Mesogeography:

Books on spatial thought, labor, and political economy

[mesogeography]

I swear I’ll be posting more here!  suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuper busy lately

[mesogeography]

Well, one thing I object to is the very notion that they have of ‘geography’ being a tyranny. To begin with: why is distance always negative, something to be overcome? There could be a whole thesis countering this but at the most simple of levels, what of the pleasures of travel? This inattention betrays a deeper attitude. Our overvaluation of speed (time here as only money) has robbed us of many things that are at least equally precious. But, second, ‘geography’ is more than distance. What an impoverished view of the planet! What of the variety of place? What of specificity and difference? If time is the dimension of change, then space is the dimension of coexisting difference. And that is both a source of nourishment (something that the globalisation gurus seem altogether to have foregone), and a challenge (how negotiate difference, how to address inequality, and so forth). So I don’t accept the terms of debate, that ‘geography’ is just a negative tyranny. And that critique is before we get to the more standard criticisms of neoliberal globalisation – that it has produced a world even more unequal than the one it inherited. Incidentally, I don’t think there is a non-adjectival ‘globalisation’. What we have now is a particular form: dominated by finance and multinational corporations and by a rhetoric (though not a reality) of ‘free trade’ and market forces. So I’m not a localist. I’m an internationalist, but one who believes (a) that such a thing is really only possible through a prior grounding and (b) that the terms of our present globalisation have to be challenged politically

Doreen Massey

3:AM Magainze. Interview by Andrew Stevens

https://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/the-future-of-landscape-doreen-massey/

[mesogeography]

I’ve spoken a little about ‘belonging’ already. And that already disturbs some of those romantic (and nostalgic, if you like) notions of place identity. For me, places are articulations of ‘natural’ and social relations, relations that are not fully contained within the place itself. So, first, places are not closed or bounded – which, politically, lays the ground for critiques of exclusivity. Second, places are not ‘given’ – they are always in open-ended process. They are in that sense ‘events’. Third, they and their identity will always be contested (we could almost talk about local-level struggles for hegemony). You ask why London has to ‘stand for’ anything. One response is that in fact it always inevitably does. One could say at the moment it stands for a complex mix of multiculturalism and financial power. Interestingly, that is a political mix of progressive and oppressive. What I’m arguing is simply that we should take responsibility for the effects of ‘our place’ around the world. To take responsibility for our embeddedness. If you don’t want to, so be it. It does demand an imaginative engagement with our planetary interdependence and that can be quite challenging.

Doreen Massey

3:AM Magainze. Interview by Andrew Stevens

https://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/the-future-of-landscape-doreen-massey/

[mesogeography]

“An emerging critique of the technology sector is that it promotes inequalities rather than mitigates them.  Exposes about Silicon Valley’s discriminatory human resources practices are outnumbered only by stories of predatory business practices.  As noted throughout this book, economic geographers have long argued that firm strategies reflect the context from which they emerged.  So, as technology firms turn their attention to cities, it should be understood that they are likely to employ the approaches and practices they know from the past rather than adapt to the ethics and standards of the public sector or specific communities.

The smart cities project provides a platform for economic development; it is not economic development by itself. And perhaps this is the key distinction moving forward.  As cities and observers of the smart cities project become increasingly cognizant of the inequalities that are produced and magnified in the diffusion of new technologies, it might be the responsibility of the public sector to step up and intervene, not step back and allow the people and places to be cast as users and testbeds in an industry experiment rather than as citizens and communities in a city.

In her 1980 article, “What Would a Non-Sexist City Be Like?” Dolores Hayden asked readers to consider – to visualize – how to produce a city that did not reflect the institutionalized gendered norms that framed decisions about the design of an investments in our built environments (and the systems and services that operate it).  Similarly, Carlo Ratti asked us to visualize a city that is tailored to the needs of individuals.  Hayden and Ratti are making different arguments, of course; Ratti is arguing for a technology solution, and Hayden is arguing for a shift in the patterns of social reproduction.  Hayden’s argument is simple: perhaps stop reproducing structural inequalities in structures. Hayden called for redesigning the American dream through an analysis of how we produce the built environment and why. That is still the underlying issue. All too often, smart cities advocates are more interesting in building (and experimenting) than in the systematic and sustained deconstruction of the old modes of production and the patterns of inequality they produce.

In this book, I have posed a variation on Hayden’s argument: stop reproducing uneven development patterns through technology solutions.  Uneven innovation is a manifestation of an old problem: the sexist city, the racist city, the classist city, the city of unequal opportunities and unequal outcomes. I have also made two further points. First, cities are not the problem, but, second, cities may be the solution.  Once the technology sector determined that cities were the preferred space of innovation, production, and consumption, cities gained the ability to manage and determine the smart cities project.  Through the regulation of citizen rights to data, investment in the internal capacity within cities, the undertaking of strategic planning and policy analysis and evaluation, and the expansion of participatory planning, cities have an opportunity to shape the smart cities project.  We may not see Hayden’s nonsexist city emerge as a result, but we may see a future for cities that moves further away from an unequal past and toward a more equitable future.”

[mesogeography]

Alright, I’m starting this sucker up again.  Most of my excerpts from what I’m reading will go on here (mesogeography, as opposed to zwischenstadt) now

[bijoux-et-mineraux]

Lizard in Baltic Amber (Eocene)

[privatethicc]

Russian matchbook labels.

[bunjywunjy]

why do the seals pulls their heads into their body’s?? is it for warmth?? is it just to be cute ??? also. what do their neck bones look like? do they have bones ?!!?! do the bones stretch ?!?!

the ever-adorable Seal Neck Scrunch is a pretty unique feature to seals, but they don't actually need any special equipment to pull it off!

see, like all mammals, seals have the traditional seven neck vertebrae, but their necks ARE surprisingly long!

but we don't notice this in practice, because the natural resting position of a seal neck is in sort of an "s" shape:

this makes the seal neck look shorter than it really is, but their RIDICULOUSLY thick layer of blubber smooths their neck into a streamlined shape no matter what position the neck bones are in!

so when a seal has it's neck "in" and has entered Blob Mode, basically their actual neck is all coiled up in there like a heron's:

and when the neck is "out", the seal has just extended it to its actual length:

you can actually see this happening in motion if you know what to look for! THERE'S BONES MOVING IN THERE.

[mesogeography]

Serious question: would you want me to bring this blog back? I gave up because of a lack of engagement, but it was at a time when Tumblr seemed locked into a death spiral. It was fun tho

[mesogeography]

I nabbed the Mesogeography URL on Pillowfort!  I’ll be restarting Mesogeography there

[mesogeography]

Below is excerpted from Carl Sauer and the Cultural Landscape

Carl Sauer was probably the most influential cultural geographer of the twentieth century. Sauer was born and raised in a German (Protestant) farming community in rural Missouri, and attended Wesleyan College in the town of Warrenton. After completing his undergraduate degree, he eventually completed his graduate work at the University of Chicago. For several years, he taught at the University of Michigan, and then, in 1923, moved to the University of California at Berkeley. Throughout his productive career, he always maintained his love of rural places, simple economies, and ancient cultures. Accordingly, he was a constant critic of the wasteful and destructive practices of modern society, and over the years, he grew increasingly convinced that modern civilization cannot be sustained. In addition to his many insightful publications and seminal works, Sauer directed more than forty Ph.D. dissertations in geography. Many of his students went on to make immense contributions to cultural geography as well.

Sauer’s work is characterized by a focus on the material landscape tempered with an abiding interest in human ecology, and the damaging impacts of humans on the environment. Additionally, and of equal importance, Sauer worked tirelessly to trace the origins and diffusions of cultural practices such as agriculture, the domestication of animals, and the use of fire.

Although there is no question that Sauer’s contributions to cultural geography are of great worth, some also criticize him for an anti-modern, anti-urban bias. Even so, his efforts to correct the inherent flaws associated with “environmental determinism” greatly strengthened the discipline of geography, and cultural geography in particular.

[mesogeography]

Bill Bunge is one of the weirdest, most interesting geographers in the history of the field.  Bunge came out of the University of Washington as one of the early 1960s quantitative geographers: He was dedicated to developing a spatialized quantitative social science...

... Until the late 1960s, when Bunge came out as a marxist.  He would move in and out of the academy, publishing studies of racial segregation and deindustrialization in Detroit, while working as a cab driver & union organizer when being periodically pushed out of academia.  His academic work often focused on how the spatial relations and movements of capitalist industry pushed harsh externalities onto the working class and racialized poor.  An incredibly intense guy, according to the people I know who were friends with him.

[zwischenstadt]

From the preface: “This is a book about the American politics of urban and regional development.  Much has been written about this topic.  There are numerous case studies as well as some more theoretical statements that have been highly influential; those of Molotch, Elkin, and Stone come readily to mind.  There has been critical review.  Among others, a common claim is that the literature has had difficulty bringing together the local forces that are at the heart of the American politics and forces of a more global nature.  In this book, this claim will be of only incidental concern.  My focus lies elsewhere.  For one thing that is rarely remarked on is the sheer distinctiveness of the American politics: its utter peculiarity when compared with what transpires in the countries of Western Europe and even compared with Canada.  It is, for a start, a very bottom-up politics in which interests in rent dominate.  The object is to channel value through real estate investments, something that necessarily takes on a competitive character, not just within metropolitan areas but between them and between regions.  The American politics is bottom-up because it works by mobilizing different agencies of the state to very local purposes: local government is called on to provide the infrastructure for a particular office park project; or local governments, aided and abetted by developers, bring pressure to bear on state government for some sort of favor.  In Western Europe the balance between bottom-up and top-down, between public and private interests, has tended to be quite different.  Central branches of the state have played a preponderant role relative to local government.  Private interests have seemingly been subordinated to planners, and local planners to some sort of central oversight.  There have certainly been changes in a more American direction over the last thirty or so years, but how things are done in France, Germany, Italy, and so forth, remains quite different.  In short, the West European case provides a useful counterpoint to the American one, and our understanding of the latter stands to be deepened by an examination of these differences.  That is what I have had in mind in writing this book.”

- Kevin R. Cox

Syracuse Press

[zwischenstadt]

Why service-sector jobs have gotten worse—and what can be done to improve pay and working conditions for low-wage workers

Drawing on fieldwork in Chicago, Degraded Work examines changes in two industries in which inferior job quality is assumed to be intrinsic: residential construction and food retail. Arguing that a growing service sector does not have to mean growing inequality, Marc Doussard proposes creative policy and organizing opportunities to improve job quality despite the overwhelming barriers to national political action.

Marc Doussard posits a new interpretation of the 2001 to 2006 profit-wage disjuncture that is innovative and fresh. This is the stuff of truly innovative urban-economic analysis.

—

David Wilson, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

[mesogeography]

Sorry I haven’t been updating lately- I’ve been trapped in a Dissertation State of Mind.  Will be throwing up more books soon.

[mesogeography]

“Karl Haushofer, a Bavarian general and professor, is widely recognized as the “father of geopolitics.” In 1945 the United States sought to put him on trial at Nuremberg as a major war criminal for being “Hitler’s intellectual godfather” and the true author of Mein Kampf. In this definitive biography, noted historian Holger H. Herwig assesses the fiction and reality behind these claims. Making comprehensive use of Haushofer’s previously unavailable private papers, Herwig analyzes Haushofer’s geopolitical concepts, his relations with his student Rudolf Hess, and his mentorship of Hitler and Hess at Landsberg Prison in 1924. Herwig offers unique insights into Haushofer’s crucial behind-the-scenes influence in providing the Nazis with his theories of Autarky and Lebensraum, the rationale for Germany’s control of Europe and the world. This riveting book ends with Haushofer’s final verdict on himself: “I want to be forgotten and forgotten.” But the author concludes with the admonition that the “demon” of Geopolitik demands much closer scrutiny in this new age of geopolitics.”

[mesogeography]

“The first detailed study of the Hindu goddess Svasthani, her mythology, and her iconographic transformations

Provides a comprehensive history of the Svasthanivratakatha textual tradition and the first English translation of one of its oldest texts

Offers a new perspective of the history of the Sanskrit, Newar, and Nepali languages and literary cultures in Nepal“