Alyson L. Greiner

New Amazonian geographies: emerging identities and landscapes

Common stereotypes of a homogeneous Amazonia belie the complexity and diversity of peoples and landscapes across the region. Although often invisible to the outside world, diverse peoples—indigenous, traditional, migrant, urban dwellers and others—actively construct their identities and shape cultural and political landscapes in diverse ways throughout the region. This volume combines political ecology, with its emphasis on identity, politics, and social movements, with insights from cultural geographys focus on landscapes, identities and livelihoods, to explore the changing nature of Amazonian development. These papers focus on indigenous identity and cosmology; changing livelihoods and identities; and transboundary landscapes. They highlight the diversity of proactive, place-based social and political actors who increasingly raise their voices to contest and engage with Amazon development policies. Based on their history, social values, and livelihood practices, such groups propose alternative ways of understanding and managing Amazonian landscapes.

CALCUTTA'S HAND–PULLED RICKSHAWS: CULTURAL POLITICS AND PLACE MAKING IN A GLOBALIZING CITY*

Abstract. For more than a century, hand‐pulled rickshaws have been a prominent part of Calcuttas cityscape. Under the veil of modernization, progress, and globalization, however, the government of West Bengal State declared that rickshaws cause traffic congestion and constitute an exploitative use of human labor. Yet, despite the government‐imposed ban, rickshaws continue to ply the streets of central Calcutta. Based on interviews with rickshaw owners, operators, public officials, and local residents, we examine the cultural politics surrounding rickshaw pulling in Calcutta. This article shows that the rickshaw wallahs (pullers), who operate as part of the informal economy, provide an expansive range of services not limited to transportation. Indeed, the rickshaw wallahs form an integral part of Calcuttas social fabric, having made a place for themselves by facilitating social interaction and challenging hegemonic ideas and practices about who belongs where.

Geographic Education and Careers in Geography.

Abstract Disciplinary concern with career options and opportunities has fluctuated over the years. Not surprisingly, geography continues to be incorrectly stereotyped as a field of study offering limited employment prospects. While geographic education has long focused on content, it must also embrace the importance of educating instructors, students, and career counselors concerning how the field opens doors to viable careers. This article presents a program that can be implemented by college and university departments to raise awareness and disseminate information about career opportunities in geography. The program emphasizes an integrated approach that includes partnerships with alumni, campus placement offices, and employers.

New-Build Development and the Gentrification of Oklahoma City's Deep Deuce Neighborhood

New‐build development has become associated with the phase of gentrification that has taken shape since the mid‐1990s. This article examines the gentrification of Deep Deuce, a historically black neighborhood in Oklahoma City. An analysis of property sales identifies the major external agents involved and leads to a discussion of the areas racial turnover. Considering the relational aspects of place, specifically how the identity of Deep Deuce has been constructed in relation to the nearby area of Bricktown, provides new insights on the nature of changes affecting this neighborhood. Supplementing this with an examination of resistance to the gentrification of Deep Deuce shows how city neighborhoods can come to be defined by limited understandings of place, and how historic preservation efforts can generate symbolic capital and facilitate cultural appropriation. This article also contributes to the study of gentrification in smaller metropolitan areas.

Making Human Geography

Long recognized for his scholarly contributions to local and regional development as well as political geography, Kevin R. Cox has now turned his attention to advances in human geography. Drawing f...

Sacred Space and Globalization

Although research and discussions of sacred space began to capture the attention of geographers in the late 1970s, the subject of sacred space has factored in the scholarship of religious historians, sociologists and philosophers since the early twentieth century. This chapter provides an intellectual history of the concept of sacred space and examines the ways in which globalizing processes transform sacred space. I engage with key ideas from Mircea Eliade and Gerardus van der Leeuw and focus particularly on the numerous criticisms of Eliade’s work, which is often dismissed as simplistic and anachronistic. I then consider the contributions of the eminent historian of religion, Jonathan Z. Smith. His articulations on the metaphors of locative and utopian maps are profoundly geographic and significantly resist the notion that sacred space is spatially fixed. I also examine other scholarship that deals with the contested nature of sacred space, embodiment, ways of encountering sacred space, sacred ecologies, and the ways in which globalization enables the creation of new sacred spaces through virtual pilgrimages, religious Web sites, religious transnationalism, and commodification. Development practitioners and those involved in disaster recovery now confront very real challenges of grappling with the politics of sacred space as faith-based organizations increasingly participate in recovery efforts. I recommend that contemporary scholarship on sacred space reclaim a place for some of the early foundational works, and identify possible directions for future research.

Scottish migration to the Eastern Australian outback

Abstract Using an unorthodox and previously unutilised data source — epitaph inscriptions — the authors deal with several geographical aspects of the Scottish migration to the humid crescent of eastern Australia. Source regions within Scotland are determined, destinations within Australia charted, and the issue of chain migration addressed. These findings are then brought to bear on the ‘Australia‐is‐one’ hypothesis, which holds that a composite Anglo‐Celtic culture prevails in that continent, submerging Scottish identity. Our findings generally support the hypothesis, with certain substantial qualifications.