Kevin Keenan

Listening to Our Students: Understanding How They Learn Research Methods in Geography

Abstract How undergraduate students learn research methods in geography has been understudied. Existing work has focused on course description from the instructor’s perspective. This study, however, uses a grounded theory approach to allow students’ voices to shape a new theory of how they themselves say that they learn research methods. Data from two focus groups, a survey, and in-depth interviews with undergraduates taking a research methods course suggests that students perceive that they learn best when research methods are taught in ways similar to the faculty research process. The conclusion is that students learning research methods need clear illustrations of process, a community setting that facilitates discussion, instruction in theory, and an extended period of time to complete effective projects.

The Impact of 9/11 on the Geography of Financial Services in New York: A Few Years Later

An economic census and a survey of seventy-nine firms revealed a changing geography of financial services after 11 September 2001. Although the suburbs benefited from the outward relocation of financial services from Manhattan immediately afterward, they lost considerably two years later, demonstrating the interdependence of the central city and its suburbs. Executives of financial services firms ranked highly locational attributes such as prestige, public transportation, and proximity to clients and other financial services before 11 September, but terrorism also emerged as a major locational factor after 11 September. The impact of terrorism and how it interacts with agglomeration economies, technological changes, and globalization to shape the geography of financial services is examined under the framework of quaternary place theory.

Hazard Perception and the Urban Geographies of Place: Insights from New York City's Financial Executives Following 9/11

Theories of place have yet to be developed to explore societal responses to terrorism in the post-9/11 city. Urban geographers have shown the relevance of place for understanding the way people live in cities, including conceptualizations of the way people perceive those places. Geographers working on environmental risk have also conceptualized perception, but only in regard to hazard perception. They have not focused on the city itself as a hazard site, nor have they studied how the contours of place affect hazard perception. Joining urban geography and risk-hazards scholarship, this study argues for a terrorism-place nexus that links terrorism hazard perception to urban place. Using survey and interview data collected from 79 financial service executives in New York City, it will be shown that terrorism has created a place-based ontological dissonance among financial executives, and we speculate about the implications for the city should these workers restore ontological order by moving away their establishments.

Gender, Place, and Social Contacts: Understanding Awareness of Vulnerability to Terrorism

Abstract Creating resiliency, accomplished in part by individuals preparing for disaster, is the primary strategy outside of law enforcement for responding to the threat of urban terrorism. Individuals prepare when they perceive a need to do so, yet little is known about what shapes a persons awareness of vulnerability to terrorism. Because evidence indicates that social contacts act as conduits of information and affect perception of risk to natural hazards, it is possible that such contacts also affect terrorism vulnerability awareness. Because social contacts are also known to be systematically segmented by gender and location, we hypothesized that conversations about terrorism vary by gender and place, specifically the home and work place. Drawing on data from 93 interviews with householders in Boston, the study demonstrates that: (1) family networks generated discussions of home preparedness, whereas workplace networks engaged a wider variety of topics; (2) women discussed terrorism more frequently and in greater depth than did men; and (3) women heard more preparedness messages for the home than did men, whereas men undertook preparedness activities external to the home. The findings bridge geography and terrorism studies by theorizing emplaced and subjective human experiences that prompt conversations about terrorism. These conversations, in turn, help urban emergency managers and risk-hazards geographers promote rational dialogue and action vis-à-vis terrorism. Hazards researchers have shown that the more people discuss terrorism, the less they seek extreme and unwarranted responses.

Rethinking place in the study of societal responses to terrorism: Insights from Boston, Massachusetts (USA):

The dual conditions of an early emphasis on context within terrorism theory and an existing familiarity of place as point or jurisdiction for hazards researchers led to a subsequent diminished role for place as a core explanatory concept in the study of terrorism. This condition is increasingly untenable. There is growing evidence within the environmental risk-hazards literature and theories of terrorism that holistic understandings of place beyond simply a point on the Earth will enhance knowledge of how individuals might respond to this hazard. Drawing on 93 interviews conducted in Boston, Massachusetts (USA) before the Marathon attacks in 2013, and a subset of additional interviews conducted after, I answer the following question: What role does place play in the way that ordinary people experience vulnerability to terrorism at a micro-scale? I demonstrate that people interpret their risk not simply through the media or representativeness of particular places – ideas which are commonly assumed to amplify risk and fear – but rather that subjective experiences of everyday, practical places actually attenuate such perceptions and emotions. This paper presents several contributions to public policy, including rethinking a place-based paradigm for how emergency managers communicate with the public, how to generate a politics of fear reduction based in place, and how to rethink future studies on terrorism to appreciate the practical places of everyday life.

Security is going to work: Everyday geographies, organizational traps, and the public administration of anti-terrorism policy

Terrorism scholars have theorized excessive social control in response to post-9/11 expansive security structures. This literature is not, however, informed by the perspectives of public safety officials. Drawing on interviews with 27 public safety officials in Boston, MA conducted in 2008 and 2013 after the marathon bombing, I argue that one reason officials do not challenge social control issues is because of an organizational trap rooted in geographies of place. Organizational traps are theorized within public administration, and refer to institutional cultures that prevent needed change. I demonstrate that some of these traps are rooted in perceptions of geography beyond the institutional culture, and in the case of anti-terrorism policy, can result in much needed community engagement when disrupted. I provide three policy recommendations: (1) incorporate community sentiments about place into policy; (2) embrace expansive spatial identities; and (3) link security efforts with community geographies.

Place ontologies and a new mobilities paradigm for understanding awareness of vulnerability to terrorism in American cities

There is increasing evidence that people interpret their risk from environmental hazards through places—such as urban neighborhoods. At the same time, heightened levels of mobility are theorized to be leading to a so-called “placeless society” and possibly nullifying theories of locality-based risk perception. The purpose of this study is to combine environmental risk-hazards scholarship with work in urban geography to explore the following question: is perception of vulnerability to terrorism influenced by place and mobility, and if it is, what is the relationship? Drawing on interviews with 93 householders in Boston, Massachusetts, I demonstrate that people perceive vulnerability via understanding the transportation environment as a place—not simply a conduit—and that these perceptions reflect larger societal structures, such as wealth and gender disparities, that combine with (im)mobility and human subjectivity to amplify or attenuate a person’s sense of vulnerability. These findings bring an understanding of subjective experience to the geography of transportation systems, which has not yet been theorized within the urban disaster literature.

Managerialism and terrorism policy for the urban financial industry: The implications of ignoring geographical process

The urban financial industry is expected to continue to be a primary target of terrorism. Critical policy analyses call for reevaluations of knowledge via direct linkages with served communities. We use interview and survey data from 79 financial executives in New York after 9/11 to study place-based subsidy policies. We demonstrate that place is an important, and often overlooked, geographical concept for understanding how financial decision makers should respond to terrorism. We show that an analysis of local context must be included when crafting effective policies, and we argue that microscales are as important to urban resiliency as the citywide and regional scales.

Whiteness or resilience? Placing terror by studying the Charleston, South Carolina

ABSTRACT How do ideas of place support the development of racialized identities in times of terror violence? We situate this paper in the “deep” south via the shooting of 9 black churchgoers by a white supremacist. We explore how the community mobilized after the massacre, and in what ways it relied on ideas of place. While many claimed that the community exemplified resilience, we demonstrate a process of re-racialization. We analyzed local media to document place framing. This frame was recirculated in reporting of residents’ expressions about the tragedy. We conducted interviews with community leaders to deepen our understanding. We find that while place played a powerful role in the resilience narrative, the resilience was ultimately one of a city of whiteness. We advance several points: (1) whiteness adapts in times of terror; (2) place is important in the security studies; and (3) place also plays a role in attenuating fear.

Creating spaces of public insecurity in times of terror: The implications of code/space for urban vulnerability analyses

From data leaks of sensitive information to the degrading or halting of complete systems upon which integral societal process rely, there are daily reminders of the precariousness of networked institutions. This form of vulnerability extends beyond services to also threaten foundational values, such as privacy, movement, and free speech. Yet, given the awareness of vulnerability to cyber disruption, little is known about how massive cyber failures might disrupt the lives of ordinary people at a micro-scale. Because technology is imbued in everyday life, and people use internet systems in bundled, complex ways to accomplish a myriad of unknown activities, a complicated web of cyber-vulnerability likely exists. Thus, the goal of this paper is to explore one dimension of this vulnerability as it pertains to public security. Terrorism is predicted to remain an urban phenomenon, and terrorists are increasingly exploiting cyber-systems. The aims of terrorism to disrupt democratic systems are perfectly achieved by cyber disruption, and this paper explores how those goals were facilitated during the Boston Marathon Bombing in 2013. By drawing on interviews with public safety officials and ordinary people who relied on the internet and linked technology during that emergency, I demonstrate the complex ways that cyber-systems limited the effectiveness of public security in times of terror. The results suggest a rethinking of the social amplification of risk paradigm that dominates in risk hazards research as well as several policy interventions in security communication and information dissemination, population management during crisis, and resilience.From data leaks of sensitive information to the degrading or halting of complete systems upon which integral societal process rely, there are daily reminders of the precariousness of networked inst...