Derek H. Alderman

Memory and place: geographies of a critical relationship

In recent years, investigations of social or cultural memory have become a major field of inquiry throughout the humanities and social sciences. No longer the sole preserve of psychology, the study of memory now extends to anthropology, sociology, cultural studies, literary studies, communication, history and, increasingly, to geography. This article assesses some of the major trends in this burgeoning literature, especially those works spatial in nature, which we find to be of considerable cross‐disciplinary importance. Together, memory and place conjoin to produce much of the context for modern identities; providing a modest overview of that critical, dynamic relationship, this article serves as an introduction to this special issue of Social & Cultural Geography.

Geographies of toponymic inscription: new directions in critical place-name studies

The study of place naming, or toponymy, has recently undergone a critical reformulation as scholars have moved beyond the traditional focus on etymology and taxonomy by examining the politics of place-naming practices. In this article, we provide a selective genealogy of the ‘critical turn’ in place-name studies and consider three complementary approaches to analyzing spatial inscription as a toponymic practice: political semiotics, governmentality studies, and normative theories of social justice and symbolic resistance. We conclude by proposing that future scholarship should explore the political economy of toponymic practices as a step toward expanding the conceptual horizon of critical place-name studies.

A Street Fit for a King: Naming Places and Commemoration in the American South

The naming of streets after Martin Luther King, Jr. (MLK) is an importantarena for African Americans as they rewrite the landscape of southern identity and commemoration. While less ornate and ostentatious than museums and monuments, MLK streets are powerful and highly contested cultural geographies because of their potential to connect disparate communities and incorporate a vision of the past into the spatial practices of everyday life. They reveal the importance of location, particularly intra-urban location, to public memorialization. Naming streets for King is a significant part of the nonmetropolitan South as well as larger cities and dependent upon the relative size of a citys African-American population. When estimating the intra-urban character of MLK streets within several southern states, findings suggest that they are located in census areas that are generally poorer and with more African Americans than citywide averages. Analysis reveals a geographic unevenness in the frequency of businesses having an address identified with King. When compared with the stereotypical American thoroughfare of “Main” Street, the address composition of MLK streets appears to be more residential in nature, although there is significant state by state variation.

Tour Guides as Creators of Empathy: The Role of Affective Inequality in Marginalizing the Enslaved at Plantation House Museums

Criticized for ignoring or misrepresenting slavery, some docents at plantation house museums have responded by including more references to slavery, but rarely move beyond mere factual references of the enslaved. This contrasts with the emotionally evocative accounts tourists hear about the planter-class family. We refer to this disparity as affective inequality. At plantation house museums, affective inequality is created and reproduced through specific spatial and narrative practices by tour guides. By retracing docent-led tours at Destrehan Plantation, Louisiana, this article engages, conceptually and empirically, with the concept of affective inequality — how it contributes to the marginalization of the history of the enslaved community, and how it becomes reproduced within the practices of tour guides at plantation house museums in the Southern US.

(In)Visibility of the Enslaved Within Online Plantation Tourism Marketing: a Textual Analysis of North Carolina Websites

Tourism landscapes are constructed and marketed in selective ways that reaffirm long‐standing patterns of social power and inequality and thus influence whose histories and identities are remembered and forgotten. The purpose of this article is to conduct an analysis of plantation tourism marketing in North Carolina, measuring the degree to which the history of slavery and the enslaved are (in)visible within online promotional texts. Previous research has found that the slave experience is frequently ignored in promoting the Southern plantation, although the analysis of North Carolina has been limited in the past and no studies to date have examined the promotional images found on plantation websites. An analysis of 20 websites for historic plantations in North Carolina does not reveal a universal exclusion of the enslaved but it certainly shows an uneven treatment both in terms of the absolute number of textual references to slavery and the frequency of these references relative to other themes used in marketing the plantation landscape. Among those plantation websites that show a sensitivity to slave history, two discourses are employed that still run the risk of misrepresenting the enslaved even as they devote needed attention to this marginalized population. They are the discourse of the individual (a)typical slave, and the discourse of the good master/faithful slave. We conclude by highlighting two representational strategies used by some plantation websites that could serve as exemplars for other destinations inside the state and beyond. These strategies include documenting the different identities and histories of many slaves rather just a few, and discussing the hardships and resistance that often characterized the slave experience. The authors gratefully acknowledge the helpful comments of the articles two anonymous reviewers and the support of the Center for Sustainable Tourism at East Carolina University. Derek dedicates the article to his wife Donna and son Tyler. Arnold dedicates the article to his son A. J. and daughter Onyx.

Creating a New Geography of Memory in the South: (Re)naming of Streets in Honor of Martin Luther King, Jr.

The (re)naming of streets in honor of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. is quickly becoming a common yet controversial feature on the southern urban landscape. This new trend in place-naming reflects efforts by African Americans to create a new geography of memory in a region where much of its landscape has long been used and reserved for remembering (and memorializing) primarily white-controlled and dominated conceptions of the past. This paper articulates a theoretical framework for understanding the struggles that local African-American communities face in the street-(re)naming process. The controversy surrounding MLK street (re)naming can be analyzed in relation to three interrelated struggles: (1) the politics of place-naming, the struggle of African Americans to inscribe their ideological values and aspirations about race relations into the symbolism of place-names; (2) the politics of memory, the struggle of African Americans to reconstruct the regions collective memory of the past through commemoration; and (3) the politics of space and scale, the struggle of African Americans to engage in commemoration of King as it is affected by the long-standing authority of whites to control the scale of black expression and mobilization, black attitudes toward space, and the politics of designing the city. This paper attempts to build a greater understanding of how geography constitutes and structures the production of memory within society.

Street naming and the politics of belonging: spatial injustices in the toponymic commemoration of Martin Luther King Jr

Although the critical turn in place name study recognizes the central and contested place that toponyms hold in peoples lives and identity struggles, little work has explicitly analyzed place naming rights in terms of social justice, citizenship, and belonging. We introduce readers to the naming of streets for slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr and use two brief case studies from the southeastern USA (Statesboro, Georgia and Greenville, North Carolina) to discuss the barriers that hinder the creation of a landscape that truly reflects the teachings of King. Naming opponents, sometimes with the (un)witting cooperation of black activists, impose spatial, scalar limits on the rights of African Americans to participate in the street naming process and to appropriate the identity of streets outside of their neighborhoods, even though challenging historically entrenched patterns of racial segregation and marginalization is exactly the purpose of many street naming campaigns. The case of King streets prompts us to think about place naming as a mechanism of spatial (in)justice, demonstrating the fundamental role that geography plays in constituting and structuring the processes of discrimination or equality.

Southern hospitality and the politics of African American belonging: an analysis of North Carolina tourism brochure photographs

Building upon James “Pete” Shortridges appreciation for the multiple and contradictory meanings associated with the portrayal of regions, we explore the racial politics of representation within the American South and actively link the study of regional identity with a concern for social justice and African American belonging. Our study of the American South, a region with a long history of limiting if not altogether denying the right of African Americans to travel, exposes the racial inequalities that characterize the seemingly harmless arena of southern hospitality and tourism promotion. Although the power to be seen is an important cultural right, African Americans are frequently made invisible in photographs published in North Carolina tourism brochures. In framing the region in this fashion, these brochures communicate powerful ideas about who is most welcome and, conversely, who is not. Our examination of brochures indicates that some communities are attempting to make a place for African Americans, but there are clear limits in the extent to which promoters are willing to racially re-code travel spaces.

Humor and Film in the Geography Classroom: Learning from Michael Moore's TV Nation

Abstract How can teachers use humor and film to convert geography classrooms into public spaces for thinking and talking about the world in a critical way? One useful resource for raising student consciousness and critical discussion is TV Nation-a satirical television newsmagazine show created, produced, and hosted by rebel-filmmaker Michael Moore in the mid 1990s. TV Nation not only serves as a potential instructional resource for geographers but also provides teacher and student a springboard for re-thinking humor and television news as analytical/educational objects. Moore challenges the popular notion that humor should not be taken seriously. By combining laughter with harsh reality, he questions the legitimacy of established ways of seeing the world and provides a unique way of discussing the socially constructed and contested nature of space and place. TV Nation also challenges the value traditionally placed on claims of neutrality and objectivity in conventional television news narratives. By making his own perspectives clearly known, Moore exposes the positionality inherent in all media representations of place. Included in this paper is an annotated list of TV Nation segments available on video and a description of how one of these news segments was used in a college-level classroom to teach about the complexities and contradictions of free trade and globalization.

On the Importance of Environmental Claims‐Making: The Role of James O. Wright in Promoting the Drainage of Florida's Everglades in the Early Twentieth Century

Responding to recent calls to analyze the authoritative role of scientists in producing environmental knowledge, this article conceptualizes applied scientists as “environmental claims-makers” who play an influential role in shaping how the public perceives and interacts with the environment. Analyzing the knowledge claims of scientists, particularly applied scientists, requires a consideration of both cognitive and interpretive claims-making activities. The concept of environmental claims-making is used in analyzing the historical geography of one of North Americas most famous wetland landscapes—the Florida Everglades. Specifically, we examine the role played by engineer James O. Wright in making scientific claims about the Everglades and its climate and how he (and others) used these claims to promote reclamation of this wetland during the early twentieth century. Our study critiques Wrights claims-making activities, evaluating the quality of environmental knowledge he constructed, the social and economic context within which his knowledge claims were interpreted and appropriated, the lasting impact that these claims had on settlement patterns, and the hazards of future scientific/engineering claims. Wright made fundamental errors in calculating how much water would need to be removed from the landscape in order to make it agriculturally productive. At the same time, Florida politicians and the South Florida real-estate industry used both Wrights work and his status as a scientist to represent the Everglades to prospective land buyers as an agricultural paradise. Flaws in Wrights drainage plan become clear only after thousands of people purchased land in South Florida that remained subject to periodic flooding. Experts were utilized in an effort to reclaim the Everglades, but the complexity of the Everglades ecosystem and the chronic lack of funds doomed the project until the 1950s. It took more than half a century of research and the technical and financial resources of the federal government to finally convert significant chunks of this vast wetland into productive farmland.