New Books for Geographers

New Books: June 2015

Every month the AAG compiles a list of newly-published books in geography and related areas. Some are selected for review in the AAG Review of Books.

Publishers are welcome to send new volumes to the Editor-in-Chief (Kent Mathewson, Editor-in-Chief, AAG Review of Books, Department of Geography and Anthropology, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA 70803).

Anyone interested in reviewing these or other titles should also contact the Editor-in-Chief.

June 2015 

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Changing Human Populations Governance and Policy Networks and Connections
AAG Staff
AAG Staff

Daniel W. Gade

Dan Gade, emeritus professor at the University of Vermont, and a geographer with diverse interests who pursued fieldwork on four continents over four decades, passed away on June 15, 2015, aged 78.

Daniel Wynne Gade was born in Niagara Falls, NY, on September 28, 1936. He completed his bachelor’s degree at Valparaiso University, IN, in 1959, immediately followed by an MA at University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana (1960), then an MS (1961) and PhD (1967) both at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

His doctoral research examined ecological relationships in peasant societies, and a grant from the National Academy of Sciences–National Research Council underwrote his fieldwork in southern Peru. His thesis was entitled “Plant use and folk agriculture in the Vilcanota Valley of Peru: a cultural-historical geography of plant resources” and he began to emerge as a leading proponent of the so-called Berkeley school of geographical thought.

Gade was appointed by the University of Vermont (UVM) in 1966, one of four dedicated young geographers tasked with establishing a new geography department to offer courses at both undergraduate and graduate levels. He remained at UWM for his whole career enjoying a succession of promotions in the geography department and a ten-year stint as Chair of the Latin American Studies Program (1977-87).

Over the years, the courses he taught were primarily in the fields of cultural geography, cultural ecology (with the anthropology department), and the geography of Latin America. For more than a decade, he also taught an elective course, always heavily subscribed, on the geography of wine.

In broadest terms, Gade’s scholarship examined the many kinds of connections that tie humans, in their cultural and temporal settings, to the earth and its resources. This took him into various academic subfields including cultural-historical geography, environmental history, ethnobiology, cultural ecology, and biogeography.

Gade’s wide-ranging research interests were underpinned by fieldwork. In fact, he was an enthusiastic field geographer energized by distant, exotic lands and cultures. He undertook research projects in various countries of Latin America, France, Italy, Madagascar, Ethiopia, Spain, Portugal and Quebec. He received support from the Social Science Research Council for further work in Peru in 1970, and from the National Geographic Society in 1977 for a project in the western Amazon. He received a Fulbright Research Award for work in Madagascar in 1983; a research grant in 1989-90 from the Comite Conjunto of the Government of Spain to do research in the Archivo General de Indias in Seville; and another Fulbright Award to visit Brazil and Argentina in 1993.

This varied field research resulted in publications on topics as diverse as: the verticality of Peruvian Indian agriculture, the concept of nature and culture, cultural history of coca leaf, manioc ecology, lightning and religion, Madagascar’s deforestation problem, the shaman as an archetype, appellation controlee of a French wine, ethnobotany and Nazi ideology, hyena predation in Ethiopia, and synanthropy of the American crow.

Gade authored five books, around 150 articles and book chapters in five languages in a wide variety of anthropological, geographical and interdisciplinary publications, and more than 50 book reviews. His publications were of consistently high quality, and often cited. For years, he was the U.S. correspondent for the Bibliographie Geographique Internationale and an editor of the Handbook of Latin American Studies prepared at the Library of Congress in Washington.

During his final year before retirement, the UVM Graduate College designated Gade a University Scholar in the Social Sciences and Humanities. Although he retired in 1999 and became professor emeritus, he continued with his academic work, starting with a residential fellowship at the Camargo Foundation in Cassis, France in 2000.

Retirement saw a continuation of his prodigious publications output, with dozens of papers and book reviews, and, of particular note, three major books. Madagascar: Madagasikara (McDonald and Woodward, 1996) was a primer giving an overview of the physical geography and climate, culture and traditions, society and economy of the island nation. Nature and Culture in the Andes (University of Wisconsin Press, 1999) was a suite of graceful, sweeping essays on the relations between landscape and people in the Andean countries of South America. This a masterful work pulled together disparate themes and materials, and weaving scientific analysis with personal reflections. More recently, Curiosity, Inquiry, and the Geographical Imagination (Peter Lang, 2011) was also a wonderful piece of academic writing about intellectual curiosity as the driving force in scholarly endeavor. In typical Gade style, it combined the empirical with the philosophical and reflexive, and straddled the borders between geography, history, anthropology, and other disciplines. Six weeks before his death, Gade submitted another manuscript to publishers in New York: Spell of the Urubamba, a series of essays combining geography, history and anthropology.

Gade was a member of the Conference of Latin Americanist Geographers who gave him the Eminent Latin Americanist Career Award in 1993. He was also a member of Association of American Geographers and received the Robert Netting Award in 2011 in recognition of distinguished scholarship linking geography and anthropology. In addition, he was a member of the American Geographical Society, the International Mountain Society, and the Society of Ethnobiology.

Gade had an unusually diverse intellectual curiosity about the world and his work manifested an unwavering love of fieldwork. Over the decades he inspired thousands of students and was widely respected by his peers who have described him as “one of the most traveled and cosmopolitan scholars in cultural and historical geography” (Stanley D. Brunn, University of Kentucky) and “a master cultural geographer” (Kent Mathewson, Louisiana State University).

Dan is survived by his beloved wife of 49 years, Mary Scott Killgore Gade, their son, Christopher Pierre Gade, and his granddaughter, Skyler Scott Gade. His wish was for some of his ashes be buried on Camel’s Hump in Vermont and the rest on an Inca terrace in the Urubamba Valley in Peru.

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Two Geographers Receive ACLS Fellowships for 2015

Two geographers, Jessica Barnes and Eric Carter have received American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) fellowships for the 2015 program.

Jessica Barnes will be examining the longstanding and widespread identification of food security in Egypt with wheat and bread self-sufficiency. She will be working towards completing a book project entitled “Making Bread: The Cultural Politics of Food Security and Wheat Self-Sufficiency in Egypt.”  The goal of the project is to offer insights into how bread and wheat continue to shape relations of power in Egyptian society, and, more broadly, into how food security is envisioned and experienced across scales.

Carter will conduct archival research in Argentina, Chile, and Costa Rica from 2015-2016 for a book project entitled “The Health of the People: A History of Latin American Social Medicine.” The main goals of the project are to understand the ideological roots of socially conscious health policies in Latin America and the institutional and interpersonal networks that sustained them, from the 1920s onward.

ACLS, funded in 1919, is a private, nonprofit federation of 72 national scholarly organizations, is the preeminent representative of American scholarship in the humanities and related social sciences. Advancing scholarship by awarding fellowships and strengthening relations among learned societies is central to our work. Other activities include support for scholarly conferences, reference works, and scholarly communication innovations. ACLS fellowships fund research in the social sciences and the humanities where the ultimate goal of the fellow is by the end of the year to produce a major piece of scholarly work.

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Changing Human Populations Governance and Policy Living within Ecosystems
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Chicago: Food City

In 2011, Michelin released its first “red” guide to Chicago restaurants and hotels. Chicago became the third city in the United States, after New York and San Francisco, to have a red guide. To some, this may seem like a minor matter, but the red guide is a marker of culinary excellence for gourmets, and its release was a sign of how important of a destination Chicago has become for culinary tourists.

High-end restaurants have bloomed in Chicago in the past 20 years. Current tourists come to experience places like the molecular gastronomy temple Alinea, currently listed by one source as the ninth best restaurant in the world. Chef Grant Achatz takes apart foods into basic components, and reconstructs them into beautiful (and very expensive) concoctions. Grant Achatz’s other restaurant, Next, features a new cuisine every few months. Like Alinea, one buys pre-paid “tickets” rather than making reservations. At Next you can buy season tickets for the various incarnations of the restaurant, in the same way you purchase a theater subscription (hint for AAG gourmands, if you sign up to their Facebook page, a couple of tables usually are available each day). Other places such as Avez, the Gage, Girl and the Goat, and Publican feature Midwestern ingredients especially house-cured meats.

While these high-end restaurants may bring tourists to the city, Chicago is as least as famous for its hearty everyday foods. These include the Chicago hot dog, topped with mustard, tomatoes, grilled or raw onions, a pickle spear, “sport” peppers, and celery salt, and the even heartier Italian beef, a roasted beef sandwich somewhat like a French dip, served on Italian bread, and topped with hot or sweet pepper. It is particularly delicious dipped back into the gravy. Both of these sandwiches grew out of the Depression years, providing a cheap meal to hungry Chicagoans. The World War II era saw the invention of the deep-dish pizza, a similarly hearty meal in one dish (and one slice). Later, Chicago was the site of the invention of the gyro sandwich (at least the ground lamb and beef on a rotating skewer variety), and more recently, the Puerto Rican jibarito, a steak sandwich served between two mashed and fried plantain slices (vegetarian and other varieties are now also available).

Chicago is not a food city just because of the food that is served here. From its beginning, Chicago has been a place that processed, stored, and sold the ingredients of the Midwest. Chicago was the US capital of industrial candy manufacturing, home or former home to Brach’s, Mars, Toostie Roll, Curtiss Candies (makers of Baby Ruth and Butterfinger bars), Wrigley’s gum, and many others. While many of these plants and companies are now gone, the Mars plant still makes candy on the far west side, and Tootsie Roll is still on the southwest side. Nestlé bought Curtiss Candies but manufactures candy bars in the same plant as before, just south of O’Hare airport. Still today, if you take a walk west along the north bank of the Chicago River, past the Merchandise Mart, and then cross the north branch of the river at Kinzie, you may start smelling chocolate. This comes from Blommer’s, the largest processor of chocolate in North America, and supplier to many other manufacturers, which is located just beyond the river.

Probably the most famous Chicago sites related to industrial food are the Chicago Board of Trade and the Chicago Union Stockyards. The Board of Trade began as an association of grain buyers and sellers who traded along the south bank of the Chicago River, but soon developed into the largest grain exchange in the world. It is now part of CME Group, having merged with the once much smaller Chicago Mercantile Exchange, which itself began as the Chicago Butter and Egg Board. The Board of Trade Building, located prominently at the south end of the LaSalle Street urban canyon, is worth a tour. Topped by a faceless statue of Ceres, the Roman god of grain, the Arc Deco building’s interior is filled with sculptural allegories to grain. The Chicago Union Stockyards closed in 1971, but the stockyards area, on the near southwest side, still hosts one meatpacker, and The Plant, a vertical farm and food business incubator, which at the moment includes a kombucha manufacturer, two aquaponics companies, a bakery, and a sustainable indoor prawn farm.

The Plant is one example of how urban agriculture has been growing in the Chicago area. Others include two for-profit large-scale aqauponics facilities, non-profit urban farms including the Chicago branch of Milwaukee based Growing Power, and Growing Home, a work-training program in the Englewood neighborhood, and many others. Community gardens now dot many Chicago neighborhoods. While this may all seem new, in many ways it brings the city back to its roots. Much of Chicago was once a swamp, but after being drained, much of it was also very good agricultural land. Sandy Lake View was once a leading producer of celery. What is now the South Side was a produce producing area, and part of the North Side was covered with greenhouses, producing flowers and other plants for the city. The area near O’Hare (once called Old Orchard) was a farming zone, also largely producing for the city, but also producing peas and other vegetables for canning by Chicago-based Libby’s.

At its very beginning, the town of Chicago was consisted of collection of taverns and houses that were built between 1829 and 1833 around “Wolf Point,” at the confluence of the North and South branches of the Chicago River. The most famous of these was the Sauganash Hotel, where proprietor Mark Beaubien would play the fiddle while townsfolk and hotel patrons danced. Hearty food was served. Today, the flow of the river has been reversed, and the river is wider, but Chicago still is a place that welcomes its visitors with hearty food and good cheer, as well as more gourmet possibilities. Enjoy your time in our city and eat well.

—Daniel Block
Chicago State University

DOI: 10.14433/2015.0012

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Author-Meets-Critics: David Harvey’s ‘Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism’

In his newest book, Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism (Oxford, 2014), David Harvey sets out to understand not the contradictions of capitalism, but those of capitalism’s economic engine: capital. He wants to uncover how and why capital works the way it does and “why it might stutter and stall and sometimes appear to be on the verge of collapse. [He] also want[s] to show why this economic engine should be replaced, and with what.”

This author-meets-critics panel brings Harvey into conversation with several important figures in contemporary Marxist geography to discuss this book in particular and Harvey’s significant contribution to radical geography more generally. Remarks from this panel will subsequently appear as a Review Symposium in the journal Human Geography.

Panelists will include Ipsita Chatterjee, Elaine Hartwick, Don Mitchell, Dick Peet, Sue Roberts, and Erik Swyngedouw. David Harvey will also be present to respond to the critics and take questions from the audience.

Author-Meets-Critics: David Harvey’s Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism
Wednesday, April 22, 2015, 3:20 p.m.
Grand C/D North, Hyatt, East Tower, Gold Level

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Surveillance and Policing in Chicago…and its Discontents

Geraint Rowland via Compfight

In the aftermath of the 2013 Boston Marathon Bombing, Chicago received national attention for its comprehensive network of surveillance cameras. One of the first U.S. cities to make extensive use of surveillance cameras, beginning in June 2003, the Chicago Police had launched “Operation Disruption,” a multi-phased plan to install “blue-light” Police Observation Device cameras (PODs) in high crime areas. Able to rotate 360 degree and zoom to a fine level of detail, bullet proof, operable in any weather condition, these cameras record continuously and switch into night vision mode after dark. They are used to monitor street crimes and direct police deployment. In 2006, “Operation Disruption” gave way to “Operation Virtual Shield,” a scheme to create the most extensive and integrated video surveillance network in the United States. In January 2007, the city began installing cameras at least 20 high schools. Under Mayor Rahm Emanuel, the city has added 500 more and now has an integrated system of 22,000 cameras citywide (see map). This system includes the “blue-light” street cameras as well as cameras on CTA trains, buses, and public transit stations and cameras installed on public buildings such as schools and Chicago Housing Authority facilities. As part of “Operation Virtual Shield,” the city upgraded cameras to incorporate facial recognition and “automatic tracking” or the ability to follow a person or vehicle from one camera to the next. Today, the data from these cameras is wirelessly transmitted to the Chicago Crime Prevention Center (CPIC) which also can individually control any camera (Chicago Police Department 2013a; 2013b).

CPIC is one of 78 fusion centers recognized and partially funded by the Department of Homeland Security. With a potentially limitless “all crimes, all threats, all hazards” mission, the CPIC operates 24 hours a day from the fourth floor of police headquarters at 3510 S Michigan Ave. It has a regular staff of 30 to 35 people. Personnel from FBI, DHS, and Illinois State Police are assigned full time to the CPIC, while personnel from other agencies including the Illinois Department of Corrections, Cook County Sheriff’s Police, State Department, Metra Police, DHS Customs and Border Protection, U.S. Secret Service, U.S. Attorney’s Northern District of Indiana, Transportation and Security Administration and various suburban police departments also deploy the CPIC as needed (Chicago Police Department 2013b). The CPIC is an information clearinghouse and analytic center that analyzes long term trends, monitors the “threat environment” to achieve real time “situational awareness,” and provides tactical case support. In the latter capacity, the fusion center provides “real-time violent crime detection monitoring and response, continual assessment of available resources for the purpose of possible redeployment of manpower, instantaneous major incident notification, analysis and identification of retaliatory violence and automated construction of enforcement missions to thwart retaliatory violence, crime pattern identification, and immediate access to in-depth background data on persons of investigative interest” (Government Accountability Office 2007: 70).

Fusion centers like the CPIC are associated with intelligence-led policing (ILP). ILP operates on two fronts. One the one hand, ILP is “a top-down management approach” that “uses crime intelligence to objectively direct police resources decisions” and offers a “business model and managerial philosophy where data analysis and crime intelligence are pivotal to an objective, decision-making framework that facilitate crime and problem reduction, disruption and prevention through both strategic management and effective enforcement strategies that target prolific and serious offenders.” On the other hand, ILP reorients policing around intelligence in an effort to shift the profession toward the pre-emptive disruption of crime. This future-oriented mode of policing entails the individual targeting of chronic offenders, using informants and surveillance to identify and track them (Ratcliffee 2008: 6, 83-87). In Chicago for example, analysts at the CPIC evaluate an individual’s parole or warrant status, weapons or drug arrests, arrest histories of the person’s acquaintances, and whether they have been the victim of a shooting to generate a “heat list” of individuals “500 times more likely than average to be involved in violence” (Gorner 2013; Flannery 2014).

While fusion centers and ILP are considered by some to be the future of law enforcement, the centerpiece of the so-called “Homeland Security Era” of policing in the United States, they also raise a series of concerns related to civil liberties violations and political policing. In Chicago, the CPIC has recently been implicated in the illegal surveillance of activists associated with the Black Lives Matter protest. “Police scanner enthusiasts” found evidence that the Chicago Police were using StingRay devices—the brand name of a device made by Harris Corporation to simulate a cell tower’s radio signal and capture data from nearby mobile phones, tablets and similar wireless devices—to monitor the Ferguson solidarity protests. The intercepted communications revealed that this data was being sent to the CPIC (Handley 2014). Like all issues surrounding intelligence generally and fusion centers specifically, these allegations are obscured by official secrecy. The Chicago Police are currently being sued to release documents that would prove that the department owns a Stingray device (Smith 2014).

Such secrecy may not last long. The lawsuit and ongoing protests around police abuses are developing into a broader effort to assert community control over the police. The Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression (undated) is organizing a drive to pass legislation that would create a Civilian Police Accountability Council with powers to appoint the police commissioner, rewrite the police rule book, investigate police shootings, and otherwise oversee the police department. A coalition of grassroots groups are planning a demonstration this August in support of the legislation and are already pushing alderman to support the legislation. Outside of Chicago, the proposal is attracting attention of other activists in other cities, including Baltimore and St. Louis, who are considering launching similar campaigns.

—Brendan McQuade
International Studies
DePaul University

DOI: 10.14433/2015.0011

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What’s in a Nickname? In the case of Chiraq, a Whole Lot

Chicago goes by many nicknames—from the widely recognized “Windy City” and “Second City” to more obscure and seemingly puzzling associations, such as “Paris on the Prairie” and “The Smelly Onion.” Nicknames are important branding strategies used by civic boosters, and Chicago’s namesakes are frequently employed to market the city and its surrounding region as “The Jewel of the Midwest” and “Heart of America.” At the same time, urban monikers can arise from the wider public and they have sometimes been used to draw attention to negative qualities of Chicago life. With the help of a NWS meteorologist and social media, the city was rechristened “Chi-beria” during the record-breaking cold weather of 2013-14. The Wall Street Journal identified Chicago as “Beirut by the Lake” when reporting on the intense political infighting on the city council in the early- and mid-1980s.

Popular culture and artistic expression are important sources of nicknames. Some of Chicago’s best-known monikers are found in poems, such as “City on the Make” from Nelson Algren and “City of Big Shoulders” from Carl Sandburg. Other Chicago nicknames have originated from songs. Frank Sinatra popularized “That Toddling Town” and “My Kind of Town.” Famous blues artist Robert Johnson’s “Sweet Home” captured the emotional geography of the Great Migration of African Americans from the racial oppressive South to presumably better conditions in Chicago. As of late, the local rap/hip-hop music scene has given rise to “Chiraq,” a controversial mash-up of the place names Chicago and Iraq. Chiraq has become shorthand for capturing the life and death struggles and feelings of anger and alienation that poor people of color experience within the city. The nickname stands in marked contrast to the optimism and sense of belonging found in Johnson’s portrayal of Chicago as home.

The emergence of Chiraq is an opportunity to think about the politics of how places are represented and made meaningful within the wider cultural arena of music and naming—both in general and specific to Chicago. City nicknames might appear at first glance to be gimmicky or superficial. Yet, we would suggest that this form of naming, like all toponymic practices, plays a critical role in socially constructing and contesting the identities of urban places and the people associated with those places. As increasingly suggested in research, place names are not confined to official nomenclature on maps, but also include competing, vernacular systems of naming. Chicago’s many nicknames provide insight into the different ways that social actors and groups frame and reconfigure the image of the city for visitors, residents, and the wider world. The case of Chiraq encourages us to recognize that historically marginalized groups such as African Americans can harness the power of naming to articulate a sense of place and a resistant place identity on their own terms and in their own words.

Music is an important signifier of place and the cultural power of hip-hop, or any musical genre for that matter, is the way in which it originates from and gives voice to the specific lived experiences and struggles of its artists. The term Chiraq was coined by local musician, King Louie, and debuted in his 2009 track “Chiraq Drillinois.” Rappers born and reared in the impoverished south and west sides of Chicago have collectively popularized the nickname, most notably Chief Keef, Young Chop, Lil Reese, and Lil Durk. This group of artists along with many others formed what is known as “Drill Music,” a subgenre of hip-hop known for its grim, violent depictions of Chicago street life, especially the Englewood neighbor. Chief Keef drew attention to the Drill music scene in late 2011 with a homemade music video released on YouTube entitled Bang. In 2012, after being signed to Interscope, he released his first album, Finally Rich, which pushed Drill music into the mainstream. In April of 2014, Chiraq become even more nationally recognized when hip-hop star Nicki Minaj featured Drill rapper Lil Herb on a single, titled Chi-Raq.

Chiraq can be understood in part by looking at the lyrics and the commentary that describe it. Lyrics written and performed by Drill artists frequently refer to rampant murder and the wide availability of guns, along with frequent references to Chicago as a militarized and besieged landscape. As King Louie put it in his seminal track: “rocket rocket gun fire, you hear that killer noise, this is…Chiraq Drillinois…we drillen, we killen…” In the recently released track Gang Members, Chief Keef and three other Drill artists employ sound-bites from televisions new reports about crime mixed with their own flows to describe the astounding level of violence and apathy they encounter in Chicago. Because the production and online posting of home-made music videos is a hallmark of Drill artists, Chiraq has opened up a space in social media for sharing the comments, reactions, and life experiences of locals as well as political discussions from observers/listeners well beyond Chicago.

For some commentators, Chiraq exposes the contradictions of living in a country that spends massive amounts of money to intercede in conflicts abroad but places less priority on the “war zones” at home, especially when victims are too easily reduced to the collateral damage of gang violence in minority neighborhoods. Some observers, including the FBI, attribute high levels of violence in Chicago to gang activity, although anecdotal evidence suggests the situation is more complex. Others argue that it was government efforts to dissolve gangs and close down federally subsidized housing that have destabilized communities and the support networks provided by gangs, thus putting already vulnerable African Americans further at risk and intensifying their struggle to survive (1:31-2:23).

As journalists report, a sense of fatalism pervades some of neighborhoods most harshly affected by high levels of violence. When interviewed, twenty-year old Chicago resident Jamal stated that he didn’t expect to live much longer after sharing that only two of his childhood friends were still alive. This message of hopelessness is echoed in an interview with another local resident who goes further to make a suggestion on how Chiraq might be changed, “I believe if people had availability of service, and something to do, more so in the community, if it was more… something to look forward to, maybe it [the violence] would subside” (11:57-12:13).

Renaming Chicago as Chiraq represents a form of resistance initiated by youth who are experiencing a lifetime of hyper-segregation, chronic poverty, poor education in crowded classrooms, and a regular loss of loved ones to both prison cells and gunshots. The nickname’s power, politically, is the way in which naming functions as a form of shaming, a way of challenging Chicagoans, especially those in power, to consider the harsh and dangerous realities of life that are so clearly at odds with the city’s positive promotional image. When a local news station interviewed Chicagoans about their opinion of the Chiraq label, shame was clearly an underlying feeling, as exemplified by this quote, “I don’t want them to think of Chicago, our beautiful city as a war zone.” The willingness of some residents to deny the extreme violence in Chicago, and in fact make excuses for it, are evident in the words of another quoted resident: “It’s a little violent, but then again it’s Chicago…I mean it’s one of the best places in the world.”

Chicago has a long and documented history of police violence against youth. Not surprisingly, the lyric of “F*** the (insert any derogatory term for police officer)” is frequently associated with Chiraq and it is the most blatant way that Drill artists shame local authorities and implicate the state in making Chicago a war zone. But the shaming goes beyond lyrics and musical performance, manifesting itself in the commentary attached to YouTube videos. For example, one observer wrote: “Apparently the police don’t give a f*** and are encouraging it…guess that’s why they inherited the raq in chi.” Comments such as these are not simply directed locally. The capacity of the Chiraq nickname to shame and evoke condemnation is also being exercised nationally. When 82 people were shot over the July 4, 2014 weekend in Chicago, a journalist asked of the city’s most famous resident: “Obama, Why Aren’t You in Chiraq?

Due in part to the exposure given by hip-hop star Nicki Minaj, Chiraq is growing in popularity as a point of identity and even a badge of honor among segments of Chicago’s African American community. The nickname can now be found displayed on an array of posters, T-shirts, and hats—many of which also display images of automatic rifles and handguns. Enthusiasts have gone as far as appropriating the icons of the city’s famed sports franchises, drawing a gas mask on the Bulls’ red charging bull and inserting the name Chiraq in place of “Cubs” within the baseball team’s logo. The growing popularization of Chiraq has sparked opposition to the nickname. Anti-Chiraq activists, including ex-gang members, have argued that Drill artists glorify and encourage violence, even as they speak to the truth of that violence. Some opponents assert that referring to communities as war zones creates a “punishment mentality” that limits how people think about the solutions to the systemic inequality and racism in Chicago. In the words of one commentator, “War can further dehumanize black bodies and count them as casualties.”

Not everyone in the Chicago’s black community has embraced the Chiraq moniker or used it in the same way as Drill artists. K’Valentine is part of a small but vocal group of female rappers using their music to speak out publicly against the nickname. She wrote and performed a track entitled Anti-Chiraq, a loose remix of Nicki Minaj and Lil Herb’s famous Chi-Raq track. Alonzo Jackson, a local fashion designer, sells anti-Chiraq shirts. By scratching out, literally and figuratively, the controversial nickname on apparel, Jackson hopes to alter the direction of the public conversation. On this point, he stated: “So don’t even call it [the city] Chiraq because the power of the tongue and you speak that, it’s like you’re embracing it and we don’t like that at all.”

Chicago activist Julien Drayton founded RIP Chiraq Foundation in 2012 to advocate for peace and to provide employment and career training to underprivileged people in the city. Yet, Drayton’s call for “No More Chiraq” is not necessarily a call to ban the nickname, but actually a call to end the structural conditions (poverty, joblessness, discrimination, and gun proliferation) that have given rise to Chicago’s violence, and he speaks pointedly to a goal of seeing the city growing “out of the shadow” of high death tolls. Chiraq encompasses many complicated layers of resistance and the name has clearly become part of the lexicon for framing discussions of problems in Chicago and broader urban America, even if everyone cannot agree on what the term means, what it is accomplishing, or whether it should be invoked at all.

Chicago is a city of conflicting identities depending on one’s social and geographic position in its networks of power and resources. Chiraq is not merely an alternative nickname for Chicago or hip-hop styling or personae; rather it marks larger geographies of exclusion, violence, and resistance within the city. Chiraq highlights important relations between local music, social media, and the racial and class politics of naming and claiming cities. Chiraq prompts us as geographers to consider the broader social and economic struggles at work in the cities where we hold meetings, helping us move toward a more critical and empathetic understanding of place that is perhaps not possible within conference hotels and session rooms.

Janna Caspersen
Department of Geography
University of Tennessee
@jannacaspersen

Derek Alderman
Department of Geography
University of Tennessee
@MLKStreet

DOI: 10.14433/2015.0006

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Op-Ed: Preemption and Scalar Politics, from Living Wages to Hydraulic Fracturing

If municipal political geographies seem boring, think again. In Texas, where we study municipal oil and gas drilling ordinances with support from the National Science Foundation (and live in cities with active drilling), fundamental questions are being raised: What are state governments for? What are municipalities for? How do opposing sides frame their struggles to determine the locus of regulation and control over activities like oil and gas drilling and hydraulic fracturing (fracking)?

The decade-long boom in unconventional hydrocarbon extraction by fracking has sparked debates throughout the US. Although distribution of impacts and benefits receive most media attention, disputes over authority to regulate oil and gas development have sprung up in Pennsylvania, Colorado, and New York, for example. Surprisingly, Texas — the leading US oil and gas producer and historic innovator of all-things-hydrocarbon (including extraction and production technologies, and oil and gas law) — has thus far remained largely above the regulatory litigation fray. Although some might attribute this to the state’s wildcatter culture and long embrace of oil rig landscapes, it also stems from the strong home rule powers of Texas municipalities. Indeed, in recent years, many Dallas-Fort Worth area municipalities have used their state-sanctioned powers to regulate drilling activities within their corporate limits. However, state legislators are now challenging their ability to do so.

It started in November 2014 when 59% of voters in the City of Denton passed a fracking ban. The next day, the Texas Oil and Gas Association (TxOGA) filed a lawsuit arguing that Denton’s ban “is preempted by Texas state law and therefore unconstitutional.” According to TxOGA, the outcome of the popular vote was “an impermissible intrusion” on the powers of the Texas Railroad Commission (RRC; the state oil and gas regulatory authority) and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. The speed with which the lawsuit was filed suggests that reliance on the doctrine of preemption was well considered before the vote.

In December 2014, a second preemption response to Denton’s ban came from State Representative Phil King who filed two bills to the Texas Legislature that target local government regulatory authority. House Bill 539 specifically targets oil and gas regulations, and would force cities to identify and compensate the state for any lost revenues that an oil and gas regulation might cause. House Bill 540 would mandate that cities submit any proposed new voter-initiated ordinance or elimination of an ordinance (and not just those relating to oil and gas extraction) to the Texas attorney general for review. The attorney general would then decide if the city has authority to adopt or remove the ordinance. And recently introduced Senate Bill 440, by Senator Konni Burton, gets right to the preemptive point: “A county or municipality may not prohibit hydraulic fracturing treatment of oil or gas wells.”

A third preemption issue became apparent in January 2015 when TxOGA bombarded College Station City Council with claims that a proposed 1,500 foot setback between residences and drilling pads amounted to a “de facto ban” on fracking, with the unstated threat that a preemption lawsuit would be filed against the city. In public hearings, councilmembers repeated the “de facto ban” talking point and stressed that state agencies regulate the “means and methods” of oil and gas production — in addition to possible air and water contamination — and not cities.

Contemporary preemption legislation can be understood as “expressions of a politics of scale that is emerging at the geographical interface between processes of urban restructuring and state territorial restructuring” (Brenner 1999, 432). By simultaneously expanding the power of a higher level of government and reducing the power of a lower level of government (Weiland 1999), preemption is a way to rescale, redistribute, and remove city and local government regulatory authority over planning, environmental hazards, and business activities. Prominent examples in the US and Texas include preemptive legislation pertaining to tobacco sales and smoking bans (Laposata et al 2014), city and regional sustainability planning efforts (Trapenberg Frick et al 2015), municipal bans on genetically engineered crops (Roff 2008), and local living wages (Lafer 2013) and non-discrimination ordinances (Blanchard 2015).

Long a strategy of corporations and their lobbying arm, particularly big tobacco, preemption is also a central strategy of the conservative front organization, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). Established by conservative activists in 1973, ALEC aims to influence state legislative agendas towards government downsizing, deregulation, tax restraint and preemption of local control (Nichols 2011). Comprised of 2,000 state-legislator members and others, ALEC also is openly anti-climate change and anti-United Nations.

Central to preemption rhetoric and the goals of ALEC is the idea that a patchwork of local government regulations and zoning laws hurt industry and consumers by creating an unpredictable environment for the private sector (Goho 2012). But there are serious implications for local populations when local governments, with more direct knowledge of the local situation, geography, and environment, are unable to regulate activities that might affect residents’ health, safety, and welfare.

Returning to the Texas oil and gas context, it turns out that Phil King is an ALEC national chair and recipient of funds from ALEC’s corporate members. The head of the Texas RRC also receives campaign funds from ALEC. And newly-elected Texas Governor Greg Abbott recently lamented that Texas was “being Californianized” by stealth: “you may not even be noticing it…It’s being done at the city level with bag bans, fracking bans, tree-cutting bans. We’re forming a patchwork quilt of bans and rules and regulations that is eroding the Texas model” (Austin-American Statesman, 2015).

In Texas, we are witnessing a fascinating experiment in political geography, with Governor Abbott’s warning of stealthy municipalities creating a “patchwork quilt” and state legislators seeking to usurp the power of cities when they disagree with how people vote in municipal elections. As governor, legislators, and municipal officials struggle over the proper site for regulation, they are proving what geographers have long known: municipal political geographies are definitely not boring, but rather important sites for geographical inquiry.

Matthew Fry
Department of Geography
University of North Texas

Christian Brannstrom
Department of Geography
Texas A&M University

DOI: 10.14433/2015.0008

References

Austin-American Statesman. 2015. Gov.-elect Abbott: End local bans on bags, fracking, tree-cutting. 8 Janurary, 2015.

Blanchard, B. 2015. Nondiscrimination Ordinance Battle Goes Statewide. The Texas Tribune, 24 January 2014.

Brenner, N. 1999. Globalisation as Reterritorialisation: The Re-scaling of Urban Governance in the European Union. Urban Studies, 36(3): 431-451. DOI: 10.1080/0042098993466.

Goho, S.A. 2012. Municipalities and Hydraulic Fracturing: Trends in State Preemption. Planning & Environmental Law, 64(7): 3-9. DOI:10.1080/15480755.2012.699757.

Lafer, G. 2013. The Legislative Attack on American Wages and Labor Standards, 2011–2012. Economic Policy Institute Briefing Paper #364, 31 October 2013.

Laposata, E., Kennedy, A.P., and Glantz, S.A. 2014. When Tobacco Targets Direct Democracy. Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law, 39(3): 537-564. DOI: 10.1215/03616878-2682603.

Nichols, J. 2011. ALEC exposed. The Nation, 1 August 2011, www.thenation.com.

Roff, R.J. 2008. Preempting to nothing: neoliberalism and the fight to de/re-regulate agricultural biotechnology. Geoforum 39: 1423–1438. DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2007.12.005.

Trapenberg Frick, K., Weinzimmer, D. and Waddell, P. 2015. The politics of sustainable development opposition: State legislative efforts to stop the United Nation’s Agenda 21 in the United States. Urban Studies, 52(2): 209–232. DOI: 10.1177/0042098014528397.

Weiland, P.A. 1999. Preemption of Local Efforts to Protect the Environment: Implications for Local Government Officials. Virginia Environmental Law Journal, 18: 467-506

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Christian Brannstrom
Christian Brannstrom

Ruth Shirey

Ruth Shirey, professor emerita in the Department of Geography and Regional Planning at Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP), and an expert and authority on geography education, died unexpectedly and suddenly at her home in Indiana, Pennsylvania on February 20, 2015, at the age of 72.

Shirey was born in 1942 and raised in Johnstown, PA. She received a B.A. in geography education from IUP in 1965 before completing an M.A. and Ph.D. in geography at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville in 1968 and 1970 respectively. Her field research took her to Latin America and she produced a thesis entitled “An Analysis of the Location of Manufacturing: Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula, Honduras.”

She began her teaching career at the Tennessee Technological University in 1968 before returning to IUP in 1970 to become a faculty member, where she remained until her retirement in 2007.

Shirey taught courses across the spectrum of the discipline including the geography of Latin America, the geography of Pennsylvania, physical geography, climatology, physiography, industrial geography, the geography of energy, the history of cities and planning, and cultural geography.

At Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Shirey provided leadership as department chair of Geography and Regional Planning from 1977 to 1988, and interim associate dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences from 1987 to 1989. Her excellence at IUP was recognized by the Graduate School in 1996 with an award for Outstanding Commitment to Sponsored Programs, and by the College of Humanities and Social Sciences in 1998-1999 with an award for Outstanding Service.

Shirey was a widely respected and beloved leader in the field of geography education. Over her career, she wrote numerous articles and books on geography education, and was awarded more than $1.8 million in external grant funds. Her sustained efforts over many decades enhanced geographic literacy in elementary, secondary, and postsecondary schools.

From 1988 to 2002, she served as the executive director of the National Council for Geographic Education (NCGE), simultaneously coordinating efforts to develop and implement national geography education standards in cooperation with teaching colleagues from across the education spectrum.

In the early 1990s, she served as project administrator for the National Geography Standards Project, a groundbreaking effort that led to the articulation of content standards for geography education nationwide. She also served as the coordinator of the Pennsylvania Geographic Alliance during this same time period, conceiving and organizing geography teaching workshops for educators from across Pennsylvania.

Because of her tireless work, Shirey was very well known and admired among geographers in the United States and internationally, and was honored with the National Council for Geographic Education’s George J. Miller Award for Distinguished Service (1996), the Pennsylvania Geographical Society’s Distinguished Service Award (2001), and the Association of American Geographers’ Ronald F. Abler Distinguished Service Award (2013).

Shirey was also internationally-minded. In 1988, she participated in a Fulbright faculty exchange with the University of Poona in India. Back home at IUP she was known for inviting international students to her home for holiday meals, and for making them feel welcome at the university while far away from home. She was also very proud of her role on the “Committee to Save John Sutton Hall” in the 1970s, which played a pivotal role in preserving the building which is the focal point of the IUP campus today.

The role of women in science and academia was another passion. Shirey was elected to the Society of Woman Geographers in 1980, and after her retirement she served as the chair for the Society’s Fellowship Award Committee.

In 2008, IUP honored Shirey with a Distinguished Alumni Award for achievements in academia and for contributions to geography education, research and administration, as well as efforts to advance geographic literacy in the United States.

Shirey was very active in the Association of American Geographers. Having joined in 1965 she was due to receive recognition of her 50 years of continuous membership at the Annual Meeting in Chicago in April 2015. She was also a member of the Conference of Latin Americanist Geographers and the Gamma Theta Upsilon International Honor Society.

Until her untimely death, Shirey continued her active community life through work with the League of Women Voters and the Indiana County Democratic Party, as well as her continued association with Department of Geography and Regional Planning, most recently assisting with fundraising for the department’s facilities in a new building.

Ruth will be greatly missed by her colleagues at IUP, her many students, and by all those in the geography community whom she inspired. She will be remembered for her groundbreaking accomplishments in geography education, her many contributions to the Department of Geography and Regional Planning, and her dedication to Indiana University of Pennsylvania.

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Reauthorization of ESEA (No Child Left Behind) Heating Up

A draft reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), which is currently known as No Child Left Behind, has been released by Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN), the new Chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee.  By taking this step so early in the newly-convened 114th Congress, Alexander is signaling that he has serious interest in passing a bill in the first half of 2015.  The ESEA – the nation’s primary K-12 law – has not been reauthorized since early 2002.

As many AAG members are aware, the Association has been working for many years to ensure that the next enacted ESEA should include a specific funding authorization for K-12 geography education.  Geography is specified as one of nine core academic subjects in the existing law but is the only one that does not have a dedicated funding stream.

In 2010, we began circulating the AAG Resolution Supporting K-12 Geography Education, which calls for funding of K-12 geography in the ESEA and urges the Obama Administration to include geography and geospatial education in its STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) proposals.  The Resolution has been endorsed by four former U.S. Secretaries of State; 20 incumbent state Governors; 25 Fortune 500 companies; and many other prominent individuals and organizations (see:  www.aag.org/AAGEducationResolution).

This large coalition of supporters of geography education that we have assembled has helped us make a forceful case to federal policy makers.  As an example, please see the letter we have just sent to Senator Alexander on the reauthorization: www.aag.org/esea_alexander.

The Senate HELP Committee has held two hearings so far in 2015 related to the ESEA:  one on “Testing and Accountability” and the other on “Supporting Teachers and School Leaders.”

Alexander’s draft bill – which has yet to be formally introduced – does not include a listing of core academic subjects and does not specifically mention geography at all.  The Chairman has indicated that he would like to pass a reauthorization bill through his panel by the end of February, but if he does so without bipartisan support, he may find it difficult to win needed Democratic votes (to avoid a filibuster) when the bill reaches the Senate floor.

We will keep you apprised of developments on this important legislation.

—Douglas Richardson and John Wertman

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Changing Human Populations Governance and Policy Networks and Connections
Douglas Richardson
Douglas Richardson