On the Fringes of Urban Justice: Violence and Environmental Risks in Guatemala City

Living in the city’s ravines is the common destiny of thousands of poor urban dwellers in Guatemala City, as is too often the case elsewhere in the Global South. The ravines surrounding the city represent one of the most visible and unjust urban spaces in the nation’s capital. At the same time, Guatemala City has been among the most violent cities in the world and is highly vulnerable to climate change. Employing a critical spatial perspective and drawing on interviews in two at‐risk communities—Arzú and 5 de Noviembre—this article examines the social production of such peripheral spaces. The levels of exclusion and inequalities are analysed by focusing on the multiple manifestations (visible and invisible) of violence and environmental risks, and deciphering the complex dynamics of both issues, which in turn generate more unequal and harmful conditions for residents. This article draws on the theoretical ideas elaborated by Edward Soja, Mustafa Dikeç, and Teresa Caldeira on the contextualisation of spatial injustice and peripheral urbanisation to study the specific conditions of urban life and analyse the collective struggles of people in both communities to improve their current living conditions and mitigate the risk and the precariousness of their existence. The article underlines the need to make the processes of urban exclusion and extreme inequality visible to better understand how they have been socially and politically constructed. The research argues for more socially and ecologically inclusive cities within the process of unequal urbanisation.

THE THIRD SPACE AND THE ROLE OF BUNDO KANDUANG IN RUMAH GADANG

Minangkabau is a tribe in West Sumatra with a matrilineal kinship system, which draws lineage based on the mother's ethnicity. Therefore, women are the main characters in the tribe. Minangkabau women who are married, wise, and elder are called Bundo Kanduang, who have duties and obligations to carry out. Given the importance of the role of Bundo Kanduang, it is necessary to know how the role of Bundo Kanduang can be carried out in the Rumah Gadang, both physically/real and non-physical/imaginary. The research method used is an ethnographic method with a qualitative analysis approach using the theory of the third space from Edward Soja. Based on the analysis, it was found that the activities of Bundo Kanduang in carrying out its role have been facilitated in the Rumah Gadang, both physically and non-physically, even beyond what is known as third space.

Urbanismo participativo. Una aproximación pedagógica compleja

Las formas representativas de Estado durante la modernidad han restringido la participación ciudadana en los procesos de creación y producción de la ciudad, no obstante la actual denominación de Estado Social de Derecho en la legislación colombiana tiende a permitir una mayor relevancia en ella. Se trata entonces de presentar en este ensayo, un esquema académico curricular que conciba el activismo ciudadano en la idea de ejercer “el derecho a la ciudad” enunciado por Henri Lefebvre. Para ello en el énfasis espacial que caracteriza la formación académica de arquitectos, juzgamos esencial la perspectiva de la trialéctica de la espacialidad percibida-concebida-vivida que maneja Edward Soja en el interés académico de privilegiar el espacio más allá de considerarlo un simple elemento contenedor ambiental de la actividad humana. Como complemento para fortalecer las competencias formativas de los estudiantes, presentamos de manera articulada los principios de un sistema complejo a la manera de Edgard Morín, el principio dialógico, hologramático y de recursividad para revaluar o resignificar las habilidades argumentativas y analíticas que fundaron la idea del urbanismo como una ideología tecnocrática moderna.

A sour cherry orchard. An excursion through Chekhovian green spaces

The cherry orchard marks the end of Anton Chekhov’s life, consecrating him as the author who defined the threshold of the new epoch. In this article, I construe the garden as the motif linking Chekhov’s sensitivity to the general spirit of his era, revealing his poetics to the global stage as the distinctive mark of a historical and socioeconomic shift. On this path, I will clarify how the subtle difference between sour cherries and sweet cherries becomes a symbol of Chekhov’s dramatic construction, and how his poetics are built on nuances and subtle shifts in meanings, representing the irrevocable fading of a culture. A philological reflection combined with an attentive reading of Chekhov’s letters, Stanislavsky’s memoirs and scenic sketches reveal the author’s interest in the relationship between man and nature as well as the need to read his work from a more spatial-oriented standpoint. Chekhov clearly anticipates the so-called ‘spatial turn’, approaching space not through the description of a specific landscape or dramaturgical setting, but from a phenomenological point of view, leading him to profound reflections on the relationship between physical planning and socio-political development, as later conceptualised by key social thinkers such as Henry Lefebvre and Edward Soja. Chekhov’s dramaturgical construction and symbology are the result of this awareness and endless passion for nature in all its forms.

Hailsham as an Intimate Space: A Bachelardian Reading of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go

This paper aims to investigate the role played by Hailsham, the fictional boarding school in Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel Never Let Me Go, in the mind of its central characters as seen through Gaston Bachelard’s conception of space. The article then aims to explore how the memory of Hailsham works as a coping mechanism for some of the novel’s characters, especially for Kathy. After a brief survey of Bachelard’s spatial criticism, the article then discusses the elements of intimacy in the space of Hailsham and portrays the boarding school as a oneiric house or a childhood home in Bachelard’s terms. By using an analytical method, this study offers an examination of two notions, that of memory and that of imagination, which are built upon the aspect of association and intimacy. Following the development of the plot of Never Let Me Go, the article sheds light on the role played by the so-called “cottages” in the shaping of these character’s relations to themselves, to each other, and to the outside world. This paper opens the door to other critics to read Never Let Me Go from the perspective of other spatial theorists like Mitchel Foucault, Henri Lefevbre, and Edward Soja.

A Perpetuity of Lesser Emptiness: The Social Space of the Postcolonial Small Town and Vinod Kumar Shukla’s Naukar kī kamīz

The article provides an analysis of the spatial configuration of the Hindi novel Naukar kī kamīz by Vinod Kumar Shukla (translated into English as The Servant’s Shirt). In highlighting the argumentative and structural similarities between the content of the novel and various concepts of social space and literary spatiality developed by Catherine Régulier, Henri Lefebrve, Edward Soja, Mikhail Bakhtin, and others, the article proposes to read the novel not only as a rare example of a detailed engagement with the social space of a postcolonial small town, but also as a text that provides a useful method and indeed a theory for the analysis of such a small town and its literary representation.

Hailsham as an Intimate Space: A Bachelardian Reading of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go

This paper aims to investigate the role played by Hailsham, the fictional boarding school in Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel Never Let Me Go, in the mind of its central characters as seen through Gaston Bachelard’s conception of space. The article then aims to explore how the memory of Hailsham works as a coping mechanism for some of the novel’s characters, especially for Kathy. After a brief survey of Bachelard’s spatial criticism, the article then discusses the elements of intimacy in the space of Hailsham and portrays the boarding school as a oneiric house or a childhood home in Bachelard’s terms. By using an analytical method, this study offers an examination of two notions, that of memory and that of imagination, which are built upon the aspect of association and intimacy. Following the development of the plot of Never Let Me Go, the article sheds light on the role played by the so-called “cottages” in the shaping of these character’s relations to themselves, to each other, and to the outside world. This paper opens the door to other critics to read Never Let Me Go from the perspective of other spatial theorists like Mitchel Foucault, Henri Lefevbre, and Edward Soja.

Notas metodológicas en las postulaciones teóricas de Henri Lefebvre

El artículo tiene como objetivo proponer que la amplitud teórica de Henri Lefebvre conlleva distintos diseños metodológicos, además del método dialéctico. Para cumplir con lo anterior, se apela a que el pensamiento de Lefebvre se concibe de manera tríadica y su postura epistemológica corresponde a un enfoque heterodoxo que da luz sobre la cuestión del método. A partir de esto, se pone de relieve algunos postulados que respaldan la presente investigación como: el método regresivo-progresivo; los juegos de tríadas se pueden relacionar promoviendo un diseño metodológico de totalidades abiertas; y, la teoría unitaria de la producción del espacio que fragmentada por dimensiones espaciales responden a configurar un método de análisis teórico-conceptual, aunque dejando diversas posibilidades al usuario del punto de aplicación que serviría como sustento teórico-metodológico en las proposiciones en David Harvey, Edward Soja y Neil Brenner.

Technology as Thirdspace: Teachers in Scottish School Engaging with and Being Challenged by Digital Technology in First COVID-19 Lockdown

This paper looks at the impact of digital technology on teaching and learning in primary schools in Scotland during the first COVID-19 lockdown from March to June 2020. The pandemic has challenged our understanding of schooling as, for the first time in many years, schools as we know them were shut and the school building was removed as the site of teaching and learning. This paper uses the concept of Thirdspace as developed by Edward Soja (1996), where Thirdspace is understood as an in-between space between binaries that enables the possibility to think and act otherwise. Drawing from qualitative data from interviews with primary school teachers, this paper explores how the lockdown in general, and digital technology in particular, facilitated a Thirdspace in the first COVID-19 lockdown. Findings from the study indicate that engaging with digital technology offers the teacher more possibilities than they have come to expect in the physical space of traditional schooling.

Heterodox Microeconomics: A Spatial Turn for Environmental Health and Just Food System Social Provisioning

This paper examines food system social provisioning at low levels of geographic scale to merge the heterodox microeconomic approach outlined by Frederic Lee (2018) and the activist spatial justice methodology of Edward Soja (2010). Combining these two theoretical frameworks blends academia and activism by joining community perspectives with spatial, quantitative and qualitative data techniques to hypothesis test and investigate disparities in social provisioning. Initiating the inquiry with data available at the address level of geography allows the analysis to develop across diverse geographic scales and reveal consistent patterns of inequality. It is argued that these consistencies afford researchers, activists, and practitioners benchmarks for the study and development of transdisciplinary intervention design and implementation. This spatial study of pediatric food allergy frames a practical example of how this approach is applicable across a variety of socioeconomic and environmental health disparities and the pursuit of spatial justice outcomes at local and national levels of social provisioning.