Research

The most important aspect of my research is an engagement with issues that can have a “real-world” applicability for work in righting injustice or ending suffering.   I feel a very strong and demonstrable responsibility to use my research agenda as a way to identify social injustice and present opportunity for rectifying that injustice.

My research interests lie at the intersections of socially and culturally constructed space and place, social and environmental justice, public space and natural hazards, all of which I generally study in urban areas.  I use a variety of different methodologies and perspectives in my work because I consider these to be tools that can each serve specific purposes.  In the past three years, as my commitment to community service and righting social injustice have strengthened, my research has begun to focus more strongly on issues in my local community.


RESEARCH GOALS

“Everything can be explained to the people, on the single condition that you really want them to understand."
--Franz Fanon

The main goal with my research is to promote a more just world.  I intend to reach this goal through the following:

  1. 1.Bring geographically relevant research topics to a broad audience, not just through the publication of peer-reviewed papers, but the distribution of research findings through non-traditional, wider reaching means.  I have demonstrated that I am capable of both publishing successful papers in academic journals, but also of writing pieces that can explain and illustrate complex topics and themes to less academic communities. 

  2. 2.By working on research that is both relevant to the “real world” and my community, specifically by developing the research within my local community.  I feel that my research has no purpose if it is not useful to those people who are “on the ground” working to affect real change.

  3. 3.By writing pieces for both audiences, I can serve to progress the discussion of the discipline as a whole, serve as a positive representative for the discipline to the wider public.  Geography is an underutilized and often forgotten tool for issues of social justice.  I feel that geography is perhaps one of the academic disciplines most suited to present instances of social and environmental injustice for rectification.


CURRENT RESEARCH projectS AND PAPERS IN-PROGRESS

Erasing Space: The May 4, 1970 Shootings at Kent State University

On May 4, 1970, four unarmed students were killed and nine more were injured as members of the Ohio National Guard opened fire on students protesting the expansion of the Vietnam War by President Richard M. Nixon's ordering of the illegal invasion of Cambodia.  Having dispersed the main protest, the ONG fired upon a loose group of protesters had left the university's Commons as ordered.

News of the shootings shocked the nation and further galvanized the popular peace movement against the Vietnam War.   At Kent State, final exams were cancelled and the university closed for six weeks.  The incident caused a marked decline in enrollment at Kent the following fall semester, which led to a redefinition of the campus logo and moniker from “Kent State” to “Kent.”  The attempts to change the university’s image were not limited to the name; indeed, spaces on campus were changed as well.  The location of the shooting lacked a university-sponsored memorial until 1990, some 20 years later. 

In the 39 years since the event, the university has greatly changed the landscapes of the events of May 4, rendering the spaces unrecognizable to students who attended the university at that time.  Through carefully designed memorials and changes to the campus, Kent State University has worked to erase space, specifically that of the May 4 shootings.

A beginning stage presentation of this research was given at the 2007 Meeting of the East Lakes Division of the Association of American Geographers, winning first place in the Student Paper Competition.   A more advanced stage of this research was presented for the 2009 Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers in Las Vegas, as part of a session entitled Landscapes of Militarization.  The notes from the 2009 AAG presentation are available here.

I have recently submitted this work for publication in a refereed journal.


FourSquare.com and the “Realization” of Virtual Space

The recent combination of handheld GPS-equipped mobile phones with social networking, realized in network sites such as FourSquare.com, is a revolutionary turn in the applicability of “virtual” spaces provided by the internet in the past 20 years.

Indeed, FourSquare.com has combined the previously virtual aspect of social networking, community and friendship spaces with a component of “reality” through the recording and publication of “real world” location data.  Certainly, the dissemination of such real-time information regarding individual location, in a way unseen in human history has changed interaction and gathering.  However, the ubiquity of this information brings forth a number of concerns of the continued corporatization and politicization of the combined virtual and real spaces through social networks.

This project, in its earliest stages, is a collaboration with Emily Fekete of the University of Kansas Department of Geography.  Publication of the research is intended for a refereed journal in late 2011.


Killing Puppies in Public: One Pet Store’s Mobilization of Capitalist Space to Conduct Brutality Against Pet Animals

In the latter half of the 20th century, the United States has witnessed a dramatic spatial transformation of public spaces through the enforced regulation of certain activities (such as protest), coupled with the abrupt removal of certain functional activities from public spaces (such as retail establishments) to new installations on private property. 

Indeed, a number of critical geographers (see: Don Mitchell and others) have recognized the silencing of protest to be a result of this change.  In Elyria, Ohio, noted animal abuser and pet store owner Sam Mazzola has chosen to open stores in enclosed shopping malls.  Mazzola’s brutal practices are well-documented, and include killing ill but still-living puppies and kittens by leaving the animals in a commercial freezer, to avoid following laws requiring he provide veterinary care. 

Disgusted members of local law enforcement agencies frequently attempt to charge Mazzola, but find that Ohio’s neoliberal laws regarding animal cruelty embrace a laissez-faire approach to pet stores, allowing for consumers to decide if his practices are despicable enough to shop elsewhere.  Such a free-market approach to governance might work in this issue, except that Mazzola's stores are located in enclosed shopping malls, which provide an enforced buffer of private property that serves to silence protesters from informing potential customers of cruelty their purchase from Mazzola would support. 

Animal rights activists are limited in their picketing to a small slice of public land invisible to mall shoppers, across a major highway, enforced by the mall management’s threat of trespassing charges.  Mazzola has seized this buffer of private property to conduct his brutality in profitable peace.

This research was presented at the 2008 Joint Meeting of the ELDAAG and CAGONT in St. Catharine's, Ontario.  For a draft of the presentation given at that meeting, click here.

I have recently submitted this work for publication in a refereed journal.


RECENT RESEARCH projects

Post-Katrina New Orleans and The Colonial Present

Throughout the 20th Century, the United States government has assumed an ever-increasing role in the relief and recovery efforts following natural disaster events.  Indeed, throughout the last century, the government has shifted from a hands-off approach to a more active role.  That this shift corresponds with the evolution of the U.S. economy from an industrial to a post-industrial economy is no coincidence. In this paper, I argue that post-Katrina New Orleans constitutes one potent example of Derek Gregory’s notion of the Colonial Present, in which nature, not terror, legitimizes a neoconservative occupation of space. Specifically, I demonstrate that the federal government of the U.S. mobilized discourses of nature to legitimate the occupation of New Orleans as a post-disaster landscape.  This production of  ‘nature’ is blamed for the disruption the economic conditions conducive to investment and exchange.  The state, citing ‘nature’s fury,’ then intervened – through the mobilization of bureaucratic agencies and military muscle – to ensure the repair and continuance of the capitalist system.

This research represents one set of analyses from my PhD dissertation, which was defended on November 19, 2010.

This paper was presented at the 2008 Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers in Boston, Massachusetts.  It was presented part of a paper session entitled "Urban Environmental Reconfigurations.” A draft of my presentation notes is available here.

I am currently drafting a paper from the findings of this project, intended for publication in a refereed journal.


Putting the “Nature” in Natural Disaster: State Productions and Mitigations of Nature, the Creation of Feasible Capitalist Space and Resulting Environmental Injustice as Reflected by Hurricane Katrina’s Impact on New Orleans, Louisiana.

In this project, I am examining the discursive formations of "nature" deployed by the state in regards to natural disasters.  Before disasters in areas considered hazardous, the state employs certain discourses of implied safety, installing infrastructural mitigation, warning systems and other programs to ensure that spaces are safe for economic development from "nature."  Similarly, during and following disasters, the state's intervention in the affected society is supposedly legitimized by the realized threat of that produced "nature."
For this project, I am using the case of Hurricane Katrina to substantiate these theoretical claims.  Specifically, I will be exploring the state's actions and reactions to the threats of the hurricane to New Orleans, Louisiana.  I am driven to this research by the exceptionally unacceptable reactions to the tragedies of this event by multiple levels of government in the United States.  Because of Katrina's revelation of the problematic relationships between humans, the state and their environment, I am situating this study within the realms of environmental justice.

This is my PhD Dissertation, for which I successfully defended on November 19, 2010.  The members of my dissertation committee are:

  1. •James A. Tyner (adviser), Professor of Geography, Kent State University

  2. •Scott Sheridan, Associate Professor of Geography, Kent State University

  3. •Mandy Munro-Stasiuk, Associate Professor of Geography, Kent State University

  4. •Robert M. Schwartz, Associate Professor of Public Service Technology, The University of Akron.

I am intending to create several papers from this project (including “Post-Katrina New Orleans and the Colonial Present,” above) and ultimately publish a version of this as my first book.


Tornadoes and Mobile Homes in the Southeastern United States

A stereotype shared by many in the United States is the idea of a strong relationship between mobile homes and tornadic activity.  Though the origins of this stereotype are unknown, many possibilities may exist including a bias in media coverage or the fact that mobile homes are susceptible to weaker tornadoes that occur more frequently. 

Residents of mobile homes are usually less affluent than those of frame-built homes and have fewer resources to cope with the destruction of their homes.  Despite the knowledge that these homes are more susceptible and the heightened socioeconomic risk the residents of these homes face, little in terms of spatial coincidence between mobile homes and tornadoes has been studied.

In this study, tornado occurrences in the Southeastern United States between 1970 and 2000 were statistically compared to the locations of mobile homes in 2000 to determine if mobile homes were located in areas climatologically prone to tornadic activity.

This topic was the focus of my masters thesis at Ball State University, under the direction of Dr. Robert M. Schwartz. The thesis was defended in July of 2005.  The findings of this research were published in the Journal of Emergency Management:

  1. Shears, Andrew and Robert M. Schwartz.  2008.  Tornadoes and Mobile Homes: The Geographic Data of a Stereotype.  Journal of Emergency Management 6(1): 11-22.   The article can be found here, assuming you or your institution has a subscription to JEM’s web portal.

 

Updated: April 25, 2010

My full Curriculum Vitae is available here.