Ben A Gerlofs
Biographic Data
| ID | 1340604 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ben A Gerlofs |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ben A |
| FAMILY NAME | Gerlofs |
| SIGNATURE | GERLOFS B A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Hong Kong |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1118-5111 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 13 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 20 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 13 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2016 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Quién es gentrificación (‘who is gentrificación ’)? urban change, conceptual chimerae, and the challenge of blanqueamiento (‘whitening’) in mexico city
In this article, we outline the central tenets of an endogenous theory of neighborhood change in Mexico City known as blanqueamiento (‘whitening'). Drawing on longstanding research and intellectual exchange with local scholars and activists, we illustrate the promise this concept holds for transcending the many limitations of ‘gentrification', and its metaphrase translation, gentrificació n, in this and other contexts. We argue that while blanque…
The Aesthetic Survey: A Field Guide to an Integrative Methodology for the Study of Urban Change at the Neighborhood Scale
Despite decades of still-growing popularity as a topic of research and policy intervention, scholarship on urban change at the neighborhood scale remains plagued by long-standing analytical issues of commensurability, replication, and reliability. In this article, we introduce a methodology designed specifically to transcend and otherwise ameliorate such issues, which we refer to as the aesthetic survey. Comprised of several component methods, th…
Humour as a Pedagogical Tool: Evidence and Implications for Critical Geography
In this article, we elaborate the results of a focused empirical study on the use of humour in teaching undergraduate geography courses. Through semi‐structured interviews and weekly reflections submitted by students, we delve into a diverse array of experiences and perceptions of humour as a pedagogical tool. Building on research that suggests humour is an especially potent and exceptionally dangerous mode of communication, we argue that it also…
States of Compulsion: Reassessing ‘State‐Led’ Neighborhood Change in Hong Kong
This article provides a critical reassessment of the role of the state in processes of neighborhood change in Hong Kong, based on mixed‐methods research conducted in the rapidly changing Sai Ying Pun neighborhood. We argue that common narratives of ‘state‐led’ processes of neighborhood change often overstate, oversimplify or unduly assume the influence of state agencies, especially the Urban Renewal Authority (URA) and other ‘usual suspects’, obs…
Tank to Table: Hong Kong's Wet Markets and the Geographies of Lively Commodification Beyond Companionship
We argue for a radical reconfiguration of existing theorizations of the "lively commodity"-beings captured, cultivated, and traded for their very lives-on more inclusive terms. Specifically, we advocate the inclusion of animals intended for dietary consumption, in recognition of the demonstrable centrality of encounters between human beings in their role as consumers and the animals and animal parts offered for sale in Hong Kong's many wet market…
Timing is everything: Territorial stigmatization, immobility policy, and the Covid-boom in Hong Kong’s Sham Shui Po
This article examines a peculiar case of neighborhood change in Sham Shui Po, one of Hong Kong's densest and poorest neighborhoods. Based on two mixed-methods research projects conducted in 2021 and early 2022, we use social media analysis and data gathered through a four-component "aesthetic survey" methodology to demonstrate the drastic transformation of a particular section of this neighborhood in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. A key ques…
Ammunition, not a ride: Humor, human geography, and the fragile absurdities of power
In this author's response, I close this forum on the spatiality and political utility of humor by responding to a superb set of critical commentaries – for which I am extremely grateful – in three parts, with the sobering contemporary reality of the comedian-president facing down a brutal invasion serving as a critical, conjunctural point of entry. First, humor can be, as the commentators highlight in different ways, extremely serious business. S…
Deadly serious: Humor and the politics of aesthetic transgression
This essay examines the political utility of humor using a framework developed in recent geopolitical scholarship read through Jacques Rancière's theorization of the politics of aesthetics and applied to everyday political life in contemporary Mexico City. Geopolitics here offers a unique lens through which to understand the spatiality of humor and its effects on the aesthetic and affective processes by which urban identities are constructed and …
Seismic Shifts: Recentering Geology and Politics in the Anthropocene
A strident focus on atmospheric carbons and on climate change as its distinguishing feature has seen much debate and research surrounding the Anthropocene stray from its conceptual grounding in geology. Yet new research argues that hallmarks of the Anthropocene such as sea-level rise, melting ice sheets, and environmental engineering projects designed to mitigate chronic shortages of potable water all increase the potential of seismic activity, p…
Dreaming dialectically: The death and life of the Mexico City charter for the right to the city
This article investigates the conceptual and political history of the right to the city in Mexico City from the late 1980s to the present, focusing especially on the Mexico City Charter for the Right to the City completed and endorsed by leading political figures in 2010. By grounding this investigation in the dialectical methods of Henri Lefebvre, the article builds on roughly 12 months of ethnographic and archival fieldwork in Mexico City to ar…
Policing perception: Postpolitics and the elusive everyday
This piece argues that urban postpolitical scholarship should pay greater attention to the everyday lives of urban residents and the everyday spaces of contemporary cities. Recent debates in urban geography have sought in part to expand narrow readings of Jacques Rancière’s politics in particular, creating space for broader and more inclusive analyses of resistance to depoliticizing regimes. This article builds on this work, extending these criti…
Asĺ No (Not Like This): Resisting Postpolitics on Mexico City's Avenida Chapultepec
Building on roughly ten months of ethnographic and archival research, this article examines successful resistance to a planned redevelopment project along Avenida Chapultepec, one of Mexico City's historic boulevards. Local residents and their allies objected not only to the specifics of the project but also to its planning process, in which citizen input was foregrounded but extremely limited. This case illustrates the instantiation of a 'postpo…
Edge city or bust: Dismantling a regime of aesthetic governmentality in Oak Brook, Illinois
This article examines the construction and dismantling of a regime of “aesthetic governmentality” in Oak Brook, Illinois. This regime consists not only of policy and law, but more importantly of a way of seeing and evaluating Oak Brook’s idyllic suburban landscape. Drawing on interview and archival data, the case is made that the power of this longstanding regime has begun to decline in recent years, making space for new ways of understanding lif…
Deadly serious: Humor and the politics of aesthetic transgression
This essay examines the political utility of humor using a framework developed in recent geopolitical scholarship read through Jacques Rancière's theorization of the politics of aesthetics and applied to everyday political life in contemporary Mexico City. Geopolitics here offers a unique lens through which to understand the spatiality of humor and its effects on the aesthetic and affective processes by which urban identities are constructed and …
Policing perception: Postpolitics and the elusive everyday
This piece argues that urban postpolitical scholarship should pay greater attention to the everyday lives of urban residents and the everyday spaces of contemporary cities. Recent debates in urban geography have sought in part to expand narrow readings of Jacques Rancière’s politics in particular, creating space for broader and more inclusive analyses of resistance to depoliticizing regimes. This article builds on this work, extending these criti…
Edge city or bust: Dismantling a regime of aesthetic governmentality in Oak Brook, Illinois
This article examines the construction and dismantling of a regime of “aesthetic governmentality” in Oak Brook, Illinois. This regime consists not only of policy and law, but more importantly of a way of seeing and evaluating Oak Brook’s idyllic suburban landscape. Drawing on interview and archival data, the case is made that the power of this longstanding regime has begun to decline in recent years, making space for new ways of understanding lif…
Ammunition, not a ride: Humor, human geography, and the fragile absurdities of power
In this author's response, I close this forum on the spatiality and political utility of humor by responding to a superb set of critical commentaries – for which I am extremely grateful – in three parts, with the sobering contemporary reality of the comedian-president facing down a brutal invasion serving as a critical, conjunctural point of entry. First, humor can be, as the commentators highlight in different ways, extremely serious business. S…
Asĺ No (Not Like This): Resisting Postpolitics on Mexico City's Avenida Chapultepec
Building on roughly ten months of ethnographic and archival research, this article examines successful resistance to a planned redevelopment project along Avenida Chapultepec, one of Mexico City's historic boulevards. Local residents and their allies objected not only to the specifics of the project but also to its planning process, in which citizen input was foregrounded but extremely limited. This case illustrates the instantiation of a 'postpo…
States of Compulsion: Reassessing ‘State‐Led’ Neighborhood Change in Hong Kong
This article provides a critical reassessment of the role of the state in processes of neighborhood change in Hong Kong, based on mixed‐methods research conducted in the rapidly changing Sai Ying Pun neighborhood. We argue that common narratives of ‘state‐led’ processes of neighborhood change often overstate, oversimplify or unduly assume the influence of state agencies, especially the Urban Renewal Authority (URA) and other ‘usual suspects’, obs…
Timing is everything: Territorial stigmatization, immobility policy, and the Covid-boom in Hong Kong’s Sham Shui Po
This article examines a peculiar case of neighborhood change in Sham Shui Po, one of Hong Kong's densest and poorest neighborhoods. Based on two mixed-methods research projects conducted in 2021 and early 2022, we use social media analysis and data gathered through a four-component "aesthetic survey" methodology to demonstrate the drastic transformation of a particular section of this neighborhood in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. A key ques…
Seismic Shifts: Recentering Geology and Politics in the Anthropocene
A strident focus on atmospheric carbons and on climate change as its distinguishing feature has seen much debate and research surrounding the Anthropocene stray from its conceptual grounding in geology. Yet new research argues that hallmarks of the Anthropocene such as sea-level rise, melting ice sheets, and environmental engineering projects designed to mitigate chronic shortages of potable water all increase the potential of seismic activity, p…
Edge city or bust: Dismantling a regime of aesthetic governmentality in Oak Brook, Illinois
This article examines the construction and dismantling of a regime of “aesthetic governmentality” in Oak Brook, Illinois. This regime consists not only of policy and law, but more importantly of a way of seeing and evaluating Oak Brook’s idyllic suburban landscape. Drawing on interview and archival data, the case is made that the power of this longstanding regime has begun to decline in recent years, making space for new ways of understanding lif…
Policing perception: Postpolitics and the elusive everyday
This piece argues that urban postpolitical scholarship should pay greater attention to the everyday lives of urban residents and the everyday spaces of contemporary cities. Recent debates in urban geography have sought in part to expand narrow readings of Jacques Rancière’s politics in particular, creating space for broader and more inclusive analyses of resistance to depoliticizing regimes. This article builds on this work, extending these criti…
Asĺ No (Not Like This): Resisting Postpolitics on Mexico City's Avenida Chapultepec
Building on roughly ten months of ethnographic and archival research, this article examines successful resistance to a planned redevelopment project along Avenida Chapultepec, one of Mexico City's historic boulevards. Local residents and their allies objected not only to the specifics of the project but also to its planning process, in which citizen input was foregrounded but extremely limited. This case illustrates the instantiation of a 'postpo…
Dreaming dialectically: The death and life of the Mexico City charter for the right to the city
This article investigates the conceptual and political history of the right to the city in Mexico City from the late 1980s to the present, focusing especially on the Mexico City Charter for the Right to the City completed and endorsed by leading political figures in 2010. By grounding this investigation in the dialectical methods of Henri Lefebvre, the article builds on roughly 12 months of ethnographic and archival fieldwork in Mexico City to ar…
Deadly serious: Humor and the politics of aesthetic transgression
This essay examines the political utility of humor using a framework developed in recent geopolitical scholarship read through Jacques Rancière's theorization of the politics of aesthetics and applied to everyday political life in contemporary Mexico City. Geopolitics here offers a unique lens through which to understand the spatiality of humor and its effects on the aesthetic and affective processes by which urban identities are constructed and …
Seismic Shifts: Recentering Geology and Politics in the Anthropocene
A strident focus on atmospheric carbons and on climate change as its distinguishing feature has seen much debate and research surrounding the Anthropocene stray from its conceptual grounding in geology. Yet new research argues that hallmarks of the Anthropocene such as sea-level rise, melting ice sheets, and environmental engineering projects designed to mitigate chronic shortages of potable water all increase the potential of seismic activity, p…
Ammunition, not a ride: Humor, human geography, and the fragile absurdities of power
In this author's response, I close this forum on the spatiality and political utility of humor by responding to a superb set of critical commentaries – for which I am extremely grateful – in three parts, with the sobering contemporary reality of the comedian-president facing down a brutal invasion serving as a critical, conjunctural point of entry. First, humor can be, as the commentators highlight in different ways, extremely serious business. S…
Timing is everything: Territorial stigmatization, immobility policy, and the Covid-boom in Hong Kong’s Sham Shui Po
This article examines a peculiar case of neighborhood change in Sham Shui Po, one of Hong Kong's densest and poorest neighborhoods. Based on two mixed-methods research projects conducted in 2021 and early 2022, we use social media analysis and data gathered through a four-component "aesthetic survey" methodology to demonstrate the drastic transformation of a particular section of this neighborhood in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. A key ques…
States of Compulsion: Reassessing ‘State‐Led’ Neighborhood Change in Hong Kong
This article provides a critical reassessment of the role of the state in processes of neighborhood change in Hong Kong, based on mixed‐methods research conducted in the rapidly changing Sai Ying Pun neighborhood. We argue that common narratives of ‘state‐led’ processes of neighborhood change often overstate, oversimplify or unduly assume the influence of state agencies, especially the Urban Renewal Authority (URA) and other ‘usual suspects’, obs…
Tank to Table: Hong Kong's Wet Markets and the Geographies of Lively Commodification Beyond Companionship
We argue for a radical reconfiguration of existing theorizations of the "lively commodity"-beings captured, cultivated, and traded for their very lives-on more inclusive terms. Specifically, we advocate the inclusion of animals intended for dietary consumption, in recognition of the demonstrable centrality of encounters between human beings in their role as consumers and the animals and animal parts offered for sale in Hong Kong's many wet market…
Quién es gentrificación (‘who is gentrificación ’)? urban change, conceptual chimerae, and the challenge of blanqueamiento (‘whitening’) in mexico city
In this article, we outline the central tenets of an endogenous theory of neighborhood change in Mexico City known as blanqueamiento (‘whitening'). Drawing on longstanding research and intellectual exchange with local scholars and activists, we illustrate the promise this concept holds for transcending the many limitations of ‘gentrification', and its metaphrase translation, gentrificació n, in this and other contexts. We argue that while blanque…
The Aesthetic Survey: A Field Guide to an Integrative Methodology for the Study of Urban Change at the Neighborhood Scale
Despite decades of still-growing popularity as a topic of research and policy intervention, scholarship on urban change at the neighborhood scale remains plagued by long-standing analytical issues of commensurability, replication, and reliability. In this article, we introduce a methodology designed specifically to transcend and otherwise ameliorate such issues, which we refer to as the aesthetic survey. Comprised of several component methods, th…
Humour as a Pedagogical Tool: Evidence and Implications for Critical Geography
In this article, we elaborate the results of a focused empirical study on the use of humour in teaching undergraduate geography courses. Through semi‐structured interviews and weekly reflections submitted by students, we delve into a diverse array of experiences and perceptions of humour as a pedagogical tool. Building on research that suggests humour is an especially potent and exceptionally dangerous mode of communication, we argue that it also…
Sociology (11 works) · Political science (10 works) · Law (9 works) · Politics (9 works) · Urban Planning and Governance (7 works) · Law (6 works) · Anthropology (5 works) · Economics (5 works) · Epistemology (5 works) · Ethnography (5 works)