Domesticating the Geopolitical: Rethinking Popular Geopolitics through Play

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available on open access from Taylor & Francis via the DOI in this recordIn this paper, we take the emergence of the Her Majesty’s Armed Forces toy range in 2009 as a starting point for thinking through the domestication of geopolitics through practices of play. Empirically, the paper draws upon substantive, innovative and original research undertaken with children in their homes, via a series of play ethnographies; conceptually, the paper draws upon the notion of ‘domestication’ and argues that ideas from these literatures might be usefully adopted as a means of reconfiguring popular geopolitics. In so doing, we argue not only that toys, games and play warrant much greater attention as forms of popular geopolitics, but also that the idea of domestication has much to offer wider conceptions and framings around popular geopolitics itself. The paper thus advances claims for a significant reformulation of popular geopolitics as an encounter between texts, objects, bodies and practices. More specifically, the rich ambiguity of the observed practices emerging from our play-centred ethnographic approach speaks clearly to the need to avoid prioritising the public over the private, cultural producers over audience, and the discursive over the affective in our theorisations of domestication. While we should be attentive to the highly orchestrated practices of anticipating domesticity and the multiple sites of geographical production assembled though these practices, we should not ignore the excess inherent within the incomplete, experimental process of domestication.Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC

On comfort and the culture of cultural geography

In this commentary, the author revisits Cosgrove and Jackson's (Area, 19, 95–101) article in two parts: first, outlining the personal significance of Cosgrove and Jackson's agenda by revisiting her roots in, and routes through, cultural geography over the last two decades; and second, re-engaging with the paper's key themes and arguments in a contemporary context, considering its on-going influence, with reference to work on methodological innovation, collaborations with other practitioners and transdisciplinarity. The author concludes by calling for a continued practice of revisiting within cultural geography to help ourselves and our students understand where cultural geographies come from and may be going next

Inviting construction: Primark, Rana Plaza and political LEGO

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Wiley via the DOI in this record.Toys protest political corruption in Siberia, critique ISIS worldviews in London and illustrate Greece's financial and migrant crises. Geographers disagree about whether playing with things distracts us from, or helps us to more critically engage with, questions of justice, poverty, exploitation, environment and the commodity. Art activists in the academy say that working in creative ways can enliven and enhance our practices of research, publication and impact. Drawing together these debates about art, activism and geography, this paper asks what can be learned from recreating in LEGO and posting online scenes from the tense and changing socio‐economic relationships between investigative journalists, corporate executives and garment workers making clothes for a high street fashion retailer Primark before, during and after the catastrophic Rana Plaza garment complex collapse in April 2013. It also experiments with the composition of academic outputs, in the hope that that its arguments leap up from the page. And it finishes by inviting readers to try this approach for themselves.The University of Exeter International Office funded our work

Switching the cofactor specificity of an imine reductase

Chiral amines have proven to be powerful building blocks for defining new pharmaceutical and agrochemicals due to their high density of structural information. In this light, the reduction of prochiral C=N double bonds is a well-established route in synthetic chemistry due to the easy accessibility of imines from their ketone precursors with the asymmetric addition of hydrogen or a hydride as the key stereo-differentiating step. Recently, we have witnessed remarkable advances in the enzyme-catalyzed asymmetric reduction of imines by NADPH-dependent imine reductases (IREDs).[1,2] Imine reductases were presented that catalyze the asymmetric reduction of various imines and the chemo- and stereoselective reductive amination as a useful method for the preparation of amines derived from aldehydes and ketones.[3,4] Please click Additional Files below to see the full abstract