How deep is your love – Of nature? A psychological and spatial analysis of the depth of feelings towards Dutch nature areas

The most binding nature protection policy in the Netherlands and the EU primarily designates areas based on ecological value, ensuring their sustained protection. Of less concern to these policies are the current and future needs of the average citizen, who is experiencing increases in education, income, and health. This paper argues that although existing policies protect biodiversity needs, the spatialemotional needs of the public are of similarly high importance. We analyze the spatial and emotional characteristics of favorite natural places in the Netherlands selected on the Hotspotsmonitor survey. Content analysis of the open question, "Why is this place important to you?" identified three categories: peace & quiet, explore, and peak. These were mapped using GIS to identify predominant hotspots and compared against the most binding nature protection policy - Natura 2000. The important societal benefits of augmenting ecologically based nature protection policies with emotional valuation are discussed.     

Emotion and politics in a mediated public sphere: Questioning democracy,responsibility and ethics in a computer mediated world

This article debates the extent to which particular forums of the internet enable democratic discussions around social and political issues, developing the interest in cyber-geographies from the late 1990s and early 2000s. The paper investigates discussions around abortion in the UK media, and public response(s) to such discussions. The analysis originates from an article written for the Huffington post by political editor Medhi Hasan and deconstructs subsequent reactions to this through mainstream media and news sites, comments pages on these sites, and reactions on Twitter. We assess the democratic potential of these types of media, developing Habermasian notions of the public sphere by analyzing the extent to which specific forums within the internet sphere play a role in facilitating emotions in political discussions. We also discuss the impact of individual narrative and personal perspective and its role within this quasi-political space. In so doing, we question the extent to which these types of ‘new media’, as a forum for public discussion and interaction, enable democratic deliberation by assessing the engagement between users of this sphere, and the nature of those discussions. This presents an assessment of computer mediated communication as a new way of ‘doing’ politics through its absence and presence(s) and through ideas of distance, moral responsibility, and an understanding of ethics and care at-a-distance, presenting a holistic account of how we might envision these debates playing out.     

(Re)Connecting spatial literacy with children’s geographies: GPS,Google Earth and children’s everyday lives

This article sets out an agenda for research that (re)connects research on children’s geographies and childhood studies with studies of spatial literacy. Research on children’s environmental cognition and, latterly, spatial literacy, has been artificially and problematically separated from the majority of research in childhood studies. Our fundamental aim in this article is to argue for – and to evidence – greater attention to how spatial literacy and children’s everyday lives are embedded in one another. To support our broader call for a synthetic research agenda, we draw on some more focussed, qualitative empirical material taken from a large-scale project about children’s mobilities and everyday lives in newly-built urban communities. Our analysis focuses upon children’s interpretations of Global Positioning Systems (GPS) tracks of their mobilities, set against a background of Google Earth imagery. In doing so, we showcase one suite of ways in which research on environmental cognition and children’s geographies might proceed together. We demonstrate that children not only displayed analytical skills (for instance, in relation to scaling effects and pattern recognition) but that many also exercised higher-level, critical analysis, especially in relation to errors on Google Earth outputs. Simultaneously, we interrogate the recursive articulation of a range of qualitative indicators of spatial literacy, with children’s everyday mobilities, routines, emotions and memories. The paper analyses how new conceptual languages and technologies being propounded by spatial literacy scholars could afford a more enriched understanding of key contemporary concerns for children’s geographers, and, recursively, what spatial literacy scholars might gain from engaging with (especially qualitative) research prompted by those concerns.     

Marine-space assemblages: Towards a different praxis of fisheries policy and management

In this paper, we discuss the intent and purpose of Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation Management Act/National Standard 8 and examine how it reinforces problematized conceptualizations of marine-space(s). We then discuss shifts in sensibilities around marine-space, especially with concern to notions of fishing communities and their inclusion in planning and management processes. Through this, we underscore a problematic pervasive in conceptual models used to account for relations between humans and marine-spaces and how this contributes to failures to fulfill regulatory responsibilities to fishing communities. We then draw on new materialist insights into assemblages and affect and emotion to offer alternative ways to think about, research, approach, and manage marine-spaces through more nuanced and informed considerations of their broad, complex, and ever-present human and socio-cultural components.     

Climate anxiety: Conceptual considerations,and connections with climate hope and action

Climate anxiety is a phenomenon which raises growing attention. Based on a national survey of climate-related feelings and behaviors (N = 2070) in Finland, we analyzed and discussed the concept of climate anxiety and its relationship with hope and action. We found that all our measures for climate anxiety (including worry and some stronger manifestations of anxiety) and hope (including efficacy beliefs) correlated positively with each other and climate action. Furthermore, climate anxiety and hope explained unique parts of variance in self-reported climate action. We propose that, in line with the Extended Parallel Process model (EPPM) that was used as a framework, the interplay of emotions needs to be considered when studying and explaining their effect on climate action. In conclusion, the results provide support for seeing climate anxiety and hope as intertwined and adaptive feelings, which could be needed to motivate humankind in finding solutions to climate change.     

Campus sustainability at the edges: Emotions,relations, and bio-cultural connections

The university campus is often considered a key site for the development of environmental sustainability initiatives. At the same time, the concept and practice of sustainability has been critiqued for its lack of conceptual clarity and its proneness to co-optation by neoliberal institutions and organizations. Using a just sustainabilities framework, this article strives to respond to this tension by exploring the possibility of a campus sustainability at the edges, one that is interested in engaging the broader socio-spatial context of a university as well as in tapping into the emotional and relational realms of fostering more sustainable socio-ecological assemblages. Through a case study analysis of the Philadelphia Urban Creators (PUC), a youth-led organization operating within the Temple University-North Philadelphia interface, I find that grassroots sustainability actors possess important knowledge for understanding how sustainability can be a tool for restoring emotional affinity with the environment as well as for enacting transformative socio-ecological change in the urban university context and beyond. Through these explorations, my purpose is twofold: (1) to envision a more diverse, inclusive, and meaningful campus sustainability model that seeks to confront urban crises such as gentrification, racialized poverty, and mass incarceration, and (2) to incorporate emotion and affect geographies into the just sustainabilities research agenda.     

Anxiety, epistemology, and policy research “behind enemy lines”

Based on my political opposition to neoliberal policies, I elected to conduct dissertation research on a World Bank-funded land policy in Guatemala. This paper explores emotional aspects of this work. Specifically, I describe my fear that research subjects would accuse me of being a spy. I then describe my efforts to cope with these fears and the ways that fear and coping influenced my meaning-making work.