final exam

Question 1

Scale (As Geographers Use The Term)

Answer 1

This is basically a “scale of analysis” measuring a relative size or extent; geographers
tend to use to it to measure the “scale” of a problem.

Question 2

Global (As Geographers Use The Term)

Answer 2

This is a scale for approaching/evaluating/understanding social and environmental issues around the world. It is a way of imagining the world and our relation to it. And these imaginings have implications for how we perceive social and environmental Issues

Question 3

Global Processes

Answer 3

processes that take place on a larger scale than the local, national, or
regional and that involve connections among people and places across the planet, cultural
geographers study how culture is a product of “global interconnection”.

Question 4

Environmental Injustice (Racism)

Answer 4

Environmental injustice refers to the disproportionate
impact of environmental hazards on poor people, marginalized groups, and people of color.
(Environmental racism specifically focuses on the impact of environmental hazards on
people of color – being another form of racial discrimination).

Question 5

Structural Racism/Injustice

Answer 5

system of social structures that produces cumulative,
durable, (often class and race-based) inequalities. Also called systematic or institutional
Racism

Question 6

Cerrell Report

Answer 6

A 1984 report advising garbage companies that the best place to locate
landfills or dumps is in low-income, rural areas because garbage companies generally will
encounter the least resistance because residents had lower levels of educational attainment
and were less politically active.

Question 7

Environmental Justice

Answer 7

The necessary steps taken to achieve equity and a fair sharing of
environmental burdens and benefits - you should be at the forefront (contrast to Kettleman city - spanish translator is in the back of this public forum)

Question 8

Environmental Injustice

Answer 8

the disproportionate impact of environmental hazards on poor people, marginalized groups, and people of color

Question 9

Environmental Shadows

Answer 9

The dark realities, the environmental and human costs, cast by
the production (and disposal) of items that we use everyday (and hold dear) that often remain
hidden from us. “Cast in the dark and hidden in the light”.

Question 10

Superfund Sites

Answer 10

A Superfund site is an uncontrolled or abandoned place where hazardous
waste is located, possibly affecting local ecosystems or people. For instance it could be a
nuclear waste factory that was abandoned and is leaking its runoff into local rivers
contaminating local communities’ water supply

Question 11

The Politics of Nature

Answer 11

What is at stake—what stands to be gained or lost, and by whom–
in how we define “nature”

Question 12

Nature

Answer 12

represented as “untouched” by man, occurring in the natural world, has a politics to how it is represented (shaped by relations of culture and power social histories, political-economic structures/relations)

Question 13

Social Construction

Answer 13

The products of human choices, beliefs, and actions affect what is at
stake in how we define “nature”. In a way, we basically construct (or even destroy) nature
through the processes of our social interactions. → gender, race

Question 14

A Relational Approach to Nature

Answer 14

Approaching “nature” as something that comes to be
known “relationally,” that is through relationships or interactions between “human” and
“non-human” forces and beings. Nature is socially constructed, recognizes the agency of non-human beings.

Question 15

Ward Vs. Race Horse (1896)

Answer 15

A court case that nullified the Fort Bridger Treaty in
Wyoming. Indians could hunt in unoccupied American lands so long as there is game for
hunting, as long as they moved onto the reservations set up for them.

Question 16

Human-Nonhuman Relationships

Answer 16

Tsing- relations between the Meratus people and the landscape; formation of swiddens that
create a self-sustainable environment for both nature and humans
Coutin- people in the space of non-existence are separate from others: demanded and denied
in the US because they are needed for the economy, but they are unwanted in society

Question 17

Meratus Dayaks

Answer 17

The people who live in the Meratus mountains of Indonesia, where the
landscape falls into conceptual gaps between categories that developers, conservationists, and
governments for example use to understand them.
Explained by Anna Tsing in her History of Weediness

Question 18

Swidden

Answer 18

A cleared portion of the rainforest used for planting. Anna Tsing discusses the use
of Swiddens by the Meratus Dayaks in her piece called the History of Weediness.

Question 19

Gap

Answer 19

term coined by Anna Tsing in her History of Weediness, that basically are
conceptual spaces and real places in which powerful demarcations (like categories) do not fit
well. She calls it a “zone of erasure and incomprehensibility” Tsing is talking about the way that the Meratus landscape falls into conceptual gaps between categories that developers and conservationists and governments use to understand them.

Question 20

Human-modified Rainforest

Answer 20

coined by Anna Tsing, they are Rainforests that are neither
cultivated nor wild. She says that the “Meratus landscape is intelligible to neither developers
nor conservationists”

Question 21

Social-natural Landscapes

Answer 21

or Anna Tsing, the world basically consists of both social
and natural categories. “Nature” alone is often an insufficient category, it hides more than it
reveals. By understanding these social-natural landscapes, we change the ways we think
about and treat our environment

Question 22

Border

Answer 22

legal/official dividing lines along two geographic or political territories. For cultural geographers, they are set up to define the
places that are “safe” and “unsafe” and that distinguish “us” from “them”. Sets up the
concepts that geographers study known as inclusion and exclusion. They are better
understood as being social processes.

Question 23

National Border/National Territory

Answer 23

Borders that are socially produced and politically
institutionalized. They don’t naturally exist, rather they are the products of history and can
always be redefined. They must be “enforced”. A national border is a kind of boundary
making device that is at once inclusionary & exclusionary. A national territory is a portion of
space over which a nation state claims exclusive legitimate control.

Question 24

Nation as Imagined Community

Answer 24

This is a notion created by Bennedict Anderson.
Basically, being American, Chinese, Japanese, Jewish, etc. helps you believe that you have
something in common with the people of a certain place. This is a basic understanding of the
relationship between yourself and other people.
A developed idea of what/how the community should be and a sense of unity with others
(Americans for example who recite the Pledge of Allegiance) that you may not know

Question 25

Chinese Exclusion Act Of 1882

Answer 25

First significant law restricting immigration in the United
States. Suspended Chinese immigration for ten years and declared the Chinese as ineligible
for naturalization. Cultural geographers study this to understand how political, economic, and
racialized, struggles involved with inclusion and exclusion

Question 26

Gatekeeping Ideology

Answer 26

Erika lee coins this term to discuss how borders have become
patrolled through “border diplomacy” and “border policing” to allow who may and may not
enter; kind of like a gatekeeper. This set up ideological precedents of who belongs and who
doesn’t belong, who is desirable and who is undesirable, who Is welcome and who is not
welcome, and has lead to the establishment of present immigration law. Cultural geographers
study this concept to better understand the notions of inclusion and exclusion.

Question 27

Borderland

Answer 27

term coined by Gloria Anzaldua (and also referred to by Coutin) to
describe the “home” of the people who do not fit, those whose experiences are divided and
injured by being split between two categories/worlds. Reinforces Anna Tsing’s idea of
“conceptual gaps”, areas where powerful demarcations, like categories, cannot be defined.
For Anzaldua specifically, this area refers to her “incompatible” social characteristics (being
a woman, a lesbian, etc.) that create cultural collisions

Question 28

Chicana/o

Answer 28

Americans who identify as being of Mexican descent

Question 29

Aztlán

Answer 29

The lands of northern Mexico that were annexed by the United States as a result of
the Mexican American War in 1848

Question 30

Mestiza/o

Answer 30

A mixed Indian-Spanish race.

Anzaldua refers to all 3 of these living in the borderlands

Question 31

Mestizaje

Answer 31

the racial and cultural mixing of Amerindians and Spaniards

Question 32

Space of Nonexistence

Answer 32

A term coined by Susan Coutin, in more of a political reference
to those who are in the space between legality and illegality. This space is “officially outside
the body of the US” and excludes people, limits rights, restricts services and erases
personhood. It is an “imagined space” and also refers to those in exile of persecution, those
displaced or part of a diaspora. Individuals come into this space when they enter the US
without authorization or remain there after their authorization has expired.
Ex = reflects how Lupe feels in “Made in LA” : “If you are undocumented and don’t speak
English, you basically don’t exist”

Question 33

Transnational

Answer 33

A way of talking about processes that cross national borders. They include
back-and-forth movements by individuals. It breaks down the notion that nations are
bounded entities.

Question 34

Illegal Immigration

Answer 34

established as a criminal offense by the Chinese Exclusion Act, also racialized because of the CEA

Question 35

Undocumented Workers

Answer 35

live in a space of physical, legal, and social non-existence, are taken advantage of for these reasons

Question 36

Global Entanglements

Answer 36

the ways in which everyday experiences, domination, and resistance in one place are inextricably bound up with those in another

Question 37

Lotto visa

Answer 37

This term, used by Charles Piot, refers to the cultural practice of applying for diversity visas in Togo, and the economic activities that emerge as part of this popular practice.

Question 38

Diversity Visa Program

Answer 38

cultural performance and an economic practice; was created to increase immigration to the US from Italy and Ireland. It is not open to everyone because you need to be able to afford it (this creates a demand for fake papers and documents (Kodjo the fixer, who attaches dependents to files)). Creates an “exit culture/strategy,” desperation, and resistance to power

Question 39

Assimilation/Multiculturalism

Answer 39

Contemporary discussions of Multiculturalism and diasporic ties replaced an earlier way of thinking about the relationship of immigrants to their host countries, known as Assimilation. (assimilation was kind of an older way of looking at scholarship in immigration; how do people assimilate, how do we get them to assimilate? – “becoming american”); multiculturalism - how people maintain their cultural ties)

Question 40

Garment Workers Center

Answer 40

a nonprofit advocacy group where they joined together to report long hours, lack of compensation, and wretched conditions at a Forever 21 clothing factory (sweatshop)

Question 41

Free Trade Zone (If we get to it in Life And Debt)

Answer 41

From the movie Life and Debt, places that are not bound by country or foreign law. No taxes are paid, there are no labor laws, and there is no surveillance. There basically is a gap between countries because corporations can have factories there and never have to be recognized by taxes or laws

Question 42

Diaspora

Answer 42

The voluntary or forcible movement of people from their homeland to a new
region. The term implies a kind of longing for the homeland that for some reason or another
cannot be accessed

Question 43

Displacement

Answer 43

A shared feeling of being “out of place” – usually by people of diasporas,
and those living in the borderlands and space of nonexistence

Question 44

American Guests (Guest Houses)

Answer 44

term coined by Julie Chu to describe those who feel “emplaced”,
displaced in their own homelands because all others have left. She refers to the Fuzhounese
who were left behind in Longyan and felt displaced because they were immobile

Question 45

Homeland

Answer 45

native country that displaced people feel a longing for

Question 46

Commodity

Answer 46

any good or service that is produced by human labor and that is offered for sale on the market

Question 47

Commodity Chain

Answer 47

the networks of labor, production, and consumption through which a commodity is produced and used; the processes and relationships through which an object for sale is conceived, designed, produced, retailed, and consumed

Question 48

Spatial Justice

Answer 48

the study of how the world’s resources are distributed geographically and what can be done to make that distribution more fair - broader than environmental justice (which can be considered as part of that) ex. Why are the CEO’s of starbucks getting a huge amount of profits but workers on coffee plantations are getting a fraction of a penny?; Made in L.A.

Question 49

Structural Adjustment program

Answer 49

These types of loans were provided by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB) to countries that experienced economic crises, and required these countries to implement certain policies involving deregulation, budget cuts, privatization, currency devaluation, and trade liberalization. They contributed to the rise in maquiladoras along the US-Mexico border, and to impoverishment of countries who could not compete with cheaper US commodity exports

Question 50

Alice Waters

Answer 50

went on a trip to France where she saw that foods were made with fresh ingredients. Came back to San Francisco and started a movement where people only want fresh ingredients when they cook their food. Lead to our belief that organic food is fancy or for upper middle class. (336-337 of course reader)

Question 51

Mesclun/yuppie greens/spring mix

Answer 51

Yuppie: Young Urban Professionals, romanticize organic food; exemplifies how the success of the organic food industry was largely wrapped up in gentrification and class differentiation; however, organic food is not the antidote to fast food; immigrant workers are still exploited and multinational companies dominate the market

Question 52

Doreen Massey

Answer 52

culture is 1. Hybrid 2. Produced through processes of interaction 3. Historically specific and constantly changing 4. Involves connections among multiple scales 5. Shaped by unequal relations of power; routes not roots