bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Social Production of Built Form
Authors: Cuff D
Published: October 2006

The social production of built form can be characterized by three ideal types: vernacular building, organizational management, and creative individual. An ethnography of contemporary architectural practice in the USA portrays an alternative model of the design process as a social construction, comprised of dilemmas which, once resolved, pose new contradictions. An analysis of three case studies of buildings with design quality reveals that design participants invoke a series of dialectical strategies to respond to the uncertainties and contradictions of the situation. These strategies, introduced by quotations from the buildings' makers, are described in contrast to the approaches taken by participants in everyday design practice. The production of the built environment is seen as a complex, interactive, social process which is formative, constructed out of a loosely orchestrated constellation of key individuals in organizations, who together develop design solutions.
Survey 16; Privatization and the Rhetoric of Planning Practice
Authors: Dear M
Published: October 2006

In this paper the privatization of the planning profession is examined. The analysis proceeds with an exploration of how planners represent their profession through text and speech. Three kinds of rhetoric dominate discussion: a rhetoric of instrumentalism, which is concerned with reestablishing physical planning at the core of the discipline; a rhetoric of negotiation, which often loses sight of why negotiation was initiated in the first place; and a rhetoric of performance assessment, which is content with a planning which achieves its sponsors' goals. None of these concentrations is intrinsically wrong, but their cumulative effect has been to permit a commodification of the functions of planning, which has subsequently facilitated the privatization process. Other elements of planning, not susceptible to commodification, have been dropped from the discourse. One such loss has been the rhetoric of reform, which has traditionally connected planning with its progressive roots and political action. Also absent is a rhetoric of theory, which would permit comparative analysis of the meanings of a postmodern planning.
Explaining and Interpreting Ideological Effects: A Rhetorical Approach to Green Belts
Authors: Rydin Y , Myerson G
Published: October 2006

The authors argue the advantages of an approach that explores the understanding of participants in political discourse. A spectrum of rhetorics is proposed which can provide a framework for such exploration and draws on what is termed ‘the rhetoric of partial rationality’ to examine a particular discourse, that concerning green belts. Throughout the paper it is stressed that such rhetorical analysis must be contextualised. Interpretation must complement, rather than replace, explanation. Providing complementary explanatory and interpretative analyses suggests a potential way of tackling ideological effects. Therefore the authors deal both with a general methodological issue—the analysis of ideological effects—and with a specific policy issue—green belts.
Striking Parallels: A Comparison of the Geographies of the 1926 and 1984–85 Coalmining Disputes
Authors: Sunley P
Published: October 2006

The author compares the coalmining disputes of 1926 and 1984–85 and concentrates on the similarity shown by the spatial patterns of support for both actions. It is argued that the failure of the recent strike was not the result of the disappearance of a traditional solidarity but involved the reproduction of regional traditions of industrial relations. The geography of the 1926 dispute is not satisfactorily explained by economic coercion. It was also related to the coalowners' determination to end national wage bargaining and produced by varying degrees of commitment across the coalfields. In Nottinghamshire a group of internal contractors, who saw the strike as a denial of individual liberty and as a political abuse of mining unionism, organised a return to work. A sense of a violation of individual rights, which centred on the lack of a national ballot, was also fundamental to the failure of the recent strike in this coalfield. The cultural inheritance which shaped this response should be set within the context of the restructuring of the industry and of a decentralisation of wage bargaining. The conclusion drawn is that understanding economic change is not furthered by exaggerating the simplicity and homogeneity of past geographies.
Household Work Strategies and Suburban Homeownership in Toronto, 1899–1913
Authors: Harris R
Published: October 2006

The dwelling reflects the employment situation of its occupants and enables them to engage in a particular level and combination of types of work (‘work strategy’). The growth of suburban homeownership in Toronto demonstrates the point. Ownership levels increased rapidly among all social classes. More middle-class women were doing their own housework. As a result they came to value smaller and more affordable homes. Many working-class men built their own homes. Some of these homes were in unserviced districts at the suburban fringe, where household tasks were more arduous. In both cases the growth in owner-occupation depended upon an increasing amount of unpaid work within and upon the home. Toronto's experience is exemplary and challenges the belief that, in the early 20th century, suburban homeownership was a middle-class phenomenon. The prevailing model of the city in this period must be revised to incorporate the fact that unpaid labour played a vital role in determining people's housing situation and standard of living.
Social Control and Social Engineering: African Reserves in Kenya 1895–1920
Authors: Overton J D
Published: October 2006

The establishment of African reserves in early colonial Kenya is examined in an effort to analyse the motives of the colonial state in the formulation of its social and spatial policies. It took time to develop a reserves policy. There was even debate about whether any land should be set aside for Africans. Ostensibly, reserves were established to protect African-held land from encroachment by European settlers. However, it is apparent that there was a deeper motive: spatial segregation was part of a strategy of indirect rule and thereby lowered the cost to the state of social control. Furthermore, officials soon learned that by altering the size and pattern of reserves, aims of changing African society could be pursued by limiting land availability and forcing change in African land-use and trading patterns. The manipulation of space became one of the most important tools of colonial control and social policy.
Place, Voice, Space: Mikhail Bakhtin's Dialogical Landscape
Authors: Folch-Serra M
Published: October 2006

Geographers have produced a host of different interpretations of the landscape. In this essay I aim to participate in such an endeavour by linking Mikhail Bakhtin's work to geographical inquiry. Concepts such as dialogism, heteroglossia, the chronotope, and polyphony are only a sample of his valuable contributions to the theory of knowledge, alongside the ‘carnival’ sense of the world that conveys a pathos of shift and change, of death and renewal. ‘Carnival’ sums up the rituals and diverse festivities that reflect popular culture. Together these notions lead to a better understanding of otherness and alterity. This understanding provides the basis for a conceptual landscape that indicates the moment and situation (time-space) of a dialogue whose outcome is never a neutral exchange. Landscape thus becomes not only ‘graphically visible’ in space but also ‘narratively visible’ in time through dialogue.
Theories of Regulation
Authors: Dunford M
Published: October 2006

Neo-Schumpeterian, world system, and regulation approaches to the analysis of structural change in advanced capitalist societies are distinguished and the development of theories of regulation and their connection with Marx's conception of capitalism are outlined, A synthetic account of the structure of theories of regulation is presented and is used to discuss the development and the crisis of Fordism. The macroeconomic character of these theories and the macroeconomic evidence that supports them is emphasised as are the difficulties encountered in analysing the internationalisation of advanced capitalist economies.
The Social Foundations of Planning and the Power of Capital: Teesside in Historical Context
Authors: Sadler D
Published: October 2006

A key distinguishing feature of British society in the 1980s was a redrawing of the legitimate extent and nature of state intervention in the workings of a market economy. Deregulation, intended to enhance the power of capital, depended centrally not just upon creating and sustaining new labour-market conditions, but also on developing an environment in which capital had freedom to invest and manoeuvre (inter)nationally and locally. One mechanism for the latter was a redefinition of planning, epitomised in the creation of Urban Development Corporations (UDCs). This paper uses the area of the largest UDC, Teesside in northeast England, as a vehicle through which to investigate these recent policies in a broad historical context. It proceeds in three stages, at each of which Teesside was at the forefront of key national changes. From 1945 to the mid-1970s an increasing array of national and local government policies sought to plan the development of the area. This contrasted markedly with the context of deregulation which was created from the late 1970s onwards, partly in response to the apparent failure of state planning. An enhanced role for the private sector was encouraged by parallels drawn with the past, in particular with Victorian city-founding entrepreneurs, Although such analogies were questionable, they were revealing, for the legacy of this period on Teesside in social and environmental terms was devastating. The paper concludes by pointing to the significance of these lessons of history; of the new context for planning in Britain in the 1980s; and of political–institutional arrangements as a means of solidifying capital's command over space.
Restructuring in the Motorcycle Industry in Great Britain and Italy until 1980
Authors: Cenzatti M
Published: October 2006

In this paper the different forms of restructuring experienced by the British and Italian motorcycle industries over the last thirty years are outlined, In the British case the restructuring was limited to a process of concentration and rationalization of production among the existing producers and was unsuccessful. In fact, the industry, having been a world leader until the late 1950s, declined until its demise by 1975. In Italy the success of the restructuring process was not based on the reorganization of existing firms, but on the emergence of new producers and product differentiation. The major factor in the restructuring of the Italian motorcycle industry was a radical innovation in the production process of motorcycle frames. This innovation has led to the development of two types of motorcycle firms with different final products and in different locations.

In Northwest Italy, the lower production cost of the new frame led to the appearance of several new, large, highly-integrated manufacturers geared to standardized mass production. At the same time, however, new motorcycle production also began in Central Italy in a large number of small, specialized firms. In this case, the success of the restructuring was based not so much on low production costs as on the flexibility of production allowed both by the new production methods and by the social characteristics of the region.
Homeownership, Accumulation, and Restructuring: A Comment on Badcock
Authors: King R J
Published: October 2006

The question of whether homeownership is an enduring source of accumulation, and the further question of class effects of any such accumulation, can only usefully be addressed in the broader framework of the role of housing in long-term restructuring of the economic and cultural spheres of society. That restructuring must, however, be considered in a context wider than that of a single city. Rather, housing-related accumulation, in a specific market or submarket, will vary with processes of global, national, and urban restructuring, and will in turn affect such processes.
The Struggle for Political Democracy: Emancipation, Gender, and Geography
Authors: Rose G
Published: October 2006

The discursive meaning of places and spaces is central to configurations of power. The author focuses on the patriarchal imaginative geography which designates spaces either as public, masculine, and political or as private, feminine, and domestic, and argues that this is an oppressive structure of signification which limits women's identities and powers by denying them a place in the polity. The author concentrates on resistance by feminists against their confinement to the domestic sphere, and begins by briefly discussing their suffrage campaigns in the period before the First World War to enter and change the public arena. She then presents the lives of two interwar women radicals who overcame the public–private dichotomy in their attempts to liberate children from the oppressions of class, gender, and race, and examines the way in which their work offers a radical democratic critique of the state itself. Their efforts are compared favourably to contemporary revisions of the English polity by democratic socialists, and in consequence the paper concludes by advocating the destabilising and liberating effects of certain feminist critiques.
Towards a Geography of the Rainbow Coalition, 1983–89
Authors: Rogers A
Published: October 2006

The Rainbow Coalition (and rainbow politics in general) provides a suitable context in which to explore ideas about the relationship between theories of social identity and actual processes of identity formation. A brief outline of the history of Rev. Jesse Jackson's two presidential nomination campaigns is provided. Existing academic interpretations of the Rainbow Coalition are then reviewed, and a class-based analysis is favoured rather than one grounded in racial politics or new social movements. This conclusion needs to be tempered by a fuller consideration of the geography of the Rainbow Coalition than has been available so far. The paper ends with a tentative examination of what geographical principles and themes are involved, drawing on case studies from Vermont, Van Nuys, CA, and Baltimore, MD, It is suggested that a focus on the circulation of finance capital may provide both the principle linking the coalition's diverse constituencies and places and a significant point of political leverage for future rainbow polities.
Frisian Nationalism: A Response to Cultural and Political Hegemony
Authors: Penrose J
Published: October 2006

The author explores the complexity of the concept of nationalism by presenting the very different) but intimately connected, experiences of Dutch and Frisian nationalism in the Netherlands. In the introduction she outlines nationalism's relation to the concepts of patriarchy and racism, by highlighting their shared tendency to express dominance–subservience relations. At the same time, the concept of hegemony is introduced as the process which seeks to institutionalize unequal power relations based on characteristics of gender, ‘race’, and culture. In the body of the paper she then examines the way in which Frisian nationalism has responded to the cultural and political hegemony born of Dutch nationalism. Specifically, the author demonstrates how Dutch nationalism sought to establish Dutch hegemony; outlines the way in which Frisian nationalism—particularly its most recent phase of political activitism—has responded to Dutch hegemony; and evaluates the effectiveness of this Frisian response. The conclusions draw on the Frisian experience to show how hegemony can be challenged in ways which promote increased equality in the power relations of gender, ‘race’, and culture.
Who are ‘The People’?: Gender, Citizenship, and the Making of the American Nation
Authors: Marston S A
Published: October 2006

Although theorization about the role of the state and nation building has been a key element in the revitalization of human geography in recent years, very little attention has been paid to the concept of citizenship and its relationship to the state and the nation. This paper is an attempt to draw arguments about citizenship, particularly as they relate to gender, into the current human geographic discourse on theories of the state and nationalism. An examination of some of the historical research on how cultural ideals about the natural roles of men and women interacted with the construction of the early American national community is undertaken. The focus is upon seventeenth-century and eighteenth-century liberal bourgeois notions about public and private life and the way in which the problematic relationship between gender and nationhood undermined republican claims to universal membership. Geographers interested in issues of state formation and nationalism are encouraged to consider the importance of feminist approaches to citizenship.
Space, Time, and Renegotiating Motherhood: An Exploration of the Domestic Workplace
Authors: Dyck I
Published: October 2006

Recent discussion in human geography has heightened awareness of the problems and possibilities of the use of social theory in empirical research, This paper is concerned with showing how insights from feminist theory and Giddens's theory of structuration informed a study focusing on women's mothering practices in a Canadian suburb. In concert these approaches cast attention to the implications of recognizing subjects as knowledgeable human agents in analyses of social and economic change. These include a renewed emphasis on the ‘everyday’ and its links with general processes, an interest in methods appropriate for investigating the generation of meanings central to our social and spatial worlds, and the need to incorporate women's experiences in the construction of theoretical knowledge. Included in a new research agenda within feminist geography are questions concerning the active construction of gender identities through practices which vary over time and space. In the study reported the meaning of the domestic workplace to mothers of young children was explored. It is shown how the notion of motherhood and the sets of practices making up mothering work were interpreted and negotiated as women responded to social and economic structuring in a particular place. The paper includes a concluding discussion on the links between the theoretical underpinnings of the study and its empirical findings.
Time and Space, Text and Context; Books in 1989
Authors: Barnes T , Beauregard R A , Dear M J , Thrift N J
Published: October 2006

Books appearing in 1989 and likely to be of interest to readers of this journal are reviewed.
Flexible Sexism
Authors: Massey D
Published: October 2006

Soja's Postmodern Geographies and Harvey's The Condition of Postmodernity are two of the major recent works within geography addressing the debate around modernity and postmodernity. Moreover both of them, while examining the relation between ‘space and society’, are broad in scope and carry the debate beyond the confines of the geography discipline. In this paper they are examined from a feminist perspective. The arguments range across a number of issues, from the question of style and the construction of the texts, the assumption of universals which are in fact particulars, the lack of recognition of the feminist literature, to a politics in which it is assumed that the only enemy is capitalism. These arguments therefore go beyond feminism to link up with issues of other groups, most particularly ethnic minorities and those from non-Western societies. In the end, it is argued, consigning these groups to parentheses after the supposed universal of the white, male, heterosexual vitiates the projects which the two books undertake.
The Comic Book Diary of Kamayan: The Life of a Day-Laborer in Kamagasaki
Authors: Arimura S
Published: October 2006

In these specially commissioned cartoons, artist Sen Arimura portrays the other side of life in contemporary Japan, as seen through the eyes of Kamayan, working-class hero.
The Impact of the Minkatsu Policy on Japanese Housing and Land Use
Authors: Hayakawa K , Hirayama Y
Published: October 2006

During the period 1983–87, the ‘ minkatsu’ policy of the former Nakasone Government caused many serious problems. Urban land became a target of direct speculation by real estate companies, banks, and big enterprises. This phenomenon began in Tokyo and has now spread to all the nation's large cities. A new housing crisis has resulted, and the right to housing is widely threatened. We discuss, in this paper, the relationship of minkatsu, to the deregulation of zoning, the sale of nationally and publicly owned lands, the unease of residents, the recession in public housing policy, and skyrocketing land prices.
An International City Going ‘Global’: Spatial Change in the City of London
Authors: Pryke M
Published: October 2006

Social and spatial change in the City of London from the 1960s to the end of the 1980s are described. From the mid-1960s there have been wide-ranging changes in flows of international finance through the City's financial markets. Despite these outside changes the City remained almost spatially intact. Through a distinctive social power, built on generational layers of ‘invented traditions’ and an interpretation of ‘Englishness’, the City has been able temporally and spatially to regulate incoming financial capitals to the trading mores of the ‘Square Mile’. In this way the City has been able to innovate its way through change in international financial markets. Yet to ensure its survival in the financial league tables of the late 1980s and beyond, not only did the City have to deregulate its securities markets, it had to deregulate its social space. Informed through an understanding of the gender and class composition of the City, this paper is an attempt to capture this social and spatial transition.
Gentrification as Consumption: Issues of Class and Gender
Authors: Warde A
Published: October 2006

In this paper some issues concerning the interpretation of urban gentrification in the context of debates about the relationship between production and consumption are examined. Two different types of gentrification are distinguished, one the work of the property developer, the other the outcome of the localised collective behaviour of households. Existing accounts of gentrification are criticised for their lack of explanatory value. It is argued that gentrification is unlikely to be founded in the distinctive behaviour of particular fractions of the middle class, because their cultural practices are weakly constrained. Rather it is the ways in which women adapt to new patterns of employment that provide the most plausible explanation of the origins of the process.
Critical Geopolitics: Discourse, Difference, and Dissent
Authors: Dalby S
Published: October 2006

In the 1980s international relations theory has been undergoing a major methodological and theoretical debate which has challenged much of the recent disciplinary orthodoxy. This has been inspired by the introduction of contemporary critical social theory and poststructuralist themes into international relations by a new generation of practitioners. Given the close intellectual proximity of international relations to political geography's concerns with geopolitics, these current debates are of great relevance to any attempt to retheorise global politics from the perspective of political geography. Although the recent revival of interest in political geography has led to a considerable interest in rethinking the historiography of the subdiscipline and to reevaluating its tainted past, the necessary accompanying theoretical rethinking has not progressed in a similar fashion. The theoretical issues discussed in the contemporary international relations literature have much to offer political geographers in pursuing this important task.
Company Towns and Class Processes: A Study of the Coal Towns of Central Queensland
Authors: Gibson K
Published: October 2006

The growth of the international export coal market during the 1960s and 1970s prompted, in Australia, a massive injection of global and national capital into coal-mine and town development, especially in rural areas of Central Queensland. A new and distinctive set of ‘localities' were created. In this paper some of the social processes set in motion by this development are examined with particular focus upon the role of capitalist class processes in the region. A number of struggles involving miners and their employers, town residents and the state, and workers and residents which have occurred over the last twenty years are discussed. The complex and at times contradictory interactions of class and nonclass processes within these struggles are explored, each case highlighting a different moment in class (and place) formation.
Ornamentalism: Geography and the Labor of Language in Structuration Theory
Authors: Hannah M , Strohmayer U
Published: October 2006

In an effort to respond to the so-called ‘postmodern challenge’ in a way that continues to allow for an understanding of social interaction in time and space, geographers have increasingly turned to the theory of structuration put forward by Anthony Giddens. This theory paints a picture of the human agent as being constrained by sociohistorical circumstances and yet being fundamentally autonomous. The success of Giddens attempt to transcend the traditional dualism of individual and society seems to have been taken for granted by now. In this paper it is shown that a careful, ‘deconstructive’ scrutiny of key concepts as they appear in Giddens's major texts reveals insurmountable problems inherent in language. Specifically, the categories ‘duality of structure’, ‘practical consciousness’, and ‘mutual knowledge’ are each in their turn required to perform two contradictory tasks: The simultaneous blending and separation of determinism and autonomy. The gist of Giddens's attempts to circumvent this task is outlined through a seemingly thorough consideration of the effects of language, and the continued popularity of structuration theory is speculated on in light of its ultimate failure.
Towards an Understanding of the Contextuality of Mode of Life
Authors: Simonsen K
Published: October 2006

This paper should be seen as a step towards reestablishing the individual, or the subject, in urban and regional studies. It is argued that to overcome the problems of ecological as well as structural determinism it is necessary to return to basic ontological questions. The questions raised are of the nature of human action and of existing and acting in a context, and they are discussed in their philosophical groundings and in relation to recent social theory. At the centre of the discussion are the concepts of temporality and spatiality which are broken up into their different, but related, dimensions. In the final section of the paper an analytical method to study mode of life which uses the dimensions of time and space as crucial categories in the mediation between structure and action is outlined.
Structure, System, and Contradiction in the Capitalist Space Economy
Authors: Gough J
Published: October 2006

A theoretical approach to analysing the capitalist space economy is presented and is applied to the analysis of local economies. Capitalist society itself creates a distinction between ‘structures’, embodying necessary social relations and processes, and ‘systems’, which articulate contingent, external relations, in particular market relations. The development of structures from abstract to concrete forms incorporates space as spatial differentiation and as spatial logic. A specifically Marxist conception of competition in space is developed. On this basis, there is a discussion of the different meanings of ‘local’, the competition and coherence of local economies, and types of contradiction of different spatiality experienced by local economies.
Rhetoric, Memory, and Power: Depth Psychology and Postmodern Geography
Authors: Bishop P
Published: October 2006

The attitude towards rhetoric, metaphor, and imagery is identified in this paper as being central both to the definition of postmodernism and to any postmodern scholarship. It is also claimed that questions about the relationship between archetypal psychology and geography mirrors the wider postmodern phenomenon of comparative knowledges. By focusing on radical criticism of contemporary heritage movements it is shown how archetypal psychology can help to deepen metaphorical reflection on such crucial issues as fantasy, theory, history, and memory. In particular, it is insisted that such reflections should themselves avoid philosophical abstraction and stay as close as possible to the logic of imaginative discourse.
An Occasion for Geography: Landscape, Representation, and Foucault's Corpus
Authors: Matless D
Published: October 2006

After it is outlined why this paper is not geared around the term ‘postmodernism’, approaches within Geography and without to the representation of landscape are considered, and a way of analysing representation from the writings of Michel Foucault is developed. Foucault's ideas on power, knowledge, discourse, truth, and genealogy are discussed, and the paper is concluded with an examination of how such ideas might be employed in relation to key themes of geographical enquiry such as nature and place identity, and to the discipline of geography itself.
Art, Ideology, and Everyday Space: Subversive Tendencies from Dada to Postmodernism
Authors: Bonnett A
Published: October 2006

This is a paper about the transgression of the boundary between art and everyday space. It traces the development of a practical and theoretical critique of this divide from Dada and surrealism to situationism and postmodernism, whilst showing how these movements have themselves often perpetuated a specialized notion of cultural production. The ultimate failure of these movements, with the exception of situationism, to develop a coherent and effective challenge to the dualism art—everyday space is related to their reliance upon the artistic ideologies of antiart, indifference, and spontaneism.
On Boundaries
Authors: Reichert D
Published: October 2006

Geography's relation to thinking is much closer than we sometimes would believe. What we traditionally call ‘thinking’ is based on a spatial metaphoric that visualizes thoughts as solid identities related in absolute space, forming regions or fields. Different traditions of thought differ in the way they conceive the line that surrounds them, for example, as a limit, a boundary or a ditch. In the paper the author tries to find out if thinking has to be limited by such lines. In order to do this, the author balances on the boundary, that is, stays in the paradox. If such a meaningless statement can succeed in becoming meaningful movement, thinking could show that, even though it depends on topo-logic, it can in fact exceed it. This may lead in the direction of a different conception of ‘knowledge’ and ‘communication’, a questioning of the idea of an ontology/epistemology, or of politics. They are not fully developed here, but it is presumed that to do this one would need a twofold move: Question the spatial metaphors in which binary oppositions take place to show what is underneath, and, at the same time, trust poetry.
A Truant Proximity: Presence and Absence in the Space of Modernity
Authors: Shields R
Published: October 2006

Jameson described postmodernism as a change in Western urban populations' ‘cognitive maps' of the world. But this seemed to suggest a totalising change in our space-time regimes or ‘social spatialisations’ which does not fit with everyday experiences of contemporary life. There is a continuity of most aspects of social spatialisation (which, denying locality and regionalism, once unified the empire of Western modernity). Yet, even small shifts may have notable impacts. If “space makes a difference” (Sayer), it is more important than ever to go on to specify what is different about space and spatiality today. Only changes in the spatialisation of presence and absence (a dialectic which was at the heart of modernity) can be empirically demonstrated. The distinction between modernity and postmodernity must be argued on this basis. After a survey of ‘what remains the same’, postmodern spatial differences, and why they matter are approached via a meditation on our relation to Others who bring the far-off and exotic into the cosy, local world of our everyday lives. The collapse of presence and absence, correlated with an everyday synthesis of proximity and remoteness; near and far; past, future, and present suggest the erasure of a set of cultural oppositions which structured the social imaginary, representations, and practices. Modernist, spatialised oppositions such as public-private, insider-outsider, and subject-object are changed, affecting the nature of the public sphere, forcing new ethical perspectives on community membership, and new understanding of our relationship to Others and to the environment.
On the Borders of Social Theory: Learning from other Regions
Authors: Slater D
Published: October 2006

In the first section of the paper a few general remarks concerning three lineages of universalism are outlined; these comments act as an introduction to a more detailed examination of ‘Euro-Americanism’. In this second section, the main focus of analysis falls on examples taken from the literature of critical urban studies. In the final part, a briefly stated case is made for learning from the South. It is suggested that it is not only crucial to question all forms of Western ethnocentrism, but that by scrutinizing critically the historical constitution of the relations between the First World and the societies of the periphery, the realities of the West can be better comprehended. In fact, it is argued that without such a connection First World geographers will not be able to grasp the meanings and dispositions of the societies in which they live, and in this important sense will remain ‘intellectual prisoners of the West’.
A Place for Experience: A Psychoanalytic Perspective on Boundary, Identity, and Culture
Authors: Hoggett P
Published: October 2006

Proceeding on the assumption that the ‘inner world’ is marked by an imminent catastrophe, the Kleinian tradition within psychoanalysts proposes that human development requires the existence of a benign social medium which is reliable and flexible enough for fear to be contained without being visited upon the other. Such a medium finds representation in a variety of psychological and social spaces, spaces where experience can be held on to and worked upon so that thought might occur. The author seeks to outline a number of basic spatial configurations which occur as a result of the ‘moves' made by the subject in its struggle to obtain a space for experience—some of the configurations facilitate development, some destroy it. It is suggested that such configurations are a characteristic both of internal and of external environments and offer important insights into the constitution of identities and the ordering of the social world.
Contrasting Patterns of Business Organization in Silicon Valley
Authors: Saxenian A
Published: October 2006

The industrialists of Silicon Valley have pioneered two divergent political strategies in recent decades: one is an attempt to improve the competitive position of local firms by lobbying for supportive trade and technology policies, the other is an attempt to enhance the flexibility of the specialist producers in the region by providing collective services that promote the innovative recombination of resources. These contrasting patterns of organization reflect the hybrid structure of the local economy, and political conflicts in the region highlight divergent understandings of the proper forms of governance for a flexible regional economy. This case underscores the openness of regional and industrial trajectories, and suggests the importance of analyzing the political, as well as the purely economic, determinants of industrial strategies and regional outcomes.
Science Parks: A Concept in Science, Society, and ‘Space’ (A Realist Tale)
Authors: Massey D , Wield D
Published: October 2006

In this paper we report on one aspect of ‘methodology’ as developed in a recent research project. The project was an investigation of the implications of science parks as they are currently being developed in the United Kingdom. And the issue which is reported here is that of conceptualisation—how to conceptualise the central object of study: the science park. A comparison is made between the ‘popular’ definition and one which was arrived at during the research project. This latter mode of conceptualisation follows a broadly critical-realist approach, and we draw out the causal powers which are associated with the definition. This enables a different form of policy-evaluation from the usual empirical assessment of ‘outcomes’. The discussion of this particular case also allows a number of other reflections on the debate around the realist approach to research.
Modernity, Urbanism, and Modern Consumption
Authors: Glennie P D , Thrift N J
Published: October 2006

In human geography, as in other social sciences, much recent work has focused on contemporary consumption practices. The aim of this paper is to bring historical perspectives on consumption to bear on theorisations of contemporary consumption, It is contended that many such theorisations are deficient because they inaccurately characterise the history of modern consumption. As a result, they are prone to stress novelty where there is continuity (and vice versa). It is suggested that the importance of several oft-stressed facets of contemporary consumption has been exaggerated, but the authors also seek to identify aspects of contemporary consumption that are genuinely important and novel.
The Politics of Polyphony: Reconfigurations in Geographical Authority
Authors: Crang P
Published: October 2006

This article contains a critical view of the displacement, into the field of human geography, of concerns with polyphonic textual composition.

Questions of representational politics and poetics have increasingly come to occupy something of a central place in contemporary re-visionings of the human geographical imagination. It has been widely suggested that any ‘new’ human geography will require ‘new’ textual strategics for representing its subject matter. In what follows I look at one of these suggested ‘new’ textual strategies; one emphasizing the need for multifibred, multivocal texts, a form of composition which, using a term borrowed from the fields of music composition, novel writing, and most recently anthropology's so-called ‘new ethnography’, has been labelled as ‘polyphonic’ in character. I am rather ambivalent about the usefulness of such calls for polyphony in human geography. So in the first part of the paper I trace out what the term has been used to mean in the cultural fields from which it has been borrowed, and, quite deliberately putting aside my rapier-like academic cynicism, I try to highlight and enthuse about some of the possibilities polyphonic practices elsewhere might suggest for human geographers. In the second half of the article I try to think through more critically some putative objections to the calls for and the actuality of polyphonic texts; objections which I think serve to emphasize that newfound sensitivities to textual poetics in no way dissolve the problematic politics of representation, but instead reconfigure them, in this case around power relations of cultural capital.
Sexuality and the Spatial Dynamics of Capitalism
Authors: Knopp L
Published: October 2006

Sexuality, gender, and class (with race, ethnicity, physical mobility, and other social categories related to power) are deeply implicated in the constitution of each other as social relations. Spatial structures and conflicts that are constitutive of class relations are therefore also constitutive of sexuality. An examination of recent developments in feminist, lesbian and gay, and radical social theory, and certain elements of the historical geography of capitalism, reveals specific ways in which this is so. Urban spatial designs in Britain and the USA in the 19th and 20th centuries, for example, implicate hegemonic constructions of sexuality in gender-based and class-based spatial divisions of labor. Similarly, struggles over the social definitions of sexuality have involved individuals and groups recoding spaces that have been devalued by the market in potentially counterhegemonic ways. Thus, struggles over sexuality manifest themselves as struggles over sexual representations of, and sexual symbols in, space as well as over spatial organization. Indeed, these sorts of struggles may actually be more important in the contemporary era than those concerning the spatial organization of sexuality. This is because the sociospatial construction of otherness, which has as much to do with representational and symbolic space as with physical space, has become key to the survival of capitalism.
“The Worse it Got, the More We Laughed”: A Discourse of Resistance among Farmers of Eastern Ontario
Authors: Mackenzie F
Published: October 2006

Empirical data collected from dairy farmers in Stormont, Dundas, and Glengarry counties in Eastern Ontario provide the basis for an analysis of the actions of Women for the Survival of Agriculture (WSA), a network of women farmers which emerged in the 1970s in a context of deepening agricultural crisis. Conceptually, I draw on postmodern feminist critiques of Foucault's work to argue that the effectiveness of WSA as a political voice locally, provincially, and federally has depended on the strategic manipulation of two contradictory ideologies. On the one hand, an explicitly feminist discourse created by WSA challenges male hegemony in work and property rights on the farm. On the other, the struggle for equality, for farm partnerships, is grounded in an appeal to the ‘family farm’, a symbol of national security and sovereignty, which in the past has served to perpetuate gender-based hierarchy.
Unfinished Business: Ten Years of Society and Space, 1983–1992
Authors: Dear M , Thrift N J
Published: October 2006

The tenth anniversary of the journal Society and Space is used as an opportunity for reflection. We note the salient features in the journal's foundation, its mission, our sense of its achievements, and conclude with a restatement of intellectual principles.
Therapeutic Landscapes: Theory and a Case Study of Epidauros, Greece
Authors: Gesler W M
Published: October 2006

A new direction for medical geographic study is suggested, the analysis of places which have attained an enduring reputation for achieving physical, mental, and spiritual healing. The reasons for the efficacy of these therapeutic landscapes can he examined by using themes derived from the traditional landscape ideas of cultural geography, humanistic geography, structuralist geography, and the principles of holistic health. These themes are categorized as inner/meaning (including the natural setting, the built environment, sense of place, symbolic landscapes, and everyday activities) and outer/societal context (including beliefs and philosophies, social relations and/or inequalities, and territoriality). By using a methodology termed an ‘archaeology of discourse’ in which written and oral documents are examined, the themes are used to investigate the healing reputation of the Asclepian sanctuary at Epidauros, Greece. Study findings have policy implications for health-care practice today.
Weir(d) Sex: Representation of Gender-Environment Relations in Peter Weir's Picnic at Hanging Rock and Gallipoli
Authors: Aitken S C , Zonn L E
Published: October 2006

Soft images of pubescent women scaling the dizzy heights of a massive phallic rock in turn-of-the-century rural Victoria, and young men matching physical prowess in the indomitable Western Australian desert as World War I rages in Europe, provide foci for two of Peter Weir's most successful early films, Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) and Gallipoli (1981). In both these films the physical landscape is simultaneously integrated with and contrasted to the passions of young men and women. The result is an aesthetic that takes the viewer beyond the immediate narrative to a place where masculinity and femininity find expression. In this paper, transactional and psychoanalytic perspectives are used to interrogate the gender images which are portrayed in both these movies, linking them to some concepts which find currency in ecofeminism. The concern is with the individual struggle between the powerful, complex, and yet less-than-rational forces that are integral to the nature of our individual beings and the rational nature of prevailing societal values that supposedly provide us with guidance. A dynamic theory of contemporary film is implicit in our discussion of “images in motion over time through space with sequence”. These elements—along with an overlay of shape, size, scale, color, sound, and light—arc the cues that provide meaning for Weir's portrayal of wo/man-in-environmcnt relations. Suggested in this paper is a broader narrative which speaks to a postmodern sexual order and its representations in social theory and contemporary cinema. Crucial questions are raised regarding the ways that cultural identity is grounded in class and gender.
Markets, Design, and Local Agglomeration: The Role of the Small Independent Retailer in the Workings of the Fashion System
Authors: Crewe L , Forster Z
Published: October 2006

The fashion system, as a powerful cultural signifier, offers some important clues into the links between production and consumption change. In this paper, the workings of the fashion system are explored, with a focus on changing consumption patterns and new market trends, which may have the potential to even out the profoundly unequal relationship which exists between high-street multiples and small independent retailers. The suggestion is made that the fashion system is polarising at present, that design-led boutiques are enjoying renewed popularity. Not only is this benefiting local design talent, it is also a means of affording greater autonomy to local manufacturers. The emergence of one particular fashion agglomeration, the Nottingham Lace Market, is traced, with local linkage structures looked at through the interplay of manufacturers, designers, retailers, and local policymakers. In this way, an attempt is made to offer a more expansive investigation of flexible production systems, one which is not grounded exclusively in economic-centred narratives but which recognises that the factors which shape the development of local agglomerations are rooted in production and consumption shifts, and are dependent on multiple political, cultural, and economic discourses.