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CITIES AND IDENTITIES IN THE US SOUTH
Geography 716
Rich Schein
This seminar is based on three fundamentally related premises:
- "places" and "landscapes" are best conceived of as "always becoming" and can be seen as processes implicated in the socio-spatial (re)production of everyday life;
- distinctions between local/global, theoretical/empirical, and a whole host of seeming oppositions often
are false dichotomies -- and we can begin to challenge this fissiparous tendency by viewing each "pair" as mutually constitutive;
- it often is useful (and fun!) to examine abstract concepts in light of the immediate and the mundane.
Thus, although the "place" and "landscape" under scrutiny here is "the southern city", we will
continually strive to incorporate the city of Lexington into our understanding of cities and identities in the US south.
Beyond these general geographic premises, we will weave together four important strands of inquiry which bear upon the contemporary urban south. These strands are by no means exhaustive of the
interpretive possibilities open to us or of the problems and issues facing urban America. Rather, they represent a beginning that can be served by a number of exciting new publications. The four strands are: the new south city;
"race"; public space and democracy; suburban expansion.
CULTURAL LANDSCAPES
Geography 716
Rich Schein
This seminar is designed to allow us: to briefly explore the concept of the cultural landscape, especially as it has been
employed within geographic literatures; to read a number of "thematic" empirically grounded essays which explore particular landscapes as either a direct object of study or for their implication in general social
processes (or both); to explore the manner in which a specific, local landscape might be interrogated in light of knowledge gained from the other two objectives above. We will begin with the proposition that "the cultural
landscape is our unwitting autobiography..." (as Peirce Lewis has written), and move toward a more processual conception of the landscape where "it" is implicated in the ongoing formulations of social and
cultural (re)production.
ENVIRONMENT AND MULTINATIONAL CORPORATIONS SEMINAR
Geography 718
P.P. Karan
Giant multinational corporations play an important role in the economy of many countries, and their impact on the
environment and development are steadily increasing. Relatively little is known about the environmental management policies and practices of the multinationals. This seminar will explore the environmental management and
development policies of the multinational corporations. How are multinational corporate systems geographically organized? How do multinationals make locational decisions and how to predict the effects of these decisions? What
is the effect of multinationals policies on the environment? How does a multinational corporation affect the economy and environment of a defined area? What multinational companies can do to improve environmental management?
What countries can do to improve environmental management and cooperation with multinational companies?
ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT IN DEVELOPMENT
Geography 718
P. P. Karan
This seminar will explore the practices of environmental management and development and their theoretical constructs. Following are the topics which we will discuss:
I. Introduction/ Working Definitions for purposes of this seminar of the following terms:
Development; Economics, Environment, Environmental Management, Paradigm, Resource,
Sustainable Development.
II. Evolution of Environmental Management
Nature/Society Relationship in America
Environmentalism from Stockholm (1972) to Rio (1992) and present
Environmental System, Social Economic Structures, Analytical Tools and Methods
Environmental Policy Impact on Key Sustainable Development Issues
Economy-wide Policy and Environmental Linkages
Indicators and Causes of Selected Environmental Problems
III. Taxonomy of the Relationship between Environmental Management and
Development Frontier Economics versus Deep Ecology
Environmental Protection
Resource Management
Ecodevelopment
IV. Major Theories of Environmental Degradation and Development
Malthusian and Neo-Malthusian Approaches
Neoclassical Economics
Dependency and Ecological Marxist Approaches
Political Economy Approach
V.
Environmental Management Policy and Development in Selected Areas: United States, Japan, European Union, China, India, Latin America, Africa
GEOGRAPHY AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES
This seminar explores the interactions of what we usually refer to as society and technology, but has
come under increased critical interest in recent years among historians, sociologists, anthropologists, philosophers, and, last but not least, geography. Discussion is organized around several debates with relevance to
geographic information technologies (in their broadest sense). The three aims of this course are to introduce students to the ongoing debates, explore pertinent work from society and technology studies, and examine
Actor-Network Theory in depth.
The course begins with a review of critical issues identified
in discussions surrounding Geography and Information Technologies. Several questions serve to orientate us for the: What perspectives on technology and society do we find inside of geography? What are the critiques of GIS? What
epistemic/ontological claims are disputed or critiqued? This topic brings intra-disciplinary perspectives and debates together as a basis for considering the next two topics.
The next topic broadens the view to look at work from the very active communities under the umbrella of science, technology, and society studies with a special focus on
actor network theories. Some of the questions to begin our discussions in this section are: How do these perspectives differ from the discussions inside geography? What are the major issues? In these discussions we will also
look at pragmatic approaches influenced by phenomenology and ethnography. The literature for this part of the course will draw on a wide range of perspectives ranging from Artificial Intelligence to the History of Science.
This leads to the final topic we will open up perspectives and consider the fundamental
empirical and ontological claims of A-NT proponents as well as the critique which has been voiced, including chauvinism, exclusionary tendencies, and depoliticization. We will look at a variety of readings claiming to apply
A-NT and turn as well to geographical work that draws on this theoretical corpus.
GLOBALIZATION
Geography 717
Susan Roberts
This course is aimed at introducing students to the many-stranded debates and struggles over the term
"globalization" and its implications. To say that the term is contested would be to put it mildly. Globalization has become what Raymond Williams identified as a "keyword". A keyword is, according to
Williams, a term that is central to social inquiry but is also used in "quite general discussion" in particularly "interesting or difficult ways." Globalization certainly qualifies! As Waters
says in his book on globalization, the term has become ubiquitous yet has thus far escaped the serious critical attention it deserves (compare to postmodernism for example). This seminar is an attempt to begin and perhaps
further the project of critically assessing this term. This means that we will examine the discourses and practices (not separable) of globalization. As an organizing framework I have used the rather awkward and certainly
inadequate framework of sectors/aspects. Thus the subject matter of the readings appears to move from considerations of the economic, to the social, then political, then cultural aspects of globalization and so on. However, we
will see that there are some underlying thematic issues that are recurrent and these will most likely be the axes around which our discussions turn.
The sorts of questions we will be dealing with include:
- How is globalization defined? What do people mean when they talk of or write about globalization? Who is discussing globalization? Why?
- What are the issues around which debate over globalization's definition turns? These might include: is what is happening
really new? What are the continuities and discontinuities?; What is driving globalization? Technology, transnational capital, financial capital, "natural" processes (pollution, depleting of the seas etc.), or
something else?; Is globalization already accomplished or is it on-going?
- What is the nature of the "global"? How does this relate to the "local"? How are scalar relations being
re-wrought? With what consequences?
- What is happening to the state? Is the modern state out of synch with globalization? Is the state a "victim" of
globalization or is it an agent of globalization? Or we might ask, perhaps more profitably, how are different states positioned differently with regard to globalization? And how does a state's relation to the dynamics of
globalization differ with regard to different sorts of globalizing flows (people, ideas, money etc.)?
- Is there now a "global society"? In what sense is this meaningful?
- How are identities being reconfigured in a globalizing world? Are identities and territories in a changing relation? Whose
identities and whose territories? What is cosmopolitanism? What is transnationalism?
- What role does tourism play in the cultural transformations of globalization? What role does the media (specifically
television and film) play? What about migrations (of all sorts)?
- Have recent changes in the world economy (specifically GATT and the WTO) meant that the transnational corporation (TNC) is
more powerful than ever? If so, what are the implications?
- Is the globalized world economy (and especially the world financial system) out of control? Is it deregulation gone mad? Who
can regulate whom, and why?
- Can governance go global? Can democracy be enacted globally? What would it be like?
- Does globalization present new opportunities as well as challenges for "progressive" democratic politics? What is
meant by "globalization-from-below"? How are trans-local alliances formed and maintained?
THE HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT OF GEOGRAPHIC THOUGHT
Geography 707
Michael Samers
This seminar will focus on the development of modern geography in the nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries. Particular emphasis will be placed on developments in geography in Germany, France, England, and the United States, and the contexts from which there geographies emerged.
This temporal focus will be complemented by a critical engagement with contemporary ideas dealing with disciplinary histories, their contexts of emergence, and
their relations with the worlds of ideas, politics, culture, technology, and production. In other words, our task will be an investigation of the emergence of modern geography, its foundational concepts, and founding
institutions, the ways in which these responded to and in turn influenced the world around them, and the ways in which they have continued to influence the world of geography down to the present.
Thirdly, the seminar will seek to investigate the relations between modern geographic ideas, traditions, institutions, and practices as they emerge in the nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries and the experience of, and writings about, modernity, modernism, and modernization. That is, we will endeavour to carry out a disciplinary history of geographic ideas and a historico-geographic analysis of the role of
geographic ideas and practices within the political economy of modernity (specifically including geography's relations or articulation with capitalism, patriarchy, the 'race question', and imperialism).
The seminar requires that students engage a variety of literatures critically, and extend the ideas found
therein in two written term papers. The first will be a critical account of the origins and use in geography of a particular concept. The second will require students to select a particular geographer from the period 1850-1930,
to carry out basic archival work on their writings and life, and to attempt a critical contextualization of their work following the lines of argument developed in the seminar.
HUMANE GEOGRAPHIES
Geography 716
Stan Brunn
The seminar is devoted to three overlapping themes related to humanitarians and humanitarian
organizations. These are: individuals, organizations and associations, and landscapes. I define humane individuals as those who seek, as a major goal in their lives, to better the human condition and who have made a qualitative
difference in the way people live and relate to one another, either in the past or present. In this context, I value the contributions of those from many different cultures, societies, and fields of study. Examples of caring
individuals and organizations could come from medicine and health care, public service, religion, the visual and performing arts, and the academy. Individuals could be familiar names with international standing and those at the
grassroots or local levels who pioneered successful and significant efforts. A few outside speakers will participate in class sessions.
The first part of the course will focus the personal geographies, histories and experiences of well-known persons.
They and their contributions will also be studied in regards to their social and political changes in their society, who and what influenced them, their personal, professional, and intellectual linkages, how they worked within
and outside existing institutions, and the obstacles they may have encountered in pursuit of their goals and dreams. The second part will examine the institutional histories of humanitarian organizations and networks at local,
national, and international scales. These might be concerned with literacy programs, empowering women, expanding the human rights of minorities, disaster and emergency relief efforts, preventing cruelty to animals, opposing war
and violence, and assisting refugees, the dispossessed and outcasts. These might include interfaith networks, environmental groups, and organizations of physicians, artists, scientists, environmentalists, women, farmers, and
volunteers. The third segment looks at humanitarian landscapes, specifically who designed, planned, and constructed these built landscapes. We will consider as examples peacekeeping landscapes as well as those for refugees,
relief operations, homeless and abused populations. Landscapes of a therapeutic variety and those honoring or commemorating individuals, groups, and events will also be considered.
INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
Geography 722
Susan Roberts
The aims of this course are to introduce students to selected recent writings that address aspects of international
political geography. Drawn from a variety of disciplines, including international relations, sociology, and anthropology, the readings share an attention to theory and a commitment to critical inquiry. The readings are
organized thematically around key issues in international political geography. The key topics selected for examination in this course are focused on issues pertaining to the state, sovereignty, territoriality, nationalism,
boundaries, and trans-border flows.
Although the syllabus is organized thematically, there is
overlap between the clusters of readings and it is expected that students will be able to relate one week's readings to certain works that have already been discussed. The readings have been chosen to give students a variety of
approaches and to present empirical as well as theoretical work.
There is much exciting new work
that may be loosely collected under the label international political geography. The syllabus contains only a portion of the vast literatures it draws from. For example, much work in International Political Economy meshes with
work by geographers such as Stuart Corbridge and John Agnew on the "Geo-political Economy," while it is international political geography is not really covered in this course. Similarly, work at the intersection of
Development Studies and political geography and geopolitics (see, for example, the work of David Slater) is also not central to the course. Of necessity there are significant areas left unexamined by the assigned readings,
students are encouraged to read beyond the syllabus and to explore the cognate literatures they find most interesting.
It is my intention that, by the end of the semester, participants will have a solid grasp of the current issues in what I'm calling international political geography and the dilemmas entailed
in pursuing a theoretically informed and critical scholarship in this area.
MIGRATION AND IDENTITY
Geography 722
Patricia Ehrkamp
This seminar will focus on theories of identity as they relate to immigrant communities, especially, though not exclusively, in
Western industrialized societies. The course will span several bodies of theoretical literature, including urban ecology, multiculturalism, marxism, and post-structuralism. The course will also include a segment on
methodological problems related to the study of identity and culture. Students will be required to complete weekly readings and short discussion papers. They will also have a larger paper due at the end of the semester
which can be a grant proposal or pilot study on a research project relating to migration and identity.
"MODERN" AMERICAN LANDSCAPES
Geography 716
Karl Raitz
Context
What cultural attributes and practices do Americans embrace and employ that provide the agency for material or built environments? From what sources do these attributes spring? Does the building of and living in landscape
embrace symbolism and meaning that have a greater purpose or greater affect such as the creation of a HOMELAND, or are Americans such superficial consumerists that landscapes are simply another dimension of the unending search
for gratification?
Perspective:
Classic economic theory, supply and demand, competition, markets, and all that should lay out rationales for prices, values, methods of exchange, etc. Can we extrapolate such principles into landscape? If material landscape
artifacts (everything humans build--from barns to malls to landfills [there is a sequence imbedded in that order])--conformed to these principals, would structures not be simple and pragmatically based on function and cost
(shelter, comfort, security, service, etc.)? Instead, many structures are elaborate with design detail (even some vernacular structures like farm buildings may incorporate "design" to differentiate them). What
theoretical perspective can we draw upon to understand or explain the use of "design" on the landscape? If design is the product of the pragmatic, practical, functional, and the engineered, then why do we find
seemingly infinite expressions of how structures should look, how they are used and reused, and why does the sense of the pragmatic seem to explain so little? (Do Southerners cultivate hospitality because they are or were
poor, unable to consume, and so substitute obligational hospitality in order to achieve some measure of power? See Burke, History and Social Theory).
Are these qualifying conditions all part of larger human concerns? Does the concern for landscape configuration
have a larger meaning or role in American culture? Two kinds of possible embedded meanings come to mind, no doubt there are many others. The first, homeland, is inherently geographical and attached to the concept of place. The
second, gratification, is a psychological property that also has implications for how humans construct places. Humans seem to seek attachment to place. Yi-Fu Tuan says place is "a centre of felt value." Fred Lukermann
holds that place as at least six constituent values: location; "ensemble" or the integration of nature and culture; uniqueness, though within an interconnected framework; localized focusing power; emergence (within an
historico-cultural sequence of change); and meaning (to human agents). To Martin Heidegger, place is "that which places man in such a way that it reveals the external bonds of his existence and at the same time the depths
of his freedom and reality." One of the most powerful movements in current world affairs is the assertion by "minority groups" of hegemony over their own place, their own homeland. Almost every "ethnic" conflict centers on concerns for historic possession of territory--the homeland. Our concern in this course is not for the political dynamics of Serbia or Armenia but to try to understand the role of such concerns in the
creation of American places, and whether the creation and employment symbolism and icons on the landscape has deeper meaning and is linked to the symbolic structuring of an American Homeland.
A second kind of embedded meaning may lie behind our choice of landscape configurations. Why do humans seek power,
seek to control space or influence opinion, or gain wealth? Gratification? Why do humans seek visual stimulus? Gratification? Why do humans seek pleasurable experiences whether travel, sport, and recreation, or 'shop till you
drop;' or uncountable other activities? Gratification? Many of these actions involve place and landscape, and if all of this follows, it would seem that some places and landscapes will supply more gratification than others, and
therefore will be more popular, be replicated more extensively, will attract consumers in the form of visitors or permanent migrants. What levels of gratification do humans espouse and how does this depend upon who you are and
where you are from (Ethnic, Gender, Rural-Urban-Suburban-Galactic, Education, Family Structure, etc.)? How do humans evaluate place and landscape stimulus and decide whether it meets their needs or expectations? For whom and at
what point do places and landscapes repel people? What happens when places become derelict? Can we employ ideas which try to come to grips with cultural complexity to help understand how all this works?
Culture springs from what some call "deep structure." Bourdieu suggests that "habitus"
or "structured structures of practice" can provide understanding of how humans create and use relationships and places. Geertz provides a recipe for "deep description" as a method by which we can attempt to
reveal "deep structure," and, one suspects, a concern for homeland is embedded in every culture's deep structure. One might conceptualize deep structure as a combination of a multi-strand helix and a tree. The tree
analogy is useful in linguistics and archaeology to suggest through-time linkages between language families or Homo Sapien evolution. The multi-strand deep structure or culture helix is an analog to the DNA molecule that models
the human genetic structure code. Humans somehow build, maintain, and perpetuate cultural attributes. But unlike the genetic code which "never forgets," the cultural building blocks in the human culture helix are
easily forgotten and new variations are easily added. Culture includes diverse elements which we traditionally group together in order to simplify analysis: language, religion or philosophy, political systems, economic
systems, social systems, survival systems (food supply, shelter, etc.), and so on. Inventing new attributes is not a common process; borrowing or modifying attributes is; we commonly borrow or pass along attributes practiced by
ancestors and hence we are concerned with the time dimension. We also borrow from other culture groups--folk on a different branch with different helix strands--modify what we have borrowed, and incorporate the new practices
into our attribute system. Therefore, branches not only "branch off" but may also rejoin and helix strands within different branches may share similar attributes. The "American Culture" tree includes a
trunk with roots in Greece and Roman Italy, and American regions retain some distinctiveness because various branches were introduced (implying that a branch can be spatially "transplanted") and reproduced selected
parts of the helix (Puritan England, Cavalier England, Southern Germany, scattered Ukrainian islands, French-Canadian, Iberian and Mexican, and others). If our goal is to try to make sense of built environments, part of our
responsibility should be to discover if and how the details of cultural elements carried in the helix strands are employed in making that environment, if those engaged in building environments acknowledge the deep structure
represented by the helix strands, and if those who live within the built environment recognize the helix' time-depth. Do people simply exist within a built environment without understanding it or assigning it meaning? Does a population differentiate itself into groups that respond to their built environment in different ways--ways appropriate to the helix strands from which their practices stem?
PHOTOGRAPHY AND THE REPRESENTATION OF PLACE
Geography 716
Karl Raitz
This seminar has two themes: The first is to introduce photography as a methodology that geographers might employ in
their discourse(s) on place and landscape. Photography has been an accepted methodology in Anthropology for some time, less prominent yet emerging in History. It has been systematically employed in a very limited
manner in physical geography, in "re-photographic" studies where changes in landforms or vegetation patterns over time are of concern, for example. Judging from the manner in which human geographers employ or deploy
photography in their research (and teaching) few seem comfortable using photography in an analytic sense--be it to treat existing photography as a text or discourse or to create new photographic images with the purpose of
functioning as a text. With few exceptions, geographers have not employed professional photographers to supply photographs to illustrate published research, although several research papers have engaged historic
photographs made by professionals. Instead, as the first epigram above suggests, photographs are often conceived of by geographers as "window dressing" rather than as an analytical tool that is integral to
written text and maps.
A second theme is to develop skills in the visual analysis or
"reading" of photography as a research strategy, to engage the potential uses of photography in publication, and in critiquing the rationale (or lack of it) for using photographs. This includes an appreciation
of how photography might be manipulated--intentionally or not-so that the message conveyed is biased or unrepresentative.
Related Issues and Concerns:
- Representation of the spatial, of place, as empirics.
- Place or site "maps."
- History, as a "visual census."
- Documentation or art, and the tension between these two forms.
- Text or augmentation.
- Metaphor or trope.
- Parables of visual structure, irony in juxtapositions.
- Personal discovery.
- An influence on personal philosophy and public policy.
- Issues of context and composition.
- Photos and text/captions (meaning and interpretation for the viewer or by the viewer?).
- The issue of personal privacy.
SPACE, IDENTITY, AND CULTURAL POLITICS
Geography 722
Over the past several years, questions of 'identity' have emerged to be central ones in social theory. The
range of problematics they suggest are numerous, encompassing for example: what is identity? how is identity constructed, and with what individual and social effects? and how can we construct an effective 'identity'
politics out of these understandings? Such questions are not only important to the retheorization of the left's prototypical subject, the working class white male, they are profoundly at the heart of theoretical and empirical
work in feminism, gay and lesbian studies, male studies, race and ethnic studies, and postcolonialism.
It is in the wake of geography's 'social theorization' that such questions have begun to resonate within our own discipline. However, given the relative blindness of most social theory to questions of space, it should not
surprise us to find that many commentators on identity have worked with
limited understandings of the role of
space in the construction and maintenance of identities. It is a premise of this seminar that contemporary understandings of space have much to offer contemporary theories of identity. In proposing to offer a
seminar on these topics, I hope to have us collectively engage us in the project of developing novel understandings - both theoretical and empirical - at the intersection of space and identity. Such novelty would be
demonstrated by work that goes beyond a mere conformism, wherein one category is mapped to another; it would lead us to the realization that each of the above questions posed about identity are 'shot through' with space, and
that, space, as a continually contested and redefined representation of the socio-political, is uneliminably tied to the identities of subjects.
SPATIAL EXPERIENCE AND THE LIFE COURSE
Geography 722
Everyone has a life course, which in the most basic sense is nothing more than a history of an individual's life
from birth through death. Certain elements of this history may be common to everyone. We all, for example, experience natural biological aging as we move from infancy through adolescence, and as our bodies continue to
change through late adulthood. Most of us will pass through school at certain ages, and become employed. Most likely we will marry and perhaps have children. And we most certainly will die at some time. The packaging of this
history, however, varies considerably among individuals, across cultures, and throughout time
This
seminar will begin by establishing a common foundation of knowledge through examinations of the myriad "life courses" influencing individuals as they age through time. These life courses include:
Biological/Physiological; Household and Family (members of a household); Housing (type and size of residence); and Education and Career (schooling and work). Emphasis will be placed on surveys of existing literature and on
integrating the various life courses into a more coherent theoretical framework. Particular attention will be given to notions of population heterogeneity as they modify life course trajectories, and on
psychosocial/psychobiologic determinants and consequences.
With the foundational knowledge under our belt, we will then start to probe uncharted territory. In particular, we will try to address these central questions:1. How are life courses expressed over space?
2. How is an individual's 'spatial experience' acquired, combined with other experiences, and modified through life?
3. How is spatialized cumulative life experience used in later life decision making?
As we investigate these concepts we will seek to place individual experience and decisions in the broader context of societal
change, which includes relationships with aggregate transitions in economies, culture, social organization, and political structure. In other words, we will try to determine what it is like to age here or there, and perhaps now
or then.
THEORIES OF DEVELOPMENT AND ANTI-DEVELOPMENT
Geography 717
Susan Roberts
The aims of this course are threefold: to introduce students to the basic contours of development theories and to
the basic features of the related history of development practices, as well as to the variety of critiques of development theories--internal and external.
The course will thus begin with an introduction to "development" and "progress" as keywords in the lexicon
of modernity. Then there will be a week of readings selected to review, in a most general way, the salient trends in the dynamic post-war world political-economy. Following these introductory readings we will move to consider
critically exemplary works in the modernization "paradigm." This will he followed by an examination of early critiques of modernization theory. The ideals and institutions of modernization theory (but particularly
development economics) came under sustained fire (from left and right) in the late 1970s and 1980s. What Toye calls the "counter revolution in development economics" (but it was a broader shift) occurred and we will
read the key works in this movement. The battles in the realm of theory were part of political economic events (such as the "Debt Crisis") and shifts that saw the "south" linked into the world economy in new
ways as well as the rise of certain institutions -- notably the IMF and the World Bank. Global economic, environmental, and political changes (the "collapse" of some communist states) and local struggles come together
as various writers seek to get beyond what Corbridge has called the "impasse" in development theory. Strategies range from promoting some "alternative" path to calling for "anti-development" theory
and praxis.
The external critique of the "project" of development and its associated
practices--coming out of the "south" (especially South Asia)--is being formed in a variety of works and we will be examining some key contributions. With links to postmodern, poststructuralist, and postcolonial social
theory, and with a particular eye to environmental, feminist, and other political and cultural issues (not just economic) these writers variously call into question many of the "articles of faith" of development.
Indeed, many are consciously working towards defining and enacting "anti-development" strategies.
We will, at this point, take a couple of weeks to read the "founding texts" of these powerful external critiques. These are Fanon's Wretched of the Earthand Said's Orientalism.
Both works approach the social construction of categories (such as native or other) as in part at least a discursive process. Following these texts we will turn to recent works that have examined development as a discourse
(often drawing on Foucault), beginning with Escobar's work Encountering Development: the Making and Unmaking of the Third World. We will then proceed to consider selected case studies of how development discourse and its
practices and institutions work including Ferguson's study, The Anti-Politics Machine: "Development," Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho.
To finish up we'll attempt to frame some questions around the issues we've been discussing. Are we in a postdevelopment era?
What are the spaces of postdevelopment? Where is and how does power work now in development? It is my intention that, by the end of the semester, participants will have a solid grasp of the current issues inside development
theory and the dilemmas and resistance it faces. This includes understanding the political-social-cultural-economic contexts of development discourse and practices.
URBAN LANDSCAPES
Geography 716
Rich Schein
This seminar does not pretend to be a comprehensive treatment of the topic. Rather, we will explore several contemporary themes
relevant to the topic of urban landscapes. Underlying the seminar is the conceptual premise that the cultural landscape is everywhere and always implicated in the never-finished processes of cultural and social reproduction;
or, simply put, that the landscape is not innocent. Urban landscapes and urban space have a normative function, making the figure in the landscape both object and subject. We are at once the authors of our everyday landscapes
while, once written, those same manipulations of urban space subject us to the tastes, the values, the aspirations, and the fears captured in tangible, visible form (to borrow a phrase). Working from this taken-for-granted
point/moment (which we will further explicate on day one of the reading list), we will read a number of recent essays which we will interrogate both on their own terms and with specific attention to the possibilities for a
better informed empirical and theoretical conception of our topic, urban landscapes.
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