Search

To purchase or authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9272.2007.00646.x Byline: Vincent J. Del Casino (1) Keywords: pilgrimage; religious geographies; security; tourism Author Affiliation: (1)Department of Geography, California State University, Long Beach, CA

As spaces increasingly come to be described as "smart," "sentient," or "thinking," scholars remain in disagreement as to the nature of intelligence, knowledge, or the "human mind." This article opens the notion of intelligence to contestation, examining differing conceptions of intelligence and what they might mean for how geographers approach the theorization of "smart" spaces. Engaging debates on the distinction between cognition and consciousness, we argue for a view of intelligence as multiple, partial, and situated in and in-between spaces, bodies, objects, and technologies. This article calls on geographers to be attentive to the multiple forms of intelligence made possible by innovations in information processing and to the ways in which particular intelligences are prioritized—as others might be neglected or suppressed—through the production of smart spaces in the context of our rapidly changing understandings of the "humanness" of intelligence. Key Words: cognition, consciousness, digital technology, intelligence, space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rapid expansion of online education compels debate over what accessible higher education should be, how it should be delivered, and whom it should serve. While geographers remain relatively marginal to this debate, they have engaged the question of the neoliberal university, where online education is sometimes characterized as another instantiation of the neoliberal turn. This paper draws geographies of education scholarship into productive conversation with online teaching and learning, critical pedagogy, and public geographies literatures to argue that geographers can reframe the debate over online education and reposition it as a productive space of critical dialogue, inquiry, and encounter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I contribute to our understanding of the plurality of approaches that construct the geographies of health care through an examination of the distribution of health care services for people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) in Chiang Mai Province, Thailand. In particular, I focus on the development of a network of support groups for PLWHA in order to examine the differences in the sociospatial organization of these groups, the practices of social actors participating in the groups' activities, and how these activities are mediated through place-based social relations. The first section of the article analyzes the spatial distribution of PLWHA support groups in relation to the distribution of AIDS cases over two time periods, 1994 and 1997. The second section goes below the surface of the spatial distribution, examining similarities and differences in PLWHA support groups through an analysis of survey data collected on thirty-five groups in 1997. The final section deepens this examination through an analysis of ethnographic data collected on the outreach efforts of one nongovernmental organization (NGO) and one PLWHA support group with which it worked. Each section offers opportunities for the extension of our understanding of the development of PLWHA support groups, their distribution in relation to the spread of AIDS cases, and their place-based meanings. Key Words: health care geographies, HIV/AIDS, Thailand.

This report examines how social geography engages with nonhuman subjects; in this case, bugs. The report focuses on how social geography is rethinking its core concepts of difference and inequality through scholarship that examines the relations between bugs and human inequality, bug management and molecular intervention on/in bugs, and the biosocial relations bugs help forge. It does so while opening up what bugs – not just insects, but also a wider range of bugs, such as viruses, bacteria, and parasites operating within and beyond the human body – offer to our theorization and examination of everyday social life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This review discusses the social geographies of food, focusing on how social geographic research has been taken up in and influenced by the wider discussions of food geographies in the discipline. It does so with particular attention to: the spatial politics of food deserts, food security, and food justice movements; the socialities of food identities; and the embodiments of food. This tripartite discussion of the social geographies of food is intended to highlight the complex theoretical and methodological approaches that geographers are employing when interrogating this particular object. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of Viagra in the late 1990s ushered in a new age of conversation about sex and sexuality, as men's bodily abilities were put on display for all to discuss. In 2005, the video-sharing technologyYouTubewas launched. Taken together, these technological innovations – both biomedical and representational – have produced debate around sex, sexualized and gendered bodies, and sexual health. This article interrogates Viagra-related representations posted onYouTubeand analyzes sexuopharmaceuticals as a set of intertextualities that create space for both normative discoursesandsocial critiques. Three analytic themes illustrate how Viagra-relatedYouTubevideos (1) reinforce a regime of self-care within a wider context of individualized responsibility for one's sexual health, (2) highlight the values attached to the pharmasexed gendered body for men and women in the age of Viagra, and (3) provide disruptions, in the form of criticism, to the assumption that healthy bodies and relationships need pharmasexual enhancement. The article concludes by suggesting that social networking sites such asYouTubeare managed public spaces through which one can interrogate the intertextualities that link discourses related to bodies and sexual health to the virtual and material spaces of everyday life. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]