“Do Not Kill Guinea Pig before Setting up Apparatus”: The Kymograph's Lost Educational Context

The objects of science education are transformed, degraded and disappeared for many reasons, and sometimes take other things with them when they go. This close reading of an undergraduate physiology laboratory report demonstrates how the kymograph was never a stand-alone instrument, but intertwined with conceptual frameworks and technical skills, laboratory amenities, materials, animal supply, technicians. Replacing the obsolete kymograph entails changing all of that, though our usual stories are focussed on progress associated with better measurements with fewer complications, not complications themselves. Such interconnectedness between progress and demise raises uncomfortable challenges for laboratory pedagogy, and for museum practice: what is laboratory education really about, and what kinds of heritage should museums, libraries and archives preserve to document it

Gaining ground: Emerging agrarian political geographies

The impact of political ecology testifies that agrarian-related issues, such as the political economy of food production, are by no means alien to political geography. But agrarian issues do not occupy a prominent place in the sub-discipline; nor do studies of agrarian geographies rank high amongst contributions to Political Geography. There are some serious indications, not least in 2008, that all of this might have to change. I use three cases in what follows to suggest that emerging ‘agrarian political geographies’ alert us to the value of expanding political geographers’ field of vision into the countryside and onto the (broadly construed) political dimensions, dynamics, and impacts of contemporary agrarian struggle and change

Land grab/data grab: precision agriculture and its new horizons

Developments in the area of ‘precision agriculture’ are creating new data points (about flows, soils, pests, climate) that agricultural technology providers ‘grab’, aggregate, compute and/or sell. Food producers now churn out food and, increasingly, data. ‘Land grabs’ on the horizon in the global south are bound up with the dynamics of data grabbing, although hitherto researchers have not revealed enough about the people and projects at issue. Against this backdrop, this paper examines some key issues taking shape, while highlighting new frontiers for research and introducing the concept ‘data sovereignty’, which food sovereignty practitioners (and others) need to begin considering

Geography and Land Reform

In this article I examine a range of issues raised in recent geographical studies of land reform. I briefly discuss the career of land reform, review a selection of geographical publications on land reform in a range of places in the global south and even the global north, note some prominent themes and silences, and raise points for discussion and debate about the direction a geography-of-land-reform literature might take. My aim is to help geographers who are interested in land reform identify ways in which they might more purposively develop a literature that heretofore has not been considered a whole

Hybridity emergent: Geo-history, learning, and land restitution in South Africa

Market-Led Agrarian Reform (MLAR), which is advocated by the World Bank and is being implemented in various contexts around the world, is a more neo-liberal approach to land reform than that we have seen implemented in the past. MLAR principles have underpinned South Africa’s land reform programme, being based on the ‘willing-seller, willing-buyer’ principle, which guarantees market-related prices to sellers. Evidence presented in this paper, however, raises serious questions about the extent to which the South African government has held on to MLAR principles. Specifically, the paper argues that South Africa’s peculiar geo-historical context has in some instances led the government to fuse market-led approaches with more authoritarian interventions that dictate to land reform beneficiaries how the land will be used. A case in point is the government’s approach to the restitution of land rights to communities dispossessed from the Levubu area of Limpopo province. As the paper illustrates, the government has imposed on the intended beneficiaries a so-called ‘strategic partnership’ between them and agribusinesses. Although the government touts the approach as a way to protect the commercial viability of the land and to transfer skills from white farmers to the beneficiaries, the terms of the Levubu solution may turn out to be less than favourable for the beneficiaries

The craft of scalar practices

Despite recent controversies over the ontological status of scale, geographers have continued to interrogate so-called 'scalar practices'. But not enough has been said about the skill involved in making these practices successful. Geographers have overlooked the potential for thinking through the craft of scalar practices. I therefore introduce 'scalecraft', a concept which builds upon existing work and is intended to draw attention to and elaborate upon the skills, aptitudes, and experiences at issue in working with scale. A relatively diverse set of secondary materials selected from recent academic literature is used first to demonstrate how scalar practices entail failures, learning, complex machinations, and innovations. I then use materials from my own research in South Africa into white farmers' practices which fashion an organic scale of action amidst a space-time of uncertainty and insecurity

The craft of scalar practices

Despite recent controversies over the ontological status of scale, geographers have continued to interrogate so-called 'scalar practices'. But not enough has been said about the skill involved in making these practices successful. Geographers have overlooked the potential for thinking through the craft of scalar practices. I therefore introduce 'scalecraft', a concept which builds upon existing work and is intended to draw attention to and elaborate upon the skills, aptitudes, and experiences at issue in working with scale. A relatively diverse set of secondary materials selected from recent academic literature is used first to demonstrate how scalar practices entail failures, learning, complex machinations, and innovations. I then use materials from my own research in South Africa into white farmers' practices which fashion an organic scale of action amidst a space-time of uncertainty and insecurity

In the footsteps of a quiet pioneer: Revisiting Pearl Jephcott’s work on youth leisure in Scotland and Hong Kong

Pearl Jephcott’s (1967) research on Scottish teens, Time of One’s Own, is one of the first sociological studies of leisure in the postwar period. This research is remarkable not only for its emphasis on ‘ordinary’ young people but also for its ambitious and eclectic research design, which incorporates field research, sample surveys and task based participatory methods. The (Re)Imagining Youth team revisited Jephcott’s Scottish research alongside her survey of The Situation of Children and Youth in Hong Kong (1971) as part of a contemporary study of youth leisure and social change. This paper outlines our attempt to reimagine Jephcott’s work for the contemporary context, highlighting the ways in which her method was both a product of its time and ahead of its time

Index of Volume 44

Teaching/Communication/Extension/Profession,