Matthew Farish
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 141709 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Matthew Farish |
| NOMBRES | Matthew |
| APELLIDO | Farish |
| FIRMA | FARISH M |
| AFILIACIONES | University of Toronto |
| VERIFICADO | No |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 31 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 220 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 31 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2001 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 10 |
Sand, Snow, and Stardust
The path to Panarctic
From the late 1940s to the late 1950s, the Geological Survey of Canada (GSC) turned vigorously to the Arctic archipelago, expanding and confirming the colonial premise that the islands of the High Arctic were an extractive frontier for oil and gas. In this paper, the first of a planned pair, we show how the efforts of the GSC were hugely consequential for subsequent corporate hydrocarbon exploration, but were also intimately entangled with other,…
Crisis Thinking
Watching the Nazi Party seize power and the Weimar Republic fall in the early 1930s, the young German sociologist Hans Speier arrived at four interrelated conclusions. First, the champion of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) recognized the fragility of democracy. Second, Speier came to distrust, even disdain, the presence of the public in political life. Third, the apparent effects of attacks on the SPD from further left—from the German Communist…
Tug of War
In the 1990s Jocelyn Wills conducted interviews with key figures from MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates (MDA), a technology firm established in the basement of a University of British Columbia (UBC) professor's home in 1969. In 2016, having developed the RADARSAT-2 earth observation satellite and many other significant products, MDA boasted revenues of over $2 billion. And twenty-five years after those conversations with MDA's principals, Willi…
Geography and Geographers
Ron Johnston and James D. Sidaway. London and New York: Routledge, 2016. xxii and 544 pp., figures, index. $64.95 paper (ISBN 9780340985106); $165.00 cloth (ISBN 9780415827379).Spring 2016 saw the
Nuclear landscapes
This article brings together the geographic literature on nuclear topics, and draws out the geographical dimensions of broader scholarship on ‘nuclearity’, to consider the premise of a nuclear landscape, and to offer a partial history of such landscapes. Places such as New Mexico’s Trinity Site have become iconic, at least in the United States, and a study of nuclear landscapes must consider the cultural force of spectacular weapons tests and rel…
Zachary Lockman. Field Notes
In this crisply written companion to his notable book Contending Visions of the Middle East: The History and Politics of Orientalism (2004), Zachary Lockman charts the institutional history of research on the “Middle East” in the twentieth-century United States. Field Notes: The Making of Middle East Studies in the United States is a comparatively subdued, focused work, which moves smoothly between its specific emphasis and a discussion of the in…
The Ordinary Cold War
On July 14, 1952, the U.S. Air Force launched Operation Skywatch. In twenty-seven states, 150,000 civilian volunteers were directed to stand atop some six thousand observation posts, scanning the horizon twenty-four hours a day, year-round, for planes, especially those flying at low altitudes. Sightings, whether of “friend or foe,” were recorded on standardized forms and relayed by telephone to regional “filter centers,” where other volunteers, w…
The Conquest of the Russian Arctic
Introduction
The guest editors for this special issue of Urban History are both Canadian, and for many Canadians the hottest conflict of the Cold War might have been the 1972 ‘Summit Series’, eight hockey games played between the Russian Red Army team and an all-star cast of Canadian professionals. Without delving into the sporting glories of the series (Canada won it, four games to three, with one tie), we can aver that the event was as much about diplomacy,…
The Surveillance Imperative
Northscapes
Canons and wars
Mapping the End of Empire
MAPPING THE END OF EMPIRE: American and British Strategic Visions in the Postwar World. By Aiyaz Husain. 364 pp.; maps, notes, index. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2014. $49.95 (cloth), ISBN 978067472882. While it is not a condition that historical geographers constantly contemplate, their scholarship--our scholarship--stretches across the intellectual divide between and history. At times this gap seems modest, fictional, or a relic…
Battling shadows
This short commentary applauds John Agnew (2014) for his interest in the history of geographic concepts but dissents with both his diagnosis of and proposed remedy for the literature in this field. After contesting Agnew’s use of ‘genealogy’ and his assessment of critical geopolitics, the commentary suggests that his treatment of geography’s intellectual histories rests on two untenable separations, that is, of past from present and concepts from…
The Lab and the Land
The militarization of Alaska during and after World War II created an extraordinary set of new facilities. But it also reshaped the imaginative role of Alaska as a hostile environment, where an antagonistic form of nature could be defeated with the appropriate combination of technology and training. One of the crucial sites for this reformulation was the Arctic Aeromedical Laboratory, based at Ladd Air Force Base in Fairbanks. In the first two de…
Geographies of Mars
"Reading Matthew Farish's "The Contours of America's Cold War
Locating the American Military-Industrial Complex
In February 2010 President Barack Obama proposed that Congress provide the Department of Defense with over $700 billion in fiscal year 2011. Given that not all defence-related expenditures flow through the Pentagon, this staggering figure—which includes both a “base budget” and “supplemental” funding for the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan—is hardly conclusive, and the total tally likely exceeds $1 trillion (see Higgs 2007). Gently critiquing…
Creating Cold War Climates
Since any aspect of environment (in its widest sense) may be significant to military activities, the designer of equipment, as well as the military planner and operator, must consider all the implications of man-machine-environment interrelationships if the full potential of military power is to be realized. – Southwest Asia: Environment and Its Relationship to Military Activities (1959) On coming into the Arctic a man from a warm climate must le…
Environmental Histories of the Cold War
Environmental Histories of the Cold War explores the links between the Cold War and the global environment, ranging from the environmental impacts of nuclear weapons to the political repercussions of environmentalism. Environmental change accelerated sharply during the Cold War years, and so did environmentalism as both a popular movement and a scientific preoccupation. Most Cold War history entirely overlooks this rise of environmentalism and th…
High modernism in the Arctic
The Cold War on Canadian Soil
Given the low standard of contact between environmental and military historians, it is unsurprising, if regrettable, that the relationship between military activity and natural landscapes in Canada has received minimal scholarly attention. This paper seeks to open space for such an environmental history of militarism and militarization. Focusing on the Cold War and its aftermath, the essay documents the history of military activity on Canadian so…
Frontier engineering
The dual themes of sovereignty and wilderness have come to define, or at least dominate, historical discussions of the North American Arctic. This paper argues that neither adequately captures the role of the Arctic during the early Cold War, a period of unprecedented interest in northern landscapes. Political and environmental approaches, with their national undertones, were incorporated into a dominant narrative whose implications were far less…
Between Regions
Histories of American geographic thought and practice have sketched, but not critically explored, the relationship between war, intellectual change, and the production of spatial knowledge. This article sheds light on a crucial period, the middle decades of the twentieth century, when new modes of understanding and representing geography were being formulated at a variety of sites across the nation-state, from Princeton to the University of Washi…
Between Regions
Histories of American geographic thought and practice have sketched, but not critically explored, the relationship between war, intellectual change, and the production of spatial knowledge. This article sheds light on a crucial period, the middle decades of the twentieth century, when new modes of understanding and representing geography were being formulated at a variety of sites across the nation-state, from Princeton to the University of Washi…
Frontier engineering
The dual themes of sovereignty and wilderness have come to define, or at least dominate, historical discussions of the North American Arctic. This paper argues that neither adequately captures the role of the Arctic during the early Cold War, a period of unprecedented interest in northern landscapes. Political and environmental approaches, with their national undertones, were incorporated into a dominant narrative whose implications were far less…
The Lab and the Land
The militarization of Alaska during and after World War II created an extraordinary set of new facilities. But it also reshaped the imaginative role of Alaska as a hostile environment, where an antagonistic form of nature could be defeated with the appropriate combination of technology and training. One of the crucial sites for this reformulation was the Arctic Aeromedical Laboratory, based at Ladd Air Force Base in Fairbanks. In the first two de…
Nuclear landscapes
This article brings together the geographic literature on nuclear topics, and draws out the geographical dimensions of broader scholarship on ‘nuclearity’, to consider the premise of a nuclear landscape, and to offer a partial history of such landscapes. Places such as New Mexico’s Trinity Site have become iconic, at least in the United States, and a study of nuclear landscapes must consider the cultural force of spectacular weapons tests and rel…
High modernism in the Arctic
Archiving Areas
The Second World War's global dimensions necessitated an intellectual mobilization dedicated to the study of the world's geographical regions. In the United States, the production of this intelligence prepared the ground for Cold War area studies, as information on certain cultural and natural spaces was collected and classified in central repositories or published in comprehensive manuals. Using archival and period sources, this article employs …
From Warfare to Welfare
Jennifer S. Light Baltimore Johns Hopkins University Press 2003. x and 287 pp. maps diags. photos notes note on sources and index. $42.00 cloth (ISBN 0-8018-7422-X).In a 1951 study of air defense c...
Disaster and decentralization
The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki also ushered in an era of anxious urbanism in the USA. Despite its status as the inheritor of European modernism, the champion of capitalism and the centre of a rapidly globalizing popular culture, America still struggled with the contradictory results of urbanization and military supremacy. In this essay, I bring political and urban geography together in a study of American cities and their role as st…
Cities in Shade
This paper historicizes American cities after the Second World War through the rich motif of noir literature and film. But, in doing so, the paper is also a critical consideration of noir's work in urban studies. Noir has been drawn, often usefully but also unfortunately, away from its referents, from the terrain that it most directly summons but also from the spaces in which its contradictions are most apparent. Moving from a discussion of the d…
The Cold War on Canadian Soil
Given the low standard of contact between environmental and military historians, it is unsurprising, if regrettable, that the relationship between military activity and natural landscapes in Canada has received minimal scholarly attention. This paper seeks to open space for such an environmental history of militarism and militarization. Focusing on the Cold War and its aftermath, the essay documents the history of military activity on Canadian so…
Modern witnesses
The First World War was the first modern, mediated conflict. In this paper I argue that British correspondents on the Western front attempting to accurately witness the war encountered a crisis of representation and visuality. They occupied a particularly unstable position between the many sites and points of view within a cubist landscape of shattered geographies and unstable boundaries. Their writings, though rich in masculinist and nationalist…
Introduction
The guest editors for this special issue of Urban History are both Canadian, and for many Canadians the hottest conflict of the Cold War might have been the 1972 ‘Summit Series’, eight hockey games played between the Russian Red Army team and an all-star cast of Canadian professionals. Without delving into the sporting glories of the series (Canada won it, four games to three, with one tie), we can aver that the event was as much about diplomacy,…
The Surveillance Imperative
Locating the American Military-Industrial Complex
In February 2010 President Barack Obama proposed that Congress provide the Department of Defense with over $700 billion in fiscal year 2011. Given that not all defence-related expenditures flow through the Pentagon, this staggering figure—which includes both a “base budget” and “supplemental” funding for the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan—is hardly conclusive, and the total tally likely exceeds $1 trillion (see Higgs 2007). Gently critiquing…
Modern witnesses
The First World War was the first modern, mediated conflict. In this paper I argue that British correspondents on the Western front attempting to accurately witness the war encountered a crisis of representation and visuality. They occupied a particularly unstable position between the many sites and points of view within a cubist landscape of shattered geographies and unstable boundaries. Their writings, though rich in masculinist and nationalist…
Moment of Grace
Key Words: citiesculturesuburbsUnited States
Disaster and decentralization
The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki also ushered in an era of anxious urbanism in the USA. Despite its status as the inheritor of European modernism, the champion of capitalism and the centre of a rapidly globalizing popular culture, America still struggled with the contradictory results of urbanization and military supremacy. In this essay, I bring political and urban geography together in a study of American cities and their role as st…
From Warfare to Welfare
Jennifer S. Light Baltimore Johns Hopkins University Press 2003. x and 287 pp. maps diags. photos notes note on sources and index. $42.00 cloth (ISBN 0-8018-7422-X).In a 1951 study of air defense c...
Archiving Areas
The Second World War's global dimensions necessitated an intellectual mobilization dedicated to the study of the world's geographical regions. In the United States, the production of this intelligence prepared the ground for Cold War area studies, as information on certain cultural and natural spaces was collected and classified in central repositories or published in comprehensive manuals. Using archival and period sources, this article employs …
Cities in Shade
This paper historicizes American cities after the Second World War through the rich motif of noir literature and film. But, in doing so, the paper is also a critical consideration of noir's work in urban studies. Noir has been drawn, often usefully but also unfortunately, away from its referents, from the terrain that it most directly summons but also from the spaces in which its contradictions are most apparent. Moving from a discussion of the d…
Frontier engineering
The dual themes of sovereignty and wilderness have come to define, or at least dominate, historical discussions of the North American Arctic. This paper argues that neither adequately captures the role of the Arctic during the early Cold War, a period of unprecedented interest in northern landscapes. Political and environmental approaches, with their national undertones, were incorporated into a dominant narrative whose implications were far less…
Between Regions
Histories of American geographic thought and practice have sketched, but not critically explored, the relationship between war, intellectual change, and the production of spatial knowledge. This article sheds light on a crucial period, the middle decades of the twentieth century, when new modes of understanding and representing geography were being formulated at a variety of sites across the nation-state, from Princeton to the University of Washi…
The Cold War on Canadian Soil
Given the low standard of contact between environmental and military historians, it is unsurprising, if regrettable, that the relationship between military activity and natural landscapes in Canada has received minimal scholarly attention. This paper seeks to open space for such an environmental history of militarism and militarization. Focusing on the Cold War and its aftermath, the essay documents the history of military activity on Canadian so…
High modernism in the Arctic
Creating Cold War Climates
Since any aspect of environment (in its widest sense) may be significant to military activities, the designer of equipment, as well as the military planner and operator, must consider all the implications of man-machine-environment interrelationships if the full potential of military power is to be realized. – Southwest Asia: Environment and Its Relationship to Military Activities (1959) On coming into the Arctic a man from a warm climate must le…
Environmental Histories of the Cold War
Environmental Histories of the Cold War explores the links between the Cold War and the global environment, ranging from the environmental impacts of nuclear weapons to the political repercussions of environmentalism. Environmental change accelerated sharply during the Cold War years, and so did environmentalism as both a popular movement and a scientific preoccupation. Most Cold War history entirely overlooks this rise of environmentalism and th…
Locating the American Military-Industrial Complex
In February 2010 President Barack Obama proposed that Congress provide the Department of Defense with over $700 billion in fiscal year 2011. Given that not all defence-related expenditures flow through the Pentagon, this staggering figure—which includes both a “base budget” and “supplemental” funding for the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan—is hardly conclusive, and the total tally likely exceeds $1 trillion (see Higgs 2007). Gently critiquing…
Geographies of Mars
"Reading Matthew Farish's "The Contours of America's Cold War
The Lab and the Land
The militarization of Alaska during and after World War II created an extraordinary set of new facilities. But it also reshaped the imaginative role of Alaska as a hostile environment, where an antagonistic form of nature could be defeated with the appropriate combination of technology and training. One of the crucial sites for this reformulation was the Arctic Aeromedical Laboratory, based at Ladd Air Force Base in Fairbanks. In the first two de…
Battling shadows
This short commentary applauds John Agnew (2014) for his interest in the history of geographic concepts but dissents with both his diagnosis of and proposed remedy for the literature in this field. After contesting Agnew’s use of ‘genealogy’ and his assessment of critical geopolitics, the commentary suggests that his treatment of geography’s intellectual histories rests on two untenable separations, that is, of past from present and concepts from…
The Conquest of the Russian Arctic
Introduction
The guest editors for this special issue of Urban History are both Canadian, and for many Canadians the hottest conflict of the Cold War might have been the 1972 ‘Summit Series’, eight hockey games played between the Russian Red Army team and an all-star cast of Canadian professionals. Without delving into the sporting glories of the series (Canada won it, four games to three, with one tie), we can aver that the event was as much about diplomacy,…
The Surveillance Imperative
Northscapes
Canons and wars
Mapping the End of Empire
MAPPING THE END OF EMPIRE: American and British Strategic Visions in the Postwar World. By Aiyaz Husain. 364 pp.; maps, notes, index. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2014. $49.95 (cloth), ISBN 978067472882. While it is not a condition that historical geographers constantly contemplate, their scholarship--our scholarship--stretches across the intellectual divide between and history. At times this gap seems modest, fictional, or a relic…
The Ordinary Cold War
On July 14, 1952, the U.S. Air Force launched Operation Skywatch. In twenty-seven states, 150,000 civilian volunteers were directed to stand atop some six thousand observation posts, scanning the horizon twenty-four hours a day, year-round, for planes, especially those flying at low altitudes. Sightings, whether of “friend or foe,” were recorded on standardized forms and relayed by telephone to regional “filter centers,” where other volunteers, w…
Geography and Geographers
Ron Johnston and James D. Sidaway. London and New York: Routledge, 2016. xxii and 544 pp., figures, index. $64.95 paper (ISBN 9780340985106); $165.00 cloth (ISBN 9780415827379).Spring 2016 saw the
Political science (26 obras) · Law (22 obras) · History (20 obras) · Sociology (17 obras) · History (16 obras) · Politics (15 obras) · Law (14 obras) · Geography (13 obras) · Cold war (10 obras) · Economic history (8 obras)