Hegemony, Prejudice and Genocide

• The lecture is titled "Geographies of Identity and Difference" and it's for ESG126, Week 7, given by Dr. Bryan Dale on Feb. 17, 2025.

Agenda

• Topics that will be covered include identity and difference, race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, intersectionality and indigeneity.
• The lecture will include a midterm test review.

Logical Fallacies: Appeal to Authority

• This is the argument that if a credible source believes something, then it must be true.
• Example: A mayor said the crime rate is down, so statistics claiming otherwise must be wrong.
• Example: If the Pope says a part of doctrine is true, it is added to the creed because he is infallible.

Logical Fallacies: Appeal to Emotion

• This involves making a claim based on sympathy or empathy instead of logic.
• Example: Someone is urged to think of starving children when they don't want to eat liverwurst.
• Example: It is argued that not going to university means a life full of regret.

Identity and Difference

• Identity is socially constructed

Hegemony

• This occurs when society members align their interests with a dominant group’s worldview and interests.

• This includes accepting justifications for inequality and believing in meritocracy or trickle-down economics.

• Cultural hegemony has the power to shape identity creation.

• Critical geographers analyze identity and difference.

Examples of Scales of Difference

• Body: Racialization, racism, heterosexism, and bodily geographies like transgendered bodies.
• Home: Domestic violence and geographies of fear, such as fleeing or staying put.
• Nation: Colonization, genocide, apartheid, geographies of diaspora and migration, critiques of the nation.
• Globe: Imperialism, globalization, language, religion, geographies of fair trade, refugees, and anti-globalization activism.

The Myth of Race

• Race is a myth and does not represent distinct human subspecies.
• Humans are 99.9% identical at the genetic level, as per the Human Genome Project.
• Race remains a social construct.
• The terms 'racialized' and 'racialization' can still be utilized.

Racism

• Prejudice and/or unequal access to power/resources are based on how people look or their cultural traits.

Racism and Genocide

• Xenophobia: Fear/dislike of people perceived as foreign (e.g., people from other countries).
• Scapegoating: Blaming a person/group for the wrongdoings/mistakes of others or for the problems they didn't cause.
• Genocide: Organized, systematic effort to destroy a defined group.
  • This includes using symbolic and sometimes spatial distancing, and actively denigrating the group.

Historical Examples of Genocide

• The Holocaust (1941-1945)
• Cambodia (1975-1979)
• Rwanda (1994)
• Burma/Myanmar (2016-Present) - Rohingya genocide.
• Presently, genocidal intent accusations arise against both Israel and Hamas.
• The UN Convention on Genocide and the International Court of Justice are relevant on an international scale.

Apartheid

• This involved European colonization practices that emphasized ethnic differences.
• South Africa: 1948-1994
• Nelson Mandela and the ANC were deemed as terrorists.
• International solidarity efforts were influential.

Racism, Migration, and Labour

• Chattel Slavery: Enslaved persons are legally rendered as the personal property of the slave owner.
• Indentured Labour: A person is contracted to work without salary for a specific number of years.
• Forced migration for labour still occurs.
• Imported products may be connected to slavery.

Racism, Migration, and Labour in Canada

• Canada has racist immigration policies with bias against people from non-European origins.
• Chinese "head tax" in the early 1900s.
• Anti-Indian immigration policy (1908).
• Restrictions on Japanese migration in the early 1900s.
• Black people from the U.S. and Caribbean were also singled out.
• Today, many 'temporary' migrant workers lack a path to permanent residency.

Ethnicity

• Ethnicity includes shared cultural traits, history, and identity.
• Ethnic group: A group whose members perceive themselves as different from others due to shared ancestry and culture.
• Ethnic group migrations create new geographies, such as chain migration.
• Social and spatial isolation can create enclaves.

Ethnic Identities

• Assimilation: Absorption into a larger society.
• Acculturation: Partial absorption into a larger society.
• Multiculturalism: A formal state policy.

Gender and Sexuality

• Gender: Socially constructed differences between men and women.
• Contrasts biological and anatomical differences between the sexes.
• The landscape reflects power inequalities between women and men.
• Patriarchy: A social system where men dominate, oppress, and exploit women.

Gender and Work

• Spatial divisions of labor exist.
• Work predominantly performed by women is undervalued (both paid and unpaid).
• Sexism and stereotyping occurs in the workplace.

Gender and Development

• There is different access to education, health, work, and political expression.
• Gender equality is a fundamental development goal

Sexuality

• Sexuality is studied as an expression of identity.
• Focus has been on dominant heterosexual landscapes
• Debates take place about percentages of people who make up LGBTQ+ communities.
• Homosexual acts are still criminalized in ~80 countries.

Intersectionality and Indigeneity

• Intersectionality: Recognizing the multiple, often-overlapping axes of inequality.
  • E.g., considering gender, race, class, indigeneity, and ability.
  • Built landscapes generally reflect the dominant culture.
  • Landscapes demonstrate inequalities of well-being, encompassing mental health.

Indigeneity in Canada

• Ongoing settler-colonial histories and intergenerational trauma exist.
• Examples are Colonization Roads and Residential Schools.
• Approximately 150,000 children were removed from their families to attend residential schools.
• At least 3,200 students died in residential schools
• The last residential school closed in 1996.
• The child welfare system perpetuates problems.
• Resistance takes shape in various forms.
  • Examples are blockades of development projects, the #LandBack movement.
  • It includes Language reclamation and solidarity organizing.

Mid-Term Test Review

• The test will consist of multiple choice (10 questions, 1 mark each) and short answer (2 questions, 5 marks each), totaling 20 marks or 15% of the grade.
• The test will cover content from Weeks 1-7 (Chapters 1-7).

Key Concepts for the Test

• Defining Human Geography Questions: Where? And why?
• Concepts: Space (absolute and relative), scale, region, landscape, location, place, sense of place vs. placelessness.
• Concepts: Distance (and the friction of distance), movement (relocation & expansion diffusion).
• Concepts: Maps (thematic mapping) and tools.
• Holistic perspectives and Socio-ecology.
• The Anthropocene: Humans' role within the global ecosystem.
• Impacts on vegetation, animals, land, air, & water.
• Environmentalism (politics; the Capitalocene).
• Climate Change: The IPCC's work.
• Consequences of climate change and Climate Justice.
• Responding to Climate Change: Renewable energy transitions.
• Responding to Climate Change: Catastrophist vs. Cornucopian viewpoints.
• Time-space convergence.

Overcoming Distance

• Transportation including with water, rail, road, air + containerization.

Trade, Business and communications

• Factors influencing trade plus regional integration.
• TNCs and the International Division of Labour and FDI.
• The digital divide and social media.
• Theses: Hyperglobalist, Skeptic, Transformationalist.

Interpreting Globalization

• Measuring global connectedness.
• Economic, cultural, and political globalization.
• Alternative globalization.
• Spatial and political aspects of demography.

Population

• Carrying Capacity and the Malthusian Theory.
• Population trends and projections.
• Demographic equation and dynamics...and policy.
• Population: Crises and debates.

Migration

• Categories (e.g., environmental) and types (e.g., forced).
• Distribution and diffusion of disease.

Health Geographies

• Social Determinants of Health.
• Systems that contribute to inequality globally and within countries, and there are proposals to reduce it.
• Links exist to geopolitical issues and cultural politics.

Refugee Crisis

• Links exist to geopolitical issues and cultural politics.
• Solutions are available such as voluntary repatriation.

Cultural Geographies

• Spatial dimensions such as landscapes, regions, diffusion.
• Influence of the capitalist mode of production.
• Divisions such as Orientalism and othering.

Language

• Developments based on diffusion (e.g., creole languages) ...and the loss of languages; nationalism.

Religion

• Diffusion (e.g., via hearths) and religious landscapes.
• Ethnic and universalizing religions.
• Migration: Labour; ethnicity and assimilation, etc.

Gender and Sexuality

• Gender and landscape, work, and development.
• Sexuality and landscape and policies.
• Settler colonial histories, forms of resistance in Canada.
• Identity, hegemony, and intersectionality.
• Race as a myth.

Race And Ethnicity

• Xenophobia, scapegoating, genocide, and apartheid.