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Articles 1 - 9 of 9

Full-Text Articles in Human Geography

Self-Reliance Beyond Neoliberalism: Rethinking Autonomy At The Edges Of Empire, Karen Hébert, Diana Mincyte Jan 2014

Self-Reliance Beyond Neoliberalism: Rethinking Autonomy At The Edges Of Empire, Karen Hébert, Diana Mincyte

Publications and Research

Across scholarly and popular accounts, self-reliance is often interpreted as either the embodiment of individual entrepreneurialism, as celebrated by neoliberal designs, or the basis for communitarian localism, increasingly imagined as central to environmental and social sustainability. In both cases, self-reliance is framed as an antidote to the failures of larger state institutions or market economies. This paper offers a different framework for understanding self-reliance by linking insights drawn from agrarian studies to current debates on alternative economies. Through an examination of the social worlds of semisubsistence producers in peripheral zones in the Global North, we show how everyday forms of …


Le Nature Degli American Studies, Cindi Katz Oct 2013

Le Nature Degli American Studies, Cindi Katz

Publications and Research

Al “Futures of American Studies Institute” di Dartmouth del 2003 lanciai una provocazione sulle “geografie immaginate” dell’americanistica. Volevo mettere in discussione sia le celebrazioni romantiche del “luogo” in quanto elemento in qualche modo autentico e particolare, minacciato da un mondo sempre più globalizzato e controllato dalle multinazionali, sia l’esaltazione della “delocalizzazione” nelle società in rete, negli “spazi di flusso”, nella mobilità senza attrito. Suggerivo che queste, come altre geografie poco studiate, si sposano troppo facilmente con molte correnti dell’eccezionalismo americano.


Global Futures And Government Towns: Phosphates And The Production Of Western Sahara As A Space Of Contention, Mark Drury Apr 2013

Global Futures And Government Towns: Phosphates And The Production Of Western Sahara As A Space Of Contention, Mark Drury

Publications and Research

The study of natural resources lends itself to theorizing the politics of nature and the politics of time. The space of Western Sahara, where both remain highly contested, provides an opportunity to consider the ramifications of resources in political conflict at different historical moments. Drawing from environmental histories of North Africa and the Sahara, as well as the anthropology of time, the author focuses on two historical moments. The first, from 1945 to 1972, concerns the discovery of phosphate deposits during the Spanish colonial period and the implications of this discovery for political authority in the Sahara more broadly. The …


Accumulation, Excess, Childhood: Toward A Countertopography Of Risk And Waste, Cindi Katz Nov 2010

Accumulation, Excess, Childhood: Toward A Countertopography Of Risk And Waste, Cindi Katz

Publications and Research

This piece grows out of my on-going project, ‘Childhood as Spectacle’, and my enduring concern with social reproduction and what it does for and to Marxist and other critical political-economic analyses. After more than 30 years of Marxist-feminist interventions around these issues, symptomatic silences around social reproduction remain all too common in analyses of capitalism. Working through these issues and their occlusion, I offer what I hope is a useful and vibrant theoretical framework for examining geographies of children, youth, and families. Building this framework calls into play three overlapping issues; neoliberal capitalism in crisis and David Harvey’s notion of …


It's All Happening At The Zoo: Children's Environmental Learning After School, Jason A. Douglas, Cindi Katz Apr 2009

It's All Happening At The Zoo: Children's Environmental Learning After School, Jason A. Douglas, Cindi Katz

Publications and Research

Pairing dynamic out-of-school-time (OST) programs with zoos can encourage young people's relationships with and sense of responsibility for animals and the environment. The project presented in this article, Animal Rescuers, gave the authors the opportunity to examine how such a pairing can work. OST programs enable learning in settings that are generally unavailable during school time (Honig & McDonald, 2005). They provide space for collaboration among students, teachers, and others such as program visitors or outside educators. Taking advantage of the flexibility, location, and educational playfulness of an OST setting, the authors worked intensively with a small number of 10-12-year-old …


Lost And Found: The Imagined Geographies Of American Studies, Cindi Katz Oct 2005

Lost And Found: The Imagined Geographies Of American Studies, Cindi Katz

Publications and Research

In the days after September 11th, 2001, and continuing until now, the national guard and other military personnel fanned out around New York City. Automatic rifles slung over their camouflaged shoulders, they "guarded" New York City's transportation stations, vital corners and thoroughfares, marquee buildings, and each and every bridge and tunnel entrance. Their comportment was usually cordial and rarely vigilant. Exuding the antithesis of an urban sensibility, they complemented the beefy boredom of the police who usually stood nearby, with an almost surreal sense of incredulity; not just "Why am I here?" but a sort of bafflement that anyone would …


Reconfiguring Childhood Boys And Girls Growing Up Global, Cindi Katz Jan 2004

Reconfiguring Childhood Boys And Girls Growing Up Global, Cindi Katz

Publications and Research

Children are a spur, a commitment, a way of imaging the future—but all too often these sorts of phrases just rattle around a vacuum, their utterance the beginning and end of the commitment. We emphasize “the best interests of the child,”but this gloss provides a moral imperative to all manner of uncompleted projects and unfulfilled policies. Likewise, the use of children’s images or presence in public forums of all types gives a patina of honorableness to practices and plans that never actually make good on the promissory note of childhood. The 1992 Rio Earth Summit is a notable example. Such …


The State Goes Home: Local Hyper-Vigilance Of Children And The Global Retreat From Social Reproduction, Cindi Katz Oct 2001

The State Goes Home: Local Hyper-Vigilance Of Children And The Global Retreat From Social Reproduction, Cindi Katz

Publications and Research

In an early scene in The Terminator, the Cyborgian Arnold Schwarzenegger walks into an L.A. gun shop and asks to see the wares. The shopkeeper lays out Uzis, submachine guns, rocket launchers, and other sophisticated means of overkill, nervously understating, "Any one of these will suit you for home defense purposes." The situation is likewise in the growing child protection industry. In keeping with the shopkeeper's sly comment, these businesses feast on an all-pervasive culture of fear, while creating a mockery, alibi, and distraction out of what they are really about - to remake the home as a citadel through …


A Methodology For The Study Of Children's Environmental Knowledge In Other Cultures, Cindi Katz Jan 1985

A Methodology For The Study Of Children's Environmental Knowledge In Other Cultures, Cindi Katz

Publications and Research

This paper presents a methodology which I used to study the content and acquisition of children's environmental knowledge as central to the social reproduction of a rural agricultural economy in the Sudan. My approach was forged drawing on methods of geography, linguistics and anthropology to provide information on (1) how children learn to interact productively with their environment, (2) the nature of their interactions and (3) their knowledge of environmental processes and resources. In this paper I will describe first the methodology adopted including participant observation, ethnosemantic interviews, child-led walks, environmental modeling and "geo-dramas". I will then discuss its use …