Posted on October 2, 2012 by stuartelden

A brief tribute to Neil Smith, and seven open access papers from the archives of Environment and Planning A and Society and Space:

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3quarksdaily Philosophy blog prize

Posted on October 1, 2012 by stuartelden

Worth reading the whole piece, with the introduction by judge Justin Smith which thinks about the status of blogs as a form of philosophical writing.

Justin E. H. Smith has picked the three winners:

  1. Top Quark, $1000: Wesley Buckwalter, Factive Verbs and Protagonist Projection
  2. Strange Quark, $300: Elizabeth Anderson, Recharting the Map of Social and Political Theory: Where is Government? Where is Conservatism?
  3. Charm Quark, $200: Thomas Rodham, Democracy is not a truth machine
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Peter Sigrist ‘In Memory of Neil Smith’

Posted on October 1, 2012 by stuartelden

At Polis.

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Posted on October 1, 2012 by stuartelden

Some thoughts about Neil Smith at the Royal Holloway Geopolitics & Security blog.

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Kant – Natural Science now out

Posted on October 1, 2012 by stuartelden

Just received my copy of Kant’s Natural Science – includes the first full English translation of the Physical Geography lectures, albeit in the corrupt Rink edition. I am due to write a review of this, and will be speaking about it at the APA Eastern meeting this December. Great to have this volume out – it’s been a long time in the making.

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Eric Hobsbawm

Posted on October 1, 2012 by stuartelden

The Guardian has the news of the death of Eric Hobsbawm, at the age of 95. The obituary is here. His three books on the long nineteenth-century – The Age of Revolution, The Age of Capital and The Age of Empire – and the one on the short twentieth-century, The Age of Extremes, were all important to me at different times.

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IAS director and new term

Posted on October 1, 2012 by stuartelden

Today I officially take over as Director (Social Science) of the Institute of Advanced Study.  This term’s fellows arrive today, and it should be really interesting – this year’s theme is Time.

Teaching starts next week, but several meetings this week. I’m teaching much the same as last year – a final year module on Territory and Geopolitics; convene and part-teach level two Political Geography; and the Foucault lectures on Theory and Geography.

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Neil Smith as lecturer, and singing the Socialist ABC

Posted on September 30, 2012 by stuartelden

There are lots of clips of Neil as lecturer online [more here], such as his AAG lecture for Progress in Human Geography in 2011:

This one – posted by James Sidaway on the CUNY site, and also sent to me by Jan Schubert – shows a different side to him:

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Tributes to Neil Smith

Posted on September 30, 2012 by stuartelden

Many tributes to Neil Smith are appearing. There are several in the comments to the CUNY Graduate Center page, including from Trevor Barnes, John Agnew, Allen Scott, Sue Ruddick, Simon Dalby, Dick Peet, Ron Johnston, James Sidaway… too many to mention. And there are more at a page set up to wish him well as he was fighting his illness. I’ve seen many from friends, colleagues and readers of his work on Facebook. And there have been blog tributes from Derek Gregory, Álvaro Sevilla Buitrago, Jeremy Crampton and Clive Barnett.

Neil’s personal website gives a good sense of his wide interests, scholarship and activism – and you can download his book Uneven Development there too.

Neil was a past co-editor of Society and Space, and made many contributions to the journal over the years. You can find a list of those pieces here – several are available open access. In time the journal will do something to honour his memory and work.

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Neil Smith, 1954-2012

Posted on September 29, 2012 by stuartelden

The Graduate Center at CUNY has the tragic news of the death early this morning of Neil Smith. Neil was a terrific scholar, incisive, creative and supportive, making several fundamental contributions to Geography and having a reach far beyond that discipline. He was also a warm, funny and generous person. He will be greatly missed.

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