Progressive Geographies

Mark Crinson, Aviationland: Heathrow and the Making of an Airport Landscape – Paul Mellon Centre, June 2026

New Books discussion with Miranda Melcher

How the UK’s largest international airport remade a local landscape
 
Aviationland is the first critical study to examine how a major international airport takes shape on the ground, and what that means for the landscape around it. Focused on Heathrow airport, it traces how the area has been formed and reformed by overlapping systems of architecture, infrastructure and enclosure, from the common land of Hounslow Heath in the eighteenth century to the global transport hub of the present day.
 
The book explores the different forces that have shaped the airport’s environment: the remaking of landforms, the design of terminal buildings, and the surrounding sprawl of hotels, schools, factories, and business parks. At the same time, it shows how the Heathrow area has been moulded by wider shifts in energy, mobility, and the economy, and how the airport has in turn left a lasting mark on its surroundings, both materially and ecologically.
 
Drawing on previously unpublished material, Aviationland includes close studies of key sites, as well as figures who shaped how we see the airport today, including Richard Rogers, Patrick Abercrombie, and J. G. Ballard. Bringing together architectural, landscape, and infrastructural histories that are seldom read in tandem, this volume makes the case for Heathrow as a distinctively modern landscape. The result is a nuanced account of how local places become entangled within global systems, and what happens when they do.

Magdalena E. Stawowski, Atomic Collective: Radioactive Life in Kazakhstan – University of Toronto Press, June 2025

New Books discussion with Miranda Melcher – thanks to dmf for the link

In the aftermath of the Soviet Union’s collapse, Kazakhstan inherited the remnants of one of the world’s most contaminated landscapes: the Semipalatinsk Test Site, known locally as the Polygon. Resigned to dispossession, residents have chosen to remain on the abandoned nuclear test site, despite the isolation and the radioactive environment, rather than face marginalization or the rigors of a neoliberal world. Atomic Collective examines this nuclear legacy through a decade-long ethnographic examination of the village of Koian, situated on the border of the test site. Facing residual radiation all around them and isolation, Koianers persist, reshaping their pastoral existence among the ruins and scientific debates surrounding genetic damage.

Drawing on first-hand accounts and archival research, this book explores the resilience and everyday survival strategies of a community left behind to fend for itself in the shadow of nuclear testing. It offers a unique perspective on life in a nuclear zone and poses fundamental questions about human resilience and the impact of historical events on a collective identity. Atomic Collective sheds light on a community overlooked in the larger Cold War histories of atomic testing.

Delio Vasquez, Huey P. Newton: I am We – Polity, July 2026

Huey P. Newton was called many things in his time: revolutionary, genius, criminal, even the most surveilled human being in world history. Yet, little of the truth about him is known today due to persistent distortions of his legacy as co-founder of the Black Panther Party.

In this much-needed intellectual history, Delio Vásquez establishes Newton as a true philosopher. Newton developed innovative theories for how the most oppressed could spearhead revolutionary change in a rapidly developing technological society. Inspired by his ideas, the Panthers forged alliances with Black student unions and street gangs, Hollywood elites and poor whites, the gay liberation movement and Third World nations.

Newton left behind dozens of unpublished manuscripts analyzing politics, feminist thought, education, philosophy, evolutionary biology, and theology – texts presented here for the first time. Vásquez also puts into proper perspective Newton’s late descent into addiction and madness – a direct effect of US government techniques of cognitive war that targeted his body and mind in ways that remain all too relevant today.

Phil McManus, Extreme Weather and the Media: Communicating Disasters and Climate Change – Elgar, 2026

This timely book examines how media reporting of extreme weather events informs and influences the public perception of climate change. Phil McManus argues that media reporting has changed over time, varies between places, is influenced by political stance and must improve if we are to avoid the worst aspects of anthropogenic climate change.

Case studies of media coverage of extreme heat, wildfires and floods from around the world demonstrate that while attribution science is identifying the influence of climate change in disasters, this is not always conveyed via media. Incorporating scientific knowledge and philosophical approaches to living with climate, the book identifies how everyday reporting of weather should include references to the influence of climate change where appropriate.

This book is a valuable resource for scholars and students of geography, sociology, environmental management and media and communication. It will also benefit practitioners reporting on weather, climate scientists and urban planning specialists who are seeking more information on the role of public perception in the climate crisis.

Jeanne Favret-Saada, L’impossible famille Rivière: Retour sur un triple meutre en 1835 – Gallimard, February 2026

Interview with Le Grand Continent

Le 3 juin 1835, un jeune paysan normand, Pierre Rivière, égorge sa mère, sa sœur et son frère avant de s’enfuir. Arrêté le mois suivant, il rédige, dans l’attente de son jugement, un Mémoire d’une cinquantaine de feuillets pour expliquer son geste. Condamné à mort, puis gracié, c’est-à-dire emprisonné à vie, il se suicide dans sa cellule en 1840.
De cette affaire, il nous reste ce Mémoire très détaillé, redécouvert au début des années 1970 par Michel Foucault qui, entouré d’une petite équipe, en produisit l’édition. Jeanne Favret-Saada avait participé à cette entreprise éditoriale, qui se refusait à toute interprétation savante pour laisser la pleine page au jeune homme.
Dans le présent ouvrage, l’anthropologue revient sur ce qui s’est joué en 1835 – des élites donnant la parole à un « subalterne » que son acte jugeait d’avance –, mais en s’attachant au fond de l’affaire : quelle suite d’événements a conduit Pierre Rivière à ce triple meurtre ?
Contre l’interprétation qui réduit ce Mémoire à un discours psychotique, elle propose qu’on le soumette à une enquête qui conjoigne l’ethnologie et l’histoire. Elle examine ainsi les vingt-deux ans d’une vie familiale impossible, Victoire Rivière ayant refusé d’emblée la plupart des devoirs de l’épouse. Le mariage était alors régi par le Code civil napoléonien, pleinement confirmé par la coutume locale en matière de domination masculine. L’analyse serrée des péripéties rapportées par l’assassin montre alors les raisons de son geste meurtrier.

Thanks to Foucault News and Keanu Heydari for the links.