Geoforum最新文献

{"title":"Modelling nature? The digital twinning and untwinning of urban farms","authors":"Prerona Das ,&nbsp;Orlando Woods ,&nbsp;Lily Kong","doi":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2026.104539","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2026.104539","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Data-driven solutions and innovations have been extended to various industries, including agriculture, to increase efficiency. With the emergence of smart farming and agriculture 4.0, advanced technologies such as IoT, big data, machine learning, and cloud computing are increasingly integrated into farming. Among these, technologies such as digital models, digital twins and the metaverse are now used to control various farming activities remotely based on real-time data. However agricultural ecosystems, involving uncertain nature-based factors and complex human-nature interactions cannot always be accurately represented or predicted by digital models. Digital models aim to reduce natural environments into controllable game-like situations and undermine the multifaceted human and natural intelligences at play in agricultural ecosystems. This paper critically examines this reductionist view of the digital modelling of nature within the context of smart farming. We approach digital twinning not only as a technical tool but also as a conceptual lens that reflects a broader epistemological shift; one that assumes complex agro-ecological systems can be fully rendered calculable. By engaging with the idea of <em>untwinning</em>, we argue that this approach fails to account for the context-sensitive, dynamic dimensions of farming, particularly those rooted in traditional farming knowledge. Using the case of smart farming initiatives in Chiang Mai, Thailand, we show how digital modelling technologies, while offering certain efficiencies, face challenges as some factors in agro-ecological systems cannot be fully captured or controlled by technological solutions.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":12497,"journal":{"name":"Geoforum","volume":"170 ","pages":"Article 104539"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2026-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145993529","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":"Assembling diasporic faith amidst China’s rise: (de)territorialization and the multi-scalar production of the Guangze Zunwang cult in the Chinese diaspora","authors":"Ningning Chen ,&nbsp;Orlando Woods","doi":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104525","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104525","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Faith in the Chinese diaspora has become increasingly vibrant in the context of China’s rise as a global power. Drawing on multi-sited ethnographic research exploring the temple networks of the Guangze Zunwang cult, this paper advances an assemblage approach to understanding diasporic faith and investigating its multi-scalar becoming by exploring three areas of inquiry. The first investigates the evolving development of the Guangze Zunwang cult and its formation into a faith assemblage based on temple alliances, which bring people, deities, institutions, places and material objects together across (national) borders<em>.</em> The second explores the multi-scalar becoming in which faith assemblages are (de)territorialized by the Chinese state for diaspora engagement and at the same time by diasporic devotees who leverage their affective potential for root-seeking and networking. The third considers how the scalar interaction of top-down and bottom-up visions eventually leads to the emergence of liminal faith assemblages that are characterized by ambiguous temple activities and subjectivities, producing ambivalent tensions. In all, by foregrounding an assemblage perspective, this paper highlights the multi-faceted, non-linear and liminal ways multiple actors, flows and sites are weaved together to shape the emergence of Chinese diasporic faith across borders. It also contributes to existing understandings of diaspora engagement by bringing hitherto overlooked religious and spiritual dimensions into one analytical schema, offering insight into the agency of the Chinese diaspora amidst China’s rise.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":12497,"journal":{"name":"Geoforum","volume":"169 ","pages":"Article 104525"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2026-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145837122","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":"Necrospatial containment and slow violence in Harare’s informal settlements","authors":"Elmond Bandauko","doi":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104527","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104527","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper develops the concept of necrospatial containment (NSC) to illuminate the conditions shaping everyday life in Hopley and Hatcliffe Extension, Harare’s largest informal settlements. Building on Mbembe’s (2003) necropolitics and Nixon’s (2011) theory of slow violence, I develop necrospatial containment as an analytical framework structured around four interrelated pillars: (i) geographies of spatial constriction, (ii) infrastructure as deathscape, (iii) perpetual threat of erasure, and (iv) toxic ecologies. Collectively, these pillars reveal how urban governance, infrastructural abandonment, and everyday struggles intersect to produce spaces of prolonged disposability. I then empirically ground necrospatial containment using evidence from focus group discussions and institutional discourses, demonstrating how informal settlement residents are confined in precarious conditions that limit mobility, constrain opportunities, and normalize risk. The paper contributes to critical urban studies by advancing a conceptual vocabulary that frames informality as a spatialized mode of governance that structures who gets to live and under what conditions. The findings underscore the urgent need for policy interventions that recognize informal settlements as legitimate urban spaces requiring investment, rights, and infrastructural justice.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":12497,"journal":{"name":"Geoforum","volume":"169 ","pages":"Article 104527"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2026-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145837060","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":"Understanding Mosquito Burdens through an Urban Political Ecology of Singapore’s Residential Landscapes","authors":"Natacha Aveline-Dubach ,&nbsp;Raksha Mahtani","doi":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104511","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104511","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Dengue fever is a pressing threat in tropical regions, where high temperatures and frequent rainfall create ideal breeding grounds for <em>Aedes</em> vectors. This article examines the notion of mosquito burden, defined as the cumulative effects of mosquito density, perceived dengue risk, and the discomfort associated with vector control policies in dengue-endemic countries. Framed within Urban Political Ecology (UPE) and informed by a housing political economy beyond a Marxist lens, the study examines the interrelations between housing provision patterns, public health policies, and mosquito ecologies. It draws on a case study of Singapore’s public housing estates and private condominium enclaves to show how uneven socio-ecological housing conditions produce divergent patterns and intensities of mosquito burden experienced by residents, both between and within residential landscapes. The study employed 100 semi-structured and informal interviews with residents, 15 in-depth interviews with stakeholders engaged in mosquito management in public and private estates, and documentary analysis. The study found that residents of public housing neighborhoods bore a particularly heavy mosquito burden, driven by high perceived exposure to breeding sites in both domestic and peridomestic spaces, compounded by intensive biosecurity measures, hypersurveillance, and the large-scale release of Wolbachia-carrying mosquitoes. Low-floor residents bear a disproportionately high burden due to heightened exposure to pests and vector control measures. In contrast, condominium residents experience less vector-related discomfort, with their exclusive lifestyle maintained through minimal state intrusion and privately managed chemical fogging. These disparities underscore the increasing contradictions in state policy that have emerged as Singapore’s economy has matured—between neoliberalised developmentalism and state commitments to housing equity, and between centralised vector control through direct state intervention and more fragmented approaches mediated by condominium management.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":12497,"journal":{"name":"Geoforum","volume":"169 ","pages":"Article 104511"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2026-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145787681","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":"Feeding the enclave: special economic zones, street food vendors and the dynamics of urban economy in Tema, Ghana","authors":"Kauê Lopes dos Santos,&nbsp;Lívia Cangiano Antipon","doi":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104522","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104522","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This article investigates the everyday interactions between highly capitalized firms operating within the Tema Free Zone (TFZ) in Ghana and low-capital street food vendors working in and around the enclave. Drawing on Milton Santos’s theory of the two circuits of the urban economy, it examines how industrial production and informal food vending are dialectically articulated – functionally interdependent yet structurally asymmetrical. While formal firms in the TFZ operate within export-oriented global circuits, popular food vendors sustain the daily reproduction of industrial labour by providing affordable meals and services under precarious conditions. Based on qualitative fieldwork (interviews and systematic observation), and cartographic documentation, the analysis highlights the vendors’ supply networks, spatial practices, and capacity to mobilize local and regional scales. The study demonstrates that SEZs are not isolated enclaves but hybrid and porous urban formations whose productivity depends on the everyday economies that surround them. By foregrounding these relational dynamics, the article contributes to a non-dualist understanding of urban economies, capturing the intertwined arrangements between economic actors that operate under different forms of organization, and access to capital, labour, and technology within the city.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":12497,"journal":{"name":"Geoforum","volume":"169 ","pages":"Article 104522"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2026-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145787683","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":"Informal, individual and cumulative labour agency: reconceptualising capital's socio-spatial fix in the south Indian garment industry","authors":"Grace Carswell ,&nbsp;Geert De Neve ,&nbsp;Nandini Ramamurthy","doi":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104497","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104497","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper reconceptualises labour agency by examining the cumulative impact of informal and individual worker agency on capital’s search for a social-spatial fix in the Tiruppur garment industry in Tamil Nadu, India. The study foregrounds everyday micro-acts—such as choosing, refusing, and exiting work—as significant forms of agency, especially when viewed in aggregate. Based on ethnographic research, we explore how these acts influence the socio-spatial fix pursued by capital. Drawing on social reproduction theory to unpack the gendered dynamics of workers’ agency, the paper first highlights how workers’ decisions— constrained by domestic responsibilities, safety concerns, and aspirations for dignity and autonomy—create a volatile and elusive labour force. It then shows how capital responds to this agency by adapting its socio-spatial strategies, such as increasing its use of labour contractors, shifting to piece-rate payments, relocating production units, and fostering patronage-based labour ties. The study advances labour geography by expanding the conceptualisation of agency to include reproductive dynamics and by demonstrating how individual acts of agency, though not always intentional or collective, cumulatively reshape capitalist production geographies. Ultimately, the paper argues for a dialectical understanding of capital-labour relations, in which socio-spatial fixes are continuously restructured through the interplay of everyday worker agency and capital’s strategic responses.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":12497,"journal":{"name":"Geoforum","volume":"169 ","pages":"Article 104497"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2026-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145683504","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":"Regional technology legitimation: The case of green hydrogen-based steelmaking","authors":"Sven Alsheimer ,&nbsp;Elisabeth Dütschke ,&nbsp;Jannika Mattes","doi":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104499","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104499","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Creating and maintaining legitimacy is essential to enable the transition from a fossil-based to a green hydrogen-based production pathway in the steel industry. With the importance of the regional level in legitimation processes increasingly recognised, this paper aims to examine the processes that influence the regional legitimation of green hydrogen-based steelmaking. Given the lack of further insights into the regional legitimation of technologies in its multi-scalar character, we propose a framework that conceptualises regional technology legitimation as regionally embedded and further shaped by multi-scalar dynamics. Empirically, we draw on a single case study in Salzgitter, Germany, using qualitative content analysis of 19 expert interviews with relevant actors at regional, state, and national levels. Building upon our framework, our analysis identifies three types of processes: At the core are regionally embedded processes that (1) directly influence the embedding of green hydrogen-based steelmaking in regional institutions. As subsidiary legitimation processes, interactions with the regionally embedded legitimacy of (2) related technologies or (3) relevant actors indirectly influence its regional legitimation. These also interact with analogous supra-regionally embedded processes. Our findings suggest that green hydrogen-based steelmaking is embedded in regional institutional structures and largely supported by overarching dynamics. The regional legitimation is also influenced by interactions with the regionally embedded legitimacy of green hydrogen and the automotive industry, both of which are interdependent with supra-regional levels. Consideration of these multi-scalar interactions has been lacking in previous studies of regional technology legitimation and offers important insights for future research and policy making.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":12497,"journal":{"name":"Geoforum","volume":"169 ","pages":"Article 104499"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2026-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145734833","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":"Philanthropic foundations and water insecurity in the United States: Problem framing, interventions, and geographies","authors":"Melissa Heil,&nbsp;Shannon Corray","doi":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104524","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104524","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Much of the research on strategies to address water insecurity in the United States has focused on government policy and community activism. Our research project investigates an overlooked set of actors: philanthropic foundations. Philanthropic foundations have helped to meet social welfare needs throughout much of U.S. history, intervening in areas like housing, community development, education, health. Philanthropic foundations not only meet people’s basic needs through grant-making, but they also frame how the public conceives of social problems and inform policy responses. In this paper, we document how philanthropic foundations are intervening in the issue of American water insecurity through their grant-making. Drawing on a dataset of 296 grants, we identify the number and monetary value of grants made by American foundations related to water insecurity in the U.S. and analyze which communities receive these grant funds, revealing geographies where the philanthropic sector is especially involved in facilitating water access. Beyond these quantitative and locational questions, our research examines how these philanthropic foundations frame the problem of household water insecurity (i.e., how do they explain its causes, how does it relate to other social challenges) and documents what kinds of change-making strategies they support (e.g., funding policy research, advocacy, direct resource provision, etc.).</div></div>","PeriodicalId":12497,"journal":{"name":"Geoforum","volume":"169 ","pages":"Article 104524"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2026-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145973226","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":"Islandness and resilience: a study of food systems in the Maldives","authors":"Mariyam Anaa Hassan ,&nbsp;Celia McMichael ,&nbsp;Uma Kothari","doi":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2026.104534","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2026.104534","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Islands have long been depicted as vulnerable, lacking in resources, and constrained in their ability to adapt and recover from socio-economic and environmental challenges. Specifically, food systems in Small Island Developing States (SIDS) are widely viewed as vulnerable to disruptions and shocks including the impacts of climate change, trade volatility and geopolitics. This paper assesses the opportunities and challenges to achieving a resilient food system in the Maldives, illustrating the ways in which islanders respond to disruptions and shocks to their food system. Drawing on research on two islands, this paper highlights three factors that support food system resilience: social and cultural norms that enhance everyday agency; multi-scalar connectivity between people and places; and decentralised governance and collective action in response to risks and shocks. Building on literature that challenges colonial and homogenized discourses of islands as being predominantly vulnerable, the paper presents a place-based and multi-scalar analysis of food systems. While vulnerability discourses around SIDS have been critiqued, few studies have done so in relation to food systems. This paper contributes novel insights by situating these critiques within the lived experiences of food system actors during a major crisis and grounding them in the Maldivian context. While acknowledging constraints and threats to food system resilience in SIDS this paper argues the need to look beyond conventional vulnerability paradigms to understand the form and extent of their agency and capabilities.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":12497,"journal":{"name":"Geoforum","volume":"169 ","pages":"Article 104534"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2026-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145973222","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":"Indigenous participation in the Local Communities and Indigenous Peoples’ Platform: The need to decolonize UN climate governance","authors":"Siobhan McDonnell,&nbsp;Brianna Gordon","doi":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104514","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104514","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":12497,"journal":{"name":"Geoforum","volume":"169 ","pages":"Article 104514"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2026-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145921384","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}