Making and Unmaking “places”
摘要
The challenge in this chapter is to rethink commonly assumed geographical “entities” or “places”. Such “entities” play a pivotal role in how governing takes place and are most often treated by policy makers as taken-for-granted physical sites or locations. The chapter shows how poststructural policy analysis, illustrated in applications of WPR, encourages policy workers/analysts to consider “places” as political creations. Specifically, it illustrates how, through the lens of problematization and a focus on practices, it becomes possible to interrogate the underlying precepts and assumptions that are necessary to the constitution of named “places”. The following questions guide the account: What does it mean to challenge the existence of “places” as fixed and stable “entities”? What is accomplished through this form of analysis? What strategies are available to problematize named “places”? What are the implications of a poststructural perspective for research on assumed “places”, such as “nation-states”, “cities”, and “public places”?