Progressive Geographies

Matthew W. Wilson, New Lines: Critical GIS and the Trouble of the Map – now out with University of Minnesota Press.

A provocative critique of Geographic Information Science

New Lines considers a society increasingly drawn to the power of the digital map, examining the conceptual and technical developments of the field of geographic information science as this work is refracted through a pervasive digital culture. This book draws together archival research on the birth of the digital map with a reconsideration of the critical turn in mapping and cartographic thought.

“With rapidly shifting digital technologies, geo-surveillance, everyday cartography, privatized georeferenced data, and neoliberalization, New Lines offers a reflexive reassessment of the scholarly praxis of critical GIS, an increasingly anachronistic term. Attentive also to contemporary philosophical debates, Matthew W. Wilson’s lively and ambitious manifesto pushes the reader to re-examine everything they thought they knew about the topic”.

Eric Sheppard, author of Limits to Globalization: The Disruptive Geographies of Capitalist Development

Peter Brown reviews Sarah Ruden’s new translation of Augustine’s Confessions in the NYRB.

David Beer, ‘Three types of reading: ideas, targets & explorations’

I’ve been asked to give a short talk on the topic of ‘active reading’ to our students. The request got me thinking about my reading practices . I realised that, very broadly speaking, I do three types of reading. What varies is how focused the reading is and how closely it is tied to particular writing plans.

Martin Dodge and Rob Kitchin’s 2001 book Mapping Cyberspace is now available as a free download. There is also a website about the book here.

Mapping Cyberspace is a ground-breaking geographic exploration and critical reading of cyberspace, and information and communication technologies. The book:

* provides an understanding of what cyberspace looks like and the social interactions that occur there

* explores the impacts of cyberspace, and information and communication technologies, on cultural, political and economic relations

* charts the spatial forms of virutal spaces

* details empirical research and examines a wide variety of maps and spatialisations of cyberspace and the information society

* has a related website at http://www.MappingCyberspace.com.

This book will be a valuable addition to the growing body of literature on cyberspace and what it means for the future.

Reflections on the Posthuman in International Relations. An E-IR Edited Collection

Available now on Amazon (UK, USA, Ca, Ger, Fra), in all good book stores, and via a free PDF download.
Find out more about E-IR’s range of open access books here.

This book exposes a much needed discussion on the interconnectedness between objects, organisms, machines and elemental forces. It seeks to disturb dogmatic ontologies that privilege human life and successfully questions the separation between the natural and human worlds. By doing so, the collection confronts, challenges, and energises discussion beyond International Relations’ traditional territorial lines. By revealing the fragility of mainstream narratives of the ‘human,’ each author in this collection contributes to an unsettling vision of a posthuman world. Questions of what the future beyond the Anthropocene looks like pervasively infiltrate the collection and move away from a system that all too often relies on binary relationships. In contrast to this binary view of the world, the book (re)entagles the innate complexities found within the world and brings forward a plurality of views on posthumanism.

Alexandre Kedar, Ahmad Amara and Oren Yiftachel, Emptied Lands: A Legal Geography of Bedouin Rights in the Negev, forthcoming in February 2018 with Stanford University Press.

Since its establishment, the Jewish State has devoted major efforts to secure control over the land of Israel. One example is the protracted legal and territorial strife between the Israeli state and its indigenous Bedouin citizens over traditional tribal land in the Negev in southern Israel.

Emptied Lands investigates this multifaceted land dispute, placing it in historical, legal, geographical, and comparative perspective. The authors provide the first legal geographic analysis of the “dead Negev doctrine,” which has been used by Israel to dispossess Bedouin inhabitants and Judaize the southern half of the country. Through crafty use of Ottoman and British laws, particularly the concept of “dead land,” Israel has constructed its own version of terra nullius. Yet, the indigenous property system still functions, creating an ongoing resistance to the Jewish state. This study examines several key land claims and rulings and alternative routes for justice promoted by indigenous communities and civil society movements.