{"title":"Demanding ownership: Energy democracy and environmental labour geographies","authors":"Franziska Christina Paul","doi":"10.1111/area.12987","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/area.12987","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This paper contributes an ‘ownership perspective’ to the spectrum of labour environmentalist enquiries, and positions environmental labour geographies within a wider political economy of transformation. The paper explores the concept of energy democracy as a trade union strategy that pursues the social and economic ownership and democratic governance of energy systems and resources. Empirically, the paper presents the case study of Trade Unions for Energy Democracy (TUED), as an ‘actually existing’ initiative of labour environmentalism, contextualising its emergence and enduring relevance in terms of its approach to ownership vis-à-vis justice-oriented demands, and exploring its geographies through a strategy of spatially specific mobilising and regionally focused movement building. The paper investigates how the TUED network has developed a transnational, labour-inclusive framework of energy democracy <i>as</i> labour environmentalism, by promoting democratic control and the social, public and collective ownership of energy systems and resources as tangible solutions to address the climate emergency. The paper also establishes how the TUED network creates radical geographies of labour environmentalism, through the varied mobilisation of its participating unions in their specific local and regional contexts around actually existing opportunities for policy and political intervention. The paper concludes that the question of ownership is a fundamental one for environmental labour movements and their geographies, and one that shifts the emphasis of labour environmentalist thinking towards the <i>democratisation of labour environmental ownership relations</i>.</p>","PeriodicalId":8422,"journal":{"name":"Area","volume":"57 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2024-12-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/area.12987","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143404386","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":"Visualising and mapping historical networks of international diplomatic training","authors":"Jonathan Harris","doi":"10.1111/area.12984","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/area.12984","url":null,"abstract":"<p>What might methodological approaches drawing on Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and Social Network Analysis (SNA) offer to sub-disciplines in geography which have traditionally been dominated by qualitative and often micro-scale research, such as historical or political geography? How might these approaches—often understood as opposing—be brought together to advance transnational research in particular? This article responds to these questions through a reflection on a recent project on the geopolitics of diplomatic training in the mid-twentieth century. Building on the established use of biography to focus transnational analyses within a complex abundance of sources, the project complemented such close-reading with computational methods of distant-reading, able to analyse large datasets to produce prosopographies and network visualisations that help identify diffuse and larger scale political and geographical relationships. The article concludes with a consideration of how such methods might be effectively integrated in the historical or political geographer's toolkit.</p>","PeriodicalId":8422,"journal":{"name":"Area","volume":"57 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2024-11-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/area.12984","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143404562","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":"(Pragmatist) geographies of rankings","authors":"Gerhard Rainer","doi":"10.1111/area.12980","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/area.12980","url":null,"abstract":"<p>As a rapidly growing interdisciplinary literature has argued, rankings have become a key means of valuation in contemporary society. However, the majority of the work focuses on rankings in only a few areas, and even if spatial aspects play a role in the interdisciplinary literature, the number of explicitly geographical works on rankings is surprisingly low. Against this backdrop, in this paper I aim firstly to flesh out a pragmatism-inspired geographical perspective on rankings. Secondly, using the example of wine rankings, I will ask the question as to how the growing importance of rankings has changed valuation schemes. The wine industry is particularly well suited to this, as nominal classifications in the form of designations of origin have historically played a central role here. A pragmatist, geographical perspective on ordinal ordering processes illustrates that rankings evoke both economic and geographical realities; they do this not only through the ranking processes as such, but also through observation of and engagement with rankings by different actors. In the case of wine, local/regional specificity is an inherent part of the world of rankings—be it through the fact that ranking processes build on (embodied) geographically contextualised knowledge of wine judges, through the possibilities of using (or not using) (different) rankings for different markets by wine producers, or through the balance between the marketing of wine through rankings and the suitability of those very wines for the specific markets in which they are to be sold. This is perhaps the biggest difference compared with other fields in which the importance of rankings has increased considerably—in particular, higher education. It helps to explain why the historically significant valuation scheme of geographical origin has not lost any of its significance, despite the increase in the importance of rankings in the world of wine.</p>","PeriodicalId":8422,"journal":{"name":"Area","volume":"57 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2024-11-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/area.12980","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143404558","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":"Pedals and throttles: Ride-along experimental journeys with Hanoi's cyclo and motorbike taxi drivers","authors":"Sarah Turner, Binh N. Nguyen","doi":"10.1111/area.12978","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/area.12978","url":null,"abstract":"<p>In this article, we analyse the effectiveness of ride-alongs, a specific mobile method, to better understand the daily realities of informal mobile livelihoods in Hanoi, Vietnam. The field of mobile methods has seen significant advances both within and beyond geography. Yet, there is still an absence of literature comparing the benefits and drawbacks of using a consistent mobile method across different forms of mobility in the same context, such as pedal-powered versus motorised transport. Additionally, studies specifically addressing the daily experiences of informal cyclo (trishaw) drivers in Vietnam are scarce. Our paper aims to fill these gaps by evaluating the effectiveness of ride-along interviews in understanding the mobility and livelihood challenges faced by informal cyclo and motorbike taxi (<i>xe ôm</i>) drivers in Hanoi, who navigate the city's dense and chaotic traffic to earn a living. Ride-alongs provide a unique perspective on the city's informal transportation sector, uncovering new insights into the nuanced micro-mobilities and rapid decision-making required of these drivers. Cyclo drivers navigate Hanoi's streets with considerations for tourist appeal, physical exertion, and police avoidance. Meanwhile, <i>xe ôm</i> drivers manoeuvre through alleyways and roads, balancing efficiency, speed, and passenger demands. Both groups are concerned with circumventing often-corrupt police, managing local traffic conditions, and adapting to changing weather patterns. This comparative study reveals the benefits and insights gained from ride-along interviews with mobile informal economy workers, highlighting the similarities and differences in the choices and tactics these drivers employ. The method allows for a deeper understanding of how vehicle type, physical demands, and the socio-political environment shape the split-second decisions these drivers must make to maintain their livelihoods on Hanoi's streets.</p>","PeriodicalId":8422,"journal":{"name":"Area","volume":"57 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2024-10-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/area.12978","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143404796","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":"Feminist visualisation challenges: Methodological innovation, opportunities, and lessons learned","authors":"Kate Coddington, Jill M. Williams","doi":"10.1111/area.12974","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/area.12974","url":null,"abstract":"<p>In this paper, we detail the process of organising and facilitating a visualisation challenge as part of a larger project centring visual methods. We explore how the visualisation challenge specifically operated to highlight feminist epistemological and methodological principals, and practically, what worked and what didn't. We conclude that visualisation challenges offer exciting potential to jumpstart creative and innovative project development, but if a challenge is to be successful, context matters, and so too do practical and logical considerations. We believe that feminist visualisation challenges offer exciting models to share findings and data, learn from emerging research practices, and build community within and beyond the academy.</p>","PeriodicalId":8422,"journal":{"name":"Area","volume":"57 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2024-10-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143404805","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":"Training young co-researchers to interview their parents: The transformative potential of intergenerational interviews","authors":"Catherine Walker, Ellen van Holstein","doi":"10.1111/area.12972","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/area.12972","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The turn to co-production in geographical research is underpinned by the social justice aim to democratise academic practice, and in recent years this has extended to training young people as co-researchers. However, discussions of intergenerational dynamics in co-produced research are limited, and there are no accounts of family members interviewing one another. This paper responds to this oversight by presenting a reflective account of a research project centring on intergenerational family discussions and negotiations of climate change knowledge, in which young co-researchers interviewed parents. We share key considerations for developing bespoke interview training and preparing co-researchers to undertake interviewing, and we highlight the strengths and opportunities of intergenerational interviews in families. Our core contention is that, when planned and supported with tact and consideration, intergenerational interviews can boost young people's confidence in their skills and generate rich dialogues that may lead to decisions and outcomes that will outlive the research. However, engaging co-researchers and their pre-existing familial relationships in research requires careful consideration, practical training, and ongoing reflection, because these relationships are defined by intergenerational dynamics that precede and outlast the research.</p>","PeriodicalId":8422,"journal":{"name":"Area","volume":"57 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2024-10-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/area.12972","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143404565","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":"Making the case for ‘care-full’, ‘slower’ research: Reflections on researching ethically and relationally using mobile phone methods with food-insecure households during the COVID-19 pandemic","authors":"Alison Briggs","doi":"10.1111/area.12966","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/area.12966","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This paper reflects on the research process and ethics of doing research with low-income households in Stoke-on-Trent, UK, during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with five mothers experiencing food insecurity, I argue that it is imperative that researchers employ ‘care-full’, slow, flexible methodologies situated within everyday lives to ensure that research with vulnerable and precarious groups of people is not exploitative, especially during times of crisis. The emergency public health measures introduced to contain COVID-19 in March 2020 acted like a brake on my research activities, slowing things down, limiting the methods available to me, and ultimately, provoking a reimagining of my original research design. I make two contributions. First, building on feminist geographical scholarship on care and reflexivity, and calls for ‘slow’ research that prioritises the shifting needs of researchers and participants, I suggest adopting a relational approach to take account of participant subjectivities in order to minimise disruption in their everyday lives. Second, through discussing the ways in which I employed the mobile phone to continue gathering data with participant mothers during COVID-19, I build on nascent geographical and methodological conversations about the role of technologies in the design and implementation of care-full research. In highlighting the limitations of the mobile phone as a research device in this context, I extend current limited understandings of utilising mobile phones to gather data in the course of conducting research with marginalised people.</p>","PeriodicalId":8422,"journal":{"name":"Area","volume":"56 4","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2024-09-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/area.12966","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142596225","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":"Opening the notebook: How and why human geographers take fieldnotes","authors":"Russell Hitchings, Alan Latham, Tatiana Thieme","doi":"10.1111/area.12969","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/area.12969","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This short paper introduces a special section exploring how human geographers use research notebooks. It outlines why a fuller exchange about how exactly we do ethnographic note-taking in human geography is worthwhile, and describes a series of conference sessions in which a group of human geographers took the relatively bold step of showing each other examples of what could be found inside their notebooks. It also provides an overview of how the papers in the special section might help us all to consider the variety of options available to us when we choose to work in this way.</p>","PeriodicalId":8422,"journal":{"name":"Area","volume":"57 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2024-09-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/area.12969","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143404504","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":"I say a little prayer for me: Poetry as spiritual self-care in the ethnographic field","authors":"Josep Almudéver Chanzà","doi":"10.1111/area.12968","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/area.12968","url":null,"abstract":"<p>How do we make sense of our place in the field as researchers and as sexual, spiritual beings? Ethnographic fieldwork is central to several disciplines, including geography. It involves the researcher encountering and gathering stories and meanings through interaction with people's lived experiences in settings that are often not the researcher's own. Although rarely strain-free, fieldwork is seen as a transformative experience, both from the personal and the academic point of view. This paper, situated at the intersection of geography, queer/ing practices, and ethnographic methodology, explores poetry as a form of self-care in the field. In recent years, poetry has emerged as a creative and productive mode of representation and (co-)interpretation of qualitative data. Based on my own spiritual experience(s) while conducting fieldwork in Spain, I consider prayer cards as a poetic form and a means through which issues of self-care and spiritual self-preservation are made visible, particularly when experienced within a social environment that is hostile to LGBTQ+ lived experiences of faith.</p>","PeriodicalId":8422,"journal":{"name":"Area","volume":"56 4","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2024-08-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/area.12968","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142596273","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}
Thomas A. Lowe, Andy Harrod, Richard Gorman, Chloe Asker, Jeremy Auerbach
{"title":"Reflections on a healthy discipline: Celebrating 50 years of health geography within the Royal Geographical Society","authors":"Thomas A. Lowe, Andy Harrod, Richard Gorman, Chloe Asker, Jeremy Auerbach","doi":"10.1111/area.12967","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/area.12967","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This article introduces a special section comprising papers examining the evolution, current state and potential futures of the subdiscipline of health geography. Geographers’ engagement with ‘health’ has transformed from a strict rooting in the ‘(bio)medical’, coinciding with, and contributing to, a paradigm shift emphasising a recognition of health as multifaceted and shaped by everyday experiential spatial practices, rhythms and identities. The development of this area of geographic scholarship, we argue, has been inextricably linked to the simultaneous growth of the Geographies of Health and Wellbeing Research Group (GHWRG) of the Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers), founded in 1972. Celebrating this golden jubilee, the Research Group initiated a project reflecting on how geographical knowledge on health has been produced and the networks that have influenced thinking. This coincided with an additional anniversary, the twentieth iteration of the ‘Emerging and New Researchers in the Geographies of Health & Impairment’, a conference developed to support new conversations relating to geographical scholarship around ‘health’, playing an important role in the development of ideas, scholarship and community since its inception in 1994. In introducing this special section, we underscore the importance of geographic interrogations of health for addressing contemporary challenges and providing interdisciplinary contributions. The articles in the collection delve into conceptual, theoretical and methodological developments that have shaped health geography, featuring work showcasing the breadth and depth of research within the subdiscipline. Complementing these empirical pieces, the special section traces the history of the GHWRG and its contributions, alongside interviews and conversations with scholars who have played pivotal roles in shaping the evolution of the subdiscipline. Overall, we are keen to celebrate health geography scholarship, question how academic networks shape thinking about interrelationships between health and place, and reflect on potential future directions for geographical scholarship on health and wellbeing.</p>","PeriodicalId":8422,"journal":{"name":"Area","volume":"56 4","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2024-08-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/area.12967","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142596306","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}