Area最新文献

{"title":"Editorial: Towards more gentle geographies: Narrating a virtue turn, and possibilities for multi-tonal politics of activism and academic labour","authors":"Matt Finn,&nbsp;Jayne M. Jeffries","doi":"10.1111/area.70045","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/area.70045","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This editorial introduces a Special Section on gentle geographies in which the authors were invited to problematise ideas of gentleness in their research and practice. We understand gentleness to mean the act of limiting or moderating capacities to affect others, or ourselves, in ways that could otherwise cause harm. Gentleness is not necessarily a risk-averse practice that stands or sits in the way of other forms of resistance, and we should distinguish the gentleness we advocate for from a white classist form of etiquette as ‘niceness’, or a smiling acquiesce to injustice. Rather, acting gently modifies action so that it is experienced as recognising, and adequately responding to, the intersubjective and more-than-human capacities to affect, and be affected by, others. We write for gentleness as part of a multi-tonal politics of activism and academic labour, and locate this as part of a ‘virtue turn’ in and beyond human geography. We draw out themes in the papers around acts and activisms, and gentle methodologies which draw our attention to the absencing of human and more-than-human others.</p>","PeriodicalId":8422,"journal":{"name":"Area","volume":"57 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2025-09-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/area.70045","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145196639","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}

{"title":"Areas of opportunity","authors":"Jeremy J. Schmidt,&nbsp;Mary Lawhon,&nbsp;Jonathan Darling,&nbsp;Eli D. Lazarus","doi":"10.1111/area.70041","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/area.70041","url":null,"abstract":"&lt;p&gt;These are times of significant change. The climate is changing in unprecedented ways, and so are geographical relationships and ideas — and the responses of geographers to them. In this moment of change, we would like to introduce ourselves as the newly assembled editorial board and offer our collective sense of why &lt;i&gt;Area&lt;/i&gt; continues to be an important outlet for geographical scholarship. We applaud how the journal has been stewarded by the previous editors, who managed through the peaks and on-going aftermaths of the Covid pandemic. We hope to continue advancing efforts to ensure that &lt;i&gt;Area&lt;/i&gt; responds to, and helps make sense of, our changing times.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;As editors, we continue to welcome submissions from across the breadth of geography as a discipline defined by diversity of thought, methods, approaches, and topics. In doing so, we rely on the expertise and insight of our expert peer-reviewers to support our decisions and inform the continued development and success of the journal. We encourage submissions from across the discipline and beyond our own research interests and specialisms which include environmental geography, resources, and sustainability; social and political geographies; political ecology; urban geography; physical landscape and environmental change; ethics; and contemporary social and spatial theory.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Area&lt;/i&gt; publishes empirical, conceptual, and methodological papers, and its relatively short word count pushes authors to present clear and concise arguments. An &lt;i&gt;Area&lt;/i&gt; paper does not afford space for everything and instead asks authors to seek novel and innovative ways to position keystone or centrepiece concepts in larger bodies of work. This does not always require an extensive review of literature, or a broad overview of research context. Instead, &lt;i&gt;Area&lt;/i&gt; offers an opportunity for a different kind of conversation, a different vehicle for intellectual exploration. This includes finding ways to develop interdisciplinary work that synthesises disparate literatures and concepts. Without constraining authors to predetermined formats, we highlight here that many of the papers in &lt;i&gt;Area&lt;/i&gt; to which we are drawn derive their strength from how they advance their central arguments.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;As incoming editors, we reviewed many compelling papers for the annual &lt;i&gt;Area&lt;/i&gt; Prize, awarded to an outstanding contribution by an early-career researcher. Although there is no ‘ideal’ &lt;i&gt;Area&lt;/i&gt; paper, the papers by &lt;i&gt;Area&lt;/i&gt; prize winners showcase how concise, novel, and insightful arguments can make distinct interventions. We were delighted to award this year's prize to Palden Tsering's ‘Hybrid rangeland governance: connecting policies with practices in pastoral China’ (&lt;span&gt;2024&lt;/span&gt;), a paper that pushes the reader to think beyond straightforward classifications of different kinds of property, instead asking how property and land governance work in practice, and how these practices challenge existing under","PeriodicalId":8422,"journal":{"name":"Area","volume":"57 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2025-07-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/area.70041","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145197062","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}

{"title":"Navigating inequalities and shaping aspirations: The role of supplementary education in low-income immigrant youth's transition to selective secondary school","authors":"Lara Landolt","doi":"10.1111/area.70031","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/area.70031","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Research within the geographies of education and related fields has advanced our understanding of how family, school and policy shape young people's educational aspirations, emphasising that these processes often reflect middle-class norms. This paper furthers this debate by examining how young people's aspirations are shaped at Chance4You; a private, non-profit supplementary education programme for low-income immigrant youth that aims to address the social inequalities reproduced at the transition to selective public secondary schools in Zurich, Switzerland. Despite the growing importance of supplementary education, its role in shaping young people's aspirations is underexplored. Using Appadurai's concept of the capacity to aspire and a Bourdieusian sensitivity for social class, the paper analyses data from a six-month ethnography with three ninth-year students (aged 14–15) and their coaches at Chance4You. The analysis revealed that students viewed the programme as enhancing their capacity to aspire, while coaches framed Chance4You's practices in a way that implied parents faced challenges in appropriately managing their children's aspirations. This paper posits that using aspiration as a lens has helped to identify the tension between Chance4You's efforts to counter inequalities created by systemic privilege at this transition and the programme's inherent dependencies on the hegemony shaped by the middle-class norms embedded in the transitions' admissions process.</p>","PeriodicalId":8422,"journal":{"name":"Area","volume":"57 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2025-06-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/area.70031","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145196683","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}

{"title":"On the forms of borderwork in public institutions: Bordering social security through conditions and tests","authors":"Kathryn Cassidy,&nbsp;Gill Davidson","doi":"10.1111/area.70028","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/area.70028","url":null,"abstract":"<p>In this paper, we analyse the key forms of borderwork that have emerged in UK social security over the last few decades. We argue that these forms play a role in everyday bordering in the UK, i.e. the embedding of immigration checks into more and more routine encounters, administered not by trained, paid border officials, but by other residents, in order to secure a range of public services for a majoritised population deemed deserving by the state. Legislation plays a role within the formation of public sector bordering practices and processes, but does not pre-determine the exact forms and, therefore, people's experiences of and with these. We argue that far from being a ‘flat’ or ‘uniform’ space, the bureaucratic field in which borderwork is being undertaken is lively and differentiated. We believe that it is important that we as geographers attend to and analyse these variations. To develop these arguments, we explore the uneven topographies of bordering and borderwork in UK social security by focusing on two key forms: conditions and tests. Specifically, we seek to answer the question, what do these forms do, that is, what role do they play in the aggregation of bordering within this specific site? We argue that conditions mean that borderwork both exceeds and persists, whereas tests function to ensure that borderwork proliferates and obfuscates.</p>","PeriodicalId":8422,"journal":{"name":"Area","volume":"57 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2025-06-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/area.70028","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145196619","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}

{"title":"‘Backward geographies’: Contested lives and livelihoods in the tea plantation enclaves of South Asia","authors":"Suranjan Majumder","doi":"10.1111/area.70026","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/area.70026","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This paper draws on ethnographic narratives to critically examine the plantationscape as an ongoing site of ‘backwardness’, highlighting the everyday livelihood struggles of indentured Oraon labourers and their continued institutional exclusion. This study was conducted in the tea plantation belt of the Dooars area of India. The arguments in the paper centre the voices and experiences of the Oraon people, offering a grounded perspective on how subaltern group(s) navigate recurring liabilities amid constrained agency and uneven, often contradictory, encounters with the state's shifting narratives of (in)equality. The research, conducted via intensive fieldwork and comprehensive interviews, elucidates how <i>structural inequalities</i>, exemplified by intergenerational poverty, territorial isolation, institutional neglect, and gendered disadvantage, persistently shape the socio-economic spectrums of communities reliant on plantations. These conditions exemplify <i>backward geographies</i>, highlighting spaces marginalised by historical dispossession, infrastructural neglect, and deliberate exclusion from prevailing developmental narratives. Engaging debates in labour geography, territorial equity, and indigenous marginalisation, the plantationscape is not ascertained as a ‘historical anomaly’ but as a contemporary site where colonial labour legacies intersect with postcolonial developmental exclusions and decision-making asymmetry. I argue that, far from being a historical anomaly, the plantation remains a locus of ‘structural disempowerment’, perpetuating marginalisation and reinforcing mono-livelihood dependency. This study urges researchers and policymakers to understand <i>backward geography</i> as evolving formations of exclusion, where marginalisation is spatially embedded and continues to shape the lives of those at the ‘edges of development’ across the Global South.</p>","PeriodicalId":8422,"journal":{"name":"Area","volume":"57 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2025-05-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145197067","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":"Ex Libris: Books, creativity and academic freedom","authors":"Matthew Gandy","doi":"10.1111/area.70013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/area.70013","url":null,"abstract":"<p>In this commentary I build on my earlier contribution to <i>Area</i> and engage with a series of responses as part of an emerging debate on the future of academic books. Although the deficiencies in UKRI's approach culminated in the suspension of an open access mandate for books to be submitted to the 2029 REF (Research Excellence Framework), the pressure to extend a science-based publishing model to the social sciences and humanities remains intense. I argue that the imposition of an open access policy for books will restrict academic freedom, threaten independent publishers, exacerbate existing inequalities in access to research funding, disrupt career development for early-career researchers, and facilitate the economic exploitation of intellectual labour for the development of AI systems.</p>","PeriodicalId":8422,"journal":{"name":"Area","volume":"57 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2025-04-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/area.70013","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145196489","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}

{"title":"Is the spatial persistence of deprivation dependent on neighbouring areas?","authors":"Stephen D. Clark,&nbsp;Fran Pontin,&nbsp;Paul Norman","doi":"10.1111/area.70015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/area.70015","url":null,"abstract":"<p>In the context of poverty and deprivation alleviation by national and local government, we use census data to explore 50 year trajectories of area deprivation to provide insight into how the spatial context of a community influences these trajectories. Using the temporal and spatial framework of spatial Markov models, we provide evidence for England and Wales on whether changing levels of deprivation over time are conditioned by areas having different types of neighbour. We find that, independent of the nature of their neighbours, there is high persistence of Most Deprived communities remaining deprived. Moreover, after conditioning by the type of neighbour, there is little likelihood of a Most Deprived neighbourhood improving when its neighbours are also the Most Deprived. However, Most Deprived neighbourhoods with Less Deprived neighbours have a greater likelihood of improvement. Communities that are the Least Deprived and have neighbours that are mostly Least Deprived, most likely remain Least Deprived. In terms of policy implications, targeting Most Deprived areas that have mostly Least Deprived neighbours can be considered ‘quick wins’. It will also be resource efficient to target spatial clusters of Most Deprived communities rather than a similar number of isolated Most Deprived communities. This raises ethical questions around investing in some Most Deprived areas, but not in other, potentially more deprived, communities.</p>","PeriodicalId":8422,"journal":{"name":"Area","volume":"57 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2025-04-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/area.70015","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145196323","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}

{"title":"The role of virtual field trips in Geography higher education: A perspective paper","authors":"Elizabeth R. Hurrell,&nbsp;Simon M. Hutchinson,&nbsp;Lynda Yorke,&nbsp;Lesley C. Batty,&nbsp;M. Jane Bunting,&nbsp;Dan Swanton,&nbsp;Derek A. McDougall,&nbsp;Daniel R. Parsons","doi":"10.1111/area.70011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/area.70011","url":null,"abstract":"<p>In this perspective paper, we explore the role virtual field trips (VFTs) may play in creating a more resilient, sustainable and equitable field education for Geography students in higher education as we move away from the pandemic but into a financially precarious higher education environment. While in-person field trips are a fundamental part of Geography (and allied subjects) education, there is growing recognition of the equality, diversity, and inclusivity (EDI) barriers presented by fieldwork, the environmental and financial costs of trips, and the vulnerability of field education to disruptions. During the pandemic, there was a shift to online remote learning, which saw innovation and growth in the development of VFTs. Written from a staff perspective, this paper aims to review the opportunities and challenges VFTs present in education and consider future directions for this pedagogical practice. We argue VFTs should not replace in-person trips, but they can enhance field education and may help to address EDI and sustainability challenges. We identify that the resourcing and development of VFTs is a particular challenge and suggest that developing communities of practice and cross-institutional global collaboration could be one effective way to avoid duplication of time and effort as well as sharing valuable knowledge and expertise. Cross-institutional sharing of VFTs would also support the development, implementation and evaluation of VFTs as a teaching tool and would support continued innovation in this teaching practice.</p>","PeriodicalId":8422,"journal":{"name":"Area","volume":"57 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2025-03-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/area.70011","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145197190","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}

{"title":"Right-sizing the smart city in Southeast Asia","authors":"Prerona Das,&nbsp;Orlando Woods,&nbsp;Lily Kong","doi":"10.1111/area.70014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/area.70014","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The idea of right-sizing, or the process of adjusting the size of a city to maximise the efficient use of resources, has traditionally been used in strategic management and the resizing of shrinking cities to promote efficient urban development. Concurrently, in contemporary discourse, the sizing of smart cities has emerged as a critical topic, as size impacts the implementation of smart initiatives. Smaller cities offer the advantage of serving as cost- effective testing grounds for innovative solutions; however, they also need to be sizeable enough to attract private investments and build a robust smart city ecosystem. In this paper we demonstrate how in the context of smart city planning and governance in Southeast Asia, different actors are adopting new spatial strategies to address the sizing question. The idea of right-sizing requires rethinking in the context of the smart city because it captures how effectively cities are scaled to balance technological innovations with socio-economic and administrative demands. Through three case studies from Southeast Asia, we analyse three distinct smart city right-sizing strategies: dispersal, zoning, and merging. By examining these, the paper highlights the complexities and nuances in determining the right size of a smart city across discrete contexts.</p>","PeriodicalId":8422,"journal":{"name":"Area","volume":"57 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2025-03-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145197189","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":"It takes a team to participate – Refining working participant observations through multiple researchers","authors":"Maria Thulemark,&nbsp;Susanna Heldt-Cassel,&nbsp;Tara Duncan","doi":"10.1111/area.70012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/area.70012","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This paper explores the collaborative methodology of conducting working participant observation in a team setting to study the experiences of hotel housekeepers in Sweden. It aims to refine and extend the method of working participant observation by highlighting the benefits of a team approach to intensive ethnographic fieldwork. Drawing on critiques of ‘traditional’ geographical methods that rely heavily on interviews, the researchers immersed themselves in the physical labour of housekeeping alongside housekeepers, engaging their own bodies as research instruments. The research team navigated the complexities of embodied labour, reflecting on how their own identities (gender, age, nationality) influenced interactions and observations. The study emphasises the importance of collective reflection and dialogue between researchers, who debriefed each other daily, transforming individual experiences into shared analytical insights. Taking this approach challenges methodological conservatism by integrating feminist and intersectional perspectives and demonstrates how working participant observation can provide deeper understandings of workplace hierarchies, bodily labour, and power dynamics. By focusing on the bodily presence of both researchers and workers, the study highlights the unique insights gained through participatory, team-based ethnographic research in service work.</p>","PeriodicalId":8422,"journal":{"name":"Area","volume":"57 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2025-03-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/area.70012","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145197113","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}