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Technologies have been theorised to understand their powers to produce spacetimes – notably through Bernard Stiegler's reading of technics as constitutive of human ontology. However, less attention has been paid to how technologies shape spacetimes according to their own distinct logics of evolution, the result being a tendency to reduce technological agency to a question of its effects on human being. The first half of the paper elaborates this problem in conversation with geographies of the digital turn. The second half introduces an alternative approach through Gilbert Simondon's ontogenetic notion of technology characterised by its own logics of evolution – what I term techno-genesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human geography's onto-epistemological expansion in recent decades has not been well matched by methodological development. Learning from the methodological pluralism in four relational approaches, this paper reflects on key issues in relational-explanatory theorizing before introducing a social science method of process tracing in relation to a comparative methodology. I argue that contrastive explanations can be developed through deploying comparable methodological practices as different 'moments' of a research process in appropriate evidential contexts. This research process-based comparative methodology can better trace actors and their relational networks through in situ research and generate explanatory theoretical insights into the complexity of socio-spatial life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews the progress of geographical research on the gambling industry and presents a framework to comprehend the role of space in gambling consumption and harm. It covers two themes: the casino's place in urban governance and the agency of gamblers, and how space impacts gambling consumption and harm. The paper introduces a conceptual framework of orientation, affective atmosphere, and intimacy to better comprehend how gambling practices can increase or decrease risk. Finally, the paper suggests that this framework can help to better understand online sports gambling consumption and harm in the context of market growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building upon the current concern with relational, processual and assemblage approaches to place, this paper argues for a move away from 'pointillist' and constructivist accounts of the assembling of places because they reinforce binaries, reintroduce structures and highlight singular representational moments in the building, identification and dismantling of places. Drawing upon Deleuze's philosophy of difference and Simondon's writings on individuation, I suggest that places can more usefully be seen as events of crystallisation, distillation or folding characterised by multi-phased processes of individuation through which distinctive 'individual-milieu coupling[s]' emerge, refocusing attention on the open-ended, plural and eventful qualities of places-in-becoming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While geography has traditionally 'looked down' in the search for social justice, a recent trend in the social sciences has argued for thinking through privilege. Taking this call seriously, this paper draws on feminist scholarship and uses intersectionality to demonstrate that reflections about privilege are imperative in the pursuit of social justice. Through laying the groundwork for a theorisation of privilege within and beyond migration geographies, we use transnational circulation, as one of the – unquestioned and taken for granted – characteristics of elites, arguing that an understanding of privilege in migration is critical to understanding and combatting inequalities and injustices. This leads us to argue for the need to explore privilege in relation to its others, such as precarity and vulnerability. We conclude by advancing a research agenda on privilege in (migration) geography that draws upon a feminist ethics of responsibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent years have seen a burgeoning of scholarship in abolition geography. But what does it mean to theorize abolition in geography and what do geographers bring to abolition? This paper seeks to theorize geography's abolitionist turn, tracing its roots from Du Bois' ideas of abolition democracy through to contemporary iterations and variations. In doing so, it offers property and the state as key analytics: property insofar as it undergirds carcerality, racial capitalism, and settler colonialism alike, and the state insofar as it comprises both a site from which to make demands and a perpetrator of carceral and racial violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Progress in Environmental Geography is a new journal that has been launched alongside Progress in Human Geography and Progress in Physical Geography. It aims to be the go-to peer-reviewed journal for those interested in the latest research in all areas of environmental geography. The journal welcomes contributions from diverse authors and aims to encourage collaboration and interdisciplinary submissions. It will publish perspectives papers, progress reports, and themed interventions, covering a wide range of topics within the discipline. With the launch of this new journal, Progress in Human Geography will no longer publish review articles and reports in the field of environmental geography. [Extracted from the article]

Teleology shapes the design of much geographical research through the requirement to identify outcomes. In contrast, the theoretical orientation of geographical research on the everyday promotes a relational and visceral approach to resist the teleological logic of the primacy of outcomes. With this paper, we address this tension between different orientations to the practice of geographical research. Drawing on three case studies of empirical research we propose a grammar for non-teleology to capture the divergence of intentions and outcomes. Giving rise to non-teleological narratives, we suggest, signifies a forward orientation for doing geographical research to unpick the messiness of everyday life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite theoretical developments in conceptualising alterity, what counts as 'alternative' in unconventional systems of food provision remains contested. This paper argues that the literature has reached an impasse. I argue that overly 'alternative' readings conceptualise Alternative Food Networks (AFNs) as a more embedded form of economic exchange, while neoliberal readings represent them as a case of marketisation. This paper systematically reviews AFNs literature and contends that a deeper engagement with Polanyian geographies enables a more nuanced approach to evaluating alternatives and their socio-political significance. Analytically and normatively, 'alternatives' need not be radically 'other', nor seen as having been co-opted by the neoliberal order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper outlines scholarship on resistance within geography. Its contention is that conceptualisations of resistance are characterised by a predetermination of form that particular actions or actors must assume to constitute resistance. Asking what we risk ignoring if we only focus on predetermined, recognisable resistant forms, the paper revisits some of the fundamental assumptions (of intention, linearity and opposition) that underpin accounts of resistance. It calls for geographers to engage with resistance in emergence. The paper concludes by detailing what this might look like in practice, including intersections with work on potentiality, incoherent subjects, agentic materiality and speculative futures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Science is a cumulative activity, a body of knowledge sedimented in its publications, which form the foundation for further activity. Some items attract more attention than others; some are largely ignored. This paper looks at a largely overlooked book – Statistical Geography – published by three US sociologists at a time when geographers were launching their 'quantitative revolution'. There was little literature within the discipline on which that revolution could be based, and a book with that title could have been seminal. But it was not, and as a consequence – as illustrated with three examples – major issues in spatial analysis were not addressed in the revolution's early years. The paper explores why. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A dialectical relationship between 'big D' Development (broadly, the formal interventionist, international Development sector) and little 'd' development (the immanent structures and processes of capitalism) is a concept widely invoked in Geography and Development Studies. In this paper, we ask how the d/Development dialectic is evolving under current conjunctures of emergent state capitalism(s). We suggest that, going beyond 'containment', Development is ever more deeply inhabited by (capitalist) development; with implications for its palliative and restructuring roles, and for praxis, contestation and transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I review research strategies, designs, methods and data in financial geography, by focussing on 449 articles published in 2001–2020. The analysis shows considerable methodological diversity and originality, contributing to geography and studies of finance. Over time, qualitative strategies, case study design and interviews as a method and data source are growing, while quantitative strategy, longitudinal design, regression methods and the use of government data are declining. The analysis helps identify gaps, opportunities and challenges, including the need for more methodological transparency, more in-depth qualitative and quantitative approaches supporting causal analysis, and a more ambitious historical and geographical scope. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a new disciplinary research agenda for a geography of the human face. Locating a research lacuna within the subfield of embodied geographies, the paper highlights existing interdisciplinary scholarship on the face, suggesting avenues through which geographers can both complement and advance such discussions. The overall proposal is to (re)consider the spatialities of the face via three routes: the political and biometric, the aesthetic and facial modification. The paper concludes by suggesting a disciplinary opportunity for a future facialised geography, providing valuable insight into this dynamic bodily site upon and through which the world is encountered and experienced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Makeshift camps have increasingly become a permanent presence along border areas and in cities around Europe and elsewhere, constituting a 'hidden geography' that is crucial to overland mobilities of thousands of migrants each year and essential to understanding contemporary informal migration. While there is rich and burgeoning scholarship on makeshift camps, substantial gaps remain in the understanding of these informal geographies which have not yet been conceptualized in terms of the key roles they play in the production of informal migration corridors nor the unique forms of daily life en route that they support, as this paper intends to do. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to contribute to the debate concerning the current and future state of human geography by focusing on its changing treatment of the past. I argue that, while contemporary human geography has experienced a welcomed explosion in terms of its thematic breadth, it has also suffered from a considerable narrowing of the time periods that inform its empirical and conceptual studies. The paper begins by demonstrating the changing temporal focus of the subdiscipline over the past 50 years, drawing particular attention to its temporal narrowing over the past 20 years. Following this, I seek to suggest possible reasons for the foreshortening of the times studied in the subdiscipline. I then illustrate the benefits of extending our temporal frame of reference to discuss earlier times. I conclude by arguing that the project of lengthening the timeframes that we use to structure our geographical research has the potential to enable us to tell different stories about the geographical past and present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Community geography is a growing subfield that provides a framework for relevant and engaged scholarship. In this paper, we define community geography as a form of research praxis, one that involves academic and public scholars with the goal of co-produced and mutually-beneficial knowledge. Community geography draws from a pragmatist model of inquiry, one that views communities as emergent through a recursive process of problem definition and social action. We situate the growth of community geography programs as rooted in two overlapping but distinct traditions: disciplinary development of participatory methodologies and institutional traditions of community engagement in American higher education. We then trace the historical development of these programs, identifying common themes and outlining several challenges that community geographers should prioritize as this subfield continues to grow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to excavate a latent geographical approach to the question of culture. Specifically, I argue that the culture question has been developed by two schools of geographical thought: an Anthropogeographical School (represented by the traditions of Ratzel and Vidal de la Blache) and a Landscape School (represented by the Berkeley School and new cultural geographers). My purpose for conducting this excavation is not only to illustrate the discipline's distinct approach to the question of culture, but to make the argument that this tradition holds potential resources for posing the question of culture anew. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to recent debates on the geographies of education. I argue that research in geography over the past decade has conceptualized education principally in terms of attachment to – and boundedness within – particular (often institutional) places and spaces. Yet a productive tension has emerged in contemporary scholarship around the competing concepts of mobilities and emplacement. The paper considers what the ‘mobilities turn’ offers for understanding geographies of education and learning, with a focus on ripple effects, structures and subject positionings. Four different but related bodies of work are identified that productively engage a notion of ‘mobilities’ to challenge bounded conceptions of education through their focus on (i) community and mobility; (ii) ‘alternative’ spaces of education; (iii) student mobilities; and (iv) embedded institutional capital and internationalization. Through the lens of mobilities, the paper advances research agendas within both geography (on ‘geographies of education’) and cognate disciplines (such as sociology and education). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is as an invitation to rethink social studies of economization and geographies of marketization at a time when the heydays of neoliberal marketization seem to be over. After briefly summarizing the thrust of the economization/marketization approach, we make two suggestions to develop the perspective further. The first is to make use of economic geography's heterodox tradition and contribute to the ongoing "provincialization" of the neoclassical market. Second, theorizing actually existing market arrangements as necessarily involving struggles between competing logics and rationalities, we open social studies of economization and geographies of marketization for questions of social inequality, marginalization and exclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper emphasises the decolonial importance of geographical engagement with the materiality of language as an embodied and embedded relation. It shows how abstractions of language(s) as discrete, codified and possessable objects participate in a 'coloniality of language' that risks obscuring alternative geographies of language within, against and beyond the territorialised monolingualism of the colonial nation-state. Through considering Italian philosopher Adriana Cavarero's analysis of Western modernity's systematic 'devocalisation of logos' from a modernity/coloniality perspective, I argue that geographical consideration of language as a 'revocalised' relation could contribute to moving beyond colonial and (ethno)nationalist geographies of language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article comments on the article "The postmodernism challenge: reconstructing human geography" by Michael Dear that was published in the 1988 issue of journal "Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers." The author expresses that the work allows the inclusion of social theory into the writings of geographers that gives more open claims to knowledge. It states that the paper is instrumental in promoting language awareness in human sciences within geography among geographers. It is argued that human geographic research is an implicit or explicit context of the article.

In this paper I outline the potential for three strands of recent critical and feminist scholarship in geography to advance discussions of anti-human trafficking, particularly state responses to the problem. These strands are: the geopolitics of film and media; geographies of bordering and preclusion; and carceral regimes, spaces and institutions. These strands respectively present a critical engagement with the role of representations, practices and institutions in anti-trafficking activity which can enliven discussions within and beyond the discipline on anti-human trafficking responses. This is because they re-centre political concerns around (in)security and sovereign power as these intersect with human rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digitality is deeply implicated in sociospatial processes of exclusion, adverse incorporation, impoverishment and enrichment. Theorizing digital practices of life and thriving is politically and epistemologically urgent, and more robustly intersectional theory in digital geographies scholarship offers crucial pathways. I argue for theorizing digital geographies at the intersection of feminist relationality and Black, queer and feminist code studies. I demonstrate these theoretical horizons through an analysis of 'glitch politics' that refuse normative digital-social-spatial relations of technocapitalist urban life, and catalyze sociospatial relations of thriving otherwise, drawing examples from digital practices of street newspapers sold by unsheltered people in cities worldwide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current conceptualizations of vulnerability have so far served to describe—and reproduce—social difference, setting people apart at local and global scales. Yet vulnerability is fundamental to the connectedness in social relations critical to understanding and acting on climate change. A more compassionate type of research is urgently required; that is, one that goes beyond the material and political dimensions to investigate the deeply personal. Drawing on politics of adaptation, emotional geographies, sustainability science and psychology literatures, the paper reconceptualizes vulnerability as co-suffering, linking lived experiences with a shared humanity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is a viable life? This paper addresses this question with reference to viability as a concept and young people's social action across the world. The notion of viability offers a framework for examining how young people 'think across' different domains of life – such as education, work, environment, politics and cultural practice – and develop ecosystems of practice that connect these domains together. In addition, the concept of viability draws attention to the alternative nature of these ecosystems of practice – how young people commonly use these ecosystems to 'think against' dominance – and how they also 'think out' to produce new ideas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Autonomist Marxist ideas and concepts are resurgent and, with their latent spatiality, are well placed to contribute to radical geographical debates. In particular, the methodology of 'class composition' analysis provides a rigorous, materialist critique of transforming capitalist social relations. This paper first provides vital historical–theoretical context from the milieu of Italian Operaismo, before emphasising the value of autonomist Marxist analyses of three contemporary geographical frontiers: labour process, migration, and social reproduction. It ultimately argues that the laudable motivations of the autonomous geographies project, explored in this very journal, would be better served through an explicitly materialist autonomist geography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper identifies and examines three key approaches prevalent in the geographical study of migration: the displacement and mobilities approach, the transit and waiting approach, and the immigrant settlement approach. Each approach is analyzed in terms of its treatment of time and migratory experiences, critiquing them for reinforcing conventional temporal categories: the past, present, and future. It argues that these categories are problematic as they oversimplify the complex spatiotemporal nature of migration. The paper proposes the concept of “temporal logics” to problematize and de-reify these categories, enabling a more nuanced analysis of time in migration, mobility, and displacement processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the relationship between light and mental health through a multifaceted inquiry into the complex and contested condition of ‘Seasonal Affective Disorder’ (SAD). It does so by first charting a disciplinary neglect of seasonal depression in ‘geographies of mental health’, followed by a consideration of broader philosophical ideas about human sensibilities and the place of light in life. These interpretative resources are brought into correspondence with both clinical debates about the legitimacy of SAD as a phenomenon and the role of culture in the experience of light-affected sadness. The paper culminates by outlining a future research agenda for a cultural geography of SAD in the context of climate-changed environmental light. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues for a 'provincialised' critical geography of area studies by tracing the spatial genealogy of three waves of Chinese world regional geography and foreign area studies. The shifting terrains have been shaped strongly by the continually reconfigured power-geometries and Chinese thinking of 'the international'. The two coeval fields and knowledge production therein are situated in place-specific institutional contexts, which engender contingent disciplinary geographies and their enduring lack of dialogue. The contemporary regeneration of Chinese 'world-writing' brings its own identities and discourses, power relations and complex impacts to local-global epistemic (in)equality, which requires and rewards further critical mapping. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces a set of analytical frames that explore the possibilities of conceiving, researching and writing a global geography of squatting. The paper argues that it is possible to detect, in the most tenuous of urban settings, ways of thinking about and living urban life that have the potential to reanimate the city as a key site of geographical inquiry. The paper develops a modest theory of ‘urban combats’ to account for the complexity and provisionality of squatting as an informal set of practices, as a makeshift approach to housing and as a precarious form of inhabiting the city. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper extends discussions of the geographies of the body by examining hair as a geographical lens that reimagines the body's borders. Hair is a key agent in producing and representing the body, specifically through the presences and absences of hair that influence, disturb, transform and transcend its margins. By examining the materialities, performances and discourses associated with how and where hair is situated (or not) on the body, this paper situates hair as a geographical prism that explores new frontiers of the bordered body, shapes corporeal understandings of appearance and projects identities and power well beyond its physical limits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Attention to plant life is currently flourishing across the social sciences and humanities. This paper introduces recent work in the informal sub-discipline of 'vegetal geography', placing it into conversation with the transdisciplinary field of 'critical plant studies' [CPS], a broad framework for re-evaluating plants and human-plant interactions informed by principles of agency, ethics, cognition and language. I explore three key themes of interest to multispecies scholars looking to attend more closely to vegetal life, namely: (1) plant otherness; (2) plant ethics; (3) plant-human attunements, in the hope of encouraging greater cross-pollination between more-than-human geography and critical plant studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores tensions that emerge from the injunction to make progress in geographical knowledge production in the globalizing landscape of higher education and research. The paper identifies gaps that emerge between disciplinary geographical knowledge production and area studies knowledge production, particularly connections to non-western areas on which many geographers work. It suggests these gaps are symptomatic and productive of the discipline’s problematically constituted community: the ‘we’ of Geography’s vanguard. The paper charts the precipitation of these tensions within Geography’s disciplinary dispositif before suggesting three alternative knowledge production tactics aimed at closing any such gaps and that in turn democratically reconstitute disciplinary Geography’s ‘we’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature on climate migration is increasingly concerned with linking the natural-environmental and socio-cultural dimensions of risk response. However, the epistemological disjuncture between 'objective' and subjective accounts of the environment is an impediment. In particular, despite clear evidence of mutual relevance, work on the emotional landscape of climate change has remained separate from more systematic analyses. Aiming to resolve this, this paper uses the case of a Cambodian beggar to show how recent developments across three fields have laid the groundwork for the structural and emotional dimensions of climate change response to be engaged with under a coherent theoretical rubric. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]