Alex G. Papadopoulos

Restructuring the kiosk trade in St. Petersburg: A new retail trade model for the post-Soviet period

This study explores the commercial kiosk phenomenon as a reflection of the socio-spatial reordering of St. Petersburg following the introduction of market forces. In this article we interpret empirical evidence on the restructuring of commercial opportunity in post-Soviet St. Petersburg as a result of the emergence of the kiosk phenomenon. Kiosk trade and processes that contribute to it have emerged as tools for mass socioeconomic and psychological adaptation, following the dismantling of the communist regime. In our opinion, the emergence and continuing mutation of St. Petersburg kiosks constitutes the backbone of a process of middle-class formation. An extensive field research of 1989, 1994 and 1995 made it possible to study the dynamics of spatial structures of kiosk phenomenon. It is our final conclusion that kiosks will remain an important feature of St. Petersburgs commercial geography in the foreseeable future.

Mapping “Romeic” and “Hellenic” Same–Sex Desire: Articulating Heteropatriarchy and Male Homosexuality in Contemporary Greece

This study of the articulation of heteropatriarchy and male homosexuality in contemporary Greece questions the widely accepted paradigm that male same–sex desire in modernity is both ontologically and ritually divorced from ancient Greek practices. Drawing on Herzfeld’s (1982) ethnographic model of the dual construction of modern Greek identity as “Romeic” (qua actual, vernacular, rural–rooted, and “oriental”), and “Hellenic” (qua constructed, idealized, cosmopolitan, and occidental), the study explores the similarly dual sociosexual construction of male homosexuality following the creation of the modern Greek state in 1830. The study concludes that the Greek national project required desexing the ancient Greek past in the process of crafting a sanitized, heteronormative, and patriarchal polity in line with its Victorian–era counterparts in Western Europe. Furthermore, modernity reordered the extensive diasporic Greek communities in the Europe, the Middle East, and the Black Sea region in ways that promoted the fertilization of metropolitan Greece with a variety of rural and immigrant sexual imaginaries.

Landscape, Nature, and the Sacred in Byzantium

Della Doras volume on the Byzantines’ perception and representation of nature makes a considerable contribution to the humanistic geographic analysis of the late Roman and Byzantine worlds. While “the spatial turn” in the humanities is a recent innovation, humanistic geography has long toiled on questions of meaning, symbols, representation, and place. Yi-Fu Tuans classic definition of the field in his piece “Humanistic Geography” (1976)—”an understanding of the human world by studying peoples relations with nature, their geographical behavior as well as their feelings and ideas in regard to space and place”—has endured through the poststructuralist critiques of the end-century, and still reflects important thrusts of current humanistic research in geography. Further, considerations of landscape are shared by a broad spectrum of geographers, across the human and physical branches, and those who work at their nexus. The meaning, reading, relation to power, and co-constructive character of landscape define a considerable swath of studies in the subfield. n nThis article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

Long-term tendencies in the electoral behavior and the geography of voting in St. Petersburg: 1989–1995

This paper studies the basis and nature of the long-term factors that may have influenced the electoral behavior of St. Petersburgers between 1989 and 1995 from the perspective of geography. Our analysis shows two distinct periods in St. Petersburgs recent electoral history marked by differing behavioral motivations of voters in the city. The first period was marked by only one ideological cleavage between ‘marketers’ and ‘hard-liners’. In 1993 protest motivation managed to erode the predominance of ideology as the determining variable in voting behavior, and began to act as a new independent variable. This marked the beginning of the second period. Four major groupings of St. Petersburg electorate are described in terms of the basic ideological cleavages, party affiliations and geographical gravity centers.