Dusting off the blog...

Hi everyone, and happy nondenominational winter holiday! I count myself an atheist and yet I still find this whole peace on earth/goodwill toward humankind thing pretty worthwhile. Anyhow, it's been over a year since any of us have posted here and I thought it might be nice to inject a little life into the old group blog. And so, today I want to talk about the AAG Annual Meeting.

I am attending the meeting this March (Vegas, baby, Vegas! -- in truth I'm almost dreading the location) and there's part of me that is happy about this. Last year's meeting in Boston was overwhelming but inspiring. Our faithful gang here came away with some excellent ideas for collaborative projects (which haven't come to pass yet -- but I am convinced that they will eventually), energized, jazzed up, ready to make our collective mark on the geographical community.

And yet, there has been some criticism of the meetings -- criticism that I think is well deserved. In a recent commentary in Environment and Planning A, James McCarthy at Penn State has argued that the Annual Meeting is out of control: too many presenters are spreading themselves too thin across too many commitments, driving down the quality of presentations. Add to this the confusion at splitting the conference across three hotels as it was last year, the lack of a review process for abstracts and sessions, and the pressure placed on younger (pre-tenure) faculty members and graduate students to perform, and on reflection what was inspiring (if exhausting) last time around becomes absolutely daunting.

Last time around I was a master's candidate. I was quite happy with the paper that I put together and the presentation itself (and I think my then-adviser was as well). But it feels in retrospect like there was less riding on it. It was fun. It was snazzy. Very few students in my department at the time (a terminal MA program) were attending the meeting, much less presenting there.

This time around, it's a different story. I'm a doctoral student. I have to start thinking ahead: how is this going to look on my CV? Will anyone get anything worthwhile out of my presentation? Will I make a complete fool of myself in front of people who might be on a hiring committee considering my application in a few years? Is this whole one presentation this year enough for someone who wants a good job down the line? Should I start putting together a session for the DC meeting right after Vegas?

But really, the most important question of all, is will I be too shy to ask questions and network? Will I have the confidence to ask for a business card? To buy someone a drink? To get my name out there?

Not just daunting, but downright scary.

Until then, I'll be pondering these questions. Expect a few more posts in the meantime.

Using this Space as My Space

I am watching Ariana Huffington on Charlie Rose. She has points, but her voice kind of makes me zone out. Sorry, Ariana. Had that itch to write, so here we are. I am grappling with my second thesis idea, that of 'Queer Space,' in that I was to articulate my ideas of queer is not isolated to sex, rather, the idea, in the post-lesbian-feminist, post-gay liberation writings, is that queer is that which opposes the norm. Through this opposition, the 'fallacy or normalcy,' if you will, is shown and thus is changed in some way equalizes the disparities in society. Make any sense? Then comes the 'space' part of this idea. Much work has been done in the gay and lesbian literature on the city as creating or harboring spaces used for illicit activities (sex. drugs, violence), long held as the moral decay centers of American society. Rural-ness = wholesomely moral. To me, suburban and rural areas are the ones to be feared, places of isolation, hatred, bigotry, misundertanding, violence behind the picket fence, murder in the bedroom, and all that. I believe this distinction between urban/rural is still being debated, which is one of the reasons I want to explore these topics. At least I think that is why.

Queer Space is thusly those areas of the built environment where those activities labeled 'abnormal' or against the norm reside. Those closets of man-made materials set in the rural areas of the urban - parks, public places, open spaces, and the rural areas in the country - those places in the mountains, the fields and plains where people meet and exchange what a 'majority' would call deviant or against the norm. These spaces are also the spaces of misunderstandings, homophobia, hatred, violence, rape, muggings, and assaults. All of these areas are. Is that what ties them together or is it something else?

Continuing the Conversation

If there is one thing that annoys me the most about the 'academia-Ivory Tower' versus 'common folk/everyday people' debate, it is the ingrained arguement that politics and religion should not be discussed. How many times have I heard this from family and friends? Answer: way too much. It is aggravating to be that voice in the crowd, or at the dinner table, or at the party, that broaches an important, or at least contemporary, issue or story of some relevance and someone says, 'Oh, my mother/father always said, the two things you dont talk about are religion and politics,' to which I respond, what else is there? I do not to hear about American Idol, or Britney Spears, I do not care who was voted off Survivor or what you bought at Pottery Barn last Saturday. This is nothing more than the materialist clogging of American intellectual arteries. We are all suffering from brain failure.

This arguement also leads into another pet-peeve of mine, the importance of unions. At several of my lowly, entry-level jobs I have held, I mentioned the fact that, with a union, we could have greater say the outcome of our work and surroundings. 'Oh no', one middle-aged woman told me. 'Unions are terrible, they make you not work, they tell you what to do,' etc. etc. I really had no idea what a bad name unions had gotten in the last generation, with many afraid of them to the point of getting completely screwed by corporations. Does it not make common sense to unite and stand against capital, which exists only to reproduce itself, not help labor, instead of taking whatever scraps they decide to give us? It boggles the mind!

These two themes are inextricably linked, in my opinion, as the American people are blinded by consumerism and cheap brick-a-brack at the expense of American jobs, then complain that all the companies are leaving. The housing bubble, mortgage crisis, and incredible debt burdens that we all now carry in some form further clog thos arteries of intellectualism, environmentalism, humanitarianism, and self-lessness in general. It is long past time for people to wake up and exercise their minds. Get involved, watch the news, take up an issue, care about something besides your own life-bubble! If you don't, somebody else will and I can guarantee that they could care less about you.

A question of place and space

I have had numerous discussions with several friends and academic 'enemies' on the importance of place and space, particularly in geography. So which concept is more important, or are they inextricably linked? Place implies specificity to me, a degree of certainty of knowledge, or having the ability to properly describe the specifics of an area. To me, then, place = area, in that it is bounded by something, whether it is material cognitive. Space on the other hand is everything and anything that exists, even immaterial items like ideas and concepts, because they all have or need space. Without space where would we be? How could we orient any activity or process if it were'nt for space? Space, then, is the foundation of place and together they are the component elements of our world, our society, and our lives.

That shadowy discipline...

On a number of recent occasions I've been asked just exactly what it is that I'm studying. I get these wonderfully puzzled looks when I tell people I'm studying geography--what is it, they want to know, that one does in a graduate geography program? It's about making maps, right? Their looks become more puzzled still when I tell them, well, yes and no--and then I try to explain.

A few weeks ago my department gave its comprehensive exam for the MA program. In hindsight, it occurred to me that the entire exam could have been built around the question what is geography?

Many of the times that I've been asked about this, I hit a stumbling block. My areas of interest converge around the social, cultural, and psychological aspects of geography--aspects that are as much theoretical as practical, abstract as concrete, and intangible as mappable. I'll mention something I'm reading and inevitably the response will be, "Isn't that really sociology [or anthropology, or philosophy, etc.]?" Yes, but...

I came to geography from a trail of other disciplines: archaeology and anthropology, criminology, psychology. I've always loved the potential for cross-pollenation, the inspiration that one field can take from another. To me, geography has provided the perfect synthesis of all these fields and more, all tied together by the thread of place. It all makes perfect sense to me--but explaining this on the spot to someone of the conviction that all social sciences should fall into discrete boxes is a challenge. And really, I'm not so good at off-the-cuff kinds of things.

In the end, I usually return to what has become sort of a mantra for me: If you can use the words space, place, landscape, or topography, chances are a geographer is interested in it. And that's what I plan on talking about here. Pigeonholes be damned.

Introductions

Welcome to Geographical Eclectica, an experiment in group blogging. Our mission is to use this blog as a forum for discussing, analyzing, commenting on, and even complaining about various aspects of geographical issues ranging from the popular to the journalistic to the scholarly. While we all have academic backgrounds in geography, we have very different specializations, interests, and perspectives. We hope this mix will be as entertaining for you as it is for us.

A little about our contributors:
Our current contributors are Gavia Immer, Globalfreak, Katie, and Placemaker. Here's a little about each of us.

Gavia Immer has just finished an MA in geography and has several years of experience as a GIS professional. His interests include physical geography and technical applications.

Globalfreak is finishing an MA in geography and an MA in sociology, looking to pursue a PhD in geography in the near future. His areas of interest include political and cultural geography, landscapes, and social theory and policy.

Katie is finishing an MA in geography and will be entering a PhD program in planning in the fall. Her interests include social theory, postmodernism, and the works of David Harvey.

Placemaker is working on an MA in geography with the intent to earn an PhD in the discipline. Her areas of interest are geographical phenomenology, cyberspace, place identity and place making, developmental geography, and urban design.

As this blog grows we hope to add more contributors. Keep an eye out for new contributor introductions along the way.