Here is news of The Routledge Handbook on Cities of the Global South, due to be published any time soon, edited by Sue Parnell and Sophie Oldfield. An important contribution to ongoing debates about ‘theory from the south’ and such things.
New Perspectives on the Problem of the Public
Here is a Call for Papers for a conference in May 2014 organised by the Centre for the Study of Democracy at the University of Westminster on theme of New Perspectives on the Problem of the Public. Confirmed guest speakers include Andrew Barry, Jon Coffee, John Law, and Sarah Whatmore.
Problems: New issue of Limn
A new edition of Limn, which is a rather wonderful on-line ‘scholarly magazine devoted to outlining contemporary problems’ (problems being a theoretically weighted term in this context), is just published, this one on the topic of Food Infrastructures.
Latour MOOC on Scientific Humanities
I came across this accidentally – news of a forthcoming MOOC on Scientific Humanities led by Bruno Latour.
Derek Gregory on Drone Geographies
In the latest issue of Radical Philosophy, an essay by Derek Gregory on Drone Geographies (same issue has an appreciation of Marshall Berman by Andy Merrifield).
2013 in review
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2013 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 16,000 times in 2013. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 6 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.
Review of Consumption and its Consequences
My review of Danny Miller’s Consumption and its Consequences has been published in Area. It’s very good (the book, that is) – if you’re interested in consumption, obviously, but that might not be the main point; it’s also about how to think about poverty, or thinking about social change, thinking about how and why materiality matters. Big ideas in an accessible package.
Post-apartheid Geographies
At the Society and Space webpage, a series of research papers on aspects of post-apartheid South Africa, taken from the various Environment and Planning journals (well, A, C, and D), have been collected as a Virtual Theme issue – these will be available open access for three months. Antipode have a similar Spotlight on South Africa section.
Thought for the day
“Freud’s research can be taken as demonstrating that people are unaware of the causes of their action because Freud refused to listen to them, taking for granted that people are unaware of the causes of their action”.
John Levi-Martin, The Explanation of Social Action.
Introducing Human Geographies
I have just received my copy of the new, 3rd edition of Introducing Human Geographies, “the leading guide to Human Geography for undergraduate students”. Technically, not published ’til 2014, but perhaps available in the better bookshops in time for Christmas. In the second edition, published in 2005, I wrote a chapter under the Issues sub-section with the title ‘Who cares?‘. This time, I have a chapter in the Horizons sub-section on ‘How to think about public space‘. This chapter is actually the first published piece in which I attempt to outline some of my own thinking about publicness that came out of an ESRC project on the theme of Emergent Publics which finished a while ago now…. I’m not sure an undergraduate textbook is necessarily the best place to try to articulate the fuzzy research agenda that I thought might have ’emerged’ from that project, but I suppose it might be a good way of catching the next generation early. Only time will tell.
Pop Theory 