Progressive Geographies

Michel Foucault, The Punitive Society: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1972-1973, Edited by Arnold I. Davidson, Palgrave Macmillan, September 2015

Publisher’s page

‘Unfortunately, when we teach morality, when we study the history of morals, we always analyze the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals and do not read [Colquhoun], this character who is fundamental for our morality. The inventor of the English police, this Glasgow merchant … settles in London where, in 1792, shipping companies ask him to solve the problem of the superintendence of the docks and the protection of bourgeois wealth. [This is a] basic problem …; to understand a society’s system of morality we have to ask the question: Where is the wealth? The history of morality should be organized entirely by this question of the location and movement of wealth.’
Michel Foucault

These thirteen lectures on the ‘punitive society,’ delivered at the Collège…

Halvard Buhaug

Fiona McConnell

The new Political Geography editorial team for 2016 (and beyond?) is now in place. James Sidaway, Jo Sharp, and I will be joined by two new associate editors: Halvard Buhaug, from the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), and Fiona McConnell, from Oxford University.  Halvard and Fiona both currently serve on the journal’s editorial board and have a long history assisting in directing the journal. They both come to the journal with a wealth of experience, in journal editing and management, as well as being leading scholars in the field. In addition to Halvard and Fiona, James Sidaway will be continuing on as associate editor and Jo Sharp will have her remit expanded from reviews editor to  associate editor with responsibility for the entire ‘Setting the Agenda’ section (guest editorial, review essays, review forums, etc.).

It’s with a sense of humility (yes, really…

“When war happens in the city, people die in buildings, the majority in their homes; when the dust settles ruins become evidence with which we could reconstruct controversial events.”
Eyal Weizman

I’m delighted to announce that my good friend Eyal Weizman will deliver the next Wall Exchange on Forensic Architecture at the Vogue Theatre in downtown Vancouver on 15 October 2015:

Can architecture provide new tool of political analysis and intervention? This question is central to the work of Eyal Weizman, Israeli architect and scholar. Since 2010 he has been directing Forensic Architecture, an innovative forensic agency that investigates the sites of contemporary conflicts and monitors the crimes of states. His teams examine buildings, ruins, maps, satellite imagery and increasingly an emergent type of testimony — images and clips taken by citizens and uploaded online. His talk will unpack new modes of exposing the logic behind state violence from the…

An exhibit at Simon Fraser University is exploring the application of Lefebvre’s rhythmanalysis in art! “Curated by Melanie O’Brian and Amy Kazymerchyk, Through A Window traces the history of art at SFU of the past 50 years. The inspiration behind the project stems from Henri Lefebvre’s book Rhythmanalysis (1992), particularly the chapter “Seen from the Window,” which allows us to consider three social, spatial, and material windows of SFU, and explore different rhythms since SFU’s inception in 1965.

Posted by Katy Crossan, Senior Commissioning Editor

Ashgate is delighted to announce the launch of a new series, Cultural Geographies: Rewriting the Earth, with series editors Paul Kingsbury (Simon Fraser University, Canada) and Arun Saldanha (University of Minnesota, USA).

Cultural geography has witnessed profound changes in recent years on three interrelated levels: theoretical, methodological, and socio-political. In terms of theory, new conceptions of culture have emerged which examine social and geographical differentiation as involving objects, affect, nonhumans, mobility, emotion, queerness, assemblage, materiality, the unconscious, biopolitics, relationality, and intersectionality. At the level of methodology, experiments with fieldwork and writing practices demonstrate the extent to which cultural geography has learnt from and contributes to many areas of policy, science, therapy, ethics, aesthetics, and activism. Finally, in terms of the socio-political and engagements with the world outside of academia, cultural geographers are exploring the multiple crises of energy, climate change, nationalism…