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Delivery platforms use algorithmic control mechanisms to control couriers' work. Despite studies looking at how algorithmic control manifests on different delivery platforms, there is a dearth of research exploring how delivery platforms communicate their approaches to algorithmic control, what kinds of strategies delivery workers adopt to mitigate algorithmic control, and to what extent information regarding such 'algoactivistic approaches' is shared among communities of delivery couriers who in many cases are in direct competition with one another. To that end, two studies are conducted. Study 1 analyses five publicly listed delivery companies' annual reports (n = 14), highlighting a lack of transparency on how the platforms' algorithms function. In Study 2, a netnographic approach is used to conduct interviews (n = 12) and a qualitative analysis of delivery workers' online discussion forum posts (n = 830) on the discussion forum Reddit. Four approaches to mitigating algorithmic control are found, and the way these are shared among couriers is considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on tourism, as well as speculation about tourism futures, have been the subject of intense academic debate. Yet, despite a prolific literature on the intimate relationship between tourism and (geo)politics, accounts of how conservative and (extreme) right-wing politics shaped tourism during the pandemic remain underdiscussed in tourism studies. Hence, the purpose of this commentary is to draw attention to this intertwined connection by stimulating critical reflection on the specific cases of the Netherlands and Brazil in terms of their politics and approaches to tourism during the pandemic. We highlight the key political ideologies that guided the actions of the respective governments of these countries, focusing on the social, economic, and political meanings of their outlooks in a globalized and neoliberal world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the claim that virtual reality (VR) holds significant potential for pedagogical applications in geography. We do so with reference to results from a two‐year research‐teaching project embedded in a postgraduate course on "Heritage and Its Management." We reflect on the implementation of a VR field trip to the Auschwitz‐Birkenau State Museum enabled by the high‐immersive Inside Auschwitz guided documentary, drawing on surveys and interviews held with students after their participation in the field trip. We found that VR technology may work as a (dis)inhibitor and provided users with a sense of social and temporal freedom to explore sites but in combination with a new set of spatial and perceptual constraints. The VR field trip generated curiosity about the "details" of the site, but we argue that learning with and through VR technology only became possible via active bodily adaptations and renewed understandings of bodily capacities and their inequalities. We conclude that VR works most effectively if conceived not as a journey into a self‐contained virtual realm but instead as a spatial prompt designed to provoke new questions for students already on the path to developing geographical understandings and imaginations related to specific sites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Provocatively drawing inspiration from an episode of the Netflix series Black Mirror and China's Social Credit System this article critically examines the politics and practices of datafication, quantification and qualification associated to the Airbnb platform. It first explores some of the ideas and ontological claims that endorse Airbnb's digital infrastructure. Secondly, it looks at how the company's use of data management and metrics has become increasingly instrumental in maintaining control over hosts and guests and obtaining desirable and profitable outcomes. It does so by unpicking various applications and technologies used by Airbnb to monitor, record and measure the behaviour of hosts and guests. Drawing on in-depth interviews with Airbnb hosts and their participation in forum discussions the article discusses how people understand – and resist – Airbnb's 'ranking logic' and the ways in which their Selves and their homes should be rated and ranked and put into circulation as 'value' by the platform. In particular, the article argues that, through the review and rating system incorporated in the platform, both guests and hosts actively contribute to the production of a set of constantly changing hierarchies that represent the driving force of Airbnb as a biopolitical social regulator. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores how "home" is performed in the emerging sharing economies of tourism, drawing on the example of Airbnb in Sofia, Bulgaria. Based on an (auto)ethnographic approach, this article analyses the sometimes contested ways in which both hosts and guests engage in the everyday embodied practices of home-making. In doing so, it challenges Airbnb's essentialized idea of home as a site of belonging, "authenticity" or "localness". It also shows how the political and historical specificities, as well as the materialities of people's homes significantly shape the ways in which ordinary practices of homemaking play out and consequently affect feelings of (un)homeliness as part of the Airbnb experience. By using performance theory as an analytical framework, this article seeks to contribute to a critical understanding of the contemporary geographies of home in relation to the global sharing economies of tourism, one that is attuned to openness, interrelatedness, and a constant mode of becoming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research explores the complexities that underlie the formation of women’s social networks at traditional social student organisations in the Netherlands, advancing theory on the intersectionality of gender and class in leisure space. Building on Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of social capital it investigates if these social networks are segregated, and to what extent their divisions depend on previously acquired economic, cultural and symbolic capital. It analyses the hierarchical structures and ‘ranking’ of women’s year clubs within student organisations, and examines how the enactment and achievement of femininity determines women’s ability to move through social space. Finally, it investigates the use of social capital for women’s career progression. Semi-structured interviews were held with 20 women who were current or former members of one of the most traditional Dutch student organisations, thecorps. Their accounts were used to gather information about the meaning women gave to their membership, and shed light on the role of previously acquired capital in the formation of clubs. Our findings show that women’s previously acquired social capital allowed them easier access to corps’ space and advanced their ability to navigate it. The establishment and ranking of year clubs and their members demonstrate the power dynamics that operate within the corps and the way class underlines network formation. Femininity was deemed one of the important markers of respectability and the enactment and achievement of ‘proper’ femininity determined women’s recognition and position in corps space. Despite the hierarchies of placement in the corps, most women profit from the social capital they acquired during membership, and can use it in selective ways for career progression and acquisitions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]