Environment, Space, Place

Between 1681-1725, several Quaker writers promoted settlement in Pennsylvania to English and continental readers. This promotional literature attempted to persuade investors to support the venture, and to attract potential emigres to settle in the province. These texts described the landscape as having been improved by Quakers through clearing the land, laying out farms and towns, and refining the built environment. This widely circulated image of an improved landscape joined with other writings to refute the charge that Quaker incivility disqualified Friends for government during a volatile era of English politics. Pennsylvania’s improvement gave weight to the claims of William Penn and others that Friends deserved not only religious toleration in England but political authority as well, in the American provinces and throughout the Atlantic World.

Often the term “Roman frontiers” is used to refer to the outer borders of the empire and, in some instances, the physical limes systems that demarcated the extent of Roman rule. However, it is also possible to discuss the frontiers of the internal provinces, some of which offered important strategic and political advantages to the Romans. Certainly, this is true of Gallia Narbonensis, an internal province that is modern-day Southern France and the Rhone Valley. Here, early Augustan urbanization schemes and imperial policy underlined the beneficial relationship between indigenous populations and the Roman military and aristocracy, resulting in urban and provincial landscapes that defined borders relevant to not only local urban populations, but also foreigners – Roman subjects and “barbarians” alike. One way to identify these ideological frontiers is through the examination of Narbonensian triumphal architecture, particularly arches.Triumphal arches are more prevalent in Gallia Narbonensis than in any other province in the Western Empire. During the early stages of imperial expansion, Augustus began new phase of triumphal iconography that took into account the differing secular ideologies of the frontier and interior. Where the aggressive and militaristic traditions of border tribes were used as a means to defend the Empire, the populations of the interior were demilitarized – an act which was called peace by the imperial government. The non-military virtue, in addition to urbanization, set those identified as Roman apart from those seen as barbarian.

Socio-spatial conditions for women in Dhaka are very specific and highly contradictory. This article traces some of these contradictions by looking at the multilayered presence of women in public space—where public space is defined as both the space of politics and public discourse, and the physical space of streets, parks and squares. By analyzing the presence of women in public space, it is argued that one can observe a continuous tension within these spaces between ‘official’ discourses and often repeated ideas that stress equal rights for women on the one hand and a whole series of everyday practices on the other that rather tend to make women’s presence in public space marginal.

This essay theorizes a spatial-affective strategy from the discursive silence between Alexander Kluge and Peter Sloterdijk. Using as a springboard their discussion of a film that Sergei Eisenstein never made, I identify two possibilities of agency in an age of late globalization: Kluge’s faith in the possibility of liberating processes and spaces and Sloterdijk’s mistrust in the hegemonic structures of contemporary society. The difference between those agentive-affective possibilities gives rise to distinct strategies for a subjective geography capable of countering the violent and virtual spaces of late globalization. Rather than declaring one philosopher’s strategy the path to luck, this essay tests how each can be mobilized. Thereby, the crucial location of humans in spaces normallyconstrained by capitalism’s rhetoric of terror and safety can instead become—though hope or suspicion—spaces engendering more plural subjects.

Drawing on the phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, key ideas in the writings of the poet and scientist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, a phenomenological conception of affects, and poems that address the seasons, this article outlines a poetic phenomenology of the temperate seasons. It aims to unite a poetic sensibility for seasonal phenomena with a structured phenomenological approach. In doing so, it presents the seasons as a meaningful polyphony in which human beings also participate. It gives a non-reductive account of how the human experience of the seasons is deeply connected to natural seasonal phenomena and indicates ways in which we can deepen our understanding of, and participation in, the seasons.

A summer spent in the Scandinavian Arctic changes the sense of seasons: the Sámi know eight seasons; the visitor finds summer in the valleys, winter above, in the mountains, and winter below, in the permafrost underfoot. The summer spent in movement makes one understand the force of movement and initiative in human life, the sedentary and the nomadic instincts. The seasonal migrations of reindeer and the periodicity of lemming years make one explore movements of humans that are not launched by initiatives, periodic and rhythmic movements. Exploring rock paintings in Alta and the space station in Kiruna extends the space of human history from humans assembled at the foot of the retreating glacier, 7000 years ago, to human tourists in outer space.

The cave at Lascaux, France provides one of the earliest examples of human artwork: bulls, horses, and other creatures painted on rough rock walls, iconic examples of the emergence of human culture. After being closed to the public due to damage from the large influx of visitors, the cave was recreated in a near exact replica at Lascaux II, a museum site close to the original cave. This paper explores the reconstruction of the site and the constant stream of tourists to the location, arguing that the site functions as a pseudo-religious place of pilgrimage in which human beings imagine themselves as descendants of their primevalancestors and re-affirm their own humanity. The representations of Lascaux, including Bataille’s text, express longing for an absent origin, in keeping with discourses of play between presence and absence in philosophy and theology.

The “universally affective power of home” is such, that in the light of an increasingly mobile world this very concept articulates a great part of the contemporary debate around place, identity and belonging. An overview of such debate will be provided in this article. It begins with a problematization of the concept of home that allows us to understand it beyond notions of fixity and stability. The core of the article is a discussion about the ways in which contending definitions ofplace determine the understanding of attachments to place, and this will be grounded through the discussion of a particular way of experiencing such attachments: the feelings of home.

This case study of Peter Buch, self-taught creator-builder of an art environment in the remote mountains of Spain’s Castellon province, is contextualized within a broader discussion of the worldwide phenomenon of such invented spaces. Intimately linked to their creator in a way generally unmatched in any other circumstances of art, architecture, or landscaping, these sites are developed through an additive and organic process of creation, without formal architectural designs or engineering plans. Fabricated and found objects are combined into monumental compositions that are generally “permanently” fixed on site, andmay often combine elements of architecture, sculpture, landscaping, and painting. As such, they draw their power from the spatial context of the site itself as well as from the innovative multi-dimensionality of the interaction of the discrete elements, an experiential interface that creates a potency that is significantly dissipated if discrete works are removed or the site is demolished.

Abraham Ortelius and Gerhard Mercator respectively assembled two of the earliest and most influential map collections in the western world. Ortelius’ Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (1570) and Mercator’s Atlas sive Cosmographicae (1585) exemplify the emerging drive in the six teenth century toward collecting and communicating ever-increasing knowl edge about the natural world. However, on close examination the two collections bear as many differences as similarities. This paper addresses these differences and suggests that a comparison between their schemas reveals that the distinctions between Ptolemy’s geography, as adescription of place, and cosmography, as the construction of space, are two different forms of knowledge in early modern science.

Despite westernized reports to the contrary, occupation occurred in the Adirondacks before and after European contact. Seasonal encampments scattered throughout the region were part of Iroquoian and Algonquian peoples labour for resource gathering that occurred year-round and for extended periods. The area also became a haven from colonial warfare for some Indigenous peoples; these communities dispersed by the mid-nineteenth century. Land pressures around the reservations of Akwesasne and Odanak forced some peoples to go elsewhere. A few who chose the Adirondacks settled there until White homesteaders moved nearby chasing away game. By the mid-nineteenth century especially Abenaki families settled around established tourist towns. I argue these are all examples of Indigenous occupation and we need to acknowledge this and how their occupation adapted over time.

Literary histories are narratives, just like the literatures they describe. They construct not only a temporal framework but also a spatial arena for literary events, movements and authors—frequently following extra-literary agendas. Using the example of Hindi, the official language of the Republic of India, the article analyzes the conceptualisation of space within literary history by comparatively mapping the space of a sixteenth-century Hindi poet, Tulsi Das, as presented in three histories of Hindi literature (by two Western and one Indian historiographer) from the periods of high colonialism, the struggle for independence andthe post-colonial era. The highly divergent spaces that emerge show that space can never be an objective ‘given’ and also testify to the significance of visualising verbally produced spaces cartographically, so that underlying socio-political dimensions can be perceived.

In the 1980s, teenagers came to dominate the last bastions of public spaces on the sprawling suburban landscape: the shopping mall and the arcade. Teenagers’ presence and the sense of their domination of those spaces from media and popular culture initiated new regimes of regulation with distinct consequences. Through tactics designed to combat the disruptive presence of teens, including use of closed-circuit video monitoring, professionalization of private security staffs, and strict municipal oversight, mall owners, concerned parents, and local political leaders created systems of insistent and pervasive policing of mall space. That surveillance not only undermined the very nature of the space as public but also nearly eliminated teens from shopping centers while facilitating their reintegration into the supposed safety of the home.

This essay argues that Hannah Arendt’s conception of public space can contribute to the defi nition of material and virtual public spaces in contemporary social movements. By investigating Tahrir Square as a material public space and We are All Khaled Said Facebook page as a virtual public space during the Egypt 2011 revolution, this essay studies the relationship between these spaces and the events of the revolution. It shows that Arendt’s concepts of action and speech can theorize the virtual and public spaces of the Egyptian revolution.

As the second installment in a three- part series, this essay seeks further understanding relevant to the growing green schools movement in the United States. Specifically, the article examines two overarching threats that have the ability to significantly hinder the future growth and success of such a movement. First, the alarming rise of rampant media use by youth is examined as a potential deterrent to increased environmental understanding, exposure, and actions. Second, a general lack of inclusivity and related programming specific to diverse audiences is analyzed for its potential to erode the movement’s current and future base. Finally, the two threats are examined together through the lens of sustainable education and its potential to ameliorate such grave concerns in the near and long term.