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The concept of rurality has been widely debated among scholars, yet rarely questioned in tourism research. We argue that new approaches to rurality in rural tourism research need to be explored if a more inclusive and diverse rurality is to be found. For this purpose, three fundamental dimensions of dominant approaches to tourism rurality, particularly in the Global North, are problematized in the paper: rural as the opposite of, what is not an urban space, rurality as idyllic/romantic landscapes, and rural authenticity as symbolically and existentially perceived by the visitor. The paper then contends that these three dominant taken-for-granted dimensions reinforce a normative conception of rurality which potentially marginalizes, obstructs, and excludes the flourishing of alternative ruralities in rural tourism destinations. A new theoretical approach to rural tourism, which draws on Massey's relational perspective of space and a new-materialist ontology is proposed, where more inclusive and diverse forms of tourism rurality and more open and non-hierarchical rural assemblages can be envisaged as a result. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reference points provide crucial spatial information for people with visual disabilities, and existing literature categorizes and describes their functions. However, these studies still adhere to a geographical pointillist logic that perceives points as fixed and stable entities and overlooks corporeal processes through which reference points are created. Utilizing concepts from Deleuze-Guattarian philosophy and drawing from sit-down and go-along interviews with visually disabled people, this article answers the question of how to conceptualize reference points from a non-pointillist perspective. By elucidating how reference points need to be actualized through affirmative bodily acts of complex spatio-temporal assemblages, it dismantles their seemingly disembodied and static nature. Consequently, the text explores reference points interwoven with diverse assemblages and examines scenarios in which suitable assemblages could not be assembled, nor could reference points, therefore, be actualized. Thus, the article departs from conceiving of points solely as nouns and presents them in verbal terms, effectively reconciling stability with dynamism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The influence of the International Baccalaureate (IB) has grown impressively on a global scale. In Latin America, the IB has been mainly introduced in private schools that cater for the most affluent sectors of society and, consequently, has been mostly interpreted as contributing to processes of social reproduction and the widening of inequalities However, since the mid-2000s the IB has been promoted in state schools in countries such as Ecuador, Peru, Costa Rica and in the City of Buenos Aires in Argentina. This paper analyses the enactment of the IBDP in public schools in Costa Rica and Peru drawing on a mixed methods multiple case study. It shows how, in countries with significant socioeconomic disparities, the possibility of offering the IBDP to students at public schools was mostly justified as a matter of equity, understood as opening access to an educational programme that was only available to the most privileged sectors of society. By problematising the notions of privilege and eliteness, we discuss the complex relations between inequalities and educational opportunities and question the extent to which these programmes are affecting social structures in Costa Rica and Peru. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Termites are considered as important pests of maize plantations in Republic of Benin. However, very little information is available on their assemblage composition, abundance, damages, and on the sensitivity of common maize varieties in Benin. This study aims to fill these gaps and provide baseline for the development of an integrated termite management in maize plantations. Therefore, 60 maize fields across 30 villages located in four agro-ecological zones of southern Benin were prospected using the standardized method of belt transects. In addition, the resistance of five maize varieties to termite attacks was evaluated on-farm during two consecutive seasons (2018 and 2019). Fifteen termite species belonging to 11 genera, 6 subfamilies and 3 families were collected in the prospected maize fields. Four species (Macrotermes subhyalinus Rambur, Coptotermes sjostedti Holmgren, Amitermes evuncifer Silvestri, and Trinevitermes germinatus Wasmann) were found in all agro-ecological zones with A. evuncifer as the most abundant species. High similarity indices of termite assemblages were found between the four agro-ecological zones. Wood-feeders group and species nesting in hypogeal nests were the mostly abundant in all agro-ecological zones. The attack rate of termites in maize fields was 16.9% and did not vary significantly between agro-ecological zones. A. evuncifer and C. sjostedti were significantly the most destructive species on the five evaluated varieties, although Trinevitermes oeconomus Trägardh was most abundant in leaf sheaths; M. subhyalinus and Macrotermes bellicossus Smeathman in the stem; Pseudacanthotermes militaris Hagen and Odontotermes sp. in the roots. Termite damage level to maize depended of the variety. Korga variety was classified as highly resistant to termite attacks; Agbadé kouin winiwini variety as resistant; Igbado tchakpa variety as moderately resistant. While, Elèkpèrè and Forkui varieties were classified as highly susceptible. The three maize varieties identified as resistant to termite attack should be included in the development of an integrated termite management program and in future breeding programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although rallies are essential to political communication campaigns, they have been little studied. Thus, this article presents an ethnographic observation of the Democratic campaign rallies during the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Two research questions structure the paper: How do material things—including human bodies—and their transportation structure the production and reproduction of rallies as political communication systems? What kind of political communication assemblages constructs the materiality of rallies? The text presents three conclusions. 1) A substantial part of the materiality of these rallies was composed of human bodies and many other things that were transported to a specific space to have copresent interactions with other bodies. 2) The production of these rallies required creating an infrastructural space built upon transporting a myriad of material objects to a specific place. These objects constituted the material bases for developing these rallies as a set of political communication practices. 3) These rallies can be conceptualised as mobile and itinerant assemblages for transportation and communication. These rallies were a means of transportation that moved the candidate's body across a vast territory and a (political) media of communication designed to transcend the time and space in which these events were produced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses commuting by elderly Ukrainian passengers on tramways and trolleybuses as a symbiosis between human bodies and public electric vehicles. First, aging is presented as an important part of the socio-material order of Ukrainian cities. Then, using ethnographic methods, the research traces how elderly, mostly female, bodies and aging vehicles are singled out as a symbiotic assemblage formed under rigid social assistance policies. Mutual dependencies between bodies and vehicles help them both remain in the city. In the discussion, this symbiotic assemblage is connected to the larger policy and political context of Ukraine in terms of Europeanization. Using assemblage thinking and the notion of symbiosis allows us to see elderly commuters on Ukrainian tram and trolleybuses not as mere end-users of the city but as co-creators of urban space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I present my methodological approach to researching the sex practices of trans people developed during my PhD project How we Fuck. Using my body as both a fertile site of knowledge production (Bain and Nash, 2006), and an instrument for intimate analysis, I articulate an approach to 'intimacy-as-method' within an assemblage framework (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987) to provide new ways of engaging in empirical sex research. Intimacy-as-method draws attention to how senses, bodies, affects, human and more-than-human agents ('things') coalesce to produce both trans sex, and trans sex research(ers) (Fox and Alldred, 2015). If ontologically unstable 'things' gain their stability by assembling relationally, then how can we create the conditions that liberate both trans sex from dominant narratives of suffering, and (trans) sex research from its conventions of squeamishness? I argue that considering the dynamic and mutable ways in which trans sex (and trans sex research) is produced expands the capacities and limitations of what trans bodies can 'do', making space for novel assemblages, new embodied knowledges, and expansive possibilities of How we Fuck. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract\nPoints of interestBlindness (in)directly affects all aspects of daily life and participation in society. Living with a visual impairment can be mapped in terms of the intra-actions between blindness and an individual’s networks. This study conceptualised visual impairment in the context of James and his different networks across his lifespan in an attempt to understand the contextualised and complex meaning of his disability. The lived experiences of James and his networks were unravelled, and their perspectives revealed two main encounters: decisions and processes on (inclusive) education and connecting with others. James and his networks discussed how he succeeded in regular education and how he adhered to higher educational norms. The narratives highlighted the pressure to ‘pass’, to have a space to belong in social spheres, and to function within social networks. The concept of ‘assemblage’, the entangled gathering of embodiment and relationalities, was helpful in unravelling the complex and contextual conceptualisations of blindness in James’ lived experiences.This article presents a personal narrative of the experiences of James, his family, and his friends in relation to blindness.This study’s perspective fundamentally assumes that everyone, including people with disabilities, is embedded in several networks of human and non-human elements.Disability is not an individual condition; rather, it is something relational and contextual. We want to understand the complexities of the participants’ experiences.In James’ networks, educational development in regular education is identified as a life goal that requires the input of everyone and everything.For living blindness, James and his networks also identified the relevance of being socially embedded and bonding with peers and friends.This article presents a personal narrative of the experiences of James, his family, and his friends in relation to blindness.This study’s perspective fundamentally assumes that everyone, including people with disabilities, is embedded in several networks of human and non-human elements.Disability is not an individual condition; rather, it is something relational and contextual. We want to understand the complexities of the participants’ experiences.In James’ networks, educational development in regular education is identified as a life goal that requires the input of everyone and everything.For living blindness, James and his networks also identified the relevance of being socially embedded and bonding with peers and friends. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on the conceptual-methodological framework of assembling urbanism, the paper sheds light on the strategies, actors and labors of mobilization of the integrated approach to urban development in Ukraine in the late 2000s, its further consolidation after the Euromaidan Revolution of 2013–2014 and transformation into a dominant policy assemblage with discursive and normative power for strategic socio-spatial changes at the national and municipal levels. The research findings deepen the understanding of the complexity of mobilization––assembling––translation processes, revealing the dynamic and affective dimension of relations between heterogeneous actors and underscoring the role of political and politics in assembling urbanism studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When responding to an incident, Norwegian rescue services in the Arctic have to consider weather conditions, surface features, infrastructure scarcity, and technological availability. To some extent, safe navigation is based on the use of digital maps. In this article, I analyze how maps are assembled for their role as navigation tools and how this interlinks with the capacity for timely incident response in the Arctic context. My study is based on new materialism, which pays attention to interactions. I investigate maps as processes, focusing on how they are constituted through practices. Therefore, I follow heterogeneous entanglements of more-than-human actors. In this article, I focus on localities related to the Svalbard archipelago, including incident response on land, the Joint Rescue Coordination Centre, and information support services. I explore the assemblages of maps through three aspects: institutional mapping of Svalbard, avalanche observations around Longyearbyen, and mapping practices of the local rescue services on land. I argue that safe navigation, and consequently a timely incident response, is embedded in more-than-human networks and depends on their flexibility and durability. Divergence of mapping practices between those in Svalbard and on the mainland further highlights the need for an analysis of socio-technological entanglements in the Arctic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article engages with TPC scholarship that calls for increased attention to agency as distributed and interdependent. This study analyzes 320 postings in one online health forum to better understand how patients come together to collaborate with one another, distribute information, and make health decisions. I argue that viewing crowdsourced forums as agentive assemblages may help researchers explain both the agency of individual actors as well as the collective agency of groups over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Creative assessments hold the potential to counter outcome-oriented and utilitarian approaches to teaching, characteristic of neoliberal academia. This paper explores the potentialities of digital stories as one form of creative assessment that may help rupture normative ways of teaching-learning and engaging with affective pedagogies. The authors are a group of teacher-learners who engaged with digital stories as a part of teaching-learning assemblages at two universities in Aotearoa, New Zealand. Drawing on our collective dialogue and writings, this paper explores the potentialities of breaking ‘dichotomies’, including personal/academic, good/bad affect, and certainty/uncertainty. The ways in which digital story assessments can unsettle but also affirm teaching-learning assemblages are explored. Various moments of glow from the authors’ reflections on engaging with digital stories as teacher-learners are followed to consider affective pedagogies for the 21st century. Through openly sharing vulnerabilities between students and teachers the paper affirms, imagines, and creates openings for pedagogical praxis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the field of educational sociolinguistics there is a body of literature with a focus on children in complementary schooling. While timely, such work often does not often pay much attention to the parents who frequent the school setting, preferring to focus on the interactions between children. This paper addresses this absence by reporting on a study of parental social-networking and group formation in a Chinese complementary school in Germany. By investigating various parental groups in the complementary school setting, this paper explores the parents’ different ways of forming mutual space and the kinds of social investments they have in such space. This includes a focus on the linguistic and semiotic resources which the parents draw upon in the formation of their groups, as well as the cultural and class-based assumptions which underlie their choices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Virtual environments as spaces for leisure are rapidly emerging within the zeitgeist of 21st century leisure practices. One such environment is the Zwift cycling and running app which provides a series of virtual worlds where cyclists and runners can train, race, and socialise with a global community from their own home. As four authors, we are all in some way curious or engaged with Zwift as a platform for our own leisure. We therefore developed a 'community of inquiry' to provide an initial foray into Zwift as a virtual leisure space. We each produced a section of the paper which focused respectively on assemblage theory, micro-sociology, gender, and morality. Through critique and the spirit of collegiality, these texts were refined and are presented in the paper as separate yet interlinked narratives. Our community of inquiry then reconvened to consider the mechanics of game design and to present Zwift as exhibiting the components of an interreality. The paper concludes with implications for further research which includes considering Zwift as a third space and as a panopticon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we explore the social production of able-bodiedness triggered by an art-based research project carried out in an inclusive Chilean school. Grounded in Deleuzoguattarian assemblage theory, we map the multiplicities produced by the collision between social justice research practices and 'vulnerability' as a pervading category within the contemporary education policyscape. Analyzing a short film created by students labeled as 'at risk', we expose that educational policies aimed at addressing social vulnerability invent 'the future' as only habitable for those who materialize able-bodiedness. However, crip futurities also emerge throughout the short film, showing that non-normative expressions of the human can actualize themselves using research as a milieu. These simultaneous and asymmetrical ways of expressing humanness illuminate how intricate the affective relation between research and neoliberal policy is. We conclude by discussing the power of research-assemblages for disorienting ableist biopedagogies and legitimizing futures other than those of compulsory able-bodiedness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public performances have been studied as acts of social protest that contest social or gender norms or collective memories of state violence. When public protests were prohibited after the 2010 violent crackdown in Thailand, Thai protesters staged other forms of public performances. What unfolded were adaptive street performances by innovative assemblages that forged new ways to resist when interacting with existing limitations and state suppression. This essay engages Deleuze and Guattari's approach in examining public performances as assemblages. I argue that the multiplicities of public performances challenged the official narrative of the 2010 Crackdown and served as a demand for accountability and justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper traces recent theorisation stemming from the multilingual turn and brings this into dialogue with assemblage thinking, discussing the critical potential of bringing these perspectives together to explore what language is and how it is understood. The argument maps salient features of the multilingual turn which have extended the fields of applied and socio-linguistics beyond a preoccupation with separable languages embedded within a code-based depiction of linguistic behaviour. Within this body of research, we highlight the influential theoretical frames of (trans)languaging and metrolingualism, which position language as a dynamic process – and practice – rather than a product. We then begin to think through language/languaging as assemblage, a process which heralds an ontological shift. In so doing, we consider the ontological turn within and beyond linguistics to extend the potential of critical language studies, breaking with hegemonic language ideology via a radical reconsideration of the temporality, complexity and materiality of language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reflecting upon the implications of Russia's invasion of Ukraine for the theorization of 'diaspora diplomacy', this Provocation uses the concept to frame the conflict and the ensuing power plays. The extent of global community involvement requires the existing diaspora diplomacy definition to account for 'quadratic nexus' configuration of 'home' and 'host' country, respective diasporas and international actor engagement in diaspora diplomacy practice. In reviewing the conflict, and the current response, four themes emerge as central to the 'quadratic nexus' configuration and deserving further attention: the politics of labelling, the dynamics of engagement, third-party diasporas and diaspora identities in diaspora diplomacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building on studies of transnational policing, security and digitization, we develop an assemblage-theoretical framework to explore perceptions of time in contemporary policing efforts. We use the concepts of techno imaginaries and policing assemblage to examine the articulation of temporality and multi-scalar connections between humans and non-humans in policing, which has become increasingly pluralised and digitised. We draw on documentary research on Europol to analyse anticipatory governance in transnational police work, including the linkages between humans and machines and identify a shift from post-crime towards pre-crime interventions. We critically discuss the significance of this shift for the character and robustness of expected future risks and threat assessments. Our reflections on the interplay between time and techno imaginaries contribute to critical analyses of the ways in which decision-making and interventions shape and are shaped by transnational assemblages in anticipatory governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is about relational becomings and opposing forces that may occur when white skin becomes tanned over the course of everyday life. In the Australian context of beach leisure culture and rising melanoma rates, the article draws on the only three participants with diverse ancestry from a larger qualitative research project conducted with 40 young men and women in Greater Sydney, New South Wales. I argue that Deleuze and Guattari's assemblage thinking, specifically three related concepts of a lifeline have much to offer feminist geographers: molar lines (segmented lines), rupture lines (lines of flight) and molecular lines (crack lines). Here, I illustrate the potential of assemblage thinking to analyse the reciprocal relations between tanning, skin, gender, race and place. I illustrate how tanning sensations are comprised of contradictory forces. I argue that while participants do not escape the molar lines of gender and a Black-White racial dichotomy, there are molecular lines that temporarily disrupt these gendered and racialised regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the emergence of digital homophobia in Indonesia as an assemblage of homophobic discourses imbued with a language of urgency, technological infrastructures, and punitive laws on non-normative sexualities. The internationalisation of LGBT rights has provided discursive capital for anti-LGBT groups to generate affective qualities (fear and moral panic), positioning queer people as a 'threat' to national identity, 'traditional values', and 'vectors of disease' intent on 'converting' others to homosexuality. Moreover, technological infrastructure, such as social media, fosters and amplifies the circulation of homophobic rhetoric. Such technologies have enabled citizens to persecute and shame LGBT people directly, and increasingly demand that the state enact punitive laws on gender and sexuality through the use of online petitions and other online surveillance practices that affect queer people beyond the digital space. These movements are legally justified by existing regulations, often associating homosexuality with pornography and social indecency, manifested in local and national laws that do not always specifically target homosexuality. As a result, digital homophobia moves beyond the online space, deeply affecting the material life of the Indonesian queer community and activism. For instance, activists, fearing reprisal, have begun carrying out their activities surreptitiously. This analysis makes a contribution to existing scholarship on global homophobia, surveillance, and technocultural and sexual globalisation by highlighting the interplay of technology, homophobic discourses, and public policy in responding to the proliferation of international LGBT rights discourses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on infrastructures as heterogeneous assemblages. Our claim is that to examine something as elusive as data infrastructure calls for an epistemological and methodological approach consistent with the fluid ontology of the object of study. Moreover, we assert that there is no position of exteriority from which to critique data infrastructures. Our question is thus primarily methodological: How might we analyse the relational and heterogeneous nature of data infrastructures in a way that both problematizes and builds on the impossibility of exteriority? We examine two dispositions of data infrastructures: first comes their provisional, dispersed and entangled character, and second, the affective attachments imbued therein. Overall, this paper, first, returns to the ontological and theoretical perspectives on what data infrastructures are; second, makes a contribution to the methodological question of how to study them; and, third, develops a means of critique that do not locate the analyst outside the object of the critique, reminding us of the immanent relationality of data infrastructures and of the necessity to take these seriously in the methodological approach. The paper works with the existing literature on data infrastructures and research methods in education policy analysis, and with our own research data and first-hand experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ubiquity of chemicals demands new ways of thinking about human–nature assemblages. This article develops a dialogue between agrarian political economy, critical commodity chains research, and chemical geographies through a case study of the world's most widely used agrochemical: glyphosate, commonly known as Monsanto's Roundup. In the 1980s, glyphosate triumphed as a benign biocide that promised both safety and effectiveness. This construct made possible a capitalist agricultural assemblage characterized by chemical pervasiveness, first as a chemical replacement for mechanical tillage and since the 1990s as the chemical input for genetically modified seed packages. The ubiquity that characterizes the glyphosate assemblage is also a geography of uneven development comprising shifting firm networks, policies, and trade. Central to this assemblage since 2000, yet largely ignored, is the outsized expansion of second- and third-tier generic pesticide producers, especially in China, for whom glyphosate is part of a network entry and upgrading development strategy. Today, the glyphosate assemblage faces unprecedented challenges from weed resistance and health controversies. Whether and how the herbicide assemblage restabilizes will be determined by the complex environmental and developmental challenges of chemical agriculture and pervasive chemicals broadly, which highlights the need for a transdisciplinary dialogue that cuts across these domains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Religion is often taught as a topic within culture and scholars have increasingly argued alongside J. Z. Smith's position that religion cannot be taught as a thing-in-itself. This essay not only challenges that assumption, but it also addresses how religion can be taught and understood as a nonhuman entity outside of thought and in-itself. Within the developing literature about material religion, this essay will use Graham Harman's object-oriented ontology to theorize about learning how one might teach religion as an agentic thing-in-itself. Harman's unique speculative philosophy enables teaching to embrace material religion and things as agents, while creating a framework of assemblages and a social ontology to express the modern academic nature of "religion." This is an argument for teaching religion as religion, while emphasizing diversity, pluralism, and the nonhuman world of religion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On February 23rd, 2020, Ahmaud Arbery, a Black man out for a jog in Georgia, was murdered by two white men who, acting as vigilantes, assumed Arbery was responsible for recent burglaries. While Blacks being murdered by whites in America is nothing new, new theories of identification – specifically, assemblage theory and identitarian articulations – offer us tools to better understand how such events take place. Specifically, we argue that racialization occurs not just on the body, but through a complex process resulting in 'race' immanently emerging as the outcome of an assemblage. In this article, we show, first, that Arbery, through no fault of his own, entered into a 'Neighborhood Watch Assemblage' that already anticipated the body of a Black man that would fulfill an overdetermined role as 'criminal' and that this identitarian articulation emerges through the arrangement of several identifications, bodies, technologies, objects, discourses, affects, and emotions that, together, actualize 'races' on bodies. Tragically, in this case, death became a capacity of the assemblage. In contrast to the death of an innocent man in Georgia, we secondly analyze what occurred in Kenosha, Wisconsin, where a 'Law and Order' assemblage's outcome resulted in a White identitarian articulation not being, initially, interpellated as 'criminal' even though the person had committed murder. Overall, we show that assemblage theory and the concept of identitarian articulations help us better understand such occurrences. Such analyses can shed a different light on episodes of systemic racism and can, eventually, help in overcoming it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines translanguaging that occurs in and as a community. Expanding the notion of translanguaging, we conceptualize community translanguaging as collaborative meaning-making among children, their family and community members, and their collective semiotic resources. Using a family literacy project as the research site, this article showcases how participating families built (on) cultural and semiotic wealth beyond the individual's and across diverse sign systems; this was demonstrated both in the process and as the product of family storybooks. Taking an ecological approach and drawing from the notions of spatial repertoires, assemblages, and distributed/collaborative agency, the analysis shows that languaging is inherently social, intertextual, multimodal, and contingent on the dynamic of the semiotic ecology. Families collaborated, cross-culturally, metalinguistically, multimodally, and across generations, to discuss, write, draw, and digitize their family stories. This expanded concept of community translanguaging counters the coded notion of language and resulting separatist paradigm of language education with pedagogical implications. Leveraging community repertoires provides new opportunities to create educational space(s) where more/various semiotic resources can be drawn upon to maximize creativity in teaching and learning. It also can engage families and communities from diverse backgrounds in ways that empower, rather than marginalize, diverse ways with words and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay identifies anxious assemblages as a powerful rhetorical strategy used by organizers of the 2014 Flood Wall Street protest in New York City's financial district. Anxious assemblages may disrupt the reduction of protest to acts of individual expression while promoting intra-movement solidarity. Drawing together literatures about assemblages and anxiety, I show how circulating signs and images on social media can propel protests that repeat and modulate pre-existing expressions of anxiety. I then use visual and textual methods to demonstrate how Flood Wall Street emerged from a Twitter campaign to transform protestors into a flood or bodies that predicted global climate chaos and spurred participants' ongoing agitation against the causes of climate change. This essay provides an important analytical tool for analyzing the repetitive and collective tactics now popular among climate justice organizations, explaining how they promote intragroup solidarity and elicit further agitation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that the study of religious translation can greatly benefit from a material turn, that attention needs to be paid to the carriers and forms of religious translations, and that such an approach can ultimately add different understandings of the translation process and alternative readings of religious texts. Drawing on theories of material culture, it proposes engagement with the material structures, practices and spaces that accompany translations. The article explores the modalities of engagement with the religious translation and the values and meanings that are associated with the object. It suggests a consideration not merely of the translated object, but also its related entanglements and sensory engagements, situating the text within its associated practices, assemblages and networks. It furthermore proposes an empirical engagement with the object and an exploration of the variations in form which exist in the possible afterlives of texts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many people who experience spinal cord injury become long-term wheelchair users. This article addresses the process of becoming en-wheeled through the case example of a disabled man called Patrick. An intrinsic case study informed by posthumanist developments was used. Within this design, Patrick and his manual wheelchair were the entangled participants of the inquiry. Interviews and fieldwork observation with Patrick were conducted. Qualitative data were analysed using the posthumanist notion of 'assemblages'. The results illuminate Patrick's struggle of negotiating a new embodied selfhood that includes the wheelchair. Patrick engaged in ableist rehabilitation after spinal cord injury to recuperate the capacity to walk and break his connection with the wheelchair. After extensive treatment of his body, he reluctantly assumed his cyborg or posthuman condition. The analysis and discussion resulted in a theoretical frame that presents the notions of humanist and posthumanist enwheelment as two directions of a continuum. The paper offers a useful tool for understanding and addressing enwheelment plus other cyborgification processes. We advocate for its acceptance into the disability studies and rehabilitation practice repertoire. Enwheelment –the process of becoming one with the wheelchair – is relevant to people after SCI (or other impairments). The notions of humanist and posthumanist enwheelment are developed and presented as two ends of a continuum. Rehabilitation workers should be mindful of the complexities of cyborgification to avoid ableism and help people flourishing within and beyond recovery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, 25 Maltese employees with physical or sensory impairments shared their experiences regarding access and use of various technologies at work, first via focus groups and individual interviews, and then through observation sessions at their workplace. The research initially rested on the premise that disabled people face various barriers related to the access and use of technology in their employment, that are not directly ensuing from their impairments. It then built on this premise by applying concepts from new materialisms in an attempt to broaden the notions proposed by the social model of disability. Through the use of vignettes, this paper shows how enabling technologies form part of assemblages, networks and entanglements of people, things and affects to produce consequences that are conducive to or limiting of dis/ability. This article is about people with physical or sensory impairments and how they use technology at their place of work. Research participants describe many difficulties they have in order to obtain and use technology at work. Difficulties using technology at work are not only due to financial, physical or attitudinal barriers but also due to difficulties that have to do with impairment such as pain and fatigue. It is difficult to understand how barriers to obtaining and using technology in work produce disability because they are entangled with many other factors, human and non-human. Stories presented show that people, things, places and feelings, can all equally produce ability or disability in the workplace depending on how they interact together. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we 'plug in' ideas from post-qualitative thinking to read empirical material from Erasmus+ project, Open School Doors, and mobilise new ways of conceptualising teachers' work with newly arrived families. Driven by commitments to inclusion and social justice teacher participants described tacit, in-the-moment, knowledge-making, that felt contingent and risky, as they sought to respond to encounters with families that demanded compassionate action but pushed them beyond the threshold of professional certainty and the would-be neutralities of 'professional' identities. We understand these affective responses to the work of teaching as 'abductive' moments of breakdown, rupture and estrangement, that draw attention to the always already becoming nature of professional practice. We put to work the concepts of entanglement, assemblage and rhizomes to make use of 'abductive' moments as productive opportunities for exploration of teachers' messy, implicated, intra-relatedness to their practice worlds and to imagine models of professional learning that promote connection and knowledge-in-the-making as ethical, 'response-able' post/rhizo-professional alternative to linear forms of professional learning. Our discussion is embedded in a specific context but has important broader implications for the design of teacher education as preparation for complex anticipated working lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In contrast to the perception that mega-urban projects are the epitome of neoliberal governance, in China they are initiated by the state as a state development strategy, which represents a new governance mode of 'state entrepreneurialism'. The market is used as a new governance mechanism to mobilize the resources of multiple actors. Consequently, the delivery of mega-urban projects is neither driven by market actors nor controlled by the state alone. Mega-urban projects are the sites where governance innovation is experimented upon. Focusing on Lingang in Shanghai, the paper reveals that a horizontal networked mode of governance has emerged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spiders, natural enemies of several insects of economical and sanitary relevance, are sensitive to anthropogenic disturbances. Urban habitats, home to nearly half of the world's human population, are growing in number and size. Consequently, natural habitats are lost and impervious surfaces increase. We compared the overall spider species and guilds assemblage characteristics associated with vegetation, between sites located within different urbanisation levels (urban and suburban) and in relation to local and landscape traits. The most abundant guilds were sheet web weavers and ambush hunters. The overall richness of spiders and richness and abundance of two guilds (space web weavers and stalker hunters) were higher in suburban than urban sites. The overall spider abundance, Shannon-Weaver diversity and the Shannon evenness index did not change between urban and suburban sites. While the species composition differed between urban and suburban sites, comprising the urban spider species a subset of those found in the suburban pool. Species abundances were negatively related with the percentage of bare ground, canopy cover, and urban level. Richness was positively related to low vegetation. Guilds' responses differed concerning their life histories. At a landscape level, high consolidation (impervious surface) degree surrounding the green patches had negative effects while medium values had positive effects. Higher diversity was associated with intermediate mixtures of vegetation and impervious cover. In conclusion, the spider's community and guild characteristics were associated with environmental, landscape and local factors through the urbanised landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research draws upon pedagogical experimentation on a ski-touring journey in the Australian Alps, building upon place-responsive pedagogies in outdoor environmental education with insight from new materialist and posthuman theory. In particular, this research focusses on the generative potential of considering co-productions and assemblages that include the materiality of a more-than-human world. Combining place-responsive and new materialist ideas, the concept of more-than-human stories is offered as a pedagogical strategy that may challenge anthropocentrism and develop different ways of thinking about and with more-than-human places. An example of these ideas in practice is offered, where Ya, an undergraduate student, presents her more-than-human story—One Single Moment—a picture-story book created on the ski-touring journey. Following her picture-story book, she maps the conditions of possibility, the various pedagogical influences that led to the creation of One Single Moment. Our aim through this research is to offer methodological and pedagogical insight into using new materialist theories in creative and productive ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sustainability initiatives have expanded beyond the rehabilitation of physical environments towards the reconstruction of discourses that shape human-nature interactions. In the present study, the discursive-materiality of territorial assemblages of sustainability were examined by analyzing tabloid news report coverage of the closure, rehabilitation, and reopening of Boracay, an island in the Western Philippines hailed as one of the most popular beach destinations in Asia. News reports about Boracay from eight local tabloids (n = 507) were collected and analyzed in two phases. The data corpus underwent basic descriptive coding through a text mining strategy called Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA), a confirmatory form of analysis that grouped data into clusters of meaning. From these initial clusters, discursive-material assemblages and their respective elements were critically mapped and identified through further interpretative analysis. Throughout the process of rehabilitation, Boracay was (re)constructed from a cesspool into a fortified paradise. These discursive-material assemblages of sustainability are further discussed in relation to the broader political climate of the current administration, as well as, the reproduction of claiming territories of public good in online space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, many of the companies collectively known as 'Big Food' have undertaken efforts to assess and improve agricultural sustainability, both within their own supply chains and as members of multi-stakeholder initiatives (MSIs). Taking up Friedmann's call for closer attention to corporate sustainability practices, this paper finds that companies are doing more than they advertise, but making slower progress than originally hoped. Up to a point, political economy perspectives on corporate power and governance help to explain both why these MSIs have taken shape, and why their corporate members' immense market power might not guarantee quick results. Yet these perspectives do not fully capture how corporations' sustainability efforts contend with not only other actors' challenges to their legitimacy and authority, but also their own lack of knowledge and access to information. This paper therefore also draws on global assemblage and science and technology studies (STS) frameworks in order to analyze corporate power – and its limits – inside a set of ongoing sustainability initiatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Could the most miniscule of objects, imperceptible to the human eye, enact whole new political economies? The suggestion may seem odd, but this article shows that tiny molecules are already engendering new regimes of value across the fields of global health and biodefense. Delving genealogically into the onto-epistemology of the life sciences, the article thus traces the protracted molecular reconfigurations of state-market relations underpinning the global bioeconomy and civilian biodefense today. Using methodological precepts developed through assemblage thinking, this evolving patchwork of new constellations is conceptualized as a global molecular assemblage. Attending to the lively play of molecules in the world advances the post-Foucauldian, molecular study of biopolitics by exploring how scientific shifts in our 'vital epistemics' contour state-market relations. It further contributes to the development of a post-human international political economy that is more sensitive to the ways in which artefacts (like molecules) too exhibit particular kinds of 'agency' and 'force' in the world. Finally, it also enhances the field's ability to make unconventional, hitherto overlooked and multi-scalar connections in the study of political economy through the creative use of assemblage thinking. In the case of molecules, such assemblage thinking can – quite literally – reveal the value of 'life'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Maintaining an immaterial and modernist approach to interpersonal and family relationships obscures places in lived experiences where scholarly critiques may be most disruptive and impactful. Nonhuman vocabularies provide valuable foundations for critical interpersonal and family (CIFC) scholars, as we analyze and disrupt problematic communication practices that constitute contested interpersonal and family relationships. We argue that it is incumbent upon CIFC researchers to critique the material-discursive practices that constitute unjust operations of power by including and recognizing nonhuman actants in our analyses and subsequent critiques. In this paper, we first describe current barriers that keep CIFC scholars from reaching for nonhuman vocabularies. Second, we identify 3 nonhuman theories CIFC scholars could adopt. Finally, we discuss the risks and promises of nonhuman approaches for CIFC scholars. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on data from a Bangladeshi-run mixed-goods store in Tokyo – a site of diversity in terms of customers, the products and interactions – we argue in this paper that in order to understand translinguistic ordinariness, or what we call mundane metrolingualism, we have to explore both the ideas of ordinariness and of diversity in greater depth. Ordinariness, or the cluster of other terms that have been similarly used (everyday, unremarkable, mundane, from below) has been employed to address four principal concerns: Difference – social, cultural, sexual, economic, racial – rather than commonality is the core experience of human life; diversity is not exotic or something that others have, but key to all experience; diversity has temporal dimensions as part of repeated everyday practice; and difference as everyday practice is part of the non-elite world of struggle for recognition. Focusing on two particular spatiotemporal themes, everydayness and simultaneity, we examine the ways in which different activities, conversations and artefacts may be brought together through mobile technologies. These mundane metrolingual assemblages are both central to the activities of the shop but also part of simultaneous worlds of engagement and activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper re-assesses South Korean unification narratives in the context of territory and critical approaches to territory. From this, the paper identifies a set of underlying assumptions and expectations of South Korean government and civil society. The paper explains why division and unification are commonly assumed as a zero-sum relationship and primarily based on a bounded and homogenous understanding of spatiality and territory. From this, the paper indicates how alternative conceptions of space, networks and territory might be used to recast the site and nature of Korean territorial unification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Elements of the ancient periglacial flora such as peat bog shrubs provide a paleorefugium in Central Europe for survival of glacial biota and other cold-adapted species during recent climate change. This study provides evidence that diversity of one of the most numerous consumers in peat bogs, beetles, was higher in mid-successional stages characterized by the highest degree of shrub encroachment, compared with early and old stages. The main autogenic factor driving successional changes of herb-shrub layer coleopteran assemblages were shrub cover and bog water level. Younger successional stages contained the highest abundance of herb dwellers (chortobionts) and polyphagous species, whereas middle and old stages contained shrub inhabitants (chamebionts), which are oligophagous species specializing on ericaceous dwarf shrubs. Species richness and abundance of cold-adapted inhabitants of peat bogs (tyrphobiontic and tyrphophilous) increased from young to old successional stages along with increased shrub cover. Herb dwellers and polyphagous species are among the first primary consumers to colonize peat bogs. With changes in late-successional habitats, in particular the invasion of ericaceous dwarf shrubs, chamebiontic and oligophagous species start colonizing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nearly 20,000 adult caddisfly specimens were collected during May through September 2010-2014 from approximately weekly ultraviolet light samples of Fairbanks Creek in northern Lower Michigan. Detrended correspondence analysis determined four distinct seasonal assemblages corresponding to spring (May to late June), summer (late June to late July), late summer (late July to early September), and autumn (early to late September). Of the 109 total species caught, 5 indicated the spring assemblage, 13 the summer assemblage, 1 the late summer assemblage, and 4 the autumn assemblage. Species richness, specimen abundance, and number of unique species were highest during the summer. Most summer samples contained ∼50% of all species caught during the year; whereas the spring and autumn assemblage contained a smaller but unique fauna, and the late summer assemblage was characterized by a decreasing richness of summer species. Pollution tolerance and shredder to filtering collector ratio metrics varied by factors of 5-30x; both were highly dependent on the abundance of particular species. Overall mean values of all metrics varied seasonally but not annually. The specific date of peak species richness varied based on annual weather, but occurred at a similar degree-day value for all 5 years. These results suggest the importance of sampling within a season when comparing streams for biological monitoring purposes. Moreover, they confirm the comparability of samples taken from different years, provided such samples are collected during the same season. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article poses questions about astronomy and its local, national and global developmental impacts, drawing on ongoing research around the internationally networked Square Kilometre Array (SKA) radio telescope in South Africa. The relationship between progress in global science and technology and societal change has traditionally been framed through western-centric notions of progress imbued with universalism; the field of astronomy exemplifies this approach, with its assumptions of an inherently positive correlation between its science and loosely defined notions of 'development'. We problematise this assumption through an analysis of the multiple notions of development at different scales of analysis in the SKA. We argue that large astronomy projects such as the SKA are best understood as dense assemblages of science, infrastructure, human agency and politics, in which historically rooted local concerns are marginalised in the name of the national or global public interest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: For over four decades, there have been calls for physical education (PE) and physical education teacher education (PETE) to address social inequality and foster social justice. Yet, as numerous studies demonstrate, attempts to educate for social justice in PETE are infrequent and rarely comprehensive. This raises the question why it appears to be possible in some situations but not others, and for some students and not others. Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the multiple sociopolitical networks or assemblages in which PETE is embedded and explore how these shape the possibilities for students to engage with the concept of social justice and sociocultural issues (SCI) when learning to teach PE. Two research questions guided this study: How does an orientation for social justice education (SJE) within education policy affect the standards for enacting PETE programs? How is SJE encouraged within PETE programs? Methodology: Drawing from a broader study of over 70 key personnel in more than 40 PETE programs, we examined how faculty in PETE understand their professional world, identify their subjective meanings of their experiences, and address SCI and SJE within PETE. Data sources included an initial survey, a semi-structured interview, and program artifacts. We analyze the ways that SJE/SCI was represented in three national settings (England, the United States, and New Zealand) and identified common themes. Results: Examination of each national setting reveals ways that SJE and SCI were enabled and constrained across the national, programmatic, and individual level in each of the countries. The coherence of explicit National policy and curricula, PETE program philosophies, and the presence of multiple individual interests in social justice served to reify a sociocultural agenda. Conversely, possibilities were nullified by narrow or general National Standards, programs that failed to acknowledge sociocultural interests, and the absence of a critical mass of actors with a socio-critical orientation. These differences in assemblage culminated in variations in curriculum time that served to restrict or enable the breadth, frequency, and consistency of the messages surrounding SCI in PETE. Conclusion: These findings highlight the importance of acknowledging socio-political networks where PETE operates. The agency of PETEs to enact pedagogies that foreground sociocultural interests is contingent on congruity of the networks. The authors caution that although the 'perfect storm' of conditions has a profound influence of the possibility of transformational learning of SCI in PETE, this arrangement is always temporary, fluid, and subject to changes in any of the three network levels. Additionally, the success of PETE in enabling graduating PE teachers to recognize the inequities that may be reinforced through the 'hidden curriculum' and to problematize the subject area is contingent on the expectations of the schools in which they teach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Targeting, to aim a crosshair at an object, is the most basic skill for a gamer to survive from enemies, solve puzzles, and make a story unfolded in videogames. As the trigger for the game objects’ reciprocal operations, this simple action functions to individuate the objects kept in their abstract initial state into the concrete functional units participating in a topological network operational in a videogame to achieve the gamer’s goal. In today’s open-world games, these objects disclose their agencies through the auras perceivable when the player characters use certain magical skills and technological aids. In this genre, a gamer’s narrative and ludic experiences, all triggered by one’s performance to target at the objects on the human side of the interface, are translated, on the machinic side, into the topological transformations of the objects’ network. As an experiment for a nonhuman turn in videogame studies, this essay examines how this topological network behind an open-world mobilizes the ludic and narrative behaviors of gamers for its never-ending transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Networked technologies have distinct effects on argumentation and public memory, offering the possibility of more democratic engagement through shared discourse. This essay examines Facebook memorials for Nelson Mandela to assess the democratic potentials of networked memory. Following the death of Nelson Mandela on December 5 2013, people from around the world flocked to Facebook to write on memorial walls for the fallen leader. These users connected with others from around the globe, but their engagement was shallow and short-lived. This essay traces the argumentative force of memorial networks, arguing that technological structures and neoliberal activities imbue argumentation and public memory with the real-time values of networked culture. Site structure, graphical user interfaces, and algorithmic arrangement combine to promote consumption and connection rather than sustained critical discourse. Networked memorials promote public vernacular performances, but those performances remain constrained by time, space, and technological power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reflects on research on medicinal plants in the Matzikama Local Municipality, Western Cape, in order to elaborate on methodological possibilities and their problematic in such studies. Classical ethnographic research is usually conducted from an anthropocentric viewpoint, but our intimate engagement with plants compelled us to experiment with a range of methodological tools in order to gain deeper and wider insight into plant worlds. We paused, spent time to dwell with plants, drew on all our senses and learned new ways to be attentive to plants and their more-than-human sociality and entanglements. This expanded our perceptual skills as we reassessed how to study, engage plants with care and think about and with them afresh. The thrust of our efforts was to draw plants from the margin of research, without anthropomorphising them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Río Caldera occupies the northernmost subbasin of the Río Chiriqui watershed area. Two of its tributaries, Quebrada Grande and Quebrada Jaramillo, occur in close proximity and on opposite sides, and have different recent geologic histories and current land use patterns. The species richness of adult caddisflies in these drainages is very similar. However, their assemblage composition is quite different. When compared to optimal and minimal lists of genera, mimicking collections of larval stages, the similarity between these two tributaries increases significantly. This study suggests that adult caddisfly identifications at the species level provide higher overall information content, produce better estimates of species diversity, are potentially useful in determining relative similarity of streams and drainages based on assemblage composition, and generate questions which would not be possible employing larval, generic-level identifications. However, multiple samples over time and space employing multiple sample methods are required to provide robust estimates of species diversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this article is to analyse how 15 students at a public elementary school detach from immobile representations of identity through aesthetic self-expressive work with cinema. Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of assemblage, I interrogate students’ experiences of discrimination and challenge their processes of developing a short film within cinema workshops at school. I find that when new components regarding cinema, such as material apparatuses (e.g. cameras, stages, sound recorders) and expressive devices (e.g. improvisation, dialogues, corporeal movements), are applied to both the school and subjectivities, there is a rupture of rigid systems of representation and the creation of novel assemblages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article has three interrelated aims: first, to examine the achievements of the study of the phenomenon of backpacker congregations as 'enclaves', and present the principal historical trajectory of those enclaves in terms of a sequence of transitions: from inception and enclavisation, to conventionalisation and eventual medialisation. Second, to offer a critique of the prevailing approach to backpacker enclaves and dwell upon its inherent deficiencies. Finally, to suggest an alternative approach to backpacker congregations, based on the concept of 'assemblages', for a more adequate and nuanced representation of the spatial and virtual processes, by which backpacker enclaves are constituted, and to explicate their multiple enmeshments in their proximal and distal environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]