Critical Toponymy Research Articles

Reflections on the Politics of Place (Re)-Naming: Decolonisation, the Collapse of Totalitarian Regimes, and Government Changes

Previous research on toponymy analyses the roots and meanings of place names. However, the advent of the Critical Toponymy Theory has added a new dimension to the study of toponymy, particularly, focusing on the politics of naming. Theorists have

Assembling a Critical Toponymy of Diplomacy: The Case of Ankara, Turkey

ABSTRACT An entire subdiscipline of critical toponymy has developed over the past decades to produce theoretically informed approaches to the study of place-naming, in general, and street-naming, in particular. Among other things, research has focused on the colonial politics of street-naming; renaming of streets after a regime change; and the social justice of street-naming. What has not been documented and discussed in detail, however, is street-naming in terms of interstate geopolitics and diplomacy. In light of this omission, the current paper analyses street-naming as a form of diplomatic gift-giving and an element of geopolitical representations. Drawing on the Turkish capital city of Ankara as a case study, our assemblage analysis shows that street-naming as a form of diplomatic gift-giving has multiple underlying intentions, from strengthening existing ties to recognising shared historical, cultural, ethnic and religious narratives. Street names can also be unwanted gifts to punish or shame other countries for breaking alliances or opposing the ruling regime’s policies. As a form of ritual exchange, street-naming is highly choreographed and may include the obligation to reciprocate the gift. We end the article by suggesting new angles on, and directions for, critical toponymy and diplomacy research.

‘To us it’s still Boundary Park’: fan discourses on the corporate (re)naming of football stadia

ABSTRACT This paper explores how the corporate (re)naming of football stadia and their urban environs is negotiated through fans’ toponymic discourses and associated commemoration. Critical toponymy research emphasises oppositional toponymic tensions between sovereign authorities and citizens, which can result in competing inscriptions of space. Adopting a quasi-ethnographic approach, we reveal a more complex picture by exploring the variegated toponymic discourses of football fans. The findings demonstrate intricate entanglements in how fans reluctantly accept a corporate stadium name, yet also actively resist it through counter-performative utterances, often imbued with commemorative intent. Alternatively, fans passively ignore a corporate stadium name, using a former toponym in quotidian and habitual speech. We conclude by considering the implications of these findings for the influence of corporate power in urban toponymic inscription.

The toponymical palimpsest: renaming as a symbolic (re)construction of space and place

Theoretical approaches to renaming as present within critical toponymy and cultural geography are described in the article. The critical approach presumes neglecting the traditional etymological studies and considers toponymy as a reflection and a projection of certain social processes. A geographical approach to the social meanings of renamed places is suggested to develop this paradigm by means of explaining the multiplicity of a place. The place itself as a notion, a center of human meanings and a starting point of the unite world view is used as a domain for the suggested approach. The critical geographical paradigm is combined with the representational approaches typical for new cultural and humanistic geography in order to create a stereoscopical vision of a place through the multiplicity of its meanings, images, lived social practices and semiotic signs. Developing the notion of geoconceptualization of a place within its renaming a palimpsestic approach in toponymic studies is stated. Geoconcept are regarded not only as linked to certain place images and meanings, but also as a part of the process of the endless process of the new world views’ formation. The toponymical palimpsest reveals the multiplicity of renamed place as semiotic resignification thus turning a geoconcept into an intertext.

Towards Creating a Global Urban Toponymy—A Comment

This commentary points to the problems inherent in critical place names studies in terms of classic research topics, methodologies and geographies. It expounds the limits of the official “index”, that is, the variety of traditional urban inscriptions on which critical toponymy scholars rely in interpreting modern urban spatialities—e.g., lists of street names, official street signage, gazetteers, archival materials, etc. The argument is that in Southern urban contexts, where informality in planning can reach up to about 80 percent of the city, researching official naming and signage renders a distorted image of the city and its namescape production. A comment is thus made on the need to embrace more innovative and almost ethnographic research methodologies for understanding place referencing, place attachment and everyday navigational channels in Southern cities. These will generate a more substantial contribution towards the creation of global urban toponymy and a further de-colonization of Eurocentric presumptions regarding governmentality, urban management, and the accompanying role of street naming systems.

CONTESTING PLACE NAMES: THE EAST SEA/SEA OF JAPAN NAMING ISSUE

ABSTRACT Building on the work of critical toponymy, this paper provides an example of the active contestation of a place name. Since the early 1990s, successive Korean governments have argued that the singular use of “Sea of Japan” is a colonial legacy. We provide a brief historical context for this dispute. We identify the array of names currently used in newspapers, journals, educational texts, and internet sites and show that a dual naming is now a more common usage, especially in international English-language newspapers, atlases, educational textbooks and internet materials. A colonial naming practice has been challenged.

Eponymic Place Names in Zambia: A Critical Toponymies Perspective

This study examines eponymic place names in Zambia, specifically focusing
 on names of international airports and national stadia. Names of these
 features have been selected for study because in 2011, they had been
 subjected to changes. The study brings out the doubled nature of this name
 change by the Patriotic Front regime: to commemorate Zambia’s heroes
 and to entrench their political stamina. To successfully bring out the double
 edged nature of place name change by the Patriotic Front regime, the
 study engages Critical Toponymies Theory, a theory which considers place
 names as social artefacts which are caught up in a web of social conflict,
 implicating them as key players in (re)producing unequal socio-political
 power balance, an aspect which can be viewed as a social problem. The
 study argues that names of key national places or features in Zambia,
 banal and mundane as they may appear, are implicated in formulating and
 perpetuating social classes and power imbalance in the country because
 they are agents that promote the ideologies, aspirations and worldview of
 the ruling elites.

Rethinking the toponymic politics in Belarus in the 20–21 centuries: toward the post-colonial perspective

The article explores the historical trends and patterns in the politics of space in toponymic landscapes of Soviet and postSoviet Belarus through the prism of critical toponymy and the post-colonial theoretical approach. This work aims to reveal the colonial essence of the toponymic politics and policies in Belarus during the Soviet era and explore the unique national (post) colonial context of the post-independent place names. Based on the idea of methodological convergence of post-colonial and post-socialist paradigms, this article analyzes the “top-down” hegemonic toponymic practices implemented by the Soviet regime in Belarus in comparison with the place name policies of the colonial regimes in other parts of the world. Using the comparative analysis of historical (re)naming cases from the regional toponymic system of Belarus, the work shows that the Soviet regime used similar goals, methods, and technologies as other colonial powers. Such examples include ignoring the national language, history, and cultural traditions reflected in place names, inadequate renaming criteria and arrogant methods of choosing the new names, banalization of toponymic landscape and inconsistency in renaming, removing the Belarusian vocabulary from the toponymic landscape and inserting the foreign words and terms into the toponymic system, phonetic and grammatical mutilations of national toponyms according to the norms of the foreign language, symbolic resistance of local population toward new place names. The post-independent period can be defined by the selective post-colonial toponymic practices, which include the co-existence of the Soviet and national toponyms, symbolic (re)naming processes typical for new independent post-colonial states, and the resurrection of the ideologically motivated “toponyms-zombies” from the previous period. Therefore, the modern toponymic landscapes in Belarus can be considered post-colonial, and methodological and theoretical post-colonial perspectives on toponymic research can be applied to post-socialist states.

Streetscapes and stereotyping: streets named after Martin Luther King, Jr., and the geographies of racial identity

In addition to recognizing a commemorative space and geography that serve to legitimize a particular racial identity, streetscapes in the U.S. named after Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., (MLK) are also a stereotyped space that is presupposed as marginalized. The main objective of this paper is to investigate whether stereotyped MLK neighborhoods differ from the lived spaces. To achieve this objective, the paper relies on two indexes of segregation: namely dissimilarity and interaction indices, the racial composition, and the socioeconomic characteristics of MLK neighborhoods in the 48 contiguous states. Both dissimilarity and interaction indices implied higher segregation in the South and Midwest. The higher proportion of the African American population relative to Whites and other races in the MLK neighborhoods, except in California, confirms that the MLK streetscapes are racially concentrated spaces. Further, analysis of socioeconomic variables does resonate with the stereotype of MLK neighborhoods as marginalized spaces. To demystify the stereotype and to reconstruct the identity of African Americans and their lived and experienced spaces, this paper draws upon studies of the broader process of racialization, critical toponymy, and stereotype theories. Based on this exploratory approach, the paper concludes that though the characteristics of MLK neighborhoods reflect their marginalized status, this status is itself the result of a broader process of racialization. This process has distributed resources unequally among racial groups, forming and buttressing negative stereotypes about African Americans while also stigmatizing their living spaces, which are all too often susceptible to a policy of benign (or not-so-benign) neglect, property devaluation, and industrial pollution.

\u2018Where Art Thou?\u2019: Ethnocracy, Toponymic Silence, and Toponymic Subjugation in the Harare Commemorative Landscapes During the Mugabe Era (1980\u20132017)

This article explores the post-colonial national identity formation using place names that commemorate the nation’s past in Zimbabwe. Place name alterations that the new political elites implemented at independence in 1980 were aimed at disassembling relics of the deposed regime and craft a new national identity. The commemorative landscapes of Harare, as a national capital, constitute a strategic medium in the constitution of national identity. Ethnicity dominated the political landscape in Zimbabwe. The two main political parties, the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) and Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU), have been aligned with the two supertribes, Shona and Ndebele, respectively. The article explores how the ruling ZANU (PF) government whose leadership was largely Shona used a meta-narrative modelled around discourses of exclusionary autochthony and a partial presentation of the liberation war history that projected ZAPU as having made an insignificant contribution to the liberation war to construct a national identity. It concludes that the use of exclusionary definitions of belonging and a one-sided presentation of the war past that projected ZANU as having contributed more to the liberation war entrenched Shona ethnic chauvinistic tendencies and propagated ZANU (PF) political hegemony. Using the theoretical lens of critical toponymy, the article argues that politically motivated place renaming efforts usually select from the past aspects that serve present political purposes.

Gender-biased Street Naming in Urban Sub-Saharan Africa: Influential Factors, Features and Future Recommendations

This article explores the present-day problematic of gender-biased street names as prevalent in sub-Saharan Africa’s cityscapes. That is, the abundance of masculine street names as opposed to feminine ones in the urban environments of this region. The article first provides a comparative view on the scope of this toponymic phenomenon in other geographic regions with relation to sub-Saharan Africa. It also identifies few decisive factors in the creation of the gender-biased urban landscapes in sub-Saharan Africa. These factors consist of: recent tendencies in critical toponymy studies; colonial and post-colonial cultures of governmentality; and inadequate urban planning legislation and vision as pertained by post-colonial states. This toponymic problematic is then exemplified in a site-specific analysis of the city of Bindura in north-eastern Zimbabwe. The article concludes with recommendations for designing a more socially inclusive urban management policy in the region, pointing to future research directions of this under-studied phenomenon in critical place-name studies.

Toponimia, paisaje y ciencia. El caso de los nombres de municipio de la Plana de Castelló (País Valenciano)

Los topónimos son nombres propios que a menudo describen rasgos naturales y culturales de un paisaje y que suelen fosilizarse en el tiempo. La perspectiva diacrónica que ofrecen algunos topónimos permite reconstituir virtualmente parte de los elementos naturales y culturales de paisajes desaparecidos. La toponimia, además, posee un valor referencial, ya que designa lugares y los distingue entre sí. También tiene un valor identitario, ya que los habitantes de un lugar se sienten afectivamente vinculados a su lugar de residencia y, por tanto, al nombre que lo designa. Por último, es también una ciencia ideológica, porque el contexto político condiciona la elección de un topónimo preciso y no de otros también plausibles. En este artículo, que se centra en el caso de los municipios de la comarca valenciana de la Plana de Castelló, llevamos a cabo un método de clasificación e interpretación novedoso, ligado al auge de la toponimia crítica surgido con el cambio de milenio entre los geógrafos anglosajones. A partir de este método se detectan ciertos modelos de comportamiento toponímico que ayudan a entender el contexto ideológico dominante en el área de estudio. Estos modelos son extrapolables a otros territorios afines.

School Names in Selected Districts in Southern Province of Zambia: A Critical Toponymies Perspective

Studies have exposed place names as embodiments of the history, identity, culture, and language of their bestowers. Whilst this is true, some place naming practices reflect hegemonic tendencies that have not received adequate scholarly attention, especially in Zambia. This study examines school names in four districts in the Southern Province of Zambia and exposes the hegemonic slant inherent in place naming. The names examined in this study were collected from the Provincial Educational Offices. The names fall into two categories; government and private school names. These names were couched on Critical Toponymies Theory, a theory which politicises place naming and place names. The study found out that there is a toponymic hegemony in both categories of school names. The study argues that toponymic hegemony, as is shown in the study sample, is a manifestation of the dominance of the history, culture, world view, and identity or at least of the interests of the people who named the schools. It is concluded that place names, mundane as they may appear, are embroiled in the (re)production of unequal social power balance.

Do street status and centrality matter for post-socialist memory policy? The experience of Ukrainian cities

Naming and renaming of urban space often is sensitive in terms of the street location and status and implies categorization of streets according to the perceived importance of a street name. Thus, different locations in the city have different symbolic significance, and the urban toponymy could be read as a spatial projection of the societal axiological system. This article represents an attempt to study the importance of location (centrality vs. peripherality) and status (significance) of the urban public spaces in the 36 largest Ukrainian cities in terms of symbolical value and memory policy. The findings indicate that both investigated factors constitute an important tool of identity shaping and historical memory policy, but their influence and manifestation may vary considerably depending on specific historical, cultural and (geo)political conditions. Therefore, although the central parts of cities and the main urban arteries have tangibly larger symbolic significance, the toponymy of less presentable urban areas may be no less eloquent in the critical toponymy studies.

Shifting urban namescapes: street name politics and toponymic change in a Romanian(ised) city

Street names express the spatial materialisation of nominative discourses articulated and deployed by the powerful in their politicisation of the urban landscape with self-legitimising ideological values, political symbols and historical narratives. Using an approach grounded upon the theoretical principles of critical toponymies, this paper sets out a longitudinal perspective on the politics of street nomenclature in Hermannstadt/Sibiu (Romania). For this purpose, a dataset comprising the complete historical record of street names in Sibiu between 1829 and 2018 was constructed. The analysis focuses on capturing the ethnopolitics played out at the level of the city's street names through the dual toponymic means of naming and renaming. Subsequently turning to a cross-sectional and comparative approach, the paper then explores the spatialisation of post-communist toponymic change. The statistical analyses performed on these data reveal how the streetscape became a canvas for political authorities' attempts to inscribe and reinscribe ethnicity onto urban space.

Critical Toponymies: The Contested Politics of Place Naming

The timing of Critical Toponymies, a compilation of articles that advocates linking toponymic studies to critical theory of power relations, is odd. This is certainly true of the original publicati...

TERMİK SANTRAL PROJELERİNİN SOSYAL KABUL BOYUTU: PAŞAKÖY (BALIKESİR) TERMİK SANTRALİ ÖRNEĞİ

Herhangi bir bölgede yapılan veya planlanan bir enerji tesisinin maksimum kapasitede çalışabilmesi, onun teknolojik özelliklerinin yanında, yapıldığı bölgedeki yerel halkın kabul düzeyine de bağlıdır. Yerel halkın bulunduğu alanlarda yapılan tesislere yönelik bu kabul düzeyi literatürde sosyal kabul olarak tanımlanmaktadır. Sosyal kabul ile ilgili yapılan çalışmalarda temel amaç, toplumun yapılan yatırımlara yönelik sosyal kabul düzeylerini belirlemek ve halkın ilgili politikaların belirlenmesindeki sürece dâhil edilmesini sağlamaktır. Enerji ihtiyacını büyük oranda ithal ettiği kaynaklar ile karşılayan Türkiye, bu açıdan bakıldığında dışa bağımlı bir görünüm arz eder. Enerjide yurt dışına olan bağımlılığı azaltmak, enerji kaynaklarını çeşitlendirmek ve enerji üretiminde kendi öz kaynaklarını değerlendirebilmek amacıyla ülke çapında birçok enerji tesisi inşa edilmiş veya planlanmıştır. Planlanan ve yapımına başlanan bu tesislerden birisi de Balıkesir–Altıeylül sınırları içerisinde bulunan Paşaköy Termik Santrali’dir. Bu çalışmanın temel amacı, Paşaköy Termik Santrali örneğinde; (i) yerel halkın termik santrallere yönelik sosyal kabul düzeylerini, (ii) yerel halkın termik santrallere yönelik algı ve tutumlarını etkileyen etmenleri ve (iii) termik santrallerin sosyal kabul düzeyinde mesafenin bozucu etkisinin varlığını belirlemektir. Çalışmada ayrıca çevre ile ilgili genel tutumları da incelemek için bir anket formu geliştirilmiştir. Çalışmada alan araştırması yöntemi kullanılmıştır. Bu kapsamda, söz konusu termik santralin etki alanı içerisinde yakınlık düzeyine göre zonlar belirlenmiş ve bu zonlarda tesadüfi örnekleme yoluyla seçilen katılımcılara anket uygulanmıştır. Araştırma sonuçları bölge halkının çevresel tutumları ve termik santrale yönelik sosyal kabul düzeyleri açısından yorumlanmış ve değerlendirilmiştir. Araştırma, termik santrale olan mesafenin yerel halkın santrale olan tutum ve davranışlarında ve sosyal kabul düzeyinde belirleyici bir etkisi olduğunu göstermiştir. Termik santrale yakınlık arttıkça; santralin ekonomik ve çevresel açıdan olumsuz etkisi olacağı düşüncesi nedeniyle santrale olan sosyal kabul düzeyi azalmaktadır. Enerji santrali projelerinin kabul edilebilirliği ve sürdürülebilirliği açısından sosyal kabul kapsamında yerel halk mutlaka dikkate alınmalıdır. Proje hakkındaki bilgilendirme sınırlı olduğu durumlarda yöre halkı projeye karşı durmakta ve çevresinde yapılacak olandan habersiz olma hususunda kaygılanmaktadır. Yaşadığı bölgede yapılan faaliyetlere ve yatırımlara yerel halkın tepkisini ifade eden NIMBY davranışının olumsuz etkilerini ortadan kaldırmak adına bölge insanının proje sürecine dâhil edilmesi gerekmektedir. Projeden, süreçten, projenin olası etkilerinden haberdar olan yerel halkın sosyal kabul düzeyinin pozitif yönde artacağı düşünülmektedir.

Who owns the name? Fandom, social inequalities and the contested renaming of a football club in Timişoara, Romania

ABSTRACTRecent scholarship in critical toponymy has raised questions about the impacts on urban residents of selling naming rights and the possibility of contesting the commodification of urban place names. This article examines these issues using Poli Timişoara, the major football team of Timişoara, Romania, as a case study. The cash-strapped local authority sold the naming rights for the team to raise revenue. However, when the club’s private owner was unable to finance the team, the local authority reacquired the naming rights of Poli, now under the name Asociaţia Club Sportiv Poli (a new team with a small fan base). Drawing on the everyday narratives of fans, this article explores how the commodification of a local club name can cause social tensions. This is important for understanding urban residents’ access, or lack thereof, to social capital resources and how this leads to the manifestation of social inequalities which co-determine fans’ reactions and responses to the change in the name of a sports team. The findings suggest that commodifying names can mobilize serious contestations among partisan groups about who owns the name, although such contestations appear to be on uncertain ground because of post-communist urban practices of delayed economic restructuring.

Scalar tensions in urban toponymic inscription: the corporate (re)naming of football stadia

ABSTRACTThis article examines issues of scale in urban toponymic inscription. The specific focus of inquiry is toponymic commodification, whereby corporate brand names of international scope are imposed on English football stadia and their locally embedded fan communities. We employ primary data relating to three football clubs in the Greater Manchester conurbation, all of which have sold their stadium naming rights to corporate entities. Drawing on fans’ perspectives, our findings initially surface the scalar tensions arising from such occurrences. We explore how football club authorities attempt to manage these tensions; first through efforts to embed corporate names into the fabric of urban communities, and second by using commemoration to valorize notions of the “local” for their fan base. The article concludes by discussing how our findings deepen understanding of critical toponymies, particularly in terms of theorizing scale and shedding light on the workings of neoliberal agendas for controlling urban space.

Engaging Geography at Every Street Corner: Using Place-Names as Critical Heuristic in Social Studies

ABSTRACTIn this article I explore an often overlooked feature of everyday life that can serve as a powerful heuristic for students to engage history and geograhpy critically: everyday place-names. Drawing on scholarship in critical toponymy, I explore how the city-text—the past as it is overlaid on top of the geography of the community through place-names—serves to commemorate particular histories that are often simultaneously exclusionary and taken-for-granted. Outlining three of the city-text's primary features—its unconventional narrative structure that emphasizes a worldview, its existence as a manifestation of state control over commemoration in the community, and its exclusive focus on heroism—I suggest that social studies classrooms be sites from which students critically engage the everyday city-texts of their own communities as a way of fostering critical thinking skills and commitments to historical and geographic critique.