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As a graduate student team from an applied anthropology course series, we conducted a yearlong community research project focused on an urban park for a local city government partner. This paper reflects on how learning and working as an applied, interdisciplinary team impacted our research process, our project design, and our experiences as students. Through the project, we experienced the benefits and challenges of collaborative work, like working through different disciplinary expectations and training styles, communication challenges, and equitable work distribution. Our unique positionalities and backgrounds shaped how we engaged with the park, the community, and the research. We all experienced the city for ourselves—through hands-on engagement—and learned about many different park experiences through a novel combination of techniques, including observations, interviews, a survey (with an embedded map feature), and a community design charrette. We engaged with a variety of people and population dynamics, which helped us provide our government partner with insight into how various community voices matter in the future of the park as a public space, while we also had the opportunity to grow as researchers.

This study examines virtual exchange (VE) as a mode of internationalization at a distance through the Turkish higher education context. Recognizing the constraints of geographical mobility, VE emerges as a viable alternative to enhance international and intercultural learning through technology. Employing a qualitative phenomenological design, we interviewed 22 participants, including students, faculty members and international office professionals from five Turkish universities. Our findings reveal diverse motivations, such as personal and academic development, and highlight professional and intercultural affordances. However, significant challenges persist, including technological limitations, time and communication obstacles and institutional support deficiencies. Our study indicates that VE projects provide valuable international experiences and intercultural awareness for students unable to participate in geographical mobility, yet they require careful consideration of technological tools and planning of activities in the ‘third space’ to overcome existing barriers and enhance student engagement. We recommend that scholars and institutional leaders give more consideration to VE from the viewpoint of internationalization at a distance for more inclusive and equitable internationalization practices in higher education driven by technological tools. Practitioner notes What is already known about this topic? Virtual exchange offers cost‐effective solutions for international and intercultural exchanges, especially for students with limited opportunities for geographical mobility. What does this paper add? Examines the virtual exchange from the viewpoint of Internationalization at a distance, using the Turkish case. Uses the conceptual lens of space, place and time to understand virtual exchange and Internationalization at a distance and improve virtual exchange experiences in underprivileged contexts. Implications for policy and practice Instructors should foster a sense of community and belonging for virtual exchange participants and diversify technological tools and communication mechanisms. Institutions should prioritize virtual exchange and technology integration in internationalization, provide adequate resources for students and faculty members and incentivize virtual exchange. What is already known about this topic? Virtual exchange offers cost‐effective solutions for international and intercultural exchanges, especially for students with limited opportunities for geographical mobility. What does this paper add? Examines the virtual exchange from the viewpoint of Internationalization at a distance, using the Turkish case. Uses the conceptual lens of space, place and time to understand virtual exchange and Internationalization at a distance and improve virtual exchange experiences in underprivileged contexts. Implications for policy and practice Instructors should foster a sense of community and belonging for virtual exchange participants and diversify technological tools and communication mechanisms. Institutions should prioritize virtual exchange and technology integration in internationalization, provide adequate resources for students and faculty members and incentivize virtual exchange. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In opposition to dualism of mind over against body and matter, Maurice Merleau-Ponty offers his experiential, lived, or ‘phenomenal’ body. Meaning, in the sense of both knowledge and value, arises from our embodied engagement and mutual constitution with our natural-social world. This article argues that two types of understandings of the nature of the body are still common in religious studies, which reinscribe Cartesian dualism by opting for one side or the other. Using Merleau-Ponty's language, these are the ‘intellectualist’ body and the ‘empiricist’ body, the first reducing meaning to mind or language that controls or inscribes bodies, the second minimizing or eliminating meaning through reductive, mechanistic, physiological causation. The constructive portion of this article engages with scholars in accord with Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenal body, who work on ways to study religion as embodied, expounding upon enactive, emplaced cognition and meanings, religious or extraordinary experiences, ritual, and the evolution of religion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, childhood is conceptualised in relation to the geography and materiality of place, the navigation of public space and the ways in which places and spaces are experienced. The article compares two middle-class girlhoods – in the 1920s and the late 1940s/early 1950s, respectively. The girls, Jo and Julia, shared a family ancestry (aunt and niece) and a similar experience of place; they lived in the same part of North London. Both were eldest children and both had parents in middle-class occupations though in different sectors. The article examines the geography and housing of the two girls’ childhoods at particular periods of history, their negotiations of, and mobilities in, public space, and the ways in which they experienced place and public spaces. To do this it draws on personal diaries written in Jo’s teenage years and on Julia’s memories of growing up in an earlier life course phase that are recollected in late adulthood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past 20 to 30 years, relational, post‐humanist, processual, and non‐representational approaches to space and place have gained an increasing purchase within anglophone human geography, whether underpinned by academic engagements with Western philosophy, anthropology, or indigenous thinking and praxis. One approach by anglophone geographers has been to incorporate assemblage thinking into constructivist and representational accounts of the building, settling, and/or disassembling of places, but here I argue that assemblage may not be the best way to do this if we wish to foreground process and the dynamism of places. Assemblage theories place too much emphasis on the structural logics and thing‐like qualities of identifiable places, even when they aim to focus on the processual or verb‐like qualities of places. I suggest that geographers who are keen to advance processual and dynamic understandings of place can usefully (re)focus their attention on Deleuze and Guattari's writings on the ritournelle (refrain) because they articulate many of the rhythmic, repetitive, differentiated, intensive, affective, eventful, and performative qualities of placing and emplacement, while resisting any easy assimilation into constructivist and representational ‘building’ perspectives which foreground the assembly and disassembly of worlds. I outline the usefulness of Gilbert Simondon's writings on individuation and crystal growth for understanding individual‐milieu relations, before discussing Deleuze and Guattari's description of the refrain as being like a ‘glass harmonica’, which captures the reverberative, refractive, and rhythmic aspects of the concept. I then revisit a series of well‐established debates about the relationship between place and placelessness, or places and ‘non‐places’, suggesting how placelessness and non‐places can be linked to either a failed process of individuation or to uneventful expressions of a series of circulating, deterritorialising, and territorialising refrains which have differing rhythmic effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The UK’s ratification of Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage in March 2024 signals a formal commitment to engage with the concept of intangible cultural heritage (ICH). This article investigates how this commitment could reshape built heritage practices in the UK through fostering a more integrated relationship between the tangible and intangible qualities of heritage. It argues that prioritising this interface is essential for contemporary built heritage management, ensuring the diverse cultural values embedded in the historic environment are represented. After examining the broader UK context, the article narrows focus to England, where Historic England’s guidance and initiatives demonstrate how shifts in policy and practice could materialise in response to the convention. The article concludes by proposing three key opportunity areas that could emerge from emphasising the tangible–intangible relationship: 1) evolving understandings of heritage, community and participation; 2) recognising the mutual influence of ICH and physical heritage; and 3) strengthening place-based cultural practices. These opportunities offer a timely pathway for the UK to become a thought leader in heritage management by aligning conservation practices with evolving cultural values and community involvement, thus setting a new benchmark for built heritage management in a Western European context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Financial exploitation of older adults is a rapidly growing social problem, and research in this area has largely focused on individual-level risk factors with the role of the community not considered. Given the rapid expansion of retirement communities across the United States, these areas may be emerging as hotspots for financial exploitation. This study presented officially reported administrative trend data on reported cases of financial exploitation and analyzed focus group and interview data collected from 80 residents of a large retirement community to assess the self-reported role of the community on older adults’ financial exploitation experiences and perceptions of risk. Study participants overwhelmingly expressed that they were targeted for financial exploitation immediately and repeatedly after moving into the retirement community and much more frequently than they had experienced before moving. Participants believed they were seen as vulnerable targets and adequate protection measures were not implemented by the retirement community’s management. Retirement community managers and local criminal justice officials should recognize that residents of retirement communities may be at risk for financial exploitation and implement prevention and response strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we move from considering the chair as an (inanimate) object, to exploring its vitality through a more vibrant and active reading of this inescapable everyday item. We are inspired by feminist new materialism and how affect shapes our understanding of matter. Reading matter in this way surfaces our orientations toward everyday items that show embodied practices of mattering. This, in turn, shines light on how we imbue objects with meaning, and how objects exceed these designations and categorisations to form new unbounded relations with the world. We focus on affective and symbolic meanings to consider different types of chairs, the spaces they occupy, and who comes to sit in them. For example, the empty chair expects an arrival; the occupied chair raises questions related to place and hospitality. Exploring whose bodies occupy an academic chair enables us to understand our embodied relationships with objects and work. We use personal experiences to engage in acts of experimental writing, reflecting on our lived experiences, and combining philosophical musings that bring the chair to life. By re-thinking our relationships to chairs, we invite the reader to resist the urge to dismiss them as mundane pieces of furniture worthy of only function or dismissal, and instead foster an openness that expands consideration of the material relations that travel across bodies and nonhuman kin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current study examines the relationship between the level of social activity and crime in place. We theoretically conceptualized the social activity as a combination of two essential elements of vitality and diversity. Our results suggest that level of social activity has a crime enhancing effect on both violent and property crime. We also found that there are positive interaction effects between the measures of vitality and diversity. This study contributes to the field by introducing a theoretically driven concept of social activity and empirically showing how the two dimensions of social activity—vitality and diversity—have independent effects that multiplicatively impact the level of crime at a location. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we theoretically conceptualize and empirically investigate translocal spatial arrangements of networked public spheres on social media. In digital communication networks, actors easily connect with others globally, crossing the borders of cities, nations and languages. However, the spatial notions evoked in public sphere research to date remain largely territorial. We propose a theoretical framework drawing on Löw's sociology of space, which highlights the relational and translocal nature of spatial arrangements. In a case study of the translocal interaction network of Berlin Twitter users, we demonstrate how this framework can be leveraged empirically using network analysis. Despite the overall network of Berlin's Twittersphere spanning the whole world, we find territorialized as well as deterritorialized translocal communities. This points to the simultaneity of territorial and networked spatial logics in digital public spheres. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The transition to a neoliberal economy that has been happening in Northern Canada has promised increasing control over resources to residents. Yet, the neoliberal approach carries significant risk, especially as it attempts to extract profit from failed and abandoned public projects—what Anna Tsing calls "salvage accumulation". In Churchill, Manitoba, the primary economic drivers—shipping and tourism—have turned the town as a place into a particular type of salvage commodity. Built upon abandoned infrastructure, non‐human nature, the collapse of other industries, and the changing climate, these industries rely upon the overall place image of Churchill to bring non‐market goods into the commodity process. This process removes local control of place image (and experience) yet still embeds the risk of the venture in the location itself. Salvage accumulation as an entrepreneurial practice unequally distributes the risk onto residents while allowing the profits to accrue elsewhere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Little attention has been devoted to framing multiple continuous social variables as a "mixture" for social epidemiologic analysis. We propose using the Bayesian kernel machine regression analytic framework that yields univariate, bivariate, and overall exposure mixture effects. Methods: Using data from the 2023 Survey of Racism and Public Health, we conducted a Bayesian kernel machine regression analysis to study several individual, social, and structural factors as an exposure mixture and their relationships with psychological distress among individuals with at least one police arrest. Factors included racial and economic polarization, neighborhood deprivation, perceived discrimination, police perception, subjective social status, and substance use. We complemented this analysis with a series of unadjusted and adjusted models for each exposure mixture variable. Results: We found that more self-reported discrimination experiences in the past year (posterior inclusion probability = 1.00) and greater substance use (posterior inclusion probability = 1.00) correlated with higher psychological distress. These associations were consistent with the findings from the unadjusted and adjusted linear regression analyses: past year perceived discrimination (unadjusted b = 2.58, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.86, 3.30; adjusted b = 2.20, 95% CI: 1.45, 2.94) and substance use (unadjusted b = 2.92, 95% CI: 2.21, 3.62; adjusted b = 2.59, 95% CI: 1.87, 3.31). Conclusion: With the rise of big data and the expansion of variables in long-standing cohort and census studies, novel applications of methods from adjacent disciplines are a step forward in identifying exposure mixture associations in social epidemiology and addressing the health needs of socially vulnerable populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sense of place and identity are related to the weather, and to memories and perceptions of what constitutes "normal" weather for a particular place. Weather is an important ingredient of cultural life; thus, long‐term changes to weather patterns can affect sense of place and sense of reality, although these changes will not be experienced uniformly. We argue that weather and climate should thus be considered forms of intangible cultural heritage, which we refer to as weather‐heritage. Drawing attention to place‐specific weather‐heritage that is threatened by climate change may increase support for mitigation and adaptation policies and encourage behavior change from individuals and governments. A heritage/memory lens can also draw attention to the ways in which lost weather‐heritage should be memorialized, ensuring that the right to memory of lost weather‐heritage is maintained. We therefore argue for a new research focus on weather‐heritage and memory, to understand how people remember and ascribe significance to particular weather types and patterns, and to document weather‐heritage that has been lost or is likely to be lost as climate changes. One purpose of this research should be to ensure that weather‐heritage is plural and does not become a majoritarian and exclusionary exercise in uncritical nostalgia. This article is categorized under:Climate, History, Society, Culture > Ideas and KnowledgePerceptions, Behavior, and Communication of Climate Change > Perceptions of Climate ChangeTrans‐disciplinary Perspectives > Humanities and the Creative Arts [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Djoussour El-maarefa is the property of Association of Arab Universities and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The paper theorises how a place can influence the emergence and evolution of an exchange field. Specifically, we examine the Society for Arts and Technology building in Montreal, focusing on its geographical location, material form, and meanings as their adaptations over time. Our findings identify three types of influence that the SAT building has on the field of projection mapping: supporting the community, fostering interorganisational relationships, and catalysing innovation. These influences manifest in distinct ways depending on the field's evolution phase. We contribute to the literature on field configuration by developing the concept of the field-configuring place and distinguishing it from the established concept of the field-configuring event. Additionally, we extend the institutional dynamics literature by showing how a place can support the configuration of a field from its emergence, based on its characteristics that can be adapted while providing stability. This study thus underlines the cross-fertilisation between the literature on field configuration and that on places. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article shares our experience of pivoting a place-focused participatory research project with children in rural China who have migrant parents from an in situ design to an online design during the COVID-19 pandemic. In redesigning the project, we shifted the photovoice component online, and substituted digital storytelling for go-along interviews. We found that the use of cell phone-supported photovoice and storytelling techniques not only provided significant flexibility in engaging children, but also empowered them to take an active role in presenting their viewpoints. Our experience demonstrated the potential for these virtual methods to increase confidence and participation among child participants, while allowing for a meaningful collaborative process between the children and researchers. Although we recognize that the data lacks the observational dimensions inherent in field-based place research, the online platform and associated digital technologies nonetheless enabled both children and researchers to capture meaningful aspects of children’s lives in everyday places. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evaluating the balance between a city’s physical and socioeconomic environmental development is crucial for creating sustainable and livable urban spaces. Although they might appear contradictory, they jointly support the comprehensive sustainable urban development strategy. Traditional methods usually focus on assessing this balance from a specific perspective, such as how neighborhood greenery shapes real estate value. Yet, they fail to deliver a holistic balance assessment in developing the physical and socioeconomic dimensions. To fill this gap, this study introduces a research framework that measures this balance through house prices based on transferred bias. Using house price as an indicator shaped by both physical and socioeconomic environments, the framework first constructs a series of deep learning models to estimate house prices through street view images for each city. These models capture the relationship between neighborhood appearance and house price. Second, by leveraging transfer inference, we introduce neighborhood appearance from one city into the model trained from another city. This process identifies the transferred bias, which is the disparity between inaccurate inference resulting from a mismatched neighborhood appearance and the trained model. Through transferred bias, we can quantify the differences in physical and socioeconomic environments across cities and evaluate the urban balances of these two environments. The results show that the transferred bias effectively quantifies the disparities among cities in physical and socioeconomic environments, thereby facilitating further investigation into the urban balance between these two environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ways in which learning environments are spatially conceived have undergone a significant transformation from space as "a realm without meaning" into place as "a meaningful location." In this context, the relevance of online interactions and the significance of online space and place in facilitating positive learning are worth exploration. Drawing on a nationwide survey involving 1010 international students at 41 Chinese HEIs in the COVID‐19 pandemic, this research applied k‐means cluster analyses which produced a typology of international students' perceived online educational environments and another typology of their online interpersonal interactions. The logistic regression results indicated the predictive power of both typologies on ability development. The discussion highlights the importance of considering spatial dimensions of international students' online learning. Promoting international students' online interactions and supporting inclusive, engaging learning experiences require both space for hosting and place enabling intercultural learning. The research holds implications for the sustainable development of online international education in the post‐COVID‐19 era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Thus far, approaches to analyzing geographies in large collections of digital texts have used coordinate-based locations derived from toponyms (place names). Although this approach provides a useful starting point, it ignores both nontoponym references to place and textual structure while stressing Euclidean space. This article addresses these issues. Focusing on a corpus of writing about the English Lake District before 1900, it explores the different geographies associated with tourists, travelers, and inhabitants. Alongside toponyms, we identify the concept of a geo-noun to associate place with geographical features. Sense of place is then identified using the adjectives, nouns, and verbs that writers associate with locations and locales. This methodology allows us to identify and define places described in large volumes of digital text both holistically and textually. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The heavy global demand for sand in various sectors of the economy subjects the Vietnamese Mekong Delta to correspondingly high amounts of sand mining—a process that started in the early 1990s contributing significantly to the Vietnamese economy. The impacts of intensive sand mining and mining-related industries damage the integrity of the river and local communities. Much of the literature focuses on the former, exposing people to the deleterious implications of sand mining on the physical environment. This study aims to fill the gap on the less explored latter through the lenses of place and landscape per human geography tradition, using qualitative methods of thirty-five interviews with locals, video recordings, and sound measurements to highlight the impacts of sand mining and mining-related industries. This study revealed that sand mining and its associated activities are responsible for people's perceptions of notable air, land, and noise pollution, as well as substantial harm to the urban environment. Over 80 percent of interviewed locals acknowledged the disruptions to their daily lives and a substantial loss of their sense of place. These findings shed light on narratives frequently overlooked by policymakers, emphasizing the urgency of addressing these issues for a sustainable future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although grief can have a profound effect on the workplace, the long-term lived experience of working after bereavement remains under researched. But how is grief experienced at work? And to what extent does this experience vary according to type of loss and form of work? Drawing on data collected through a qualitative online survey (n = 220), this article provides a sociological exploration of experiences of work after bereavement. The article will argue that while grief can be silenced in the workplace, work can also provide an important source of relational connection for bereaved individuals. It concludes by reflecting on the need to move beyond linear approaches to grief and work, highlighting the important intersection of social relations and place. By analysing experiences through a relational lens, this article seeks to offer an original contribution to the sociology of work, and to grief theory as applied in the workplace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Located within feminist scholarship on sport, leisure and physical cultures, this article explores our attempts to understand what conducting 'research with responsibility' means as White, settler-coloniser, immigrant women researching surfing, place and community in Aotearoa New Zealand. Taking inspiration from Hamilton's 'intersectional reflexivity' and Māori feminist scholars' discussion of (de)colonizing methodologies, we discuss the development of our intersectional, collaborative methodology to understand our relationships to place, community and surfing. This co-ethnographic approach helped us navigate the ethics and challenges of knowledge production in Aotearoa New Zealand, and enabled us to be aware of, and open to, different worldviews and ways of knowing. We argue this methodology has value in developing better recognition of our own privileges; understanding of the intersectional politics-of-place we are part of as researchers, and as community members; and of the assumptions, motivations and values that inform our research practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores toddler – place relationships outdoors during early childhood education in Sweden. Informed by Tim Ingold's theorization of movement, we explore toddlers' embodied engagements with the preschool playground and how the human–non-human environments become entangled. The results show that, just as in the wider world, the processes enabling and limiting toddlers' engagements in the playground are continuously in motion. Toddler–place relationships are continuously created through a mutual dependence between human and non-human entities. In this sense, toddlers' engagements with playgrounds are not separate from the place through which they engage, but change place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the concept of social affordances in relation to social theory. Our point of departure is the growing literature which posits, in one way or another, that affordances may be seen as social, or cultural or similar. Across the literature on social affordances, it is thus emphasized how perception is shaped within human econiches, how it is fundamentally social, historical, and cultural, but limited direct engagement with decades of scholarship within the social sciences on many of these same topics. This paper thus discusses three key themes for theories of social affordances, exploring sociological perspectives on meaning, place and power, arguing that there may be a difficult, yet fruitful, potential for not just an ecological psychology, but an ecological social science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of game design is often associated with a computational creative task or a creation with technology. Automatically linking game design to computational activity or technology may have contributed to the scarce research on the interaction between place and game design. The focus on technology may have excluded indigenous games from game design conversation in the game design literature. This article explores design in the context of two classic African board games. We examine the influence of place on the design of these games. Building on game design and place literature, the article shows the situatedness of game design and it integrates the design of classic African board games into the larger conversation about game design. The article discusses the implications for game-based learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While it is clear that space matters when it comes to explaining crime, there is a lack of research exploring whether such spatial effects remain significant if victim characteristics are introduced into the analysis. This paper addresses this gap by applying risk terrain modeling to predict assaults for victims of different racial backgrounds and local versus non-local residents. The results show spatial risk factors have different impact on the likelihood of victimization for individuals of different racial backgrounds and those who live in the city where the crime occurs versus those who are visiting. The findings suggest that more attention should be given to integrating the victim characteristics with the characteristics of space when predicting violent crime using spatial analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite much attention to physical aspects of climate change, the relationship between climate change and culture has thus far received little attention in research. Cultures develop over time and are shaped by place-specific factors such as history, landscape, weather, flora and fauna. Climate change affects these contextual factors, and as such will have consequences for the cultures shaped by them. In addressing the intersection of culture and climate change, the paper draws on a qualitative study on Fanø, a low-lying Danish island in the Wadden Sea. We illustrate how the cultural heritage of Fanø's seafaring past plays an important role in the everyday culture of the present. The cultural heritage and the nature of Fanø are at the core of the island's identity. As climate change will affect the community's ability to maintain their cultural heritage and will change the island's natural values, it will affect what it means to be Fanniker. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article critically examines the contemporary applicability of homonormativity in understanding LGBTQ experiences in outer suburban Australia. Representing a departure from urban-rural dichotomies in queer geographical research, this study enriches our understanding of LGBTQ life in suburban areas. Drawing on a comprehensive national survey encompassing 6835 LGBTQ adults in Australia, the research provides novel quantitative insights into the geographic distribution of LGBTQ mental health and wellbeing outcomes. Contrary to assumptions of suburban privilege, the article challenges the notion of homonormativity in the suburbs, shedding light on the unique challenges faced by LGBTQ people in these areas. Findings reveal that LGBTQ people in outer suburban Australia experience higher psychological distress and suicidal ideation compared to their inner suburban and rural counterparts. Additionally, they report lower levels of connection with LGBTQ communities, indicating a dearth of supportive resources in these areas. These insights have crucial policy implications, advocating for changes that foster diversity and inclusion in outer suburban areas. By emphasizing the distinct experiences of LGBTQ individuals in these settings, the research underscores the necessity for targeted interventions and support. This work extends beyond conventional urban-centric studies, offering valuable insights to inform policies, advocacy efforts, and community support initiatives for LGBTQ people in suburban environments. Cet article offre une approche critique sur l'applicabilité contemporaine de l'homonormativité pour comprendre les expériences des LGBTQ dans les grandes banlieues australiennes. Il s'écarte de la dichotomie ville-campagne qu'on trouve dans la recherche sur la géographie queer et enrichit nos connaissances sur la vie des LGBTQ dans les zones périurbaines. Reposant sur une enquête approfondie à l'échelle nationale concernant 6 835 adultes LGBTQ en Australie, il offre des données quantitatives inédites sur la distribution géographique des résultats en matière de bien-être et de santé mentale pour ce groupe social. Contrairement à la théorie du privilège urbain, cette recherche remet en question la notion d'homonormativité dans les banlieues et met en évidence les obstacles uniques auxquels se heurte la communauté LGBTQ dans ces environnements. Les résultats révèlent que les LGBTQ qui vivent dans la grande banlieue australienne éprouvent plus de détresse psychologique et plus de pensées suicidaires que ceux qui habitent en province ou en banlieue proche. En outre, ils font état de moins de liens avec les communautés LGBTQ, ce qui indique un manque de ressources de soutien dans ces parties du pays. Ces constatations ont des implications importantes au niveau stratégique, et préconisent des changements qui renforceraient la diversité et l'inclusion dans les zones de grande banlieue. En mettant en avant des expériences individuelles de LGBTQ dans ces environnements, l'étude souligne la nécessité d'interventions et de soutien ciblés. Cette recherche va au-delà des travaux conventionnels focalisés sur les villes et offre des perspectives utiles pour les politiques, les efforts de sensibilization et les initiatives de soutien communautaires pour les LGBTQ dans les grandes banlieues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With 32 images, this photo essay tells the story of the rediscovery and rehabilitation of the Clydesdale horse. Some of the very best things languish, hidden in plain sight, waiting to be noticed, brought into the light and put to work – which is why they emerged in the first place. Serendipity led the author to rekindle an association with a horse from childhood, the Clydesdale. It turned out to be a Trojan horse, with considerable previously untapped potential. This horse from the past has a very bright future. It represents a showcase for its own kind, for other rare and endangered breeds, and for the humans who maintain them. Clydesdale horses provide us with a widened perspective on how to 'do' economic development, encompassing place-making, heritage, skills, education, wellbeing, and horsemanship. Saving Clydesdale saves many other elements, including our own continuing human relationships with the environment and past heritages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Larq Journal for Philosophy, Linguistics & Social Sciences is the property of Republic of Iraq Ministry of Higher Education & Scientific Research (MOHESR) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Short videos are very popular in China. The provincial TV stations in China use short videos to disseminate information. Curiosity about the influence of short video news is the primary motivation of this study. This paper integrates theories of news and place, focuses on local visibility, explores how short videos can serve as media infrastructure to report news, construct local visibility and change public life. Taking a sample of official short videos from 31 provincial TV stations in China, this paper uses the narrative analysis method to decode the videos. It is found that short videos create a unique news space which are reflected in narrative language, narrative framework and narrative theme, respectively. This study argues that the short video platform has shaped a place with public vitality, participated in local image management, and built the "visible community". This has innovated the existing theoretical relationship between news and place, and the short video media practice of TV stations in various provinces has provided the world with the Chinese experience of creating place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research and policy during the Covid‐19 pandemic often dovetailed with an established interest in how nearby urban nature spaces can encourage human well‐being. Yet, to define the focus upfront in this way is to overlook the many ways in which different groups may draw on experiences in diverse natural environments to get through challenging times.This paper draws on a qualitative study with 98 university students in Innsbruck, Austria. As part of a co‐production approach, and using a range of exploratory and inductive methods, we examined how they coped with lockdown restrictions and other challenges to everyday life during the pandemic between March and November 2020.The study's longitudinal design reveals how their nature relations evolved over the lifetime of the pandemic. Participants showed a strong identification with the Alpine nature surrounding Innsbruck and deeply mourned opportunities to go there during quarantine at the start. With the relaxation of restrictions, they briefly celebrated the return of access to these spaces before nature experiences were soon blended back into their everyday lives as before.The findings present an account of nature spaces being valued during the pandemic precisely because they were away from urban spaces nearby that had come to feel strange as a result of the lockdown restrictions. This leads us to reflect on the importance of how exactly people engage with local nature and how nature connections change in response to the evolving pressures and preoccupations that shape everyday life, both for young people and others. We emphasise the value of contextual sensitivity in future research and policy hoping to foster nature benefits, both during crisis situations such as these and more generally. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog. Zusammenfassung: Forschungen und Maßnahmen während der Covid‐19‐Pandemie haben oft auf nahe gelegene städtische Naturräume und ihre Bedeutung für (eine Verbesserung von) Wohlbefinden fokussiert. Wenn der Schwerpunkt im Voraus auf diese Weise festlegt wird, übersieht man jedoch andere und vielfältige Naturräume die verschiedene Bevölkerungsgruppen nutzen um Krisen und schwierige Zeiten zu überstehen.Dieser Beitrag beruht auf einer qualitativen Studie mit 98 Studierenden in Innsbruck, Österreich. Im Rahmen eines ko‐produktiven und partizipativen Ansatzes und unter Verwendung einer Reihe von explorativen und induktiven Methoden haben wir untersucht, wie Studierende während der Pandemie von März bis November 2020 mit den pandemiebedingten Maßnahmen und damit zusammenhängenden Herausforderungen des Alltagslebens zurechtkamen.Das Längsschnittdesign der Studie zeigt, wie sich ihre Naturbeziehungen während der Dauer der Pandemie verändert haben. Die Teilnehmenden zeigten eine starke Identifikation mit der alpinen Natur rund um Innsbruck und trauerten zu Beginn der Quarantäne sehr um die Möglichkeit diese zu nutzen. Mit der Lockerung der Restriktionen zelebrierten sie kurzzeitig die Rückkehr des Zugangs zu diesen Räumen, bevor sich die Naturerfahrungen bald wieder in ihren Alltag einfügten wie zuvor.Naturräume um Innsbruck wurden von unseren Teilnehmenden während der Pandemie gerade deshalb so geschätzt, weil sie außerhalb der Stadt lagen, die aufgrund der pandemischen Maßnahmen als fremd empfunden wurde. Vor dem Hintergrund dieser Ergebnisse, möchten wir anregen zu einer Diskussion über die Spezifika räumlicher Naturerfahrungen und ‐beziehungen und wie sie Belastungen, Sorgen und das Wohlbefinden von (jungen) Menschen prägen. Wir plädieren für kontextsensible zukünftige Forschungen und Maßnahmen, die darauf zielen den Nutzen von Natur für menschliches Wohlbefinden zu fördern – sowohl in Krisensituationen wie einer Pandemie aber auch ganz allgemein. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Derrida's reading of Heidegger's 1962 lecture On Time and Being concludes the last session of the 1978–79 seminar published in Donner le temp II. There, Heidegger suggests that the task of thinking consists of thinking Being without regard to metaphysics, while ceasing all overcoming of metaphysics as such. What is given as the task for thought is that which onto-theology makes impossible to think, that is, the constitutive aporetic remainder of metaphysical thinking. This essay contends that for both Heidegger and Derrida the task of thought consists in this same matter of thinking, with which the question of the gift primarily deals. It maintains that in order to think the giving of the gift without regard to metaphysics, the gift could be thought in terms of anxiety. In this perspective, anxiety emerges as a thoughtful affect that gives an access to thinking the impossible, cutting through the onto-theological order of metaphysics. Finally, bringing together Heidegger and Lacan's accounts of anxiety allows us to creep deeper into this liminal dimension of what is to be thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Social vulnerability may play a role in social media-involved crime, but few studies have investigated this issue. We investigated associations between social vulnerability and social media-involved violent crimes. Methods: We analyzed 22,801 violent crimes occurring between 2018 and 2023 in Prince George's County, Maryland. Social media involvement was obtained from crime reports at the Prince George's County Police Department. Social media application types included social networking, advertising/selling, ridesharing, dating, image/video hosting, mobile payment, instant messaging/Voice over Internet Protocol, and other. We used the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Social Vulnerability Index to assess socioeconomic status (SES), household characteristics, racial and ethnic minority status, housing type and transportation, and overall vulnerability. Modified Poisson models estimated adjusted prevalence ratios (aPRs) among the overall sample and stratified by crime type (assault and homicide, robbery, and sexual offense). Covariates included year and crime type. Results: Relative to high tertile areas, we observed a higher prevalence of social media-involved violent crimes in areas with low SES vulnerability (aPR: 1.82, 95% CI: 1.37-2.43), low housing type and transportation vulnerability (aPR: 1.53, 95% CI: 1.17-2.02), and low overall vulnerability (aPR: 1.63, 95% CI: 1.23-2.17). Low SES vulnerability areas were significantly associated with higher prevalences of social media-involved assaults and homicides (aPR: 1.64, 95% CI: 1.02-2.62), robberies (aPR: 2.00, 95% CI: 1.28-3.12), and sexual offenses (aPR: 2.07, 95% CI: 1.02-4.19) compared to high SES vulnerability areas. Low housing type and transportation vulnerability (vs. high) was significantly associated with a higher prevalence of social media-involved robberies (aPR: 1.54, 95% CI:1.01-2.37). Modified Poisson models also indicated that low overall vulnerability areas had higher prevalences of social media-involved robberies (aPR: 1.71, 95% CI: 1.10-2.67) and sexual offenses (aPR: 2.14, 95% CI: 1.05-4.39) than high overall vulnerability areas. Conclusions: We quantified the prevalence of social media-involved violent crimes across social vulnerability levels. These insights underscore the need for collecting incident-based social media involvement in crime reports among law enforcement agencies across the United States and internationally. Comprehensive data collection at the national and international levels provides the capacity to elucidate the relationships between neighborhoods, social media, and population health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Residential location can significantly impact the mental health, wellbeing, and community involvement of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer/questioning (LGBTQ) young people. While research has explored geographical differences in LGBTQ adult wellbeing, limited knowledge exists regarding LGBTQ young people’s experiences. Using a large Australian cross-sectional survey of 6,620 LGBTQ individuals aged 14–21, this study examined the associations between residential location and wellbeing outcomes. Findings revealed that LGBTQ young people in rural and remote areas reported higher levels of psychological distress. Cisgender young people in rural areas experienced more verbal and physical harassment, while those in inner-suburban areas faced increased sexual harassment. Participants were also particularly vulnerable to experiencing homelessness when living in regional towns and rural and remote areas. Trans young people were more likely to attend LGBTQ events in inner-suburban areas. These results emphasize the need for policy changes to foster diversity and inclusion in rural areas, along with targeted support services to enhance the mental health and wellbeing of LGBTQ young people. Understanding the unique experiences of LGBTQ young people across different residential locations is vital, calling for tailored interventions and support in all settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores local experiences and consequences of Russian “borderization” and “creeping occupation” along the administrative boundary line (ABL) between occupied South Ossetia and Georgian-controlled territory. Based on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews in borderland villages, the focus moves beyond the immediate physical manifestations and geopolitical consequences and draws attention to the social effects produced by these practices. By examining the relationship between the specific political situation affecting livelihoods along the ABL and local notions of kinship and place as foundations of good lives and social continuity, the article unpacks the ways in which fundamental ambiguities and uncertainties characterizing the borderlands extend beyond the physical terrain and into intimate social relationships and practices. I conclude by arguing that in this context otherwise mundane notions of individual mobility, kinship obligations and ancestral place are infused with a sense of urgency, which takes on both existential and political significance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The monument, or the memorial, as a place of memory and emotional support, has been the focus of scholarly attention. Although existing studies have explored its space's materialization, identity, history, and memory content, the materials about its design transformation have yet to be deeply excavated. Based on the relevant theories of place and place-making, the researchers constructed a knowledge system of the place-making model, the spatial vector pattern, and the worship behaviors of monuments. On this basis, a qualitative research methodology is adopted. Through case studies and participant observation, the design transformation of the monument/memorial is interpreted in the following five dimensions: function theme, morphology style, spatial relationship, visitor experience, and symbolic meaning. The results of this study show that the monument/memorial tends to promote in-depth public reflection and critical engagement with history, reflecting changes in how society perceives historical events. This research provides new perspectives for understanding the multidimensionality of the monument/memorial but also emphasizes the need to continue exploring its interaction with the socio-cultural context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Black education has interrogated race, context, and power questions, yet these practices spanning geographies and learning contexts have not always been valued as spatial knowledge. Further, Black scholars have carved out spaces that honor the communal and spatial sensibilities of Black students, educators, and communities. Black geographies thought can help us reshape how we understand and interrogate issues within education and learning with attention to anti-blackness, futurities, imagining, placemaking, and efforts to create a sense of belonging despite perpetual unbelongingness in dominant educational and learning spaces. Thus, our piece engages with Black Geographies to emphasize the Black radical traditions of space and freedom-making to reorganize our approaches to pedagogy and storytelling. We engage what we call Black Spatial Storylines through our shared and individual stories. We present multiple vignettes and examples to model the ways Black Sound, particularly hip-hop, invites us to engage Black Spatial Storylines as both methodological and pedagogical techniques that start at Blackness. Not only do we highlight and use our own stories as examples, we detail how this process shifts our understanding of Black urban life, and allows us to reorient our educational praxis through Blackness. We conclude with suggested pathways for future applications of a Black geographies framework to education and learning, including the abundance that is the interweaving of Blackness. Thus, we hope to honor and uplift Black communities' spatial knowledge by formulating our foundational understandings of Black spatial knowledge and the role it plays in education and learning studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a case study design, this research explores the Coronavirus 2019 disease (COVID‐19) pandemic from the perspectives and worldviews of Malawians (Black/African knowledge) through the Bawaka Yolŋu ontology of co‐becoming (Black/Indigenous knowledge). This study seeks to examine the ways in which COVID‐19 has influenced perceptions of place and the places themselves, thereby contributing to the development of policies and strategies for effectively navigating and living with the ongoing COVID‐19 pandemic. The study involved forty‐one in‐depth semi‐structured interviews and two unstructured interviews, enabling a nuanced exploration of COVID‐19's impact through the diverse perspectives of Malawian knowledge holders including religious leaders, health‐care workers, farmers, and community leaders. The findings reveal a multifaceted transformation in the relationship of Malawians with nature, place, and one another. Nature, once a source of sustenance, has become a realm of danger due to its association with airborne transmission. Place, typically a communal space, has shifted towards individualized safety, necessitating changes in how homes are adapted and perceived. The communal fabric of Malawian society, deeply ingrained in communal practices, has been strained, altering traditional gatherings and societal interactions. This research adds depth to our understanding of COVID‐19's complex impacts, emphasizing the importance of cultural and environmental contexts in shaping responses to the pandemic. The insights gained hold significance for tailored policy interventions and community‐focused strategies to navigate and adapt to the evolving challenges presented by COVID‐19. Key points: Indigenous/Black knowledge offers perspectives necessary for building robust public health policies: Co‐becoming, as a form of knowledge production and framing, offers a new perspective on the relationship between place and space. It allows for a deeper understanding of how COVID‐19 has influenced and changed the dynamics between humans, nature, and the environment in Malawi.Diseases impact people's perceptions of places and mobility: Co‐becoming sheds light on the influence of COVID‐19 on people's perceptions of different places and their mobility patterns. COVID‐19 led to increased stigmatization of movement and nomadic lifestyles in Malawi, as the disease was associated with travelers. People became less likely to leave their communities, resulting in a stronger place‐based lifestyle.Diseases have cultural implications in a given place: This study highlights the changing relationships and adaptations in Malawi's communal culture due to COVID‐19. Customs and cultural practices were modified to reduce in‐person interactions, leading to decreased social cohesion and individualized responsibility. Furthermore, people created new social norms and expectations in response to the COVID‐19 pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the meanings and uses of a hospital corridor through 98 diary entries produced by the staff of an English specialist hospital during the early stages of the COVID‐19 pandemic. Drawing on Lefebvre's (1991, The production of space. Blackwell) threefold theorisation of space, corridors are seen as conceived, perceived and lived spaces, produced through and enabling the reconfiguration and reinterpretation of social interactions. The diaries depict two distinct versions of the central hospital corridor: its 'normal' operation prior to the pandemic when it was perceived as a social and symbolic space for collective sensemaking and the 'COVID‐19 empty corridor' described as a haunting place that divided hospital staff along ostensibly new social and moral boundaries that impacted negatively on lived work experiences and staff relationships. The mobilisation of the central hospital corridor in the daily social construction of meaning and experience during a period of organisational and societal crisis suggests that corridors should not be only seen as a material backdrop for work relationships but as social entities that come into being and are maintained and reproduced through the (lack of) performance of social relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through an analysis of the moral relationship between people and place, this paper offers a new view of the wrongful character of gentrification, which is pluralistic, locating the wrong in the non-fulfillment of three place-related rights: rights to a home, rights of residency, and place-based rights to a community. By focusing on the multiple ways that people are connected to place, we offer a more complete and systematic account of place-related rights that is not only able to make sense of people's lived experiences of the harms of gentrification but is also able to address standard criticisms, which have been made of other key accounts of the wrong of gentrification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One's perception of place is in constant flux, shaped by experience, memories, and feelings over time. Time and perception of place are inextricably linked, where the transient nature of time and one's perception of place affects one's understanding of the world. This transience challenges cartography. This paper reports on the outcomes of a year-long mapping project (A Walk in the Park), where the effects of time on perception of place could be seen through recording personal experiences of being in the park. The outcomes of these experiences were used to develop a new model of reflective practice which is called the Interdisciplinary Model of Creative Practice. This model and an accompanying tool, the brief, was employed to create ephemeral mapping prototypes from records of my experiences and ideas about time and perception of place from the scholarly literature. The model builds a creative mapping process by drawing from and weaving together the perspectives of scientific cartography, design, and artistic expression. Using the example of ephemeral mapping, this paper shows how one can use this Interdisciplinary Model of Creative Practice, describing the approach for other researchers, cartographers, designers, or artists who might utilise the model and tools offered in this paper for their own creative practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Should the multi-disciplinary field of Forced Migration Studies (FMS) re-orient itself around the concept of "displacement"? This short intervention situates this question against the background of the transition from Refugee Studies to FMS, as well as external developments in the realm of protection. It draws attention to how the concept of displacement has become more central to both policy and academic discussion in FMS before considering what difference such a re-orientation might make conceptually, ethically, and politically. It concludes by suggesting that FMS might be conceived as standing between and across two larger fields of enquiry: Migration Studies and Displacement Studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the Le Thor Seminar in 1969, Heidegger characterises his thinking as taking the form of what he calls a 'topology of being' (Topologie des Seins) and as thereby giving a key role to place (topos, Ort/Ortschaft). Much of my work over the last 25 years has been devoted to exploring how such a topology is indeed present in Heidegger's thinking, both early and late, and so to showing how place figures in that thinking - to showing, in effect, how the questioning of being is also the thinking of place. The aim here is to provide a summary introduction to the topology that this exploration has aimed at uncovering, but to do so in a way that is focussed on the early work, especially Being and Time. To this end, the discussion proceeds through an explication of the topological elements that are present in the form of key terms and ideas such as facticity, questionability, being-in, existential spatiality, and there-being or Dasein. There is also a brief exploration of the way the term Dasein figures in German philosophical discourse prior to Heidegger in ways that are not only reflected in Heidegger's early work, but also draw directly upon that term's topological connotations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I clarify the phenomenological concept of lifeworld by drawing on the geographical themes of place, place experience, and place meaning. Most simply, lifeworld refers to a person or group's day-to-day, taken-for-granted experience that typically goes unnoticed. One aim of phenomenological research is to examine the lifeworld as a means to identify and clarify the tacit, unnoticed aspects of human life so that they can be accounted for theoretically and practically. Here, I discuss some key phenomenological principles and then draw on phenomenological renditions of place as one means to clarify some of the lifeworld's social, environmental, spatial, and geographical aspects. To concretize my discussion, I draw descriptive evidence from British writer Penelope Lively's Spiderweb, a 1990s novel describing one outsider's efforts to come to inhabit a place--a fictitious present-day village in the southwestern British county of Somerset. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper challenges the simplified binary division of suppliers of goods and services into market or state categories and identifies the continued relevance of household, community, and third-sector provision in rural areas. We explain the emergence, survival, and development of place-based and collaborative action using a three-fold typology, reflecting differences in the motivations and rationales for providing goods and services in these ways. In a place-based context, some communities have acted collectively using collaborative agency. Many observers of rural community development have suggested that place-based communitarian action may be unable to break free from class-based controls, but this is contested by some compelling examples. Where supported by effective public policy, place-based communitarianism can offer an alternative mode of provision for a wide range of services. Using Scotland as an example, this paper explores the dynamics of interactions between community and policy actors in land acquisition and management, renewable energy, and social care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hiding from war, violence, and persecution in a secret, confined place affects the subjectivity of the occupants. The hideout's material properties and the hiders' silence to avoid detection enter deep into their lives. This co-constitution of subjectivity and hiding becomes manifest in their affects, feelings, and emotions, as will be illustrated by an analysis of Anne Frank's lived experience of hiding for two years from Nazi persecution. She and her fellow hiders maintained a regime of silence in the secret annex of a canal house in Amsterdam to prevent their discovery and deportation. The hideout's material and social restrictions created a subjectivity of hiding that devalued Anne Frank's existence as a human being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research from both managerial branding and social semiotics has acknowledged the construction of space for retail establishments, while the experiential turn in brand practice has resulted in the more deliberate use of space to build identifiable characteristics across outlets. As a "retail apocalypse" has been sweeping across the U.S., forcing numerous chains and malls to close, these outlets often leave a host of brand-identifying materials behind after their closing. As the materials were once used to define the space and communicate a brand identity, they continue to do so in the afterlife of stores, forcing future tenants and the surrounding community to deal with the remains from the former capitalistic enterprises. Using a reflexive, visual ethnography, this paper shows how the materials used for brand purposes outlast establishments and pose obstacles for new tenants by casting a shadow and structuring new tenants as subordinate or lesser than the original outlets. The increased use of branded spaces coupled with the extensive closure of retail outlets has made this a pressing concern as communities need to deal with the trash departing retails have left behind. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]