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Copyright of Tracce Urbane: Rivista Italiana Transdisciplinare di Studi Urbani is the property of Sapienza University Press 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.)

This paper seeks to offer a nuanced understanding of how the rural responds to and speaks back to the urban in the context of increasingly blurred rural‐urban landscapes. The prevailing theorizations remain entrenched in an intellectual impasse that still treats the rural as a residual space or a reactive actor besieged by external urban forces. Using lineage spaces as an empirical lens, this paper delves into rural geographies of lineage landscapes in post‐reform China by articulating rural agencies in more active, non‐lineal ways. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in rural Wenzhou, southeast China, this paper argues that the articulation of rural voices amidst China's urban modernity unveils a spatial paradox of landscape de/reterritorialization at the dimensions of discourse, practice and (trans)locality. We first reveal how official rural discourses de‐territorialize and lessen lineage groups' control over their symbolic buildings while simultaneously opening up opportunities for them to mobilize officially‐sanctioned discourses to expand lineage spaces and reterritorialize their power. Second, we show how villagers embrace the de‐territorializing practice of landscape commodification, which becomes a crucial source of finance for them to perform ritual activities at specific festivals, thereby re‐asserting rural collectivism, sociality and sacredness. Third, we unpack the trans‐local dimension of rural de/reterritorialization by exploring how villagers forge lineage‐based rural networking that transcends space‐time, which paradoxically reinforces the spatial claim for territorializing rural power that is demarcated from urban/modern orientations. We further argue that these multiple spatial processes of rural de/reterritorialization challenge a reactive or neatly‐divided account of rural agency during its engagement with urbanizing relations and processes. In all, this paper offers a more complex, paradoxical account of relational rurality in a rapidly urbanizing China, and foregrounds an agenda towards more 'inclusive' rural studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental virtue ethics is about how things (nature) matter, and this is explicated through the virtues (character and dispositions of the agent). It has been suggested that human virtue should be informed by what constitutes our flourishing and by what constitutes nonhuman entities flourishing. Our flourishing, in other words, involves recognising their flourishing and autonomy. My purpose in this paper is to elucidate the notion of mutual flourishing through a study on the relational space that a recognising attitude or disposition of a loving and caring subject creates in its interactions with 'earth others'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Feelings and questions of belonging are central to daily life. Highlighting this centrality, research and theory in higher education have offered robust definitions and frameworks for understanding what it means to belong, how it shapes meaningful life outcomes, and how to foster it. This chapter offers an interdisciplinary structure for putting these perspectives in conversation. To do this, I first briefly review and weave discussion about some common definitions and frameworks on belonging. Then, drawing from a place-belongingness and a politics of belonging framework— which describes how belonging is both an intimate feeling and bounded by intersecting social forces that serve to include and exclude various social realities—I highlight key factors (autobiographical, relational, cultural, economic, legal, elective) that constitute belonging. I offer concrete examples for attending to each factor as a pathway for building relational spaces that critically foster belonging for college students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a call for more students to continue into computer science (CS), but as many leave their studies before completing, there is a potential in retaining students rather than focusing on recruitment alone. The retention literature proposes 'sense of belonging' as a key concept. This paper contributes with nuancing how sense of belonging is shaped differently within different spaces at the same CS study-programme, by drawing on narrative interviews and ethnographic fieldwork with BA-students, analysed through a spatial analytic lens. By applying the metaphors of a solar system and force fields, we investigate how sense of belonging was constructed within relational spaces and students' identity-negotiations within them. Three spaces are found: The study-lounge (the epicenter of the solar system), the pulsating planet, and the distant isolated planet. Conclusions show how the epicenter are enforced by teaching and learning activities, and how broadening what counts hold potential to retain students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews the progress of geographical research on the gambling industry and presents a framework to comprehend the role of space in gambling consumption and harm. It covers two themes: the casino's place in urban governance and the agency of gamblers, and how space impacts gambling consumption and harm. The paper introduces a conceptual framework of orientation, affective atmosphere, and intimacy to better comprehend how gambling practices can increase or decrease risk. Finally, the paper suggests that this framework can help to better understand online sports gambling consumption and harm in the context of market growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Turkish Online Journal of Design, Art & Communication is the property of Turkish Online Journal of Design, Art & Communication 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.)

This study focuses on transitions that emerge between the child’s first transition from home to early childhood education and care (ECEC) and the transition to pre-primary education in Finnish centre-based ECEC. Group-based organisation of Finnish ECEC produces transitions between groups within settings but children transition between centres also. The aim is to reach the fringes of transition focusing on other change processes children encounter during their years in ECEC. Thus, transition is defined as a relationally constituted change process framed by educational institutions and their practices. We examine how children’s lived spaces of transition are socio-spatially constituted. Two analytical narratives from a longitudinal, multimethods multi-case study dataset are presented as examples of relational socio-spatial constitution of transitions. Henri Lefebvre’s theory about production of social space is applied. We discuss how educational transitions within ECEC as relational processes concerns children who are not designated to move from one group or centre to another. For them, the relationality of transitions rearranges groups and centres as networks of socio-spatial relations in various, context-specific ways, constituting lived spaces of transitions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of space, which is constantly reshaped within the routine activity of geography, forms its contexts through the processes it undergoes, and constructs its basic relations through the “other”. This relationality, which embodies all kinds of dichotomic constructs such as good-bad, beautiful-ugly, and political-apolitical, can have a natural fiction or be based on hegemonic structuralism loaded with ideology. While it can ensure the continuity of individual and collective culture, identity, and memory, it can also commodify the reproduction of all kinds of power elements. Therefore, the relational relations of space can only be understood depending on when, where, and by whom it is constructed. Football spaces, where this relationality is intensely embedded, are constantly reproduced by different actors at different scales and presented to the daily life consumption of individuals and societies in new contexts. In this context, this article aims to analyze the relational contexts of football spaces in the case of the Qatar World Cup. In the study, in which the qualitative research method was used, the data obtained from Twitter users during the 2022 World Cup were analyzed using content and descriptive analysis techniques. As a result of the research, it was understood that football spaces have multi-layered sociopolitical, economic, and cultural contexts constructed by both individual and ideological actors and systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The basis of relational transactional analysis is the field of tension of the » in-between « as well as the movement towards a two-person psychology. Buber captured this with his formulation » The I becomes the I at the Thou «. This is a new way of looking at and thinking of the intersubjective connection between people, the ultimate entity is no longer the individual, but relationship or relation. In the course of human development, with the increasing self-control within the common scheme between mother and child, a network, the psychic apparatus is built. Movements of the maternal object are more and more distinguished from the own self and also symbolized as for example in the life positions. The state between mother and child unfolds in relationship states, each of which can be described as a coherent system of feelings and thoughts, which in connection with chosen pattern of coherent behaviors. The goal within this coherence is an appropriate balance between closeness (fusion) and distance (separation). Early experiences and experiences are available to humans as early knowledge, including physical knowledge, as implicit knowledge (implicit memory). Relational knowledge is organized in an internal relational grammar (relational forms, meta-cognitive control) along concrete living co-creative and co-present experiences. This approach changes the view of dialogues. At the center are the pillars of experience: phenomenological, hermeneutic and psycho-dynamic. This also requires a different shaping of dialogues through invention (here and now, co-present, co-creative invention, the spontaneous impulse). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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

Queer safe space is commonly understood simply as space that is safe for queer people. In this paper we seek to develop a more nuanced conceptualisation of queer safe space attuned to how the process of creating space as simultaneously queer space and safe space can mean making compromises with both safety and queerness. Our research uses a case study of 'Free Pride' a grassroots LGBT Pride group in Glasgow, Scotland that sought to create a radical and inclusive event space, particularly for transgender people, but attracted controversy when it banned drag performers from the event, before reversing this decision. Drawing on in-depth, semi-structured interviews with the organizers of Free Pride, alongside online statements collected from those involved in the controversy, we show how the contradictions and complexities that arose from the group's decision and its reversal highlights the contested political underpinnings of contemporary Pride events and the potentially fraught relations that can exist between certain identities within LGBT communities. Ultimately, Free Pride's decision-making raised questions over how queer people relate to one another at Pride events, the inclusiveness of drag for trans identities, and the importance of seeing and being with one another in Pride spaces. We argue that although the process of queer space-making involved these complex and contradictory negotiations between safety and queerness, Free Pride ultimately created a queer safe space focused on queer collectivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The subject of therapists facing an illness or living with a health condition that impacts their practice hasn’t been addressed much. In my research I confirmed what I have been noticing in my practice as a systemic therapist: the relational space within myself, my thoughts, emotions, memories and embodied reactions, interconnects with the relational space between client and therapist. My inner voices, what I experience, feel and think (Rober, 2010) affect the way I connect to my clients. This means that when I am fully present with my various selves in the therapy room, more of the client is in there too. Therefore, when I was diagnosed with cancer, I chose to disclose my illness to my clients. In this paper, I discuss my experience with cancer, the way it had an impact on my practice and how I found a way to include the relational space within myself facing an illness in the therapy room. The story that is included in the paper is a story from within practice that appears in my doctoral thesis (Karamatsouki, 2020).

Copyright of Migraciones is the property of Universidad Pontificia Comillas, Instituto Universitario de Estudios sobre Migraciones 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.)

Municipal amalgamations are widely applied interventions for enhancing policy delivery in a political-economic context of devolution, austerity, and decentralization of welfare states. This paper studies how public stakeholders in the Netherlands walked the tightrope between 'hard' political-administrative logic and 'soft' cultural-historical discourse to justify, institutionalize, and legitimize municipal amalgamations. It uses a theoretical approach that combines literature on the rescaling of state governance and cultural political economy. Based on a discourse analysis of amalgamation reports, the paper traces the constructed political-economic and cultural imaginaries of the 26 municipal amalgamations that took place in the country between 2018 and 2023. Imaginaries underpinning the Dutch decentralization discourse were purely political-administrative in content, both regarding the necessity to act and the solutions (i.e., municipal amalgamations). Alternative, relational forms of spatial decision-making were covered by an imaginary of inefficiency and limited democratic control. Cultural imaginaries were locally mobilized to retain the top-down political-administrative logic, and to allow the municipalities to position themselves in between the citizens and the state. The amalgamation reports reflected a sometimes-difficult discursive negotiation between administrative efficiency and culture, future and past, vigour and softness, and external and internal visibility of the new municipalities. The paper concludes that the spaces of territorially bounded ways of policymaking, including municipal mergers, are intrinsically relational, jointly material-discursive/symbolic, and fluid (i.e., process-based). The cultural political economy framework provides a useful interpretative framework for debates on politics of scale, state rescaling, and (re)territorialization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental virtue ethics is about how things (nature) matter, and this is explicated through the virtues (character and dispositions of the agent). It has been suggested that human virtue should be informed by what constitutes our flourishing and by what constitutes nonhuman entities flourishing. Our flourishing, in other words, involves recognising their flourishing and autonomy. My purpose in this paper is to elucidate the notion of mutual flourishing through a study on the relational space that a recognising attitude or disposition of a loving and caring subject creates in its interactions with ‘earth others’.

Applied geography represents the dialectic relationship between theory and application (Pacione 1999, 2004). A well-informed rigorous pedagogy must represent this dialectical relationship (Pacione 1999). How then can the relationship between the theoretical and the applied be challenged within the "spaces" of the university? I provide a critical discussion of the use of a blended learning pedagogy (Davis & Fill 2007) in challenging that there is a separation of theoretical and applied geography. A blended learning pedagogy allows for the inclusion of emerging media and learning technologies as tools in developing a new "space" for teaching and learning, a "space" which is focused on active learning. The walls of the university lecture room become porous, as students begin to make critical connections between theory and application. I unpack the pedagogical justification for a shift to a blended learning approach. I support this justification with evidence from curriculum design in a first-year geography course, and the student experience of implementation of this blended learning approach. I assess student engagement with theory through the integration of real-world case studies into a blended delivery approach. I evaluate their critical engagement by applying a mixed-method approach to a survey and follow-up focus group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the ways in which the religious subject can be a contingent position that is responsive to the broader socio‐religious context within which it is expressed. These contingencies are acutely observed among short‐term missionaries (STM), who seek out encounters with difference in pursuit of a more cosmopolitan subjectivity. Yet, while spaces of missionary encounter are inherently relational, the missions literature has tended to downplay the effects of relationality on the realisation of these subject positions. By focusing on the experiences of Singaporean missionaries working among Christian communities in Southeast Asia, I contribute a more nuanced and less pre‐determined understanding of the dynamics that underpin intra‐Asian missionary encounters. Drawing on interviews conducted with Singapore's STM community, I explore how materiality and new media can structure encounters and subject positions within relational missionary space. I also emphasise the limits of relational space by highlighting its untranslatability beyond the missionary terrain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Exegesis In my doctoral inquiry, I focused on the relational space in the therapy room. The relational space is a concept that may appear in different forms and include words, emotions, non-verbal communication, objects within the context of space and time (Gergen, 2015). As a systemic practitioner and practitioner researcher, I find the process, and, potentially, the outcome of therapy to be largely defined by: the relational space between myself and my client; the relational space within my different selves; and the interconnectedness of these relational spaces. By being both self-reflexive and relationally reflexive, my research addresses the question of how the relational space between client and therapist interconnects with the relational space within the therapist, thus creating “relational ripples” in the therapy room (Karamatsouki, 2020). My interest in the area emerged as in my practice I observed that when I bring more of myself in the therapy room, more of the client is in there, too. In order to study the complex encounter in the therapy room I used autoethnography through storywriting. Autoethnography, “an autobiographical genre of writing and research that displays multiple layers of consciousness” (Ellis, 2004, p. 37), gives access to research material from an insider’s perspective. I use stories from practice in a literary style and in an ethical manner, where the focus is neither on the therapy techniques nor on the client’s difficulties. Instead, the focus is on the relational conversation between my client and me, as well as my inner dialogue and thoughts and feelings. What follows in a story from within practice which appears in my doctoral thesis and shows the relational flow of the therapeutic process and the creation of relational ripples. In a way, what I am trying to do is expand systemic thinking by bringing to the fore the relational space within myself as a therapist and create a professionally employable space for the personal.

Degrowth is both an academic debate and an activist call for a necessary socio-ecological transformation. It proposes a just and selective quantitative reduction of societal throughput to achieve ecological sustainability, social justice and individual well-being. What does such a transformation imply for cities, for place and space in general? Recently research has begun to explore this question, at the intersections of the degrowth project with geography, urban and planning studies. The present systematic review of this stream of the degrowth literature argues that contributions convincingly criticise mainstream solutions of sustainable urban development and portray an inspiring variety of local and sectoral alternatives. They also discuss the possibilities of spatial planning for degrowth. But the literature, related to a limited conceptualisation of space, lacks consideration for larger geographical scales (localism is prevalent). Also, limited attention is paid to material flows (the focus is on formal outcomes in the built environment) and there sometimes is a lack of reflection about positionality (with a tendency to apparently universalist solutions). Drawing in particular on Doreen Massey's conceptualisation of the relationality of space and place, a conceptual framework is proposed for further research. It evidences questions neglected in the reviewed literature: how to spatialise degrowth beyond the local scale, not reducing the argument to a dualism between local = good and global = bad? And, how to transform not only the physicality of places but also the material and immaterial relations they are based on? The proposed framework, embracing a situated, relational and multiscalar understanding of space and its socio-ecological transformation, might be a first step in approaching these and other open questions in the debate on degrowth, cities and space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract This article proposes a revised approach to the mainstream definition and understanding of the term ‘Global South’ by anchoring its meaning in a relational view of space. Secondly, it presents the GCC-Mercosur agreement as a case study that illustrates the obstacles involved in the making of spaces in the Global South. The main research question addressed here is: Why has the GCC-Mercosur framework agreement failed to materialize into a meaningful economic space? This question will be answered through David Harvey’s theoretical insights and Doreen Massey’s relational approach to space, as well as post-structural geography. This article argues that the promise of increased trade and investment was the basis on which the GCC-Mercosur economic space was designed, but the narrowness of the framework agreement’s scope and the socio-political relations organized around it have not been able to sustain or strengthen this Global South space. This study employs discourse analysis as its main methodological technique, grounded on a Foucauldian understanding of the empirical properties of discursive activities. It concludes by advocating for the need to incentivize a broader engagement of civil society in the processes of Global South space making.

Age is a conceptual challenge for geographical research due to its twofold character as a marker of difference (age) and a dynamic process (ageing). The fluidity of the ageing process makes it difficult to employ age as an analytic variable for empirical research, perhaps even more so than for other social categories such as gender, ethnicity, social status, or sexual orientation. Drawing on qualitative research with 18 expert interviews and 4 focus group discussions with older people (n = 26) from diverse backgrounds in Berlin (Germany), this paper argues for a spatial perspective to grasp the individual, continuous process of ageing. Based on the spatial settings of (1) places of recreation, (2) places of work, and (3) home as examples, our empirical findings reveal how older people become aware of their own ageing through specific places and how the process of ageing is perceived in relation to both people of other age groups and one's personal lived lifetime. The intersectional approach of our research thus demonstrates how social diversity shapes the experience of later life. The paper concludes by proposing three ways how a spatial perspective on the ageing process can advance debates within geographies of ageing. Key Messages: A spatial perspective enables an analysis of the continuous process of ageing drawing on specific spaces and places.A spatial perspective renders visible how social diversity impacts the experience of later life and how diversity shapes the ageing process.Seeing the ageing process through specific spaces offers fresh ways to analyze age(ing). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

shaping is a Web-based tool that enables direct manipulations of cartographic space to sculpt, cut, expand, and contract map regions. Breaking with rigid Euclidean understandings of projected space found in GIS, these operations support creative cartographic work that understands space as fluid, dynamic, relational, and situated. Each operation is described in detail, along with possible use cases informed by literature in geography and cartography. Most manipulations of space found in shaping can be translated into QGIS, enabling the transformation of vector and raster layers of geographic information. By enabling direct and real-time manipulation of cartographic space, shaping acts as an expressive tool that engages with geographic information. It is also an example of how accessible tools can be built that are interoperable with existing GIS while still being useful on their own. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Acts of sexual violence in transit environments are everyday occurrences for women across the globe, and the fear of being on the receiving end of sexual violence severely impacts women’s mobility patterns. Gill Valentine, in her examination of women’s fear of male violence and women’s perception and use of public space, has argued that the impact on women’s mobility amounts to a spatial expression of patriarchy. The aim of this paper is to expand upon Valentine’s notion of “the spatial expression of patriarchy” by engaging feminist philosophy within the context of sexual violence against women on public transportation. More specifically, I will argue for two particular interpretations of the spatial expression of patriarchy, one structural and one relational. It follows from my view that solutions to overcoming and ending sexual violence against women on public transportation hinge on both a structural and a relational understanding of the spatial expression of patriarchy.

Ausgangspunkt des Beitrages ist die Annahme, dass nachhaltige Raumentwicklung in substanzieller Hinsicht an ein relationales Raumverständnis und prozedural an die Auseinandersetzung mit Konflikten gebunden ist. Diese Anforderungen werden auf einen konkreten Gegenstand der räumlichen Planung bezogen: landschaftsbezogene Identitäten. Deren Konzeptualisierung erfolgt als individuelle Deutungen landschaftlicher Spezifik, die sich der Materialität ebenso wie gesellschaftlicher Deutungsmuster bedienen. Für die empirische Erfassung werden landschaftsbezogene Identitäten als Zuspitzung der ‚angeeigneten physischen Landschaft‘ konkretisiert. Im Zentrum des Interesses stehen also solche Merkmale, die zur individuellen Konstruktion spezifischer Landschaft ‚zusammengeschaut‘ werden und auf die sich Zugehörigkeits- bzw. Zusammengehörigkeitsvorstellungen sowie emotionale Zuwendungen beziehen. An diesen als Referenzpunkte bezeichneten Merkmalen kommen auch identitätsrelevante Konflikte zum Ausdruck, also gegensätzliche Deutungen landschaftlicher Spezifik. In einer ländlichen Fallstudienregion werden so verstandene landschaftsbezogene Identitäten mit qualitativ-rekonstruktiven Methoden sichtbar gemacht. Die Ergebnisse von 28 leitfadengestützten Interviews belegen ein vielfältiges Spektrum an Referenzpunkten, die zwar individuell unterschiedlich besetzt sind, aber dennoch wiederholt auftreten. Zudem zeigen sich gegensätzliche Deutungsmuster: Dieselben Merkmale gelten den einen als identitätsstiftend, den anderen nicht. Die Diskussion resümiert die theoretisch-konzeptionellen und methodologischen Überlegungen vor dem Hintergrund der empirischen Ergebnisse und leitet Implikationen für die räumliche Planung ab. Ein besonderer Fokus liegt dabei auf Handlungsempfehlungen zur Bearbeitung konfliktär verfasster Lesarten landschaftsbezogener Identität.

Human and physical geography share a concern with the implications of spatial arrangement for process and hence for differentiation over the earth’s surface. In human geography, its explanatory role is crucial to (sub-) disciplinary awareness. In physical geography this is not the case. In the first place, this is a result of prevailing views of space: space as relative in human geography and as relational in physical geography. In human geography, space exists because objects exist and can exercise effects; in physical geography space is constitutive of objects, so that the idea of separate spatial effects is meaningless. This might seem to have to do with the fundamental nature of objects: people exercise choice in a way that packets of air cannot. What this fails to recognize is that choice is always exercised under particular social conditions; those of capitalism seem to impose a separation of objects from each other and from space that is wholly illusory.

Recent work has shown that the medial temporal lobe (MTL), including the hippocampus (HPC) and its surrounding limbic cortices, plays a role in scene perception in addition to episodic memory. The two basic factors of scene perception are the object ("what") and location ("where"). In this review, we first summarize the anatomical knowledge related to visual inputs to the MTL and physiological studies examining object-related information processed along the ventral pathway briefly. Thereafter, we discuss the space-related information, the processing of which was unclear, presumably because of its multiple aspects and a lack of appropriate task paradigm in contrast to object-related information. Based on recent electrophysiological studies using non-human primates and the existing literature, we proposed the "reunification theory," which explains brain mechanisms which construct object-location signals at each gaze. In this reunification theory, the ventral pathway signals a large-scale background image of the retina at each gaze position. This view-center background signal reflects the first person's perspective and specifies the allocentric location in the environment by similarity matching between images. The spatially invariant object signal and view-center background signal, both of which are derived from the same retinal image, are integrated again (i.e., reunification) along the ventral pathway-MTL stream, particularly in the perirhinal cortex. The conjunctive signal, which represents a particular object at a particular location, may play a role in scene perception in the HPC as a key constituent element of an entire scene. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses expectations and experiences of digital public spaces that facilitate community engagement with urban planning. While viewing digital spaces as part of an expanding repertoire of public spaces and events – physical and digital – that signify the participatory turn in municipal governance, we argue that local officials and residents are overly optimistic about the democratic and administrative capacities of the digital sphere. Through a case study from Melbourne, Australia – a city with significant growth pressures – we argue that the experience of new participatory digital platforms falls short of expectations, for both residents and officials. Data show that well-documented problems with established modes of community engagement such as agenda control and ‘black boxing’ of responses, are replicated in on-line settings. The wariness residents have of administrators and elected officials are overlaid by new concerns of digital distrust and digital exclusion. For officials, using these digital spaces effectively requires time to develop and apply new skills. Our study suggests that digital spaces are not homogenous but are made up of diverse and complex practices and interrelationships. The multiplex relationships making up these digital spaces suggest that strategic and contextual combinations of online and offline engagement may be a path towards inclusive and democratic community engagement.

Traditional brand management literature largely implies that the brand regeneration process is linear, atomistic and rather harmonic, thus reducing the complexity of the process to individual parts that can be managed rationally and logically in sequence. By ontologically as well as epistemologically adopting a performative approach where brands are seen as loose performative assemblages, the present article suggests instead that the brand regeneration process is truly processual, multiple and political. A specific brand regeneration process should be seen as relationally spatial and as only one of several possible ‘realities’. The argument is based on an analysis of a 5-year-long case study of the branding of Stockholm, inspired by a Latourian hybrid fieldwork approach. Based on the analysis, the novel concept ‘brand transformation’ is suggested to frame the characteristics and complexities of the brand regeneration process. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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

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

Over the last century, we observe a steady and exponential growth of scientific publications globally. The overwhelming amount of available literature makes a holistic analysis of the research within a field and between fields based on manual inspection impossible. Automatic techniques to support the process of literature review are required to find the epistemic and social patterns that are embedded in scientific publications. In computer sciences, new tools have been developed to deal with large volumes of data. In particular, deep learning techniques open the possibility of automated end-to-end models to project observations to a new, low-dimensional space where the most relevant information of each observation is highlighted. Using deep learning to build new representations of scientific publications is a growing but still emerging field of research. The aim of this paper is to discuss the potential and limits of deep learning for gathering insights about scientific research articles. We focus on document-level embeddings based on the semantic and relational aspects of articles, using Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Graph Neural Networks (GNNs). We explore the different outcomes generated by those techniques. Our results show that using NLP we can encode a semantic space of articles, while GNN we enable us to build a relational space where the social practices of a research community are also encoded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Digital technologies are transforming corporate banking relations. • A Cultural Economy lens offers granular, relational accounts of platform finance. • Banks' discourse on digitization combines tech with banking sector repertoires. • Banks' digital strategies reveal economic and technological path dependencies. • Economic geographic shifts are figured as topological/topographical entanglements. Recent economic and financial geographical literatures on Fintech have queried how financial incumbents' operational and business models are changing with digital technologies. Providing financial services that enable firms to operate and internationalize, corporate banking is a key part of Advanced Producer Services (APS) where such transformations are underway. This paper contributes to geographical literatures on Fintech and APS change by developing a Cultural Economy approach to digital transformation in corporate banking at two large European banks - BNP Paribas and ING. Through a focus on discourse, processes and materialities, a Cultural Economy lens can help producing more nuanced geographies of digital transformation at incumbent banks. Building on Investor Relations materials where digital strategies are discursively articulated for investors, the paper explores two tropes marking these discourses: 'customer experience' and the 'digital platform'. Exploring these in depth, the paper contributes two main insights. First, where the trope of customer experience entails a folding of banking into customers' spatiotemporalities, banks' discourse reveal key entanglements between this topological digital space and a shifting topographical space of branch networks, established and emerging financial and service centres and entrepreneurial ecosystems. Second, incumbent banks' discourse on digital transformation manifest, and is shaped by key path dependencies which are economic, technological, and geographic. Notably, questions of legacy IT systems, as well as economic and organizational restructuring following the 2008 financial crisis mark the distinctive ways in which incumbent banks are disputing the discursive field of digital financial re-intermediation vis-à-vis technology and Fintech companies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]