{"title":"The city and the philosopher: On the urbanism of phenomenology","authors":"E. Mendieta","doi":"10.1080/10903770124212","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10903770124212","url":null,"abstract":"Philosophy projects a certain understanding of reason that is related to the ways in which the city figures in its imaginary. Conversely, the city is a practice of spatialization that determines the ways in which agents are able, or unable, to live out their social agency. This essay focuses on the ways in which philosophy and the city's spatializing practices and imaginaries inform differential ways of living out social agency. The thrust of the investigation is to discern the ways in which sexism - differential engendering - results from the relationship that exists between philosophy and the city. To illustrate this link between philosophy, the city, and differential engendering, the work turns to a consideration of Jean-Paul Sartre's phenomenology, which is taken as an exemplary illustration of the entwinement between the philosophical imaginary, and the perception and reception of the city.","PeriodicalId":431617,"journal":{"name":"Philosophy & Geography","volume":"15 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2001-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127824076","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Serendipity","authors":"Natasha S. Guinan","doi":"10.1080/10903770123863","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10903770123863","url":null,"abstract":"In volume 4.2 of Philosophy and Geography, our editorial staff faced the dif cult but welcome task, following our double-blind peer referring process, of selecting from among our many high quality submissions. I should have expected this welcome task, as my experience so far working at P&G has taught me to expect the unexpected. From a new interdisciplinary marriage, expect articles that genuinely re ect the rich intellectual debates of both disciplines; from the transition to a semi-annual format, expect too many high quality submissions to publish in any one volume; best of all, amongst the submissions, expect to nd thematic links and a natural “ t” between contributors for each publication. Volume 4.2 meets all these expectations. Our lead article, “Urban Planning in the Founding of Cartesian Thought,” by Abraham Akkerman, sets the tone for this issue. Akkerman’s piece explores the geographical and intellectual con uence of Renaissance urban planning with René Descartes’s notion of “clear and distinct” ideas. Professor Akkerman’s article is a bold, suggestive, and provocative piece that nicely underscores the interdisciplinary commitments of P&G, and evidences the exciting new work that is possible from a bridging of the disciplines of philosophy and geography. In “Wind, Energy, Landscape: Reconciling Nature and Technology,” by Gordon G. Brittan Jr., Professor Brittan departs from his more traditional intellectual pursuits to offer us an aesthetic critique of contemporary wind energy devices ground in his own passionate pursuit of a life more integrated with, and respectful of, his rural Montana home. Professor Brittan is well suited to offer us this critique. Both philosopher and inventor, he has developed an alternative environmental wind energy device, the Windjammer, which satis es the arguable necessity of combining clean energy, creativity, and beauty. Ben Minteer’s article, “Wilderness and the Wise Province: Benton MacKaye’s Pragmatic Vision” provides us with an account of MacKaye’s pragmatic environmental vision concerning wilderness conservation, principally through the latter’s novel and lasting contribution of the Appalachian Trail to the American environmental experience. Those who enjoyed Bill Bryson’s best-selling A Walk in the Woods (NY: Broadway Books, 1998), a celebration of a failed hike of the approximately 2,150 miles of the trail from Georgia to Maine (the exact length of the trail is a matter of some dispute), will especially nd stimulating Minteer’s account of the relevance of MacKaye’s vision to contemporary environmental policy-making. Eduardo Mendieta contributes the nal article in this volume, “The City and the Philosopher: On the Urbanism of Phenomen-","PeriodicalId":431617,"journal":{"name":"Philosophy & Geography","volume":"9 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2001-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114173749","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"On aesthetically appreciating human environments","authors":"A. Carlson","doi":"10.1080/10903770125625","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10903770125625","url":null,"abstract":"In this essay I attempt to move the aesthetics of human environments away from what I call the designer landscape approach. This approach to appreciating human environments involves a cluster of ideas and assumptions such as: that human environments are usefully construed as being in general ''deliberately designed'' and worthy of aesthetic consideration only in so far as they are so designed, that human environments are in this way importantly similar to works of art, and that the aesthetics of human environments thus has much in common with the aesthetics of art. As an alternative to the designer landscape approach, I suggest that the aesthetics of human environments should be understood as a major area of the aesthetics of everyday life. To facilitate this shift I develop the idea of an ecological approach to the aesthetics of human environments and the related notion of functional fit. The ecological approach employs an analogy with natural ecosystems and, by stressing the role of functional fit in each, facilitates the appreciation of both natural and human environments in a way that I characterize as ''looking as they should.'' The upshot, I maintain, is a set of appreciative consequences constituting a more satisfying aesthetic experience of our everyday human environments.","PeriodicalId":431617,"journal":{"name":"Philosophy & Geography","volume":"26 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2001-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116402751","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Is ecosabotage civil disobedience?","authors":"Jennifer Welchman","doi":"10.1080/10903770124815","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10903770124815","url":null,"abstract":"According to current definitions of civil disobedience, drawn from the work of John Rawls and Carl Cohen, eco-saboteurs are not civil disobedients because their disobedience is not a form of address and/or does not appeal to the public's sense of justice or human welfare. But this definition also excludes disobedience by a wide range of groups, from labor activists to hunt saboteurs, either because they are obstructionist or because they address moral concerns other than justice or the public weal. However earlier definitions of civil disobedience were not so narrow. I review the development of the current definition and the circumstances of its acceptance. I argue that the circumstances which help to explain the attractiveness of the Rawls/Cohen formulations in the 1970s are no longer applicable and that the question of civil disobedience should be revisited. I suggest a wider definition according to which at least some types of eco-sabotage would be civil disobedience.","PeriodicalId":431617,"journal":{"name":"Philosophy & Geography","volume":"22 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2001-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125701070","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Reading private green space: Competing geographic identities at the level of the lawn","authors":"R. Feagan, Michael Ripmeester","doi":"10.1080/10903770124446","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10903770124446","url":null,"abstract":"This paper focuses on private residential green space as a site of contested meanings. Recent research points to the emergence of an activism centered on ecological restoration and a shift away from the lawn as the only accepted landscape practice for private green space. However, it is clear that the lawn, a particularly powerful cultural landscape form in residential neighborhoods, still largely dominates this space across North America. This investigation examines the voices of two groups: traditional lawn owners and ecological activists. We observe two sets of discourses centered on private green space. Both groups construct residential green space as a site of identity politics-a site wherein the self is defined as pure and the other excluded as different and necessarily inferior. And both perceive their discourse as ''natural.'' The critical finding is that they are almost entirely oppositional discourses. The contest over what constitutes appropriate landscaping practices for this space provides a locus for bringing to a discursive level, the kinds of socio-cultural perspectives and practices that create and dominate our places in late capitalist society. We suggest that at present the lawn remains a barrier to alternative green space practices.","PeriodicalId":431617,"journal":{"name":"Philosophy & Geography","volume":"4 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2001-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128736676","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Coercive population policies, procreative freedom, and morality","authors":"J. Räikkä","doi":"10.1080/10903770123420","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10903770123420","url":null,"abstract":"I shall briefly evaluate the common claim that ethically acceptable population policies must let individuals to decide freely on the number of their children. I shall ask, first, what exactly is the relation between population policies that we find intuitively appealing, on the one hand, and population policies that maximize procreative freedom, on the other, and second, what is the relation between population policies that we tend to reject on moral grounds, on the one hand, and population policies that use coercive methods such as laws or economic incentives and deterrents, on the other. I shall argue that when changing a population policy, it may be morally desirable to affect people's procreative decisions more rather than less, and that sometimes it may be morally desirable to prefer a population policy that does not maximize procreative freedom to a population policy that does maximize it. I shall also point out that indirect population policies that use incentives and deterrents are not necessarily incompatible with liberal principles. Finally, I try to show what is assumed by those who defend the view that coercive population policies are morally wrong in all circumstances.","PeriodicalId":431617,"journal":{"name":"Philosophy & Geography","volume":"32 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2001-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134437703","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The given land: Black Hawk's conception of place","authors":"S. Pratt","doi":"10.1080/10903770123754","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10903770123754","url":null,"abstract":"In the wake of a war against the United States and the displacement of his people from their lands at the confluence of the Rock and Mississippi Rivers, the Sauk leader, Black Hawk, prepared an autobiography published in 1833. At the center of his work was an attempt to offer his readers a strategy that would make it possible for the Sauk and other Native peoples to coexist with the Americans of European descent who had come to the Mississippi valley. The autobiography, from this perspective, represents more than another statement of a Native American ''worldview.'' Instead, it offers an assessment and a response to a crisis of survival. At issue for Black Hawk are neither property rights nor the troubles of communication between cultures, but rather ways of seeing and understanding the place that sustained the life of his people. Here, the land is not merely something valued, but rather the ground that organizes the meaning of things and events. It is the breakdown of this logic of place, both within the Native community and outside it, that precipitated the disastrous war and it is the recovery of this logic through the narrative of Black Hawk's autobiography that he raises the possibility of cultural survival. This paper reexamines Black Hawk's project and provides resources for reading it both as philosophy and as an instance of a conception of place that can contribute to ongoing efforts to promote the coexistence of cultural differences in the land of Black Hawk's people.","PeriodicalId":431617,"journal":{"name":"Philosophy & Geography","volume":"16 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2001-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121864953","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Vagueness in geography","authors":"Achille C. Varzi","doi":"10.1080/10903770124125","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10903770124125","url":null,"abstract":"Some have argued that the vagueness exhibited by geographic names and descriptions such as ''Albuquerque,'' ''the Outback,'' or ''Mount Everest'' is ultimately ontological: these terms are vague because they refer to vague objects , objects with fuzzy boundaries. I take the opposite stand and hold the view that geographic vagueness is exclusively semantic, or conceptual at large. There is no such thing as a vague mountain. Rather, there are many things where we conceive a mountain to be, each with its precise boundary, and when we say ''Everest'' we are just being vague as to which thing we are referring to. This paper defends this view against some plausible objections.","PeriodicalId":431617,"journal":{"name":"Philosophy & Geography","volume":"59 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2001-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122216748","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The two professions of Hippodamus of Miletus","authors":"Roger Paden","doi":"10.1080/10903770124644","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10903770124644","url":null,"abstract":"According to Aristotle, both urban planning and political philosophy originated in the work of one man, Hippodamus of Miletus. If Aristotle is right, then the study of Hippodamus's work should help us understand their history as interrelated fields. Unfortunately, it is difficult to determine with any degree of precision exactly what Hippodamus's contributions were to these two fields when the two fields are studied separately. In urban planning, Hippodamus was traditionally credited with having invented the ''grid pattern'' in which straight streets intersect each other at right angles to form regular city blocks. However, as grid patterned cities have been discovered that were built before Hippodamus's birth, this traditional attribution must be false. In political philosophy, Hippodamus was credited with having written the first utopian ''constitution''. However, Aristotle's account of this constitution is so brief that it is difficult to determine what philosophical position lies behind it and, as that account makes clear, several of the laws governing Hippodamus's ideal city seem contradictory. In this paper, I argue that Hippodamus did significant work in both fields but that his intentions can only be seen clearly if his philosophical and architectural works are read together. This reading not only makes clear the unique contribution that Hippodamus made to both disciplines, but it shows how they were-and perhaps how they should be-related.","PeriodicalId":431617,"journal":{"name":"Philosophy & Geography","volume":"23 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2001-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131963602","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}