Spatializing Politics: Essays on Power and Place ed. by Delia Duong Ba Wendel and Fallon Samuels Aidoo (review)

Writers embracing the spatial turn in several disciplines, including the humanities, often overlook a field engaged with the social processes behind spatial arrangements of power: geography. Fortunately, the editors avoid this myopia by bringing together authors engaged across disciplinary boundaries. Invoking geographical theorists such as Harvey, Massey, Mc-Cann, and Soja, the level of intellectual cross-pollination is refreshing.

The editors invoke the term "spatial epistemology" to frame case studies focused on the spatially contingent nature of political power. The essays shed light on varying forms of state power and of resistance efforts in order to articulate dissent over the reconstruction of space that invariably benefits the entrenched interests driving the state.

The first two sections cover the themes of contentious politics and the politics of consensus. Margo Shea's take on urban renewal and the spatial politics of governance in Northern Ireland highlights the spatial resistance after implementation of policies aimed at making a space of political resistance more governable. Kerry Chance's examination of South Africa's transit camps and the development of new slums as infrastructure highlights efforts to enhance the state's ability to govern an evicted populace. Anh-Thu Ngo provides a discussion of the reworking of Ho Chi Minh City and the contestation of those visions with art and creative energies. Fallon Aidoo's exploration of efforts to contest the reworking of spaces related to railroads that crossed class lines provides insight into how such coalitions can be forged.

Biopolitics is the organizing theme for a three-essay section, including Joy Knoblauch's consideration of community mental health centers, their architectural design, and their role in communities. Melany Park looks at North Korea's penal colonies and their practices upon the body through a narrative utilizing texts from various interviews and the stage play Yoduk Story. Disabled bodies and how architecture is designed to accommodate the Americans with Disabilities Act is the focus of Wanda Liebermann's chapter, which highlights how disability was defined and then incorporated into the Architectural Graphic Standards so that only certain bodies' accommodations are addressed.

The final section is the politics of expertise. Orly Linovski argues that there are clear issues with the development of a public space through the use of design consultants. Michael Mendez's narrative about Oakland's grassroots environmental efforts shows that they have been effective in articulating climate change issues in such a way as to transform them into tangible, knowable impacts that resonate with communities and drive actions at the city scale. Finally, H. Fernando Burga chronicles efforts to plan Miami-Dade County in the face of changing demographics, immigration trends, and refugee flows, allowing for a more nuanced understanding of the Cuban-American political dynamics at the local scale.

Two of the essays stand out for their engagement of politics at multiple scales. First is Delia Duong Ba Wendel's work on the 2004 radio program Musekeweya. The program created a fictional version of the challenges facing Rwandan society after the deployment of differences in economic status between the Hutus and the Tutsi nations during the 1994 genocide. The series narrates a parallel history through the use of spatial metaphors and fosters a space of reconciliation and a new spatial conception of the future.

The value of a discursive landscape is highlighted by Ryne Clos's essay on the dormant Tiscapa volcano in Managua, Nicaragua, the site of political symbolism on the landscape in two distinct eras, the Somoza and Sandinista regimes. Contrasting Rancièrian approaches to the state with Althusserian ones, Clos highlights Somoza's efforts to insure consensus in what the author terms "… 'his' Nicaragua …" versus the Sandinistas' respatialization through democratization of the Tiscapa.

The book as a whole represents a consistent engagement with various forms of spatial politics across scales, but always reminds the reader of individual-scale processes. These chapters are well-theorized case studies, as...