cultural geography
3. What does a non-representation approach to culture consider as important that would be missing from the study of culture in terms of discourse or linguistic representation? (Alan Latham's work)
non-representational approach to culture: not everything can be represented by words; approach culture as practice instead of representation
22. In 1979, Edward Said wrote the book "Orientalism". As Angus discussed it in his presentation, what does the title of the work refer to? How does Gabriela Valdivia use it in her article?
orientalism refers to the stereotyping and generalization of middle eastern peoples in a way that embodies colonialism and domination. Valdivia extends this concept to the indigenous in latin america, saying that they are often generalized or lumped into this category of "indian", which their unique cultures erased, by the dominant, colonist culture
20. If the decision to embrace or reject indigenous identity in Ecuador can be accurately described as a 'double bind' - a dilemma with no satisfactory solution - in relation to the dominant society, please describe how Gabriela Valdivia illustrates this tension in her article OR how Angus describes similar social dynamics in the context of oil production and compensation in the Amazon.
so on one hand people want to identify as indigenous to gain the benefits from the government, citizen and territorial rights. Yet many in the younger generation dont want to be identified as indigenous because they are mocked or made fun for this identity. -Angus mentioned how these indigineous people were relocated by the oil companies and given housing and schools, etc., however the infrastructure was very lacking and people dont have the money to pay for electricity, etc., and within these schools there's a mix of indigenous and non-indigenous peoples and the indigenous students are often picked on or made fun of so they've begun to identify with emo culture as a marker of them being civilized and mestizo instead of indigenous.
14. The body as space and places through bodies: how is the body produced as a space materially and symbolically? How do different bodies may experience the same place differently? How do bodies become sites of struggle? Explain with specific examples.
-Historically, the female body has been seen as related to nature, it is passive and fluid opposed to the masculine solid body. Women's bodies become ideologies in this way; the way women are supposed to appear correlates to the way women are supposed to behave. The gym for example, is a place where female and male bodies have different experiences. Men are encouraged to lift weights, build their muscles and exhibit strength and power, while women are expected to do light exercises like pilates or aerobics to stay slim and trim; small. An example of the body being site of struggle is abortion and birth control. Female bodies become battlegrounds in this way, they transcend the physical to become sites of political and ethical argument and disagreement. -In the indigenous bodies reading it explained how bodies have different physical markers and experience due to our culture, our socioeconomic status, etc., and therefore the body can be read as an indicator of culture and geography; the women who's feet are very tan because they live as indigenous in the amazon and cannot afford shoes.
cultural geography is...
-culture as distribution of things (furniture, clothing, roads, buildings) - culture as a way of life (practices, values, meanings) -culture as meaning -culture as doing (performance, protest, play) -culture as power (unjust, unequal power relations)
Geertz, "Thick Description: Towards an Interpretive Theory of Culture"
-culture is not set of practices, laws and beliefs, but instead an ongoing construction of meaning; culture is semiotic (semiotics = study of meaning-making; signs, and symbols) -ethnography is interpretive ; challenged assumption that there was a clear divide between ethnographer and people being studied -thick description: wink example: thin description would be simply contracting one's eyelid, while thick description differentiates a wink, a twitch, a mocking wink, etc. -culture is public bc meaning is
Mitchell "California: The Beautiful and the Damned"
-grapes of wrath; description of landscape as beautiful and fulfilling the american dream; landscape looks beautiful from afar/on the surface, but in reality it is formed on the exploitation of workers who are seen as expendable while their work is valued -landscapes simultaneously facilitate and hide the exploitative relations of production that shape it -labor and struggle, representation and material -"old" cultural geographers epitomized by Carl Sauer (against environmental determinism; people determined growth of landscape and mapped environment); held that landscapes were a collection of its material elements that together displayed how human cultures had inscribed the physical world -"new" cultural geographers have emphasized landscape's representational and symbolic aspects -laborer does work of maintaining landscape, but under a capitalist system they neither enjoy the land nor benefits in full measure from its products. Part of the work done of the landscape is to hide this basic inequality from the laborer and larger society. Thus material power dynamics of capitalist society must be at forefront of landscape analysis -emphasizes not abandoning analysis of material and physical for representational and social constructs bc physical/material analysis is important -'"Landscape" is not so much experienced as seen..."landscape" is a relation of power, an ideological rendering of spatial relations." -"California landscape is beautiful because it is damned." -landscape as viewed and produced, as symbolic and material -workers make the landscape (but their labor is usually invisible and ignored) -Mitchell argues against seeing landscape as a relict rather than an ongoing construction and merely as organic, natural, and aesthetic because such views erase the traces of work and struggle that produce a landscape. -Because Mitchell argues that while people make the landscape, the erasure of their work makes "the alienation of their labor from the landscape seem at once natural and incontestable." (p.164) Thus, landscape (as both form and symbol) is a part of the reproduction of inequality.
Rose "Looking at Landscape: The Uneasy Pleasures of Power" in Feminism and Geography
-landscape = a way of seeing and knowing, gender -landscapes imbued w/ power relations of gender - landscapes often depicted as feminine forms; curves, etc -domination of knowledge of landscapes = domination of feminine other -looking at landscape is a gendered act of power on the part of male geographers; masculine gaze bestows ownership and control on that which is gazed upon -feminization of landscape -painting of couple with land; man owns the land and holds a gun and he is ready to leave to go hunt while the woman is sitting, rooted to the spot, not an owner of the land -women more "natural" than men
8. Explain the following different approaches to landscape by using the university campus as an example: landscape as text, landscape as visual ideology, landscape as labor and struggle, landscape as a process.
-landscape is a text: It's something that can be read and derive meaning. UGA can be read as a beautiful, southern campus. Through it's memorials and plaques it can also be read as a confederate campus. The small plaque, the only one mentioning race at all, near the entrance to the campus, can be read as an attempt to acknowledge race in a small, after thought kind of way. -landscape as visual ideology: what you read from a landscape can be indicative of it's larger values and beliefs. The lack of the acknowledgement of race in physical monuments, memorials, etc., and the plaque calling the civil war a war for southern independence ignores the meaningful history of race, making the campus seem white, southern and confederate. -landscape as labor and struggle: the reading mentions how a disproportionate number of poc were working in the dining halls, as custodians, etc., and other positions that often involve serving, cleaning up after, etc., opposed to the white student body and the white faculty make-up (where professors are often given more respect and credit) shows landscape as labor, also the fact that this institution was built during a time of slavery, where the founders owned slaves and slaves most likely helped create the buildings, structures, and geography of the campus in the first place. In this way, the landscape is a struggle. Slaves helped build it from the ground up, but their history is largely erased and their struggles silenced. -landscape as a process: landscape is not fixed and is not unaffected by change. they are constantly changing, growing, etc., along with our social, economic and political growth/change. The addition of the plaque acknowledging af. am. struggle is an example of this change. The university is obviously trying to make-up for its past erasure of contributions from poc by changing the landscape of the university to be more inclusive to poc
Latham "Research. Performance, and Doing Human Geography: Some Reflections on Diary-Photograph, Diary-Interview Method"
-meaning not always a cognitive process involving conscious reflection/interpreting symbols, etc., instead comes from emotions, movement from place to place, embodied senses; something people do in their daily lives vs. something they think about, reflect on and interpret -approach culture as practice instead of representation; non-representational approach to culture: not everything can be represented by words; focuses on new ways of doing fieldwork -metaphor of performance as a way to frame research process; performance/practice--diary-photograph-diary-interview method; helps to provide comprehensive picture -too much emphasis on writing, representing, interpreting, culture and meaning since many people don't really analyze why they do what they do and that sometimes theres not a way to know whether your interpreted meaning of something is in fact correct
1. What are the problems the anthropologist Lila Abu-Lughod see with writing culture? When she argues for "writing against culture," what kinds of strategies does she offer to remedy the problems with culture?
-she believes that writing about culture too often relies on a self/other rhetoric -Abu-Lughod suggests: new theoretical approaches (such as discourse and practice instead of culture), studying connections between places and communities, 'ethnographies of the particular' (avoiding generalization)
Gupta and Ferguson, "Beyond 'Culture:' Space, Identity, and the Politics of Difference"
-space is not a neutral container, but instead a product of social relations; differences in culture comes not from isolation but from interconnection; these differences create power hierarchies -they suggest abandoning culture's association with a discreet, fixed, and bounded place or territory; instead emphasizing hybridity, marginality, 'deterritorialization,' borderlands -Problem with culture=place 1. inhabiting the border, margins, 2. cultural difference within a locality (multiculturalism, subcultures, etc.), 3. "The presumption that spaces are autonomous has enabled the power of topography successfully to conceal the topography of power." - product of shared historical processes that differentiates the world as it connects it." -"if we question a pre-given world of separate and discrete "peoples and cultures" and see instead a difference-producing set of relations, we turn from a project of juxtaposing preexisting differences to one of exploring the construction of differences in historical process."
21. Gabriela Valdivia examines the social category of "indigenous" not only by asking people about it verbally but also by observing how people in Ecuador use their bodies in space and express themselves physically. Describe two examples. What does she see or reveal about indigeneity in Ecuador through her observations that she might not by simply asking her interviewees?
-the foot example -she also speaks to people who are indigineous but educated and work in predominately mestizo spaces; he can wear mestizo clothes but his language and accent keep him from being able to fully assimilate. -she brings up the concept of "passing"; is a woman in a skirt and high heels white? No, she can pass as white, but that does not change her racial experience
18. What was the role of Warren County, NC in the struggle against environmental racism?
1982, warren county, NC: selected for a landfill, the rural poor and mostly af. am. community protested and inspired 2 studies to be done, one focused just on the south and the other on the nation birthplace of US environmental movement
10. In Inwood and Martin's analysis, how is the University of Georgia campus racialized and continues to uphold white privilege?
Being able to ignore race is a part of white privilege. The campus chooses to generally ignore race, racial struggles and racialization altogether, even though it' an important part of the campus' history. This is inherently white privilege. White privilege is having your history being the dominant history, while history of poc is largely ignored. The campus' decision to ignore poc history and monuments dedicated to their struggles shows how the campus upholds white privilege.
12. How have gender and racial ideologies shaped UNC-CH campus? How do student movements challenge these ideologies and try to change the built campus environment?
Chapel hill is definitely a southern university. A history of racism and sexism have inherently helped form and shape the school and the campus. The silent sam monument was constructed to honor confederate soldiers, since many who attended the school during the war were soldiers. The stone center was created to give a space for black history and culture that had been largely ignored on campus. The unsung founders memorial was installed in 2005 to honor the poc who helped build the universty. Saunders hall was named after a KKK leader. Student movements including the real silent sam coalition help to point out our universities history of racism, as well as spaces on campus that to this day honor that history. By renaming buildings and removing monuments that once signified racism and oppression, we can re-build a campus that doesn't forget it's history, but doesn't honor those who were on the wrong side of it.
Mitchell "Difference"
Difference is managed through specific kinds of spatial assumptions and practices (of risk and disorder) Difference justifies and legitimizes state intervention at the scale of both the city street and the sovereign nation; Zero tolerance, broken windows ordinance, stop and frisk in the US, But also transnational and translocal: airport security, Guantanamo Bay preemptive policies such as stop and frisk or broken windows policing rely on commonsense definitions of difference in relation to space ex: At the scale of the nation state, failed states can provide the justification for preemptive invasion, even before any discursive or military aggression has been displayed (iraq example). The idea of a difference produced and managed through specific kinds of spatial assumptions and practices (in this case, of risk and disorder), justifies and legitimizes state intervention at the scale of both the city street and the sovereign nation. ------ Kay Anderson's 1991 classic work on Chinatown in Vancouver The government played a significant role in constructing the category of Chineseness and institutionalized and territorialized this category in the space of Chinatown. Anderson: 'State practices institutionalized the concept of a Chinese race, but it was in space that the concept became materially cemented and naturalized in everyday life'. I use 'cultural citizenship' to refer to the cultural practices and beliefs produced out of negotiating the often ambivalent and contested relations with the state and its hegemonic forms that establish the criteria of belonging within a national population and territory. Cultural citizenship is a dual process of self- making and being-made within webs of power linked to the nation-state and civil society. Becoming a citizen depends on how one is constituted as a subject who exercises or submits to power relations.
Checker "Race-ing the Environment" in Polluted Promises: Environmental Racism and the Search for Justice in a Southern Town
Environmental racism affects specifically poor African Americans well being and daily life and, contrary to mainstream understandings that blame African Americans for being passive, affected communities have deployed multiple strategies to mobilize against this situation. hyde park race = most important variable in determining where toxic waste plants will be ; worse in the south; particularly targets af. am. 1982, warren county, NC: selected for a landfill, the rural poor and mostly af. am. community protested and inspired 2 studies to be done 1. What does race have to do with the environment? Environment = where we work, live and play. Geographies often different for people of color and people living in poverty. 2. Checker argues that how "environment" is conceptualized has historically mattered in the kinds of issues targeted by environmental activism. Explain her argument. usually reserved for white middle and upper class/ elite; ignored urban environmental struggles. would close down factories where minorities worked which threatened their livelihoods 3. How/why/when did environmental racism/environmental justice emerge as significant issues? 1964 rachel carson published silent spring. civil rights movement helped spark this activism. after relocation of love canal in NY in 1978, more focus on toxic waste and health risks 4. Checker criticizes the way scholars (especially anthropologists and sociologists) have explained the problems that poor, urban African American communities face in much of the 20th century. What are her criticisms? fueled stereotypes, blamed the victims, no single "black community" etc., 5. What is the approach she uses instead? understand that there is no single black community, realize that these are real people
Vasudevan and Kearney "Remembering Kearneytown: Race, Place, and Collective Memory in Collaborative Filmmaking,"
Environmentalist movements have been dominated by the concerns of urban white middle class people and ignored the plight of African Americans in whose neighborhoods and towns toxic waste is often dumped. By linking racial disparity and toxicity, African Americans have mobilized against "environmental racism" and sought justice. In the video that Pavithra Vasudevan shot with William McKearney, how do they present the relationship between the environment and racial justice and between landscape and memory? In the rural South, Black relations with land and environment are shadowed by memories of restricted mobility, forced labour and lethal violence under slavery and Jim Crow segregation However, Black geographic traditions also actively reclaim devalued spaces and de-naturalise the association of Blackness with degradation, generating vibrant creative, spatial and political practices. Communities facing environmental harms seek to 'recode' waste sites as memorials of resilience; commemorations, toxic tours, storytelling and other performances of memory are critical fora for articulating subjectivities and histories absent from mainstream media
15. How do female body builders disrupt the feminine/masculine dichotomy (binary) according to Lynda Johnston? How do the gym environments reinforce gender stereotypes?
Female bodies are supposed to be "natural", fluid like, submissive, etc., juxtaposed to the male rigid, built and solid body. Female body builder ignore this expectation of what feminized bodies are supposed to look like. They have muscle and are strong and hard like male bodies, which is a transgression against this dichotomous gender expectation. People commented on how female body builders look like men with female heads; insinuating that a build body must belong to men or to one gender. The gym environment explained in this reading reinforces gender stereotypes by creating masculine spaces and feminine spaces: the weight room for the men and the pink room for the women. While these spaces don't actively bar any gender from participating, but the male weight room for example, is not a very welcoming space for women.
9. In their analysis of the University of Georgia historic campus, Joshua Inwood and Deborah Martin argue that the cultural landscape of the university is both a thing and a process. Explain.
First, landscape can be considered a thing; something that can be gazed upon, read, analyzed, interpreted and taken from physical/visual apparatus into ideologies. Landscape is also a process. The things that constitute landscape are subject to change. Buildings may be constructed or demolished, renamed, monuments and plaques can be constructed to add more ideologies to a landscape. So landscape is something physical that exists, but it is created through a process.
Johnston "Flexing Femininity: Female body-builders refiguring 'the body',"
Geographic approaches to bodies: -bodies as the inscribed surface of events and ideologies -bodies as the material sites of identity -bodies as the medium for experiencing place/landscape (how the experience of the same place differs from one person to another) -bodily movement/mobility (how different bodies have different mobility) -bodily boundaries/borders (how bodies are porous or fluid and what this means) Find examples of how bodies: -May experience the same place differently -May have different mobility -May become sites of struggle Lynda Johnston: women body builders and their training environments -"Female body-builders disrupt binary notions of femininity and masculinity." -Body as not pre-social, completely natural but made, built. -The gym as a socio-political space which confirms feminine and masculine stereotypes. -Black and Blue room for heavy weight lifting -Pink room for aerobics --bodies built to become more docile, self-disciplining feminine bodies --bodies built to transgress gender dichotomy and enjoy masculine privileges; . The built female body acts as a mode of defiance to patriarchal attempts to render Woman as the Other --bodies built by the erotic gaze, simultaneous fascination and disgust; alluring and threatening with the possibility of overturning Western hierarchical dualisms Western philosophy has traditionally defined Woman not only as lacking, but also as a leaking, uncontainable and form less vessel. Woman becomes the Other of the Self (male) The male gym user may experience a double disruption in his conception of the `natural' order of femininity and masculinity. First, because femininity and `nature' are often considered to be so closely allied, any attempt to reconstruct the body is transgressive against the `natural' identity of the female body. Second, when female athletes use the technology of the hard core gym to achieve physical muscularity--the male prerogative--they transgress the natural order of sexed identity. The systems of surveillance in the gym (such as `the gaze', reflections via mirrors, and comments) provide an atmosphere that (self) regulates body-builders and form s of femininity
Cresswell, in Place/Out of Place.
Ideology <-----> Place "place" can be more than just spacial, ex: 'put her in her place"; where one belongs related to one's relations to others expectations of behavior based on place in social world and physical place Normative geography (not rules but norms); ex: homelessness and NY train station, black men who's car broke down in white neighborhood, rape in central park v. rape in barroom -transgression: an act that goes against a law, rule, or code of conduct; an offense; places exist, something "bad" happens, place connected with meaning to strengthen ideological position Hegemony- political or cultural dominance or authority over others Doxa - a society's taken-for-granted, unquestioned truths 1) the way in which space and place are used to construct a normative landscape—the way in which ideas about what is right, just, and appropriate are transmitted through space and place 2) transgression—the margins tell us something about normality and transgression as a form of politics "It is when [actions out of place] occur, I argue, that the everyday, commonsense relationships between place and behavior become obvious and underlined." "Ideological beliefs are important because they affect what people do." "Place is produced by practice that adheres to (ideological) beliefs about what is appropriate to do. But place reproduces the beliefs that produce it in a way that makes them appear natural, self-evident, and commonsense."
Valdivia "Indigenous bodies, indigenous minds? Towards an understanding of indigeneity in the Ecuadorian Amazon,"
My identification as a mestizo/white woman academic bounded the frontiers of the research process. Gender, patriarchy and class relations shaped my relationship with Amazonian peoples and what constituted data to be collected and analyzed. For instance, in many cases it was easier to speak with women about the ways in which they related to their husbands and political leaders and how this reproduced views on 'indigenous women', since we shared common elements of identity in those matters (e.g., being women, having husbands). In other cases, differences that marked our distinct positionalities, such as clothing, Spanish-speaking skills, the color of our skins and the shape of our bodies, and the questions I asked about life in the Amazon defined boundaries between us that limited a further understanding of indigeneity in everyday life -I was told my feet were 'too white', that they 'looked strange and too skinny'. I explained that this was probably because my feet are usually inside my shoes. My answer, meant to deflect attention from my scrutinized feet, reinscribed my position as a woman with a higher status. Some women hid their feet after our brief exchange, which I interpreted as a way to close off the subject. -our bodies became different in their form by routinely performing different everyday practices associated with our distinct ways of being in the world. In our encounter of difference, our bodies had become places where different subjectivities could be recognized and mapped. Their exteriority was a medium through which our place-based, reiterative practices actualized our gendered, classed and racialized positionalities -orientalism: In Andean Latin America, 'indigenous bodies' are inscribed with meaning through Orientalizing (Said 1979) intersections of race, ethnicity, nationality, class, generation and gender that shape the everyday experiences of individuals in spaces of work, home and community. This gives the corporeal exterior -phenotypic expressions, clothing, sex and language - the potential to signify 'indigenousness' within a matrix of intelligibility that places individuals as Others outside of modern space and time - there, instead of here -denaturalize indigeneity: "indian does not exist"; instead that umbrella term comprises different peoples and cultures broadly generalized by anthropologists and dominant culture. In a way indigenous and other non-dominant cultures are categorized, defined and created by dominant cultures -being identified as indigenous granted many Amazonian peoples access to certain citizenship/territorial rights -indigeneity can be read through clothes, skin color, ways you walk and talk and other physical forms -participation in political and organizational affairs is a hot issue that threatens established gendered norms of spatial and sexual behavior. Organizational development and regional politicking thus challenge the indigenous woman's rural domesticity, contesting the frontiers of her body and its positionality. The problematic laid out here, thus, is not whether a person is or self-identifies as indigenous or not - an exercise in dichotomous thinking - but how to understand that being identified and/or identifying others as indigenous is a conjuncture with possibilities for changing conditions of existence
Abu-Lughod, "Writing Against Culture"
The problem with culture: self versus other but also hierarchical difference and unequal power; feminists and halfies: problematize self/other, insider/outsider, here/ there distinctions -'other' cultures: over-emphasizing difference, coherence, portraying as homogenous, discreet, timeless, unchanging -Abu-Lughod suggests: new theoretical approaches (such as discourse and practice instead of culture), studying connections between places and communities, 'ethnographies of the particular' (avoiding generalization)
7. What are normative geographies? How can studying transgressions be a method to understand how normative geographies are formed and sustained?
The way in which ideas about what is right, just, and appropriate are transmitted through space and place. The only way we really notice these standards and norms is when they're broken. Restaurant example: people became aware of norms when they were being broken. Transgressions help us understand what is normal and what is not
Inwood and Martin "Whitewash: White Privilege and Racialized Landscapes at the University of Georgia,"
concepts: cultural landscape as both a thing and a process, Collective memory race and racialization white privilege and whiteness as a cultural norm whitewashing main argument:"...we argue the UGA North Campus landscape memorials simplify or ignore race as a social mediator, thereby obfuscating/blur deeply embedded racialized identities and tensions on campus." The materiality of landscapes "serves to naturalize or concretize --to make normal- social relations" Cultural landscape is representative of both a process and a thing that can be analyzed. -Ante-Bellum period: slavery legally sanctioned and protected (1600s-1865) -Jim Crow segregation: whites and blacks legally and socially segregated (1865-1960s) -Civil rights era to the present: official nondiscrimination and efforts at integration Whiteness as the unquestioned norm, a source of privilege ('invisible package of unearned assets'); Racialized hierarchy and whites historically in positions of power Walking/roving interviews; Disconnect between memorial landscapes and the experiences of African Americans on campus; Race is both made visible and remains hidden on campus everything is framed as either pre-war or post-war. Chris: When I read the memorial plaque the first thing I see is Confederate flags, that's the first thing that jumps out to me. Will: [interrupts]: It seems like they are changing the meaning of the Civil War, like it was a war to protect people's independence. Chris: It is like they are trying to keep a kind of Southern Spirit here. Delilah: Yeah, like they are pushing Southern Pride because most of our students left to fight and we had to make this big sacrifice. It makes it look like this place is for Southerners. lawsuits concerning UGA's affirmative action programs and the subsequent publicity has had a 'chilling impact on young African Americans who are looking at the culture of UGA and that the renaming of the Academic Building has gone a long way in improving the situation. ; placement of plaque ensures that this African American presence on campus is visible. ; only plaque that mentions af. am. Holmes-Hunter building is the only site that recognizes 'race', and to see that black history is designated, literally, a specific time and place even though African Americans have always been integral to the University. The status of African American workers on campus is another aspect of the racialization of place and it has meaning for current and prospective students.
17. What does the term environmental racism refer to? How does it present a critique of the mainstream environmentalist movement and expand the understanding of what environment means?
environmental racism is racism in economic policy, in placement of toxic waste dumps, landfills, etc., its the fact that af. am. neighborhoods are bigger targets for waste and environmental hazards. its forcing poc to live in these areas bc of wealth, race, etc., and then allowing for higher rates of pollution, etc., in these areas. mainstream environmental movement was focused on untouched parts of nature and was mostly upper middle class white people. environmental racism turned environmentalism into something for poc and lower class peoples and focused on "where we work, live and play", so schools, neighborhoods, urban areas, etc.
Williams, "Culture"
history of term "culture": -From root word colere in Latin to cultura -Colere: inhabit, cultivate, protect, honor with worship -Early uses of culture: the tending of something (crops or animals) (still used: bacterial culture) -18th century French, German, and English: the tending of natural growth extended to a process of human development -Related to civilization, enlightenment, humanity -European domination and subjugation of other 'cultures' 3 definitions of culture: -The independent and abstract noun which describes a general process of intellectual, spiritual, and aesthetic development from the 18th century similar to "civilization" -The independent noun, whether used generally or specifically, which indicates a particular way of life, whether of a people, a period, a group, or humanity in general: Hiphop culture, American culture, Corporate culture, Southern culture, etc. "anthropological' -The independent and abstract noun which describes the works and practices of intellectual and artistic activity; "elite"
6. In In Place/Out of Place Tim Cresswell argues that "Place is produced by practice that adheres to (ideological) beliefs about what is appropriate to do. But place reproduces the beliefs that produce it in a way that makes them appear natural, self-evident, and commonsense." Explain the relationship between ideology and place. Demonstrate this argument with an example.
ideology helps to define place by using normative geography, or societal expectations and norms based on relative space. One example was Grand Central station in NY. The mayor was upset that homeless people "loitered" in this station that signified wealth, so he tried to ban anyone who wasn't there for travel in order to exclude the homeless from this space. He used common sense logic saying that of course its common sense that only people traveling should be in this space, even though this space is also used as a meeting place, a place to eat, a place to make art, etc.,
4. What is "thick description" as a method? How does it try to capture culture?
it is explaining in detail the background information necessary to understand an action, occurrence or event; the wink example- provides context
Cosgrove "Geography is Everywhere: Culture and Symbolism in Human Landscapes"
landscape as visual ideology; a way of seeing: a way of composing and harmonizing the external world into a 'scene', a visual unity -landscape-as-text -landscapes are a mirror where we see ourselves reflected -different people read different landscapes in different ways; one landscape does not have one universal meaning. Ex: a shopping mall is different for many people; designed for consumer; author sees it as a place for shopping, while the unemployed youth use it as a place to loiter not shop -symbolic representation: dominant culture has upper hand in deciding the content of the landscape; what/who will be included/excluded -social power is reproduced through landscapes -evolving socio-economic relations of capitalism, with its emphasis on private land ownership and wage labor, is reflected through european landscape -treat geography as a humanity; analyze and interpret it -dominant landscapes -Alternative landscapes: -residual: medieval church building in Britain, stone-hinge; leftover from the past -emergent: communes of the 1970s; new -excluded: women's spaces and the home
11. How do cultural landscapes relate to collective memory? Why do monuments, names of buildings or streets matter?
marking significant in history, failing to do so and refusing to do so all say a lot about what the nation wishes to project about itself to others and itself; civil war cites remembered, while Japanese internment camps unmarked. They represent which parts of our history we choose to retain in our collective memory and our conceptions of history. The name of Saunders Hall, for example, matters because it's an active acknowledgement and remembrance of our history's racism: it's pretty much saying we know what he was a leader of the KKK and was racist, but his financial contributions to our campus were important. It's also saying, we know that our past leaders of the university openly held this racist man in a place of esteem and we do not feel ashamed of that. When people say the building should be renamed, they are not saying that we should forget history, they are merely saying that people in our history who committed atrocities and who stood on the wrong side of history should not be honored anymore
Collective memory
memory that is not simply an individualized process, but a shared and constructed creation of a group shared understandings of the past are not simply received, but actively re-interpreted through political and social activity.
16. How has the environment conceived of historically in the mainstream environmentalist movement? How did this conception change?
the focus was more on conservation and what was considered untouched nature such as national parks, monuments, etc., the movement of the 60s and 70s and focus on lead paint/gasoline and then the shift of focus to toxic waste and health shifted focus from the outdoors to urban and residential spaces of the environment
13. What are the factors contributing to sexual assault and violence targeting women on university campuses?
the geography of college campuses from doc: the fact that police weren't allowed to go find athlete rapist; not allowed to go to sports facilities searching for an athlete accused of rape the geography of fraternities on campus; fraternities are valuable to colleges so they don't want to interfere, even though they have concentrated issues of rape
5. When Don Mitchell says, "No decent cultural analysis can draw on culture itself as a source of explanation; rather culture is always something to be explained as it is socially produced through myriad struggles over and in spaces, scales, and landscapes," what is he referring to?
the idea that culture is semiotic, or a study of meaning-making including signs and symbols; culture is interpretive and subjective
2. Why do Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson (two anthropologists) criticize the association of culture with a specific place? How do they propose that we view culture instead?
they have a problem with cultural equaling place because a place can contain many unique cultures, because places like borders and margins have a mix of cultures, and the presumption that spaces are autonomous has led to focus on specific places rather than the diffusion, movement and interconnection of cultures. To counter this, we should view culture as moving and changing by emphasizing hybridity, marginality, deterritorialization and borderlands
