IF 3.4 2区社会学

Geoforum Pub Date : 2025-03-19 DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104246

Alexis Metzger , René Véron , Emmanuel Reynard

{"title":"Remaking land–water boundaries in the Rhone plain in Switzerland: A reinterpretation of past and present river training using a ‘postcolonial mirror’","authors":"Alexis Metzger , René Véron , Emmanuel Reynard","doi":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104246","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104246","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>River training in Europe has recently shifted from a focus on hard infrastructure toward river widening and renaturation. Inspired by postcolonial studies on land–water dichotomies, this article seeks to examine the material and ideational remaking of land–water boundaries through past and current river interventions on the Rhone River in the Valais, Switzerland. Based on an analysis of historical and contemporary documents, we show how the first two major river projects between the mid-19th and mid-20th century led to a gradually increasing separation of land and water. The current river-training project gives more space to the river, but it deepens the land–water demarcation through reinforced flood protection. Using a ‘postcolonial mirror’, a heuristic tool to uncover ontologies, discontinuities and continuities across space and time, we then identify the historical continuities of different forms of domination of the river, ranging from scientific knowledge and conceptualizations to commodification and the creation of false memories. We conclude that the colonial mirror is a useful heuristic tool to uncover usually hidden processes.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":12497,"journal":{"name":"Geoforum","volume":"161 ","pages":"Article 104246"},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2025-03-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143643491","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}

引用次数: 0

Urbanization’s mediator: Reassembling rural tibetan lives through pig breed changes

IF 3.4 2区社会学

Geoforum Pub Date : 2025-03-18 DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104262

Dan Wu , Yang Zhan

引用次数: 0

“They’re probably quite used to this idea of us and them”: The racialising assemblage and development discourses in school geography in England

IF 3.4 2区社会学

Geoforum Pub Date : 2025-03-18 DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104240

Christine Winter , Shaakirah Kasuji , Daniel Whittall

{"title":"“They’re probably quite used to this idea of us and them”: The racialising assemblage and development discourses in school geography in England","authors":"Christine Winter , Shaakirah Kasuji , Daniel Whittall","doi":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104240","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104240","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>School geography classrooms are crucial sites where the international is taught and learned. In English school geography, the dominant mode through which the international is taught is via global development education. This article analyses ethnographic research with teachers to examine their experiences of teaching about global development in GCSE geography. Based on their accounts, it identifies the circulation of problematically racialised development discourses. Furthermore, our analysis finds evidence of epistemic, material and affective dimensions (<span><span>Sriprakash et al, 2022</span></span>) through which a racialising assemblage (<span><span>Weheliye, 2014</span></span>) is constructed around global development education in English school geography. Guided by the research question ‘How do geography teachers experience teaching about global development in the English GCSE geography curriculum in England?’, we explain how four dominant curriculum framings of comparison, simplification, decontextualization and post-racialisation function to maintain whiteness as hegemonic in the curriculum. Teachers respond to these framings with feelings of discomfort and awkwardness, yet navigate the complexities of the racialised assemblage in ways that reinforce it, but also have potential to create space for resistance to it. Throughout, we draw attention to how neoliberal educational structures of governance and surveillance reinforce the racialising assemblage and shape the labour that teachers do. We understand school classrooms as geopolitical sites of struggle (<span><span>Lizotte and Nguyen, 2020</span></span>) within which racialised discourses are assembled, promoted and contested. We conclude with suggestions for how the racialising assemblage we identify might be contested and overcome.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":12497,"journal":{"name":"Geoforum","volume":"161 ","pages":"Article 104240"},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2025-03-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143641792","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}

引用次数: 0

Can wild geese remake a zoo? The promise of more-than-human heterotopia for a politics of living with urban wildlife

IF 3.4 2区社会学

Geoforum Pub Date : 2025-03-17 DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104261

Yulia Kisora , Clemens Driessen

{"title":"Can wild geese remake a zoo? The promise of more-than-human heterotopia for a politics of living with urban wildlife","authors":"Yulia Kisora , Clemens Driessen","doi":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104261","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104261","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>With biodiversity in crisis globally, there is an urgent need to include wildlife in urban planning and governance – not merely as passive elements but as political actors with their own interests and needs. We propose addressing this challenge by rethinking the role of urban zoos in shaping human-animal relations. Drawing on a case-study of a colony of wild geese nesting in Korkeasaari zoo, Finland, we tap into the productive ambivalence of Foucauldian heterotopias. This lens reveals how a zoo simultaneously functions as a socially ordered and tightly controlled institution of captivity, shaping and being shaped by human discourses on wildlife, but also as a real place, dynamically made and re-made through more-than-human agencies, relations, and materialities. This tension results in discourses and practices that stage a mode of open-ended interspecies exchange, politicising the shared use of space between human and non-human animals. In the context of intensive management policies and restrictive measures applied to non-human animals in urban contexts, Korkeasaari zoo stands out as an interspecies experiment where wildlife has been allowed to settle −at least in part- on their own terms. The paper concludes by exploring the potential of such more-than-human heterotopias to offer models for co-existing with non-human animals on mutually negotiated political terms. We advocate for a research focus on similar ‘other’ places where non-human creatures catalyse a reimagining of anthropocentric spaces, offering pathways to rethink urban living and human-animal relations that constitute it.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":12497,"journal":{"name":"Geoforum","volume":"161 ","pages":"Article 104261"},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2025-03-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143637420","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}

引用次数: 0

The ‘Borders of Berlin’: West African protests and the coloniality of Euro-African deportation cooperation

IF 3.4 2区社会学

Geoforum Pub Date : 2025-03-15 DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104205

Aino Korvensyrjä

{"title":"The ‘Borders of Berlin’: West African protests and the coloniality of Euro-African deportation cooperation","authors":"Aino Korvensyrjä","doi":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104205","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104205","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This article examines diaspora-led protests in Germany and actions in West Africa opposing Euro-African deportation cooperation after 2015. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork (2015–2021) with West Africans facing deportation in Germany and activists, it investigates how the protests effectively challenged the role of West African authorities and embassies in German deportations. As the European Union sought to increase ‘returns’, the protesters contested this framing of deportation, which presupposes symmetrical nation-states, reciprocity, and harmonious belonging. They exposed colonial continuities in European deportation policies and asymmetries in sovereignty, mobility, and access to resources. Building on longstanding West African diaspora critique, the protesters denounced Euro-African borders as the ‘Borders of Berlin’, traced to the 1884–1885 Berlin Conference and reinforced after the fall of the Berlin Wall. They urged African governments to reject deportations and subordination to Europe, reframing migration as decolonisation and redress. Yet, by voicing demands as citizens to nation-state representatives, they also affirmed the identities and nation-states created by the Borders of Berlin. The article contributes to scholarship on colonialism’s influence on European borders and externalisation by centring the analyses and agency of marginalised actors in shaping deportation, Euro-African relations, and international law. It challenges the view of externalisation as Europe’s territorial expansion, highlighting colonial continuities and violence within Europe. Moreover, it underscores the persistence of the national as a frame for resistance and the fragility of the Borders of Berlin as a radical, decolonising imaginary, in contrast to the nation-state order enforced through deportations.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":12497,"journal":{"name":"Geoforum","volume":"161 ","pages":"Article 104205"},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2025-03-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143628652","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}

引用次数: 0

Resistance in a “sacred geography”: Critical perspectives on land, ecology, and activism among Dersimi Alevis in Turkey 神圣地理 "中的抵抗：土耳其 Dersimi Alevis 人对土地、生态和行动主义的批判视角

IF 3.4 2区社会学

Geoforum Pub Date : 2025-03-14 DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104263

Hayal Hanoğlu , Dobrosława Wiktor-Mach , Wendelmoet Hamelink , Marcin Skupiński

{"title":"Resistance in a “sacred geography”: Critical perspectives on land, ecology, and activism among Dersimi Alevis in Turkey","authors":"Hayal Hanoğlu , Dobrosława Wiktor-Mach , Wendelmoet Hamelink , Marcin Skupiński","doi":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104263","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104263","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Environmental actions related to sacred geographies have recently intensified, leading to growing research interest. Many studies have explored indigenous struggles to defend the land, its ecosystems, culture and identity, especially in the Americas. This article employs the concept of sacred geography in Dersim (Tunceli), Turkey, to investigate the unique relationship between the indigenous Alevi population and their land and natural environment. Dersim is also unique for its internal politics and left-wing identity politics, which are rooted in a history of state violence, discrimination and coloniality of nature. Focusing on environmental resistance and women’s initiatives within contemporary Kurdish socio-cultural, environmental and political activism, this article explores the relationship between land and identity and how this connection motivates environmentalist actions in Dersim. Based on ethnographic findings and analysis of secondary sources, we argue that the territorialised Dersimi Alevi identity, rooted in the physical and imaginative realms of the natural landscape, its representations, and its sacredness, is intertwined with widespread resistance to state hegemony, coloniality, and neoliberal and neo-extractivist policies. Social struggles exist in multiple forms, such as protests in defence of a sacred geography; affective relations with the land; and cross-border engagement and social mobilisation through cultural initiatives, for example, the Munzur Festival where culture, environmentalism and politics come together.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":12497,"journal":{"name":"Geoforum","volume":"161 ","pages":"Article 104263"},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2025-03-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143628770","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}

引用次数: 0

Knowledge exchange in peripheral coworking spaces: A study of proximities using social network analysis

IF 3.4 2区社会学

Geoforum Pub Date : 2025-03-11 DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104264

Mikel Oleaga

{"title":"Knowledge exchange in peripheral coworking spaces: A study of proximities using social network analysis","authors":"Mikel Oleaga","doi":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104264","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104264","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>As coworking spaces expand beyond large urban centres into more peripheral regions, they are emerging as potential entrepreneurial hubs, fostering knowledge exchange networks among entrepreneurs, self-employed individuals and other relevant economic actors. However, the factors influencing the formation of these networks and the role that different actors play remain underexplored. This study analyses the structure of the network of a coworking space and identifies the variables that influence knowledge exchanges, measuring the effect of different proximity dimensions. Using a case study of a well-established coworking in Petrer, a small ‘left-behind’ city in Eastern Spain, the study employs a social network analysis approach to analyse the knowledge-sharing network. In contrast to previous studies, it includes a full-network survey of the community, including not only coworkers but also coworking managers, ex-coworkers, and other collaborators of the space. Additional interviews, a focus group, and participatory observation contribute to providing deeper insights. By mapping and analysing the knowledge exchange network, the study sheds light on the behaviour of the different groups in knowledge sharing, highlighting the relevance of the coworking managers in building these networks. Furthermore, the study employs a multivariate exponential random graph model to demonstrate that while more frequent co-location strengthens social ties, temporary proximity is sufficient to stimulate knowledge exchanges. Moreover, non-geographical dimensions of proximity, such as organisational, social, and, to a lesser extent, institutional, are found to have an effect on knowledge sharing, while cognitive proximity does not appear to be significant.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":12497,"journal":{"name":"Geoforum","volume":"161 ","pages":"Article 104264"},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2025-03-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143592328","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}

引用次数: 0

Seeing self-help urban design as a social movement in the global south: A case in Accra, Ghana

IF 3.4 2区社会学

Geoforum Pub Date : 2025-03-10 DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104260

Hsi-Chuan Wang

{"title":"Seeing self-help urban design as a social movement in the global south: A case in Accra, Ghana","authors":"Hsi-Chuan Wang","doi":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104260","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104260","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The literature on urban design has surged to differentiate two groups of practitioners: the “knowing” (self-conscious) urban designer (people who see themselves in such a role) and the “unknowing” (unself-conscious) urban designer (people who do not see themselves in such a role). Both contribute to the making, utilisation, and transformation of places. However, the latter has yet to be adequately explored, partly the drivers behind the ongoing practices. A growing scholarship has been developed in the Global South to address such a direction, considering that the urban theory, spatial logic, and design process differ between the Global North and South. The implications of urban design practices and the role of urban designers are complex to clarify, especially considering the vast self-help activities seen in the Global South. This paper engages with such a conversation and suggests self-help urban design in informal settlements (public spaces planned, constructed, maintained, and replanned by the residents) to be perceived as a form of social movement that practitioners can not manage and predict. This paper utilises an ethnographic approach to contextualise a case in Accra, Ghana, to support the above argument. We stress this understanding, which has yet to be explored in the literature, with implications to help urban designers rethink their roles in placemaking and cope with local social movements for positive outcomes in the Global South.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":12497,"journal":{"name":"Geoforum","volume":"161 ","pages":"Article 104260"},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2025-03-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143577161","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}

引用次数: 0

Local varieties of state-directed green and digital innovation processes in China: Evidence from Shanghai, Hangzhou, and Longyan

IF 3.4 2区社会学

Geoforum Pub Date : 2025-03-06 DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104247

Chris Brueck , Ingo Liefner

{"title":"Local varieties of state-directed green and digital innovation processes in China: Evidence from Shanghai, Hangzhou, and Longyan","authors":"Chris Brueck , Ingo Liefner","doi":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104247","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104247","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper analyzes the state-directed organization of green and digital innovation processes in China. Building on a qualitative approach, we selected the three case study regions Shanghai, Hangzhou (Zhejiang) and Longyan (Fujian), and conducted 23 expert interviews with various private and government actors. Following an analytical framework based on state rescaling processes, the data were analyzed using a content analysis and categories structured according to government levels, governance processes and technology domains. The findings reveal that state-directed innovation processes are shaped between local actor constellations and national, regional and local government levels, impacting local policy application. While Shanghai pursues a top-down approach in guiding multinational and domestic enterprises, Longyan traces agency-driven bottom-up processes centered around a local flagship company, and Hangzhou combines a top-down approach with selective bottom-up policy. Based on the findings, we develop a typology for local coordination processes during policy implementation. Our findings help to better understand the diversity of the organization of green and digital innovation processes in Chinese cities.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":12497,"journal":{"name":"Geoforum","volume":"161 ","pages":"Article 104247"},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2025-03-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143548947","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}

引用次数: 0

Unveiling global narratives of restoration policy: Big data insights into competing framings and implications

IF 3.4 2区社会学

Geoforum Pub Date : 2025-03-05 DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104241

Ida N.S. Djenontin , Harry W. Fischer , Junjun Yin , Guangqing Chi

{"title":"Unveiling global narratives of restoration policy: Big data insights into competing framings and implications","authors":"Ida N.S. Djenontin , Harry W. Fischer , Junjun Yin , Guangqing Chi","doi":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104241","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104241","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Restoration has become a key environmental policy goal of the contemporary era. Yet, what restoration means and how it is pursued remains an object of debate. This study examines the nature of restoration discourses on Twitter – a large, open, and global record of public discussions around contemporary restoration matters. We apply machine learning-powered text analysis of about 350,000 geolocated tweets spanning 2015-2022, focusing on four main restoration terms – landscape restoration; forest and landscape restoration; ecological restoration; and ecosystem restoration. Findings reveal a wide diversity of environmental policies framed through the language of restoration, underscoring its public appeal and use by different institutions from global to national and subnational scales. Restoration discourses foster both ecological and human-centered framings, with the former being more prominent. Other distinct discourses convey promotional efforts, momentum building, political engagement by proponent actors, and what restoration should deliver. Only a few discourses feature quick fixes such as tree planting, potentially implying that contemporary restoration interventions are more diverse than headline-grabbing targets to plant trees. There is little discussion of rural livelihoods, tenure rights, or tradeoffs between environmental objectives and local needs. Although the discourses vary across the restoration terms, we find some shared discourses as well as unique ones. We underscore how restoration discourses carry different worldviews with implications for the purported socio-ecological benefits of restoration. Our work shows how data-driven analysis of social media can shed light on the rhetoric of restoration policy agendas and their nuances among a broad spectrum of social and policy actors.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":12497,"journal":{"name":"Geoforum","volume":"161 ","pages":"Article 104241"},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2025-03-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143548848","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}

引用次数: 0

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