Volume 22, Number 6, 2023

EN:

Millions of students in the United States are saddled with trillions of dollars in debt. The debt crisis is a behemoth, though, importantly, it is not monolithic. Experiences of student debt are unequal and uneven, and it is critical to study them as such to address them. There are many organizations bringing attention to the student debt crisis; however, there are surprisingly few institutions dedicated to studying it. Further, there are few studies that link the student debt crisis to other competing, nested crises of the present (e.g., climate change). Using theories of debt and indebtedness to contextualize the student debt crisis, this paper utilizes auto-ethnographic accounts of student debt – as a student debtor and faculty member – and ‘gray literature’ (reports, policies, and statistics) to highlight and analyze the uneven geographies of student debt in the US. The aim of this paper is to argue that a geographic perspective is generative for studying student debt because it allows for a more nuanced understanding of where and why student debt exists and persists with the intention of complementing ongoing activism to abolish student debt. This paper concludes with four potential pathways for future geographic research on student debt and a call for action.

EN:

In this article, we interrogate the representation and construction of public park space in a settler colonial city: Toronto/Tkaronto. First, we draw on the relationship between urban neoliberalism and prudentialism to demonstrate the way public health authorities in Toronto/Tkaronto promoted a neoliberal ideology of prudentialism that emphasized individual action (e.g., social distancing, personal hygiene, sheltering in place) in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Second, we consider the extent to which this response congealed and combined with broader anxieties that were used to manage more than the virus. We focus specifically on the way these anxieties took hold in public park space, and in particular the response to encampment communities. We theorize prudentialism, as an instrument of the white settler state, to interrogate the twin processes of organized abandonment and organized violence (Gilmore 2022), which were made visible in the treatment of unhoused people amidst the pandemic in an affluent and seemingly progressive city in a nation now known as Canada. Recognizing that COVID-19 has afflicted global cities marred by real estate speculation and the continual reliance on the commodification of Indigenous Land, which has made homelessness and urban displacement a lived condition for some, we argue that public health crises result not from—and thereby cannot be solved by—prudential responsibilization, but from the willful ignorance of the neoliberal, capitalist white settler [real estate] state (Stein 2019).

ES:

Las dinámicas de urbanización en el periodo neoliberal pueden ser pensadas como nuevas formas de cercamiento de los bienes comunes o como una forma de acumulación por desposesión, según Harvey (2005). Esto despierta nuevas estrategias de acción colectiva que se expresan como espacios de resistencia contra el despojo capitalista. En el presente artículo nos interesa hacer un cuestionamiento al urbanismo neoliberal y sus procesos de gentrificación, a través de la defensa de los bienes comunes urbanos vistos como un proceso que se ocupa fundamentalmente de desmercantilizar el espacio público, cuyo rasgo principal no solo es ya potencialmente antagónico a los intereses del capital, sino transformador por su defensa de las estrategias de reproducción social mediante la autoorganización y la puesta en común de estructuras de reciprocidad que refuerzan los lazos convivenciales y comunitarios. Este estudio se centra en las dinámicas de urbanización neoliberal de la ciudad de Querétaro en donde los procesos de gentrificación constituyen una forma de despojo urbano que amenaza con desplazar a la población de los barrios tradicionales del centro histórico, además de transformar sus modos de vida. En respuesta, el emblemático barrio de San Francisquito genera un proceso de resistencia que se caracteriza por la creación de formas organizativas que tienen en el centro la defensa de lo común, y la reapropiación del territorio, a partir de la reinvindicación de sus características identitarias y socioculturales.

EN:

With increased interest in Latinx geographies there is a need for more in-depth exploration of how Latinx geographers are approaching this work in their own words. In this article, we open a discussion on Latinx geographies that is grounded in our multiple, different, embodied experiences as Latinx geographers who have gathered over the last several years to have conversations, create spaces and build relationships of care and accountability with each other. We reflect on how we each arrived to Latinx geographies, what it means to us, how we do Latinx geographies and what is on the horizon. We refuse singular or imposed definitions, and collectively imagine an expansive, nuanced, and relational Latinx geographies that critically engages with difference, conquest, power, and liberation across Turtle Island and Abya Yala.

EN:

In this paper, we propose embodied listening as pedagogical praxis in which we are receptive to how our whole bodies are involved in communicating with each other. Embodied listening disrupts what we call “speech-as-presence”—normative expectations of student participation emphasizing verbal contributions and privileging particular bodies. These expectations contribute to the reproduction of oppressive logics at work in classrooms—racism, hetero-patriarchy, white feminism, masculinism, ableism, colonialism. We argue that embodied listening can serve as a source of knowledge about these logics, supporting transformation of classroom expectations beyond imposed norms. We reflect on our experiences developing embodied listening practices in our undergraduate courses through our observations and students’ own reflections. Our findings demonstrate both the transformative potential of listening in classrooms and the tensions produced as these strategies discomfited students and disrupted classroom norms. Finally, we engage with critical perspectives on listening positionality from Indigenous studies, disability studies, and sound studies towards deepening our understanding of differences and multiplicities in how we listen. We illustrate how we continue to develop ways to incorporate this work in our classrooms and support students in the exhaustive and uncomfortable work of embodied listening and imaginative ways of being in the classroom.