Sallie A. Marston

Professor, Geography & Regional Development

Ph.D. 1986, Geography, University of Colorado
M.A. 1982, Geography, University of Colorado
A.B. 1974, Geography and Psychology, Clark University

Phone: (520) 621-3903
FAX: (520) 621-2889
E-mail: marston@email.arizona.edu

Harvill Building, Box #2
Tucson, AZ 85721
USA

Curriculum Vitae

Research

My work is located at the intersection of socio-spatial theory and the state particularly with respect to political identity. At a theoretical level, I have attempted to move toward a greater understanding of the way that space mediates and is mediated by the relationship between politics and culture. And while I have interrogated politics and culture differently over the years, I have maintained a commitment to tackling conceptual issues surrounding space and social practice. Specifically, I have been interested in how the state, or political identities related to the state, are made, remade and transformed in the intimate spaces of everyday life through the meaning systems generated by identity and difference.

At the empirical level I have focused on everyday life and the seemingly mundane practices that constitute it. I look at those practices as they are shaped by and shape the larger political context in which they occur. My main empirical questions have attended to: who has access to certain spaces and how access is negotiated through state policies, practices and rules. I have investigated a range of empirical cases over the last two decades in order to explore the relationship between society, space and the state. My current research project, in collaboration with John Paul Jones, III and Keith Woodward, extends my previous work through the theoretical and methodological development of something we have called a "site ontology". The site is an immanent (self-organizing) event-space that is dynamically composed of bodies, doings and sayings. Sites are differentiated and differentiating singularities that unfold dynamically but also hang together through the coming together or force relations. We are currently involved in specifying how politics unfold in the site and how to explore these politics methodologically.

Project Involvement

• Site Ontology
• Two Undergraduate Textbooks: World Regional Geography: Places, Peoples, Environments and Places and Regions in Global Context: Human Geography