Q & A with Christopher Gaffney
GI: Paper or digital map?
CG: Paper. I´ve yet to see a digital map laid out on a library table.
GI: GPS or mental map?
CG: Mental. GPS is mental anyway and I think we’re losing our ability to navigate the simplest environments with the navigation aides.
GI: Rural, suburban or urban?
CG: Definitely a preference for urban with access to the rural. Having grown up in Arlington, Texas I have had enough of suburbia for a lifetime.
GI: Mountain, river, desert, island? In order of preference.
CG: Mountainous island, with a spot on the beach where the river flows into the sea. Deserts are great to visit, but if I had a choice, the desert mountains of New Mexico and Chihuahua.
GI: If pre-colonial was ‘0’, colonial ‘5’, and post-colonial ’10’ what number would you give your geographical imagination?
CG: 8.5- the last 1.5 are very difficult to scrub out, especially living in Switzerland.
GI: By train, by foot, by bicycle or by car?
CG: Train for long trips, car for day trips, bike for everyday and touring, walking everywhere in cities.
GI: What is less important: Gross National Product or Gross National Happiness?
CG: GNP
GI: Favorite city name in Brazil?
CG: Açaílândia, Pará…always wanted to go there, the açaí must be fantastic.
GI: Paper notebook or laptop?
CG: Notebook
GI: What is the capital of Honduras?
CG: Tay-goose-see-galpa. Was once stuck in a prison there for a few hours.
GI: Does college basketball in the United States have a geography? Explain.
CG: Most definitely. There is a class and economic geography in the production and selection of players. The political-economy of the NCAA and the NBA reflect and recreate the political geography of sport in the USA. The incredible identity associations that form around college bball teams in the USA inform personal associations with place.
GI: Favorite geographical concept?
CG: Lefebvre´s production of space triad.
GI: Lastly, what does it mean for someone, some object, some place, some process to “have a geography”? Please explain through an example of your research or creative work.
CG: Habeo geographia, ergo sum. To be “written into the earth” is to leave a mark of our passing or to be mutually recognized by one’s environment. In my creative, journalistic and academic writing I have tried to express my vision of the world as a way of interacting and trying to shift it. There is no escape from geography, as far as I can tell, and to be able to recognize the ways in which our own lives are influenced by and can have influence on the way that the planet is written (or forms) is what motivates me to do my work as a geographer. Writing, teaching, and talking about the world is a means of geographic interpretation and engagement that all geographers have. Showing how things, places, ideas, flows, and processes are inextricable connected to the “geo” is what geographers are primarily engaged in. I tried to show how football stadiums are connected to the world in Temples of the Earthbound Gods and in Hunting White Elephants to demonstrate the multiple daily events that create something like the World Cup and Olympics.
Christopher Gaffney received his PhD in Geography from the University of Texas and taught at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In 2009, Gaffney received a Fulbright Scholarship to study the urban and social impacts of the World Cup and Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. From 2010-2014 he was a Visiting Professor in the Graduate School of Architecture and Urbanism at the Universidade Federal Fluminense. Gaffney´s research has focused on social movements in the context of mega-events, the urban dynamics of Rio de Janeiro, and the political economy of football. Much of this research was tied to a three year, national scale research project hosted at the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro that investigated the impacts of the World Cup in the twelve Brazilian host cities. His current research projects are focused on a mapping of social, political, and economic actors that are shaping the 2016 Olympics. Beginning in January 2015, Gaffney assumed the editorship of the Journal of Latin American Geography. He has recently moved to Zurich where he is a Senior Research Fellow in he Department of Geography. He is working on a book entitled Hunting White Elephants, based on his blog of the same name.