Challenging placeism in Geography and beyondapv_1398 253..254

Andrew McGregor and Warwick E MurraySchool of Geography, Environment and Earth Sciences, Victoria University of Wellington, PO Box 600,

Wellington 6140, New Zealand.Email: andrew.mcgregor@vuw.ac.nz (A. McGregor); warwick.murray@vuw.ac.nz (W. Murray)

Geography’s central concern is place. Ironic,then, that it is characterised by placeist relationsof power that permeate both the production andconsumption of geographical knowledge. Otherdisciplines are placeist of course, but none pur-ports to take place as seriously as geographymust by definition. There should be no room forplaceism in the globalised, democratic, geogra-phy that most geographers aspire to. In this shortpiece we celebrate APV’s inclusion in the SocialScience Citation Index (SSCI) but reflect on theinherent spatial bias that confers importanceupon such indices and the research assessmentexercises that utilise them. On the occasion ofthe 50th anniversary Asia Pacific Viewpoint, wetake the opportunity to re-affirm our commit-ment to non-placeist scholarship which was thefounding rationale of the journal.

A placeist episode in New Zealand / Aotearoa

Our pursuit of SSCI listing, alongside the Perfor-mance Based Research Funding (PBRF) modelthat is restructuring New Zealand universities,has caused us to reflect upon the placeisminherent within the contemporary academia.The term placeism first came to our attentionwhen the Palmerston North Supreme MotorLodge proprietor banned the whole Lower Huttsuburb of Wainuiomata, both located in thelower North Island of New Zealand / Aotearoa,from staying at his hotel after a series ofunsavoury incidents involving schoolboy rugbyteams. The subsequent outrage led Labour MPand ‘born and bred’ Wainuiomatan TrevorMallard to rather ingeniously claim, ″It’s stupidand very, very unfair. It shows the sort of blindprejudice I thought we didn’t have in NewZealand any more. I’m not surprised the

[owner’s] Australian″ (Wood 2009). In a mediastunt that backfired horribly Mr Mallard visitedthe hotel on live prime time television only tobe turned away and threatened with trespassbecause of his Wainiomata-ness. The subse-quent outrage led to a very public defenceof Wainiomata, occasional bursts of NewZealand’s thinly-disguised but largely goodhumoured anti-Australianism, and some lightmocking of Mr Mallard. In one of the letters tothe Wellington-based Dominion Post an out-raged Wainuiomatan claimed the motel’sactions were a public display of ‘placeism’. Theterm makes sense: the hotel owner’s actionsreflect prejudice with respect to a particularplace resulting in spatial discrimination, muchlike any other form of bigotry such as racism,sexism or nationalism.

Placeism is all over the place

Since the above episode we have consideredhow placeism and placeist attitudes are allaround us, embedded within our everyday livesas well as our academic careers. Simple deci-sions, like where to eat or shop, in terms ofparticular establishments as well as broadershopping districts, require discriminatory atti-tudes towards place, both positive and negative;similarly where to spend the weekend, go for aholiday, buy a house, or what football team tosupport, are all embedded with both positiveand negative assumptions about place. Moredisturbingly is the role of placeism in geopoliti-cal scripts that legitimise military aggressionagainst particular places, and immigrationpolicies based on placeist, rather than racist,imaginaries. This, of course, is not news togeographers, however the term placeism has

Asia Pacific Viewpoint, Vol. 50, No. 3, December 2009ISSN 1360-7456, pp253–254

© 2009 The AuthorsJournal compilation © 2009 Victoria University of Wellington

doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8373.2009.01398.x

rarely been used in the literature. A databasesearch reveals only two references, one by Fordand Griffin (1979) in regard to the placeist atti-tudes within geographical research that stereo-type a range of black residential areas inAmerica as ghettos in need of improvement,and more recently Cartier (2008) refers to pla-ceism “as long repeated place stereotypes” inreferring to common, but misleading, construc-tions of Hong Kong as a “cultural desert”. Bothstudies link unchallenged stereotypes of placewith attitudes and behaviour, whether it iswhere and how we do our geographicalresearch or how funding is allocated, prioritiesidentified and industries developed.

Placeism in Academia

Academia is embedded with similar placeistpressures. There is a tendency for those of usliving on the margins of Anglo-American schol-arship to discriminate against our own places; afeeling that to succeed in academia we shouldspend at least part of our careers in the UK orthe USA, that we should publish in internationalrather than local journals, and that collabora-tions with British or American scholars are morehighly thought of than those with people else-where. Some of these pressures are institutiona-lised within PBRF and SSCI ranking systems thatreward people for publishing in highly rankedEnglish-speaking journals – most of which arelocated where the majority of English-speakingresearchers are based. It comes as no surprise,for example, that the only two regional journalsto make the top-20 ranked geography journalsare Transactions: Institute of British Geographersand Annals of the Association of AmericanGeographers. The SSCI system cements theirprestige and actively encourages us to forgo our

more local, and often, ironically, more relevantjournals for career progression.

De-marginalising Viewpoints

In pursuing SSCI listing we acknowledge thesecentralising forces and hope to position our-selves as an opposing force or magnet actingagainst them. The SSCI listing improves theprofile of the journal and boosts its attractive-ness to researchers everywhere. As such weseek to attract high quality scholars from aroundthe world to contribute their viewpoints on AsiaPacific and place their research in a journalspecifically committed to the region. We alsocontinue to encourage more locally embeddedresearchers to send their research to us, so wecan share internal viewpoints, particularly thosefrom the Pacific Island states and Asia, to awider audience. Indeed, it is this fusion of‘external’ and ‘internal’ that has long been astrength of Asia Pacific Viewpoint, where inter-national experts mix views with regional spe-cialists. This somewhat unique approach partlyexplains why a small journal from the bottom ofthe Pacific Ocean has survived 50 long years inthe stormy waters of academic scholarship. Weare committed to our region but resist placeismand, unlike the proprietor of the Supreme MotorLodge, Palmerston North, we welcome topquality contributions and contributors fromeverywhere.

References

Cartier, C. (2008) Culture and the city: Hong Kong, 1997–2007. China Review 8(1): 59–83.

Ford, L. and Griffin, E. (1979) The ghettoization of paradise(San Diego). Geographical Review 69(2): 140–158.

Wood, S. (2009) Motel bans town: Visitors blame ‘BasilFawlty’. The Dominion Post 21/04/2009. Downloaded30/11/2009 from http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/news/2348582/Motel-bans-town

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