertical geographies approach in an unexplored context and with a less tested method: that of cave explorers and scientists in the field in Venezuela, from an ethnographic perspective. Ethnographic analysis of exploration in practice, viewed in relation to a multi-dimensional environment and the social dynamics, bodies, and technologies involved in traversing it, illustrates the ways vertical geographies are constructed and experienced. For the Venezuelan Speleological Society, a group dedicated to cave exploration and science since 1967, examining these geographies highlights culturally specific ways the tension between sports and science in speleology play out and how new members are socialized in the field. Specifically, attention to verticality highlights the role that age, masculinist heroics, and other embodied dimensions play in the construction of ...
47 citations
TL;DR: The paper explores stability and change in well-being through a case study of a dance and movement intervention in an English primary school and draws on Deleuze and Guattari's notions of assemblages and of striated and smooth space to explore how participation in the arts may enable escape from habituated practices.
Abstract: The pursuit of subjective well-being has become an important object of policy and personal action, which within geography has been engaged largely by those with an interest in health. But to date, geography has given little attention to the ways in which subjective well-being changes and in particular, the ways in which it may be understood as both stable and amenable to change. Similarly, the field of arts and health asserts the value of participation in the creative arts for enhancing subjective well-being, but has also hardly addressed how this may come about. The paper explores stability and change in well-being through a case study of a dance and movement intervention in an English primary school. We draw on Deleuze and Guattari's notions of assemblages and of striated and smooth space to explore how participation in the arts may enable escape from habituated practices. This exploration expands the scope of geographies of health towards capturing the moments and processes through which transitions in subjective well-being may occur. The study indicates the need for greater attention to gentler and gendered forms of transition.
46 citations
TL;DR: In this article, Ni Laoire and Mattingly make the case for theatre as a safe space for migrant life narratives, drawing empirically from the verbatim play I commissioned based on my research.
Abstract: In answering the question of ‘how will you ensure confidentiality?’ we are asked to anonymise transcripts (as well as photos, images, artefacts); participants names are to be changed with pseudonyms used throughout; when particular sensitivities arise, we are to age-band people and change place names; where appropriate, family relationships should not be revealed; where necessary, identity characteristics within transcripts should be removed. This is what the ethical researcher is told to adhere to. Building on previous work in social and cultural geography [Mattingly, D. (2001). Place, teenagers and representations: Lessons from a community theatre project. Social & Cultural Geography, 2, 445–459; Ni Laoire, C. (2007). To name or not to name: Reflections on the use of anonymity in an oral archive of migrant life narratives. Social & Cultural Geography, 8, 373–390], and drawing empirically from the verbatim play I commissioned based on my research, I put forward the case for theatre as a ‘safe space’ for ...
44 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the parallels between the discourses of rehabilitation both of prisoners and prison animals during incarceration, and of both the prisoner and the prison animal as abject are explored.
Abstract: Carceral geography, whilst in dialogue with many aspects of theory-building in contemporary human geography, including notions of affect, mobility and embodiment, has yet to meaningfully engage with animal geographies to consider the nonhuman dimension of carceral experience. Likewise, criminological scholarship of human-animal carceral co-presence has yet to progress far beyond the consideration of animals as mere ‘signifiers’ of human endeavour and meaning. Further, the study of prison animals has thus far considered only those nonhumans intentionally present in carceral space, such as therapeutic animals, eliding completely those considered ‘vermin’. This paper broadens the scope of extant scholarship, considering the parallels between the discourses of the ‘rehabilitation’ both of prisoners and prison animals during incarceration, and of both the prisoner and the prison animal as abject.
TL;DR: The authors examined the day-to-day actions and overall goals of a historically prominent black Protestant church in Atlanta, GA, USA, and found that the volunteer-run emergency food program is understood as a black geography riddled with contradictions that reveal the complexity of black people more broadly.
Abstract: Black churches have received little attention in geographic scholarship. This article employs archival and textual research, extensive participant observation, and semi-structured open-ended interviews with volunteers to examine the day-to-day actions and overall goals of a historically prominent black Protestant church in Atlanta, GA, USA. Specifically, the volunteer-run emergency food program is understood as a black geography riddled with contradictions that reveal the complexity of black people more broadly. ‘Emergency soul food’ is an imperfect yet complicated short-term solution for those coming in to be served. Outside of the food program, volunteers’ hopes and dreams for Auburn Avenue are based on a romantic remembrance of the neighborhood. Ultimately, their prescriptions for the future are a mixture of black socially conservative values and visions to create an alternative black geography with affordable housing for all.
TL;DR: Two linked conclusions are drawn from the research: that the treatment of the environment can be expanded using a social geographic lens to capture the more active influence of ‘homes’ on relationship-building and the relational ethics framework is useful in the home care context to characterize and ground the importance of relationships in theHome care domain.
Abstract: Geographers and other social scientists have a longstanding interest in ‘geographies of aging’ focused on the provision of care to vulnerable older populations and the challenges and experiences of caregivers [Skinner, M. W., Cloutier, D., & Andrews, G. J. (2014). Geographies of ageing: Progress and possibilities after two decades of change. Progress in Human Geography, 1–24]. This qualitative research project explores strategies for relationship-building used by home support workers and older residents according to a ‘relational ethics’ framework, enacted in the ‘relational space’ of the home environment. This framework rests on four principles: engagement, embodiment, mutual respect and environment, and argues that ‘relationships’ between care providers and care recipients must be preserved as the real essence or heart of the health care experience. Two linked conclusions are drawn from the research: that the treatment of the environment can be expanded using a social geographic lens to capture the more...
TL;DR: These atmospheres are (co-)constituted in encounters between bodies, human and non-human, as they move, which shapes the experience of alcohol-related problems in Melbourne at night.
Abstract: Drawing from recent affective geographies of drinking and drunkenness, this article explores the affective atmospheres of spaces of mobility in Melbourne's night-time economy and how these atmospheres shape the experience of alcohol-related problems. Our discussion is grounded in the analysis of interview data collected in 2012 among 60 young adults living in Melbourne. Participants included youth residing in the inner-city who reported taking a tram, walking or cycling to nearby venues along with youth from periurban communities who used trains, buses or taxis to travel to and from venues in the inner-city. Each group reported spending varying amounts of time on the move during a night-out drinking, although the atmospherics of mobility differed for each group. Inner-city participants described ‘comfortable’ or ‘fun’ journeys on the tram, walking or cycling, whereas participants from periurban communities spoke of ‘boring’ or ‘unpleasant’ journeys via train, night-bus or taxi. Moving beyond reports of th...
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors acknowledge the support of the Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Award [grantnumber DE120102279] that enabled them to undertake this research project.
Abstract: I acknowledge the support of the Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Award [grantnumber DE120102279] that enabled me to undertake this research project.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that all manner of mobilities permeate the internal space of the ship, and challenge the binary thinking that separates moments of fixity from motion and explore the constituent parts that shape movement.
Abstract: Recent literature in carceral geography has attended to the importance of mobilities in interrogating the experience and control of spaces of imprisonment, detention and confinement. Scholars have explored the paradoxical nature of incarcerated experience as individuals oscillate between moments of fixity and motion as they are transported to/from carceral environments. This paper draws upon the convict ship – an example yet to gain attention within these emerging discussions – which is both an exemplar of this paradox and a lens through which to complicate understandings of carceral (im)mobilities. The ship is a space of macro-movement from point A to B, whilst simultaneously a site of apparent confinement for those aboard who are unable to move beyond its physical parameters. Yet, we contend that all manner of mobilities permeate the internal space of the ship. Accordingly, we challenge the binary thinking that separates moments of fixity from motion and explore the constituent parts that shape movement...
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors compare top-down, or elite, interventions in the commemorative landscape of a Kyrgyzstani city with those taking place from bottom-up level and being inscribed at street level.
Abstract: In recent years, social and cultural geographers have begun to interrogate the relationship between memory, space and identity in the towns and cities of post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan. This article advances this research agenda by comparing top-down, or elite, interventions in the commemorative landscape of a Kyrgyzstani city with those taking place from the bottom-up level and being inscribed at street level. Nowhere are the processes of memorialisation and identity building more keenly felt than in Osh, Kyrgyzstan's second city and one which is still recovering from the emotional and physical damage inflicted by 2010's violent inter-ethnic riots. Focusing on changes in the commemorative landscape of Osh since the 2010 Events, this article interrogates the construction of a number of large-scale monuments in the city in recent years, whilst also setting out a number of narratives of memory that seem to have been inscribed in the more mundane spaces of the city. Comparing and contrasting these narratives enables...
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a study with young people who spend their free time hanging out in a shopping mall and its surroundings in the city centre of Helsinki, Finland, where they interpreted "hangout" as a process where "looseness" and "tightness" of space are negotiated and re-defined.
Abstract: The article is based on research conducted with young people who spend their free time hanging out in a shopping mall and its surroundings in the city centre of Helsinki, Finland. ‘Geographies of hanging out’ is understood here as an interaction between the location and young people: the space offers affordances to the young people and thus affects their ways of being. At the same time, they give new meanings to the space by hanging out and thus take part in the production of that space. Empirical material gathered in the project includes the researcher's observations, in-depth interviews conducted with young people, youth workers, the police and the management of the mall and the photographs taken by the young participants. In this article, hanging out is interpreted as a process where ‘looseness’ and ‘tightness’ of space are negotiated and re-defined. Shopping malls are seen as spaces where boundaries between public and private are often blurred. The presence of young people can make these commercial sp...
TL;DR: Brown et al. as discussed by the authors explored the diverse and divided lives of lesbians and gay men in the north-east of England, focusing on the close encounters between material culture and place, within queer leisure spaces.
Abstract: This paper is based on the British Academy project ‘Not all bright lights and big city?’ (2008–2010), which explores the diverse and divided lives of lesbians and gay men in the north-east of England. Here, we focus on the ‘close encounters’ between material culture and place, within queer leisure spaces (Binnie, 2014; Binnie & Skeggs, 2004; Brown, 2013; Lim, 2007, 2010; Lim & Fanghanel, 2013; Nash & Gorman-Murray, 2014). We build on existing geographical intersections of class, gender and sexuality (Browne & Bakshi, 2014; Savci, 2013; Taylor, 2007a, 2007b; Tyler, 2013) and incorporate embodied and affectual analysis of ‘things’ (food, drink, decor) as well as sensual and affective articulations of ‘atmosphere’ (light, dark, dirty, ‘seedy’) (Anderson, 2012; Bennett, 2013; Brown, 2008). Considering the potential ‘zero sum’ game of territoriality and identity (Brown, 2013) – as mapped onto scene space – we highlight material cultures and sensual atmospheres that both seduce and disgust bodies, affectively pulling people into and out of place, mattering the ‘changing structurations’ of sexualities and space.
TL;DR: This paper explored the role of the patient-healer relationship in shaping therapeutic landscapes especially as regards traditional healing in the city of St. Louis in Northern Senegal, and explored the understandings of health and well-being of 160 people.
Abstract: Literature on therapeutic landscapes has not sufficiently explored the relational dynamics that contribute to shaping therapeutic landscapes. In particular, not enough attention has been paid to the patient–healer relationship and its role in producing well-being, especially in non-western settings. This article is a first attempt to address these deficiencies by exploring the role of the patient–healer relationship in shaping therapeutic landscapes especially as regards traditional healing in the city of St. Louis in Northern Senegal. By exploring the understandings of health and well-being of 160 people (including patients, herbalists and traditional healers), this article will show how therapeutic landscapes of traditional healing are built relationally in the patient–healer encounter; it will also underscore the strong link between the herbal component of traditional healing, the cognitive component of dialogue with the healer and the spiritual and sociocultural elements associated with rituals. The f...
TL;DR: In this article, the authors investigate the effect of state planners' desire to craft Astana and Ashgabat as spectacularly green oases, when their local climates should defy the logic of sustainability.
Abstract: Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan have been home to the most impressive urban development projects in the entire post-Soviet world. Their capitals, Astana and Ashgabat, now boast uniquely monumental architecture and local leaders have invested heavily in ‘green belt’ projects to surround the cities with lush vegetation, as well as developing green and water-laden public spaces. In doing so, elites have drawn on Soviet-era ‘garden city’ idealism, as well as more recent environmental sustainability narratives. Yet these schemes are anything but sustainable. Unfolding on the arid Central Asian steppe, they depend on heavy irrigation, with water diverted from rivers that already fail to meet regional demands. Employing a comparative approach, I ask why and with what effect state planners have sought to craft Astana and Ashgabat as spectacularly green ‘urban oases,’ when their local climates should defy the logic of sustainability. In so doing, I consider urban greening in the two countries as part of a wider phenom...
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explored the subject of museum geographies, focusing particularly on the development of museum policies in a changing political context, and the results of two extensive studies of school visits to museums in the Renaissance in the Region (RIR) programme suggest that large numbers of visits come from schools located in areas with high indices of multiple deprivation and income deprivation affecting children.
Abstract: This paper explores the subject of museum geographies, focusing particularly on the development of museum policies in a changing political context. The empirical focus is the emergence and transformation of the museum programme Renaissance in the Region, which is linked to the concepts of primary, secondary and tertiary spatialisations presented by Michel Foucault. The paper discusses the development of the programme and how it transformed aspects of the primary, secondary and tertiary spatialisations of museums in England, before focusing attention on the geography of school visits to museums. The results of two extensive studies of school visits to museums in the programme suggest that large numbers of visits come from schools located in areas with high indices of multiple deprivation and income deprivation affecting children. It is argued that this social geography reflects the tertiary spatialisation of museums linked to their emergence in areas of past industrial development, although practices linke...
TL;DR: McDowell as discussed by the authors covers six decades of migration history, framed by two periods when East Europeans made up the majority of incomers seeking employment in Britain, and contextualises migration agains...
Abstract: This book covers six decades of migration history, framed by two periods when East Europeans made up the majority of incomers seeking employment in Britain. McDowell contextualises migration agains...
TL;DR: In this paper, a multi-scalar geographical reckoning of abortion law goes beyond the well-rehearsed debates about the liminal space abortion occupies between public and private.
Abstract: emotions. Brown is refreshingly honest about the challenges of designing her research, and, in particular, the overhaul of the project provoked by Planned Parenthood’s rejection of the original proposal. I would have liked to have seen more individual reflection in the book about the challenges that researching this topic posed for Brown, and moreover, to see how her colleagues responded to her use of abortion as a mechanism to re-insert the political into architecture. Nevertheless, this is a very important volume. Brown’s multi-scalar geographical reckoning of abortion law goes beyond the well-rehearsed debates about the liminal space abortion occupies between public and private. She explicates how abortion is accessed at several scales, and these findings are a significant contribution to the study of women’s healthcare since the practical experience of the spatial politics of abortion has received relatively little attention. Brown’s spatial treatment of abortion and the laws relating to it will be of great interest not only to researchers working on women’s healthcare and abortion itself but also to legal scholars investigating the working of the law. For geographers, this book reminds us of the significance of a spatial approach and the continuing relevance of the cultural geography of the built environment.
TL;DR: In this paper, a collective project to render a neighbourhood in Toronto, Canada, as a "a/r/tographic" mode of inquiry and critical praxis is proposed.
Abstract: This paper traces, and is the traces of, a collective project to render a neighbourhood queer. It is a project that emerges from queer social relations. Academic research and knowledge generation are approached collaboratively by working with queer-identified residents from west-central neighbourhoods in Toronto, Canada who volunteered with the Queer West ShOUT Youth Program. Within the context of two participant-facilitated discussion events, we discursively and artistically investigate queer world-making in the neighbourhood of West Queen West. Through collective mental mapping and photovoice renderings we interpret the queering of urban space as a queer utopian impulse. We critically examine the ‘concrete utopia’ of Queer West Village and question its resonance in the lives of ShOUT volunteers. Theoretically inspired by Munoz, our ‘a/r/tographic’ mode of inquiry and critical praxis are a rendering of ‘queer futurity.’ We draw on our past to critique our lived present so as to imagine future potentialit...
TL;DR: In this article, the authors focus on how affective life becomes implicated in biopolitical interventions in a variety of spaces, including spaces of consumption and how the emotional domain also becomes a space of biopolitics.
Abstract: In recent years, scholars have focused on how affective life becomes implicated in biopolitical interventions in a variety of spaces, including spaces of consumption. Less has been said about how the emotional domain also becomes a space of biopolitics. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork at a mall in Buenos Aires, this paper attends to this link and outlines a methodology that generates insight into the layers of intimacy that help shape these social and political spaces. What I am calling images of critical intimacy point to how these biopolitical spaces may be operating today and also what their limits appear to be.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explore transnational marriage practices and their potential for reworking sharply gendered patrilineal norms framing marriage conventions, implicating questions of identity, home and belonging.
Abstract: This paper draws on an empirical study, based on interviews and observations, of youthful Pakistani Muslim women raised in Birmingham, UK, to explore transnational marriage practices and their potential for reworking sharply gendered patrilineal norms framing marriage conventions, implicating questions of identity, home and belonging. In the South Asian patrilineal system marriage signals migration for women, displacing home across the natal (maike) where they are symbolic outsiders, and the marital (sasural) home, where they are actual strangers. By contracting transnational marriage, women are able to avoid this dislocation and its disadvantages, transferred onto their overseas grooms which lays the basis for the negotiation of a more egalitarian gender dynamic. The paper explores women's narratives of transnational marriage from the arrangements through to the union and the processes of conjugal bonding and coupling constituted within the spaces of the natal home, circumscribed by the close proximity o...
TL;DR: In the early 2000s, the Nibutani community in Hokkaido, Japan, has developed several participatory projects led by a non-Indigenous professional as mentioned in this paper, which have involved community members working to revitalise and promote local Ainu culture.
Abstract: Participatory approaches have become a critical and somewhat normalised methodology in geography for working in a positive and constructive way with Indigenous communities. Nevertheless, recent literature has seldom examined the sustainability of participatory projects or looked critically at their ongoing impacts. Since the early 2000s, Nibutani, an Ainu community in Hokkaido, Japan, has developed several participatory projects led by a non-Indigenous professional. The projects have involved community members working to revitalise and promote local Ainu culture. Over the last decade, some positive outcomes from the projects have been observed; for example, the younger generation has had opportunities to engage intensively in learning local Indigenous knowledge and skills. The projects have also helped some participants to develop a stronger sense of ethnic identity and gain empowerment. Still, the power transfer from the talented non-Indigenous leader to community members has been limited and Nibutani ha...
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that artistic interventions that engage with the idea of public space and that take place in the public space of the city engender interactions that illuminate the complexities and difficulties currently facing Egyptian society.
Abstract: Since January 2011, Egypt has undergone several waves of political upheaval in order to craft a new form of governance. Central to this process has been the role of art. This article argues that artistic interventions that engage with the idea of public space and that take place in the public space of the city engender interactions that illuminate the complexities and difficulties currently facing Egyptian society. More so than serving as documentation of what has taken place or as acts of protest, public art can serve as a diagnostic of issues that simmer underneath the surface of national politics. Based on interviews, focus groups, and observations conducted between 2011 and 2013 with Cairo-based artists and arts advocates, the paper explores the way in which public art has signaled tensions regarding class, gender and increasing political polarization. By exploring the relationship between art, artists and urban space, this paper extends analyses on political transitions to take account of the effects...
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors investigate legal performativities of grievability in contemporary child migration and argue for a scalar approach to analyse and understand the cultural politics underpinning current debates on the'moving' child.
Abstract: This article investigates legal performativities of grievability in contemporary child migration and argues for a scalar approach to analyse and understand the cultural politics underpinning current debates on the ‘moving’ child. I turn to two court cases in the Dutch context that involve alleged child trafficking in international adoption on the one hand and the threat of deportation in child asylum on the other. These two forms of child migration have rarely been investigated in tandem although both concern the transnational movement of children from the global South to the wealthy North. By focusing on the legal concept of ‘the right to family life’ and ‘the best interest of the child’ I point to the performativity of law and the ways in which cultural constructions of the child, childhood, kin and humanitarianism intervene in our work of justification. My contention is that placing these ‘different-but-same bodies’ within a scalar dimension – one that takes into account spatio-temporal conditions of g...