Rethinking the RECAP: mapping the relational geographies of concentrated poverty and affluence in Lexington,Kentucky

The idea of concentrated poverty has long held a prominent place in understandings of racial and class inequality in American cities. While the spatial concentration of the poor is undoubtedly an important aspect of this story, concentrated poverty research suffers from a number of conceptual and methodological shortcomings. Through a case study of concentrated poverty and affluence in Lexington, Kentucky, this paper draws on relational socio-spatial theory and critical GIS in order to offer a constructive critique of conventional concentrated poverty research. The paper demonstrates that while concentrated poverty and affluence are both on the rise in recent years, concentrated affluence actually represents a more widespread problem within the city. At the same time, the paper visualizes how these processes are fundamentally interconnected and co-produced through property ownership, where the extraction of rents from areas of concentrated poverty works to simultaneously produce areas of concentrated affluence elsewhere in the city.     

South Central Farmers and Shadow Hills Homeowners: Land Use Policy and Relational Racialization in Los Angeles∗

This article draws from the recent relational turn in geography to develop a model of relational racialization. It argues that racism functions through the legal and discursive production of linked, interdependent, and unequal places. By comparing two social movements in Los Angeles, the South Central Farmers and the Shadow Hills homeowners, I examine two spatial discourses through which race is relationally reproduced: unequal abilities to mobilize the entitlements of “property rights” and unequal claims to represent hegemonic forms of local heritage. When materialized and naturalized in land use policy, these discourses re-create racial disparities in wealth and poverty and reproduce the qualitative nature of the physical places on which racism depends.     

Capital and conscience: poverty management and the financialization of good intentions in the San Francisco Bay Area

Social impact investing differentiates itself from traditional investing by claiming to create public social benefits alongside private profits. Globally, municipal governments are increasingly looking to this model to fund urban social services and poverty management. Through a case study of social impact investing in affordable housing in the San Francisco Bay Area, I deconstruct the financial and ideological underpinnings of this model to understand how private profits are drawn from local geographies of impoverishment. Analyzing social impact investing as a poverty politics reveals how it places preexisting, state-subsidized systems of poverty management into social impact investing portfolios, dividing impoverished spaces into new hierarchies of deservingness by incorporating private investors’ visions of what will help low-income tenants. But these processes also fail to subsume social life within housing financed in this manner, as tenant practices subverting those idealized by the state and investors persist alongside the generation of private profits.     

Internationalization of knowledge-intensive SMEs: The case of petroleum-related suppliers

Carlsson, E. & Dale, B. 2011. Internationalization of knowledge-intensive SMEs: The case of petroleum-related suppliers. Norsk Geografisk Tidsskrift–Norwegian Journal of Geography Vol. 65, 191–201. ISSN 0029-1951.

The internationalization of the knowledge-intensive industries, which predominantly consist of SMEs, has received increased attention recently. However, the existing body of theories of internationalization is not adequate for our understanding of multifaceted knowledge-intensive industries. The authors aim to shed light on knowledge-intensive SMEs’ internationalization and thereafter to illuminate recent theories with a relational perspective on firms and discuss their fruitfulness regarding the internationalization of SMEs of this type. Empirical data are drawn from a case study of 10 Norwegian firms, located in Trondheim, that are connected to the petroleum industry through subcontracting technology and services. The study indicates that the firms based their internationalization processes on a complex mix of modes or strategies, none of which were mutually exclusive. Planned strategies as well as coincidental processes and events seem to have influenced the internationalization decisions. It is argued that in order to understand the contingencies that may affect the process of internationalization, the concept of ‘preactivity’ may be a useful addition to the more well-known concepts of ‘reactive’ and ‘proactive’ strategies. Moreover, it is demonstrated that a relational approach is fruitful in order to understand internationalization processes among knowledge-intensive SMEs.     

Alternative framings of alternative food: A typology of practice

‘Alternative’ food initiatives (AFIs) are often interpreted as political movements, constructed as defiant alternatives to industrial agri‐food relations, and represented by a performance of singular alterity. This understanding of alternative collapses into a mere politics of identity, criticised in the literature for its oversimplification. In this paper, we utilise an established methodological framework that retains AFI diversity, to create a novel typology of AFIs by diverse and embodied practice rather than animating political project. In doing so, we point to the political potential for AFIs to ‘do’ food otherwise and make different worlds.     

跨学科视角下“地缘政治”概念及其研究范式

分析1982—2019年中国核心学术刊物和著作,梳理地理学和政治学对于"地缘政治"概念和研究范式的不同理解。研究发现:①地理学和政治学有很多相似之处,包括对"地缘战略"等概念的关注,对"大国安全与崛起"等议题的探讨,以及在分析框架中对案例和质性分析方法的强调等;②地理学和政治学有各具特色,地理学衍生"地缘环境"等概念,政治学也衍生"地缘安全"等概念;地理学在议题上更具空间和系统思维,对海洋地缘政治等话题更偏好,而政治学更强调时事性,侧重于分析时事政治及其地缘政治逻辑等;在分析框架上,地理学受计量革命的影响深远,对质性和定量分析都有所关注,而政治学对案例分析和质性分析的依赖度更高。这些发现说明了当前学科分工并没有改变地理学中的"地缘政治"概念和政治学中的"地缘政治"概念源出一脉的事实,同时也发现,其中的差异正是学科壁垒形成关键所在。     

Yanama budyari gumada: reframing the urban to care as Darug Country in western Sydney

ABSTRACT

In non-urban places of Australia, caring-as-Country frames natural resource management (NRM) as a practice of reciprocal, more-than-human care-giving (S. Suchet-Pearson, S. Wright, K. Lloyd, and L. Burarrwanga. 2013. ‘Caring as Country: towards and ontology of co-becoming in natural resource management.’ Asia Pacific Viewpoint 54 (2): 185–197). Caring-as-Country is an idea that encapsulates the entangled, reciprocal relationships that people have with, and as part of, agentic more-than-human worlds. In more urbanised places, however, practices of caring-as-Country are often unrecognised, undervalued and undocumented. In this paper we make explicit practices of caring, healing and rejuvenation at Yellomundee Regional Park, Darug Country in western Sydney. Our discussion of care, entanglement and reciprocity at Yellomundee focuses on two specific activities that embody caring-as-Country: the return of cultural burns and sustained presence on Country in the form of Darug-led culture camps. The Darug principle of yanama budyari gumada, to ‘walk with good spirit’, embodies and invites new ways of thinking and practising intercultural caring-as-Country in heavily colonised, urban places like Yellomundee. As we document the practices arising from this invitation, we consider its far-reaching implications for NRM and planning, and we expand on the importance of geographies of care for unceded urban places.     

Changing bodies, spaces, places and politics: Feminist geography at the University of Waikato

Abstract: ‘Place matters’ in the production of knowledge. This article examines the production of feminist geographical knowledge at a particular place – the Department of Geography, Tourism and Environmental Planning at the University of Waikato. Feminist geography at Waikato represents a nexus of international, national, regional, and local politics. It represents the efforts, personalities, political and personal motivations of particular individuals, at particular times, in a particular space. While international trends are important, they can also mask the unfolding of events in different ways in ‘other’ places.     

State‐led talent return migration programme and the doubly neglected ‘Malaysian diaspora’: Whose diaspora,what citizenship,whose development?

This paper questions the assumptions of ‘diaspora’, ‘citizenship’ and ‘development’ underlying diaspora strategies targeting a specific pool of overseas Malaysian ‘talent’ migrants. I examine the Malaysian state's discursive attempts to construct a carefully contained economic ‘diaspora'—the ‘Malaysian diaspora'—through its talent return migration programme. In this process, there is a portion of the ‘Malaysian diaspora’, especially non‐bumiputeras (sons of soil), who are doubly neglected and excluded: first, from access to full and equal citizenship (which arguably contributed to their emigration in the first place); and second, from eligibility and recognition to participate in Malaysia's talent return migration programme. However, recent political activism calling for electoral reform and overseas voting rights challenges state‐constructed visions of the ‘diaspora’ and their expected roles in advancing ‘development’. This paper concludes by highlighting questions raised by the Malaysian case, linking these explicitly to how diaspora strategies—as they have been conceived, practised and contested—challenge the broader Migration and Development paradigm.     

Laos and the making of a 'relational' resource frontier

This paper seeks to reconsider the contemporary relevance of the resource frontier, drawing on examples of nature's commodification and enclosure under way in the peripheral Southeast Asian country of Laos. Frontiers are conceived as relational zones of economy, nature and society; spaces of capitalist transition, where new forms of social property relations and systems of legality are rapidly established in response to market imperatives. Customary property rights on the resource frontier can be seized by powerful actors in crucial political moments, preparing the territorial stage for more intensive phases of resource commodity production and accumulation. Relational frontier space is understood through the work of geographers such as Doreen Massey, who views the production of space as 'constituted though the practices of engagement and the power-geometries of relations'. In Laos, a twenty-first century resource frontier is being driven by new corporate investments in natural resources, and a supporting array of land reform programmes. The paper focuses on both the material and representational aspects of the production of the resource frontier, through policy and discourse analysis, and village level research in Laos' Khammouane province. By rethinking a dualist and hierarchical-scaled imaginary of frontier places, both rural people and local ecologies are shown to be key actors, in a complex, relational reproduction of frontier zones. An emerging Lao spatial and political assemblage – a form of 'frontier-neoliberalism'– is shown as producing dramatic changes in socio-natural landscapes, as well as new patterns of marginalisation and livelihood insecurity for a vulnerable rural population.     

Learning about Feminism in Digital Spaces: online methodologies and participatory mapping

Collaborative online research offers opportunities and constraints for geographers. This article critically appraises a collaborative research process that we used to illuminate spatial and political dynamics of feminism contained within the online group ‘Destroy the Joint’ (DTJ). A mostly Australian initiative of over 74 000 Facebook members, DTJ aims to end sexism and misogyny in multiple ways. It operates as a meeting place, discussion forum, and umbrella organisation for numerous micro-campaigns that change in response to broader social, cultural and political contexts, and occur in online and offline spaces. We formed a collaborative research agreement with the moderators of DTJ to reflect on its work, asking participants to put themselves on a map and complete a survey. Participatory GIS and survey-based research operated in the real and the more-than-real spaces that contain paradoxical possibilities. We use the term more-than-real to highlight the excesses of digital spaces: the affect that social media generates, and is generated by, characterises the more-than-real, where extremes in productive and corrosive relations can permeate. Survey results showed diverse appreciations of DTJ's multiple activist tactics (across seemingly ‘superficial’ and ‘meaningful’ interventions), and creative ideas for future campaigns. Mapping revealed both dispersed networks and urban activist concentrations. Nevertheless, after an initial peak of interest and enthusiasm for reflecting on DTJ, the reporting back of research findings to DTJ followers did not garner significant interest. This article tracks that collaborative research trajectory. Intentions to build a hybrid research collective were not realised because of how the more-than-real affords possibilities and limitations. The politics of ‘giving-back’ within the more-than-real are critically engaged with in this appraisal of an experimental online collaboration.     

贫困地理学的基础理论与学科前沿

中国的减贫实践证明,地理学在服务国民经济建设和支撑减贫瞄准与扶贫决策中发挥着重要学科价值。然而,由于基本概念模糊、基础理论滞后、学科体系不健全,“理论贫困”成为制约贫困地理学创新发展的最大短板。本文在解析贫困核心概念的基础上,系统剖析了贫困地理学作为一门分支学科的学科性质、基础理论、研究对象、研究内容与框架,提出了未来贫困地理研究中的前沿领域。结果表明：① 贫困是指与一定标准相比,人们所享受的各种福利处于劣势、缺少或不足的状态,具有多维性、区域性和动态性特征。在测量标准上,绝对贫困强调“极小值”,相对贫困强调“平均值”。在瞄准对象上,个体贫困关注个人福利或能力的缺失与不足,区域贫困则是从空间视角关注个体福利背后的“区域福利”。② 贫困地理学是一门研究贫困地区的形成、分布、地理特征及其与环境的关系和反贫困措施的学科,以贫困地域系统为研究对象,以“贫困—环境”关系为研究核心,具有综合性、交叉性和区域性特点。贫困地理学的基础性理论包括空间贫困理论、区域贫困理论和多维贫困理论,其研究内容与框架包括3个维度、2大要素、2类对象、2大标准。③ 贫困地理学需要进一步强化贫困地域系统演化、区域贫困测度、相对贫困瞄准、贫困监测模拟、减贫效应评估、区域可持续发展模式等方面的基础研究。     

Imagining the borderlands: Contending stories of a resource frontier in Muang Sing

Muang Sing in Luang Namtha province, an administrative district of northern Laos bordering Myanmar and China, has been portrayed by the Lao government and international development agencies as a ‘poor’ rural region in need of development. To developers, Muang Sing's remoteness from major towns and the livelihoods of ethnic people such as the Akha in the uplands based on swidden agriculture and opium production characterized ‘poverty’. To address this rural poverty, state and development agencies devised land use zoning that would demarcate and regulate various land uses in line with a rural development plan for the district. This vision for regulated development began to go awry, however, as farmers and traders in Muang Sing launched their own rapid social and economic changes. In contrast to the official image of a backward rural district in need of outside assistance, this paper portrays farmers and local entrepreneurs of the Muang Sing borderlands as actively transforming their lives and agricultural landscapes. This paper challenges the official version of a remote, poor district untouched by regional trade through a focus on narratives of local people. Ethnographic research reveals the dynamic micro‐processes of agrarian transformation during recent decades to highlight the centrality of borderland people in reworking their lives and agricultural landscapes through cross‐border relationships in China.     

“噪”起来：广州音乐现场的文化地理研究

将广州的音乐现场看作一个承载制造“噪音”的场所,以6个现场音乐酒吧为具体案例,通过定性分析的方法探讨音乐现场如何连结不同人和不同的地方,以及如何被建构成一个“动态”的空间和“越轨”的地方。研究结果表明：音乐现场作为一种动态的物质文化空间,由经营者、组织者、音乐人和乐迷通过社会实践共同建构而成,成为所有音乐演出参与者之间的关系及其与不同地理尺度之间关系的节点;音乐现场作为一个“越轨”的地方,将音乐现场的“局内人”和“局外人”区分。上述结论回应和丰富了现有音乐地理研究的内容和成果,并对中国超越“看的方式”进行文化地理研究提供了新的切入点。     

Downgrading – An overlooked reality in African cities: Reflections from an indigenous neighborhood of Accra,Ghana

African cities contain a range of low-income ethnic and cultural enclaves that defy conventional ‘slum’ typecasts and intervention guidelines. Further, new forms of urbanization (e.g. gated communities and informal settlements) have received heavy emphasis in recent urban geographic research. Such research emphases have many unintended consequences; one of which is that traditional indigenous neighborhoods in the older city are glossed over. This paper focuses on urban downgrading in Korle Gonno, a prominent and established indigenous community in Accra, Ghana. Using mixed-method data (including surveys), the results illustrate that a traditional neighborhood encounters many of the same dimensions of urban poverty as the more famed slums in the city, yet it experiences different poverty trajectories. We argue that the prevailing slum profiling techniques fall short of capturing these trajectories; more nuanced approaches that capture continuity and discontinuity with past and present socioeconomic processes are necessary. Attention must be rebalanced toward understanding the deterioration of these neighborhoods if policymakers, planners and urban theorists are to obtain a comprehensive picture of poverty dynamics and appropriate interventions in African cities.     

发展地理学视角下欠发达地区贫困的地方分异与治理

在梳理发展地理学的发展过程、基本理论、分析模式和方法的基础上,结合中国解决区域性整体贫困目标和可持续发展本地化与减贫的学术探索,构建了欠发达地区贫困的发展地理学分析框架,建立了由经济地理资本、社会地理资本、文化地理资本、生态地理资本和政治地理资本构成的“五位一体”地理资本指标体系,提出了数据处理集成方法和技术流程,系统分析欠发达地区贫困的地方分异与治理方案。实证研究显示：① 地理探测可以确定作用地方贫困的主导地理资本,各主导地理资本对贫困发生率的决定力L_{A, P} ≥ 0.15;② 在不同主导地理资本作用下,5个单维地理资本指数及其合成的区域地理资本指数地方分异明显,存在阻隔和时滞特征;③ 贫困的地方分异可分为经济地理资本约束型、经济—社会地理资本约束型、经济—社会—生态地理资本约束型、经济—社会—文化—生态地理资本约束型4大类共7小类;④ 立足发展特征,挖掘地方动力,提出不同贫困分异类型的地方治理对策和模式。乡村振兴和2020年的减贫转向,应重视欠发达地区贫困的空间分异与空间扩散、空间整合的综合研究,为可持续发展本地化与减贫提供发展地理学解决方案。     

MOUNTAIN GEOGRAPHY

ABSTRACT. Although mountains have been studied for centuries, they are the subject of only a slender body of formal literature. Instead, those who study high places in specific regions construct working definitions and continually recraft bibliographies. Studies of mountains often focus on comparatively limited themes: physical processes, ecology, or sacred spaces, for example. As scholars become interested in environmental degradation and the development of mountains, there is all the more need to develop a mountain geography literature that expands the study of mountains to include the political, economic, cultural, and social dimensions of their environments and peoples. Three areas‐cultural geography, political ecology, and conservation theory‐are suggested for additional research.     

国外旅游发展与政治信任研究进展与启示

信任或者不信任的动态关系变化对于理解现代社会、社会关系和发展过程十分重要。然而已有研究都表明政治信任日趋下降,危及到政府的合法性地位和可持续发展。旅游作为促进地方发展的一个工具,对政府工作和政治稳定具有重要影响,但是旅游发展与政治信任的关系尚未得到应有的关注。文章在概述社会科学中关于政治信任相关解释的基础上,结合对西方学者实际案例的解读,梳理出国外旅游发展与政治信任的主要研究议题,包括旅游发展中影响政治信任的因素、政治信任与旅游支持度、旅游发展特殊背景下的政治信任与一般意义上的政治信任、政治信任与旅游政治4个方面,并论述其对于国内研究的借鉴与启示作用。旅游研究中的政治信任问题并非无关紧要,相反,随着旅游大众化时代的到来,很多地方已经把旅游业视为带动社会经济发展的主导产业和支柱产业,赋予其应对宏观经济挑战、带动就业和脱贫致富的政治使命;而政治信任关乎到这些目标的实现,更关乎到社会稳定和政府的合法性地位。把政治信任引入到旅游研究中来,为国内的旅游研究带来理论新视角和实践层面的新思考。     

Musical Words, Musical Worlds

The recent ‘cultural turn’ in human geography has neglected music and its impact in the construction and understanding of landscape and the politics of place. Using the songs of the rockgroup U2 to show how geographic imagery is used for political purposes, this paper attempts to ‘breakthe silence’ of contemporary cultural geography.     

中国残疾人扶贫效率的时空演变及优化路径

运用DEA模型、MI指数及GIS空间分析等方法,探究2012-2016年中国残疾人扶贫效率的时空演化特征与类型,分析残疾人扶贫模式及优化路径,结果显示:①2012-2016年,全国残疾人扶贫效率整体处于中上等水平,残疾人扶贫高效率区由粤桂两地、环渤海区向东南沿海、京津冀地区以及中部省市转化,扶贫中等效率区分布形态由"小...