David Nally

Geographies of food: 'Afters'

This third and final ‘Geographies of food’ review is based on an online blog conversation provoked by the first and second reviews in the series (Cook et al., 2006; 2008a). Authors of the work featured in these reviews — plus others whose work was not but should have been featured — were invited to respond to them, to talk about their own and other people’s work, and to enter into conversations about — and in the process review — other/new work within and beyond what could be called ‘food geographies’. These conversations were coded, edited, arranged, discussed and rearranged to produce a fragmentary, multi-authored text aiming to convey the rich and multi-stranded content, breadth and character of ongoing food studies research within and beyond geography.

“That Coming Storm”: The Irish Poor Law, Colonial Biopolitics, and the Great Famine

The potato blight, Phythophthora infestans, was first recorded in Dublin in August 1845. Over the next five years the Irish potato harvest failed four times, triggering mass hunger and disease on a magnitude the European continent had not endured for centuries. During this period, over one million Irish perished and a further two million fled the land, never to return. Thus, in a relatively short period, three million people were dead or gone. The purpose of this article is to situate this story of human deprivation and suffering within the context of an evolving “colonial biopolitics” aimed at regenerating Irish society. Although recent writings demonstrate an interest in the regimes of power that produce famine, there has been little attempt to connect such arguments to the theory and practice of colonialism, especially its investments in the liberal goals of development and social improvement. Building on the perspectives of Michel Foucault, particularly his discussion of “biopolitics,” I argue that the Great Famine was shaped by a regulatory order willing to exploit catastrophe to further the aims of population reform. The article draws particular attention to the development of an Irish Poor Law system, arguing that this legislative debate exposes the growing perception that agricultural rationalization, fiscal restructuring, and population clearances were necessary to “ameliorate” and “improve” Irish society. This twining of relief and development facilitated dangerous distinctions between productive and unproductive life and allowed the colonial state to apply its own sovereign remedy to Irish poverty.

Geography in Ireland in transition‐some comments : Introduction

The publication of Rob Kitchins commentary on the state of Geography in Ireland in the sixtieth anniversary issue of Irish Geography has opened the possibility for a broader, public dialogue about our discipline. This forum represents a continuation of this conversation, with its focus on a variety of theoretical, institutional and personal concerns about Irish Geography.

Ethnicity and Resistance, Historical Geographies of

Ethnicity is a mode of group identification based on shared commonalities such as religion, language, color, clothing, or diet. Although ethnicity is frequently based on material differences, the meaning and appeal of these differences is socially constructed. Ethnicity can be confined to a geographical area or it can be transnational; it can be historically circumscribed or span millennia. As with other forms of sociocultural identification, ethnicity is commonly defined relationally against an ‘other’. This permits differences to be asserted, but can also lead to communal crisis and conflict. Where ethnicity is defined agonistically, through perceived sociocultural differences, an oppositional struggle or resistance can ensue. Moreover, it is now widely accepted that the historical and geographical conditions that encourage intercultural contact are often the factors that drive ethnic differentiation. Thus the relationship between ethnic identities and resistance can be understood as a historicogeographical dialectic between self and other that always has the potential to be exclusionary, as well as inclusionary.

From the teen to the Green revolution: American philanthropy and youth club work in Scandinavia

David Nally wishes to acknowledge the generous financial aid provided by a Philip Leverhulme Prize and a Rockefeller Foundation Grant-in-Aid award which helped underwrite the costs of much of the research presented in this article.

‘Immediate in time and spectacular in space’: Famine, violence and death by proxyNallyDavid PHuman Encumbrances: Political Violence and the Great Irish Famine. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2011; 368 pp.: 9780268036089, US

tions in Somali affairs continue to undermine their ability to establish a national government of their own. The latter is particularly important since piracy did not exist along the Somali coast when the country had a government, unlike other third world regions (Bay of Bengal, Nigeria, Indonesia-Malaysia, and Colombia) where piracy continues to flourish despite the existence of national government and security forces. This last point indicates that the conditions that made piracy possible in Somalia are political, the absence of government, and that the IC should assist Somalis to re-establish their government in order to terminate piracy, particularly since the cold warriors were party to the demise of the state. All credible estimates indicate that helping Somalis rebuild their government will cost a fraction of what the IC spends on naval presence in the Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Aden. Although David Nally did not conceive Human Encumbrances to have much to say about places like Somalia, its domestic context, and global politics that have significantly shaped the misfortunes of the population, I found the book’s analytical framework exceptionally valuable in recasting the Somali story. Despite the absence of such intentionality, it is to Nally’s eternal credit that he has crafted a theoretically rich book whose intellectual architecture can accommodate cases far afield and possibly inspire others to rethink old tales. The idea of critically assessing the ways in which dominant elites and their intellectual partners try to recast people by redefining their identity and traditions is central to any understanding of the ways in which vulnerability and indignity is created.

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JOHNSON, N. (1999) Cast in stone: Monuments, geography and nationalism, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 13, 51-65. JOHNSON, N. (2003) Ireland, the Great War and the geography of remembrance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. MCMANUS, R. (2002) Dublin 1910-1940. Dublin: Four Courts. MORRISSEY, J. (2003) Negotiating colonialism. London: Royal Geographical Society. NASH, C. (1999) Irish placenames: Post-colonial locations, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 24(4), 457-480. PRUNTY, J. (1999J Dublin slums, 1800-1925: a study in urban geography. Dublin: Irish Academic Press. WHELAN, Y. (2003) Reinventing modern Dublin: streetscape, iconography and the politics of identity, Dublin: UCD Press.

From the Kraal to Knackeragua and back: Colonial and postcolonial futurologies

The city of Venice, from at least the 16th century, has been popularly portrayed as a ‘fantasmatic’ scene of desire by a Western geographical imagination. I argue that these representational strategies closely parallel the homology and practice of Orientalism, most notably documented by Edward Said. Saids argument, however, pays precious little attention to the ‘connective imperative’ at work between colonial powers, a gendered erotics of knowledge, and heteronormative practices. Focusing on Thomas Manns novella Death in Venice and Ian McEwans more recent book The Comfort of Strangers, I argue that both authors continue an ‘erotics of composition’—the historical practice of framing, ordering, and composing Venice in gendered, heterosexist terms—which bolsters a series of stereotypes about the licentious behavior of ‘Orientals’.