Progressive Geographies

With all the usual caveats about the notoriously contentious definition(s) of ‘terrorism’,  the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), which has been up and running at the University of Maryland since 2005, has now geocoded its Global Terrorism Database – at least for 2012 – and from its list of more than 8,400 terrorist attacks that killed over  15,400 people its has produce this map of terrorist attacks last year:

‘Although terrorism touched 85 countries in 2012, just three – Pakistan, Iraq and Afghanistan – suffered more than half of 2012’s attacks (54%) and fatalities (58%)… The next five most frequently targeted countries were India, Nigeria, Somalia, Yemen and Thailand.’

You can download a hi-res and zoomable version here, and you can find out more about START here.

Of course, it’s a moving map:

‘In the 1970s, most attacks occurred…

Last week I gave a webinar for the Text and Academic Authors Association on confronting the anxiety of academic writing. While these topics were on my mind, I thought I would use this post to elaborate on its key points.

I began the presentation by discussing the key dilemma of academic writing: although writing can be the decisive factor in professional academic success, we often lack both training in the act of writing and time to complete the necessary writing tasks. As a result, we often dislike our own writing or find the process of creating acceptable writing unduly onerous. To make matters worse, these problems are often compounded by the sense that our difficulties are illegitimate, that we should already know how to write. Since we often aren’t expert writers, especially early in our academic careers, we tend to think of ourselves as bad writers. People…

Please see the below call for papers for the RGS-IBG conference in London in August 2014.

RGS-IBG 2014

Paper Session Proposal

The geography of war and peace

Conveners: Derek Gregory (UBC), Craig Jones (UBC), Benedikt Korf (University of Zurich), Timothy Raeymaekers (University of Zurich)

Research Group Affiliation: Political Geography Research Group (PolGRG):

Abstract:

“War and peace – what’s the difference?” asked David Keen (2000) some time ago. And indeed, war is a slippery concept. Where does war end and peace start? What is war and what is “only” a riot, violence, struggle or uprising? And what does war tell us about peace? Or politics? It was Michel Foucault who once asked the question: isn’t politics the continuation of war by other means – putting Clausewitz on his head (or on his feet). Foucault alerts us to the entanglement of state making and war making (Tilly) and to the many facets of political power, violence and…

Daniele Lorenzini, Ariane Revel & Arianna Sforzini (eds.)

Michel Foucault : éthique et vérité (1980-1984), Paris, Vrin, coll. « Problèmes & Controverses », 2013

Les recherches menées par Foucault au cours des années quatre-vingt demeurent, à beaucoup d’égards, indécidables. Doit-on parler, à leur propos, d’un retour aux questions classiques du sujet, de la morale, de la liberté ? D’un abandon de la mise en perspective politique ? D’un dandysme esthétisant ? Les contemporains furent profondément déconcertés par des analyses qui, en se concentrant sur les modalités du rapport à soi et à la vérité dans l’Antiquité ou le christianisme primitif, paraissaient brouiller l’image d’un Foucault attaché à décrire et dénoncer les formes du pouvoir moderne.

Le présent ouvrage se propose de relever le défi posé par ce dernier moment, aussi fécond que provocateur, de la pensée foucaldienne, d’en dégager les enjeux théoriques et pratiques, et de se donner les…