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If I could hazard a contribution to the critical geography discussion, which may be off-base as I am a new subscriber, perhaps one element of the debate surrounding critical geography should be along the following lines...First, in the (now probably ancient) localities debate, scholars like Neil Smith and David Harvey projected a metric related to "transformative" politics, what some would call "revolutionary." Some people are unsatisfied with what they see as "transformative-bating," because it may seem like an "idealistic" projection which lambasts the good will of various projects, like gardening. I think that there may be a third approach to this that provides a means for getting around this stale-Miliband "revolution vs. reform," approach. The third approach would be to ask a series questions. First, how can alternative social forms be extended, e.g. even community gardens under siege? Second, what are the barriers to this extension? Third, how can the barriers be overcome? I believe the objections of one camp are that "think global, act local," leaves social relations trapped at a limited scale of activity where alternative social relations can not be extended. But, turning to the gardening example, perhaps we could forge networks of gardening exchanges, link gardens to cooperatives and progressive media, etc. In this fashion, by acting local one would simultaneously act globally. There are some good examples of this, e.g. the Equal Exchange cooperative and Twining alternative trade groups. A major problem, however, is that foundations often do not fund activists to take the next step, the step that allows local activity to be linked to more comprehensive activity, transformative activity. There was an excellent piece on this by Michael Shuman in the Nation Magazine (Jan 12/19, 1998, p. 11-15), on this regard. If one turns to Shuman's piece, it becomes clear that academics and activists have much in common in their common interests in projecting a theory and practice of extending alternative social relations. I could say more about this, but I think I may have overstepped my soundbite allotment.... Dr. Jonathan M. Feldman Department of Technology and Social Change Linkoping University S-581 83 Linkoping, Sweden PHONE: 46 13 285619 FAX 46 13 284461 EMAIL [log in to unmask] http:777www.tema.liu.se/sirp/jonfe.htm %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%