GeoforumPub Date : 2025-09-19DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104405
Kevin Grove
{"title":"Resilience, Critique and the Limits of Geographic Thought in the Anthropocene","authors":"Kevin Grove","doi":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104405","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104405","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>As resilience has become an increasingly influential governance principle, geographers have been among the most ardent critics of the concept and its depoliticizing effects. But what might the last decade of geographic critiques of resilience tell us about the geographic thought today? Situating geographic research on resilience in the discipline’s reparative conjuncture and the problematic of the Anthropocene, this paper draws attention to what I call <em>salvage geographies</em>. Playing on James Clifford's (1986), sense of salvage ethnographies, salvage geographies refer to practices of geographic knowledge production that are organized around desires to secure the promise of modernist futurity in the Anthropocene. Analyzing the affective landscapes shaping critical geographic resilience research, I identity two forms of salvage geographies: first, solutions-oriented approaches prevalent in critical sustainability studies strive to salvage modernity’s promise for science to secure a future of limitless, progressive growth and development; second, radical approaches prevalent in political ecology and security studies often strive to salvage the promise of modernist critique to politicize knowledge. These salvage geographies can only be sustained through the instrumentalization of difference, which defutures or consumes the potential for other forms of geographic thought. Turning to feminist, decolonial, and abolitionist research, I highlight the potential for reparative disciplinary futures that orient geography towards <em>problem-finding</em> rather than problem-solving activities.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":12497,"journal":{"name":"Geoforum","volume":"166 ","pages":"Article 104405"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2025-09-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145096162","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 : 2025-09-19DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104411
Fredrik Envall , J. Daniel Andersson , Johanna Liljenfeldt
{"title":"Twisting like a cabbage worm: The politics of enacting sustainable futures through energy communities","authors":"Fredrik Envall , J. Daniel Andersson , Johanna Liljenfeldt","doi":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104411","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104411","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>In 2019, the European Union launched a set of eight legislative acts called the Clean Energy Package, which<!--> <!-->introduced energy communities as a formal actor in its regulatory framework. Often defined as the cooperative production and management of energy through civic engagement,<!--> <!-->high hopes have been pinned on energy communities to serve as instruments for realizing fundamental ideals of energy democracy. Although it has been recognized that energy communities are fraught enterprises that involve multiple actors and cut across geographic scales and vertical levels of policy and politics, surprisingly little attention has been paid to the processes through which they take shape. In this paper, we approach energy community<!--> <!-->initiatives as sociotechnical configurations, examining how<!--> <!-->actors, technologies, and institutions<!--> <!-->are assembled, drawn into relation, and held together in collective efforts to shape the future. Our locus is two energy communities under configuration in the Swedish energy landscape: one part of a climate-smart urban planning project in the city of Örebro, and one in the sparsely populated rural countryside on the island of Gotland. By treating the configuration of energy communities<!--> <!-->as place-based enactments of sustainable futures, we<!--> <!-->illustrate<!--> <!-->how the prospects of community energy are shaped in practice and illuminate<!--> <!-->the composition of power that permeates the politics of future-making.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":12497,"journal":{"name":"Geoforum","volume":"166 ","pages":"Article 104411"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2025-09-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145096136","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 : 2025-09-15DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104410
Anna S Antonova , Wesley Flannery , Sílvia Gómez , Madeleine Gustavsson , Maria Hadjimichael , Brendan Murtagh , Kristen Ounanian , Sunniva Solnør , Vida Maria Daae Steiro , Kristina Svels
{"title":"Centering coastal communities’ diverse economic practices in the blue economy","authors":"Anna S Antonova , Wesley Flannery , Sílvia Gómez , Madeleine Gustavsson , Maria Hadjimichael , Brendan Murtagh , Kristen Ounanian , Sunniva Solnør , Vida Maria Daae Steiro , Kristina Svels","doi":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104410","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104410","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Despite their stated commitment to sustainable economic development, blue economy and blue growth agendas have been criticized for replicating the same unlimited growth paradigm they purport to replace, disempowering local communities. By contrast, diverse economies literature advocates looking to communities’ practices to identify alternative, socially and environmentally grounded, economic possibilities. In line with that scholarship, this article calls for a re-envisioning of the blue economy through the eyes of coastal communities and their socio-ecological relations. We draw on local knowledge acquired from research we have conducted in six coastal communities across Europe – Burgas (Bulgaria); Connemara (Ireland); Træna (Norway); Åland (Finland); Cap de Creus (Spain); and Eastern Limassol (Cyprus). From mobilizing social enterprises and commoning practices to widening the blue economy’s goals to comprise environmental care and collective wellbeing, these communities’ economic practices focus not only on retaining value at the local level, but also on advancing societal and environmental goals. The article investigates the possibilities and challenges that these experiences suggest for the blue economy, raising questions about the potential of diverse blue economies.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":12497,"journal":{"name":"Geoforum","volume":"166 ","pages":"Article 104410"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2025-09-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145096135","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 : 2025-09-11DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104408
Norbert Petrovici , Florin Poenaru
{"title":"Revanchism, misrecognition, and spatial configurations: capital integration and the electoral geography of Romania’s cancelled 2024 elections","authors":"Norbert Petrovici , Florin Poenaru","doi":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104408","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104408","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This article examines how territorial inequalities shaped electoral options in Romania in the annulled 2024 presidential elections. Anti-systemic mobilisation did not emerge from deindustrialised or economically ‘left-behind’ zones, but, we argue, from regions of domestic-led industrial growth embedded in broader territories dominated by foreign capital. These localities, central to production yet marginal in national imaginaries and policy voice, illustrate a condition we define as <em>blocked centrality</em>, the disjunction between economic contribution and political incorporation within advanced peripheral economies. Here, foreign direct investment structures accumulation and governance, while domestic production enclaves remain symbolically excluded. Methodologically, the study proposes a multi-stage spatial modelling strategy combining spatial error models, seemingly unrelated regressions, and principal component analysis. This approach operationalises <em>symbolic misrecognition</em> as a spatial mismatch between structural participation and representational visibility. The results challenge binary framings of growth vs. decline and urban vs. rural. Revanchist mobilisation is shown to stem not from economic abandonment, contributing to debates on peripheral capitalism, political blocs, and the spatial politics of recognition in Europe’s advanced peripheries.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":12497,"journal":{"name":"Geoforum","volume":"166 ","pages":"Article 104408"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2025-09-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145046460","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 : 2025-09-09DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104394
Kamil Luczaj, Katarzyna Krakowska
{"title":"Imagining Poland: exploring geographical imaginaries in the Ukrainian war refugee narratives","authors":"Kamil Luczaj, Katarzyna Krakowska","doi":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104394","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104394","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper explores the geographical imaginaries of Poland as constructed by Ukrainians fleeing the 2022 Russian invasion. Utilizing data from an international Polish-Ukrainian project, which includes 30 in-depth interviews with Ukrainian refugees, the paper examines how perceptions of Poland are formed, communicated, and challenged during forced migration. These imaginaries serve as a foundation for social remittances, shaping the transfer of cultural practices and ideas between Ukraine and Poland. Conducted from February 2023 to January 2024, the study reveals that the positive image of Poland as a Western country is associated with three primary themes: economic development and better life opportunities (evidenced by material comforts and fewer employment concerns), interpersonal relations (perceived as friendly and tolerant), and broader cultural norms (such as respect for the rule of law and postmaterialist values). While literature on the imaginaries of new EU states often portrays Poland as an aspiring member, Ukrainians view it as a “Western country” that is culturally closer and more familiar compared to other Western nations like Germany. The study highlights the importance of individual experiences, media narratives, and social interactions in shaping geographical imaginaries. Interactions between Ukrainian refugees and their Polish hosts, especially through homestay arrangements, play a crucial role in forming these perceptions. This paper enhances our understanding of how forced migration affects perceptions of neighbouring countries and challenges existing notions of the West, offering fresh insights into the dynamics of geographical imaginaries. Additionally, it underscores how factors such as the refugees’ place of residence and their “cosmobility capital” influence their views of Europe.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":12497,"journal":{"name":"Geoforum","volume":"166 ","pages":"Article 104394"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2025-09-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145020416","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 : 2025-09-09DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104392
Nicholas Kombonaah , Francis Dakyaga , Patrick Brandful Cobbinah
{"title":"Techiman: contesting an unplanned city against the commons","authors":"Nicholas Kombonaah , Francis Dakyaga , Patrick Brandful Cobbinah","doi":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104392","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104392","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Urban geography and planning scholars have argued that secondary cities can create enclaves of opportunities for urban population absorption and reduce pressures of urbanization on large cities. Yet, much remains to be understood about secondary cities whose geography, patterns of development and economic health are shaped by urban informality, and the forms of contestation and resistance articulated against it. In this paper, we use Techiman, a rapidly growing secondary city in Ghana, as a case study and a mixed methods approach to respond to this gap in literature by (i) analyzing emerging and often contentious spatial morphologies and typologies; (ii) exploring the competing demands of local (i.e. formal-informal development practices) and global (i.e. neoliberal) forces; and (iii) discussing major urban policy and planning challenges confronting the city. Findings show complex interactions of formal-informal relations, yet urban planning continues to advance neoliberal agenda and aberrates urban informality. We argue for an integrated system of urban development to position the city on a sustainable anchorage.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":12497,"journal":{"name":"Geoforum","volume":"166 ","pages":"Article 104392"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2025-09-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145020417","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 : 2025-09-08DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104377
Stephen J. Collier , Savannah Cox , Kevin Grove , Nathaniel O'Grady
{"title":"Revisiting ‘resilience’: politics and state practices in a new conjuncture","authors":"Stephen J. Collier , Savannah Cox , Kevin Grove , Nathaniel O'Grady","doi":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104377","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104377","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This special issue explores the striking proliferation of robust government interventions and forms of political mobilization around resilience today. In contrast to a “first cut” of critical scholarship that tied resilience to depoliticizing neoliberal regimes of governance, the articles in this issue identify resilience as an explicit aim of state actions, a central pillar of state legitimacy, and a contested terrain over which political claims and counter-claims are made. They examine a range of geographies and scales, from major state interventions in the US, the UK, and Southern Africa, to community level actions in the Caribbean. From these varying perspectives, the articles explore how resilience is both shaping and being shaped by a new contemporary conjuncture--one in which international trade, energy security, and planetary life are being reconfigured by state interventions that challenge the norms of liberal politics and economics. Collectively, the articles sharpen our understanding of the present and equip us to ask what kinds of futures are being built, foreclosed, or deferred in the name of resilience.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":12497,"journal":{"name":"Geoforum","volume":"166 ","pages":"Article 104377"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2025-09-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145020415","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}
{"title":"Embodied narratives of Amazon workers. A critical cartography of the warehouse","authors":"Jorge Guerrero-Valle , Esperanza Jorge-Barbuzano , Inmaculada Antolínez-Domínguez , Beltrán Roca","doi":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104396","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104396","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Warehouses are fundamental enclaves within global supply chains. They are characterised for the use of digital Taylorism, automation and algorithmic control to intensify labour processes and deskill workers. Amazon accompanies these practices with an anti-union policy and the projection of a narrative that emphasizes the benefits of its organizational model. However, several voices have contested the company’s narrative. This article aims to investigate Amazon workers’ embodied counter-narratives about their work experiences and labour relations. To this purpose, the article will employ body mapping as a participatory tool to enrichen our understanding of the spatiality of labour processes. The results show that Amazon practices about employment relations, work safety, mental health, salaries, pace of work and technological control, and work-life balance have a deep impact on workers’ bodies, and, hence, workers’ narratives are strongly connected to their bodies. Finally, the article advocates for the inclusion of body-mapping within critical cartography and labour geography to a better understanding of workers’ bodies as spaces of class struggle.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":12497,"journal":{"name":"Geoforum","volume":"166 ","pages":"Article 104396"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2025-09-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145004944","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 : 2025-09-06DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104395
Eugen Resendiz , Ryan Anders Whitney , Roberto Ponce-López
{"title":"Mapping the actors: Anchor institutions and walkability projects in Southern Mexico City","authors":"Eugen Resendiz , Ryan Anders Whitney , Roberto Ponce-López","doi":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104395","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104395","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Anchor institutions are playing an increasingly prominent role in urban development and revitalization efforts across Latin American cities, including initiatives to enhance walkability. An anchor institution is a large, locally rooted organization (e.g., a hospital, university, etc.) whose long-term sustainability is tied to the wellbeing of the community it serves, playing a significant role in shaping that community’s development. While the role of anchor institutions in urban revitalization has been well-documented in the global North, their influence in the global South, including in walkability projects, remains understudied. This article investigates the actors involved in the walkability interventions proposed by a privately funded urban regeneration initiative from a university anchor institution in southern Mexico City. Drawing on 22 semi-structured interviews and 29 participant observations, 47 actors were identified as being involved with the development and implementation of walkability projects, of which 18 had direct or indirect relationships via the anchor institution. Our findings suggest that the lack of relationships and communication with key stakeholders fosters a disconnect between the lead anchor institution and its ability to coordinate walkability interventions over the long term. We conclude by discussing how the complexity of actor relationships influences walkability efforts, alongside the evolving role of anchor institutions in urban planning and development in Latin America.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":12497,"journal":{"name":"Geoforum","volume":"166 ","pages":"Article 104395"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2025-09-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145004943","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 : 2025-09-05DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104393
Adriana A. Zuniga-Teran , Kenneth J. Kokroko , Lucero M. Radonic , Meredith E. Hovis , Adrienne R. Brown , Ivan E. Gaxiola , Flor Sandoval , Molli Bryson , Christian Aguilar-Murrieta , Oscar A. Rodriguez-Ponce , Blue Baldwin , Neha Gupta , Luz Imelda Cortez , Greg A. Barron-Gafford
{"title":"Beyond native plants: Aligning greening programs with disadvantaged communities’ landscape needs for more equitable green infrastructure planning","authors":"Adriana A. Zuniga-Teran , Kenneth J. Kokroko , Lucero M. Radonic , Meredith E. Hovis , Adrienne R. Brown , Ivan E. Gaxiola , Flor Sandoval , Molli Bryson , Christian Aguilar-Murrieta , Oscar A. Rodriguez-Ponce , Blue Baldwin , Neha Gupta , Luz Imelda Cortez , Greg A. Barron-Gafford","doi":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104393","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104393","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Cities worldwide are turning to greening programs to adapt to climate change and increase urban resilience. These programs are particularly needed in disadvantaged neighborhoods, typically less vegetated and more vulnerable to severe heat and flooding.<!--> <!-->Drawing from environmental justice scholarship, we argue that<!--> <!-->it is necessary to recognize minority viewpoints and perspectives in green infrastructure planning and align greening programs accordingly to<!--> <!-->effectively reach disadvantaged communities. This study fills this gap by<!--> <!-->examining the alignment of greening programs with the viewpoints and perspectives of disadvantaged communities in Tucson, Arizona, a city leader in greening policies, albeit with inequities in the adoption of such policies and in greenspace distribution. We engaged low-income, predominantly Hispanic communities to identify residential plant preferences and understand the reasons for plant selection. Findings reveal a misalignment between the main drivers of greening programs and those of disadvantaged communities. To advance justice in green infrastructure planning in desert cities, we call for adopting a multifunctional approach to greening that recognizes the benefits and values<!--> <!-->sought by disadvantaged communities, acknowledges water as the key equity resource, and supports local leaders, engagement efforts, and partnerships.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":12497,"journal":{"name":"Geoforum","volume":"166 ","pages":"Article 104393"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2025-09-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145004942","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}