Geography Department > Faculty > Jon Goss
Jon Goss
Jon Goss, Professor
Research Interests: urban geography; landscapes of popular culture and
tourism; social theory; Southeast Asia.
Phone: (808) 956-7093
Email: jgoss@hawaii.edu
Education
B.A., Geography, Oxford University, England, 1982,
M.A., Geography, Oxford University, England, 1985.
Ph.D., Geography, University of Kentucky, 1990.
Research interests
My main area of publication at present is in the geography of popular culture, particularly analyzing landscapes of shopping, tourism and film. These research interests are incorporated into my undergraduate classes on Culture and the Environment, the Geography of Film, and Urban Geography. I am presently working on a co-authored book on "The Geography of Consumption" which will bring together some of these interests.
I maintain my original focus on things Southeast Asian, and have recently spent some sabbatical time researching environmental and socio-economic transformations in the small-scale fisheries of Ambon, Indonesia. This is part of a long-term project in cooperation with the School of Hawaiian, Asian and Pacific Studies (SHAPS). I have also done research on the sago complex and transmigration in Maluku, Indonesia, and occasionally write about international labor migration in Southeast Asia. I teach both undergraduate and graduate courses in the Geography of Southeast Asia. I also teach a course on Research Methods in Human Geography, and I am necessarily interested in ethical and political issues that arise in "foreign area" research.
My interests in social theory has led to research and publication on the representation of space and social life in Geographical Information Systems, and to a graduate seminar on Social Geography, called "Society and Space". I also often find myself teaching the the introductory graduate seminar "Theories and Concepts in Geography".
Geography is a diverse discipline which allows a broad range of interests and I find myself working with a diverse group of students. I would like to see more students working on representations of landscapes, peoples and places, bringing contemporary theoretical literatures to bear upon traditional cultural geography concerns.
Courses Taught
GEOG 151 Geography of Contemporary Society
GEOG 328 Environment and Culture
GEOG 356 Geography of Southeast Asia
GEOG 385 Research Methods in Human Geography
GEOG 421 Urban Geography
GEOG 425 Geography of Film
GEOG 654 Geography of Southeast Asia
GEOG 695 Concepts and Theories in Geography
GEOG 696 Research Design / Methods in Geography
GEOG 764 Social Geography (Society and Space)
Publications
1999. Once-upon-a-time in the Commodity World: An Unofficial Guide to Mall of America. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 89,1:45-75.
1999. Urbanization. In Leinbach, T.R. and Ulack, R. (eds) Southeast Asia: diversity and development. Totowa, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
1999. Consumption. In Cloke, P,. Crang, P., and Goodwin, M. (eds.) Introducing human geographies. London: Arnold, pp.114-121.
1999. "From Here to Eternity": Voyages of Re(dis)covery in Tourist Landscapes of Hawai‘i. In Woodcock, D. (ed) Hawai‘i: new geographies. Department of Geography, University of Hawaiíi.
1997. Representing and re-presenting the contemporary city. Urban Geography 18,1: 104-112.
1997. Focus groups as alternative research practice: experience with transmigrants in Indonesia (with Thomas R. Leinbach, 90%). Area 28,2: 115-123.
1996. Disquiet on the waterfront: nostalgia and utopia in the festival marketplace. Urban Geography 17,3: 221-247.
1996. Development and differentiation: a case study of a transmigration settlement in West Seram (with Thomas R. Leinbach, 90%). In Mearns, D. and Healey, C. (eds) Remaking Maluku: Social transformation in Eastern Indonesia. Darwin: Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Northern Territories University, pp.80-94.
1995. Conceptualizing International Labor Migration: A Structuration Perspective (with Bruce Lindquist, 60%). International Migration Review 29,2: 317-351.
1995. "We know where you are and we know where you live": the instrumental rationality of geodemographic information systems. Economic Geography 71,2: 171-198.
1994. Marketing the new marketing: the "strategic" discourse of advertising for Geodemographic Information Systems. In Pickles, J. (ed) Representations in an electronic age: geography, GIS and democracy. New York: Guildford Press.
1993. The magic of the mall: form and function in the retail built environment. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 83,1: 18-47.
1993. Placing the market and marketing the place: tourist advertising of the Hawaiian Islands, 1972-1992. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 11: 663-688.
1992. Transmigration in Maluku: notes on the present condition and future prospects. Cakalele 3: 87-98.
