May Day was the most popular holiday of the two major wings of the German labor movement, Social Democratic and Communist, during the Weimar Republic (1918-1933). While the political importance and ideological significance of May Day celebrations for the German labor movement have been extensively researched, its geographicity, the inherently spatialized and spatializing moment of lived experience, as well as the content of that geographicity have been relatively neglected. Examining working-class May Day celebrations in a specific built environment like the (...) Lustgarten permits detailed consideration of the ways that the festive has involved spatializing and spatialized moments of lived experience which were part of the spatial reproduction of class relations and class experiences at the local level in Berlin in the Weimar Republic. (shrink)

This volume presents the concept of Ecoscape as spatial interrelations, or spatially patterned processes, that are constitutive of an environment_an ecosystem. Contributors investigate environmental issues concerning the human impact on geohistory, food distribution, genetically modified biota, waste management, scientific mapping, and the rethinking of human identity.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Cartography: The Ideal and Its History by Matthew H. EdneyAlex ZukasCartography: The Ideal and Its History BY MATTHEW H. EDNEY Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019As Matthew Edney notes in the introduction, “This book is the product of my entire career as a map historian (so far);” it does, indeed, represent the culmination of more than thirty years of his research in the history of maps and mapping (...) that began in graduate school (ix). From the outset of his career, Edney has followed and advocated a postmodern or poststructural approach to map studies. This book follows that theoretical approach, which is both a strength and a weakness. Adopting another theoretical approach would have enabled his desired critique of cartography without being self-refuting, as his poststructuralism turns out to be when he makes a positive case for studying mapping processes rather than cartography and “maps.”1Edney is a major and respected figure in the history of mapping. Along with Brian Harley, Denis Wood, Martin Dodge, Rob Kitchin, Chris Perkins, and John Pickles, he has helped reshape the field over the past thirty-plus years in the direction of “critical cartography” or “critical map studies.” He has directed the History of Cartography Project at the University of Wisconsin-Madison since 2005, and co-edited the fourth volume in that series, Cartography in the European Enlightenment (2019). He notes that co-editing that volume tested and tempered many of his ideas (ix). Since 2007 he has held the Osher Chair in the History of Cartography at the University of Southern Maine. [End Page 111]A provocative and complex polemic, the beautifully illustrated book is, as indicated by its title, divided into two main thematic sections: a philosophical deconstruction of the cartographic ideal and a retelling of the ideal’s historical development. It contains four content chapters with a brief introduction and conclusion. While the second historical half has much to recommend it (chapters 4 and 5), the first poststructurally-informed philosophical part (chapters 2 and 3) critiques propositions that he deploys to make his historical narrative work. Edney’s central argument in the book is that “cartography” is a prescriptive model that “exists only as an idealization produced by modern culture and that it cannot provide a valid conception of mapping in the past, present, or future. Cartography is not an endeavor common to all societies and cultures. Rather, it is very much a creation of the modern West and is permeated by many of the myths that Westerners tell themselves about their rationality and superiority” in which “the ideal of cartography is the entire belief system, while cartography is the fiction generated by the ideal” (8, 1). We will see that, in less sweeping form, there is value to these claims historically. However, key aspects of Edney’s philosophical position undermine his historical argument by undercutting its foundations. In fact, the polemics come mainly in the philosophical section whose tone is prescriptive, reproving, insistent, and absolute, which is ironic given his arguments against universality. His tone detracts from the value of the first section of the book and makes it a challenging read. Edney divides his book into philosophical and historical halves because he believes that “A true critique of cartography requires, first and foremost, the delineation of the ideal’s multiple tenets and all of their flaws” (26). However, he makes no specific argument on behalf of this sweeping, absolute, and universal premise, especially regarding its claims that it is a “true critique” and other critiques are “misguided and misleading” (26). If the book is supposed to provide the evidence for his premise and these claims, then the argument is circular.The introduction (chapter 1) lays out the ideal and the book’s structure. Chapter 2 examines sociocultural critiques of the ideal that emerged over the past thirty-five years and Edney’s recommended “processual approach” to mapping, which he claims “provides an intellectual framework to pursue map studies without running into the ideal’s flaws [End Page 112] and preconceptions” because “it encourages scholars to address issues about why and how maps are produced and consumed... in an explicit and empirically founded manner... (shrink)