Search

This paper explores the politics and practices of commemoration in the aftermath of Turkey's July 15, 2016 coup attempt. Developing a concept of "memorial publics," this paper examines two distinct but interrelated forms of commemoration: websites that have been set up to tell the story of the resistance to the coup attempt and a new monument that commemorates the victim-heroes of that night's fighting. I focus on two shared aspects that link the digital and the physical: The use of key terms to frame the coup attempt's heroes and villains, and the role of website and architectural design in focusing the audience's attention. I argue that these commemorative projects work together to create a memorial public in which President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's position is both naturalized and justified. This paper's analysis contributes to geographers' ongoing interest in the symbolic and material dimensions of cultural and political geographies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

No two disasters are the same. Accordingly, sociocultural geographers are aptly positioned to include the place-based and temporal aspects of disasters in their analyses. By examining the experiences of 19 Cantabrian families who have relocated to the Waikato region, this paper offers stories from the margins of ‘traditional’ disaster research. Often researchers know a great deal about the population at the site of the disaster, but little about the people who move away. Further, by investigating relocation, the insider/outsider dichotomy is challenged, as participants in this research are simultaneously inside and outside the earthquake events and their ongoing impacts. ‘Ownership’ of the disaster narratives, including research, lays open ideas of who can speak for whom. What and who is inside and/or outside a disaster event also allows a finer distinction of how place attachment filters experience and ideas of recovery, which are not diminished under internal migration. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines an experiment in theatre-making with a group of Roma refugee youth currently living in Toronto, Canada. A drama academic, a professional theatre director, an Executive Director of a Roma Community Centre, two Hungarian translators and nine Roma youth worked together to cross language and cultural borders in order to place theatre-making in a broader socio-political arena. Their primary goal was to awaken public officials, and a general public, to a better understanding of the youth's experiences of 'home' and migration in order to garner support for their claims for refugee status. Using cultural geography, community-engaged public pedagogy and feminist science as different disciplinary lenses and theoretical frames through which to make sense of the tensions of such collaborative theatre projects, the author positions the work as a 'theatre of little changes' (Balfour 2009) ultimately worth engaging in. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traces the evolution of cultural/human geography as it came under the influence of the perceptual approach, taking David Lowenthal's work on perceptual geography in the 1960s as a point of departure. Contributions made by Lowenthal to the rise in popularity of perceptual geography in the 1960s; Perceptual geography's link to identity and self-esteem.

As Fred Kniffen observed, vernacular buildings identify culture and record our relationships with physical and social environment. Influenced by Kniffen, twentieth-century cultural geographers used spatially correlated log homebuilding attributes as diagnostics. The present study used a qualitative meta-study approach to evaluate studies citing such correlations in the eastern temperate forests of North America. Forty-two studies involving sixty-three geographic entities and twenty-two attribute types were evaluated. The meta-study's findings were consistent with an Eastern Woodlands regional model described by Kniffen, Terry Jordan, and Wilbur Zelinsky. A majority of the spatially correlated attributes involved building materials, cited cultural and/or environmental influences to explain their findings, and cited correlations at state/province or county scales. Today, identification of building culture undoubtedly continues to offer potential guidance to sustainability efforts, and, although untapped, vernacular building continues to offer potential as a key diagnostic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For many geographers, the printed page is no longer a productive tool to engage contemporary definitions of place or debates surrounding the nonrepresentational. There is a discernible shift within the discipline toward creative research methods, including using media such as film or sound, with a perception that they are less 'fixed' in nature. In this article, however, I suggest that, by developing 'geo/graphic' work that draws on theories and practices from both cultural geography and graphic design, the page can be recast as a liminal space, a threshold between readers and their understanding and imagination. I propose that a book has the potential to offer a multisensory, interactive space of exploration for readers and that the construction of such geo/graphic work also offers researchers an additional creative method with which to understand place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The utility of landscape as an important component of cultural geography continues to evolve. This article demonstrates the utility of the landscape concept in reconciling informal and formal land rights. Land tenure has proved to be one of the most perplexing issues in the developing world. The inability of formal and customary property rights systems to effectively connect in ways that provide for tenure security creates dilemmas not easily overcome. Typical manifestations of this incompatibility involve problems relating to land claims and disputes, which rest upon proving access and ownership rights. Such proof is at the heart of both the capital-poverty-property rights argument and the rights recognition approach, as well as noncommodity, identity-based, and service attachments to lands. This article argues that evidence proving (attesting to) rights to land is an important but overlooked domain of interaction for formal and customary tenure systems and is where opportunity resides for a potential contribution to effective cooperation between tenure regimes. Moreover, this evidence is embedded in the same landscapes that are and have been of interest to cultural geography. This “evidence landscape” is examined in the context of its utility and connection to customary tenure and formal law and how it plays a role in attending to tenurial incompatibility in three cases: Mozambique, East Timor, and the Zuni of the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wilbur Zelinsky has spent his spectacular scholarly career enhancing our understanding of American life through explorations into the nation's cultural geography. Although he has illuminated grand themes, he is also celebrated for his eclectic work on the geography of Americana. Few, however, may appreciate his lifelong enjoyment of American literature. Early in my scholarly journey, Wilbur encouraged my awakening interest in reading widely, beyond the boundaries of professional literature. Conversations with him about shared literary enthusiasms affirmed my reading proclivities. From classic novels to those of minor authors, commentary by journalists, biographies, and mass-market fiction, literature offers provocative insights into American life and landscape. Reading widely takes one in unforeseen professional directions and yields unexpected rewards. Wilbur's sheer delight with the phenomena of the American scene, however seemingly trivial, instructs us to not overlook their possible geographical significance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Four major bridge types have dominated the central Andean Highlands in the past 400 years: the indigenous hanging bridge of plant materials; the Mediterranean stone arch bridge; the iron-cabled suspension structure with flat roadway; and the steel beam bridge. All three introductions, although technologically superior to the native vine bridge, lagged in their acceptance. Today modern bridges predominate in accessible zones, but archaic bridge types survive in the more remote areas. Bridge morphology and some bridge functions have changed, but the crossing sites have largely remained the same. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]