Geomorphology: the mechanics and chemistry of landscapes – By Robert S. Anderson and Suzanne P. Anderson

Book Reviews

Swept up lives? Re-envisioning the

homeless city

Paul Cloke, Jon May and Sarah Johnsen, Wiley-Blackwell Publications, Chichester, 2010. 292pp. ISBN 978-1-4051-5387-4.

Swept Up Lives? Re-Envisioning the HomelessCity offers a timely intervention into existingwork on homelessness and neoliberal urbangovernance. The book puts forward an alterna-tive narrative to the prevalent and often pessi-mistic accounts of urban homelessness as foundin analyses of the ‘revanchist’ city. While notdenying the increasingly punitive environmentin which welfare services now operate, theauthors seek to foreground the agency of bothservice users and providers in navigating such anenvironment.

The book is based on extensive research con-ducted as part of a UK ‘Homeless PlacesProject’ between 2000 and 2004 and has had, bythe authors own admission, ‘a long gestationperiod’. Although they acknowledge that therehave been changes to the policy landscape sincethen (such as the No One Left Out initiative in2008), their research captures an importantjuncture in the rescaling of governance forhomeless services. Alongside the election ofNew Labour in the late 1990s, there has been amore concerted attempt to recentralise controlover homeless services, in part through new‘joined-up’ partnership mechanisms, so that thestate has a greater say in how non-statutoryorganisations are delivering front-line welfareservices. This, alongside changes in how theurban environment is being policed (the intro-duction of ASBOS for example), has for manyserved to create a highly punitive and regulatedenvironment for the urban homeless.

However, the authors argue that narratives ofcontrol and purification of public space offer anoverly simplistic reading of the current situa-tion. Firstly, such a perspective tends to deploy arationalist reading of the homeless city in whichthe agency of the homeless is limited. In

response, chapter 3 provides a fascinating alter-native geography of the city whereby the lives ofthe homeless are not viewed solely as beingpunctuated by encounters with institutionalplaces (day centres or hostels, for example).Rather the chapter focuses on the daily emo-tional and affective geographies of the homelessas they traverse the city to find ‘places to eat’,‘places to sleep’, ‘places to earn’ and ‘places tohang out’.

Secondly, the authors argue that it is overlyreductive to suggest that the spaces of care, suchas soup runs, day centres and hostels, are solelydoing the work of government in ‘sweeping up’the homeless from public space. Instead theseservices are shown to be crucial sites of pauseand refuge, ‘in which the humanity of homelesspeople is respected’ (p.91).Framed by an earlierdiscussion of the potential emergence of a ‘post-secular ethics’ in homeless provisioning, chap-ters 4, 5 and 6 give profound insights into notonly the overburdened environment in whichthese services operate but also the motivationsfor those (primarily volunteers) who work insuch services. A key concern running throughthese chapters is the difficulty in defining a rela-tionship of care across different services withinthe changing governance framework. Whereasgovernment targets emphasise getting peopleoff the street in a desire for ‘rehabilitationand change’, many faith-based organisationsoperate through ‘an ethos of open and non-interventionist acceptance’ (p.120).This distinc-tion in approach has served to undermine thework of voluntary and faith-based organisationsas they are viewed by local government as lesseffective in meeting policy targets and thereforepotentially less deserving of funding. However,the authors argue this need not be the case.Working with the homeless in this way offers anoutlet for a particular ‘voluntary attitude’ insociety that continues to have a crucial placealongside more ‘professional’ approaches inaiding the most impoverished among us.

The final chapters move on to an analysisof the uneven geographies of provision and

New Zealand Geographer (2012) 68, 70–76

© 2012 The AuthorsNew Zealand Geographer © 2012 New Zealand Geographical Society

doi: 10.1111/j.1745-7939.2012.01222.x

consumption of homeless services within andacross urban and rural spaces, peeling back thedifferent contextual layers (historical, politicaland organisational) that combine to shape thecare infrastructure in place. The authors illus-trate that unevenness of provision is more thanthe sum of the number of homeless present orservices available,but this also relates to the feelof a place for a homeless person. In making thisdistinction, they draw attention to the impor-tance of different homeless scenes in making aplace ‘good’ or ‘bad’ in which to be homeless.

Overall, Swept up Lives? is a ‘hopeful’re-reading of homeless services in the UK andwould be of great interest to those in both aca-demic and policy fields working in the area ofhomelessness and welfare provisioning in aneoliberal context.

Aisling GallagherSchool of People, Environment and Planning

College of Humanities and Social SciencesMassey University

The settler’s plot: how stories take place

in New Zealand

Alex Calder, Auckland University Press, Auck-land, 2011. 299 pp. ISBN 978-1-86940-488-8.

Alex Calder’s new book The Settler’s Plotexamines the relationship between literature,place and Pakeha settlement in New Zealand.An analysis that is overtly framed by a carto-graphic impulse tries to connect stories fromthe corpus of New Zealand literature with theactuality of Pakeha settlement. The stories inthe book occur in a range of stylised and sug-gestive settings, and the book represents anattempt to write a cultural history of those set-tings in which Pakeha New Zealanders haveinvested significant tacit cultural knowledge.

Calder’s task is approached through the deepreading of a small selection of classic works inNew Zealand literature. In selecting theseworks, the author has reached both into theorthodox canon of New Zealand literature, forexample, Mansfield, Sargeson, Frame andCurnow, but also into a larger group of authorsthat include: Augustus Earle, F.E Manning,William Satchell, Herbert Guthrie-Smith,

Robyn Hyde and John Mulgan. Interestingly,Calder mixes together works of fiction andnon-fiction. The rationale for this being thatadding the work of people such as Guthrie-Smith and F.E. Manning expands and shifts thecharacter of the canon of New Zealand litera-ture (and in particular nineteenth century lit-erature), and in the process opens up newgroups of work for literary examination. Thebook is organised into four sections, each ofwhich deals with a different group of settings.The organisation and tenor of the book’s nar-rative is neatly summed up by the author whenhe argues that while the book is chronological,‘this is not sequential history so such as asorting through of communal memories’ (p. 5).

Part I reflects on what the author terms the‘Paheka turangawaewae’ and the complex rela-tionship it suggests between a sense of Pakehabelonging constituted through reference to arelationship to nature and the continuing chal-lenge offered to this identity by the prior pres-ence of Maori in those narratives of belonging.Part II examines those places of early engage-ment between Maori and Pakeha via the workof Earle and Manning. Here Calder is critical ofanalyses that tend to lock works such as thosewritten by Earle and Manning into ideologicalstraitjackets and to efface the hesitancies andsilences of their narrators. Part III focuses ourattention on what the author argues are the twokey places of Pakeha place making,the farm andsuburb. For geographers, the inclusion ofGuthrie-Smith’s classic environmental historyTutira is a reminder that such works were notsimply bald chronicles of change but often self-consciously literary in their aspirations. More-over, often lost in the grand narratives ofenvironmental change associated with Tutira,and indeed a theme running throughout thebook, is the idea that such stories are built froma myriad of small details filled with hesitanciesnot necessarily enslaved to any master narra-tive. Part IV is concerned with the absent otherof Pakeha identity – overseas – set against thenear places of the farm, etc. Examined throughthe work of Robin Hyde, John Mulgan, AllanCurnow and Janet Frame, the author argues thatthe metaphor of looming, the sense of placeoscillating between near and far, offers a pro-ductive way of thinking beyond the nationalistof ‘here’ or post-national alternatives.

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Many of us will be broadly familiar with theworks interrogated in the book,but I suspect notdeeply enough to be comfortable with the leveland style of analysis. Furthermore, the conven-tions of literary criticism represent an alien wayof knowing in a human geography increasinglyframed by the analysis of the rhythms of mate-rial practice. Here the author’s notion of a‘sorting’ through can read as a potential jumpingfrom idea to example and back again. Conse-quently, The Settler’s Plot offers a challengingread for geographers schooled in different waysof knowing and writing.Yet there is worth in theway in which Calder consistently calls us toreflect on the memories of place embedded inthose works that make up Jim Traue’s ‘Ances-tors of the Mind’ (2005). There also is worth inhis call to trust in the hesitancies of authors suchas Manning and Guthrie-Smith and to avoid theeasy positioning of their stories in the grandnarratives of place that Pakeha have told them-selves, a concern with the openness of the textthat we would do well to reflect on in our ownreading and work.

Matt HenrySchool of People, Environment and Planning

College of Humanities and Social SciencesMassey University

Reference

Traue JE (2005). Ancestors of the mind: a PakehaWhakapapa. In: Brown R, ed. Great NewZealand Argument: Ideas about Ourselves. Activ-ity Press, Auckland, pp. 139–47.

Geomorphology of upland peat: erosion,

form and landscape change

Martin Evans and Jeff Warburton. RGS-IBGBook Series. Wiley-Blackwell, Chichester,2010. 262 pp. ISBN 978-1-4443-3741-9.

This short but very informative book provides adetailed account of the geomorphology ofEngland’s upland peat ecosystems, focusing inparticular on the erosion of these landscapesthrough abiotic forces. Although the researchpresented is predominantly for peat ecosystemsin England, the authors have incorporated,where possible, data from around the globe.

Research into the erosion of upland peat eco-systems, according to Evans and Warburton, hasbeen almost entirely undertaken in the UK, andin that sense this book provides a synthesis ofprocesses and data that could be used as a start-ing point for undertaking comparative researchinto peat ecosystems around the globe.‘Upland’, in the context of UK research, refersto‘wildlands or areas where agriculture is exten-sive’ (p. 7). Evans and Warburton consider the‘low altitude peatlands of Newfoundland, Tas-mania, the Shetlands and the Falkland Islands’(p. 7) to also fit their definition of upland peat.

Like all good texts on quite specific topics,Evans and Warburton first define the relevantterminology; in doing this, the basic functional(hydrological) and structural (geomorphic)aspects of peat ecosystems and also the keyfocus of peat erosion are presented for thoseless versed in these types of ecosystems. Theland system model presented at the end ofchapter one further adds to our basic under-standing as it provides a good depiction of thefeatures typically found in these upland peatsystems, which ties into the discussions pre-sented in the following chapters.

Chapters two through six focus on the geo-morphology and hydrology of these globallyrare ecosystems and their erosion. The hydro-logical processes and sediment production ofthese systems are discussed, incorporatingdetails specific to different peat ecosystems,such as ombrotrophic mires and blanket bogs.The focus then changes to the erosion of theseecosystems and the geomorphic aspects of thesesystems that facilitate erosion such as slope,sediment yield, surface hydrology and morphol-ogy, and the influence of wind. These are pre-sented through a robust overview of processes,methods of data collection and relevant theorydrawn from a range of literary sources.The textis supported and enriched throughout the bookby numerous photographs,diagrams,graphs andtables. With every different theme, Evans andWarburton acknowledge the gaps in theresearch, highlighting that even though thisbook provides a synthesis of peat geomorphol-ogy, more research is still required.

Chapter seven presents a framework thatconsiders the geomorphic forms of the land-scape, from the macroscale to the microscale,and how they influence the construction and

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erosion of these peat ecosystems. Evans andWarburton are trying to emphasise, throughthis relatively short chapter, the importance ofspatial scale on the relationships between geo-morphic processes, hydrology and the ecologyof the landscape, and the need for research torecognise that there is variation in all of thesefeatures that gives rise to characteristic peatecosystems. The following chapter focuses onthe revegetation of these eroding peat ecosys-tems, giving consideration to long term influ-ences such as climate change and pollution.Figure 8.3 presents an interesting, but simpli-fied, model of the abiotic and biotic factors con-trolling the successful revegetation of thesystem with Sphagnum.The inclusion of abioticfactors in the model acknowledges the impor-tance of the structural (geomorphic) and func-tional (hydrological) components of theseecosystems on revegetation and long-term sta-bility. The final chapter briefly touches on theimplications of peat erosion, making mentionof carbon budgets and stored contaminants.The briefness of the issues in this chapter isperhaps a reflection on the fact that the impactsof erosion are still being determined, andresearch into this area needs to be developed.

Overall, the material presented by Evans andWarburton assumes that the reader will have atleast a basic level of understanding in the fieldsof geomorphology, hydrology and climatology.The robust synthesis of literature relating to theconstruction and erosion of upland peat ecosys-tems in England has inspired a spark of intrigueinto the nature of New Zealand’s peat ecosys-tems. A book that is well worth reading.

Jillian HetheringtonDepartment of Geography

University of Otago

Global perspectives in the geography

curriculum: reviewing the moral case

for geography

Alex Standish, Routledge, Oxon, 2009. 209 pp.ISBN 978-0-415-47549-5.

With its interesting title concerning the moralcase for geography, this book presents a criticallook at the discipline’s journey within educa-

tion, arguing that a certain derailment hasoccurred. The main concern is that the post-modern turn has resulted in a more reflexiveand individualised geography that is open to‘contamination’. Standish does not actually usethat word, but he implies it.This book is a resultof his research into the secondary curricula forgeography both in the United States and theUK, and there is value for New Zealand geog-raphy educators to learn from his observationsand to reflect further on our situation.

The central thesis is that the intrinsic qualitiesof the discipline of geography taught at second-ary school have been lost, or at least margina-lised, in the political move to use the curricula toimprove citizenship ideals, and in the case ofgeography, global citizenship (he uses the envi-ronment, population and development causesas examples). By utilising geography as avehicle, the pedagogy becomes focused onstudent-centred learning that links personalactions to global issues with the effect of relo-cating the focus of geography from the widerworld of facts to a more personal response.Thus,intrinsic knowledge (how you feel about some-thing) and personal accountability (what youare going to do about it) are prioritised abovethe outside world of facts. Standish gives thisreprioritisation a name: ‘The ethical turn’ (p. 4).

Standish is not saying that we should notteach issues in geography (he is not calling for acomplete return to the days of regional geogra-phy), but he is arguing that teaching geographytoday has meant a reconfiguration of thesubject into a verb: one does geography – it isan action, not just a process of learning (p. 120).You do not learn for the sake of learning, youlearn so you can become active in some (pre-defined) way, and that this is not agenda-free.He points out that when the ‘focus has movedfrom knowledge and understanding aboutissues to making a connection and empathisingwith the people involved’ (p. 127), that this isshowing a contempt for the subject and under-estimates the capacity of young people to learncontent and from thence to make their owndecisions for connection, if any.

At its worst, this results in the neglect ofcritical questioning and deeper learning inexchange for empathy and personal involve-ment, the emotive over the rational. To someextent, I did agree with him in that we should

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be asking questions about this, as student-centred pedagogy does have risks. I felt that hewas arguing for a more rational knowledgebase, for a deeper, more objective approach tolearning. But is this possible? Surely no disci-pline is politically neutral. Some might arguethat Standish is swinging the pendulum too far,at the risk of dismissing the many offerings, amore constructivist perspective has to offergeography. This is in terms of engaging youngpeople through place-based learning, innova-tive fieldwork that explores values and emo-tions as well as more action-orientatedgeography projects, in other words, real geog-raphy.

I found this book interesting and challengingand was left thinking that Standish makes somevalid points and there is much to digest andreflect upon in his book (for a useful compari-son, see Graham Butt’s edition ‘Geography,Education and the Future’, Continuum, London2011). It is imperative to have these conversa-tions about what constitutes knowledge, educa-tion and pedagogy in all disciplines, not justgeography. Standish is certainly furthering thedebate in geography, and this book would be avaluable asset to those involved in thinkingabout how we teach geography in this country.Being aware of how the subject is positioned,how it is taught and how it can be used as avehicle for political projects alerts educators tothe possible erosion of a liberal education, ifthat is one’s aim. No subject is politicallyneutral nor ideologically idle and this book istestimony to that.

Rachel TallonSchool of Geography, Environment and

Earth SciencesVictoria University of Wellington

Geomorphology: the mechanics and

chemistry of landscapes

Robert S. Anderson and Suzanne P. Anderson,Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2010.637 pp. ISBN 978-521-51978-6.

There has been an increasing shift in recentyears towards a process-based understandingof landscapes and their functions, and the

linking or scaling-up of processes from themicroscopic scale to a catchment scale. Geo-morphology: The Mechanics and Chemistry ofLandscapes fills this niche nicely as a textbookthat provides a quantitative approach to earthsurface processes for upper level undergradu-ate or graduate students.

The 18 chapters are comprehensive in theircoverage of topics that are relevant to the dis-cipline. The earlier chapters of the book coverthe processes related to the formation of theEarth and the fundamentals of earth surfaceprocesses, progressing to processes that act andshape the Earth, while the latter chapters coveraspects of applied geomorphology. Chapter onebegins as an introductory chapter to the earth’ssurface processes before progressing to some ofthe ‘bigger picture’ aspects of Earth morphol-ogy, large-scale topography, tectonic geomor-phology and atmospheric processes in chapters2–5. Chapter 6 describes the dating methodsused in studies of landscape evolution, followedby surface processes including weathering,glacial, hillslope, river, aeolian and coastal pro-cesses in chapters 7–16. Interestingly, there is anentire chapter (chapter 17) devoted to the geo-morphology of large floods. The final chapter,‘Whole landscapes’, links the previous chapterstogether through a case study based in SantaCruz, California by illustrating how the pro-cesses and landforms interact in the one land-scape. As with most texts written in theNorthern Hemisphere, there are few examplessourced from either New Zealand or Australia,with most primarily sourced from NorthAmerica, which may decrease its appeal to aNew Zealand or Australian student.

Each chapter starts with a landscape-inspiredquote, ranging from Shakespeare to JimiHendrix and a photograph of a spectacularlandscape characteristic of the topic. It is unfor-tunate that all the figures and photographs arein greyscale, as some of the figures, includingeach of the introductory photographs, wouldhave benefited greatly from colour. Nonethe-less, the greyscale figures convey the necessaryinformation and as a result, the lower costincreases the book’s accessibility to a greateraudience. Each chapter starts with a half-pageintroduction of the topic, finishes with asummary and a number of problems to chal-lenge students. Suggested readings are listed at

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the end of each chapter with brief notes oneach reference, providing a good guide.

This text focuses on quantitative processes ingeomorphology that are frequently derivedfrom first principles. This may prove to be achallenge for students whose grasp of math-ematics or physics is not particularly strong,even with the mathematical appendix pro-vided. However, there are a number of concep-tual diagrams used to illustrate key conceptsand theories supported by data and real-worldexamples.The title itself is a little misleading, asthere is a much greater focus on the mechanicsof landscapes, with the chemical processesfocused predominantly on geochronologicaltechniques. The writing deviates at times fromthe style that we have come to expect fromtextbooks, and can be prose-like, with cleardescriptions that can conjure up visualisationsof the landscape or process in question toengage the reader.

This book covers both fundamental andapplied aspects of geomorphology with eachchapter able to stand alone. It presents acurrent and comprehensive overview of quan-titative process-based geomorphology and is avery useful reference text for upper levelundergraduate students, graduate students andpractitioners of geomorphology.

Vanessa WongSchool of Geography and

Environmental ScienceMonash University

Domesticating neo-liberalism: spaces of

economic practice and social

reproduction in post-socialist cities

Alison Stenning, Adrian Smith, Alena Rocho-vská and Dariusz Swiatek, RGS-IBG BookSeries, Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford, 2010. 304 pp.ISBN 978-1-4051-6990-5.

Domesticating Neo-liberalism is a welcomeaddition to the now voluminous literature onneoliberalisation. In a body of scholarship thatcontinues to inform but as of late has notoffered much in the way of new theory, Sten-ning et al. have presented us with an argumentthat adds much to our understanding. Their

starting point is an adaptation of Creed’s(1998) argument, where they contend thatneoliberalism and its various processes canonly be understood within the context of‘domestication’, as neoliberalisation is madepossible through the practices of everyday lifeand social reproduction. In its rejection of‘society’ through the promotion of an individu-alising ethics of autonomous self-improvementand an entrepreneurial self, Stenning et al.contend that neoliberalisation is more than justa political economic project.Through a detailedempirical study of two districts in two largecities, Nowa Huta in Kraków, Poland, andPetržalka in Bratislava, Slovakia, they appro-priately shift our focus onto the social implica-tions of neoliberalisation by examining its rolein the remaking of familial spaces, householdeconomic practices and social reproductionin the domestic sphere of these post-socialistsettings.

While the framing of Domesticating Neo-liberalism may not appear to be a radically dif-ferent interpretation of neoliberalisation thanwhat we have already seen in the governmen-tality literature, where Stenning et al.’s argu-ment thrives – and indeed pushes the literatureforward – is in its meticulous attention to thespecificities of the mundane practices of indi-viduals, communities and households. Much ofthe governmentalities literature on neoliberal-ism focuses on how neoliberalising practicesare articulated with existing institutionalframeworks and political economic circum-stances through the actions of local elites, withlittle consideration of how everyday peopleadopt and at times de-stabilise neoliberalmodalities. Stenning et al. rectify this imbalanceby making the latter the locus of their concern.What we are accordingly presented with is abook that charts new territory into the func-tions and dysfunctions of neoliberalism as itexplicitly relates to the quotidian workings oflived experience.This is a valuable analytic lens,and through a robust, multi-method approachthat attends to the complexity of forms ofhousehold practices and social reproduction,Stenning et al. are to be commended for bring-ing it into such vivid focus.

The conclusion to Domesticating Neo-liberalism outlines the violence of neoliberal-ism in relation to class, gender, generation and

Book Reviews 75


ethnicity in Nowa Huta and Petržalka. While Ithink the authors do an admirable job of situ-ating these particular arguments within thepost-socialist literature, which paints a disturb-ing picture of the emotional and material vio-lence that is experienced through conditions ofpoverty, stress, alienation and fear, my onlyminor complaint stems from the fact that Sten-ning et al. have largely ignored the geographicalwriting on the relationship between neoliberal-ism and violence (see Springer 2008, 2010a,b).This absence is not a major fault, and of courseI am referring primarily to my own research,but I do feel it represents a missed opportunityto draw the relational connections of their loca-lised account of neoliberalised violence inKraków and Bratislava further afield, even ifonly perfunctorily, to another ‘post-socialist’context like Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

On the whole, Domesticating Neo-Liberalismreceives my highest recommendation. This isrich and detailed study that provides consider-able insight into the flourishing other-than-neoliberal subjectivities that have beennegotiated in this ‘no alternative’ age, revealinga series of geographies (housing, labour

markets, food provisioning, access to land,caring practices and friendship networks) thatat times conform with neoliberal rationalism,but importantly, at other times break with such‘wisdom’ by countering it with an ethics of soli-darity, generosity and mutual aid.

Simon SpringerDepartment of Geography

University of Otago

References

Creed G (1997). Domesticating Revolution: FromSocialist Reform to Ambivalent Transition in aBulgarian Village. Penn State University Press,University Park.

Springer S (2008). The nonillusory effects of neolib-eralisation: linking geographies of poverty,inequality, and violence. Geoforum 39, 1520–5.

Springer S (2010a). Cambodia’s Neoliberal Order:Violence, Authoritarianism, and the Contestationof Public Space. Routledge, New York.

Springer S (2010b). Neoliberal discursive formations:on the contours of subjectivation, good gover-nance, and symbolic violence in posttransitionalCambodia. Environment and Planning D:Society and Space 28, 931–50.

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Documents

Geomorphology: the mechanics and chemistry of landscapes – By Robert S. Anderson and Suzanne P. Anderson