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This paper showcases Oral Histories and Futures interviews as an approach and series of innovations for researching crises with qualitative methods. It presents new possibilities for methodological innovations to embrace the multi‐directional and longitudinal temporalities of crises across the life‐course and the life‐course of crises. As an exciting avenue for methodological enhancement, I build on and bring together techniques across Oral Histories and creative biographical interviewing. Developed as part of a recent study exploring reproduction, economic crisis and the life‐course, with this approach I aimed to elicit people's experiences and opinions about their pasts, present and futures by innovating with traditional qualitative methodologies. I outline five areas of innovation—and associated observations, opportunities and obstacles—including a focus on younger generations, on the future, the inclusion of reflexive activities, interviewing in the midst of crises, and remote interviewing. Conclusions highlight what can be learned from an Oral Histories and Futures approach for thinking about socio‐temporal horizons. This paper presents new possibilities for qualitative methodologies to embrace the multi‐directional and longitudinal temporalities of crises across the life‐course and the life‐course of crises. I outline five areas of innovation—and associated observations, opportunities and obstacles—including a focus on younger generations, on the future, the inclusion of reflexive activities, interviewing in the midst of crises, and remote interviewing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper offers a response to Kath Browne and Catherine Nash's paper 'From hegemonic to where?'. Building on their influential body of work and expanding upon further empirical research across Ireland, Canada and the UK, their paper is a direct examination of the views and experiences of those concerned about socio-legal challenges in sexuality and gender. With my responses and provocations, I gesture towards a relational geographical framing, focusing on three main themes: the everyday and relationality, experience and difference, and praxis and allyship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Doreen Massey's academic repertoire, as a human geographer and political thinker, is almost unmatched. This review essay catalogues my experience of 'meeting' Massey through the eyes of David Featherstone and Diarmaid Kelliher, the editors of this collection of selected political writings. Highlighting Massey's contributions to theories of relationality, space, place, politics and praxis, I show how the collection captures her ability to synthesise everyday struggles and global political-economic processes. We also meet Massey in her various, intersecting guises: academic, political organiser, person. Where the book brings forth a vision of Massey as scholar and as public intellectual, I further comment on how her contributions are framed within geography and particularly her influence on feminist geographies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For many young adults in the UK, austerity has restricted capacities to access secure housing, employment and social welfare, with sharp implications for reproduction and reproductive futures. Exploring these lived reproductive experiences, this article develops a conceptual framework that brings together social reproduction, emotional labour and relational work in new ways, specifically through the concept of 'carrying'. Carrying, I argue, beholds a range of embodied, emotional and laborious qualities that are required for contemporary social reproduction. To demonstrate, I draw on research based in the North East of England, as an area that has seen detrimental cuts in the name of austerity and has some of the lowest fertility rates in the UK. Empirical examples come from 12 in-depth Oral History and Future interviews, a technique specifically developed to explore present-day narratives about (not) having any or more children. It is argued that the emotional, embodied and relational labour of carrying is key to understanding the experience of reproduction in this context, particularly regarding (1) carrying possibilities, (2) carrying bodies and (3) carrying instabilities. These forms of labour often go unnoticed and unchecked and yet can shed new light on reproduction. To close, I argue that because the labour of reproduction is carried forward into the life-course, reproductive futures are yet another way in which social inequalities can widen further under austerity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We contribute to critical debates about the ethics, politics and praxis of research impact by drawing on our experiences of translating research into a comic and a zine. We demonstrate how comics and zines construct ethical and nuanced depictions of socio-politically marginalised groups, moving away from 'damage centred' research frameworks. Comics and zines enable readers to access places and moments that other mediums are less able to, and they gesture toward a participatory, slowed-down practice of research engagement. Finally, we suggest that current indicators of impact ought to consider the methods and praxis of impact, rather than focus on measurements related to outputs, as a way to creatively encourage research to meaningfully engage with participants and publics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reproduction is a considerable concern in contemporary Europe and has attracted growing academic interest in the context of austerity. This paper brings together literature on social reproduction, the life-course and vital conjunctures, and develops innovative methodologies to understand reproduction in the context of everyday life in austerity. Using biographical vignettes from family ethnographies, themes of welfare restructuring, debt and care responsibilities emerge. Empirical insights explore social reproduction and defaulted futures, indebtedness and indecision as reproductive conjuncture, and incongruous biographies and absent possibilities. Conclusions call for further research on the relationship between reproductive futures and austerity, and methodological experimentation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"It died once at playgroup, I didn't know what to do": towards vital, vibrant, material geographies of the mobile phone in austerity In these thick descriptions and envisionings of mobile phone use as ubiquitous in the context of austerity and wider global neoliberal policies, concerns about equity and access (as the politics I of i the mobile phone) are relatively sidelined; Ureta's ([47]) study of mobile phones, everyday spatial mobility and poverty in Santiago, Chile, being a notable exception. The mobile phone as a vital and vibrant material in austerity: three vignettes From the ethnographic research emerged a set of textured stories about mobile phones, everyday life and austerity, presented below as vignettes. Keywords: Austerity; mobile phone; materiality; vitalism; intimacy; vignette; Austeridad; Teléfono lMóvil; Materialidad; Vitalismo; Intimidad; Viñeta; Austérité; téléphone portable; matérialité; vitalisme; intimité EN Austerity mobile phone materiality vitalism intimacy vignette ES Austeridad Teléfono lMóvil Materialidad Vitalismo Intimidad Viñeta FR Austérité téléphone portable matérialité vitalisme intimité 972 989 18 09/09/22 20220901 NES 220901 1. [Extracted from the article]

Austerity policies and austere socio-economic conditions in the UK have had acute consequences for everyday life and, interconnectedly, the political and structural regimes that impact upon the lives of women and marginalised groups. Feminist geographies have arguably been enlivened and reinvigorated by critical engagements with austerity, bringing to light everyday experiences, structural inequalities and multi-scalar socio-economic relations. With this paper I propose five areas of intervention for further research in this field: social reproduction, everyday epistemologies, intersectionality, voice and silence, and embodied fieldwork. To conclude, I argue for continuing feminist critique and analyses given the legacies and futures of austerity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I revisit Tivers's (1978) paper 'How the other half lives: the geographical study of women', and in doing so also revisit geographies of social reproduction. Contributing to and revitalising geographies of social reproduction, I place these ideas in conversation with Perec's work on the endotic and infra‐ordinary. This has the effect of both extracting a more feminist reading of Perec and can provide new insights for social reproduction, particularly when placed alongside emerging ideas about 'social infrastructures.'. In this paper I revisit Tivers' (1978) paper "How the other half lives: the geographical study of women," and in doing so also revisit geographies of social reproduction. Drawing on a range of feminist writers, I explore how the everyday can be understood as both a geographical and a feminist project. Discussion of everyday life inevitably raises questions about gendered labour, social reproduction, and power relations and social location in research. Contributing to and revitalising geographies of social reproduction, I place these ideas in conversation with Perec's work on the endotic and infra‐ordinary. This has the effect of both extracting a more feminist reading of Perec and augmenting critical understandings of geographical approaches to everyday life and social reproduction. I argue that expanding Perec's notion of the infra‐ordinary can provide new insights for social reproduction, particularly when placed alongside emerging ideas about "social infrastructures." To close, I identify why a return to geographies of social reproduction is timely and necessary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article informs that to invest in social infrastructure is thus more than a financial commitment or policy promise it is an investment in the social reproduction of societies, communities and families. It mentions about focusing on ideas emanating from scholarship in feminist economics, which understand social infrastructures as encompassing social reproduction, are routinely side-lined in wider debates and discourses.

This paper argues for rethinking the economic geography of sharing and making in light of the recent proliferation of open innovation, makerspaces and maker movements. Using empirical research from an example of one such makerspace – Manchester's FabLab – and engaging with a range of geographical literatures on making, sharing economies, and digital fabrication, we develop a critical account of sharing in principle and in practice. The portrayal of open innovation spaces, such as FabLabs, as novel makerspaces of alterity and sharing is a common and underpinning theme in both academic and marketing literature (Aldrich, 2014; Anderson, 2012; Doherty, 2012; Fab Foundation, 2012; Gershenfeld, 2005; Suire, 2019). However, our findings suggest that the values espoused by the FabLab, of involvement, connection and affinity, are quite literally being revised and rejected by makers who use the space. Time, labour and knowledge were for the most part described by participants as precious commodities to be savoured rather than shared. Thus, while sharing is an ordinarily economic practice, this does not mean it is always, inevitably or evenly employed by economic actors and communities, especially within counter-cultural networks. If these are to be the economies of the future, we implore economic geographers to critically engage further with the complexities of and within maker spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our key aim with this collection, a combination of original empirical contributions and interventions by experts from across social geography and sociology, is to consolidate and advance feminist, interdisciplinary approaches to the everyday geographies of family via contemporary, empirically grounded research and direct interdisciplinary exchanges. This themed section showcases cutting edge geographical work in relation to the everyday geographies of family life; highlights the diversity of work being done within feminist geography and; develops a feminist geography that is enriched through engagement with interdisciplinary intellectual exchanges. We describe the intervention section that follows this introductory piece, bringing together writing from across sociology and geography, where there has been a cross-pollination of ideas around everyday family life, but very little concerted effort to bring these into dialogue to date. In introducing each contributor and their substantive interests, we will draw out relevant theoretical links across papers that illustrate how both family and the everyday, as key concepts, are being unsettled and problematised. Contributors to the intervention section are notable scholars that have set and shaped key agendas and debates. In their shorter papers, they will reflect on their influence on developing debates about family and everyday life. Drawing links across this suite of themed and intervention papers, it will be argued that interdisciplinary work around the family is important for carving out and consolidating feminist, interdisciplinary discussions and for determining what might also be distinctive about feminist approaches to family geographies as debates progress. [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]

Geographers and urbanists focused on assemblages in the Global South have significantly advanced urban theory, investigating politics, policy, everyday practices of (in)formality—infrastructure, water, sanitation, housing, education, health—how (non)human actors, networks, practices, ideas, and learning constitute urban life. This article outlines new directions for this agenda, presenting research into comparative geographies of Live-in-Guardians—"temporary" living, often in nonresidential buildings, based on licensed tenure—undertaken in London, Dublin, Amsterdam, and New York City that considers water sprinklers, light and air, employment, money, travel, ghosts, family, love, nuns, intimacy, slamming doors, echoes, friendship, aesthetics, leaks, draughts, comfort, sharing, heat and cold, housing markets, consumer culture, and so on. We engage with (non)human assemblages to offer new theoretical and empirical insights into relational politics, legislation, policy, (in)mobilities, (un)comfortable materialities, and more-than-representation, which we argue are key to understanding (in)formal housing in the Global North. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impacts of austerity have permeated many aspects of everyday life in the UK, making this an important context in which to carry out social research. In this paper I consider some of the challenges that austerity poses to how we carry out research into everyday austerities and the ethical implications of researching in austere conditions. Drawing on debates from feminist and moral geographies on ethics, care and responsibility, and on first-hand experiences of researching families in the current economic climate, I argue that the everyday mechanics of research - such as recompensing participants, and the place of the researcher - acquire particular resonance in austerity. In doing so, I also reflect on the significance of social proximity and personal biography, and the ways in which researchers may become enveloped in participants' personal narratives in addition to providing support and care. In the conclusion I identify contributions made to understandings of care and responsibility in fieldwork, the ethics of researching in and about austerity, and the relational space of the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we argue for repositioning geographies of children, youth and families at the centre rather than at the periphery of discussions about the economy. This not only reveals what contemporary and lived experiences of economic change feel and look like, but also exposes deeper problematics about the geographically and socially uneven nature of neoliberalism and the austere state. This paper also introduces a collection which, when taken together, explores intersections between everyday life and austerity, with children, youth and families as the focus of inquiry. Adopting a multi-scalar approach, the collected papers 'zoom in' to explore the everyday realities of austere life in the UK in order to refract our understanding of the broader condition of economic change and concomitant austerity measures. Simultaneously, and speaking to a wider political agenda, the collection can be scaled up, or the framing 'zoomed out', to question and actively address the injustices of austerity and neoliberal retrenchment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The family is often considered the foundation of moral learning in society, responsible for caring and parenting, and transmitting morals to children and young people, while a lack of moral guidance from family is associated with antisocial behaviour. Despite this deep moralizing of family life, very little is known about how morals are understood in the context of family, how family members form their moral outlooks, and how morals and difference are negotiated within everyday family practices. This paper addresses some of these burgeoning questions around the moral geographies of family. Drawing on two years of ethnographic research with six families in the UK, I consider normative assumptions about what morals mean to families, which parts of family life morals are drawn from, and how morals are transmitted by and within families. In the conclusion I outline my contributions to both established and emerging areas of geographical interest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Holidays are central to the rhythm of everyday family practices and consumption, and are often depicted, within both academic literature and consumer marketing, as a defining moment in contemporary family life. To date, academic accounts of the experiences of travel and tourism have been mostly developed outside of the realm of everyday family practices and intimate relations. In this paper, therefore, we advance an interpretation of family holidays as a constituent of everyday family practices. To do this, we bring together three distinct yet interrelated conceptual frameworks: those of family practices, holiday and the everyday. Presenting and analysing data collected from ethnographic research with six families and exploring the themes of anticipation and utopian family practices, we identify how the notion of family holidays can be used a conduit for realising not only relationality between family members but also as a means of easing out the tensions and aspirations of everyday family life, a way to perfect the everyday and also to make it more palatable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dressmaking is a practice infused with historical significance which in the contemporary context of austerity has renewed social, cultural, economic, political and moral importance. Drawing on writing from across the social sciences we advance a geographical understanding of dressmaking by focusing on the themes of feminism and crafting practices, austerity, fashion and consumption, and friendship and encounters in order to theorise the everyday spatialities of contemporary crafting cultures. In doing so we argue that the recent return to dressmaking cannot be understood as an extension or repetition of historic practices but that contemporary dressmakers are claiming a history and geography of their own. To conclude, we argue that dressmaking and other related fabricultures have much to offer our understanding of austerity, feminism and friendship and thus merit further theoretical and empirical investigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a first critical overview of literature within and beyond geography regarding the everyday ethics of consumption in times of austerity, with a focus on urban spaces. How consumers balance their ethical imperatives in a time of austerity has significant, multi-scalar social and economic impacts, and yet there is a limited literature that addresses the everyday ethics of consuming in austere conditions. By teasing out the differences between the 'ethics of consumption' and 'ethical consumption', and ref lecting on research regarding consumption in contemporary and historical periods of austerity, I highlight the need for greater geographical insight into the impacts of economic and political change on everyday urban life. I demonstrate that geographers might begin to tackle this emerging research agenda by attending to issues that impact on people's everyday lives, using the examples of ordinary mobilities, including home spaces and tourism, and food consumption in the case of food banks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The passing of the Russian NGO Law in mid-2006 set clear parameters for Russian NGO activity and civil society development. In this paper we assess the impact of the NGO Law on both NGOs and Russian civil society. Our findings illustrate that the NGO Law has led to a reduction in NGO activity and curtailment of civil society development. We conclude that Russian civil society appears to be dominated by groups funded and thus controlled by the state. This has implications for Russia's on-going democratic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to debates on geographies of family and intimate relations, and research ethics in ethnographic research by addressing the ethics of doing ethnography with families. Drawing on debates in human geography, anthropology, and sociology, I argue that the intimate nature of both ethnography and familial relations presents particular challenges to using an ethnographic approach to studying families. Using experiences from two years of ethnographic research with six families in the UK, the ethics of confidentiality (within and between families, and in published materials), and disengagement (following long-term involvement, transforming relationships, and staying in contact with participants) are explored. In addition, the paper sheds light on the geographical and ethical complexities of doing 'ethnography on your doorstep'. The conclusions outline the contributions of the paper to discussions within and beyond geography, family studies, and ethnography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unequal and invisible: A feminist political economy approach to valuing women's care labour in the COVID-19 response. The pandemic has normalised online learning, and the possibilities this opens up, particularly for disabled people and those with care responsibilities, as well as reshaping possibilities for international conferences and meetings. I put it off for ages because the task felt too enormous (how to write about COVID-19 and care and academia?) and it was my first I Area i editorial as the newest member of the team. [Extracted from the article]

In this paper we examine the issue of environmental responsibility in the Russian Federation by engaging in responsibility narratives with environmental nongovernmental organisations (NGOs). We do so to examine in more depth the impact of the deinstitutionalisation of environmental responsibility in Russia throughout the transition period. We find that while NGOs regard the state and other key actors to have abdicated in their responsibility for protecting the natural environment, Russian environmental NGOs appear unable to substitute for these actors. Consequently, the Russian environment remains largely unprotected and thus subject to continuing irresponsibility in the field of environmental protection and pollution control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the difficulties and dilemmas that may occur when friendships are formed with participants during an ethnographic research project. The ongoing, reciprocal relationships developed with participants are considered essential in the data collection of ethnography, as an avenue through which research can be carried out. However, while friendships in the field may open new doors to research, they can also create new (ethical) challenges. This paper revisits these issues, alongside research ethics guidelines, using three different scenarios: the negotiation of methods of contact, the maintenance of contact with participants and the sharing of research diaries with participants. From these discussions, two issues arise that may have implications for future ethnographic research: the obstacle of social networking websites and the negotiation of appropriate research ethics when participants become our friends. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This editorial introduces a Classics Revisited collection within which a range of invited authors have used Louise Bracken and Emma Mawdsley's paper, '"Muddy glee": Rounding out the picture of women and physical geography fieldwork', as inspiration for reflection and to broaden the debate around geography fieldwork. Published in 2004, 'Muddy glee' sought to engage with feminist critiques of the masculinist endeavour of fieldwork, whilst trying to reclaim some of the more nuanced, positive aspects of women in fieldwork. This editorial introduces the classic paper, reflects on fieldwork access today and the role of the RGS‐IBG in helping to shape good practice and briefly introduces the collection of papers that together form the special section. This is an introductory editorial to the Classics Revisited special collection, 'Muddy Glee'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper challenges “Big Society (BS) Localism”, seeing it as an example of impoverished localist thinking which neglects social justice considerations. We do this through a critical examination of recent turns in the localist discourse in the UK which emphasise self-reliant communities and envisage a diminished role for the state. We establish a heuristic distinction between positive and negative approaches to localism. We argue that the Coalition Government's BS programme fits with a negative localist frame as it starts from an ideological assumption that the state acts as a barrier to community-level associational activity and that it should play a minimal role. “BS localism” (as we call it) has been influential over the making of social policy, but it also has implications for the achievement of environmental goals. We argue that this latest incarnation of localism is largely ineffective in solving problems requiring collective action because it neglects the important role that inequalities play in inhibiting the development of associational society. Drawing upon preliminary research being undertaken at the community scale, we argue that staking environmental policy success on the ability of local civil society to fill the gap left after state retrenchment runs the risk of no activity at all. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]