Search

Copyright of Urban Studies (Sage Publications, Ltd.) is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article examines entanglements between a fitness wearable device, the data it collects and visualizes, and the body-mind they claim to represent. Drawing on embodied insights from my experience as a transmasculine-identified member of a 'science-backed, technology-tracked' fitness experience and employing discourse and visual analysis of marketing materials and conversations on a public subreddit for enthusiasts, the article places 'misfit bodies' – rather than the unmarked, universal 'body' – at the centre of conversations about fitness wearables and self-tracking data. Employing queer/trans critique enables analysis of forms of difference that mediate and compose all bodies and illuminates the regulatory norms and technologies through which they are produced. Throughout, the article foregrounds how selves, bodies, data, and technologies are entangled in mutual and open-ended becomings that exceed the assumed transformation of wearable users into neoliberal healthist subjects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The highly visible yet poorly studied phenomenon of roadside colossi—oversized commercial buildings and statues in the shape of everyday objects, referred to in this article as Big Things—has often been dismissed as a kitschy by-product of American post-war consumerism and car culture. There are no universal definitions or typologies for this form of material culture, nor is there a sufficiently global history that explains the origin, spread and contemporary popularity of these landmarks. In this article, I address these gaps in the discourse, drawing attention to the rich yet largely untapped theoretical underpinnings of Big Things. In doing so, I highlight the potential for further study of these landmarks as material evidence of broader socio-cultural impulses, particularly in communities across North America and Australia, where Big Things can be found in their greatest numbers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given geography’s neglect of illuminated and dark space, this paper explores the various qualities of darkness that have contributed to the experience of the city. In recent history, darkness has been conceptualised negatively, for instance, with the ‘dark side’ and the ‘forces of darkness’ conceived as the opposite of that which enlightens and illuminates. Perhaps such metaphors testify to earlier urban conditions in which perils of all sorts lurked in the nocturnal city and doors were closed when darkness fell. Yet modern illumination has transformed nocturnal urban experience, producing cityscapes of regulation, hierarchical selectiveness, consumption, fantasy and imagination. However, this article suggests that the more positive qualities of darkness have been overlooked: the potential for conviviality and intimacy to be fostered in the dark, the aesthetics and atmospherics of darkness and shadow, the possibilities for apprehending the world through other senses and the dismissal of the star-saturated sky. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Proxies that use changes in the composition of ecological communities to reconstruct temporal changes in an environmental covariate are commonly used in paleoclimatology and paleolimnology. Existing methods, such as weighted averaging and modern analog technique, relate compositional data to the covariate in very simple ways, and different methods are seldom compared systematically. We present a new Bayesian model that better represents the underlying data and the complexity in the relationships between species' abundances and a paleoenvironmental covariate. Using testate amoeba–based reconstructions of water-table depth as a test case, we systematically compare new and existing models in a cross-validation experiment on a large training dataset from North America. We then apply the different models to a new 7500-year record of testate amoeba assemblages from Caribou Bog in Maine and compare the resulting water-table depth reconstructions. We find that Bayesian models represent an improvement over existing methods in three key ways: more complete use of the underlying compositional data, full and meaningful treatment of uncertainty, and clear paths toward methodological improvements. Furthermore, we highlight how developing and systematically comparing methods lead to an improved understanding of the proxy system. This paper focuses on testate amoebae and water-table depth, but the framework and ideas are widely applicable to other proxies based on compositional data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A growing number of bioethicists, policy-makers, legal scholars, patient groups, and other critically involved parties in North America and Europe recently have started calling for a new ethical principle to gather participants into clinical and genetics research. While long-prevailing regimes of consent have held that people participate in the research process out of `altruism' (and hence do not merit more than nominal payment for their participation), the increasingly visible profits accruing to bioscience researchers, companies, and universities suggest that this research contract is producing a stark asymmetry. A move is afoot, therefore, to develop a principle of benefit-sharing through which to guarantee some form of returns to research subjects. This paper tracks some of the implications of the rise of this new ethic, tracing its travels from the world of bioprospecting to clinical and genetics research, and exploring how and why benefit-sharing matters to Latourian notions of science as politics. What might it mean, both for bioscience and for our ideas about politics and publics more generally, to think of research not just as a mode of ‘speaking for’, in Latourian terms, but as a mode of giving back? I argue that in shifting the problem from one of dialogue to one of distribution, benefit-sharing proposals are also implicated in the constitution of the biosciences' publics in new ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to understand the current North American public library directors' views and perceptions of successful library leadership in the 21st century. It was carried out based around a series of semi-structured interviews with 10 top-level directors of public libraries in the United States and Canada, which were published in the book World's Leading National, Public, Monastery and Royal Library Directors: Leadership, Management: Future of Libraries. The data collection method for this study consisted of narrative analysis of the 10 interviews utilizing Robert Greenleaf's servant leadership theory, which highlights the leader's desire to serve others first and foremost. With the current trends of increased globalization, digitization, and cultural diversity, among others, public libraries need to have leadership focused on creating shared-power environments encouraging collaboration. Analysis of these interviews showed that many of the directors' responses were quite similar to the concepts discussed in servant leadership. The library directors, through their leadership philosophies, benefited in boosting team cohesion, fostering collaboration, increasing creativity, and promoting morality-centered self-reflection amongst leaders, thereby helping their libraries gain and maintain competitive advantage, and improving the overall ethical culture of their organizations. The results of this study would be of interest to library professionals interested in management as well as LIS students who want to understand how library directors view successful traits of library leadership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides an overview of the Algonquian manitow concept. Manitow is often translated as spirit, god or mythical being, but reflects more complex and culturally grounded ideas about power in animist ontologies. The article suggests that manitow should be translated with care, with attention to a range of meanings. The authors refer primarily to Cree examples from Alberta, Canada, but also take a broader view to consider examples from other Algonquian contexts. Beginning with a discussion of definitions, the article then turns to the concept’s theoretical career. The article provides data on the contemporary dynamics of the manitow in the context of Cree religious pluralism, as well as on the emplacement of manitow relations through toponymy, particularly as seen around lakes named manitow sâkahikan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine how the seasonality of precipitation signals embedded within the North American Drought Atlas varies across the continent. Instrumental records of average summer (JJA) Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) are characterized by major regional differences in the relative importance of precipitation during summer and winter (DJF). The Atlas, which is based on a network of drought-sensitive tree-ring records, is able to reproduce the main geographic patterns of these biases, but tree-ring reconstructions exaggerate the influence of seasonal precipitation anomalies in the southwestern United States and northern Mexico (towards a stronger winter signal) and western Canada (towards a stronger summer signal). Drought reconstructions from the Southwest and Tex-Mex regions are tuned mainly to winter precipitation and display strong teleconnections to both El Niño and La Niña. In contrast, winter precipitation signals are either weak or absent in drought reconstructions from northwestern North America, and tree-ring estimates of PDSI show a much less robust association with the El Niño-Southern Oscillation. Geographical differences in the relative strength of seasonal precipitation signals are likely due to (i) local factors that influence tree growth but are not incorporated into the PDSI algorithm and (ii) real differences in regional climatology. These seasonal biases must be taken into account when comparing drought reconstructions across North America, when comparing tree-ring PDSI to drought records developed from other proxies or when attempting to use the Drought Atlas to link past droughts to potential forcing mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The proportion of North American gamblers who choose to gamble on the internet is increasing at a dramatic rate. Unfortunately, however, relatively little is known about the characteristics of these individuals or their propensity for problem gambling. Past studies predict that internet gamblers are especially at risk for developing gambling problems and that a substantial proportion of them already can be properly classified as problem gamblers. This article investigates this issue using data collected from an internet-based survey administered to 1920 American, Canadian and international internet gamblers. Confirming predictions of a relationship between internet gambling and problem gambling, it finds that 42.7 percent of the internet gamblers in the sample can be classified as problem gamblers. In light of the findings, and bearing in mind the recommendations made by other gambling researchers, it concludes with a discussion of issues and cautions for governments to heed when crafting internet gambling policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unlike the major droughts of the twentieth century that are readily identified in the instrumental record, similar events in the nineteenth century have to be identified using a combination of proxy data, historical accounts and a sparse collection of early instrumental records. In the USA, three distinct periods of widespread and persistent drought stand out in these records for the latter half of the nineteenth century: 1856–1865, 1870–1877 and 1890–1896. Each of these events is shown to coincide with the existence of an anomalously cool, La Niña-like tropical Pacific. To examine the physical mechanisms behind these droughts two ensembles of simulations with an atmosphere general circulation model (AGCM) were generated: the first forces an AGCM with the observed history of Sea Surface Temperatures (SSTs) everywhere from 1856 to 2001 (the GOGA experiment), the second forces the AGCM only with tropical Pacific SSTs, being coupled to a two-layer entraining mixed layer (ML) ocean elsewhere (the POGA-ML experiment). Owing to a sparsity of instrumental precipitation data at this time, proxy evidence from tree rings is used as verification. A comparison of modelled soil moisture with tree-ring reconstructions of the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI), a proxy for soil moisture, from the North American Drought Atlas is made. Both the POGA-ML and GOGA ensemble means capture the three multi-year droughts of the mid to late nineteenth century, indicating that the droughts were SST forced. The similarity of the POGA-ML and GOGA simulations implies that the component of each drought signal that is forced by the SST is driven ultimately by the La Niña-like tropical Pacific. The global atmosphere–ocean context of each of the mid to late-nineteenth century droughts reveals a zonally and hemispherically symmetric pattern consistent with forcing from the tropics. In addition, Rossby wave propagation from the cooler equatorial Pacific amplifies dry conditions over the USA. Finally, using published coral data for the last millennium to reconstruct a NINO 3.4 history, the modern-day relationship between NINO 3.4 and North American drought is applied to recreate two of the severest Mediaeval 'drought epochs' in the western USA. The large-scale spatial similarity to the Drought Atlas data demonstrates the potential link between a colder eastern equatorial Pacific and the persistent North American droughts of the Mediaeval period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

North American business corporations are currently facing competitive challenges as well as rising public demand for more participative and accountable forms of governance. While they have responded to the competitive challenge by implementing new lean and flexible organizational processes to improve productivity, they have made few changes in governance, and employees continue to have little input into decisions that fundamentally affect them. This article outlines the conventional arguments for workplace democracy and proposes a new, health-based argument. The grounds for an emerging employee rights movement are then presented. The article concludes that while the evidence backing up the conventional arguments for workplace democracy may be equivocal, there are still compelling reasons, both economic and non-economic, to democratize workplaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present evidence from a variety of physical and biological proxies for a severe drought that affected the mid-continent of North America between 4.1 and 4.3 ka. Rapid climate changes associated with the event had large and widespread ecological effects, including dune reactivation, forest fires and long-term changes in forest composition, highlighting a clear ecological vulnerability to similar future changes. Drought is also documented in the Middle East and portions of Africa and Asia, where it was similar in timing, duration and magnitude to that recorded in the central North American records. Some regions at high latitudes, including northern Europe and Siberia, experienced cooler and/or wetter conditions. Widespread mid-latitude and subtropical drought, associated with increased moisture at some high latitudes, has been linked in the instrumental record to an unusually steep sea surface temperature (SST) gradient between the tropical eastern and western Pacific Ocean (La Niña) and increased warmth in other equatorial oceans. Similar SST patterns may have occurred at 4.2 ka, possibly associated with external forcing or amplification of these spatial modes by variations in solar irradiance or volcanism. However, changes in SST distribution bracketing the 4.2 ka event are poorly known in most regions and data are insufficient to estimate magnitude of changes in solar and volcanic forcing at this time. Further research is needed to delineate geographical patterns of moisture changes, ecological responses, possible forcing mechanisms and climatology of this severe climatic event. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Thick Holocene Bignell Loess sections provide new evidence for the timing of early to middle Holocene aridity in the central Great Plains. The immediate source of loess in these sections was dune fields just upwind, based on thickness trends and grain size data. Thus, periods of rapid loess accumulation indicate episodes of extensive dune activity under drier-than-present climate. In typical Bignell Loess sections, a thick zone of coarse-textured loess with minimal pedogenic alteration is interpreted as a record of the most rapid, sustained Holocene loess accumulation. Optical ages indicate that loess in this zone was deposited beginning about 9000–10000 years ago at five study sites. Accumulation ended shortly after 6500 years ago at three sites, but possibly earlier at the other two. In two well-dated sections, the average rate of loess accumulation between 9000–10 000 and 6500 years ago was about 1.6–3.5 times greater than in the late Holocene. Thus, we infer that the most extensive, sustained Holocene dune field activity, reflecting sustained aridity, occurred from around 9000–10 000 years ago to just after 6500 years ago. Comparison of the Bignell Loess record with other proxy data from the Great Plains indicates general agreement on an early–middle Holocene dry period, but also provides new evidence for spatial variation of early to middle Holocene climatic change, with possible time transgression, both from west to east and from north to south. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Biotic causes of changes in palaeorecords are discussed as a counterbalance to the (over) emphasis on climatic drivers in the interpretation of palaeoecological change. Biotic and climatic drivers are considered as competing hypotheses with particular reference to the importance of early-Holocene drought in the northern central grassland region of North America. It is concluded that the observed patterns are explained better by grazers than by the direct effects of climatic variation. The elevation of biotic factors as competing hypotheses with climate will require new conceptual and methodological approaches to palaeoecology in North America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information on the timing and direction of climatic and environmental change on a millennial scale exists for many regions of North America, whereas little is known about decadal- to centennial-scale variability. Here we present a high-resolution analysis of diatom-inferred salinity from a site in the Northern Great Plains to reconstruct multidecadal- and centennial-scale climatic patterns during the early Holocene. The diatom-inferred salinity indicates a transition from fresh to highly saline conditions between c. 13 400 and 7700 cal. yr BP, which suggests a major shift in climate from wet to dry conditions. The overall trend toward increasing salinity is interrupted by several freshwater intervals between c. 9800 and 7950 cal. yr BP, which may be the result of an increase in the frequency of monsoonal flow from the Gulf of Mexico. The early Holocene is considered to be a time of rapid change in climate and vegetation within the Holocene. Although rates of change in the Moon Lake diatom assemblages were high during parts of the early Holocene, in general the rate of change was as great or greater during the last two millennia. This finding may be the result of a generally directional change in climate in the early Holocene, in contrast to shorter-term fluctuations and little directionality in the late Holocene. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]