Introduction

Author(s):  
Courtney Elizabeth Knapp

This chapter introduces the reader to ‘diasporic placemaking’ as an alternative conceptual frame for understanding the cultural and socio-spatial politics of planning and development in Chattanooga, Tennessee. It also describes current demographic and housing trends to demonstrate how the racialized stratification influences the city’s housing, economic, and placemaking infrastructures. An overview of the book chapters are also provided.

Somatechnics ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 198-215
Author(s):  
Robert McRuer

Theorists of neoliberalism have placed dispossession and displacement at the centre of their analyses of the workings of contemporary global capitalism. Disability, however, has not figured centrally into these analyses. This essay attends to what might be comprehended as the crip echoes generated by dispossession, displacement, and a global austerity politics. Centring on British-Mexican relations during a moment of austerity in the UK and gentrification in Mexico City, the essay identifies both the voices of disability that are recognized by and made useful for neoliberalism as well as those shut down or displaced by this dominant economic and cultural system. The spatial politics of austerity in the UK have generated a range of punishing, anti-disabled policies such as the so-called ‘Bedroom Tax.’ The essay critiques such policies (and spatial politics) by particularly focusing on two events from 2013: a British embassy good will event exporting British access to Mexico City and an installation of photographs by Livia Radwanski. Radwanski's photos of the redevelopment of a Mexico City neighbourhood (and the displacement of poor people living in the neighbourhood) are examined in order to attend to the ways in which disability might productively haunt an age of austerity, dispossession, and displacement.


Author(s):  
Simon Lumsden

This paper examines the theory of sustainable development presented by Jeffrey Sachs in The Age of Sustainable Development. While Sustainable Development ostensibly seeks to harmonise the conflict between ecological sustainability and human development, the paper argues this is impossible because of the conceptual frame it employs. Rather than allowing for a re-conceptualisation of the human–nature relation, Sustainable Development is simply the latest and possibly last attempt to advance the core idea of western modernity — the notion of self-determination. Drawing upon Hegel’s account of historical development it is argued that Sustainable Development and the notion of planetary boundaries cannot break out of a dualism of nature and self-determining agents.


Author(s):  
Christian D. Liddy

Urban liberties—the privileges and responsibilities linked to citizenship—were understood spatially. This chapter argues that urban politics were spatial politics. Space was not only the terrain upon which wider political battles were fought, but the object of contestation in its own right. The chapter identifies an idea of public space, in which ordinary citizens were anxious about and sensitive to its proper use. Spatial politics in towns were specifically about boundaries. Townspeople conceived a connection between three seemingly separate practices: encroachment upon streets and lanes; the segregation of religious houses within ecclesiastical closes; and the enclosure of common lands. In the course of their disputes, townspeople learned to become citizens.


Author(s):  
Pamela Faber ◽  
Pilar León-Araúz

A well-designed terminological knowledge base is a structured repository of linguistic data, which is enriched with metadata and structured according to specific classification schemes and concept-based analysis. There is now no limit to the quantity and type of information in each entry since the digital age has liberated lexicographical and terminological resources from space constraints. More specifically, a terminological knowledge resource for environmental translators should be tailored to the specific needs of users who work with this multifaceted type of specialized text. Accordingly, the type and configuration of the environmental information should reflect the micro- and macrostructural design of the resource and provide frame-like structures in which concepts and terms are dynamically related to others. Designers must also decide how each type should be accessed and in what sequence. The map of the resource can have an underlying conceptual frame that allows users to derive the maximum benefit from it. This chapter provides an overview of the needs of environmental translators and explains how they can be met in the design of a knowledge resource. This is illustrated by the type and number of data fields, their underlying principles, and their mode of visualization.


2021 ◽  
pp. 0308518X2110266
Author(s):  
Neil Argent ◽  
Sean Markey ◽  
Greg Halseth ◽  
Laura Ryser ◽  
Fiona Haslam-McKenzie

This paper is concerned with the socio-spatial and ethical politics of redistribution, specifically the allocation of natural resources rents from political and economic cores to the economic and geographical peripheries whence the resource originated. Based on a case study of the coal seam gas sector in Queensland's Surat Basin, this paper focuses on the operation of the Queensland State Government's regional development fund for mining and energy extraction-affected regions. Employing an environmental justice framework, we critically explore the operation of these funds in ostensibly helping constituent communities in becoming resilient to the worst effects of the ‘staples trap’. Drawing on secondary demographic and housing data for the region, as well as primary information collected from key respondents from mid-2018 to early 2019, we show that funds were distributed across all of the local government areas, and allocated to projects and places primarily on a perceived economic needs basis. However, concerns were raised with the probity of the funds’ administration. In terms of recognition justice, the participation of smaller and more remote towns and local Indigenous communities was hampered by their structural marginalisation. Procedurally, the funds were criticised for the lack of local consultation taken in the development and approval of projects. While spatially concentrated expenditure may be the most cost-effective use of public monies, we argue that grant application processes should be open, transparent and inclusive, and the outcomes cognisant of the developmental needs of smaller communities, together with the need to foster regional solidarity and coherence.


Human Studies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jenny Slatman

AbstractThis paper aims to mobilize the way we think and write about fat bodies while drawing on Jean-Luc Nancy’s philosophy of the body. I introduce Nancy’s approach to the body as an addition to contemporary new materialism. His philosophy, so I argue, offers a form of materialism that allows for a phenomenological exploration of the body. As such, it can help us to understand the lived experiences of fat embodiment. Additionally, Nancy’s idea of the body in terms of a “corpus”—a collection of pieces without a unity—together with his idea of corpus-writing—fragmentary writing, without head and tail—can help us to mobilize fixed meanings of fat. To apply Nancy’s conceptual frame to a concrete manifestation of fat embodiment, I provide a reading of Roxane Gay’s memoir Hunger (2017). In my analysis, I identify how the materiality of fat engenders the meaning of embodiment, and how it shapes how a fat body can and cannot be a body. Moreover, I propose that Gay’s writing style—hesitating and circling – involves an example of corpus-writing. The corpus of corpulence that Gay has created gives voice to the precariousness of a fat body's materialization.


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