Key MacFarlane
University of California, Santa Cruz, History of Consciousness, Graduate Student
- Dialectical Materialism, Marxist Geography, Critical Theory, Continental Philosophy, Space and Time (Philosophy), Spatial Theory, and 20 moreFrankfurt School, Human Geography, G.W.F. Hegel, Henri Lefebvre, Critical Geography, José Carlos Mariátegui, Edmund Husserl, Walter Benjamin, Aesthetics and Politics, Phenomenology, Uneven Development, Karl Marx, Marxism, Theodor Adorno, Alain Badiou, Subjectivity, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Everyday Life, Rhythmanalysis, and Philosophy of perceptionedit
- I am a PhD candidate in the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz. My work ... moreI am a PhD candidate in the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz. My work bridges the fields of human geography, critical theory, and contemporary philosophy with a focus on the production, politics, and experience of space and time, especially in relation to Marxism. I hold an M.A. in Geography from the University of Washington and a B.A. summa cum laude in Philosophy and English from Colgate University.
My research and teaching interests include 20th Century Continental Philosophy, Marxist Geography, Critical Theory, Political Theory, Phenomenology, Aesthetics, Philosophy of Space & Time, Critique of Everyday Life, Dialectics, Uneven Development, Walter Benjamin, Henri Lefebvre, Californiaedit
In many US cities, especially those in the Rust Belt, the environmental goods and services (EGS ) industry has played a significant role in the restructuring of local economies to promote new, flexible, and “creative” forms of... more
In many US cities, especially those in the Rust Belt, the environmental goods and services (EGS ) industry has played a significant role in the restructuring of local economies to promote new, flexible, and “creative” forms of service-based labor. And yet much of the environmental work conducted in these cities has been directed at an industrial past, cleaning up the waste left over from long-departed manufacturing sectors. Drawing on David Harvey’s writings on urban process, this paper develops a theory of “waste switching” that situates EGS within a larger negotiation of space and time across city landscapes. This theory is fleshed out in case studies of the EGS industry in Baltimore, Pittsburgh, and Milwaukee, where new cycles of accumulation have been built on refuse, toxins, and dead labor. These “toxi-cities” challenge traditional conceptions of urbanization as spatially – but also temporally – bounded. Increasingly, “creative” urban development involves the recollection and revalorization of toxic pasts. But a radical urban politics emerges from the same waste, recollecting otherwise.
*forthcoming*
*forthcoming*
Research Interests: Critical Theory, History, Geography, Urban Geography, Economics, and 15 morePolitical Economy, Philosophy, Environmental Remediation, Environmental Studies, Urban Studies, Walter Benjamin, Capitalism, David Harvey, Creative City, Rust Belt, Temporality, Cities, Toxicity, Baltimore, and Environmental Goods and Services
The last 20 years have witnessed a deepening of the imbrication between capital and the university. This paper seeks to map one point at which this binding occurs: in critical theory. Recently scholars in strategic management have turned... more
The last 20 years have witnessed a deepening of the imbrication between capital and the university. This paper seeks to map one point at which this binding occurs: in critical theory. Recently scholars in strategic management have turned to processual and relational ontologies in an attempt to reimagine the logics of profit, value, and growth. These same ontologies have appealed to critical geographers as a means of reconceiving space as unfixed. Drawing on a case study of Deleuze’s appropriation in management literature, I show how such ontologies presuppose a vitalism that necessarily reproduces and obscures the structures of exploitation.
Research Interests: Management, Ontology, Organizational Theory, Marxism, Strategic Management, and 15 moreGilles Deleuze, Process Philosophy, Capitalism, Critical Geography, Alain Badiou, Creative Class, Relationality, Business Management, Corporate University, Nigel Thrift, Vitalism, Management Studies, Relational Ontology, Dialectics, and Flat Ontology
Sanctuary, which comes from the Latin sanctus, meaning “holy,” has played a strategic role in political resistance for hundreds of years. Today the concept has returned as one of importance in the protection of refugees worldwide. In this... more
Sanctuary, which comes from the Latin sanctus, meaning “holy,” has played a strategic role in political
resistance for hundreds of years. Today the concept has returned as one of importance in the protection of
refugees worldwide. In this article, which focuses on sanctuary practices in Germany, we examine the
importance of the spaces of church-based asylum—the structure, physical spaces, and neighborhood of the
church itself. We investigate the ways in which these spaces are constitutive of collective memories of
alternative justice and resistance and how these memories are used to transform the actions and possibilities
of the present. The article builds off other nonlinear, counterhegemonic concepts of space and time, such as
the demonic, as ways of moving beyond normative assumptions of the cultural landscape. The demonic
challenges both the abstract space of modern liberalism as well as the absolute space of the sacred; it is a
radical reworking—one that relies on forgotten or hidden pasts yet remains new and open-ended. For
sanctuary to contest the racialized violence of modern state governance it likewise must both remember and
rework the idea of sacred space and sacred time in new, materialist, and fluid forms. Drawing on a case study
from Berlin, the article explores ways to conceptualize the temporal and spatial anchoring of alternative,
nonliberal memories and their potential for contemporary resistance. The Heilig-Kreuz church and its pastors
and allies, as well as an associated church network, the German Ecumenical Committee on Church Asylum,
provide the empirical case studies. Key Words: memory, race, refugees, sanctuary, space.
resistance for hundreds of years. Today the concept has returned as one of importance in the protection of
refugees worldwide. In this article, which focuses on sanctuary practices in Germany, we examine the
importance of the spaces of church-based asylum—the structure, physical spaces, and neighborhood of the
church itself. We investigate the ways in which these spaces are constitutive of collective memories of
alternative justice and resistance and how these memories are used to transform the actions and possibilities
of the present. The article builds off other nonlinear, counterhegemonic concepts of space and time, such as
the demonic, as ways of moving beyond normative assumptions of the cultural landscape. The demonic
challenges both the abstract space of modern liberalism as well as the absolute space of the sacred; it is a
radical reworking—one that relies on forgotten or hidden pasts yet remains new and open-ended. For
sanctuary to contest the racialized violence of modern state governance it likewise must both remember and
rework the idea of sacred space and sacred time in new, materialist, and fluid forms. Drawing on a case study
from Berlin, the article explores ways to conceptualize the temporal and spatial anchoring of alternative,
nonliberal memories and their potential for contemporary resistance. The Heilig-Kreuz church and its pastors
and allies, as well as an associated church network, the German Ecumenical Committee on Church Asylum,
provide the empirical case studies. Key Words: memory, race, refugees, sanctuary, space.
Research Interests:
Germany today is experiencing the strongest upsurge of right-wing populism since WWII, most notably with the rise of Pegida and Alternative für Deutschland. And yet, wealthy global cities like Hamburg continue to present themselves as the... more
Germany today is experiencing the strongest upsurge of right-wing populism since WWII, most notably with the rise of Pegida and Alternative für Deutschland. And yet, wealthy global cities like Hamburg continue to present themselves as the gatekeepers of liberal progress and cosmopolitan openness. This paper argues that Hamburg’s urban boosterism relies on, while simultaneously obscuring, the same structures of racial violence that embolden reactionary movements. Drawing on the work of Walter Benjamin and Allan Pred, we present an archeology of Hamburg’s landscape, uncovering some of its ‘spaces of danger’—sites layered with histories of violence, many of which lie buried and forgotten. We find that these spaces, when they become visible, threaten to undermine Hamburg’s cosmopolitan narrative. They must, as a result, be continually erased or downplayed in order to secure the city as an attractive site for capital investment. To illustrate this argument, we give three historical examples: Hamburg’s role in the Hanseatic League during the medieval and early modern period; the city under the Nazi regime; and the recent treatment of Black African refugees. The paper’s main contribution is to better situate issues of historical landscape, collective memory, and violent legacy within the political economy of today’s global city.
Research Interests:
資本と大学の重なり合いが深まっていくのが見られるようになった、ここ二〇年のあいだに 価、利益、近年の経営戦略論の研究者たちは。特定しようとするものである—批判理論のなかに—起きる地点を これらと同じ存在。プロセス的存在論や関係的存在論に目を向けた、成長をめぐる論理を新たに作り直すために、値 本稿は経営。批判地理学者によって好んで用いられてきた、論が空間を固定されないものとして再考する手法として... more
資本と大学の重なり合いが深まっていくのが見られるようになった、ここ二〇年のあいだに
価、利益、近年の経営戦略論の研究者たちは。特定しようとするものである—批判理論のなかに—起きる地点を
これらと同じ存在。プロセス的存在論や関係的存在論に目を向けた、成長をめぐる論理を新たに作り直すために、値
本稿は経営。批判地理学者によって好んで用いられてきた、論が空間を固定されないものとして再考する手法として
不明瞭、必然的に搾取の構造を再生産し、学の文献におけるドゥルーズの流用をケーススタディとして参照しながら
。こうした存在論がどのようにして前提視しているのかを示すものである、なものにもする生命論を
林凌訳/マクファーレン・キー
価、利益、近年の経営戦略論の研究者たちは。特定しようとするものである—批判理論のなかに—起きる地点を
これらと同じ存在。プロセス的存在論や関係的存在論に目を向けた、成長をめぐる論理を新たに作り直すために、値
本稿は経営。批判地理学者によって好んで用いられてきた、論が空間を固定されないものとして再考する手法として
不明瞭、必然的に搾取の構造を再生産し、学の文献におけるドゥルーズの流用をケーススタディとして参照しながら
。こうした存在論がどのようにして前提視しているのかを示すものである、なものにもする生命論を
林凌訳/マクファーレン・キー
Research Interests:
In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the geographies of electronic waste (e-waste). Several studies have examined how e-waste is increasingly exported to processing sites in China, India, Pakistan, Ghana and elsewhere... more
In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the geographies of electronic waste (e-waste). Several studies have examined how e-waste is increasingly exported to processing sites in China, India, Pakistan, Ghana and elsewhere across the global south, where it leads to devastating health effects. Through an interdisciplinary patchwork of human geography, public health, narrative theory, and philosophies of memory, this paper seeks to show how the export of e-waste to the global south-and the toxins it brings along with it-is part of what makes "resilient" urban growth and citizenship possible elsewhere, particularly in the San Francisco Bay Area. The surplus value of technological production is only recuperable, in places like Silicon Valley, if its toxicity is spatially and temporally displaced onto-and hidden within-surplus bodies who are cast into necropolitical terrains of ill-health and danger. Tracing this story of e-waste, which spans from the epigenetic to the geopolitical, from the San Francisco Bay Area to China's Greater Bay Area, requires a method of empirical allegory that can detect global iniquities on the most granular of scales, and vice versa.
Research Interests:
The inevitability of flooding is a constant reminder of Hamburg’s waterlogged history. From its origins, both the city’s prosperity and its precarity have been closely tied to its marshland geography. Largely due to its strategic position... more
The inevitability of flooding is a constant reminder of Hamburg’s waterlogged history. From its origins, both the city’s prosperity and its precarity have been closely tied to its marshland geography. Largely due to its strategic position along the Elbe, Hamburg has been a major hub of international commerce for centuries. This began in 1189, when the Holy Roman Emperor issued a charter granting freedom from customs duties for ships sailing between Hamburg and the North Sea. In the next century, the city’s trade alliance with Lübeck in 1230 (expanded in 1241) would lay much of the groundwork for the Hanseatic League, a confederation of northern European towns that dominated Baltic maritime trade from the 13th to the late-15th century. Although the League declined over time, and officially collapsed in 1862, it created the foundations for Hamburg’s continued economic success. With its Hanseatic pedigree, the city was – and still is – able to retain its local trade monopoly and its status as a global marketplace. Deep-seated merchant connections have helped solidify Hamburg as Germany’s wealthiest city by most accounts, with the second-busiest container port in Europe, with ships from all over the world traveling on the Elbe between Hamburg and the North Sea.
Research Interests: History, Sociology, Social Movements, Geography, International Relations, and 15 moreSocial Sciences, Globalization, Medieval History, Geopolitics, International Trade, Environmental Studies, Political Science, Logistics, Cosmopolitanism, Urban Studies, Protest, Housing, Capitalism, Germany, and Commerce
Over the last 10 years there has been considerable growth in the range of geographical work on sound, particularly on how sound shapes everyday life. One area that is beginning to receive attention is how noise is formalized in law and... more
Over the last 10 years there has been considerable growth in the range of geographical work on sound, particularly on how sound shapes everyday life. One area that is beginning to receive attention is how noise is formalized in law and policy. This paper contributes to that literature by developing a geographic theory of modern noise regulation. Two policies are examined: the US Environmental Protection Agency’s Noise Control Act of 1972 and Seattle’s Noise Ordinance of 1977. Combining Foucauldian and Marxian frameworks, I argue that these documents trace a biopolitics of “sensible citizenship” that emerges within, as a means of managing, a changing regime of capitalist accumulation, as global attention began to shift from production to the “noisy sphere” of exchange in the 1960s and 1970s. Noise, I claim here, has come to physically embody capitalism’s inner contradictions—between needing to promote commercial activities and needing to control the noisy externalities those activities create. Such an analysis addresses recent calls for a more historically and materially grounded approach to the study of sound in human geography, while also adding a critical legal perspective to recent debates on the relations between citizenship, the body, and governance.
Research Interests:
In this essay we explore this dystopic world of neoliberal education, while at the same time giving examples of how teachers and students are taking back classrooms and pedagogic practices throughout the United States. The key to... more
In this essay we explore this dystopic world of neoliberal education, while at the same time giving examples of how teachers and students are taking back classrooms and pedagogic practices throughout the United States. The key to contesting dislocation, we suggest, is quite literal: bringing back time and place in radical ways that resonate with young people. Walter Benjamin explored possibilities of the revolutionary past in his concept of 'Jetztzeit'. Rather than relying on any vulgar Marxist teleological or evolutionist notion of history (made up of ‘homogenous, empty time’), he favored a more kaleidoscopic approach – one in which a ‘tiger’s leap into the past’ opened up possibilities for revolutionary thought and action in the present. For Benjamin, as for his friend Ernst Bloch, one place where these possibilities expressed themselves is in the figure of the child. Both writers were drawn to, and at times deeply enchanted by, the spaces and rhythms of childhood – its toys, fairytales, and colorful dreams. While often overlooked, Benjamin’s and Bloch’s writings on childhood provide a microcosm of their political projects more generally. As Bloch once argued, the moment of youth is always also a moment of radical political potential. To be young, for Bloch, is to have one foot out of the present. It is to be open to other pasts and other futures, an idea with rich pedagogic possibility. This essay is inspired by the radical pedagogical potential of Benjamin’s and Bloch’s work, highlighting in particular how new configurations of political possibility are formed through spatially situated practices and modes of learning.
Research Interests: Critical Theory, Entrepreneurship, History, Sociology, Social Movements, and 15 moreGeography, Philosophy, Education, Development Studies, Social Sciences, Learning and Teaching, Early Childhood Education, Child Development, Politics, Walter Benjamin, Pedagogy, Capitalism, Memory Studies, Neoliberalism, and Socialism
Sound has received much attention from human geographers in recent years. This paper opens a debate around the growing body of work on sound as a research method. Sonic methods have largely emerged as part of the so-called “affective... more
Sound has received much attention from human geographers in recent years. This paper opens a debate around the growing body of work on sound as a research method. Sonic methods have largely emerged as part of the so-called “affective turn” in geography, as efforts to attend to the performative, emotional, and pre-reflective aspects of experience. Drawing on the work of Adorno, I develop a critique of existing sonic methods, arguing that their focus on affect and immediate experience is unable to grasp “negative geographies”: what and who fails to appear and remains silent to the researcher. These claims are grounded in two autoethnographic accounts of my own experimentation with sonic methods. The first is a GIS study of noise-monitoring data in King County, Washington. The second is a participatory mapping project that sought to record and collect “sound diaries” from migrants and refugees across the greater Seattle area. In both cases, I show how silences and failures in the research process make sonic methods useful tools for social critique.
Research Interests: Critical Theory, Geography, Human Geography, Philosophy, Ethics, and 13 moreSocial Sciences, Research Methodology, Theodor Adorno, Politics, Autoethnography, Soundscape Studies, Migration Studies, Public Health, Affect (Cultural Theory), Cities, Digital mapping, Dialectics, and Geographic Information Systems (GIS)
On May 14, 2018, Ammar Rezeq left his tiny apartment in the Gaza Strip with his 8-month-old niece, Layla Ghandour, in his arms. Ammar, who is only 12, was hoping to find their family at the protest along Gaza’s eastern border – part of... more
On May 14, 2018, Ammar Rezeq left his tiny apartment in the Gaza Strip with his 8-month-old niece, Layla Ghandour, in his arms. Ammar, who is only 12, was hoping to find their family at the protest along Gaza’s eastern border – part of the weeks-long “Great March of Return." At the protest, they managed to track down Layla’s grandmother, Heyam Omar, but they found something else as well. Israeli Defense Force (IDF) soldiers were firing tear-gas canisters into the crowd. One landed nearby. After fleeing the scene, the family realized that Layla had stopped breathing. She later died of toxic gas inhalation. She was one of the 62 Palestinians killed by the IDF that day, one of ten children.
Research Interests:
This essay is a critical response to Geoff Mann and Joel Wainwright's 2018 book Climate Leviathan. It focuses on the political alternative fleshed out towards the end of the book: "Climate X." For Mann and Wainwright, X is a variable to... more
This essay is a critical response to Geoff Mann and Joel Wainwright's 2018 book Climate Leviathan. It focuses on the political alternative fleshed out towards the end of the book: "Climate X." For Mann and Wainwright, X is a variable to "solve for." I seek to take this seriously as a mathematical statement, exploring the extent to which a politics of Climate X can be considered algebraic, especially in light of Mann and Wainwright's references to "fragments" in the work of Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin. The book's algebraic approach, I argue, reduces the fragment (X), and politics along with it, to something numerable. From a different reading of Adorno and Benjamin, I show how two other fields of mathematics-set theory and fractal geometry-help address some of the pitfalls of Climate X, while pointing towards another climate politics that embraces deviation, infinity, and nothingness.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Germany today is experiencing the strongest upsurge of right-wing populism since the second world war, most notably with the rise of Pegida and Alternative für Deutschland. Yet wealthy global cities like Hamburg continue to present... more
Germany today is experiencing the strongest upsurge of right-wing populism since the second world war, most notably with the rise of Pegida and Alternative für Deutschland. Yet wealthy global cities like Hamburg continue to present themselves as the gatekeepers of liberal progress and cosmopolitan openness. This article argues that Hamburg's urban boosterism relies on, while simultaneously obscuring, the same structures of racial violence that embolden reactionary movements. Drawing on the work of Walter Benjamin and Allan Pred, we present an archaeology of Hamburg's landscape, uncovering some of its 'spaces of danger'-sites layered with histories of violence, many of which lie buried and forgotten. We find that these spaces, when they become visible, threaten to undermine Hamburg's cosmopolitan narrative. They must, as a result, be continually erased or downplayed in order to secure the city as an attractive site for capital investment. To illustrate this argument, we give three historical examples: Hamburg's role in the Hanseatic League during the medieval and early modern period; the city under the Nazi regime; and the recent treatment of Black African refugees. The article's main contribution is to better situate issues of historical landscape, collective memory and racialized violence within the political economy of today's global city.
Research Interests:
In this chapter we investigate the formation and management of the sanctuary network in Europe by focusing on several key institutions and players and some critical events. The constitution of these types of relationships and practices... more
In this chapter we investigate the formation and management of the sanctuary network
in Europe by focusing on several key institutions and players and some critical events. The
constitution of these types of relationships and practices over decades as well as across
national borders is important to study because it can show us how counter-hegemonic
ideas move over time and space, as well as how they become institutionalized, embedded
in the landscape, and activated at different moments in time.
in Europe by focusing on several key institutions and players and some critical events. The
constitution of these types of relationships and practices over decades as well as across
national borders is important to study because it can show us how counter-hegemonic
ideas move over time and space, as well as how they become institutionalized, embedded
in the landscape, and activated at different moments in time.
Research Interests:
This chapter examines how practices, ideas, and spaces of refugee protection are coordinated across national borders, forming what we call a sanctuary network. Our focus is on Europe, where activist churches and related institutions share... more
This chapter examines how practices, ideas, and spaces of refugee protection are coordinated across national borders, forming what we call a sanctuary network. Our focus is on Europe, where activist churches and related institutions share information, contacts, and strategies for aiding and sheltering migrants. We investigate several key transnational institutions, including the German Ecumenical Committee on Church Asylum (GECCA) and the Churches’ Commission for Migrants in Europe (CCME), as well as a number of critical actors and events. To better grasp the formation of cross-border relationships and their successes and limitations we turn to existing literature on policy transfer and transnational activist networks. Such scholarship, we argue, cannot fully account for the socially, politically, and physically embedded qualities of sanctuary networks, which have existed in various forms for centuries. Drawing on interviews and archival data, we show how faith actors continually “reactivate” historical landscapes of collective memory and alternative forms of justice associated with both the concepts and the spatial practices of sanctuary. The sanctuary network is therefore understood not only as a bundle of solidarities across space – but also across time.
Research Interests: Religion, History, Sociology, Geography, Human Geography, and 15 moreCultural Geography, Historical Geography, European Studies, Education, Theology, Refugee Studies, Space and Place, Politics, Justice, European Union, Collective Memory, Migration Studies, Church History, Transnational migration, and Sanctuary
With the advance of neoliberal globalization in the 1990s, lifelong learning emerged in the policy frameworks of the United States, Canada, and the EU. Neoliberal policies during this era worked to orchestrate personal development within... more
With the advance of neoliberal globalization in the 1990s, lifelong learning emerged in the policy frameworks of the United States, Canada, and the EU. Neoliberal policies during this era worked to orchestrate personal development within the increasingly flexible processes of global capitalism, placing both within the rhythm of a personal life that must be fulfilled. Such an orchestration produced certain spaces—captured in notions such as the “learning society” and “creative city”—in which citizens were expected to take responsibility for their own human capital development as flexible entrepreneurs. For the majority of the population, however, this process led primarily to their own deskilling. Moreover, not only did lifelong learning strategies promote the standardization and homogenization of educational skills, and thus the abstraction and interchangeability of labor, but they were also bound up with the production of a so-called learning society that demanded increasing levels of external management. This chapter looks at some of the ramifications of these processes on workers and systems of education.
Research Interests: Entrepreneurship, Management, Geography, Economic Geography, Education, and 14 moreLifelong Learning, Human Rights, Liberalism, Neoliberalism, Education and Labor Markets, Knowledge Economy, Creative City, Creative Class, Employability Skills, Global Capitalism, Freedom, Taxes, Flexible Education, and flexible Labour Markets
This chapter looks at how people involved in education are recruited as entrepreneurial, choice-making subjects and how this is implicated in the longer-term transition towards the privatization of education. The focus is on the popular... more
This chapter looks at how people involved in education are recruited as entrepreneurial, choice-making subjects and how this is implicated in the longer-term transition towards the privatization of education. The focus is on the popular media and on the various “expert” reports and statistics that are funded by private foundations to encourage parents to advocate for reforms.
Research Interests: Entrepreneurship, Geography, Education, Poverty, Segregation, and 15 moreLiberalism, Neoliberalism, Charter schools, Educational reform, Public Private Partnerships, Accumulation by Dispossession, Privatization, Freedom, Dispossession, Public Education, Free Schools, Private Education, Parents, Neoliberalism and Education, and Expert knowledge
In recent years social scientists have been interested in the growth and transformation of global cities. These metropolises, which function as key command centers in global production networks, manifest many of the social, economic, and... more
In recent years social scientists have been interested in the growth and transformation of
global cities. These metropolises, which function as key command centers in global
production networks, manifest many of the social, economic, and political tensions and
inequities of neoliberal globalization. Their international appeal as sites of financial
freedom and free trade frequently obscures the global city underbelly: practices of labor
exploitation, racial discrimination, and migrant deferral. This chapter explores some of
these global tensions, showing how they have shaped the strategies and technologies
behind urban crime prevention, security, and policing. In particular, the chapter shows
how certain populations perceived as risky become treated as pre-criminals: individuals
in need of management and control before any criminal behavior has occurred. It is
demonstrated further how the production of the pre-criminal can lead to dispossession,
delay, and detention as well as to increasing gentrification and violence.
global cities. These metropolises, which function as key command centers in global
production networks, manifest many of the social, economic, and political tensions and
inequities of neoliberal globalization. Their international appeal as sites of financial
freedom and free trade frequently obscures the global city underbelly: practices of labor
exploitation, racial discrimination, and migrant deferral. This chapter explores some of
these global tensions, showing how they have shaped the strategies and technologies
behind urban crime prevention, security, and policing. In particular, the chapter shows
how certain populations perceived as risky become treated as pre-criminals: individuals
in need of management and control before any criminal behavior has occurred. It is
demonstrated further how the production of the pre-criminal can lead to dispossession,
delay, and detention as well as to increasing gentrification and violence.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
In the face of intensifying environmental crisis, and the apparent failure of national politics to address it, municipal planning has become the leading frontier of climate change action. Though the United Nations put “equity” on equal... more
In the face of intensifying environmental crisis, and the apparent failure of national politics to address it, municipal planning has become the leading frontier of climate change action. Though the United Nations put “equity” on equal footing with economy and ecology in laying out its “three pillars” of sustainability in 1987, incorporating social equity goals into sustainability planning has remained a challenge in urban practice. “Equity”—like sustainability itself—is an amorphous goal, and a large-scale problem not obviously solved through city-scaled planning efforts.
This report analyzes the inclusion and operationalization of “equity” in 170 California cities’ and counties’ Climate Action Plans (CAPs). California’s municipal climate action planning landscape is unique for both its size and diversity, as aggressive statewide environmental legislation has put unique pressure on all cities—even (or especially) small and less well-resourced ones—to adopt climate/emissions plans. We conducted a content analysis of the plans, compared different cities’ approaches to equity, and how cities’ approaches relate to city characteristics such as size, social composition, and income inequality.
This report analyzes the inclusion and operationalization of “equity” in 170 California cities’ and counties’ Climate Action Plans (CAPs). California’s municipal climate action planning landscape is unique for both its size and diversity, as aggressive statewide environmental legislation has put unique pressure on all cities—even (or especially) small and less well-resourced ones—to adopt climate/emissions plans. We conducted a content analysis of the plans, compared different cities’ approaches to equity, and how cities’ approaches relate to city characteristics such as size, social composition, and income inequality.
Research Interests:
Capital shapes space and space shapes capital. For decades, geographers have stressed that space is not an abstract dimension or some container to be filled. Space is rather formed actively through social relations. Capitalist society is... more
Capital shapes space and space shapes capital. For decades, geographers have stressed that space is not an abstract dimension or some container to be filled. Space is rather formed actively through social relations. Capitalist society is marked by a particular kind of social relation: class conflict. Class conflict forms the basic ingredient in capital accumulation, insofar as the latter relies on the ongoing exploitation of labor. But capital accumulation is riddled with contradiction. Highlighted here is capitalism's moving contradiction: between the need for human labor and the need to reduce the duration of that labor. Geographers have shown how this contradiction is “fixed” in and through space. From the local to the global, the movement of capital relies on patterns of uneven development, which generate violent divisions between regions and between bodies. In this way capital transforms space in its own image: as a terrain of conflict and competition. Radical geographers explore how space is transformed otherwise, in ways that abolish existing social relations.
***uncorrected proof, there are some typos***
***uncorrected proof, there are some typos***
Research Interests:
As nuclear tourism booms in the Land of Enchantment, histories of violence are packaged, sold and consumed.
Research Interests: Religion, History, Military History, Sociology, Geography, and 15 moreAmerican Studies, Anthropology, Tourism Studies, Education, Indigenous Studies, Journalism, Social Sciences, Architecture, Museum Studies, Violence, Cultural Landscapes, Colonialism, UFOlogy, Tourism, and Accumulation by Dispossession
Research Interests:
Ecofriendly glass architecture that incorporates flora into its design is trending high among West Coast tech giants. This essay traces the imperial and utopian lineage of this aesthetic, arguing that its contemporary effect is that of... more
Ecofriendly glass architecture that incorporates flora into its design is trending high among West Coast tech giants. This essay traces the imperial and utopian lineage of this aesthetic, arguing that its contemporary effect is that of the greenhouse: a seductive but reactionary spectacle of life incubated by total corporatization.
Research Interests:
Research Interests: Sociology, Social Movements, Geography, American Studies, Economics, and 15 moreEconomic Geography, Political Economy, Globalization, Marxism, Race and Racism, Class, Race and Ethnicity, Urban Studies, Police, Protest, Capitalism, Elites (Political Science), Prisons, Baltimore, and Black Lives Matter
Tasarımına bitkilerin dahil edildiği çevre dostu cam mimarlık, şu sıralarda ABD'nin Batı kıyısındaki teknoloji devleri arasında rağbette. Daha geçen hafta Amazon, Seattle'da Spheres adı verilen şirket merkezinin açılışını yaptı. Key... more
Tasarımına bitkilerin dahil edildiği çevre dostu cam mimarlık, şu sıralarda ABD'nin Batı kıyısındaki teknoloji devleri arasında rağbette. Daha geçen hafta Amazon, Seattle'da Spheres adı verilen şirket merkezinin açılışını yaptı. Key MacFarlane, aşağıda bazı bölümlerinin çevirisini sunduğumuz Greenhouse Effect başlıklı yazısında bu estetiğin emperyal ve ütopik kökenlerinin izini sürüyor ve, çağdaş haliyle, sera etkisi yaptığını öne sürüyor: topyekûn şirketleşmenin cam içinde büyüttüğü, baştan çıkarıcı fakat gerici bir yaşam gösterisi.
Research Interests: Emperyalizm, Botanik, Estetik, Kapitalizm, Sömürgecilik, and 5 moreçevre, Mimari, Hayat, şirketler, and Sırça
Σχετικά με τις ταραχές του 2015 στη Βαλτιμόρη...
(On the 2015 riots in Baltimore...)
(On the 2015 riots in Baltimore...)
Research Interests:
This course invites students to investigate the social, spatial, and economic inequalities that mark urban life in the United States. The class will focus on broad debates and narratives about progress, development, race, creativity, and... more
This course invites students to investigate the social, spatial, and economic inequalities that mark urban life in the United States. The class will focus on broad debates and narratives about progress, development, race, creativity, and justice, tying these large themes to how the contemporary American city is produced, governed, and imagined. Students will draw on their own experiences to examine what geographer David Harvey calls “the urbanization of consciousness” – how everyday life is shaped by the city and its inequalities. A particular emphasis will be placed on issues of social justice and political resistance in the city. Rather than delving deeply into one specific field, the course will introduce—on a weekly basis—a number of different lenses through which urban life and inequality can be seen and analyzed; these include processes such as gentrification, segregation, environmental racism, policing, fortification, and enclaving. Whenever possible, Santa Cruz and the greater Bay Area will be used as a case study and laboratory where theories can be applied and challenged. In addition to learning about the city and the processes that shape it, this course is designed to improve and challenge students’ academic skills in critical thinking, writing, and political and geographical debate.
Research Interests:
In their latest book Assembly, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri (2017) take up the issue of organization head on. They seek to reclaim strategy for emancipatory ends – removing it from the boardrooms and bringing it down to the streets of... more
In their latest book Assembly, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri (2017) take up the issue of organization head on. They seek to reclaim strategy for emancipatory ends – removing it from the boardrooms and bringing it down to the streets of everyday struggle. Such a project is clearly relevant for critical management studies (CMS) or for anyone who would like to see organizational strategy put to for more radical ends. But Hardt and Negri also overlook something that CMS scholars have been stressing for years: the relationship between strategy and history. The following critical review provides an summary of Hardt and Negri’s argument, before showing how their notion of strategy ultimately rests on a (false) utopianism that ignores the existing archive of radical organizational experiments.
Research Interests: Entrepreneurship, History, Social Movements, Political Economy, Organizational Theory, and 12 moreOrganizational Change, Marxism, Historiography, Strategic Management, Politics, Critical Management Studies, Socialization, Political Organization, Lenin, Teleology, Strategy, and Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt
“Is it possible to write well on music?” This is how Paul Kingsbury (p. 91) begins his chapter in Soundscapes of Wellbeing in Popular Music. The question is not rhetorical. Kingsbury points to a serious epistemological problem not only... more
“Is it possible to write well on music?” This is how Paul Kingsbury (p. 91) begins his chapter in Soundscapes of Wellbeing in Popular Music. The question is not rhetorical. Kingsbury points to a serious epistemological problem not only for geographers studying sound or popular culture but for anyone engaged in social research. How do we write about a world that constantly resists our attempts to capture it in language? How do we study social relations, experiences, and encounters without freezing them into the ice-cube trays of representation?
Research Interests: Geography, Human Geography, Music, Musicology, Festivals and music, and 15 moreSpace and Place, Health Geography, Governance, Identity (Culture), Performativity, Soundscape Studies, Consumption Studies, Health, Critique, Health Studies, Affect (Cultural Theory), Wellbeing, Tourism, Representation, and The Senses
The goal of this panel is to investigate the different ways cities are built and shaped by their relation to “waste,” however broadly defined. Over the last decade a growing number of critical geographers have examined the links between... more
The goal of this panel is to investigate the different ways cities are built and shaped by their relation to “waste,” however broadly defined. Over the last decade a growing number of critical geographers have examined the links between waste management and uneven development, although not always with questions of urban geography explicitly in mind. What this body of scholarship has shown is that the disposal of certain objects is deeply entangled with the dispossession of certain bodies, along lines of class, race, gender, or otherwise.
A major theoretical concern raised by this panel is the question of time. The designation of “waste” brings with it certain temporal assumptions. People and things characterized as “waste” are often considered obsolete, behind the times, remnants of the past. What does this mean for the study urban geography? How might the temporalities of waste expand our territorial notions of the city? And how are the temporalities of waste embodied in the unfolding of (slow) violence, in the racialization of certain lives, in rendering them “disposable”?
A major theoretical concern raised by this panel is the question of time. The designation of “waste” brings with it certain temporal assumptions. People and things characterized as “waste” are often considered obsolete, behind the times, remnants of the past. What does this mean for the study urban geography? How might the temporalities of waste expand our territorial notions of the city? And how are the temporalities of waste embodied in the unfolding of (slow) violence, in the racialization of certain lives, in rendering them “disposable”?
Research Interests: History, Geography, Human Geography, Urban Geography, Philosophy, and 14 moreDevelopment Studies, Space and Place, Urban Studies, Urbanism, Waste Management, Philosophy of Time, Urban Sociology, Henri Lefebvre, Creative City, Space, Accumulation by Dispossession, Cities, Dispossession, and Surplus Population
The church is a unique space because it is built on longstanding traditions as well as on a physical site that is that is often, though certainly not always, outside the jurisdiction of the state. In this way the church offers a... more
The church is a unique space because it is built on longstanding traditions as well as on a physical site that is that is often, though certainly not always, outside the jurisdiction of the state. In this way the church offers a potentially radical site of sanctuary: it provides a space for grounding history, a lightning rod for bringing alternative legal, political, and cultural legacies into the present, in a way that opens up that present.
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Geographers have recently taken note of the ways nuclear landscapes blur – or mutate – the lines between the invisible and the visible (Davies and Polese 2015), ruin and redemption (Cram 2016), the sublime and the everyday (Alexis-Martin... more
Geographers have recently taken note of the ways nuclear landscapes blur – or mutate – the lines between the invisible and the visible (Davies and Polese 2015), ruin and redemption (Cram 2016), the sublime and the everyday (Alexis-Martin and Davies 2017; Pitkanen and Farish 2017). Drawing on an ethnography of Atomic Tourism in New Mexico, this paper explores how the commodity form mediates these various tensions. In turning our attention to kitsch objects, museum collections, nuclear testing sites, and other “dark tourist” attractions, we trace the ways the invisible past lives out a half-life in the consumerist present, how landscapes of sublimity and violence are contained, “miniaturized,” and sold. Our study draws in particular on the work of Walter Benjamin and Susan Stewart to examine the ways the “souvenir” and the “collection” mediate time and space, particularly in term of collective memory. The commodification of the nuclear in New Mexico, we argue, provides a particularly useful map for how structures of violence are systematically forgotten, buried within the everyday, coopted into contemporary visual and consumer culture.
Research Interests:
Noise is one of the most common complaints of city dwellers across the world. This paper looks at a database of 350 noise complaints submitted to the City of Seattle from 1893 to the present. These complaints are examined under the... more
Noise is one of the most common complaints of city dwellers across the world. This paper looks at a database of 350 noise complaints submitted to the City of Seattle from 1893 to the present. These complaints are examined under the Foucauldian concept of confession, as bodily discourses of the self that bind freedom (individual silence) with the necessity of authority (the listening state). Read as such, Seattle noise complaints are shown to reinforce social hierarchies of race, class, and gender by transposing them within the sphere of “culture.” This transposition occurs through noise and the politics of listening it implies. As a health risk to the urban population, noise provides an “objective” phenomenon through which social antagonisms may be made to appear natural. Actual relations of white supremacy, patriarchy, and capitalism are simultaneously silenced and policed as cultural issues, which are spatially and historically specific to Seattle. From “hot-rodders” in the 1950s, to obnoxious hippies in the 1960s, to “rappers” in the 1990s, “cultures” posing a noisy challenge to liberal ideals of tolerance, civility, and the “healthy city” are subjected to acts of silencing. The violence embedded in noise complaints shows how health, well-being, and quality of life (the “lovely city”) are always political categories, inseparable from struggles over urban space, from the suffering of certain bodies.
"Unintelligible: Noise Against Capture"
UC Santa Cruz
April 20, 2018
"Unintelligible: Noise Against Capture"
UC Santa Cruz
April 20, 2018
Research Interests:
The global environmental goods and services (EGS) industry emerged in the 1960s. In many US cities, especially those in the Rust Belt, the EGS industry has played a significant role in the restructuring of local economies to promote new,... more
The global environmental goods and services (EGS) industry emerged in the 1960s. In many US cities, especially those in the Rust Belt, the EGS industry has played a significant role in the restructuring of local economies to promote new, flexible, and “creative” forms of service-based work. And yet environmental work in cities such as Baltimore and Pittsburgh has often been directed at an industrial past, cleaning up hazardous waste left over from long-departed manufacturing sectors. In examining the socioeconomic history of the EGS industry is these areas, this paper demonstrates how new cycles of “green” and “creative” accumulation are often built on the refuse, toxins, and dead labor of what is purportedly left behind. Both within the city and beyond, these polluted landscapes challenge traditional definitions of urbanization that refer solely to the growth of cities as linear and spatially bounded. Taking up Schoenberger and Walker’s (2017) recent call for geographers to examine the “historical–geographical roots” of urban markets, the study of EGS industry shows how contemporary urbanization reinserts industrial, but also military, pasts into the accumulation of capital, squeezing value out of the soils of environmental catastrophe. This analysis engages and expands on the concept of “socioecological fix,” showing how economic and environmental crisis is not only deferred into the future but actively mined, “recycled,” and “conserved” within the urban present. The toxic violences of extraction, military experiment, and social hierarchy—all of these return to urban space in a new green form.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
In both the humanities and social sciences, it’s often taken for granted that critical theory offers students a means of questioning and undermining dominant power relations. The skills and theories developed from this practice, however,... more
In both the humanities and social sciences, it’s often taken for granted that critical theory offers students a means of questioning and undermining dominant power relations. The skills and theories developed from this practice, however, have played an increasingly significant role in shaping management strategies within the post-fordist firm. In particular, I look at the ways relational theories of space—so important for human geographers in the last several decades (Harvey 1973, Soja 1989, Massey 2005)—have been recently taken up in business strategy, as tools for mapping and maximizing value creation. Relational and process-based ontologies, models, and theories remain important in helping geographers, both in research and in pedagogy, to challenge dominant conceptions of space as absolute and fixed. That these strategies are co-opted by business does not deny their worth or radical potential, but raises questions about our roles as academics and educators who produce and disseminate theory.
13th Annual Meeting of the Cultural Studies Association
May 21-24 2015
Riverside, CA
13th Annual Meeting of the Cultural Studies Association
May 21-24 2015
Riverside, CA
Research Interests:
Established in the late 1960s by R. Murray Schafer at Simon Fraser University, the World Soundscape Project is considered to have birthed acoustic ecology, a discipline recently taken up by geographers looking at the relations between... more
Established in the late 1960s by R. Murray Schafer at Simon Fraser University, the World Soundscape Project is considered to have birthed acoustic ecology, a discipline recently taken up by geographers looking at the relations between fauna, space, and sound, as well as those interested in the bodily aspects of the aural. What’s missing from the literature, though, is an exploration of how the framing and technological monitoring of “soundscapes” have functioned biopolitically to maintain hierarchies of power. Drawing on a GIS study that intersects sound monitoring points with different demographic areas in King County, WA, along with a discourse analysis of federal and local noise control regulations, I explore the ways in which the construction of a “soundscape” works to re-present marginalized groups as literally inaudible, while naturalizing capitalist production, silencing its “noisy” contradictions.
9th Annual Critical Geographies Mini-Conference
Simon Fraser University
22 November 2014
9th Annual Critical Geographies Mini-Conference
Simon Fraser University
22 November 2014
Research Interests: Geography, Human Geography, Cartography, Music, Musical Composition, and 15 morePhilosophy, Governance, Sound studies, Sound, Postmodernism, Acoustic Ecology, Alain Badiou, Biopolitics, Modernism, Representation, Soundscape, Noise, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), R. Murray Schafer, and Simon Fraser University
As Michael Mcintyre and Heidi Nast have argued, capitalist accumulation (of surplus value) and certain processes of racialization (of surplus populations) have eroded geographic separations of biopolis and necropolis, creating new unities... more
As Michael Mcintyre and Heidi Nast have argued, capitalist accumulation (of surplus value) and certain processes of racialization (of surplus populations) have eroded geographic separations of biopolis and necropolis, creating new unities they dub the bio(necro)polis and the necro(bio)polis. On the extreme end, Agamben famously claimed that all life today is subject to the sovereign exception—to sudden death—and that we are all virtually homines sacri. Left underdeveloped in Agamben’s work, however, is how the value-form of capitalism does or does not contribute to this intertwining of biopolitics and necropolitics. It seems to me that there are two ways Marxist conceptions of value have been, or can be, theorized alongside biopolitics and necropolitics. The first, and most common, is to theorize the governance of life and death through Marxist notions of surplus value and relative surplus population. The second is through the theory of commodity fetishism wherein, according to Guy Debord, the “commodity completes its colonization of social life.” Or where, amid the intertwining of biopolitical (re)production and capital accumulation, it becomes difficult to think of life outside of the concepts of political economy—including value.
