Graduate Journal of Social Science

Articles

• What’s the Good of Mercators? Cartography and the Political Ecology of Place

  Jason Cons

  • Abstract

    This paper offers a methodological argument for analyzing maps in studies attentive to the politics of place and the representations of space. Recent literature on maps has focused on cartography as central to either state or national projects, but has rarely used maps as a lens to study sub-national conflicts over resources and space. I bring this literature into dialogue with analyses of the politics of place within political ecology. Drawing on Timothy Mitchell, I argue for a critique of cartography within such studies that 1) recognizes maps as both representations of landscape and attempts to reformat that landscape through representation and 2) understands maps as not simply failed attempts at social control but rather as documents that are part of complex material and symbolic struggles over space. Reading several key studies of the political ecology of place, I suggest that while these authors are attentive to nuanced struggles over space, they often overlook maps as ways of understanding particular, often state, views of landscape and geography. Analyzing maps as a means of understand views of landscape can offer new perspectives on competing agendas, epistemologies, and understandings of space in local conflicts over borders and resources. I conclude with an analysis that begins to suggest strategies, as well as pitfalls, of using maps in political ecology as well as an exploration of ‘counter-mapping’, which argues for local and community maps as means of contesting state views of landscape.

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  • pp. 7–36

• Representing Poverty, Impoverishing Representation? A Discursive Analysis of a NGOs Fundraising Posters

  Machiel Lamers

  • Abstract

    This article seeks to understand the production and maintenance of symbolic boundaries between the “self” and the “other” in fundraising posters by aid organisations and development NGOs. The central discussion will question why NGOs come up with such dichotomising images and will address their consequences. The article discusses the complete poster collection of 11.11.11, an annually organised, overarching Belgian NGO fundraising campaign for a whole range of development projects and aid agencies. As well as exploring the definition of the ‘other’ in the poster material, this paper will also reflect specifically upon the positioning of the NGO as opposed to other agencies and players in the field of development. It is argued that although particular dominant icons and narratives remain unchanged over the course of the years, symbolic boundaries between ‘self’ and ‘other’ indeed do change.

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  • pp. 37–74

• Issues of Scope in Comparative Race and Ethnic Relations: An Analysis of U.S. American Concepts in the Japanese Context

  Isao Takei

  • Abstract

    In this article I examine problems with the application of the comparative method in cross-national studies of race and ethnic relations. I argue that the findings of different studies can be shaped in important ways by the way investigators specify the scope and scale of the core variable in the analysis – ‘race and ethnic relations’. Specifically, I argue that problems can arise when comparative analyses conceptualize race and ethnic relations in terms of a limited number of qualitatively distinct configurations rather than as a highly variable, multi-dimensional construct. The former approach often tempts investigators to ‘force’ cases to fit into an artificially limited set of categories. The latter approach not only admits the possibility that some dimensions of race and ethnic relations vary in qualitative ways while others vary quantitatively along a continuum, but it also entertains the possibility that these different dimensions can vary independently and do not necessarily occur in pre-determined configurations.
    I argue that studies of race and ethnic relations in Japan have suffered from the problem of making a specific case fit into one of a limited number of qualitatively distinct types of ‘race and ethnic relations’. One area where this can be seen is in the common practice of analyzing ‘race and ethnic relations’ in Japan primarily in terms of ethnic stratification and minority-majority relations. This approach is better suited for the United States than it is for Japan. Thus, comparative analysis of the two systems of race and ethnic relations would be better served by recognizing that the ethnic stratification dimension of race and ethnic relations may be less central to the overall configuration of ethnic relations in Japan compared to the United States and then analyzing ethnic relations in Japan accordingly.

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  • pp. 75–110

• Queer Television Discourse – Reality TV

  Rosalind Hanmer

  • Abstract

    This paper is a qualitative case study of a dedicated website that contains a chat room and message board where young people discuss the BBC ‘Reality Television’ series Fame Academy 2. Its explorations of on-line television conversations form a queer discourse that disrupts a normative heterosexual representation. The research generates discussion in the area of interdisciplinary methodology and on-line conversational research. Certain modifications characterise interdisciplinary research areas. For example, in order to tease out queer discourse and its struggle for a position within my chosen television and on-line conversations, I combine aspects of Feminist theory with Queer theory. These theories together with CMC (computer mediated communication) and the use of discourse analysis underpin the foundation of this case study. The computer conversations are a combination of asynchronous communication, which takes place at a different time, and synchronous communications, which take place at the same time (See Munt, 2002). This case study explores the use of interdisciplinary methodologies and how they can be applied to areas of research such as the Internet. For the purpose of this work the researcher engages in a hybrid queer gaze.

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  • pp. 89–119

• Transgressing the Boundaries: An Experiment Reconnoitre

  Jens Jetzkowitz and Stefan Brunzel

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  • pp. 134–147

• Feminist Research: Disclosure of Route

  Emma Martin

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  • pp. 148–160

Book Reviews

• The Good Research Guide For Small-Scale Social Research Projects by Martyn Denscombe

  Wouter-Jan Oosten

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  • pp. 161–164

• Media Rituals: A Critical Approach by Nick Couldry

  Ward Rennen

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  • pp. 165–173

• MediaSpace: Place, Scale and Culture in a Media Age edited by Nick Couldry and Anna McCarthy

  Ward Rennen

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  • pp. 165–173

• Using the Force: Creativity, Community and Star Wars Fans by Will Brooker

  Brent Allison

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  • pp. 170–174

• Feminism and Method: Ethnography, Discourse Analysis, and Activist Research by Nancy Naples

  Angela Wiley

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  • pp. 175–178