Social and cultural geography

It makes little sense to talk of a SouthEast Asian region of social and cultural geography. At least two factors inhibit this kind of generalization. First, critical analyses of area studies emphasize how colonial histories and cold war geopolitics have constructed SouthEast Asia as an object of knowledge for Western academics and policy makers (see e.g. Anderson 1998; Emerson 1984). Any investigation that uses SouthEast Asia as a heuristic device must therefore take seriously the production of area knowledge as part of the analysis, as well as the partiality and situatedness of that knowledge. Second, geographies of 'regional' difference obscure 'internal' diversity and complexity, including differences between-but also within-nations. If SouthEast Asia emerged more in relation to Anglo-American power and interests than to some indigenously defined and experienced regionalism (Anderson 1998: 3), then how can we generalize across these diverse national contexts? We might also query the extent to which a national agenda is able to envision different spatial configurations such as 'cross-cutting areas, the worldwide honeycomb of borderlands, or the process geographies of transnational flows' (van Schendel 2002: 647) that constitute social and cultural life in SouthEast Asia. These too may be productive sites of knowledge production in the fields of social and cultural geography. We proceed to write despite these caveats, and despite the original invitation by editors of this journal to write about social and cultural geographies of individual countries. We do so in the hope that our insights might serve as catalysts for debate both within SouthEast Asia and beyond and, more pointedly, in the hope that using this heuristic device allows us to foreground the situatedness and partiality, the complexity and embeddedness of knowledge. Given that our report does claim area knowledge, and therefore speaks in a position of authority, it is important to situate our perspectives in relation to our own geopolitical and institutional position in Singapore. On the one hand, we certainly do not seek to

The down-deep delight of democracy, Mark Purcell, Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013, 184 pp., $34.95 (paperback), , Democracy is not a destination but a horizon that we -everyone! -can pursue if we dispense with the fear and self-doubt that lead us, time and again, back to the passivity of existence under oligarchy. This is the central argument in Mark Purcell's recent The Down-Deep Delight of Democracy, a book that not only examines but aspires to cultivate our collective becoming-democratic.

This article explores community responses to ‘Golden Head’, a guerrilla artwork that was installed covertly in a Melbourne park in early 2020 by unknown persons. Focusing on local residents’ reactions to this mysterious, unsanctioned statue, we document an ongoing array of playful speculations, creative responses and imaginative interactions that unfolded both in situ and via social media. We argue that in eliciting an outpouring of jokes, memes, stories, photographs and other creative rejoinders, this enigmatic object has strengthened and renewed a collective sense of place. We also consider Golden Head’s reception in light of recent challenges to the legitimacy of many traditional memorial statues, and as a response to the increasingly over-regulated city. We conclude that this outpouring of imaginative local reactions to Golden Head constitutes a playful form of collective place-making that implicitly critiques the grandiose ambitions of official statues and affirms the oft-neglected ludic potential of urban space.

Edited by Nancy Duxbury, Will Garrett-Petts and David MacLennan Series: Routledge Advances in Research Methods This edited collection provides an introduction to the emerging and interdisciplinary field of cultural mapping, making a case for and demonstrating the spatial turn emerging in many related areas of critical, social and artistic research. The contributors explore innovative ways to encourage artistic intervention and public participation in cultural mapping—recognizing that artistic practices and public involvement introduce a range of challenges spanning various phases of the research process, from the gathering of data, to interpreting data, to presenting “findings” to a broad range of audiences. Toward these ends, the collection explores the international scope of conventional and alternative approaches to mapping cultures and communities. November 2014 | Hb: 978-1-138-82186-6:

This paper contributes to debates on the empirical and conceptual potentials of anti-essentializing notions such as ‘thirdspace’ with the aim to open new epistemological and political grounds. Based on the findings of ethnographic research, I critically examine two spatial strategies (the deliberate creation of an ethnic neighbourhood, and the securing of a community centre) that Latin American immigrants in Toronto, Canada, developed to appropriate urban space and lay claims to equal rights. The case of Latin Americans' struggle for belonging in Toronto serves to reflect on how and why new immigrant groups today (re)construct collective identity spatially. I argue that immigrants strategically essentialize their identities in and through place in order to make themselves visible and their voices heard. Ethnic places represent sites of resistance and creation where immigrants construct their own subjectivities while also redefining dominant notions of inclusion and citizenship. Although locally grounded, these new immigrant identities remain fluid and engage with multiple forms of exclusion [The] situation is simply sad; the [Latin American] community … is one of the most orphan communities … in [Toronto] … [We] don't even have a place where to dig our own grave basically. If there is need to get together … a meeting … there is no place. We have to be looking for a basement … for a recreational centre to give us a room … If there is a social or cultural event, we do not have a place where … we can present what we have … [It] is sad and it is a reality. (Cesar Palacio, city councillor candidate to Toronto's 2003 municipal elections, interview, 2 May 2003, translated from Spanish)Dans le but d'ouvrir de nouvelles perspectives épistémologiques et politiques, cet article se veut une contribution aux débats sur les possibilités empiriques et conceptuelles que présentent les notions anti-essentialistes comme le ‘troisième espace’. Les résultats d'une recherche ethnologique viennent appuyer mon étude critique de deux stratégies spatiales (la création intentionnelle d'un quartier ethnique, et l'approbation obtenue pour ériger un centre associatif) mises sur pied par des immigrants latinos américains à Toronto (Canada) pour s'approprier un espace urbain et revendiquer l'égalité des droits. Les efforts considérables déployés par les latinos américains pour appartenir à Toronto permettent d'examiner comment et pourquoi les nouveaux arrivants tentent aujourd'hui de (re)construire une identité collective dans l'espace. Je soutiens que les immigrants essentialisent de manière stratégique leurs identités dans et à travers le lieu en vue de se rendre visible et de faire entendre leur voix. Les milieux ethniques représentent des sites de résistance et de créativité dans lesquels les immigrants construisent leurs propres subjectivités en même temps qu'ils redéfinissent les notions dominantes que sont l'inclusion et la citoyenneté. Malgré que les identités de ces nouveaux arrivants soient enracinées localement, elles restent fluides et sont touchées par diverses formes d'exclusion.Este papel contribuye al debate sobre las posibilidades empíricas y conceptuales de nociones antiesencialistas como ‘tercer espacio’ con el fin de ir abriendo nuevos caminos epistemológicos y políticos. Basándose en los resultados de una investigación etnográfica, examina críticamente dos estrategias espaciales (la creación deliberada de un barrio étnico y el establecimiento de un centro comunitario) desarrolladas por los inmigrantes latinoamericanos en Toronto, Canadá, con el motivo de apropiarse de espacio urbano y reivindicar la igualdad de derechos. El caso de la lucha de los latinoamericanos por pertenecer en Toronto sirve para reflexionar sobre cómo y por qué los nuevos grupos de inmigrantes de hoy en día (re)construyen una identidad colectiva de forma espacial. Sugiero que los inmigrantes esencializan estratégicamente sus identidades en, y a través, del lugar para hacerse visible y hacer que se escuche su voz. Lugares étnicos representan sitios de resistencia y creación donde los inmigrantes construyen sus propias subjetividades mientras que redefinen nociones dominantes de inclusión y ciudadanía. Aunque tienen base local, estas nuevas identidades de inmigrantes siguen siendo fluidas e interactúan con múltiples formas de exclusión.

Radical, ‘eventful’ bodily vulnerability has yet to receive sustained attention in contemporary human geography. As one way of addressing the implications of existential vulnerability, this thesis explores the social geographies of people living with epilepsy. It draws upon multiple-methods research comprising an extensive mixed-methods questionnaire and semi-structured interviews, all conducted with people with epilepsy who are members of the charity, Epilepsy Scotland, the project partner. By paying attention to the (post-)phenomenological experience of ‘seizures’, the thesis argues that a failure to appreciate the complex and often extremely troubling spatialities of epileptic episodes invariably results in sustaining the stigmatisation of epilepsy and the partial views of ‘outsiders’. By exploring changed, changing and changeable relations between self, body, space, time and others, the thesis suggests that spatial behaviours in and across different places shift according to various biographical, social and illness experiences and contexts. More specifically, it contends that certain spaces become risky some or all of the time because of the body that not only threatens personal disorientation but also the very foundations of the social order. While there is a corresponding risk that individuals with epilepsy will confine themselves within the socially (although not materially) contained homeplace, many adopt active and resourceful practices, taking into account immediate time-space and embodied knowledges so as to resist being told what they can do, where and when. Disciplining the ‘epileptic body’ and environment to accommodate the unpredictability of seizures are put forward as a challenging case study for thinking through how the vital vulnerabilities of everyday life are made sense of through the very governmental regimes that they will always escape.

The conditions between the two World Wars were ripe enough to trigger off utopian imagination among the Anglo-Indians. Caught between the rulers and the ruled, this marginal group of people were faced with a dilemma. Expectations from the British were high, but seldom fulfilled, although in the initial stages the Community had helped to a large extent to build and maintain the Empire.

The present paper is an attempt to analyze the spatial patterns of regional disparities, variations in the levels of agricultural development and casual relationship between agricultural development (dependent variable) and selected variables of regional disparities (independent variables) among the districts of the state of Rajasthan. The study utilizes published data obtained from Census of India & Rajasthan and other statistical records at district level. Some standard statistical techniques are used in the present Study. Rajasthan, with varied agro-climatic conditions shows inter-district agriculture disparities. The districts of the state are covered under arid, semi-and and per-humid situation depending on rainfall and moisture index. They have different potential for development in different sectors of economy. This study on Regional-Agriculture disparities in Rajasthan was undertaken with the main objective to measure inter-district disparities prevalent in various indicators of the economy and livelihood to take necessary measures to reduce interregional disparities. Whereas this study covers year 2010-11 to make a comparison also in the process of economic development of the state. The study covered all the 33 districts of the State (new district of Pratapgarh was included in Chittorgarh, as separate data for this district were not available for all parameters)

Located on the southernmost tip of Israel, at the meeting point of the Negev desert and the Red Sea, Eilat was occupied in March 1949 in the last military operation of Israel's War of Independence. Notwithstanding official notions of Eilat as a strategic asset and efforts to sustain Israeli presence there in the form of a permanent settlement, in Israeli popular culture Eilat, which later evolved into a thriving tourist resort, has had from the outset the reputation of being 'different, special, distinct'. This article explores the unique position of Eilat in Israeli popular culture. The underlying argument is that this unique position of Eilat both evinced and reflected a dynamic interplay of liminal conditions and phenomena that rendered Eilat an exceptional experience. Furthermore, being situated at the southernmost tip of Israel, the location of Eilat at the geographical margin of Israel was productive of its image as an extraordinary place and sustained its prominence in popular imagination. The article charts and analyses a variety of liminal phenomena in their social and cultural contexts in different periods of Eilat's history.

This paper examines the representations of animals in advertisements on prime-time television in New Zealand as a route to explore the manner in which nonhuman animals are incorporated into our daily lives. The discussion is based on close reading of advertisements that draws attention to the everyday manipulation and representation of nonhuman subjects. In focusing on the seemingly banal medium of advertisements, we interrogate the subtle and less than subtle transformations of animal subjectivity and the manner in which these articulate broader discourses around gender and nature in relation to human and nonhuman agents. In this way, we highlight the critical nature of decentring the human from the privileged position within both nature and society. We argue then that gender, anthropomorphism and the placement of animals in everyday media such as television advertisements play an important role in constituting the meaning and limits of how we relate to nonhuman life. In this regard, the arguments have significance not only for the field of animal geographies but also for a future in which animals are seen as more than just food or pets.

What might it mean to think of 'the single' as a potentially queer subject and in what ways does singleness pose a challenge to heteronormative conceptualizations of the lifecourse and household formation? In this paper I explore some of the contested meanings of ‘home’ for those who are single; and examine how single people have created new forms of home and new spaces of at-homeness with those with whom they are not biologically (or romantically) related. I conclude by asking how we might help foster, build and create new forms of dwelling that might better match single people’s imaginings and desires for a home outside of heteronormative coupledom. Ultimately the paper argues that the exclusion of the figure of the single is one of the key omissions in the work of those interested in challenging the geographies of exclusion and inequality.

The novel 1984, George Orwell's nightmarish vision of totalitarianism published after the Second World War, remains relevant in the twenty-first century. Orwell's concerns regarding the abuse of power, the denial of self, and the eradication of both past and future continue to resonate in contemporary discussions of politics and society. Geographers, however, have directed minimal attention to the spatiality embedded within 1984. Accordingly, in this paper I examine the theoretical implications of space, resistance and discipline as manifest in the novel. Drawing on the theoretical insights of Michel Foucault, I detail how the spatial and temporal control of everyday activities serves to discipline spaces within a totalitarian society. Moreover, I suggest that 1984 illustrates how the production of knowledge through the act of writing may forge spaces of resistance within disciplined spaces. This paper contributes, therefore, in two areas, these being resistance geographies and fictive geographies.

KKL II dijadwalkan pelaksanaannya setiap semester Ganjil
menurut kurikulum berlaku di Program Studi Pendidikan Geografi IKIP
PGRI Pontianak 2016/2017. Secara klasikal, KKL II diberikan dalam bentuk
kuliah yang diisi materi pengenalan konsep, tujuan KKL, dan tema KKL pada
periode pelaksanaan. Tema KKL dirumuskan bersamaan dengan
penentuan lokasi KKL. Dengan alasan praktis pragmatis, lokasi KKL
disesuaikan dengan kemampuan anggaran, aksessibilitas dan sumber daya
peserta dan penyelenggara, baik mahasiswa maupun dosen pengampu.
Setelah tema KKL II dan lokasi penelitian diputuskan, dosen pengampu
menyusun instrumen pengambilan data. Penyelenggaraan KKL II
diserahkan kepada mahasiswa sebagai panita sekaligus pelaksana. Panitia
dengan berkonsultasi kepada dosen koordinator KKL II, bertanggungjawab
atas teknis pelaksanaan KKL II, mulai dari alokasi anggaran, akomodasi,
kebutuhan logistik, perlengkapan, alat ukur yang dibawa, izin penggunaan
lokasi, dan lain sebagainya.
Puncak pelaksanaan KKL II adalah pengambilan data di lokasi
yang telah ditetapkan. KKL II diakhiri dengan penyusunan laporan KKL II
oleh mahasiswa sebagai bukti dan syarat pengambilan mata kuliah.
Laporan pertanggungjawaban diserahkan kepada pemberi dana dan program studi.

Budaya ialah sifat tertentu dalam sekumpulan atau golongan individu dalam sesebuah kelompok masyarakat yang mempunyai adat dan atur cara sama ada yang berkaitan dengan bahasa, agama, makanan, tingkah laku sosial, muzik dan seni (Luthans, 2006). Dengan kata lain, budaya sering dikaitkan dengan adat resam dan perilaku atau ritual yang dilakukan oleh sesebuah negara mahupun kelompok masyarakat. Dalam arus perniagaan dan pasaran antarabangsa, nilai-nilai dan keprihatinan terhadap budaya masyarakat setempat dan negara perlu diambil kira dan ditekankan dalam organisasi tersebut. Syarikat-syarikat induk perlu sensitif dan peka terhadap isu ini, kerana ia memainkan peranan yang penting dalam kesinambungan arus perniagaan untuk berjalan dengan lancar di peringkat antarabangsa mahupun negara itu sendiri. Penerapan nilai-nilai budaya perlu selari dan seiring dengan norma-norma masyarakat setempat. Budaya akan membentuk perilaku seseorang yang akhirnya " terbawa " ke dalam proses komunikasi. Komunikasi adalah dinamik dan selalu berubah-ubah melalui interaktif antara sumber dengan penerima (Leat, & El-Kot, 2009). Dalam proses komunikasi, sumber dan penerima membawa latar belakang dan pengalaman masing-masing. Salah satu pihak akan cuba mempengaruhi pihak yang lain. Komunikasi dalam budaya berlaku dalam konteks fizikal dan sosial. Konteks fizikal terdiri daripada keselesaan dan keamanan tempat komunikasi berlaku. Konteks sosial ialah hubungan sosial antara sumber dengan penerima sama ada kawan dan musuh, guru dan murid, doktor dan pesakit dan sebagainya. Komunikasi silang budaya berlaku apabila terdapatnya interaksi diantara orang yang berbeza bangsa, ras, bahasa, agama, tingkat pendidikan dan status sosial. Komunikasi silang budaya boleh dilihat dalam pelbagai konteks seperti konteks pendidikan, politik, teknologi dan lain-lain. Orang yang meghasilkan mesej dan orang yang mentafsirkan mesej terdiri daripada individu yang berlainan budaya. Disebabkan budaya meliputi pengetahuan, pengalaman, kepercayaan, nilai, sikap, agama, waktu, peranan, hubungan yang diperolehi oleh sekelompok besar orang dari generasi ke generasi melalui usaha individu dan kelompok, budaya terbentuk daripada budaya objektif dan subjektif (Gibson, et, al. 2011). Budaya objektif ialah budaya luaran yang jelas dan mudah dikenal pasti. Contohnya, pakaian, rupa, bahasa, adat reasam, makanan dan bentuk rumah. Budaya subjektif ialah budaya dalaman yang tidak boleh nampak dengan mata kasar dan sukar dikenal pasti. Contohnya, keprcayaan dan nilai amalan.

At over 1,000 pages, and including some 750 pages of footnotes, this is the longest and craziest book ever written by a geographer, and in this case a letter to a geographer, John Agnew at UCLA,  who at the time was president of the Association of American Geographers.  The great majority of these stories within stories are true, and it is only the most perceptive of readers who can guess with any assurance which stories are in part or whole fictions.

This paper is about tourism and heritage performance in sacred sites. The pilgrimage city of Varanasi, in Northern India, forms the basis for analysing the multifarious spatial practices, social interactions and cultural performances which often constitute the heritage of religious sites. The central claim of this paper is that heritage is performative; drawing on ethnographic examples, I argue that Varanasi's heritage should be thought of as a 'living heritage' continually restored by the rituals of pilgrims, locals and devotees as much as by the activities of those who come to visit the city. This productive 'messiness' of performative and spatialised encounters activates processes of cultural negotiation and identity formation which underpin the symbolic relevance of this city.

This research explores the agency and positioning of cultural workers in the restructuring of contemporary cities. This positioning is ambiguous. Cultural workers often lead precarious professional lives, yet their significant symbolic and cultural capital is widely mobilised in the service of neoliberal urban restructuring, including ‘creative city’ flagship developments and gentrification. But cultural workers’ actual agency, their reactions to urban processes that exploit their presence, and their relations to other urban social groups, are poorly understood and hard to decipher. This thesis addresses these issues through three articles.

Paper I examines a process of artist-led gentrification ongoing in Bushwick, Brooklyn, New York. It shows that artists, gallerists and other members of the local art scene contribute to sustaining gentrification through their everyday practices and discourses. The gentrification frontier is constructed on an everyday level as a transitional space and time in the scene members’ lives. Gentrification is de-politicised by discursively underplaying its conflictual components of class and racial struggle. Forms of resistance to gentrification amongst scene members are found, but they appear to be sector-specific and exclusive. Finally, scene members tend to fail at establishing meaningful relationships with long-time residents.

Paper II brings the perspectives of long-time residents in Bushwick to the forefront. Examination of the emotional and affectual components of displacement reveals that these aspects are as important as material re-location to understanding displacement and gentrification. The encounter with newcomers’ bodies in neighbourhood spaces triggers a deep sense of displacement for long-time residents, evoking deep-rooted structural inequalities of which gentrification is one spatial expression.

Paper III examines the case of Macao, a collective mobilisation of cultural workers in Milan, Italy. There, cultural workers have mobilised against neoliberal urbanism, top-down gentrification, corruption, growing labour precarity and other regressive urban and social issues. The paper considers the distinctive resources, aesthetic tactics and inaugurative practices mobilised and enacted in the urban space by Macao and it argues that by deploying their cultural and symbolic capital, cultural workers can reframe the relations between bodies, space and time, and hence challenge power structures.

Cultural workers might not have the power to determine the structural boundaries and hierarchies that organize urban society, including their own positioning in it. Nonetheless, through their actions and discourses and subjectification processes, they can reinforce or challenge those borders.

The process of naming places involves a contested identity politics of people and place. Place-names are part of the social construction of space and the symbolic construction of meanings about place. Accordingly, we argue that the names applied to places in Aotearoa assist in the construction of the symbolic and material orders that legitimate the dominance of a hegemonic Pakeha masculinism. Attempts to rename (and in doing so, reclaim) places are implicated in the discursive politics of people and place. The contestation of place-names in Otago/Murihiku, one of the southernmost regions of New Zealand, is examined. We present a discursive analysis of submissions made to the New Zealand Geographic Board in 1989-90 concerning a proposed reinstatement of Maori names in the area. In interpreting objections to renaming we suggest these objections articulated with and through a number of 'commonsense' notions about gender, 'race', culture, and nation which discursively (re)produced a hegemonic Pakeha masculinism in New Zealand.

Given the prominence of rap music and its influence in debates about the moral status of young people, this paper seeks to highlight young people’s own lyrical practices and interpretations of the genre. Evidence gathered by the National Foundation for Youth Music has found that such lyrical modes of music making can serve as a vital means of self-expression, particularly for those children and young people who otherwise lack confidence, self-esteem and cultural validation. This paper centres on a detailed case study of a community music project called Ustudios, which drew on peer-mentoring practices to develop and record rap lyrics with local young people who were identified as experiencing a range of challenging circumstances while residing on two adjacent council estates on the outskirts of Brighton, England. By tracing the lyrical practices of a group of young participants, this paper establishes a clear sense of their potential to explore their own voice, both as means to enhance their emotional expression and development, and as a way of supporting their participation as active members within their community. Taken alongside wider evidence, this case develops an emerging thesis on the political significance of voice, listening and recognition for reframing understandings of the emotional geographies of young people.

Please contact me if you would like me to forward a zipped folder of the recorded music cited here.

The fifty-year long Chinese occupation of Tibet has resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands and has produced a refugee flow that continues today. Although the plight of Tibetans commands international attention, this diaspora remains understudied and undertheorized. To speak to this silence, we follow and argue that the Tibetan diaspora can be analysed as both a condition and a process. Diaspora as condition emphasizes the structural features of an exile population, such as race, gender, class and religion. Diaspora as process draws attention to lived refugee experiences-the making and remaking of diasporic identities. In the Tibetan diaspora, His Holiness the Dalai Lama holds a central position. Through his global profile, and a transnational nationalist political structure, he creates images of Tibet, builds community and works toward Tibetan self-determination. Within this nationalist frame, Tibetan identities assume a singular, unified and homogeneous form. Further analysis that focuses on individual voices, however, shows how Tibetan diasporic identities are contested, complex and embedded in not one but multiple narratives of struggle.

Recent work by geographers concerned with the enduring presence of racism has called for an interrogation of the privileges and contingencies of whiteness. Central to this project of denaturalizing White Identity has been the disclosure of its co-constitution with a host of social practices. Building on the work of critical theorists in the humanities and social sciences concerned with masculinist and post-colonial epistemologies, this paper outlines a socio-spatial epistemology of whiteness. Whiteness's central tenets are an essentialist and non-relational construction of space and identity that underwrite its claims to be realized independent of an Other. Spatially, this refusal manifests itself in the deployment of discursive categories associated with scales, boundaries and extensivity in ways that reify space into discrete, unrelated parcels. We discuss some of the implications of this non-relational construction of space and identity in the context of residential segregation and spatial mobility. The paper concludes by noting that historically and geographically speci c forms of whiteness have drawn upon a common socio-spatial framing and that further study in this eld will bene t anti-racist activism by disclosing the workings of racialization in numerous human geographic contexts.

John Dewey's metaphysics of experience has been criticized by a number of philosophers-most notably, George Santayana and Richard Rorty. While mainstream Dewey scholars agree that these critical treatments fail to treat the American Pragmatist theory of what exists on its own terms, there has still been some difficulty reaching consensus on what the casual reader should take away from the pages of Experience and Nature, Deweys seminal work on naturalistic metaphysics. So, how do we unearth the significance of Dewey's misunderstood metaphysics? One way is for philosophers to look to spatial and social-cultural geographers for help. To fully grasp the movement of experience, these geographers recommend that we start with an experiential activity, such as touring. The activity of sea kayak touring, I contend, discloses the general movement of experience in Dewey's metaphysics between its primary and secondary phases. With this illustration and a closely connected metaphor, I demonstrate that Dewey's naturalized metaphysics can not only withstand the objections of the likes of Santayana and Rorty it can also assist us in gaining a deeper appreciation of the qualitative richness of our own day-to-day practices.

In Swamplife: People, Gators, and Mangroves Entangled in the Everglades, anthropologist Laura Ogden traces the lives of poor, rural whites called gladesmen through the hidden cultural, political, and ecological history of the Florida Everglades. She invites the reader to imagine a world of mythological outlaws, giant reptiles, political intrigue, conservation, and rural life in order to reveal how "oppositional culture and social class operate in our understandings of wilderness in the United States" (p.2). Her monograph is based on the stories and practices of gladesmen, and unfolds as a fluid, tangled, and lush record of the history of the Everglades landscape. Throughout her book, Ogden challenges notions of the landscape as a space of cultural significance scripted by human ideas, customs, practices, and stories. She seeks to reclaim the landscape "as a place of people and human history" through understanding "how what it means to be human is constituted through changing relations" with other species and objects (p.2).

Using previously unpublished material from the LUCE archive and the State Archives in Rome, this article examines how film-making became part and parcel of the process of 'taming' nature in the Pontine Marshes under Mussolini's regime. Fascist authorities perceived the undisciplined and unproductive nature of the 'death inducing swamps' as something that had to be extinguished from the face of Italy, to make way for an ideal fascist nature that would nurture ideal fascist subjects. We argue that the success of transforming the swamps owed as much to the extensive investment of labour power, capital, and technology, as it did to the careful staging of every step of the project through cinematographic representations. Although planning and land reclamation institutions were responsible for the material production of the reclaimed land, the LUCE institute was instrumental in actively turning this new land into the ideal fascist landscape. In so doing, the paper offers a new reading on landscape and nationalism explored through an analysis of the production of landscape in Italy under Mussolini.

The paper reports on both methodological and substantive findings. It presents a method for generating simplified representations for regional urban populations, their geographical sub-populations and communities. the method generates greatly simplified high-resolution socio-economic profiles of populated geographical areas from complex large census data sets.

Edited version of published paper presented at 'Is Black and Red Dead?' Conference, Centre for the Study of Social and Global and Justice (CSSGJ) University of Nottingham, 7-8 September, 2009

https://socialhistoryportal.org/news/articles/110943