Table Of ContentCRITICAL TOPONYMIES
Re-materialising Cultural
Geography
Dr Mark Boyle, Department of Geography, National University of Ireland,
and Professor Donald Mitchell, Maxwell School, Syracuse University, USA
Nearly 25 years have elapsed since Peter Jackson’s seminal call to integrate
cultural geography back into the heart of social geography. During this time, a
wealth of research has been published which has improved our understanding
of how culture both plays a part in, and in turn, is shaped by social relations
based on class, gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, disability, age, sexuality and
so on. In spite of the achievements of this mountain of scholarship, the task
of grounding culture in its proper social contexts remains in its infancy. This
series therefore seeks to promote the continued significance of exploring the
dialectical relations which exist between culture, social relations and space
and place. Its overall aim is to make a contribution to the consolidation,
development and promotion of the ongoing project of re-materialising
cultural geography.
Other titles in the series
Cultural Landscapes of Post-Socialist Cities
Representation of Powers and Needs
Mariusz Czepczynski
ISBN: 978 0 7546 7022 3
Fear; Critical Geopolitics and Everyday Life
Edited by Rachel Pain and Susan J. Smith
ISBN: 978 0 7546 4966 3
Towards Safe City Centres?
Remaking the Spaces of an Old-Industrial City
Gesa Helms
ISBN: 978 0 7546 4804 8
In the Shadows of the Tropics
Climate, Race and Biopower in Nineteenth Century Ceylon
James S. Duncan
ISBN: 978 0 7546 7226 5
Critical Toponymies
The Contested Politics of Place Naming
Edited by
LAWRENCE D. BERG
University of British Columbia, Canada
and
JANI VUOLTEENAHO
University of Helsinki, Finland
First published 2009 by Ashgate Publishing
Published 2016 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
Copyright© 2009 Lawrence D. Berg and Jani Vuolteenaho
Lawrence D. Berg and Jani Vuolteenaho have asserted their right under the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editors of this work.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any
form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publishers.
Notices..
Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only
for identification and explanation without intent to infringe .
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Critical toponymies : the contested politics of place
naming. -- (Re-materialising cultural geography)
1. Names, Geographical--Etymology. 2. Names, Geographical--
Political aspects. 3. Toponymy.
I. Series II. Berg, Lawrence D. III. Vuolteenaho, Jani.
910'.014-dc22
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Berg, Lawrence D.
Critical toponymies: the contested politics of place naming / by Lawrence D. Berg and
Jani Vuolteenaho.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 978-0-7546-7453-5 (hardback) 1. Toponymy--Political aspects. 2
Names, Geographical--Political aspects. 3. Political geography. I. Vuolteenaho, Jani. II.
Title.
G100.5.B47 2009
910.01'4--dc22
2009016282
ISBN 9780754674535 (hbk)
Contents
List of Figures and Tables vii
Notes on Contributors ix
Acknowledgements xiii
1 Towards Critical Toponymies 1
Jani Vuolteenaho and Lawrence D. Berg
2 Naming as Norming: “Race,” Gender and the Identity Politics
of Naming Places in Aotearoa/New Zealand 19
Lawrence D. Berg and Robin A. Kearns
3 Naming the Past: The Significance of Commemorative Street
Names 53
Maoz Azaryahu
4 Street-naming and Nation-building: Toponymic Inscriptions of
Nationhood in Singapore 71
Brenda S.A. Yeoh
5 Naming and Placing the Other: Power and the Urban
Landscape in Zanzibar 85
Garth Andrew Myers
6 The Aloha State: Place Names and the Anti-conquest of
Hawai‘i 101
Douglas Herman
7 Irish Place Names: Post-colonial Locations 137
Catherine Nash
8 Proclaiming Place: Towards a Geography of Place Name
Pronunciation 153
Robin A. Kearns and Lawrence D. Berg
9 Street Names as Memorial Arenas: The Reputational Politics
of Commemorating Martin Luther King Jr in a Georgia County 179
Derek H. Alderman
vi Critical Toponymies
10 Indexing the Great Ledger of the Community: Urban House
Numbering, City Directories, and the Production of Spatial
Legibility 199
Reuben S. Rose-Redwood
11 Planning and Revamping Urban Toponymy: Ideological
Alterations in the Linguistic Landscaping of Vuosaari Suburb,
Eastern Helsinki 227
Jani Vuolteenaho and Terhi Ainiala
12 Toponymic Silence and Sámi Place Names during the Growth
of the Norwegian Nation State 253
Kaisa Rautio Helander
13 Virtual Place Naming, Internet Domains, and the Politics of
Misdirection: The Case of www.martinlutherking.org 267
Derek H. Alderman
Index 285
List of Figures and Tables
Figures
4.1 Jurong Industrial Estate: combining multiracialism and the
industrial work ethic in the naming of streets 78
5.1 Place names on the other side of Zanzibar 90
6.1 Social and political structure of traditional Hawaiian society 106
6.2 Hypothetical island, divided into large districts [moku] and
administrative units [ahupua‘a] 107
6.3 Hawaiian “spiritual ecology,” showing network of relationship
between the material world and the spiritual world in Hawaiian
cosmology 109
10.1 The number of US cities publishing a city directory for the first
time per year 205
10.2 The total number of US cities publishing a city directory per
year 205
10.3 The Philadelphia Block System and the emergence of
“theoretical” house numbers 212
10.4 The production of spatial legibility and the “business-like
arrangement” of house numbering 217
10.5 The “Visibility Test” and the making of a geo-coded world 218
11.1 The building stock in Vuosaari’s neighbourhoods in 2008 235
12.1 The county of Finnmark 254
12.2 A portion of a topographic map sheet Z4 on Finnmark 258
12.3 A portion of a topographic map sheet Z4 259
12.4 In division of land properties the lack of the pre-existing
Norwegian names was often solved by adding a Norwegian
variation word to the original Sámi name 261
Tables
5.1 Demographic shift in Zanzibar City, 1948–1988 94
6.1 Sources of Hawaiian place name words, by category 112
11.1 A sample of Vuosaari’s typical names, ratified prior to 1990 238
11.2 A sample of Vuosaari’s typical names, ratified since 1990 243
12.1 Changing the generic parts of the original Sámi compound
names into the Norwegian language was one of the linguistic
strategies to solve a lack of Norwegian names 261
Notes on Contributors
Terhi Ainiala is a senior researcher and head of the research department
at the Research Institute for the Languages of Finland in Helsinki. She is
an advanced researcher on proper names and has done her doctoral thesis
on changes in place names (1997). In addition, she is adjunct professor of
Finnish language at the University of Helsinki. Among her main research
interests are socio-onomastics, urban place names and theoretical and
methodological questions in onomastics. Between 2007 and 2009 she was in
charge of a research project “Transformation of the onomastic landscape in
the sociolinguistically diversifying neighbourhoods of Helsinki” (funded by
the Academy of Finland). Since 2008, she has been a member of the Board of
directors in the International Council of Onomastic Sciences.
Derek H. Alderman is Associate Professor in the Department of Geography at
East Carolina University, USA. He studies the intersection of place naming
with issues of public commemoration, symbolic resistance, African American
identity, and social justice. He also examines the Internet as a place of cultural
and political representation. Much of his work examines the politics of
naming streets and other places for Martin Luther King, Jr, viewing these
toponymic struggles as arenas for larger debates about race and power in
America. He is the co-author (with Owen Dwyer) of Civil Rights Memorials
and the Geography of Memory, published in 2008.
Maoz Azaryahu is Associate Professor of Geography at the University of
Haifa in Israel. His research includes the cultural and historical geographies
of national myths and public memory in Israel and in Germany, landscapes of
popular culture, and the cultural history of places and landscapes.
Lawrence D. Berg is co-director of the Centre for Social, Spatial and Economic
Justice at the University of British Columbia, Canada. He teaches in Women’s
and Gender Studies, Cultural Studies and Human Geography. Lawrence was a
founding editor of ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies,
and he remains a member of its editorial collective. Lawrence has published
widely on the politics of naming places, the cultural politics of knowledge
production, masculinities and geographies, and race and space. He is currently
undertaking research on the relationship between liberalism, neoliberalisation
and white supremacy. His work appears in journals such as AREA, Antipode,
Gender Place and Culture, Geoforum, Qualitative Inquiry, Progress in Human
Geography, Social and Cultural Geography and Society & Space.
