The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
The Louvre Museum has 8.5 million visitors per year. This blog was viewed about 110,000 times in 2011. If it were an exhibit at the Louvre Museum, it would take about 5 days for that many people to see it.
Given the number of these that are not really novels, this list should probably be retitled ‘books I read that are not for work reasons…’ Not as many as the first half of the year, but that’s probably a product of being at home and having many other non-work distractions as well as being generally busier.
I meant to post this before I went offline for a couple of weeks for Christmas and a holiday in the Gambia, but didn’t do so. Anyway, it is a brief review of my 2011 and a look to 2012…
Highlights of 2011 would include the three months in Australia at the ANU, with time in Tasmania, Sydney and the Blue Mountains, and trips to Singapore, Hong Kong, Macau and very briefly to Shenzhen on the way there and back. I had a fascinating trip to Nigeria to visit Susan and we had a great time in Amsterdam on holiday. I was in the US twice to give talks in LA, Berkeley and Tucson. Receiving the Royal Geographical Society Murchison award was an unexpected honour. In October I returned to full-time teaching and administrative duties at Durham.
I watched quite a bit of cricket—although the two days I went to England games were badly rain-affected. England became the world’s top ranking test cricket team this year. I watched a lot of cycling too, and watching Mark Cavendish win the green jersey in the Tour de France and then win the World Championship (both true team-efforts) were the sporting highlights for me. I did more cycling this year than I’ve ever done before, over 3,500 miles, in large part because of the three months in Australia with great weather when I would usually be fighting the wind, rain and cold of a British winter and early spring.
Three edited collections came out – Reading Kant’s Geography, Sloterdijk Now and the five volume Environment and Planning set. The last two have 2012 dates on them, but they were actually published in 2011. I firmly believe that Reading Kant’s Geography and Sloterdijk Now should be seen as works of many hands, rather than mere collections. I’m very pleased with both and grateful to the contributors, my co-editor Eduardo Mendieta on the Kant book, and presses for their hard work. The Birth of Territory is still under review, though I’ve started work on revisions based on the two reports I do have. I’m hoping that this can be wrapped up reasonably soon, but a 2013 publication now seems likely.
Publications in 2012 will be thin on the ground for me. I have nothing accepted and forthcoming with journals or publishers. A couple of papers are under review, but I doubt they will be out anytime soon, even if accepted. There are a couple of long-delayed edited books I have pieces in, but I’m not holding my breath. My RGS-IBG Political Geography lecture may appear in the journal in late 2012. Being asked to do this was very gratifying, and I’m looking forward to it, albeit with some nervousness. I have some other interesting speaking engagements coming up. I’m especially looking forward to the Anachronic Shakespeare conference at New York University; the AAG session on German Philosophy and Geography; and the trip to Kentucky to give a lecture to the Committee on Social Theory. I have trips to Yale, Harvard, King’s College London, Leeds, Cambridge, Rome, Paris and Nottingham in the diary. Once I’ve finished existing commitments, and revisions, I’m hoping to return to The Space of the World. I have parts of two chapters in draft, and the Kentucky and RGS-IBG papers will shape material for a third. For once I am not committed to editing any books, though there are a couple of ideas in discussion.
I’ve now completed five full years (and a bit of 2006) as editor of Society and Space. It’s a rare privilege to be actively involved with shaping such a crucial journal and overseeing its impact within and beyond the discipline of Geography. It is an enormous amount of work, especially given the steep rise in submissions, most of which happens unseen and in hours outside a standard working week. I am fortunate to work with fine co-editors and a great journal manager. Amye Kenall, Jatinder Padda and Jan Schubert at Pion all play a crucial role. Naturally, contributors and referees make and shape the content. Together I think we put together a journal that is consistently worth reading.
2011 was also the first full year of this blog, which began in April 2010. I am very grateful for the audience I have somehow gathered along the way, and although there are doubtless a lot of passing visits, sufficient people subscribe in various ways that it feels like it has a lot of continuity of readership. There have been times, especially recently, when it has become effectively just a notice-board for events, publications and links, but hopefully there has been enough beyond that to make it distinctive. Many thanks for reading!
Adrian Ivakhiv has some thoughts on “The joy (& loneliness) of being interdisciplinarian“.
I am someone who did a first degree in Politics and Modern history – though taught from a single department of Government – with a PhD from that same department in what can best be described as political theory, and who then taught in a Politics and International Studies department for three years. I think I can therefore claim to be what North Americans tend to call a ‘political scientist’, although the ‘scientist’ part isn’t something I’m comfortable with. For a while I engaged more with philosophers and philosophy than anything else. I then moved to Geography. I have no qualifications in Geography – not even a GCSE. I’ve published in most of the key Geography journals. I edit a journal that Geographers see as one of their own, though it has always claimed to be an interdisciplinary journal, and I’ve continued to try to make it so. So can I claim to be a Geographer? If so – and while I’ve usually denied it myself, some eminent Geographers have insisted that I am – when did I become one? The day I was hired by Durham? At some point since?
If I had to take a label at all, I usually say that I do the history of ideas. I’ve done it in Politics departments; I now do it in a Geography department. It allows me – I think – to write on very contemporary issues such as the ‘war on terror’ in a way that is informed by transformations among concepts, or to work on Beowulf or Antigone. I see no reason why I shouldn’t work on Leibniz and Lebanon; Heidegger and hermaphrodites; Coriolanus and contingent sovereignty. Is this interdisciplinary? Transdisciplinary? Undisciplined? One of the good things about the position I’m in – and I fully recognise this is not the case for many people – is that I no longer need to care.
One of the speaking invitations I unfortunately had to turn down this year was to speak in Zagreb at the Human Rights film festival. (You know you are busy when you have to turn down expenses-paid trips to interesting places you’ve not been before.) Since I couldn’t be physically present Petar Milat suggested I give them a text for translation in the programme. I’ve just been sent a copy. I’m in good company with David Harvey and McKenzie Wark. The piece is a translation of the ‘Territory without Borders‘ piece I wrote for the Harvard International Review earlier this year. The English version is freely available, and the Croatian translation can be found here. Many thanks to Tihana Bertek for the translation; and Petar for arranging this and the initial invitation – hopefully another time.
this is also a useful collection of links and images
The Berkeley Journal of Sociology has a whole host of links on the Occupy movement.
I mentioned some funding opportunities recently; the Durham Doctoral Studentships – especially useful for those ineligible for the other schemes are now advertised here.
Roland Boer shares the preface to his forthcoming book Criticism of Earth: On Marx, Engels and Theology. Very interesting on Marx’s manner of writing, and the contrasts with Engels.
Over at Exploring Geopolitics, Jeremy Crampton and I are two of the first to offer our thoughts on the year in geopolitics. Jeremy discusses Wikileaks; I say something about the Occupy movement. Saul Cohen offers much more comprehensive thoughts here.
