GeoforumPub Date : 2025-02-13DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104222
Alexander Osipov
{"title":"Staging indigeneity and autochthony in Northern Eurasia","authors":"Alexander Osipov","doi":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104222","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104222","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The article analyzes the interaction between autochthony, or ethnic groups’ claims of first occupancy, and the promotion of indigenous rights. The article addresses this interconnection in Russia and Ukraine and considers the stakeholders’ major modes of framing and political opportunities structure in both countries. The empirical findings do not prove the assumption that demands and actions based on autochthony and indigeneity inevitably reinforce each other and boost political contentions. The author identifies three major cases of such interactions and concludes that most actors refrain from promoting ethnic autochthony and demonstrate reluctance in exploiting the rhetoric of indigenous rights. Russian government and ethnic activists have jointly marginalized autochthony and in fact tacitly decoupled it in public discourses from indigenous issues. Russia despite its comprehensive legal framework effectively curtails indigenous rights and confines them to the protection of subsistence economy. Ukraine, previously being reluctant to pursue an indigenous policy and to support autochthonous claims, after 2014 has been using indigenous agenda and conflating it with autochthony to contest Russia’s control over Crimea. The existing discursive and normative framework of indigeneity does not necessarily entail and fuel territorial claims but rather provides governments and non-state actors with room for de-politicizing maneuvers.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":12497,"journal":{"name":"Geoforum","volume":"160 ","pages":"Article 104222"},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2025-02-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143402440","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
GeoforumPub Date : 2025-02-13DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104209
Savannah Cox
{"title":"The Infrastructural Time of resilience: Accounting for new (and old) forms of government in the South African grid","authors":"Savannah Cox","doi":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104209","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104209","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Temporality has long, if implicitly, structured geographic research on resilience—whether by underwriting scholarly endeavors to show how resilience aligns with late 20th century neoliberal modes of intervention or to suggest that resilience demarcates a recent shift beyond them. It is evident, however, that a range of “old” and “new” governmental rationalities can be observed in resilience measures. To account for that simultaneity, I suggest that researchers turn to infrastructure. Doing so attunes us to the ensemble of historically-situated ethical and political projects that, as they are attached to and enacted through materials, create the complex political and physical terrains in and on which present-day resilience measures act. It also allows us to trace how the time horizons of infrastructure give shape to specific (de)centralized, collectivizing, and individualizing forms of resilience, which can be associated with a range of “old” and “new” governmental rationalities. I make this argument through a case study of the South African electricity system and measures taken to address its ongoing breakdowns. I show how the temporalities of finance, politics, development, and electricity have shaped the contemporary problem space in which resilience measures intervene, as well as the limited and interdependent forms that resilience is taking. In doing so, the paper advances new accounts of, and ways to account for, resilience today. Specifically, it reads contemporary resilience measures as temporal projects: insofar as these measures act on places, they also act on and through time.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":12497,"journal":{"name":"Geoforum","volume":"160 ","pages":"Article 104209"},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2025-02-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143402439","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
GeoforumPub Date : 2025-02-12DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104220
Ana Lucia Britto
{"title":"Neoliberal changes and perspectives for financialization in the management of Brazil’s water and sanitation services","authors":"Ana Lucia Britto","doi":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104220","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104220","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Over the past three decades, water services in many countries have been transformed by the growing influence of and reliance on private finance, through processes of financialization, commodification, marketization and privatization. This paper examines how financialization has become embedded in the provision of water in Brazil. The privatisation of water and sanitation services was first introduced as a national police in 1995, but only few contracts were signed. Within a new neoliberal policy context of Bolsonaro’s government Brazil’s water supply sector has undergone significant changes, facilitated and enacted within a new national legal framework, from 2020, which establishes greater incentives for private sector participation in water service provision and reduces financial support for public services. Furthermore, the National Bank for Social and Economic Development (BNDES) which plays a significant role in Brazil’s economy, being responsible for long-term financing and investment in various sectors, has organized ‘concession’ projects, that combines different geographical areas into ‘concession blocks’ in a strategy that aims to combine wealthier regions with those that severely lack services, aiming to make the latter more attractive to the private sector. There was a major acceleration in privatization. The paper analyses these on-going processes through the lens of a detailed case study of the water and sanitation privatization process in Rio de Janeiro state. The analyse reveals two main features of the changes currently taking place in the water supply sector: a shift in the private companies shareholding structure, including a strong participation of financial capital and the importance of national government policies and actors in shaping this new financialization process.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":12497,"journal":{"name":"Geoforum","volume":"160 ","pages":"Article 104220"},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2025-02-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143386639","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
GeoforumPub Date : 2025-02-12DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104229
Karen P.Y. Lai
{"title":"Atlas of finance: Seeing and communicating the (financial) world differently","authors":"Karen P.Y. Lai","doi":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104229","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104229","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This commentary highlights the achievements of the Atlas as a landmark publication for financial geography. In doing so, I focus on three aspects of the Atlas that generates new (or renewed) debates and engagements with how finance matters for people, society and the environment: (i) seeing the invisible; (ii) finance and inequalities; and (iii) criticality. I also argue that the Atlas should make us reflect on our own research and intellectual practice, and what may be needed for us to communicate our research findings and arguments much more widely and effectively.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":12497,"journal":{"name":"Geoforum","volume":"160 ","pages":"Article 104229"},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2025-02-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143394458","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
GeoforumPub Date : 2025-02-07DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104221
Leonora Kleppa Stærfeldt , Paul Austin Stacey
{"title":"Environmental governance and political contestation in contexts of illegal small-scale gold mining in Ghana","authors":"Leonora Kleppa Stærfeldt , Paul Austin Stacey","doi":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104221","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104221","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Ghana experiences significant environmental harm from illegal small-scale gold mining. Despite government attempts to halt operations, countless sites exist around the country – enjoying local legitimacy, operating with seeming political impunity, and playing increasing roles in both local and national political economies. This article focuses on the environmental governance challenges and the underlying political organisational drivers, analysed from the perspectives of political settlement theory and contentious politics. This shows environmental governance challenges arising from the Ghana Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) occupying an inferior position in relation to more powerful and competing state entities and endeavouring to fulfil mandates in highly contentious local social and political fields. Accordingly, we argue that challenges to environmental regulation are based in efforts to establish ruling coalition stability amidst fierce political and institutional competition, and which results in an informalisation of resource governance and lack of structural constraints on powerful actors.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":12497,"journal":{"name":"Geoforum","volume":"160 ","pages":"Article 104221"},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2025-02-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143360214","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
GeoforumPub Date : 2025-02-06DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104218
Sina Hardaker
{"title":"Platformizing structural policy instruments? Fostering (infrastructural) power in the context of Digital Free Trade Zones","authors":"Sina Hardaker","doi":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104218","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104218","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Digital platforms are revolutionizing various sectors by altering existing framework conditions and reshaping the geography of economic activities. This study investigates the role of digital platforms in the establishment and operationalization of Digital Free Trade Zones (DFTZs) in Southeast Asia, with a particular focus on Malaysia. By conceptualizing DFTZs as an innovative evolution of Special Economic Zones (SEZs), the paper explores how digital platforms like Alibaba extend their infrastructural power through the strategic integration of digital and physical infrastructures. It examines how the platform partners with governments to create ecosystems that facilitate cross-border e-commerce, potentially support SMEs, and mediate global supply chains. Drawing on expert interviews, the study uncovers the dual role of digital platforms as technological enablers and geopolitical actors, shaping trade policies and regional development. This paper advances theoretical discourse on platformization and infrastructural power, providing insights into how digital platforms redefine governance and economic dependencies in the global digital economy.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":12497,"journal":{"name":"Geoforum","volume":"160 ","pages":"Article 104218"},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2025-02-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143259498","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
GeoforumPub Date : 2025-02-06DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104215
Deniz Yildiz, Chloe Lucas, Aidan Davison
{"title":"Framing the flames: Addressing public disengagement through fear framings in Australian bushfire preparedness campaign videos","authors":"Deniz Yildiz, Chloe Lucas, Aidan Davison","doi":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104215","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104215","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>As bushfire seasons lengthen and intensify due to climate change, Australian fire agencies express concern about widespread public complacency and unpreparedness for bushfire. Agencies address this problem through public communication, relying particularly on short-form video campaigns in doing so. Building on previous quantitative analysis of Australian bushfire preparedness video campaigns, we present an in-depth qualitative examination of four videos that headlined fire agencies’ public communication campaigns between 2015 and 2022. We identify a dominant survivalist frame which assumes that public fear of bushfire is a precondition to rational preparation for bushfire risk informed by agency expertise. Preparedness is presented as a survivalist response to imminent threats to life and private property. This frame privileges individualistic, privatised and reactive forms of bushfire preparedness. In contrast, the most recent of the videos we study, coming after the 2019–20 Black Summer fires, indicates the presence of a collectivist frame. This frame presents collaborative forms of proactive, on-going preparation in the face of shared dangers as empowerment, with bushfire understood as a normal part of Australian life. In the context of research showing that fear appeals may entrench the disengagement they are designed to puncture, our analysis suggests that a dominant survivalist framing of preparedness aligns with institutional logics within fire agencies to weaken the effectiveness of public bushfire communication. These logics do so by privileging technical expertise that undervalues social diversity and social context and reduces complex dynamics of information and emotion to a critique of complacency. The presence of a counter-frame emphasising collectivist modes of preparedness raises important questions about opportunities to reduce reliance on fear-based bushfire communication.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":12497,"journal":{"name":"Geoforum","volume":"160 ","pages":"Article 104215"},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2025-02-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143259497","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
GeoforumPub Date : 2025-02-01DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104213
Hannah Fair , Viola Schreer
{"title":"Lively gifts and exclusive commodities: Rethinking encounter value in orangutan conservation","authors":"Hannah Fair , Viola Schreer","doi":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104213","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104213","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Orangutans serve as popular flagships for international conservation campaigns, which increasingly draw on digital communication and engagement technologies to mobilise support. Building on scholarship concerning the commodification of nature and digitalisation of conservation, this paper asks how orangutans produce value, for whom and to what end? It unpacks the frictions and tensions in how orangutans accumulate encounter value or fail to do so across diverse conservation contexts. Drawing upon interviews with orangutan conservation supporters in the United Kingdom and ethnographic research conducted at a rehabilitation centre and release sites in Indonesia, it reveals how orangutans become lively gifts, exclusive commodities, and entangled in unwanted encounters. By illuminating the varying, contrasting ways in which different audiences engage with one popular conservation species, our paper expands the concept of “encounter value”, troubling some of its underlying assumptions, particularly its commodity logics and intimate character. As the paper shows, encounter value is never fixed or prescribed, but contingent and, at times, even contested.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":12497,"journal":{"name":"Geoforum","volume":"159 ","pages":"Article 104213"},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2025-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143160949","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
GeoforumPub Date : 2025-02-01DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104217
Amy Reid
{"title":"‘Wall disease’: Unpacking the emotive geographies of post-conflict Nicosia","authors":"Amy Reid","doi":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104217","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104217","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Since 1974, Cyprus has been divided by the ‘Green Line’, separating the Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot communities into the north and south of the island respectively. This paper focuses on the capital city of Nicosia, which is often referred to as ‘Europe’s last divided capital’. Despite the cessation of violence, flags, checkpoints, commemorative sites, watchtowers, and evidence of the conflict continue to permeate the urban fabric of present-day Nicosia. Thus, whilst Cyprus could be considered as being ‘post-violence’ politically, the conflict arguably continues to manifest itself throughout the urban environment. A significant body of research has explored the Cyprus conflict; however, rather less attention has been paid to the emotional impacts of living in a divided city. Therefore, this paper makes three original contributions. The first is to apply <span><span>Tuan’s (1979)</span></span> theory of landscapes of fear to a reading of Nicosia. The second is to advance our knowledge on the emotional geographies of Nicosia, focusing on how emotions and experiences are shaped and spatially manifested by this post-conflict landscape. This approach seeks to add depth to the understanding of the complex relationship between place, emotion, and conflict. The final contribution of this article is to highlight the role that qualitative research can play in moving studies of emotional geographies forward.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":12497,"journal":{"name":"Geoforum","volume":"159 ","pages":"Article 104217"},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2025-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143160952","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
GeoforumPub Date : 2025-02-01DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104216
Ana Cristina Lara Heyns
{"title":"Walking with water: Reframing drained waterways in Melbourne","authors":"Ana Cristina Lara Heyns","doi":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104216","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104216","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper examines the transformation of Melbourne’s waterways through urbanisation and colonisation, drawing on Indigenous paradigms of relationality to propose alternative frameworks for understanding and managing water. It challenges modernist water management practices that separate natural and urban systems, advocating for approaches that respect water as a relational and agentic entity. The study incorporates Indigenous methodologies and decolonial practices such as deep listening, walking, and yarning to explore the historical and cultural narratives of buried waterways. Using the Rippon Lea Estate as a case study, the research demonstrates how relational design, and augmented reality can reconnect urban communities with hidden waterways. The paper introduces three perspectives: water as a relational entity, the agency of water, and the reframing of drained waterways as active, though shadowed, contributors to the urban environment. These perspectives foster a holistic understanding of water that integrates Indigenous knowledge, promoting equity, sustainability, and a co-becoming relationship with water in urban landscapes. By engaging with water’s cultural, spiritual, and ecological dimensions, the study reimagines urban design and water governance for a future shaped by reciprocity and care.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":12497,"journal":{"name":"Geoforum","volume":"159 ","pages":"Article 104216"},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2025-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143160953","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}