Progressive Geographies

Kirsten Simonsen and Lasse Koefoed, Geographies of Embodiment: Critical Phenomenology and the World of Strangers – Sage, 2020

This is the latest book in the Society and Space series

Geographies of Embodiment provides a critical discussion of the literatures on the body and embodiment, and humanism and post-humanism, and develops arguments about “otherness” and “encounter” which have become key ideas in urban studies, and studies of the city. It situates these arguments in a wider political context, looking at power-relations through case studies at urban, national and transnational scales.

These arguments are situated across disciplinary boundaries, at the borderline between between philosophy and social science that is associated to critical phenomenology, and reaches across Human Geography, Sociology, Philosophy, Anthropology, Cultural Studies and Urban Studies.

Geographies of Embodiment by Koefoed and Simonsen presents articulate and sophisticated insights into issues about encounters, space and bodies through a practice-orientated reading of phenomenology. The book draws upon four projects over the last fifteen years about cities, encounters and nationalism to offer critical and engaging readings of encounters, embodiment, and the politics of urban life. This is an important text for critical and engaged scholars working in human geography, urban studies and racial and ethnic studies.

Peter Hopkins, Professor of Social Geography, Newcastle University

Rarely do I think that any book is a ‘must-read’, but that is surely the case with Geographies of Embodiment: Phenomenology and Strangers.  Located on the border between philosophy and social science, this is a deeply theoretical book that is anchored by significant empirical research.  Koefoed and Simonsen have written a powerful argument for a new humanism, one that is rooted in complex critical theories and phenomenological philosophies, yet is supported by important empirical work on the geographies of embodiment, practice and difference.  The result is a book that makes us rethink present understandings of humanism, especially as the ‘human’ in humanism is (re)made in embodied spatial practice.

Lawrence D. Berg, Professor in Critical Geography at the University of British Columbia

Post-Kantian Philosophy at Warwick – audio and video recordings

Daniele Lorenzini, Simon Critchley, Keith-Ansell Pearson, Stephen Houlgate, Miguel de Beistegui and others.

More details on the Centre here. The Centre’s conference this year is on 5-6 June 2020 – call for abstracts here.

In the Trenches of History – an ARTE/rbb documentary on Ernst Jünger from 2019, German with English subtitles

The North American Arctic: Themes in Regional Security, edited by Dwayne Ryan Menezes and Heather N. Nicol, UCL Press, 2019 (free download)

The North American Arctic addresses the emergence of a new security relationship within the North American North. It focuses on current and emerging security issues that confront the North American Arctic and that shape relationships between and with neighbouring states (Alaska in the US; Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut in Canada; Greenland and Russia).

Identifying the degree to which ‘domain awareness’ has redefined the traditional military focus, while a new human rights discourse undercuts traditional ways of managing sovereignty and territory, the volume’s contributors question normative security arrangements. Although security itself is not an obsolete concept, our understanding of what constitutes real human-centred security has become outdated. The contributors argue that there are new regionally specific threats originating from a wide range of events and possibilities, and very different subjectivities that can be brought to understand the shape of Arctic security and security relationships in the twenty-first century.

The North American Arctic provides a framework or lens through which many new developments are assessed in order to understand their impact on a changing circumpolar region at different scales – from the level of community to the broader national and regional scale.