Geographers and their (cyber)space

As part of the efforts by the Singapore Branch of the Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers), a siberian explorer, Felicity Aston, was invited to give a talk about yet another Siberian explorer, Kate Marsden. In fact, Felicity traced the journey of Kate Marsden, a century later!

Yakutia: Searching for the Miracle Herb of Kate Marsden
Monday 8 September 2008, 6.30 pm, LT12, NUS
Speaker: Felicity Aston, Freelance Writer and Explorer

“In 1891 a young British woman set out on horseback into the Siberian taiga from the remote northern city of Yakutsk. Kate Marsden was not an explorer but a nurse on a mission. She had come to darkest Siberia, alone, to seek a herb that was rumoured to cure the most feared disease of the age – leprosy. In March 2007 Felicity travelled to Yakutia to investigate the story of Kate Marsden and the impact that her journey had on this still remote region of Siberia.”

Kate Marsden was the first woman to be made a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and did quite amazing things only to be detracted one year after returning to the UK. However, in Yukutia, she is quite a legendary figure who has changed the life of the people in the remote corners of Siberia.

Felicity Aston in her “field gear”. Photo taken from UK Telegraph.

Being a wonderful storyteller and equipped with amazing photographers (despite the lack of siberian music which she prepared), Felicity captivated the audience with tales of her adventure to uncover the truth of Kate Marsden’s journey. Marsden’s detractors accused her of not sending any of the money she collected from Moscow and London back to Yukutia but as Felicity discovers, a whole town was born from the leper colony that Marsden helped built. There were even theories that Marsden was homosexual and thus going on her journey to repent for her past. Feminist geographers would argue that such an extraordinary feat by a woman would straight away made her “unsavory” and “manly”, thus labeled “homosexual” in the eyes of Victorian society.

Short of reproducing the entire one and half hour talk in video form right here, there is no better way to express how much I enjoyed the talk. Felicity is also here in Singapore to interview candidates for the Commonwealth Women’s Antarctic Expedition (http://www.commonwealthexpedition.com/) which will journey to the South Pole in 2009! Her resume is absolutely amazing and inspiring for all females to pursue their passion. In fact, 2 Singaporeans were selected for this expedition, one of whom is from NUS too! Felicity will also be giving a talk tomorrow on her Antarctica endeavors, organized by the Campus Sustainability Committee, of which one of the selected Singaporeans is a staff of.

It’s that time of the year again. Time to submit your abstracts for AAG 2009 conference. This time, the conference will be held in Las Vegas, the land of casinos in the strip down the desert, from March 22-27, 2009.

The deadline to submit abstracts is October 16, 2008. Anyone interested in presenting a paper, poster, interactive short paper, or illustrated paper should:

1) Read the presentation guidelines
2) Register for the conference
(You will need your AAG ID to register online. If you need an AAG ID, get one here.)
3) Submit an abstract

AAG accepts all abstracts and so, to ensure that you get the fullest exposure, remember to sign up for an organized session. You would get word of these sessions by joining as an AAG member, followed by signing up for a specialty group most relevant to your interest. These interest groups have mailing lists or listservs which will send out regular information of these sessions. You can also search for them on the conference database. You can learn more about joining as an AAG member here.

The department always has quite a few number of faculty and grad students attending AAG. If you are attending AAG, please leave a comment to this post to indicate your attendance. That way, those attending could better find travel and lodging companions. Thanks!

Elephants in Sri Lanka

On 20 August 2008, our PhD student, Monica, was in Sri Lanka for the Migration, Vulnerabilty and Security in Sri Lanka Conference. It was held in Colombo, Sri Lanka from 20 to 22 August 2008. Monica presented on her PhD research and below is her abstract.

The desires of Sri Lankan migrant women and the desire of the State
By Monica Ann SMITH

Over one million Sri Lankan female domestic migrant workers reside in the Middle East and support five million back at home, or a quarter of Sri Lanka’s population (De Silva 2007; SLBFE 2006). Women are encouraged by national policies and discourses to go abroad to earn wages that they might not otherwise be able to earn in an economically unstable Sri Lanka (Gamburd 2000; Smith 2006). Not surprisingly, women – the majority of whom are married – go abroad out of a reported pure sense of responsibility to their children, husbands and families (UNDP 2008). They go as the dutiful daughter, wife and mother (ibid).

Yet many women, once abroad discover a new way of life and speak of the nidahasa or “freedom” to begin intimate relationships and commitments with individuals outside of their kinship ties at home and away from the watchful eye of family and community. This is particularly evident in Lebanon as it is a country in which foreign migrant women can live outside of an employer’s home as well as live with men to whom they are not married. Migrant women’s new living situations and intimacies can fulfill the desires of migrant women but not necessarily the desires of the state. Relying upon over 100 interviews with migrant women, this paper documents Sri Lankan women’s intimate experiences in Lebanon and the potential mismatch of these women’s desires with that of the State.

Monica in the field

Sri Lanka (as well as Lebanon) is part of Monica’s research field sites. She has spent quite a lot of time in both sites and this is what she has to share about Sri Lanka.

“Sri Lanka is a small tropical island located off the southern coast of India, that has been known by many names to travelers over the centuries – Ceylon, Serendip, the Teardrop Isle, the Resplendent Isle and the Pearl of the Orient.

The island’s economy and people have suffered severely from the effects of an ongoing civil war between the government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam who have fought since 1983 for an independent state in the North and East of the island, but Sri Lanka remains attractive – offering great beaches, wildlife, ancient cities, mountains and tea country all within a few hours of each other.”

Despite her best attempt to share with us the photos of her surfing(!!) in Sri Lanka, she unfortunately failed to find any incriminating evidence of her having fun in the sea thus we shall share a photo of Ceylon’s famous hills of tea instead!

Recommended by our phd student, Masao, here it is the website of the Dissertation Workshop at Berkeley:

http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/DissPropWorkshop/

Masao said: “the site has not been updated for a number of years but I think it has a lot to offer. I am sure that graduate students will especially find many things useful (I found the Nuts and Bolts section very helpful). There is an essay by Michael Watts and five examples of successful research proposal–all are downloadable.”

Towards a Geography of Private Investment and Reconstruction in Post-Tsunami Aceh, Indonesia

Speaker:
Ms Lydia Ruddy (Ph.D. Candidate)
Department of Geography, University of Washington

Chair:
A/P Godrey Yeung
Department of Geography, NUS

Date/Time:
Friday, 5 September 2008
3.30 pm – 5.00 pm

Place:
Earth Lab (AS2 02-03)
Department of Geography, NUS

Abstract
Just after the Indian Ocean tsunami, the World Bank hosted an online discussion titled “The Private Sector’s Role in Disaster Recovery and Risk Mitigation.” The emphasis was on attracting foreign direct investment (“FDI”) as the means to develop a “diverse and resilient economy better suited to weather future disasters.” The Indonesian Government’s efforts to create a safe investment climate to attract FDI as a means to stimulate economic growth has intensified since the tsunami as proposals to privatize aquaculture, forest resources and Aceh’s coastline have been put forth. While the need for private investment to transform the situation of people whose lives have been upended by catastrophe may be crucial, the potential dismantling of social and environmental protections that can accompany these transformations needs to be carefully analyzed in order to more fully understand the relationship between private investment and the well-being of people at all levels of the economic scale, including especially the poorest and most vulnerable. By exploring how different actors perceive the risks versus the potential benefits of privatization and investment in the post-tsunami development efforts, this research reveals both the positive and negative potentials of these legal and economic changes for those who exist within the interstices of global processes; mainly, people whose voices are not heard during the day-to-day negotiations of international transformation.

About the Speaker
Ms. Ruddy is a geographer and attorney with over fifteen years of professional experience both within and outside of academia. Born and raised in Alaska during the construction of the oil pipeline there, and thus attuned to the resulting conflicts between international business interests and those of the local people, she developed an awareness of the importance of place in understanding the contingency of global processes. She has spent much of her life abroad including three years in Paris where she studied at the prestigious Institute d’Etudes Politiques and she has also spent extended periods of time in South and Central America, Africa, and the ex-Soviet Union. For the past two years she has lived and worked in Indonesia as a Fulbright scholar and development consultant. Her career has focused on the intersection between private sector interests, economic development and public benefit. Ms. Ruddy’s current dissertation project examines the interplay between post-tsunami reconstruction in Aceh and efforts to attract private investment.

Neoliberalizing Violence: Political Economy, Poststructuralism, and Imaginative Geographies in ‘Post-Conflict’ Cambodia

Speaker:
Mr Simon Springer
Ph.D. Candidate
Department of Geography
University of British Columbia
Vancouver, Canada

Chair:
Dr Harvey Neo
Department of Geography, NUS

Date/Time:
Friday, 29 August 2008
2.00 pm – 3.30 pm

Place:
Earth Lab (AS2 02-03)
Department of Geography, NUS

Abstract
Recent debates among political geographers have questioned the (f)utility of neoliberalism as an ‘actually existing’ concept. Yet without a critical political economy approach that specifically includes neoliberalization as part of its theoretical edifice, we run the risk of obfuscating the reality of capitalism’s festering poverty, rising inequality, and ongoing geographies of violence as something unknowable and ‘out there’ beyond the boundaries of ‘civilization’. By failing to acknowledge such very real effects of neoliberalization and refusing the explanatory power neoliberalism holds in relating similar constellations of experiences across space as a potential basis for emancipation, we may precipitously ensure the prospect of a violent future. Similarly, we may also allow for more nefarious explanations concerning violence to continue without censure. For example, violence and authoritarianism continue to resonate with ruinous effects in Cambodia’s ‘post-conflict’ landscape, leading many scholars, international donors, and nongovernmental organizations alike to posit a ‘culture of violence’ as responsible. However, in contrast to such problematic proclamations, the culture of violence thesis can be understood as both a sweeping caricature shot through with Orientalist imaginaries, and a loathsome discourse that underwrites the process of neoliberalization.

Through appeals to spatial fallacy, where contextually embedded historical geographies are considered inconsequential to neoliberalism’s effective implementation and functioning, and by promoting temporal confusions that view ‘others’ as confined to a traditional past and incapable of producing local futures, neoliberalism has mobilized a discourse that locks violence in place. But while violence sits in places in a very material sense–we experience the world though our emplacement in it, where violence offers no exception to this cardinal rule of embodiment–there is no predetermined plot to the stories-so-far of space. The imaginative geographies of neoliberalism erase the contingency, fluidity, and interconnectedness of the spaces in which all violent narratives are formed. Geography is not destiny any more than culture is, and as such the possibility of violence being bound in situ is only accomplished through the fearful and malicious imaginings of circulating discourses. Orientalism is performative, it produces the effects it names. Thus, by advancing the culture of violence discourse and by inextricably linking itself to democracy, neoliberalism proceeds as a ‘civilizing’ enterprise in presenting itself as the harbinger of rationality and the only guarantor of peace. Yet because the ‘actually existing’ circumstances of neoliberalization often (re)produce violence, neoliberalism maintains a self-perpetuating logic.

About the Speaker
Simon Springer is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Geography at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver Canada. He is currently completing the final chapters of his dissertation on ‘post-conflict’ geographies of violence in Cambodia under the supervision of Philippe Le Billon, committee members Derek Gregory and Jim Glassman, and external committee member Sorpong Peou of Sophia University, Tokyo. Simon is a young political geographer whose work has focused on understanding the imbrications between neoliberalism and violence, and in particular how space and place are (re)produced by these intercalated phenomena. His undergraduate studies were completed at the University of Northern British Columbia, where he obtained his Bachelor of Arts in Geography, achieving first class honors and receiving the university’s nomination for the Canadian Association of Geographer’s Undergraduate Award. He also attended Queen’s University, where he received his Master of Arts in Geography, graduating with distinction. Simon holds a Canada Graduate Scholarship, which is the most prestigious doctoral scholarship awarded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Afghanistan: Networked State

Speaker:

Dr Jonathan Mendel
Department of Geography,Durham University, UK

Chair:

Dr Carl Grundy-Warr,Department of Geography, NUS

Date/Time:

Friday, 22 August 2008 3.30 pm – 5.00 pm

Place:

Earth Lab (AS2 02-03), Department of Geography, NUS

Abstract

Afghanistan is often viewed as isolated from the networks of globalisation: for example, as part of Thomas Barnett’s Non­-Integrating Gap. On the contrary, the paper will show that Afghanistan has – for decades – been very much integrated into a range of international networks. An analysis of the role of various networks – in particular, those of insurgency, terrorism and the opiate trade – in Afghanistan’s recent history will be used to illustrate their contribution to the development and maintenance of the Afghan state. These networks have played a major role in making Afghanistan the type of state it is, and have also spread to have a range of impacts across the world. Rather than being isolated, Afghanistan can thus be viewed as an ‘ideal’ state of globalisation: the state’s government works along networked lines and with a light touch, much agriculture and trade takes place without effective state interference, and Afghanistan is very much connected to and integrated in many international networks. Afghanistan is thus – as the paper will demonstrate – an example of a highly networked state.

About the Speaker

Dr. Mendel has recently completed a PhD at Durham University. The thesis analysed how virtual and networked conflict developed, from the anti­-Communist Afghan insurgency through to the ongoing violence in Iraq and Afghanistan today. He is currently a Research Associate at Durham Geography Department where he is working on the Data Wars project to analyse the ways in which data is collected and made actionable as part of the ‘war on terror’, and is continuing to develop his research on networked conflict. Dr. Mendel has also worked in the non­governmental sector: his most recent project analysed the post­invasion abuse of Iraqi resources and suggested some possibilities for ameliorating the violence in the state.

The Tung Oil Boom:
Global Networks of the 1920s and 1930s from the Vantage Point of Australasia

Speaker:
Prof Michael Roche
School of People Environment and Planning
Massey University, Palmerston North New Zealand

Chair:
Prof Henry Yeung
Department of Geography, NUS

Date/Time:
Friday, 15 August 2008, 3.30 pm – 5.00 pm

Place:
Earth Lab (AS2 02-03)
Department of Geography, NUS

Abstract
Ideas about networks are explored in the context of the interest shown both within the British Empire and in the USA in planting Tung Oil trees (Aleurites fordii) during the 1920s and 1930s. Closer attention is paid to the Australian and New Zealand experience and short lived enthusiasm for the search for seeds, the collation of information on growth rates, planting Tung trees. The paper distinguishes two types of network research in historical geography. It concludes by posing some questions about network approaches in the social sciences, particularly those that appear to down play both space and time.

About the Speaker
Michael Roche is Professor of Geography School of People Environment and Planning at Massey University in New Zealand. His PhD is from the University of Canterbury and his research has focussed on the historical and contemporary geographies of food and fibre production in New Zealand. Forests and forestry have been a long term interest. More recently he has contributed to the well received collection Environmental Histories of New Zealand (2002), written progress reports on rural geography for Progress in Human Geography (2002-2005) and published on commodity chains. He was a Senior Research Fellow at Massey University in 2005 is a Life Member of the New Zealand Geographical Society and is currently part of the BRCSS Biological Economies Research Project.

The new AY08/09 semester in NUS sees new faces, new additions and new changes in the Geography Department. With 9 new graduate students, the graduate population is now 35-(wo)man strong! We have 3 new PhD students (Anil, Masao and Swe Hlaing!) and 6 new Master students (Serene, Deborah, Jianhao, Fred, Aidan and Xiaolu!).

We also say our congratulations and farewells to the Master (Brian, Daryl, Junfeng) and PhD (Desmond, Sarah, Shurong) students who just submitted their theses after much gruesome edits and tiresome rewrites. Hope I didn’t miss out any names!

Some of us are also saying farewell to the desks that we’ve been calling our own for the past semesters. With the population growth, our carrying capacity has been pushed to its limits. New seating arrangements were introduced and we join the ranks of silicon valley with the introduction of the hotdesking system. New lockers are also installed at the corridors of AS2 level 4. Goodbye keys and hello new digital locks! Dedicated room for graduate teaching assistants and graduates in their final writing stages were also introduced.

Of course, this semester also sees the birth of this brand new blog for and by the geog grad students, hosted by Blog.nus (an initiative by CIT). Hopefully we can sustain this blog with exciting news over the next semesters. Contribution of stories are most welcome. If you have just published an article, would like to invite others to a presentation or even looking for translators or field/research assistants, please email November or Louis. Or you can join us as a contributor and update this blog directly!

Feedback would be most welcome. Leave a comment on what other features you would like to see on here. Thanks!