Gwilym Lucas Eades – författare

This book examines geographical names, place-names, and toponymy from philosophical and cultural evolutionary perspectives. Geographical name-tracking-networks (Geo-NTNs) are posited as tools for tracking names through time and across space, and for making sense of how names evolve both temporally and spatially. Examples from North and South American indigenous groups, the Canadian arctic, Wales, England, and the Middle East are brought into a theoretical framework for making sense of aspects of place-naming practices, beliefs, and systems. New geographical tools such as geographic information systems (GIS) and global positioning systems (GPS) are demonstrated to be important in the production and maintenance of robust networks for keeping names and their associated meanings viable in a rapidly changing world where place-naming is being taken up increasingly in social media and other new mapping platforms. The Geography of Names makes the case that geographical names are transmitted memetically (i.e. as cultural units, or memes) through what Saul Kripke called communication chains. Combining insights from Kripke with views of later Wittgenstein on language and names as being inherently spatial, the present work advances theories of both these thinkers into an explicitly geographical inquiry that advances philosophical and practical aspects of naming, language, and mapping.

Maps and cartography have long been used in the lands and resources offices of Canada's indigenous communities in support of land claims and traditional-use studies. Exploring alternative conceptualizations of maps and mapmaking, Maps and Memes theorizes the potentially creative and therapeutic uses of maps for indigenous healing from the legacies of residential schools and colonial dispossession. Gwilym Eades proposes that maps are vehicles for what he calls "place-memes" - units of cultural knowledge that are transmitted through time and across space. Focusing on Cree, Inuit, and northwest coast communities, the book explores intergenerational aspects of mapping, landscape art practice, and identity. Through decades of living in and working with indigenous communities, Eades has constructed an ethnographically rich account of mapping and spatial practices across Canada. His extended participation in northern life also informs this theoretically grounded account of journeying on the land for commemoration and community healing. Interweaving narrative accounts of journeys with academic applications for mapping the phenomena of indigenous suicide and suicide clusters, Maps and Memes lays the groundwork for understanding current struggles of indigenous youth to strengthen their identities and foster greater awareness of traditional territory and place.

This book examines science fiction, fantasy and horror novels utilizing a conceptual toolkit of the ten duties of speculative fiction. Building on previous work in the discipline of geography it will demonstrate the value of speculation in the visualisation of Anthropocene futures.The book presents insights into how novels produce specifically geographical knowledge about the world - spatialities - and how they use both literal maps and figurative counter-mappings to comment upon and shape futures. This book is about much more than science fiction. It covers areas of literature and para-literature associated with the "fantastic" and as such, looks also at works of fantasy and horror. The areas of overlap between these three categories of fantastic literature are posited as the most productive in the terms by which this book navigates, namely, spatiality. The book will explore, through the critical examination of a selection of key works of speculative fiction, how science-fictional and fantastic narratives are spatialized through both conceptual and literal mappings.This book is intended for both an academic and practitioner and for people interested in both producing scholarly commentary upon works of speculative fiction; and for those writing speculative fiction and novels.

This book examines science fiction, fantasy and horror novels utilizing a conceptual toolkit of the ten duties of speculative fiction. Building on previous work in the discipline of geography it will demonstrate the value of speculation in the visualisation of Anthropocene futures.The book presents insights into how novels produce specifically geographical knowledge about the world - spatialities - and how they use both literal maps and figurative counter-mappings to comment upon and shape futures. This book is about much more than science fiction. It covers areas of literature and para-literature associated with the "fantastic" and as such, looks also at works of fantasy and horror. The areas of overlap between these three categories of fantastic literature are posited as the most productive in the terms by which this book navigates, namely, spatiality. The book will explore, through the critical examination of a selection of key works of speculative fiction, how science-fictional and fantastic narratives are spatialized through both conceptual and literal mappings.This book is intended for both an academic and practitioner and for people interested in both producing scholarly commentary upon works of speculative fiction; and for those writing speculative fiction and novels.