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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]

Students in mental health care are urged to develop professionally as well as personally, according to the Norwegian national state curriculum. The purpose of this study was to describe mental healthcare students' experiences with the use of Immunity to Change (ITC) workshops and endorse this as a transformative learning approach to personal–professional development. One focus group interview and four in-depth individual interviews were conducted with open-ended questions. These were analyzed with Giorgi's phenomenological method. Further existential reflections were guided by van Manen's phenomenological hermeneutics. ITC workshops offered a way to develop the ability to approach various situations and relationships in mental healthcare work flexibly and dynamically. Tolerance for uncertainty and ambiguity enabled students to grow personally and interpersonally. This study highlights the importance of supporting students to structure their transformative journey of becoming relationally spacious, being able to room themselves as well as colleagues and users/patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the academic concept of "soft spaces" from the perspective of traveling planning ideas. The concept has its origin in the United Kingdom but has also been used in other contexts. Within European Union policy-making, the term soft planning has emerged to describe the processes of cooperation and learning with an unclear relation to planning. In the Nordic countries, soft spaces are viewed as entangled with the logics of statutory planning, posing challenges for policy delivery and regulatory planning systems. This article highlights the conceptual evolution of soft spaces, specifically acknowledging contextual influences and the changing relation with statutory planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to elucidate the dynamic interplay of visuality, space and power through an analysis of what we call scopic relational spaces (SRS). Our primary claim is that scopic relations are intrinsically spatial relations and scopic practices are spatial practices. We contend that such analysis facilitates the discernment of significant socio-spatial processes and events that are otherwise unrecognized. We suggest that attention to the socio-spatial phenomena under investigation can contribute to debates about the alleged incommensurability of territorial and relational spatial imaginaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is common to view maps as simple reflections of the world. Maps, however, are more complex and dynamic. They are a potent form of spatial imagination and a powerful means of producing space. This article encourages archaeologists to experiment with, and to produce a multiplicity of, maps and other spatial images. As an example, this article juxtaposes two previously unpublished maps of Punta Laguna, Yucatan, Mexico: a site map created using traditional archaeological conventions and a visual cartographic history created using Indigenous Maya spatial ontologies. Because they depict space relationally, Indigenous Maya maps are arguably more congruous with contemporary social theories about space than are traditional Western maps. Further, the juxtaposition of two radically different maps of the same place highlights those mapping conventions that scholars often take for granted; demonstrates how specifically maps are selective and subjective; and emphasizes that Western worldviews are neither natural nor ubiquitous. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper advances ideas about relational geographies to explore 'everyday austerity'. Whilst geographers have analysed the causes and aftermath of the recent financial crisis, the focus largely remains on problems within economic systems and urban governance, rather than austerity as lived experience. I outline how focusing on everyday relationships and relational spaces – family, friendship and intimate relations – provides exciting opportunities for thinking geographically about everyday life in austerity. Using examples of care and support and mundane mobilities, I demonstrate how a relational approach extends current understandings of how austerity cuts through, across and between spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we raise a question regarding how transnational students develop their spaces as mobile, temporary, and at times stable and territorially fixed. We argue that approaching transnational student migration and its relations to place as a Deleuzian assemblage is a fruitful way of highlighting this issue, and we propose the axes of the expressive/material and territorialisation/de-territorialisation as analytical tools for understanding aspects of the temporal and spatial dimensions of transnational student mobility. Our theoretical discussion is informed by the migration experiences of transnational students studying at a Norwegian university. Our core argument is that transnational student mobility should be approached as a complex process in which links to places in the student’s past, present and future dissolve the linear notion of causality and in which new notions of the relations between proximity and distance challenge ideas regarding the power relations embedded in a geometrical space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the early 1990s, Kuala Lumpur, the capital city of Malaysia, has been entangled in the modality of World Class City building. Following key insights by critical scholars like Henri Lefebvre and Doreen Massey, in this article the author shows how spatio-temporal processes have historically produced variegated and contested relational spaces in the city centre. In particular, through the case-study of the recent spatial cleansing of the homeless and soup kitchens in downtown Kuala Lumpur, the author argues for not only critically appreciating the durability and mutability of hegemonic relational spaces but also their potential for irruption because of the ethical dynamic of ‘thrown-togetherness’ that these spaces churn up. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article methodologically develops one theoretical issue regarding the sociological debate on relational space: How do past, present and future times interfere in the relations between human bodies and in their interconnectedness with material and/or symbolic goods in places, by considering that space is generated through these relations? After demonstrating the absence of this issue in the debate, the article presents a methodology for analytically identifying and conceptually interpreting the relational space produced through historically relational time in relational bodies in places, with the aid of Henri Lefebvre’s dialectical concerns with everyday life and the production of space. In order to show the approach ‘in action’, the study focuses on the rules of pedestrians’ body conduct in the cathedral square of the Brazilian city of São Paulo in 2013–2014. Hence the approach is analytically complemented by Erving Goffman’s phenomenological approach to the bodily dimension of social interaction. In conclusion, three contributions of this methodology for relational-spatial sociology are summarized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As an invitation to spatial sociology, this article introduces key concepts and contexts to situate the articles in this monograph issue of Current Sociology. Spatial sociology is presented here as broad in scope and usefulness, but specific as a relational approach to space. As both a category of analysis and a lens through which to address sociological research questions, the gains of relational spatial research are shown in this monograph issue through articles exploring bodies, borders, units and mobilities. Outlining some of the history of relational thinking and space, clarifying some misconceptions about spatial theory, and developing a heuristic of the uses of spatial sociology, this article’s main aim is to invite specialists and non-specialists alike to spatial sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers a spatial sociological conceptualization of the concept of borders. In relational spatial theory, borders have rarely been a theme of interest, just as relational space is all but absent within border studies. In order to understand the empirical existence of container space, without rejecting the insights and challenges of the spatial turn, a concept of borders is developed within a theory of relational space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article traces the in situ production of space in a multi-unit residential building under construction in Berlin. Looking at how space is constituted in an unfinished building, it shows how material objects become loci of meaning-making in the constitution of a new building and future home. Through examining a group of future dwellers engaged in the participatory planning of a residential building, it argues that this is a community building a house in order to build an idealised community in the future. They negotiate an uncertain future community through objects in the built environment over which they have control in the present. Using relational spatial theory, the activities of planning the built environment are shown as inextricably linked to producing the meanings and significance of objects. Through looking at three objects in the built environment: an information hut, raised flowerbeds and interior windows, the active production of the relational space of inhabitation can be witnessed on-the-ground, through concrete activities, long before dwelling commences and the sites and ideas of homes are achieved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ethnographic observations at an early-detection centre for cancer serve as a basis for theorising the spatiality of preventive medicine. Based on insights from both the sociology of health and the sociology of space, the article outlines a re-spatialisation of health by articulating the concept of osmotic-spatiality: spatial-temporal arrangements which transform health into a personal task and an individual achievement, producing the subjectivity of ‘healthy patients’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article opens up debates about the deepening uneven geographies of higher education through a critical analysis of transregional university alliances. Focusing on the formation of research consortia and Doctoral Training Centres, we reveal the emergence of over 50 transregional alliances between United Kingdom universities. Despite each consortium operating at a variously defined regional scale there has been no explicit attempt to account for their geographical basis. Providing the first-ever analysis of this unfolding phenomenon, we demonstrate how the rise of transregional alliances is indicative of, and a response to, universities operating in an intensely neoliberalised political economy. Bringing together emergent theories of regionalism with emerging worlds of (neoliberal) higher education, our article reveals how, why and where universities are engaging in more intensively targeted, exclusive approaches to regional development. We argue that higher education is conducive to the weakening of fixed regional territories, and propose the metaphor of ‘regional constellations’ for interpreting transregional geographies. Finally, our analysis suggests that while high-performing research institutions may compete better by forming consortia, transregional alliances lead to a more unequal and divided university sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cultural understandings of the Afterlife are often embedded in spatial thinking and spatial metaphors. This article, first develops an understanding of the Afterlife as a relational virtual space populated by absent presences. Second, the article explores the possibility of investigating the Afterlife with ethnographical approaches. Exploring three fictional vignettes, the article discusses alternative spatialities of the Afterlife, in order to emphasize the pervasiveness of spatial thinking in conceptualizations of apparently nonspatial phenomena, and to challenge dichotomist spatial interpretations of presences/absences, the living and the postliving and life/Afterlife. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Almost twenty-five years after the mass protest of 1989 against the socialist regimes, the relationship between individual and official memory has reached a crucial point. The question of what narrative or interpretation of past events is memorialized in the urban landscape—in cities where the actual protest and dissent took place—should be determined at both the national and local level. Do the protesters of the 1980s feel that their political actions are being accurately represented by official museums, monuments, and commemorative practices? Is the new post-socialist generation of youth interested in the way the past is inscribed onto their cities? This article compares how memory and place are connected in Leipzig, Germany, and Timişoara, Romania, two countries in which the challenges to commemorating protest have taken different forms since the transition to democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper traces the origins, marketing, and proliferation of a model facility for fitness running in Sweden (1958-71) in order to reveal the history of a mundane infrastructure of the modern Swedish town. In the process, it explores the possibility of following portable landscapes in order to provide richer stories on urbanisation. The paper first introduces an internationally renowned team in exercise physiology, together with how this team marketed fitness exercise in Sweden in the 1950s and 1960s. The study then follows the establishment of a heterogeneous network for the circulation of a portable landscape for jogging and outdoor exercise, with particular focus on the role of physicians and the Swedish Ski and Outdoor Association. The model was developed with the pulse at its centre as a reductive measurement of health. With the cycle ergometer and standardised fitness tests, the individual pulse was made manifest, combined with the marketing of the model facility for exercise which expressed a particular landscape ideal, with standardised centres for outdoor exercise established all over the country. With these new facilities, a bodily pulse, a societal rhythm, and a moral landscape of the modern welfare society proliferated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Academics have increasingly begun to question the significance of bounded understandings of space and place, preferring instead to approach places as open, dynamic, relational entities that are in-formation, and the ways in which different places are connected by flows of people, ideas, and material things. The aim of this paper is to focus on the implications of networked and relational ways of thinking for how we understand the notion of 'territory', the archetypal example of bounded space. We discuss the need to develop a greater dialogue between relational and territorial understandings of space by exploring recent work on national territories. We contend that (1) the discourses and embodied practices of actors and (2) a whole series of objects are actively involved in producing a national territory that is open, contingent, and contested. The paper focuses on empirical material relating to Welsh roads and road signs-in particular the campaign in favour of bilingual road signs in Wales during the late 1960s and 1970s-as a way of highlighting the significance of these two themes. We conclude by arguing that territories are not relics of a static world of nation-states but, rather, the contingent products of an ongoing series of connections between people, discourses, and objects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the closing decade of the 19th century the Battle Creek Sanitarium, located in southern Michigan, operated as a health resort for invalids. Best known as the place where breakfast cereal was first packaged and mass-marketed, its most famous product — Corn Flakes — was the result of ceaseless experimentation to find a concoction that would serve the pharmacological purpose of healing patients. Through the course of healing at the sanitarium, digestion was paramount. This article demonstrates how digestion and the body were linked with technological implements housed in the sanitarium, creating a spatialized network of bodies at the sanitarium, and highlighting the material impacts of an early form of biotechnology. I ask not what does digestion look like — as a strictly anatomical process — but what does the geography of digestion look like — as a mapping of the digestive organs with the technologies that make it possible? This rendering demonstrates that the boundary between body and environment is not so strict, as witnessed in this earlier formation of biotechnologies. This point is made in a narrative account of the significance of eating and digestion at the sanitarium in the 1890s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article draws on activity theory, politics of the artifact, and speech act theory to analyze how language practices and technology interplay in establishing the social relationships necessary for globally networked teams. Specifically, it uses activity theory to examine how linguistic infelicities and the politics of communication technologies interplay in virtual meetings, thereby demonstrating the importance of grounding professional communication instruction in social as well as technical effectiveness. That is, students must learn not only how to communicate technical concepts clearly and concisely and recognize cultural differences but also how to use language and choose media in ways that produce the social conditions necessary for effective collaboration in globally networked environments. The article analyzes two case studies–a workplace and a classroom–that illustrate how the mediating functions of language and the politics of technology intersect as mediating tools in globally networked activity systems. It then traces the implications of that intersection for professional communication theory and pedagogy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent years have witnessed a burgeoning of work on 'thinking space relationally'. According to its advocates, relational thinking challenges human geography by insisting on an open-ended, mobile, networked, and actor-centred geographic becoming. The paper discusses the importance of this 'relational turn' by positioning it within the lineage of philosophical approaches to space in geography. Following this, it highlights some silences and limits, namely factors that constrain, structure, and connect space. The paper then offers a moderate relationalism by discussing the notion of 'phase space'. This acknowledges relationality but insists on the confined, sometimes inertial, and always context-specific nature of geography. Some challenges for this approach are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since its invention, electric lighting has had a decisive impact on the psychogeography of urban space. Concentrating on the period from 1880 to World War II, the author argues that electrical lighting has been a major factor in the emergence of modern urban environments, in which the traditional function of architecture as a stable ground has increasingly given way to a growing mutability of forms and fluidity of appearances. This tendency both paralleled and converged with the effects of modern media technologies such as cinema, contributing to the emergence of a new environment characterized by "relational space," in which the city is increasingly defined by the overlap of material and immaterial spatial regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]