Progress in Human Geography

This article seeks to unpack notions of governmentality by reading it through the case of nature. By highlighting three key aspects of governmentality — its analytics of power, biopolitics, and technologies of the self — I argue that this approach presents a promising theoretical trend for those who study nature and its rule. However, there have been critiques leveled at this approach which must be considered. Using examples drawn from human/non-human interactions, I explore how the governmentality literature needs to be made more complex and attune to difference. In the final analysis, I argue that the concept of governmentality is not only an effective tool for geographers, but that geography provides a particularly insightful lens with its attention to spatiality, scale, territory and human/non-human relations that enrich the analysis of the making of governable spaces.

This paper examines the recent attempts to develop geographies of science both within, and beyond, the discipline of geography. Such efforts have been most successful in work by historical geographers and historians of geography. Investigating the `geographical turn' evident across science studies more widely, this paper considers a broad range of engagements with spatiality by historians, sociologists, anthropologists and posthumanist practice theorists. In doing so, the paper thus argues that different geographies of science are emerging. Indeed, bringing together variegated conceptions of the spatiality of scientific activity will allow for wider audiences for geographies of science, inspire further investigation of the geographical sciences, and provide resources for debates regarding disciplinary histories and futures.

In this paper we argue that cartography is profitably conceived as a processual, rather than representational, science. Building on recent analysis concerning the philosophical underpinnings of cartography we question the ontological security of maps, contending that it is productive to rethink cartography as ontogenetic in nature; that is maps emerge through practices and have no secure ontological status. Drawing on the concepts of transduction and technicity we contend that maps are of-the-moment, brought into being through practices (embodied, social, technical); that mapping is a process of constant reterritorialization. Maps are never fully formed and their work is never complete. Maps are transitory and fleeting, being contingent, relational and context-dependent; they are always mappings; spatial practices enacted to solve relational problems (eg, how best to create a spatial representation, how to understand a spatial distribution, how to get between A and B, and so on). Such a rethinking, we contend, provides a fresh perspective on cartographic epistemology, and could work to provide a common framework for those who undertake mapping as applied knowledge (asking technical questions) and those that seek to critique such mapping as a form of power/knowledge (asking ideological questions). We illustrate our argument through an analysis of mapping practices.

This paper reviews writings about postdevelopment. It argues that critical scrutiny of the contemporary reconfiguring of postcolonial sovereignties provides a productive route to rethink the geographies of development and postdevelopment. The relationship of development narratives to reconfigurations of imperialism and postcolonialism produces a complex geography of development and postdevelopment that defies neat summary, but which demands more sustained attention to the interactions of enclosure, boundaries and subjectivities.