I Got a Song I Can Sing: A Thematic Analysis of Blues Epistemologies

Reviewed by: Ecological Crisis and Cultural Representation in Latin America: Ecocritical Perspectives on Art, Film, and Literature ed. by Mark Anderson, and M. Bora Zélia Carolyn Fornoff Anderson, Mark, and Zélia M. Bora, eds. Ecological Crisis and Cultural Representation in Latin America: Ecocritical Perspectives on Art, Film, and Literature. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2016. 329 pp. We are in the midst of an unprecedented environmental catastrophe—a disaster that is of our own making. This era has been alternatively invoked as the Anthropocene, the Capitalocene, the Chthulucene, and even the Obscene. Terminology aside, the main takeaway is that humans have become geological actors. Human history is no longer separate from, or acted out alongside, the unchanging backdrop of ahistorical "nature." Rather, human and nonhuman are inextricably imbricated, and human practices have fundamentally altered the trajectory of the planet. In spite of mounting evidence that we have entered a new climatic regime, the response to the crisis at hand has been remarkably slow. Déborah Danowski and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro argue in The Ends of the World that perhaps this is because we imagine that disaster entails a single cataclysmic event, rather than a slow and surprisingly variable process. In academia, scholarship has increasingly taken up the task of sifting through how we got here. The nascent field of the environmental humanities brings together scholars across disciplines around the common question of "nature." The wide-ranging reach of ecological crisis seems to demand new forms of scholarship, or at the very least, interdisciplinary networks to grapple with its causes and consequences. Yet within the US academy, work in the environmental humanities has remained largely Anglocentric. This is particularly troubling because the Global South bears much of the brunt of climate change. Even though Latin American countries are only responsible for about nine percent of global emissions, they are disproportionately vulnerable to its impacts. Indigenous environmental defenders are at the forefront of many of these battles; the brutal slaying of Honduran Lenca leader Berta Cáceres was but one of approximately 200 environmental-related killings worldwide in 2016 (with Brazil being the deadliest). Mark Anderson and Zélia M. Bora's edited volume, Ecological Crisis and Cultural Representation in Latin America, argues that attending to Latin American texts and contexts allows us to better understand the geopolitical, racial, and gendered implications of climate change. This volume is a welcome addition to the field of ecocriticism that will be of interest to a wide range of scholars, regardless of their primary region of study. Anderson and Bora's collection builds on the trailblazing work in Latin American literary ecocriticism by Marisol de la Cadena, Scott Devries, Jennifer French, Gisela Heffes, and Jorge Marcone. Anderson's introduction provides an excellent overview of Latin American thinkers that have theorized ecological crisis, most notably the Mexican environmental philosopher Enrique Leff and the aforementioned Brazilian anthropologist Eduardo Viveiros de Castro. Anderson explains that before the twenty-first century, in spite of the centrality of land within Latin [End Page 691] American sociopolitical discourse, "Latin American intellectuals only very exceptionally represented environmental crisis as ecological crisis" instead articulating it as a question of "uneven development" that would be resolved as soon as Latin America became fully "modern" (xii). In spite of this, the collected essays bring together a wealth of literary and cultural texts that have contended with environmental destruction throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. When curating a volume as wide-ranging as this one, representation can be challenging. Anderson and Bora's book performs strongly on this count: it includes scholars located in the United States, Europe, and in Latin America. The studied texts are representative of a range of countries throughout Latin America, including often-overlooked regions like Brazil and Central America. For example, Ana Avalos and María Victoria Sánchez's chapter on the short Costa Rican film Animales de alquiler effectively marries animal studies with biopolitics (and compelled this reader to hop onto YouTube to watch the film in question). The volume also includes numerous pieces that robustly center on Amerindian or indigenous texts and voices. A standout in this arena is Abigail Pérez Aguilera's "Mining and...

The tradition of American cultural geography was defined by studies of the rural, and in its more prosaic form focused on cataloging and mapping artifacts such as fence posts, barn types, and gravestones in order to delimit culture areas. In contrast, the city was all but ignored, treated as a cultural vacuum, and conceived only as a site of work, production, and economic relations. Hence, the importance of urban spatial science that from the late 1950s formalized that economism as central place theory, or Alonso's map of bid-rent curves, or models of retail location. Even when urban geography began eschewing formal models and theory, turning toward some kind of Marxist approach during the 1970s, the focus on things economic remained, but couched now in a different vocabulary such as rent gap, urban gatekeepers, and uneven development. The economism of spatial science and Marxism could not be sustained, however. Culture had to be let in. From 1990 pressured by outside theoretical developments such as cultural studies, and postmodernism, and changes from inside the discipline such as the rise of the new cultural geography, urban geography finally cracked, explicitly allowing culture in first as a trickle, but by the end of that decade as a flood. Culture had finally left the farm and hit the streets.

Critical geographies of education: an introduction

Imagining King Street in the Gay/Lesbian Media

This study aim at recognizing the quality and pattern of journalistic treatments related to environmental crises and disasters dealt by Arabic and international press, its interest extent with these issues, its method in dealing with it during study period. Identifying size of interest in treating environmental crises and disasters in Arabic and international journals. Identifying aspects of difference and similarity in treating environment issues resulting from environmental crises and disasters in study journals. To achieve these aims a media scanning method has been used, in addition to depending on three research tools: analyzing the shape & content of environmental crises and disasters in two journals and one magazine through a content &shape form. Preparing a list of environmental crises and disasters suits the study. Designing meeting form with journalists in number of Egyptian and Arabic journals to understand their performance regarding their treatment to environmental disasters and crises. Performing validity and reliability procedures of previous tools.

This guide accompanies the following article(s): Religious Environmentalism in the West I: a Focus on Christianity, Religion Compass 3/4 (2009) pp. 717–737, 10.1111/j.1749‐8171.2009.00161.x Religious Environmentalism in the West. II: Impediments to the Praxis of Christian Environmentalism in Australia, Religion Compass 3/4 (2009) pp. 738–751, 10.1111/j.1749‐8171.2009.00162.x Author’s Introduction Religious environmentalism (also termed, amongst others, ‘religion and ecology’) is a growing field of academic study that encompasses disciplines such as ecological theology, ecopsychology, environmental education, political science, environmental sociology and applied ecology. This field of research is of particular political significance as it is argued that the rise of religious environmentalism in the West has been and continues to be a factor in promoting an alliance of socially conservative religion and socially progressive environmentalism. Growing concern about climate change is a factor in the rise of religious environmentalism, in part because the impacts of climate change are seen to be significant for people as well as non‐human Nature. Religious groups who have long been concerned with human welfare, often to the exclusion of any form of environmentalism, are increasingly seeing that human welfare and ecological well‐being are inextricably linked. Similarly, secular environmentalists and scientists are acknowledging the potentially powerful role that religion and spirituality can play in changing human behaviours for the better. Author Recommends The following recommended works are specific to Christian environmentalism. Hessel, D.T. and Ruether, R.R. (eds.), (2000). Christianity and Ecology: Seeking the Well‐Being of Earth and Humans . Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press/Centre for the Study of World Religions. This is a large volume of work written by a range of authors. It is a core resource in the field of Christian environmentalism, and provides good coverage of this broad field. Habel, N. (2000). Introducing the Earth Bible. In: N. Habel (ed.), Readings from the Perspective of Earth (Earth Bible Vol. 1) , pp. 1–25. Sheffield, Sheffield Academic Press. The Earth Bible is a series of theological texts that amount to an ecologically oriented reinterpretation of biblical texts. Kearns, L. (1996). ‘Saving the creation: Christian environmentalism in the United States’, Sociology of Religion , 57 (1), pp. 55–59. http://users.drew.edu/lkearns/creation.pdf Whilst written in a USA context, this relatively short work (which is freely available on‐line) provides a classification of religious environmentalism that is useful more widely. It provides some particularly useful background information to important works and events in the development of Christian environmentalism. McDonagh, S. (1990). The Greening of the Church . Quezon City: Claretian Publications. This is a potent earlier work on religious environmentalism in the Catholic Church. The author, himself a Catholic, points out the many contradictions and deficiencies in the Vatican’s then environmental policies and proclamations, including a failure to deal with the issue of human population growth. This publication is a powerful insight into the development of institutional Catholic Church environmentalism. It even addresses the anti‐environmentalist views of then Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, who has since promoted a ‘greener’ view. McFarland Taylor, S. (2007). Green Sisters: A Spiritual Ecology . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. This text and associated articles in the journals ‘Worldviews’ and ‘Ecotheology’ explores the growing movement of environmentally activist Roman Catholic nuns in North America and the implications of this movement for theorising new directions in religion and culture. Northcott, M.S. (1996). The Environment and Christian Ethics . Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press. The author argues that the ‘natural tradition law’ within Christianity ‘provides significant resources for an ethical response to the environmental crisis of modern civilisation, but only if the humanocentric revision of this tradition by Finnis, Grisez and the Vatican is rejected in favour of an ecologically informed reappropriation of the pre‐Enlightenment natural law tradition, focused as it was not just on human life and human moral goods but on the moral significance and moral goods of the natural created order’ p137. Palmer, M. (1992). Dancing to Armageddon . London: Aquarian/Thorsons. An important text dealing with the history of Christianity in relation to environmental thought, differences between Western and Eastern Christianity, and the fact that other faiths are linked to environmental harm i.e. Christianity is not solely or even primarily to blame. Palmer explores some of the ecologically problematic aspects of Christianity, capitalism and Western culture. He recognises that ultimately the ecological and social crises are crises of the mind. Scharper, S.B. (1997). Redeeming the Time: A Political Theology of the Environment . New York: Continuum. </jats:list

This article provides an account of how spatial divisions permeate imaginaries of the UK’s geography, drawing on a large qualitative data-set on the locational choices of young adults. The data we draw from are unique in their multi-sited design, which includes accounts of how young people look upon the UK’s internal geography from 17 geographic vantage points, that span the four UK nations and each region of England. Data collection involved an innovative mapping exercise capturing how their spatial imaginaries are relationally constructed, and the demarcation of spatial boundaries. Drawing parallels with research on the way divisions are constructed globally by internationally mobile students, we argue that the young adults’ spatial imaginaries were infused with intranational boundaries of uneven economic development, national identity and ethnicity. Their spatial imaginaries and the geographic divisions they embody have important implications for public policy that seeks to redress spatial inequality within nations like the UK.

Picking through the Trash

Slow Death (Sovereignty, Obesity, Lateral Agency)

This paper draws upon territorial and relational approaches as well as work on the economics and politics of devolution to argue that a geographically sensitive political economy of the 'qualitative state' can interpret the roles, structures, strategies and practices of states in attempting to resolve the governance of uneven development. An empirical analysis of the UK state's governance of economic development within England reveals the construction of enabling frameworks at the national level and, in the wake of regionalization and regionalism, the encouragement of new 'spatial imaginaries' (cities and/or city-regions, localisms and pan-regionalisms). The result has been complexity, experimentation, fragmentation and incoherence with largely negative implications for territorial equity and justice. We conclude by reflecting upon the limits of projects of state decentralization and spatial policy under a strong national economic growth orientation in addressing the governance of uneven development. © The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Cambridge Political Economy Society. All rights reserved.

. . . We have not really prescribed limitations of inquiry, method, or thought upon our associates. From time to time there are attempts to the contrary, but we shake them off after a while and go about doing what we most want to do. . . . We thrive on cross-fertilization and diversity. Sauer (1956) You can’t go wrong when you call something cultural, for it is the one term that, without necessarily specifying anything, carries the full weight of all possible forms of specificity. Gallagher (1995: 307) . . . Both these quotations, one recent and one nearly a half-century old, point to the monumental task before us in attempting to report on the progress of cultural geography over the past dozen years. Many things get called cultural geography, for many different reasons, with varying purposes in mind. Different people who consider themselves cultural geographers often have wildly different ideas of what this label means, as well as radically different approaches to what they do. We cannot pretend to encompass the whole of this body of work, and we must admit as much at the outset. Instead, let us begin with the specialty group itself, since it provides some focus and continuity for taking stock of the subfield. The Cultural Geography Specialty Group’s membership has increased slowly but steadily since the group’s inception in the late 1980s. With 465 members, the CGSG was, as of 2000, the Association of American Geographers’ fourth-largest specialty group out of fifty-seven, behind the GIS, Urban Geography, and Remote Sensing groups. In terms of topical proficiency among AAG members, cultural geography looms even larger. Cultural geography is the third most frequently claimed area of proficiency, behind only GIS and Urban Geography, with 848 practicing professionals, or 13 per cent of the AAG membership. And, given Gallagher’s and Sauer’s points, the number of people who might be claimed by someone as cultural geographers would be much larger than this. Reflecting on these numbers, it appears that, far from being a moribund subfield dying out in the face of a technological revolution in the discipline, cultural geography, however it may be defined, is actually flourishing on the eve of a new millennium.

In this paper I examine the theme of mobility in Jack Kerouac's novel On the road. I argue that Kerouac used mobility, alongside other themes, to express resistance to established norms in the culture of the United States during the nineteen fifties. I sketch the use of mobility in both the content and the structure of the novel and relate it to expectations of family, progress and attached sexuality. This resistance, I suggest, is ambiguous in that it rebels against ideals of family and home at the same time as it reproduces the established American mythology of mobile, male outlaws. This interpretation is placed in the context of the counter-culture of the nineteen fifties and nineteen sixties in the United States - a period when many young people were striking out against the presuppositions of rootedness, family values and the 'American Dream'. Using the insights of new 'cultural geography' and 'cultural studies' I suggest that the use of mobility in On the road, a key text in the counter-culture, represents a contestation of a central theme in American culture. Mobility is clearly an important part of North American mythology and as such it is open to change and challenge from resistant sub-cultures.

Ecology and Collaboration

Contemporary extensions of Leon Trotsky’s argument have seen the introduction of uneven and combined development (UCD) into the field of International Relations (IR) as a theory that is uniquely able to unite sociological and international processes. Yet, despite UCD’s historical materialist foundation, its contemporary applications have been largely abstracted from ecological issues. This presents the theory with a problem that it needs to overcome if it wishes to retain explanatory relevance in a future of ecological uncertainty and crisis. This paper argues that UCD’s historical materialist basis includes a distinctly ecological dimension, which—if recovered—may enable the theory to make sense of contemporary environmental problems and also provide IR with an approach that unites international, sociological and ecological factors. The argument proceeds in three steps. It begins with an overview of UCD and its contemporary omission of ecological processes. To recover the theory’s deep ecology, it then foregrounds the ecological dimension of Karl Marx’s historical materialism, showing how an eco-socialist analysis reveals the capitalist nature of the ecological crisis. Finally, it demonstrates that an enhanced version of UCD—re-grounded in this “ecologized” historical materialism—is uniquely able to integrate the international into a Marxist socio-natural reading of the global ecological crisis.

In 2015, Jersey City was experiencing a new period of growth with a record number of housing units created or in production and thousands more jobs added to its economy.A new and more progressive administration was at the helm announcing that this round of growth would benefit more residents than previous ones, which were largely viewed as benefitting one segment of the population and area of the city.However, despite these assurances, and some efforts toward more shared growth, this new development has been very unevenly and unequally distributed across the city.This is the result of a neoliberal approach to governing that allowed developers and corporations to influence development in their interests to the detriment of most residents.