Geography and all that Jazz

It's a Travelodge night... Keeping up the tradition of moving around the country in my ales, I'm starting tonight with a bottle of Barnsley Gold from the Acorn Brewery , which is rather delicious. Earlier tonight, it was over to Sheffield University to see Doreen Massey's lecture as part of the Centenary series of Sheffield University's Geography Department. I was planning to send some Twitter messages and blog as well, but there was no mobile signal (drat) so below are the notes that I made during the lecture, which explored issues surrounding our concept of ' place '. They may make some sense to some of you - I'll do something more with them at some point. Doreen Massey Beyond critical: it is possible to make a difference Voices of places: meanings of place – places as victims of globalisation – social fora: ‘fighting back’ ? Place can be divisive – requires a boundary: an ‘inside’ & an ‘outside’ – parochialism, and ‘othering’ Identity ...

On the hottest day of the year so far, I caught a train down (bargain thanks to my Network card) to King's Cross, and wandered along Euston Road to the BBC Broadcasting House. Had my usual West Cornwall Cornish pasty (wholemeal vegetable), and a swift half in a classic London corner pub. Over to queue and go through security, and met up with some geography chums. Once inside, it was deliciously cool with the air conditioning kicking in. Image of BBC Broadcasting House by Flickr User Hugovk and made available under Creative Commons Into the BBC Radio Theatre: art deco decoration. Laurie Taylor chaired the discussion. A recording of the BBC 4 show: THINKING ALLOWED 3 people on the panel: Professor Richard Sennett : sociologist from the LSE Professor Doreen Massey : Open University Geographer Will Self : author of 'Psychogeography' (blogged about that before) and 'Book of Dave' Some notes from the session - lasted about 80 minutes, which has to be edited down to around...

World City - Doreen Massey Just ordered this from Amazon. It's for getting ready for the new A level courses from September and also putting together a fieldwork visit. Also ordered David Warlick's CLASSROOM BLOGGING to read up on how to develop my pedagogy further. I feel I'm missing something here, but am hamstrung by lack of PC access for several of my groups... Also get yourself over to the Geographical Association website and download the Spring 2008 issue of GA Magazine - a great webwatch feature...

Geography in the Times Yet again, some Geography bashing. An article by Jane Shilling which starts about the G Team's appearance on Today and later, begrudgingly, appreciates that actually the My Walks project which was one of the items is actually a wonderful thing... Here's the offending bit: A certain new year’s languor meant that I wasn’t paying very close attention to the Today programme on Monday morning, especially as they seemed unaccountably to have handed it over to a bunch of geographers to edit. Very worthy, no doubt, but terminal moraines are so not my thing at crack of dawn on the first day of the year . Reproduced below is Doreen Massey's excellent essay which was read out towards the end of the program. It succintly explains so much about the world we live in today, and the fundamental role of Geography in understanding it ! “Geographical perspectives” A mini-essay for the Today Programme 1 st January 2007 Professor Doreen Massey There is an...