Concept Caching: Istiqlal Mosque–Jakarta, Indonesia

From our Concept Caching image cache that hopes to promote student spatial awareness by relating specific features on the Earth’s surface with their visual character and GPS coordinates. Through the site photographs and GPS coordinates demonstrate core concepts in geography.  Images are “cached” for viewing by core concept and by region.  Images are certainly useful for introducing visual content to students in all Geography classes.

 

Many students do not firstly associate Southeast Asia with Islam, nor do they imagine that the region includes some of the world’s relatively stable (in the regard that they have not been overturned) Islamic governments.  Indonesia has the world’s largest Muslim population within the structures of an Islamist state.  The image of the Istiqlal Mosque in Jakarta holds testament to the extent of Islam within Indonesia’s capital city.   As students discover further, these Islamic states are not populated entirely by Muslims, but include a great degree of religious diversity.  This diversity has not coexisted without tension and violence, as discussed in the post, Religion and Society in Southeast Asia.  For the past few decades, there have been periodic outbreaks of violence within Southeast Asia’s religiously diverse society.  Reports of violence between Muslims and Christians seem to be a dominant theme; however, there are also tensions between Islamic groups and sects and between various cultural/ethnic groups within the same religion (both as evidence in Malaysia).  The cultural politics of religion exists at the national level as ambivalent policy and enforcement.  Yet, it is at the local level that groups fight over the religious character of urban spaces and suburban neighborhoods, in places like Jakarta and throughout the region.

Religion and Society in Southeast Asia

Political Islam is a term that refers specifically to the formation of an Islamic state, one in which religion ultimately provides the context for political institutions and social lives.  Political Islam is most associated in popular discourse with extremism, and even terrorism, in Southwest Asia and North Africa region.  However, the link between extremist Islam and political Islam is specious, just as the link between Southwest Asia and North Africa is myopic.  Islamist states are also found in Southeast Asia, with the two most significant Islamist states being Malaysia and Indonesia.  In fact, Indonesia has the largest Muslim population in the world as of 2009.  It will be left to scholars and analysts to argue the merits or evils of political Islam as opposed to more secular Muslim states.  As geographers we can impartially investigate the interconnections between culture/religion, politics and society in the Southeast Asian region, especially within these Islamist states.  An interesting, although troubling, trend is the future of religious diversity in the Islamic states of Southeast Asia.  Both Indonesia and Malaysia are majority Muslim, but certainly not exclusively Muslim.  Each country has varying size populations of Buddhists, Christians, Hindus and animists.  The interaction between the various religious groups and the Islamic governments provides an interesting case for social politics in the region, and for other Muslim societies beyond.

An article for the International Relations and Security Network describes how both Indonesia and Malaysia have had similar histories marked by colonial domination, violent independence, and repressive dictators.  Throughout the years, Islam was either restricted or exploited by the various powers or governments.  In particular, it was the post-independence periods that saw Islamic social and political organizations become selectively integrated by dictators into secular states.  In both countries, Islam was used for political gain in ‘divide and rule’ approaches: in Indonesia, the “New Order” rule of Suharto fragmented Islamic groups into alliances to bolster his control; in Malaysia, Mahathir Mohamad intertwined being Muslim exclusively with the majority Malay ethnic group, politically privileging that group over Chinese and Indian ethnicities as well as over other religious groups as well.  It is this context in which struggles over religious freedom are waged within both of these Southeast Asian countries.

In Indonesia, there have been significant clashes between Muslims and Christian groups since the end of the New Order government and the democratization of politics in the 1990s.  Although the democratic constitution guarantees religious freedom, the Islamic government has not decisively intervened on behalf of Christians or other ostracized groups in the face of “hard-line” or “vigilante” Islamic groups.  Groups like the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) have been targeting Christian congregations in the sprawling suburbs around Indonesia’s capital of Jakarta.  Behind all of these clashes are battles over place.  At the national scale, the FPI warns of the “Christianization” of Indonesia, as “Christians are up to something.” Vigilantism takes place at the local level, as FPI and other “hard-liners” target neighborhood congregations claiming the “Christianization” of their neighborhoods by Christian proselytization or the building of churches.  One protestant congregation was attacked and two of its leaders stabbed and beaten.  The group was forced to hold services in an empty lot despite “warning signs” posted by Muslim residents.

In Malaysia, there have also been clashes between the Muslim majority and minority Christian groups.  In particular was the cultural clash over the use of the word “Allah” to refer to the Christian god in a Malaysian language bible.  There was ambivalence within the government as it initially banned the use of the word, yet its ruling was overturned by the court.  The conflict did materialize into actual hostilities as Christian churches were vandalized or burned, and pig heads left at two mosques in retaliation.  The conflict over a single word illustrates the depth of racial politics, as the Malay ethnicity and language are conflated with the Muslim faith in state politics.  Further, Malaysian religious freedom also does not apply to all Muslim sects within the country.  Since 1996, the Shiite sect of Islam was definitively banned by the Malaysian government.  The sect is viewed by the government as a “threat to Muslim unity in Malaysia” and “could give rise to fanatics as it permits the killing of Muslims from other sects,” even going as far as directly linking it to the majority Shiite state of Iran.  A raid on a Shiite hauzar, or “house of knowledge,” was slanted by the media as an “anti-terror operation,” although the police were not involved in the raid.  The detention of Shiites from the raid is being appealed to the Malaysian Human Rights Commission, an advisory body to the government.  It will be unclear how the Commission will advise a government which already seems convinced that the Shiites are a national threat.

The complexities of political Islam in Southeast Asia are found from the national scale through to the local scale.  The seeming incongruity of the religious diversity of Southeast Asian societies is set within the social and philosophical control of the government by one religion.  Tensions within countries like Indonesia and Malaysia are experienced by people on the ground, as they struggle with one another and as they interact with the government at large.  Tensions are also existent in the political mores established by Southeast Asian governments, as constitutional or ‘human’ rights, which are transgressed or unsupported by various governmental institutions and agencies.

Concept Caching: Pyramids of Giza, Egypt

From our Concept Caching image cache that hopes to promote student spatial awareness by relating specific features on the Earth’s surface with their visual character and GPS coordinates. Through the site photographs and GPS coordinates demonstrate core concepts in geography.  Images are “cached” for viewing by core concept and by region.  Images are certainly useful for introducing visual content to students in all Geography classes.

Egypt.  Images such as this are what make up many in the world’s geographic imagination of the Egyptian landscape.  However, a new set of images from the last few weeks have entered into modern imaginations.  As referred to in the post Geography Directions: Brave New World for Egypt, there has been much effort to overturn the political conventions that had defined the ‘modern’ Egyptian state.  The post mentions the scales behind the protests, of where resistance was directed versus where resistance was communicated.   It also discusses a future for Egypt, and how democracy will interact with military in the interim.  What will play out in the coming months beneath the shadows of the pyramids and Egypt’s authoritarian history?

Concept Caching: Tower houses of Sanaa, Yemen

From our Concept Caching image cache that hopes to promote student spatial awareness by relating specific features on the Earth’s surface with their visual character and GPS coordinates. Through the site photographs and GPS coordinates demonstrate core concepts in geography.  Images are “cached” for viewing by core concept and by region.  Images are certainly useful for introducing visual content to students in all Geography classes.

Yemen has gained global attention as one of the latest centers for terrorists networks as discussed in the post Yemeni Geographies and al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. One of the challenging factors behind Yemen’s terrorist predicament is its divided history.  There were long two distinct political societies that are now together within shared borders.  Different historical trajectories defined North or South with different rulers, political philosophies, economic and social development legacies, urban networks, and environmental destinies.  Sanaa was the capital city of North Yemen, as it is now commonly known but also held several other names and historical manifestations.  The city has a unique urban form that is not quite reflected in its Yemeni sister city of Aden in the South.  The two cities do embody the divided history of Yemen, and structure some of the economic and social differences that contribute to rebellions, secessionist movements and general instability in the country.

HarassMap

Among the 79 million people in Egypt, 55 million have cell phones, and nearly half of these are women.  A group of researchers is using cell-phone technology and geography to address an all-too-common problem in Egypt, where most women report sexual harassment. In fact, nearly half of all Egyptian women experience some form of sexual harassment every day, a pattern that the HarassMap project intends to reverse.

The map uses SMS texting technology to gather reports of various kinds of unwanted encounters, from ogling and catcalling to comments or touching. Each woman also reports the location of the incident, which is corroborated with cell-phone tower triangulation. Trends in such incident reports are tabulated over time, and they are mapped on the project web site. The project has been developed by academics based in both Egypt and the United States, and is supported by several Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs).

The map has been developed by NiJeL, which uses “high performance mapping” to address social problems worldwide. The map can be adjusted in various ways by users wishing to focus on a particular neighborhood or a particular kind of incident. The default map is at an intermediate scale that shows greater Cairo on a  single image, so that all of the incidents in the central business district, for example, are likely to be agglomerated in a single number. Zooming in to a larger scale map, however, it become possible to identify particular streets or neighborhoods that warrant concern. Zooming out to a smaller scale map, users can find that women in cities and towns outside the capital are also experiencing harassment.

This project is but one example of the spatial dimensions of sexuality; some geographers who study this area of human geography have been organized into the Sexuality and Space Specialty Group of the Association of American Geographers (AAG)  since 1996. The project is perhaps even more closely aligned with the work of the Geographic Perspectives on Women (GPOW) Specialty Group, as it draws attention to the spatial dimensions of gender and the liberties that men presume appropriate to take with women in particular contexts.

Finally, the project relates to the increasingly prevalent work on the geography of crime, which is a growing area of cooperation between academic geographers and criminal justice programs. The detailed mapping of crimes can be used in law enforcement, crime prevention, and public education efforts. In the case of the HarassMap, both crimes (such as indecent exposure) and related transgressive behaviors  are mapped, both to let individual women know where to be most vigilant and to direct law-enforcement efforts. Moreover, these maps can be used to justify the dedication of an increased level of police effort to the problem of sexual harassment, by showing how common it actually is.

Classroom activities:

1. Using Google Chrome or another browser that facilitates language translation on web pages, students who do not read Arabic can examine the web site in greater detail than is otherwise possible. How much does automated translation increase the ability to understand web sites written in languages other than one’s own? What are the limitations of online translators?

2. Distribute base maps of the campus and of the surrounding area, perhaps at several scales, up to an entire metropolitan area. Ask students, working individually, to prepare their own maps of “hot spots” for sexual harassment. Then ask students to compare maps, identifying patterns within maps and patterns of agreement or disagreement among the maps prepared by the students. What factors might account for differences in the level of harassment that women experience in different places? What factors might account for differences in perceptions of the prevalence of harassment?

Concept Caching: Paris, France

From our Concept Caching image cache that hopes to promote student spatial awareness by relating specific features on the Earth’s surface with their visual character and GPS coordinates. Through the site photographs and GPS coordinates demonstrate core concepts in geography.  Images are “cached” for viewing by core concept and by region.  Images are certainly useful for introducing visual content to students in all Geography classes.

France is a nation of symbols.  Symbolic culture, language, architecture, food/drink, politics, and practices.  The post Geography Directions: Topography & Cultural Exclusion ponders the exclusionary complexities that such a well-defined and well-protected culture wields on those that are deemed “out of place.”  In France, many contemporary demographic changes are seen through their challenges to the existing and approved cultural equation of what it is to be French, whether that defines what you look like, what you eat,  or what you believe.

Geography Directions: Topography & Cultural Exclusion

From our Geography Directions site reviewing Wiley-Blackwell’s Geography Compass review journal covering the entire discipline.  Keep up with cutting edge academic geography.  These articles may be useful for introducing students to the discipline or may be appropriate for upper division Geography classes.

In the October 2010 issue of Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, Dr Sergei Shubin explores the sociological and topographical history of cultural exclusion in the Republic of Ireland and the Russian Federation – two nations with remarkably similar agricultural and industrial narratives. Shubin’s work concerns the processes and infrastructures of cultural exclusion and isolation within societies. History has, perhaps unfortunately, imbued both Ireland and Russia with images of idealised, utopian rural life. Such perceptions marginalized contemporary understanding of poverty and helped erode long-standing folk traditions.  Dr Shubin effectively applies the notion of ‘cultural capital’ – a paradigm first discussed by Pierre Bourdieu and Jean Claude Passeron in Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture (1977) – to the analysis of historical and contemporary social hierarchies. Rural poverty, Dr Shubin notes, is part of a much broader cultural past that has allowed some to prosper, while others are caught in a vicious cycle of debt, abuse, isolation, and exclusion.

An intrinsic part of this issue lies with topographical geography. Although immensely varied, the Russian landscape is defined by a relatively standard framework. Expansive urban agglomerations are connected by major thruways (e.g. Moscow to St Petersburg; Rostov-na-Donu to Volgograd). Smaller communities are dotted in the rural countryside that lies between. This geographical arrangement is advantageous for class and cultural distinction, and ultimately, discrimination. A similar situation exists in Ireland. Roughly speaking, one can divide the rural/urban organization of island into quarters. The eastern and southern quarters are relatively wealthy and cosmopolitan. The northwestern quarter, however (as well as the region surrounding the Aran Islands), faces away from the rest of the British Isles and mainland Europe, and remains rural, sparsely populated, and low-income. In both Russia and Ireland, a sharp urban/rural divide exists, determining personal incomes, material wealth, access to domestic and foreign goods, and health.

Discussions of cultural exclusion are by no means limited to Russia and Ireland. The current controversy of the French Republic’s dealings with Roma migrants reflects long-standing cultural tensions between native-born French citizens and immigrants, who are often forced into undesirable jobs or in positions far from major cities. As Dr Shubin pointedly argued, relegation is a particularly effective mean of excluding certain cultural groups, ‘limit[ing] an individual’s cultural resources and forc[ing] people to take up less desirable positions in the community’. Le Monde recently highlighted inter-governmental confusion over the legality of the forced deportations. Yet the Roma fiasco hints at a much more deeply-rooted issue in France. Article 1 of the French Constitution declares that, ‘France shall be an indivisible, secular, democratic and social republic. It shall ensure the equality of all citizens before the law, without distinction of origin, race or religion’. Yet, Article 2 begins by clearly stating that French is the national language’. Over generations, this distinction has established a strong dichotomy between “French” and “non-French” constituents in the national culture. Is it possible for France to embrace multi-ethnicity as part of its national identity? Or will cultural exclusion continue to inhibit immigrants, second-generation families, and non-French speaking peoples?

By Benjamin Sacks

To view the original article please visit the Geography Directions Blog.

Concept Caching: Washington Heights, New York

From our Concept Caching image cache that hopes to promote student spatial awareness by relating specific features on the Earth’s surface with their visual character and GPS coordinates. Through the site photographs and GPS coordinates demonstrate core concepts in geography.  Images are “cached” for viewing by core concept and by region.  Images are certainly useful for introducing visual content to students in all Geography classes.

Another concept in cultural geography is that of the cultural landscape.  Images, of which this one is also located in the same urban area as the site of cultural struggle in Lower Manhattan mentioned in the post The “Ground Zero Mosque” and Cultural Geography, provide essential visual texts to the investigation of cultural landscapes.  The image’s caption offers a sensory description of this cultural landscape; of its sights, sounds, and smells.  These traces provide clues for understanding the spatial context of cultural activities and communities that inhabit the landscape.

The “Ground Zero Mosque” and Cultural Geography

There has been plenty of, well, talk about the proposed building of a Muslim community center two blocks away from Ground Zero.  The chatter has manifest around political arguments, religious liberties, urban development strategies, community-building, and mostly, impalpable feelings.  With no attempt to take sides or to analyze such points of view, this topic can be investigated from a cultural geographic approach that may offer insight into the contradictions, controversies and commotion.

In cultural geography, we investigate the context of a place.  In this case, we would interrogate the perspectives, activities, histories and futures that all overlap in the place we know as Lower Manhattan.  By interrogating the spatial context of a site, we find traces of culture imbued with change, power, and struggle.  These traces can be material acts, messages, and presences in place from yesterday, today and tomorrow; these traces can be non-material, emanating from peoples’ memories, emotions and psyches of place.  Cultural geography, and its approach, is particularly apt for considering the competing claims over the place of Lower Manhattan.  It is the simultaneous site for competing claims made by New Yorkers, Muslim-Americans, 9/11 victims and survivors, and all Americans.  These traces are what make the proposed placement of an Islamic community center such a contentious prospect.

At the heart of this debate is the intersection of national memory and place.  Lower Manhattan is the site of one of the most emotionally-stricken events in the American memory: the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center towers.  This national memory is itself composed of millions of individual acts of remembering.  Each colored by individual experiences, knowledges, prejudices, and perspectives.  That memory has a clear visual impression that does not require a precise knowledge of the actual geographies that contextualize that landscape.  It is the tensions within this national memory that draw the battle lines in this culture war over the site.

There are several themes that emerge from this controversy.  One of the first themes that occurs over and over is location.  Distance and proximity are paramount among the arguments over the location of the Muslim community center.  To some the simple math of counting city blocks settles the dispute.  To others, it is the traces of the event that call for more relative notions of adjacency and nearness.  This is perhaps the most obvious cultural act of bordering a place in order to underscore its meaning.

Another theme relates to the establishment of presence in the place: in particular, the presence of Muslims in Lower Manhattan.  By some, this presence has been continuously claimed from the past and into the present.  That existence has preceded and persisted with the main event at the heart of this debate: 9/11.  This is another act in claiming: by asserting belonging to the place, then rights to the place are substantiated.

Another theme relates to various the scales of the debate.  Ultimately the unease or struggle is sited not only in Lower Manhattan, but at the national scale of America.  Some of the ways this has become discernable is through the discursive focus on the planned cultural activity (Islam) and on the associated cultural identity (Muslim).  First, cultural activity is focused on at the site, but also can be seen being fought over at the national scale.  The space within the community center in the place of Lower Manhattan is not defined broadly as an interfaith space of worship or prayer, but narrowly as a space of Muslim worship or prayer.  It is respected that in America, religious freedom is to be tolerated.  However, as a result of national memory, many of the individual acts of remembering now associate that certain religion as inappropriate or out of place at this site.  Some have argued this distinction stems from the conflation of Islam with terrorism, and of Muslim with foreign.  And they would see this as resulting in the discomfort, fear, xenophobia that is heard among the chatter.  Second, cultural identity is also seen to be conflict-ridden at all scales.  Perhaps as a response to the conflation of Islam with terrorism or foreign, there have emerged discursive efforts to open up Muslim cultural identities to include not only religion, but to include coexisting roles as citizens, neighbors, stakeholders, and insiders.  This can be heard as claims to identities as New Yorkers, as Americans, and as families.

Such a controversy provides a rich opportunity for the application of the cultural geographic approach.  This approach is also often the least recognized or understood by non- and lay- geographers.  And yet, the processes that it investigates are the subconscious, intuitive and most human which we employ as we shape and engage with our world.  Introducing undergraduate geographers to the cultural geographic approach is a way of introducing them to human society, and to themselves.

Cultural Geography References:

Anderson (2010) Understanding Cultural Geography: Places and Traces, Routeledge.

Mitchell (2000) Cultural Geography: A Critical Introduction, Wiley-Blackwell.

Discussion Questions:

1. Recall your experience on the day of September 11, 2001.  Attempt to describe what might be the overall national memory of that day.  Where would your memory and the national memory converge and diverge?
2. Review the two ways that location is approached (i.e. the rigid distance approach or the affective adjacency approach) in this controversy along with the accompanying validation for their claim over the site.  Evaluate each argument separately.
3. Assess the importance of establishing presence and belonging.  What are some of the strategies that cultural presence or belonging is seen to be validated or negated?

World Cup 2010: Globalization, Geopolitics and Sport

During the last World Cup in 2006, the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization (YCSG) highlighted the deeper symbolism that cultural activities, like sports – namely the sport most illustrative of globalization, football – can offer an understanding of geopolitics.  Speaking particularly in the context of political conflicts, the YCSG contends that, “Rituals of the match, such as waving flags or singing anthems, can inject new passion into national rivalries or also diffuse hostility.”  Viewing sport in this way, the matches of the 2010 World Cup held in South Africa have been symbolically framed in many geopolitically and historically significant ways.  The expectations and representations of national and regional rhetoric bring the sport far beyond the matches and scores.

Where the tone of the 2006 YCSG essay was hopeful for the role of football in diffusing hostility, Foreign Policy magazine offers a disheartening look at the symbolic hopes that football might offer to the Middle East region, specifically.  The article recounts the 2010 World Cup qualifying match between Egypt and Algeria, which was accompanied by attacks and rioting, arguing that it provided, “an uncanny analysis of the region.”  Noting the success of soccer as an “act of cultural imperialism,” the author contends that it is a perfect frame from which to view the region, through its inherent tension between uniting and dividing peoples.  The remainder of the article discusses each of the national teams, their quests to qualify, and their eventual undoing.  Some of the most politically telling include:  the plight of Palestine as, “a national team without a nation”; the divisions of Lebanon’s domestic teams controlled by various sectarian groups and the resulting hopelessness of uniting a national team; and the donning of green wristbands by the Iranian team in their match against South Korea, which were then conspicuously missing during the second half.

Quite the reverse of the divisions in the Middle East region, 2010 World Cup football sparked the flame of pan-African solidarity when Ghana was the only African nation to advance into the quarterfinals.  The Atlantic magazine cites some interesting geopolitical and historical circumstances that may have led to the trans-national camaraderie of the Sub-Saharan African region.  The author briefly describes the nationalism that thrived in the 1960s and 1970s, but then goes on to underscore the let downs of national governments since.  Ultimately, it may have been the historical beyond-borders identities, like ethnicity, language, or religion, some of which were divided in 1885 but have proved lasting in the minds of many Africans.  The author also discusses the essentialist ‘lumping’ of Sub-Saharan Africa into a single category, perhaps an interesting counterpoint to the tenets of regional geography.  Further, the article concludes with a look at the globalized marketing campaign, “brand Africa,” which may also be leading the notions of unity through “Africa United” jerseys and products featuring paint colors that were custom-made from soil samples of four different African countries.

A final perspective looks at the event, through a historical lens, using the games to analyze the distinct evolving relationship between two nations over time.  The South African Mail & Guardian Online views the 2010 World Cup as, “The symbol of a new postcolonial world order.”  The author argues that the event offers a “snapshot” of the current world system along with a “retrospective view” for the globalization currents shaping it.  Taking a closer look at the match between Portugal and Brazil, the author highlights the shift in the balance of power between these two nations in a postcolonial world.  The rising power of Brazil is set politically, economically, and diplomatically against its former colonial master, Portugal.  The article offers an interesting take on the historical metamorphism of the world political and economic system.

Discussion Questions:

1)  What are some other examples of cultural activities or products that can serve to unite or divide people?  Explain your example.

2)  How would you explain the relationship between football and nationalism/regionalism?

3)  Following a prior introduction of both the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa regions – Compare the two regions.  What explanations can you offer for understanding the football experiences of the two regions as described by the articles in Foreign Policy and The Atlantic magazines?

4)  How does globalization inform the World Cup or football in general?  Think of historical, economic, cultural, political connections, among others.

Sarah Goggin