I love book reviews. I love reading them and I love writing them. Reading them is great – in a world where so much amazing research is published every day, it seems impossible to keep up. But book reviews help make that work easier. Frankly I wish ordinary academic articles would have a digest like this as well. Sure, it’s depressing that our world is so rapid that we aren’t given the time to sit back and enjoy reading articles….
I’ve been attacked from all sides for making comments about contemporary Russia and Russian politics. I’ve been told that I’m in the pocket of Putin, or at the very least a naive “useful idiot”. Simultaneously, that same comment led others to tell me that I am Russophobic, a blind westerner who does not understand anything, and that I am contributing to anti-Russian views. One of the biggest challenges I have is to criticize what I think needs to be criticized,…
I know I’m not the only one a bit overwhelmed at times by the amount of good, interesting, and important academic work there is coming out. Just about every day I get another content alert from a journal I like, and there’s usually at least one or three that I really want and need to read. This means that I often have to read selectively. I don’t like this, actually. It’s much nicer to sit and be with a paper…
Kirill Bezrukov (@KBezrukov) pointed me to this beautiful example of savvy business in Kaliningrad. There’s a bridge (Vysokiy Most, or High Bridge) that connects the main parts of Kaliningrad to Oktyabrskiy Ostrov, a quirky, mostly undeveloped island in the middle of the city. Among other things, the city’s World Cup development agenda involves transforming this island into a viable part of the city. So the new 35,000 seat World Cup stadium is sited there, and other developments are slated to…
In preparation for my talk at this year’s American Association of Geographers annual conference I’ve been thinking about Sochi several years after the Olympics. I think it’s worth taking a look at the city after the circus has left town, when the international spotlight has largely moved on to other events and other places. Sochi 2014 was never just about the sport. Beyond the aspirations to reframe public perceptions of Russia inside and outside the nation, there was a clear attempt…