Rashid's Blog: A Place for Inquisitive Souls

I am organising a session at the forthcoming RGS/IBG annual conference in London (August 28-30, 2013). Details below:

Radical Geography in the Interwar Period:

Disciplinary Trajectories and Hidden Histories

Sponsored by Historical Geography Research Group

Organiser: Dr. Alex Vasudevan

(School of Geography, University of Nottingham)

This session builds on a brief note published in the journal Area in 1975 by the geographer David Stoddart on the disciplinary origins of “relevant” geography. For Stoddart, a “tradition of social relevance” can, in fact, be traced back to the end of the 19^th century and the work of Élisée Reclus and Peter Kropotkin whose commitment to geographical knowledge was shaped by the radical political imperatives of anarchism (188). According to Stoddart, the emergence of a radical geography in the late 1960s represented, if anything, the latest moment in the history of a “socially relevant geography” and that the very idea of “relevance”…

See on Scoop.it – actions de concertation citoyenne

The Internet democratizes innovation. The technical possibilities to hold a plebiscite are available, albeit not really technical reliable. Is the grassroots democracy a matter of time and the red pencil replaceable by a keyboard? Or is it still too unsafe? The contra-argument has been formulated, for example by Andrew Keen, with his book “The Cult of the Amateur – “How today’s internet is killing our culture”. Keen stands in a long tradition. From the early 50s the Dutch futurologist Fred Polak predicted that “dark living rooms meant dark brains” in light of the development of the television. The German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk argued that new mass media lead to media mass, civilians who are easily manipulated and tempted[xiv]. Recent developments have occurred on the other side (www.beleid20.nl), with the civilian innovation-initiative, a kind of end-user-driven-content. Also here a wrestling between stability and…