Progressive Geographies

# PALESTINE /// The Right to the Ruin: Civilizational Absence in the Post-Nakba Landscapes

stuartelden — Tue, 21 May 2013 07:06:59 +0000

What is wrong with these pictures? Start maybe by looking at them all. The landscapes that they show are beautiful and seem to be almost untouched by humans. The problem is that they are taken where Palestinian villages used to exist before 1948. Five days ago was the 65th anniversary of the Nakba (the catastrophe in Arabic), the day that hundreds of thousands of Palestinians had to flee from their land when the State of Israel was established.

The Funambulist Pamphlets

stuartelden — Tue, 21 May 2013 07:03:25 +0000

One of my favourite blogs, The Funambulist, teams up with one of the most interesting and challenging new publishing outlets, Punctum Books, to produce a series of little books on themes covered on the blog.

The twelve first volumes are respectively dedicated to Spinoza, Foucault, Deleuze, Legal Theory, Occupy Wall Street, Palestine, Cruel Designs, Arakawa + Madeline Gins, Science Fiction, Literature, Cinema and Weaponized Architecture.

Full details on The Funambulist pamphlets here.

Writing for readers

stuartelden — Tue, 21 May 2013 06:51:15 +0000

Short comment piece in The Chronicle on writing, readers and changes to publishing. Thanks to Annick Wibben for the link.

Jeanne Haffner, The View from Above

stuartelden — Tue, 21 May 2013 06:43:03 +0000

Jeanne Haffner’s The View from Above: The Science of Social Space has recently been published by MIT Press.

In mid-twentieth century France, the term “social space” (l’espace social)—the idea that spatial form and social life are inextricably linked—emerged in a variety of social science disciplines. Taken up by the French New Left, it also came to inform the practice of urban planning. In The View from Above, Jeanne Haffner traces the evolution of the science of social space from the interwar period to the 1970s, illuminating in particular the role of aerial photography in this new way of conceptualizing socio-spatial relations.

As early as the 1930s, the view from above served for Marcel Griaule and other anthropologists as a means of connecting the social and the spatial. Just a few decades later, the Marxist urban sociologist Henri Lefebvre called the perspective enabled by aerial photography—a technique closely associated with the French colonial state and military—“the space of state control.” Lefebvre and others nevertheless used the notion of social space to recast the problem of massive modernist housing projects (grands ensembles) to encompass the modern suburb (banlieue) itself—a critique that has contemporary resonance in light of the banlieue riots of 2005 and 2007. Haffner shows how such “views” permitted new ways of conceptualizing the old problem of housing to emerge. She also points to broader issues, including the influence of the colonies on the metropole, the application of sociological expertise to the study of the built environment, and the development of a spatially oriented critique of capitalism.

Taking time to dwell with Iain Sinclair

stuartelden — Mon, 20 May 2013 16:50:57 +0000

Reblogged from ANTHEM:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzXM0S4n1Hw

Iain Sinclair is a leading writer, filmmaker, poet and psychogeographer, renowned for his walks in the borderlands of cities, derelict sites and urban redevelopments. His solitary walks in Middlesbrough and Hartlepool were the focus of a public talk at mima. Sinclair previously walked the M25 to write London Orbital, and his new book, Ghost Milk, is a road map of post-Olympics landscapes.

Iain Sinclair lecture - his new book Ghost Milk was published recently.

Intervention symposium - 'Explosive geographies'

stuartelden — Mon, 20 May 2013 16:48:30 +0000

Reblogged from AntipodeFoundation.org:

On April 15, 2013, two bombs targeting the Boston Marathon exploded on Boylston St, killing three and initiating the United State’s most visible domestic security operation of the decade. Two days later, a fertilizer plant located in the town of West, Texas exploded spectacularly, killing 14 and levelling a significant part of the town. The Boston bombings and the subsequent manhunt were covered non-stop for weeks, while coverage of the West explosion was comparatively sparse.

Foucault for Architects

stuartelden — Mon, 20 May 2013 16:47:14 +0000

Gordana Fontana-Giusti’s Foucault for Architects is now out (via Heterotopian Studies).

From the mid-1960s onwards Michel Foucault has had a significant impact on diverse aspects of culture, knowledge and arts including architecture and its critical discourse. The implications for architecture have been wide-ranging. His archaeological and genealogical approaches to knowledge have transformed architectural history and theory, while his attitude to arts and aesthetics led to a renewed focus on the avant-garde.

Prepared by an architect, this book offers an excellent entry point into the remarkable work of Michel Foucault, and provides a focused introduction suitable for architects, urban designers, and students of architecture.

Foucault’s crucial juxtaposition of space, knowledge and power has unlocked novel spatial possibilities for thinking about design in architecture and urbanism. While the philosopher’s ultimate attention on the issues of body and sexuality has defined our understanding of the possibilities and limits of human condition and its relation to architecture.

The book concentrates on a number of historical and theoretical issues often addressed by Foucault that have been grouped under the themes of archaeology, enclosure, bodies, spatiality and aesthetics in order to examine and demonstrate their relevancy for architectural knowledge, its history and its practice.

Podcast: Ian Hacking 'Making up Autism'

stuartelden — Mon, 20 May 2013 16:43:49 +0000

Reblogged from Centre for Medical Humanities Blog:

A podcast of Professor Ian Hacking's ‘Making Up Autism’ - Inaugural C. L. Oakley Lecture in Medicine and the Arts, University of Leeds, 13 May 2013 - is now available here.

Audio recording of Ian Hacking lecture in Leeds from 13 May 2013

Landscape's Geopolitics reviewed by John Agnew

stuartelden — Mon, 20 May 2013 16:22:35 +0000

Reblogged from Society and Space - Environment and Planning D:

John Agnew reviews Giorgio Mangani's book Geopolitica del paesaggio: storie e geografie dell'identità marchigiana [Landscape's Geopolitics: Histories and Geographies of Marches' Identity] here. The volume was published in 2012 by Il lavoro editoriale.

Postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Copenhagen

stuartelden — Mon, 20 May 2013 09:40:13 +0000

Posted on behalf of Ben Rosamond – br@ifs.ku.dk:

Three postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Copenhagen ‘EuroChallenge’ Interdisciplinary Research Programme Department of Political Science, Facuty of Law, Faculty of Humanities ‘EuroChallenge’ is a major new interdisciplinary project, financed by the University’s 2016 strategic funding initiative. It addresses key questions about the place of Europe in the context of a rapidly and radically changing global order. The project is a collaborative venture, involving three faculties (Social Science, Law and Humanities), under the directorship of Professor Ben Rosamond of the Department of Political Science and three co-PIs: Professors Mikael Rask Madsen (Law) Hans-Jörg Trenz (Humanities), and Marlene Wind (Political Science). It is organized into three work packages. In this first round of appointments one postdoctoral fellow will be recruited to each work package as follows:

Position 1

3-year Assistant Professorship, Department of Political Science, affiliated to work package 1: ‘The European market space and the new global economy: constructions, paradigms and policies.’

http://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/AGN743/assistant-professorship/

Position 2

3-year postdoctoral fellowship hosted by the iCourts Centre of Excellence in the Faculty of Law, affiliated to work package 2: ‘The European legal-political space in a new global order? The global challenge to European markets, human rights and constitutionalized democracy’

http://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/AGN747/postdoctoral-fellowship/

Position 3

2-year postdoctoral fellowship (with the possibility of up to one year’s extension), hosted by Centre for Modern European Studies in the Faculty of Humanities, affiliated to work package 3: ‘Complex diversity: the social and cultural interpretations of changing European and global order’

http://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/AGN751/postdoctoral-fellowship/

The application deadline for all positions is 24 June 2013.