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The paper challenges writings on affect that locate affective dynamism in autonomic bodily responses while positing discourse and language as "capturing" affect. To move beyond such "verticalism", the paper seeks to further an understanding of language, and semiotics more broadly, as itself affective. Drawing on participatory research conducted in Rio de Janeiro, it uses poetic expression as a paradigmatic case of the affective life of semiotics. Conceptually, it builds on Guattari's discussion of affect in connection to Hjelmslev's semiotic approach and Bakhtin's account of the process of enunciation. It is argued that semiotics play a crucial role in conjuring affective intensities, whereby expressions themselves become affective, as they modify sensory and material registers including prosody and the voice. The argument thus leads to a new understanding of the expression of affect as well as the affectivity of expressions. As expressions become affective, they draw subjects into ongoing processes of affecting and being affected. Such a view moves away from conceptions of semiotics "capturing" or even "translating" or "constructing" affect. It also displaces prevalent conceptions of "affective transmission" in terms of the circulation of physical substances body to body. Moreover, it furthers discursive and semiotic methodologies while also inviting a reconsideration of affective ontologies.

Agriculture depends in large part on relations with weather phenomena, such as rain and temperature. Anticipatory knowledge about the atmosphere therefore is vital in agricultural livelihoods. Based on an ethnographic case study of weather forecasting for small-scale farming in western Kenya, in this paper I discuss different ways in which knowledge about the future weather is produced. While development organizations promote expert forecasts that draw on meteorological sensing technologies as a solution to dealing with climate change, I show how knowing the weather is an entangled affair in a sensory assemblage that simultaneously draws on scientific instruments and on other entities such as animals, plants, clouds and embodied sensoria associated with experiential knowledge. Building on concepts related to science and technology studies that address the relations between humans and nonhumans, I suggest to treat scientific and experiential devices symmetrically by looking at their more-than-human sensoria, proxies and imaginations to understand how farmers attune to the weather. In practice, then, navigating the uncertainties of the weather is not enabled by scientific meteorology alone, but by combining different sensory devices and practices of interpretation that together mediate the weather as something to be known and acted upon.

This paper examines the contribution of Italian academic geography to the processes of nation-building between ca. 1880–1920. With reference to Friedrich Ratzel's works, it explores the ways in which biological and vitalist theories shaped political processes. In the decades between Italy's national unification until the first post-war period, Italian academic geographers helped to consolidate the nation-state by means of theoretical reflection, applied research, and education. The main focus of geographers was in defining the national space and its boundaries, especially by developing a scientific analysis that could establish the exact position of the terrestrial border along the Alpine chain. The scientific topic was strongly connected with the nationalist question of irredenta, which garnered growing consideration in the last 2 decades of the 19th century. The epistemological turn in Italian geography was particularly influenced by new approaches in German geography introduced by scholars such as Oscar Peschel and Friedrich Ratzel and aimed to formulate a general understanding of biogeography in its relationship with the earth's physical space. The reception of this theoretical model in the political debate and the way it was applied in the following decades proved highly significant.

This article examines the constitution of affective atmospheres that arise through the encounter of scientific and theatre practices. Using an autoethnographic approach, the presented work focuses on a collaborative theatre project on the climate crisis. Here, the author performed in the role of a scientific expert next to colleagues that have a climate change-related research background. Three aspects of affective atmospheres emerging in the rehearsal process are analysed: one's position in the interplay of powerful materialities, the relationality of sensual bodies, and the (in)stability of scientific identities. This paper shows that the artistic collaboration opens up space for reflecting on science that seek to overcome ostensible dualisms of subject/object, mind/body, and reason/emotion. It emphasizes the opportunity of art to bring into account body, more-than-humanity and relationality as part of scientific practices in times of anthropocentric debates facing climate change.

Drawing on the case study of the Wageningse Eng, the Netherlands, this paper examines a set of spatial metaphors (and their attendant grounded impacts) employed within two key policy documents – the allocation plan and a related map – pertaining to how the cultural landscape is to be spatially managed and developed by the municipality. Although promoted as being based on historical facts and a cornerstone of Dutch commitment to participatory planning, the case being studied reveals the ways in which these metaphors are at times not only entirely subjective and arbitrary, but also perceived by residents and users as neglecting their rights with respect to the landscape and as instruments constraining what can or cannot be done in that area. More broadly, in the face of calls for more non-representational approaches to landscape analysis, the paper shows the continued salience of representational practices within spatial planning and how these may hold very material implications for landscapes.

"Religious spaces" can become a powerful nucleus of (geo-) political imaginations, identities, and conflicts. The paper outlines this aspect using the example of Tibet. Considering the prominent position of Buddhism in Tibet, the tense relationships between religion, space and nation come into view. In this respect the paper does however not primarily discuss the quite well known antagonistic constructions of pro-Chinese and pro-Tibetan geopolitical discourses. Rather, it addresses the far less publicized yet for the development of Tibetan Nationalism equally important fact that differences in the production of religious spaces and respective identities can also be found within Tibetan society. Tracing these discursive inventions of tradition helps to better understand, why the establishment of a national project in Tibet has been difficult and why it only started to gain traction and visibility in the face of mounting threads by an antagonistic exterior and the precarious Tibetan exile situation.

This paper reports results from a critical discourse analysis of Annual Reports for Corrections Corporation of America and Geo Group, Inc. (formerly Wackenhut), the two largest private prison firms currently operating in the United States. Considerable geographic scholarship has analyzed privatization, on the one hand, and imprisonment, on the other. However, geographers have paid less attention to explicitly for-profit imprisonment. In particular, geographers have overlooked or ignored the emergence of bedspace, a concept that now pervades penal discourse. Rather than continuing conventional public-versus-private prison debates, this paper identifies bedspace as the discursive common ground upon which private prison industrialists and the state actually converge. Applying Henri Lefebvre's theorization of "abstract space" to imprisonment, I argue that the discursive creation of bedspace produces a nondialectical representation of space that is fully commodified and bureaucratized. However, the paper concludes that this nondialectical space problematically severs the immanently human geography of imprisonment, which is a "messy" space that is always lived and experienced in particular ways, from its inanimate architectural infrastructure (i.e., beds). Beyond the potential ethical and empirical challenges raised by the production of such an abstract space, bedspace signals the discursive and material convergence of state punishment with capital flows that build and often move beyond prison boundaries while obscuring violent geographies.

Securitization of immigration, the rise of interior immigration policing, and forces of carceral privatization have occasioned a remarkable expansion of immigrant detention throughout the United States. Previous studies have drawn attention to the importance of the daily rates paid by the federal government to individual facilities in driving the emphasis on detention. This paper, in contrast, argues that tracing the political and economic geography of money inside detention facilities is also critical for understanding detention expansion and its consequences. We define the processes, mechanisms, and practices of generating profit above and beyond the "per-bed" daily rate as "internal micro-economies" of migrant detention. Drawing on an ongoing examination of migrant detention facilities in the greater New York City metropolitan area, we identify four micro-economies evident in detention facilities: the commissary systems, phone and other forms of communication, detainee labor, and detainee excursions outside detention. These economies show how detained migrants' needs and daily routines are tailored in ways that produce migrants as both captive consumers and laborers. Recognition of multiple micro-economies also highlights the fact that the numbers of individuals and entities invested in the incarceration of immigrants proliferate in tandem with the objectification of detainees. The paper further suggests that attending to relationships embedded in the inner workings of detention exposes economic links across carceral boundaries, rendering visible the porosity between government, private companies, and publics.

This exploratory paper introduces the notion of the "green" prison, uncovering the ways in which environmental sustainability inflects carceral policies and practices. Focusing on the United States, it highlights the construction of an "organizational sustainable development" discourse within the correctional system, and argues that it is the system, rather than the environment, which is being "sustained", through the promulgation of a "green" prison discourse which serves to deflect attention from the mounting human and financial costs of mass incarceration. It examines the ways in which "sustainability" plays out in correctional facilities, narrowly structured around compliance with "green" environmental and energy-related regulations, and the provision of "green-collar" training for inmates. Drawing on architectural geographies and notions of therapeutic landscapes, the paper theorizes an alternative interpretation of the "green" prison as a nurturing environment, but argues that this model functions only in decarcerative settings imbued with a rehabilitative, rather than a retributive, atmosphere.

Increasingly, governments are adopting alternative strategies to mass incarceration and drawing on the rhetoric of community to create softer and less restrictive sanctions. This paper argues that this transition provides an opportunity for geographers concerned with incarceration to consider a more expansive understanding of the carceral state. To call for a more geographically expansive consideration of incarceration, this paper draws upon a study of one juvenile court that sought to end racialized over-incarceration by promoting a "community orientation". As a consequence, juvenile detention now acts as a single node in a broader process of sorting, placing, and punishing, but the carceral aspects of juvenile court involvement did not lessen. Instead, the community orientation encapsulated a range of practices that are traditionally outside the state, yet extended the power of the state over a broad geography that resulted in the coerced mobility of children and subjection to greater insecurity. By tracing how the carceral apparatus extends into neighborhoods, community programs, probation practices, and residential placement, I argue that paying more attention to variegated carceral practices is necessary to more fully consider how incarceration has permeated places outside the prison.

The micro-macro-problem of the social sciences is also present in human geographies' discussions of creativity. Creativity could be conceptualized either as a capability of subjects or as emerging from interaction processes. A direct consequence of this theoretical indecision is an inconsistent notion of creativity in Nigel Thrifts' nonrepresentational theory (NRT) that is originally developed to valuate creative praxis. The paper advances a proposal for conceptualizing creativity in NRT by using the philosophy of symbolic forms established by Ernst Cassirer. First, the paper develops a notion of individual creativity that is implied in Cassirers' work on symbolic pregnance and symbolic forms and via Bourdieus' interpretation of Cassirer also in the French sociologists' theory of incorporation. Second, the paper shows two possibilities to include the outlined notion of individual creativity in NRT. Creativity could be linked with NRT by modifying Bourdieus' concept of incorporation as used to establish a notion of nonrepresentational praxis. The second possibility of including creativity is a connection of affect and experience, which leads directly to the emergence of novelty.

The American geographer Ellen Churchill Semple (1863–1932), famous for her work on environmental influence, is often framed as a mere disciple of the German geographer Friedrich Ratzel (1844–1904). Drawing on a reading of Semple's published and unpublished works as well as correspondence and diaries, this paper sheds new light on the two anthropogeographers' intellectual relationship, which was in fact one with benefits to both sides. Semple found in Ratzel's geography a detached and scientific language with which to reinterpret American history. He drew on her as an informant on issues of racial segregation in the United States. Although Semple remained loyal to his broader intellectual project after his death, she had begun, soon after they met, to develop her own brand of anthropogeography, freed from the ambivalences of his work. Her sharpened reformulation, which he had endorsed, would ultimately make anthropogeography an easier target for its critics.

Emotions affect how humans relate to others and define their place in the world. They thus shape responses to socio-ecological problems like climate change. In spite of the overwhelming knowledge and concern about climate change, a lack of appropriate moral and political consequences prevails in most contemporary societies. Instead of trying to explain climate inaction as a result of (un)awareness, this paper introduces a new perspective by conceptualising climate inaction as an active social process animated by emotions. Drawing on an interdisciplinary and radically relational perspective, I grasp climate inaction as a product of more-than-human intra-action and explore the affective role of emotions within this production. To illustrate how emotions energise climate inaction, I sketch how fear, grief, and hope animate current climate responses.

In this article, I will utilize the elusive and fluid identity and texture of water to complicate an essentialist view of modern water that finds new relevance in claims to close the financing gap to provide safely managed water for all by the year 2030. To close this gap, models of blended finance are pursued that rely on transparent and auditable performance data of digital systems. Tracing the implementation of pay-as-you-go (PAYGo) water dispensers in off-grid areas in the Global South, I will demonstrate that the supposedly transparent and objective data generated from remote monitoring systems form part of the enactment of only one water reality amidst the multiple enactments of waters in relation to their sociotechnical environments, non-human encounters, and human bodies. Drawing on ethnographic material from two different settings in Kenya – the so-called informal Nairobi settlement of Mathare and a village called Kondo – I will show that, on the one hand, waters' multiplicity proliferates and, on the other hand, multiple waters and alternative water realities are deliberately undone. The paper closes with a call for the attentiveness to multiple waters.

A central diagnosis driving research around social relations of nature is the thesis of the “end of nature”. In an era marked by climate change and global warming, the image of nature as a pristine and stable foundation of human existence seems outdated. In light of this, recent scholarship demonstrates how environmental changes and conflicts increasingly affect people's daily lives and present significant threats to psychic well-being. In contrast, in this paper we investigate the conditions under which nature continues to function as an effective source of `ontological security'. As part of an international comparative research project that engages geographical imaginaries of security and insecurity in Berlin, Vancouver, and Singapore, we analyze how nature is imagined by city dwellers as an object of desire that offers a place of refuge to escape the burdens from urban everyday life. Against this background, we emphasize imaginary nature as a powerful everyday source for the ontological security of subjects even under today's postnatural conditions.

The relationship between “national” geographical schools and an increasingly globalized geographical theory-building under the logics of Anglophone hegemony has generated critical debate within geography. This paper aims to contribute to current discussions on the development of differential, language-based “schools of thought” in geography and how these are mobilized and de- and recontextualized when they travel beyond their origins. However, it does not focus on the period of Anglophone hegemony but intends to shed a new, historically informed light on the politics of geographical knowledge production. Against this backdrop, we study why, how and with what consequences German geographical knowledge traveled to Argentina in the 1940s – the end of the “German hegemony” – following the employment by the National University of Tucumán (UNT) of the four German geography professors Wilhelm Rohmeder, Gustav Fochler-Hauke, Fritz Machatschek and Willi Czajka, all of whom had been institutionally and ideologically entwined with National Socialism. Firstly, we show that the epistemic differences between “national” schools of geographical thought – skillfully juggled by the geographers we analyze here – can provide an opportunity for the successful de- and recontextualization of theory. Secondly, we argue that boundary spanning and the traveling of theory beyond their geographical origins – largely (implicitly) viewed as progressive – should always be put in context(s) and assessed more cautiously from a normative point of view.

Human-animal relations are often experienced viscerally. These corporeal, affective, sensual and emotional realities cannot easily be put into words and adequately expressed through linear and textual forms. For this reason, this paper investigates the potential of comics in more-than-human geographies. It identifies three different ways of how geographers approach this field of research and communication: (1) comic analysis, (2) comic semiotics and (3) comic practice. In their comic drawings geographers try to make specific viewpoints, moments, emotions and relations visible that have been underexposed either socio-politically or in terms of scientific practice. The article then discusses more-than-human qualities of comics, arguing that graphic narratives emerge as productive tools to reveal „the in_between“ of humans and nonhumans. It further describes an exemplary approach to a collaborative comic and how visceral or nonverbal aspects in human-animal relations can be expressed and experienced, using the empirical study of returning wolves to Switzerland.

This paper analyses from a philosophical and interdisciplinary point of view two master plans of the canton Ticino – the first one from 1990, Keynesian, and the second one from 2009, neoliberal. The differences between the former and the latter are highlighted on a conceptual level. While the former stresses the importance of rebalancing and maintaining internal solidarity between the regions of the canton, the latter aims to make the canton more competitive and specialised. The discussion highlights how this type of analysis, by showing the political and moral concepts and criteria underlying a master plan, favours their political discussion and thus, ultimately, the implementation of a more inclusive planning process.

Geoheritage is a component of geodiversity constituted by all the elements of geodiversity recognized by society for their particular values. The definition of these values, including the importance of geoheritage for biodiversity, plays a key role in the process of heritage recognition and geoconservation policymaking. In mountain environments, dynamic geomorphosites have a strong influence on plant diversity because the active geomorphological processes responsible for their formation act as renovators for habitats of pioneer species. In this paper, we propose criteria to assess the ecological value of dynamic mountain geomorphosites. We show that the interest of plant communities (species richness and presence of rare or protected species) and the influence of geomorphological processes on plant communities (disturbances, surface movement and soil) are fundamental criteria for assessing the ecological value in an exhaustive and objective way and that the question of the scale (local and national scales) is also a crucial parameter. We then illustrate this methodological proposal by evaluating the ecological value of three dynamic geomorphosites and a talus slope in the western Swiss Alps.

The patterns, motivations, and consequences of the outmigration of young adults from rural areas is a classic topic in population geography. In our paper, we first take a critical look at statistical analyses and cartographic representations of migration patterns of young adults in rural areas using Central Germany1 as an example, stressing the shortcomings of quantitative analyses of residential mobility. We argue that migration is a complex social process, taking place as the result of the interplay of demographic, socio-structural, political, economic, and production-related factors involving the mobile individuals, as well as other actors, discourses, and practices. Following this, we discuss the emergence of cultures of (out-)migration in rural areas characterised by heightened mobility over longer periods of time and possible approaches to analyse such regional phenomena. We hence aim at a deepening of the concept of “culture of migration” and an expansion of the debate on motives and practices of migration to include psychological approaches, as well as a complex systems perspective.

The paper examines the conceptual implications of using Smart Farming Technologies and digitalisation in small-scale food production, exemplified by the Austrian start-up “myAcker”. The company runs a hybrid system of gamified, remote-controlled agriculture, where its customers assume the role of “online gardeners” and take care of their own vegetables. Conceptually, it combines two different logics, namely the technology focus of vertical farming and algorithm-based control over operational processes, and the participatory, values-based elements of Alternative Food Networks like connectivity, sustainability, and ownership developed by online gardeners. Consequently, the dividing lines between producers, customers, and technology, as well as between virtual and physical, become blurred. Thus, the agency of technology becomes a co-constituent of agricultural work, life, and identity, which is itself co-constituted by human actors in a network of social relations. The case study shows the new potential and pitfalls of small-scale smart farming and digitalisation, making it necessary to conceptually revisit human–environment relations in the Actor Network Theory by more explicitly including technology as a bridging element.

Immobile populations have received academic attention in recent years, following a period of focus on hypermobility and increasing migration as the main research interest. This article analyses the existing stock of literature on the topics of “immobilities” and “staying” to give insight into the importance of these concepts for rethinking contemporary population geography. It considers texts dealing with voluntary and involuntary types of immobility, as well as reasons for and factors influencing the increased observed immobility in the context of internal migration. Common theoretical frameworks used to explain immobilities and consequences for increasingly rooted societies are discussed. The paper also presents open research questions for future research. It draws the conclusion that staying and immobility are meaningful concepts for future research in the context of population and human geography, since they introduce a new perspective for research dedicated to spatial living patterns of populations. These concepts furthermore highlight the importance of different types and forms of (im)mobilities, the interconnectedness of mobile and immobile populations, and changes in aspirations and capabilities of life-course decision-making over time.

Immobile populations have received academic attention in recent years, following a period of focus on hypermobility and increasing migration as the main research interest. This article analyses the existing stock of literature on the topics of “immobilities” and “staying” to give insight into the importance of these concepts for rethinking contemporary population geography. It considers texts dealing with voluntary and involuntary types of immobility, as well as reasons for and factors influencing the increased observed immobility in the context of internal migration. Common theoretical frameworks used to explain immobilities and consequences for increasingly rooted societies are discussed. The paper also presents open research questions for future research. It draws the conclusion that staying and immobility are meaningful concepts for future research in the context of population and human geography, since they introduce a new perspective for research dedicated to spatial living patterns of populations. These concepts furthermore highlight the importance of different types and forms of (im)mobilities, the interconnectedness of mobile and immobile populations, and changes in aspirations and capabilities of life-course decision-making over time.

China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) exploits increased permeability of all kinds of boundaries even as old rhetorics of sovereign space are reanimated. This paper examines a very local example of impacts in Kibwezi, Kenya. Regarding more than a century of local land disputes, BRI's “dreamscape” (Jasanoff and Kim, 2015) can be repurposed especially given persistence of sacred geographies of wood and water access. These mathembo landscapes are less refuges for emasculated traditional customs and institutions than resources that are as much affective as they are material in their revitalization to meet the contexts of changed times. Such “socionatures” (Swyngedouw, 1996) energize multiple answers to questions of who gets to imagine the future and how much latitude others have to participate in particular designed futures as they see fit. As it turns out, dreamscapes may be opposed not only by equally grandiose alternative narratives but also by more localized imaginaries, and while dreamscapes are future-oriented, alternatives referencing the past can compete well.

In areas located near large rock cliffs, risk reduction by early warning monitoring systems highligts potentiality but also critical issues and limits. The paper examines two rock slope failures that occurred in a short time from each other near inhabited areas in the Italian Alps. The viscous behavior of the rock mass was reconstructed through data processing from ground-based Synthetic Aperture Radar Interferometry (InSAR), and elaboration of acceleration and speed curves. Landslides types and underlying complexity associated with rock detachment mechanisms suggest the identification of precautionary alarm thresholds for collapse forecasting. The analysis of financial outlay, both for mitigation works and for monitoring activities, highlight the adequacy and the opportunity to combine passive systems, like embankments or rockfall drapery meshes, with a reliable monitoring network for early warning.

This paper is an empirical mixed-method study on car use in an urban context. It explores the questions: What mobility practices do people in the city display? What role does car use play in this context? What is the guiding, underlying logic behind personal car use? The findings help to understand mobility practices and their underlying logic. The central component is a user typology based on a quantitative survey and qualitative interviews. The study aims to present an empirical description of mobility practices and the guiding logic of different mobility types in Berlin. The findings offer starting points for user-specific measures to encourage people to use new mobility concepts instead of their personal car.

This article shows how two Swiss posters represent a certain representation of the Swiss territory, appropriate to the messages they try to convey. The first one dates from 1942 and invites tourists to stay in the Pays-d'Enhaut (canton of Vaud). The second encourages the Swiss electorate to vote for the Vert'libéral political party in 2019. Through a qualitative approach, we show that the choice of representations, a set of miniatures and sketches, is not neutral. In the light of historical, tourism and political contexts of poster production, the paper decrypts an imagery of a Switzerland for urban dwellers, green for its nature, white for its inhabitants. In both cases, Switzerland is always an island that chooses its images.

The focus of this intervention follows the ongoing COVID-19 crisis and its consequences. With both health and the economy as central to this crisis, besides each amplifying the other, in some regards, the two also might stand in conflict. However, both are definitely delivering a number of consequences for humans in different regions and life circumstances across the globe. With the help of several examples, this paper sets out to visualize the unequal distribution of duties, strains, exposure and aftermath of the current health crisis.

This article deals with one of the most controversial topics in urban studies related to mobile capital and mobile people. At first glance this seems to be contradictory since numbers of short-term rentals have decreased dramatically due to the coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic. However, this paper is not about numbers and statistics. Instead it discusses structural issues regarding governance and power relations which remain important topics (especially) in times of crisis. It provides insights regarding the following issues: firstly, it deconstructs different “myths” that still surround short-term rentals and Airbnb and secondly, it delineates the structural power of Airbnb as a new urban institution. This helps us to understand some of the conflicts over Airbnb and the pitfalls with current forms of regulation on the one side as well as showing the complexity and agency of short-term rentals on the other.

The contemporary metropolis is characterised by an increasing diversity of its population, which is called “super-diversity” or “hyperdiversity” in the urban discourse. This epistemological realignment breaks new ground away from the classic Chicago School. Associated with this “diversification of diversity” (Vertovec, 2007:1025) is a fragmentation of the different social and ethnic groups in the city. However, the concept of super-diversity camouflages a separateness of these groups that is called newguineaisation in this paper. With that said, this new urban reality claims for empirical investigations of the societal implication of this phenomenon especially with regard to social cohesion in contemporary cities.

Entrepreneurial and social urban policies contradictorily depend from each other: growth policies aiming to increase investment and population numbers produce a crisis of reproduction (i.e. housing or care); and social policies aiming to resolve this crisis allegedly require entrepreneurial policies as fuel for tax resources financing social goals. We investigate this interrelationship along the recent housing and childcare policies in the city of Hamburg, Germany. We show that as long as growth and competition are primary objectives of urban governments, a compensatory social policy is needed to legitimate the entrepreneurial axiom – and therefore has a specific character: social policy in the social-entrepreneurial city is actually addressing inequalities, but it eventually is aimed at all classes, secures capital accumulation and is gendered. This paper contributes to understanding urban crises of reproduction by exposing that current social policies aiming to solve this crisis merely consolidate the crisis-prone growth policies.

While the idea of extracting deep-seabed resources dates back to as early as the 1960s, it remained pure fiction for decades due to limited technical possibilities and prohibitive costs. In recent years, against the backdrop of changing technical possibilities and a persistently high demand for raw materials, deep-seabed mining (DSM) has returned to the international political agenda. While numerous fact-finding missions engage in mapping the ocean's resources and public–private partnerships prepare to make an active engagement in mining the seabed, the International Seabed Authority (ISA) is entrusted with the development of a legal framework for possible future mining in accordance with the requirements defined under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). The preparations for DSM are accompanied and ultimately shaped by a discourse on possible opportunities and risks of mining the deep seabed. The paper at hand traces dominant discursive positions and their narrative structures as a way of explaining the relative success or failure of DSM proponents who speak in favor of mining the seabed and DSM critics who warn against its striking environmental impacts and inestimable risks. We proceed from the observation that the historic discourse on the deep sea beyond national jurisdiction was rooted in what we call “narratives of promise” regarding global procedural and distributive justice, environmental health, and peaceful international cooperation. Our findings show how in today's debates the theme of global marine justice, which dominated the historic DSM discourse, is close to a “nonstory”. DSM is commonly narrated as a merely technocratic and apolitical process that appears to be free of social and environmental conflict. We conclude by arguing that to arrive at more successful critical narratives on DSM will require more pronounced depictions of the negative consequences in particular for humans, exposing the “politics” in DSM policy making and developing more competitive stories on alternatives to DSM.

Public libraries are an important public service of general interest and, as part of social infrastructures, contribute to educational justice. This article discusses their development against the background of the interaction of digitization and austerity. As voluntary services they are particularly affected by the current austerity policy and have to increasingly justify their services and structures. At the same time, they are being rediscovered in the course of local authorities' urban development strategies. Based on empirical results from Bonn, the paper discusses central municipal strategies for the further development of the local library system and sheds light on the associated ambivalent socio-spatial implications.

This paper is concerned with a herd of wild horses that struggles to survive in the Namib Desert. This case, we argue, reveals ambivalences and critical paradoxes that go along with putting nature–culture dualisms into conservation practice. At the same time, we argue that there are aspects of bio-power involved which cannot be understood properly without taking into account the sphere of the body. We hence analyse in detail the “struggles over nature” that enfold around the questions of whether and with what means humans should intervene in the predicted extinction of the horses. Thereupon, we elucidate the relationships between sustainable conservation work and the symbolic as well as material practices of territorialization. Our investigation then puts focus on the fact that the conflictual border work appears also as an incorporated practice of subjects. Thus, while elaborating on a phenomenological approach, we explore the field of a contested conservation by employing the concept of intercorporeality. Such a “more-than-discursive” approach to human–animal relations, we finally argue, helps to reposition research for conservation as well as conservation practice towards learning about, and with, the lived bodies of all actors involved.

This study explores how technical services for automotive applications organize their value-added activities. It does so from the background of a market transition towards electric vehicles and vehicle connectivity. Conceptually, the article combines the literature stream of global value chains and global production networks (GVC–GPN) and knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS). This paper puts a specific focus on the temporality of client–vendor relationships and argues that interfirm relationships often last longer than their project-based mode suggests they would. Despite ongoing fundamental transitions of industry structures towards electric vehicles and vehicle connectivity, the relationships of incumbent OEMs and technical service firms continues to be hierarchical. Analyzing these dynamics on the level of value-added inputs, the concepts of GVC–GPN and KIBS meaningfully complement each other for outlining the mutual dependencies of market dynamics, the characteristics of a service input and the organizational outcome of the client–vendor relationship.

In Germany, strategies of “social mixing” aiming at the development of “disadvantaged” neighborhoods have been widely established in urban politics. Such strategies are oriented towards attracting middle class residents and therefore are discussed as drivers of displacement and exclusion of “the disadvantaged”. In our paper, we analyze such urban transformation processes focusing on the productivity of racial classifications. We present results of a research project in which we examine the appropriation of urban resources (such as housing, neighborhood infrastructures, and public spaces) by residents in such quarters. Using an interactivist approach “from below” and qualitative research methods, our case study on the former “declining”, currently “stagnating” quarter Essen-Altendorf shows the productivity of racial classifications in the residents' negotiations on “rules” in the closer neighborhood or on the use of public spaces. Yet, racializing articulations correspond with the policies of social mixing as well as with the observed selective policing of a “dangerous quarter”.

The housing question is a topic of increasing concern in a number of European cities. Rising housing costs burden many households. Since the outbreak of the global economic crisis in 2008, housing has increasingly come under spotlight of investors. Institutional and private actors invest in real estate not only in metropolitan areas but also in middle and small-sized towns. Tourism-induced demand increases the pressure on housing markets particularly in tourist-dominated cities. The manifestation of these processes varies on a small scale and is influenced by regional-local planning and politics. Based on the example of the city of Salzburg, the article shows that the housing question manifests itself strongly aside metropolises as well. Financial investments by private and institutional actors in real estate and different forms of tourism demand exacerbate the housing shortage. By linking the discussions about the effects of (mass-)tourism and financial investments on regional housing markets, this paper provides additional insights. The additional demand for (residential) space by tourism is used to increase or secure the return on investments in real estate. Financial investments in housing offer additional (problematic) potential for tourist use, such as short-term rentals. Owners benefit from both processes. Due to the prevalent power relations, planning and politics have little to counter the current challenges.

This paper takes Foucault's and Sloterdijk's reception of the Greek cynics as an intellectual resource to critically examine critical geography's moralizing high ground. I analyse how, in 1983, Foucault and Sloterdijk paint the cynical impulse as a political practice of provocative truth-telling against the moral high-grounds of the dogmatic left of the 1970s: For Foucault and Sloterdijk, the cynics are anti-dogmatic, anti-theoretical and anti-scholastic. I will argue, however, that the cynical impulse is itself in danger of speaking from the moral high ground of anti-critique, a disposition that needs the anti-dote of skepticism.

After the imperial land consolidation acts of 1906, the Russian land commune became a center of territorial struggle where complex alliances of actors, strategies, and representations of territory enacted land enclosure beyond the exclusive control of the state. Using original documentation of Russian imperial land deals obtained in the federal and municipal archives, this study explores how the Russian imperial state and territories in the periphery were dialectically co-produced not only through institutional manipulations, educational programs, and resettlement plans but also through political and public discourses. This paper examines how coalitions of landed nobility and land surveyors, landless serfs, and peasant proprietors used enclosure as conduits for property violence, accumulation of capital, or, in contrast, as a means of territorial autonomy. Through this example, I bring a territorial dimension into Russian agrarian scholarship by positioning the rural politics of the late imperial period within the global context of capitalist land enclosure. At the same time, by focusing on the reading of territory from the Russian historical perspective, I introduce complexity into the modern territory discourse often found in Western political geographic interpretations.

Forest is an important element of Swiss landscape, with about 30 % of the country covered by it, forming a finely structured patchwork together with water bodies, agricultural land and settlements. It is highly valued by residents as part of their everyday living and recreational environment. The aim of this paper is to provide knowledge about how residents perceive and value forests and what their dominant preferences are. The data were collected through the Socio-cultural Forest Monitoring (WaMos). In this survey, 3022 persons responded by telephone interview or online survey. Respondents were well informed about forest issues, especially about recreation, animals and protection from natural hazards. Nevertheless, functions such as wood production, air quality and biodiversity were rated as even more important than recreational functions. Mixed forests and multisensory experiences were preferred, whereas wilderness was only moderately approved of. Respondents did not much appreciate sports and fun infrastructure, but valued infrastructure for contemplative and social activities and for education about forest issues.

This paper shows the results from my research trajectory and my collaboration in cooperative projects with economically disadvantaged people of the urban periphery of Francisco Beltrão (Brazil). I initially reflect on the relevance of an analysis of urban social movements, asking how current urban conflicts can be understood from a territorial perspective. I will first develop a specific definition of territory, which seeks to become operative in collaboration with diverse subjects and in the analysis of territorial development based on the place. Such a conceptualization of territory provides a territorial analysis furthering transformation towards a fairer, solidary, and ecological society. I show how this fairer society emerges in a multidimensional way, emanating from the processes of territorialization, deterritorialization, and reterritorialization. Finally, by linking these processes with the current processes of territorial development (in research, analysis, and active participation), this study contributes to a more dialogical and counter-hegemonic perspective, especially in relation to Latin America.

The paper outlines an approach to right wing populism in recent years not only in critizing the use of so called alternative facts but using the concept of a regressive modernisation as a debate which includes populist movements into a broader social theory and diagnosis of western societies. The evolution of regressive modernisation reveals both, the success of a neoliberal globalization and a rise of marginality and perceived dangers of a downward mobility. These findings are used in order to explain certain transformations of academic fields in general and social geography in particular. It is argued that the success of postmodern geographies may be seen as an overcoming of hegemonic discourses of positivism as well as of marxism, but was and is unable to counteract geographies of recent right wing populism. Even the positions of the march for science which has been a major initiative to fight for academic integrity are seen as not being sufficient to rebuilt an antipopulist social geography. This situation leads to some suggestions and recommendation for further work in this field.

This article serves as introduction for a themed issue on Peter Sloterdijk's enormous philosophy of space. It invites scholars from various disciplines to critically engage with Sloterdijk's thought and discusses briefly the contributions made in this special issue. The paper gives some orientation on the anthropological and social philosophy Sloterdijk deploys within his oeuvre, and illuminates the various fields of social and cultural research his ideas have informed so far. The editorial identifies four possible fields of interest within human geography that could gain by engaging with Sloterdijk's thought, namely urban and architectural theory, new technologies, political geographies and critical social geography. The article also discusses the necessity of a critical distance to the philosophical premises on which Sloterdijk grounds his philosophy as well as his role as notorious commentator on political issues in Germany.

For a long time, the mainstream of social and cultural geography seems to have implicitly accepted that religion is becoming obsolete and is of little social significance. However, since the 1990s, religion has aroused new interest in the social sciences in general, and to some extent also in social and cultural geography. Against this backdrop, a controversial discussion has started in geography on the relevance of theories of secularisation and the notion of post-secularity, as well as on possible contributions to these debates. The paper introduces the interdisciplinary debate on revisions of theories of secularisation and the promotion of post-secular perspectives, referring, among others, to Jürgen Habermas, Peter Berger, José Casanova, and Talal Asad. In a second step, we argue that an understanding of post-secularity that focuses on the contingency and context-dependent delimitation of the secular and the religious promises to be fruitful for social and cultural geography and can help us to understand the geographies of religion and secularity.

This contribution of a literary scholar to the history of geopolitics argues for the consideration of literary sources as constituents of the classical geopolitical discourse (Ratzel, Kjellén, Haushofer). It exemplifies this claim by revealing the geopolitical components through which Gustav Freytag's novel Soll und Haben (Debit and Credit, Freytag, 1855, 1858) creates spaces, civilizations, and stories. Approaching these issues from the perspective of literary history and the history of knowledge, this paper turns to Freytag's novel to examine whether the literature of the period of the so-called bourgeois or poetic realism belongs to the genealogy of German political geography and geopolitics and how to study its impact on their increasingly manifest political program after the beginning of the First World War. Especially the establishment of the topos of the Volk ohne Raum (people without space) in the east of the German Reich and the reorientation of geopolitics gen Osten (toward the east) in the early twentieth century find a highly compatible antecedent in Soll und Haben.

This paper investigates the endurance of a national forest management programme in Burkina Faso called Chantier d'Aménagement Forestier (CAF), which focuses on the participatory sustainable production of fuelwood and is widely supported by international donors despite evidence of its shortcomings. We analyse the surprising persistence of the CAF model as a case of the territorialisation of state power through the reproduction of political forests – drawing on the work of Peluso and Vandergeest (2001, 2011). Analysing some the shortcomings and incoherencies of the model, we bring to light the role of non-state actors in the reproduction of the CAF as a political forest. We show that informal regulatory arrangements have emerged between state and non-state actors, namely merchants and customary authorities, over the production of fuelwood. We call these arrangements fuelwood territorialities because they have contributed to keeping the CAF's resource model unquestioned. With fuelwood territorialities, we draw attention to the role of non-state actors in the reproduction of political forests, that is, the process of state territorialisation through forest governance. This analysis helps clarify how certain areas, such as the CAFs, keep being officially represented as forest even though they are dominated by a patchwork of fields, fallows, and savannahs and do not have the ecological characteristics of one.

Drawing upon police statistics, this paper explores the impacts of the videosurveillance cameras (CCTV) installed in November 2014 in the Pâquis neighborhood in Geneva. It focuses on the evolution of criminality within the filmed perimeter and nearby settings. This analysis completes a previous article on the perceived safety of residents (Klauser and Kaenzig, 2017). In line with former studies, our results underline the limited preventive effects of the CCTV system. The analysis shows that cameras are inducing criminality displacement, mainly of drug trafficking. Overall, this study provides a differentiated and complex image of CCTV systems as instruments of territorialization of monitored areas.

This paper makes the case for greater consideration of unbound emotional geographies in research on youth transitions, based on the biographical narratives of young people interviewed as part of a qualitative research project on understandings of (in)security in the German city of Leipzig (2014–2015). The need for more holistic approaches to the complex temporalities and spatialities of transitioning in young people's everyday lives and across their life courses is identified and I propose developing such approaches partly on the basis of less bound understandings of emotion as an important medium through which boundaries are crossed, times and places intersect and both spatial intersections and boundary crossings are sensed and negotiated. The value of such an approach is demonstrated through empirical analysis of the accounts of young people from disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds in Leipzig, focusing particularly on interpersonal conflicts and how young people negotiate the resulting emotions in different everyday and institutional contexts. The accounts of research participants in Leipzig show that interpersonal conflicts evoke emotions that reach well beyond localised settings and the present. They also require a significant amount of emotional work to be carried out across a range of everyday informal and institutionalised settings. An approach to emotions as unbound and embodied can help, it is argued here, to better understand how young people negotiate their social positioning across entangled sites and relations and to develop support structures that are more responsive to this entanglement.

This paper uses the concepts of framing and overflowing (Callon, 1998) and fuzzy logic (Zadeh, 2015) to show the application and relevance of critically examining educational selection beyond the particular local context. It examines the empirical example of the central entrance examination procedure to grammar schools in the canton of Zurich. The main argument illuminates the widely neglected grey zones and the fuzzy logic lying at the heart of the selection machinery for higher education. This article elaborates fruitful links between the local case study and international discourses on the geography of education and educational research. It thus shows how a socio-material approach may build bridges not only between international and national educational discourse and local practice but also between academic research and a socio-political engagement that cares about young people's educational realities and futures.

This short paper provides the initial provocation for a themed issue that emerges from a conference on the topic of geographies of social crises/crises of social geographies. The article calls for a (re)consideration of the “social question” in the 21st century. We call for social geographers to engage with the historical dynamics of places and milieus to understand novel class societies and the violence that underpins social inequalities. The article makes a case for an empirically saturated social geography. We believe this provides a useful programme which helps to understand current phenomena of political, social and economic crises.