NEW Frontiers, a Study in Political Geography - Fawcett

As the twentieth century drew to a close, the rich were getting richer; power was concentrating within huge corporations; vast tracts of the earth were being laid waste; three quarters of the earth's population had no control over its destiny and no claim to basic rights. There was nothing new in this. What was new was the virtual absence of any political will to do anything about it. Spaces of Hope takes issue with this.David Harvey brings an exciting perspective to two of the principal themes of contemporary social discourse: globalization and the body. Exploring the uneven geographical development of late-twentieth-century capitalism, and placing the working body in relation to this new geography, he finds in Marx's writings a wealth of relevant analysis and theoretical insight. In order to make much-needed changes, Harvey maintains, we need to become the architects of a different living and working environment and to learn to bridge the micro-scale of the body and the personal and the macro-scale of global political economy.Utopian movements have for centuries tried to construct a just society. Harvey looks at their history to ask why they failed and what the ideas behind them might still have to offer. His devastating description of the existing urban environment (Baltimore is his case study) fuels his argument that we can and must use the force of utopian imagining against all who say "there is no alternative." He outlines a new kind of utopian thought, which he calls dialectical utopianism, and refocuses our attention on possible designs for a more equitable world of work and living with nature. If any political ideology or plan is to work, he argues, it must take account of our human qualities. Finally, Harvey dares to sketch a very personal utopian vision in an appendix, one that leaves no doubt about his own geography of hope.

Political Geography A New Introduction Richard Muir As the twentieth century draws to a close the apparent political certainties of preceding decades are being seriously challenged by global forms of economic organisation, changing patterns of political identification and looming ecological crisis. Written from a humanistic perspective, Political Geography: A New Introduction explores the effects of the economic globalisation process, showing how it challenges the survival of the sovereign nation-state and how it may be encouraging the development of new political associations at a localised as well as at a transnational level. The unexpected eruption of separatist movements among national minorities is examined, as well as the more intimate identifications associated with the politics of place. The failure of attempts to transplant the European nation-state system to parts of the colonial world is discussed in a chapter which focuses on the current plight of the ‘collapsed’ states of Africa. The recent revival of interest in geopolitics is described, with a review of the history of the approach and an exploration of the new ‘critical geopolitics’. Special emphasis is given to the politics of the environment and the ways in which the environmental movement has been poorly served by the political structures and division of political power in the twentieth-century world. The book concludes with an overview of the ‘New Political Order’ and the changes engendered by the collapse of the Soviet bloc. Published twenty years after the same author’s highly successful Modern Political Geography, this completely new text will be welcomed by a new generation of students for applying the same clarity of thought and exposition to a new agenda of issues and problems.

Steve Fuller has a reputation for setting the terms of debate within science and technology studies. In his latest book, New Frontiers in Science and Technology Studies he charts the debates likely to be of relevance in the coming years. *Should science and technology be treated as separate entities?*What impact has globalization had on science and technology? *Can science be clearly distinguished from other forms of knowledge? *Does the politicization of science really matter? *Is there a role for the social regulation of scientific inquiry? *Should we be worried about research fraud? These questions are explored by examining an array of historical, philosophical and contemporary sources. Attention is paid, for example, to the Bruno Latour's The Politics of Nature as a model for science policy, as well as the global controversy surrounding Bjorn Lomborg's The Sceptical Environmentalist, which led to the dismantling and re-establishment of the Danish national research ethics boa

As the twentieth century drew to a close, the rich were getting richer; power was concentrating within huge corporations; vast tracts of the earth were being laid waste; three quarters of the earth's population had no control over its destiny and no claim to basic rights. There was nothing new in this. What was new was the virtual absence of any political will to do anything about it. Spaces of Hope takes issue with this.David Harvey brings an exciting perspective to two of the principal themes of contemporary social discourse: globalization and the body. Exploring the uneven geographical development of late-twentieth-century capitalism, and placing the working body in relation to this new geography, he finds in Marx's writings a wealth of relevant analysis and theoretical insight. In order to make much-needed changes, Harvey maintains, we need to become the architects of a different living and working environment and to learn to bridge the micro-scale of the body and the personal and the macro-scale of global political economy.Utopian movements have for centuries tried to construct a just society. Harvey looks at their history to ask why they failed and what the ideas behind them might still have to offer. His devastating description of the existing urban environment (Baltimore is his case study) fuels his argument that we can and must use the force of utopian imagining against all who say "there is no alternative." He outlines a new kind of utopian thought, which he calls dialectical utopianism, and refocuses our attention on possible designs for a more equitable world of work and living with nature. If any political ideology or plan is to work, he argues, it must take account of our human qualities. Finally, Harvey dares to sketch a very personal utopian vision in an appendix, one that leaves no doubt about his own geography of hope.

Release Date: March 03, 2003

This volume seeks to provide a sense of purpose and order to the study of political geography. The editors devise a conceptual structure for the field, bringing political geography into line with trends in contemporary geography as a whole and with other social sciences. Not only do the selections contain a wide variety of contributions from other fields, but the introductory essays and annotated bibliographies suggest related research. The structure of the book enjoys close parallels in other social sciences. The organization of the book reflects the editors’ definitions and structuring of political geography. Part I, "Heritage, " includes works that have contributed to the theoretical development of the field. Part II, "Structure, " comprises the concern to which political geographers have devoted most of their past attention. Parts III and IV, "Process" and "Behavior, " form the subject where much future theoretical and practical effort is needed. Part V, "Environment, " provides the context in which spatial structure, process, and behavior occur. The Structure of Political Geography includes selections from sociobiology, history, international relations, political economy, political science, social psychology, and sociology. The classics in the field are an essential inclusion since the book would be incomplete without them. The selections in the volume, originally published in 1971, remain useful and pertinent to political geographers of diverse persuasion and to social scientists interested in geographical approaches. The fact that there is a clear focus and conceptual interdependence in political geography is the volume’s greatest contribution.

Release Date: July 01, 1996

Release Date: October 01, 1978

Shady Practices is a revealing analysis of the gendered political ecology brought about by conflicting local interests and changing developmental initiatives in a West African village. Between 1975 and 1985, while much of Africa suffered devastating drought conditions, Gambian women farmers succeeded in establishing hundreds of lucrative communal market gardens. In less than a decade, the women's incomes began outstripping their husbands' in many areas, until a shift in development policy away from gender equity and toward environmental concerns threatened to do away with the social and economic gains of the garden boom. Male landholders joined forestry personnel in attempts to displace the gardens and capture women's labor for the irrigation of male-controlled tree crops.This carefully documented microhistory draws on field experience spanning more than two decades and the insights of disciplines ranging from critical human geography to development studies. Schroeder combines the "success story" o

British explorer and professional travel writer Isabella Bird is, to the modern eye, a study in contradictions. One of the premier mountaineers and world explorers of her generation, she was, in 1892, the first woman elected to London's Royal Geographic Society. And yet Bird's books on her travels are filled with depictions of herself and other women that reinforce the "properly feminine" domestic and behavioral codes of her day. In this fascinating and highly original collection of essays, Karen Morin explores the self-expression of travel writers like Bird by giving geographic context to their work. With a rare degree of clarity the author examines relationships among nineteenth-century American expansionism, discourses about gender, and writings of women who traveled and lived in the American West in the late nineteenth century -- British travelers, American journalists, a Native American tribal leader, and female naturalists. Drawing from a rich diversity of primary sources, from published travelogues and unpublished archival sources such as letters and diaries to newspaper reportage, Morin considers ways in which women's writing was influenced by the material circumstances of travel in addition to the various social norms that circumscribed female roles. Ranging in scale from the interior of train cars and the homes of these women to the colonial projects of conquering the American West, the author illustrates how geography was fundamental to the formation of women's identity and greatly influenced the gendered and colonialist language found in their writing.