Pub Date : 2025-12-18DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104522
Kauê Lopes dos Santos, Lívia Cangiano Antipon
This article investigates the everyday interactions between highly capitalized firms operating within the Tema Free Zone (TFZ) in Ghana and low-capital street food vendors working in and around the enclave. Drawing on Milton Santos’s theory of the two circuits of the urban economy, it examines how industrial production and informal food vending are dialectically articulated – functionally interdependent yet structurally asymmetrical. While formal firms in the TFZ operate within export-oriented global circuits, popular food vendors sustain the daily reproduction of industrial labour by providing affordable meals and services under precarious conditions. Based on qualitative fieldwork (interviews and systematic observation), and cartographic documentation, the analysis highlights the vendors’ supply networks, spatial practices, and capacity to mobilize local and regional scales. The study demonstrates that SEZs are not isolated enclaves but hybrid and porous urban formations whose productivity depends on the everyday economies that surround them. By foregrounding these relational dynamics, the article contributes to a non-dualist understanding of urban economies, capturing the intertwined arrangements between economic actors that operate under different forms of organization, and access to capital, labour, and technology within the city.
{"title":"Feeding the enclave: special economic zones, street food vendors and the dynamics of urban economy in Tema, Ghana","authors":"Kauê Lopes dos Santos, Lívia Cangiano Antipon","doi":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104522","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104522","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This article investigates the everyday interactions between highly capitalized firms operating within the Tema Free Zone (TFZ) in Ghana and low-capital street food vendors working in and around the enclave. Drawing on Milton Santos’s theory of the two circuits of the urban economy, it examines how industrial production and informal food vending are dialectically articulated – functionally interdependent yet structurally asymmetrical. While formal firms in the TFZ operate within export-oriented global circuits, popular food vendors sustain the daily reproduction of industrial labour by providing affordable meals and services under precarious conditions. Based on qualitative fieldwork (interviews and systematic observation), and cartographic documentation, the analysis highlights the vendors’ supply networks, spatial practices, and capacity to mobilize local and regional scales. The study demonstrates that SEZs are not isolated enclaves but hybrid and porous urban formations whose productivity depends on the everyday economies that surround them. By foregrounding these relational dynamics, the article contributes to a non-dualist understanding of urban economies, capturing the intertwined arrangements between economic actors that operate under different forms of organization, and access to capital, labour, and technology within the city.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":12497,"journal":{"name":"Geoforum","volume":"169 ","pages":"Article 104522"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2025-12-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145787683","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-12-17DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104517
Juliane Frost , Tanja Mölders , Hartmut Fünfgeld
Climate change adaptation decisions profoundly impact resource distribution and future pathways, yet empirical research that critically examines power dynamics and injustices in adaptation processes in the Global North remains limited. We argue that gender perspectives offer a valuable analytical lens to understanding and addressing the politics of adaptation and demonstrate this through a retrospective analysis of a municipal adaptation planning process in Southern Germany. Combining gender perspectives with the trivalent environmental justice framework, we show how municipal adaptation planning in Germany affects and reflects gender relations. The findings point to the androcentric narratives that suppress feminized knowledges and epistemologies as well as to the gendered norms and practices that dominate municipal adaptation planning. Finally, we discuss how these findings can inform transformative adaptation, for example by emphasizing the need for more inclusive participatory methods in adaptation processes.
{"title":"Critical contributions of gender perspectives for transformative adaptation planning: A case study from Southern Germany","authors":"Juliane Frost , Tanja Mölders , Hartmut Fünfgeld","doi":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104517","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104517","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Climate change adaptation decisions profoundly impact resource distribution and future pathways, yet empirical research that critically examines power dynamics and injustices in adaptation processes in the Global North remains limited. We argue that gender perspectives offer a valuable analytical lens to understanding and addressing the politics of adaptation and demonstrate this through a retrospective analysis of a municipal adaptation planning process in Southern Germany. Combining gender perspectives with the trivalent environmental justice framework, we show how municipal adaptation planning in Germany affects and reflects gender relations. The findings point to the androcentric narratives that suppress feminized knowledges and epistemologies as well as to the gendered norms and practices that dominate municipal adaptation planning. Finally, we discuss how these findings can inform transformative adaptation, for example by emphasizing the need for more inclusive participatory methods in adaptation processes.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":12497,"journal":{"name":"Geoforum","volume":"169 ","pages":"Article 104517"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2025-12-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145787680","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-12-16DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104511
Natacha Aveline-Dubach , Raksha Mahtani
Dengue fever is a pressing threat in tropical regions, where high temperatures and frequent rainfall create ideal breeding grounds for Aedes vectors. This article examines the notion of mosquito burden, defined as the cumulative effects of mosquito density, perceived dengue risk, and the discomfort associated with vector control policies in dengue-endemic countries. Framed within Urban Political Ecology (UPE) and informed by a housing political economy beyond a Marxist lens, the study examines the interrelations between housing provision patterns, public health policies, and mosquito ecologies. It draws on a case study of Singapore’s public housing estates and private condominium enclaves to show how uneven socio-ecological housing conditions produce divergent patterns and intensities of mosquito burden experienced by residents, both between and within residential landscapes. The study employed 100 semi-structured and informal interviews with residents, 15 in-depth interviews with stakeholders engaged in mosquito management in public and private estates, and documentary analysis. The study found that residents of public housing neighborhoods bore a particularly heavy mosquito burden, driven by high perceived exposure to breeding sites in both domestic and peridomestic spaces, compounded by intensive biosecurity measures, hypersurveillance, and the large-scale release of Wolbachia-carrying mosquitoes. Low-floor residents bear a disproportionately high burden due to heightened exposure to pests and vector control measures. In contrast, condominium residents experience less vector-related discomfort, with their exclusive lifestyle maintained through minimal state intrusion and privately managed chemical fogging. These disparities underscore the increasing contradictions in state policy that have emerged as Singapore’s economy has matured—between neoliberalised developmentalism and state commitments to housing equity, and between centralised vector control through direct state intervention and more fragmented approaches mediated by condominium management.
{"title":"Understanding Mosquito Burdens through an Urban Political Ecology of Singapore’s Residential Landscapes","authors":"Natacha Aveline-Dubach , Raksha Mahtani","doi":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104511","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104511","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Dengue fever is a pressing threat in tropical regions, where high temperatures and frequent rainfall create ideal breeding grounds for <em>Aedes</em> vectors. This article examines the notion of mosquito burden, defined as the cumulative effects of mosquito density, perceived dengue risk, and the discomfort associated with vector control policies in dengue-endemic countries. Framed within Urban Political Ecology (UPE) and informed by a housing political economy beyond a Marxist lens, the study examines the interrelations between housing provision patterns, public health policies, and mosquito ecologies. It draws on a case study of Singapore’s public housing estates and private condominium enclaves to show how uneven socio-ecological housing conditions produce divergent patterns and intensities of mosquito burden experienced by residents, both between and within residential landscapes. The study employed 100 semi-structured and informal interviews with residents, 15 in-depth interviews with stakeholders engaged in mosquito management in public and private estates, and documentary analysis. The study found that residents of public housing neighborhoods bore a particularly heavy mosquito burden, driven by high perceived exposure to breeding sites in both domestic and peridomestic spaces, compounded by intensive biosecurity measures, hypersurveillance, and the large-scale release of Wolbachia-carrying mosquitoes. Low-floor residents bear a disproportionately high burden due to heightened exposure to pests and vector control measures. In contrast, condominium residents experience less vector-related discomfort, with their exclusive lifestyle maintained through minimal state intrusion and privately managed chemical fogging. These disparities underscore the increasing contradictions in state policy that have emerged as Singapore’s economy has matured—between neoliberalised developmentalism and state commitments to housing equity, and between centralised vector control through direct state intervention and more fragmented approaches mediated by condominium management.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":12497,"journal":{"name":"Geoforum","volume":"169 ","pages":"Article 104511"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2025-12-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145787681","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-12-16DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104472
Karenjit Clare
The ‘creative industries’ have acquired a new significance within policy spheres over the last decade. Policy makers ‘discovered’ that these industries were cool, created economic value and offered alleged job opportunities. The key contribution of this paper is to disrupt the positive narratives and instead focus on ‘new’ forms of employment, precarity and uncertainty within London’s advertisement industry for those in permanent employment, and the ways these are embedded in social networks and place. In examining this, the article provides evidence of ‘young’ professionals in white-collar permanent jobs whose fragmented lives still require them to be flexible, maintain their reputation, network, socialise and work long and irregular hours in the ‘global’ city region. Importantly, these results demonstrate how our competitive, service-orientated societies are taking a toll on all individuals, even those with permanent employment.
{"title":"‘Precarious’ worlds of work: Geographies of (over)work and (un)certainty amongst permanent employees in the creative economy","authors":"Karenjit Clare","doi":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104472","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104472","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The ‘creative industries’ have acquired a new significance within policy spheres over the last decade. Policy makers ‘discovered’ that these industries were cool, created economic value and offered alleged job opportunities. The key contribution of this paper is to disrupt the positive narratives and instead focus on ‘new’ forms of employment, precarity and uncertainty within London’s advertisement industry for those in <em>permanent</em> employment, and the ways these are embedded in social networks and place. In examining this, the article provides evidence of ‘young’ professionals in white-collar permanent jobs whose fragmented lives still require them to be flexible, maintain their reputation, network, socialise and work long and irregular hours in the ‘global’ city region. Importantly, these results demonstrate how our competitive, service-orientated societies are taking a toll on all individuals, even those with permanent employment.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":12497,"journal":{"name":"Geoforum","volume":"169 ","pages":"Article 104472"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2025-12-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145787682","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-12-16DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104496
Rachel Weber
Most studies of the financialization of space critique the rentier but overlook the the calculative knowledge practices that inform property capital’s (dis)investment decisions. I fill this gap by conducting a qualitative industry analysis of firms that produce information and future imaginaries for the world’s largest asset managers and real estate investment funds. These firms are part of predictive knowledge infrastructures that generate subscriptions to raw transactions and pricing data, outlooks and sentiment reports, statistical indices, platforms, predictive analytics, and bespoke forecasting advice. Given the barrage of often conflicting information circulated through the media and stratified professional networks, I discuss two mechanisms through which investors attempt to influence future imaginaries: intermediation by professional associations and corporate mergers and acquisitions. I argue that an oligopolistic market structure of predictive data cartels has emerged since the Global Financial Crisis of 2008. I then discuss the implications of such restructuring on asset price inflation and counterclaims to the city.
{"title":"Property knowledge: Controlling the means of prediction and production","authors":"Rachel Weber","doi":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104496","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104496","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Most studies of the financialization of space critique the rentier but overlook the the calculative knowledge practices that inform property capital’s (dis)investment decisions. I fill this gap by conducting a qualitative industry analysis of firms that produce information and future imaginaries for the world’s largest asset managers and real estate investment funds. These firms are part of predictive knowledge infrastructures that generate subscriptions to raw transactions and pricing data, outlooks and sentiment reports, statistical indices, platforms, predictive analytics, and bespoke forecasting advice. Given the barrage of often conflicting information circulated through the media and stratified professional networks, I discuss two mechanisms through which investors attempt to influence future imaginaries: intermediation by professional associations and corporate mergers and acquisitions. I argue that an oligopolistic market structure of predictive data cartels has emerged since the Global Financial Crisis of 2008. I then discuss the implications of such restructuring on asset price inflation and counterclaims to the city.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":12497,"journal":{"name":"Geoforum","volume":"169 ","pages":"Article 104496"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2025-12-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145787684","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-12-15DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104513
Andrew Power , Deborah Chinn , Katy Brickley , Tony Levitan , Shalim Ali
Feeling a sense of home has long been an aspiration by and for people in shared supported housing yet is often overlooked in its provision. In these settings, home is co-constituted through the interactions of housemates, care staff and visiting family members. However, the collective perspectives of these three groups remain underexplored, and this housing context is still marginal within geographies of care and home. This study examines how the atmospheres of such homes are shaped through the socio-material presence and practices of these actors, focusing on adults with intellectual disabilities living in staff-supported shared accommodation in England. Using a novel combination of photovoice with housemates and interviews with care staff and family members, we show how the routines, demands and material presence of staff are integral to home-making. Our findings reveal home-making as an ongoing relational competence involving multiple entanglements that unfold across bedrooms, shared spaces and the wider neighbourhood. We argue that attending to the relational atmospheres of home-making exposes how tensions, dependencies and everyday constraints can unsettle a sense of home, while also indicating how more positive atmospheres might be cultivated for housemates. These insights have relevance beyond this group, offering direction for broader work on how a sense of home is relationally made.
Accessible Summary.
•
Feeling at home is often ignored for people in supported living.
•
We found ways of home-making that were supported by staff and family.
•
Things often got in the way of home-making such as staff taking shortcuts.
•
We show how home-making can take place but needs to be given more priority.
{"title":"Negotiating shared housing, care and disability: How housemates, staff and family members navigate ambivalent atmospheres of home-making","authors":"Andrew Power , Deborah Chinn , Katy Brickley , Tony Levitan , Shalim Ali","doi":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104513","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104513","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Feeling a sense of home has long been an aspiration by and for people in shared supported housing yet is often overlooked in its provision. In these settings, home is co-constituted through the interactions of housemates, care staff and visiting family members. However, the collective perspectives of these three groups remain underexplored, and this housing context is still marginal within geographies of care and home. This study examines how the atmospheres of such homes are shaped through the socio-material presence and practices of these actors, focusing on adults with intellectual disabilities living in staff-supported shared accommodation in England. Using a novel combination of photovoice with housemates and interviews with care staff and family members, we show how the routines, demands and material presence of staff are integral to home-making. Our findings reveal home-making as an ongoing relational competence involving multiple entanglements that unfold across bedrooms, shared spaces and the wider neighbourhood. We argue that attending to the relational atmospheres of home-making exposes how tensions, dependencies and everyday constraints can unsettle a sense of home, while also indicating how more positive atmospheres might be cultivated for housemates. These insights have relevance beyond this group, offering direction for broader work on how a sense of home is relationally made.</div><div>Accessible Summary.<ul><li><span>•</span><span><div>Feeling at home is often ignored for people in supported living.</div></span></li><li><span>•</span><span><div>We found ways of home-making that were supported by staff and family.</div></span></li><li><span>•</span><span><div>Things often got in the way of home-making such as staff taking shortcuts.</div></span></li><li><span>•</span><span><div>We show how home-making can take place but needs to be given more priority.</div></span></li></ul></div></div>","PeriodicalId":12497,"journal":{"name":"Geoforum","volume":"169 ","pages":"Article 104513"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2025-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145787672","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-12-15DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104519
Iddrisu Amadu , Ingrid Boas , Simon R. Bush , Aliou Sall
With growing concerns over declining shark populations, states, NGOs and regional bodies are increasingly intensifying fisheries and conservation measures to protect endangered migratory shark species along the West African coast. Together, these measures impact the transboundary fishing and trade mobilities of nomadic fishery communities, which are fundamental for their livelihoods and fishery traditions. Through the lens of social navigation and mobility regimes, we examine how the Fante fisherfolk navigate these fisheries, conservation and border regulations via strategies enabled by their patron-client relations. First, we show how these regulations together constitute an interconnected mobility regime that extends across land and sea. Second, we show how these socially-embedded patronage relations can by themselves constitute a counter-mobility regime that mitigates the effects, evades and reshapes dominant mobility regimes. These findings contribute to ongoing debates on the mobility regimes by showing how mobile fishery practices challenge attempts to fix and securitise them through increasingly securitised national and regional borders across land-sea.
{"title":"Navigating ‘mobility regimes’ through land-sea patron-client networks: The case of Fante’s shark fishery in West Africa","authors":"Iddrisu Amadu , Ingrid Boas , Simon R. Bush , Aliou Sall","doi":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104519","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104519","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>With growing concerns over declining shark populations, states, NGOs and regional bodies are increasingly intensifying fisheries and conservation measures to protect endangered migratory shark species along the West African coast. Together, these measures impact the transboundary fishing and trade mobilities of nomadic fishery communities, which are fundamental for their livelihoods and fishery traditions. Through the lens of social navigation and mobility regimes, we examine how the Fante fisherfolk navigate these fisheries, conservation and border regulations via strategies enabled by their patron-client relations. First, we show how these regulations together constitute an interconnected mobility regime that extends across land and sea. Second, we show how these socially-embedded patronage relations can by themselves constitute a counter-mobility regime that mitigates the effects, evades and reshapes dominant mobility regimes. These findings contribute to ongoing debates on the mobility regimes by showing how mobile fishery practices challenge attempts to fix and securitise them through increasingly securitised national and regional borders across land-sea.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":12497,"journal":{"name":"Geoforum","volume":"169 ","pages":"Article 104519"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2025-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145787673","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-12-15DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104510
Zikang Ji , N. Moore-Cherry , D.F. Kogler
Small towns, historically integral to Europe’s territorial structure, remain among its most distinctive features. In Ireland these urban centres, known as Key Towns, are strategic urban areas recognized for their potential to stimulate economic growth, enhance regional connectivity, and improve the quality of life in their surrounding rural and urban catchments. They serve as critical nodes for infrastructure, services, employment, and regional cohesion, especially outside of major metropolitan areas. This study utilises 2022 census data to conduct a comprehensive assessment of Ireland’s designated Key Towns. Although positioned in policy documents as relatively homogenous places, this study employs Principal Component Analysis and cluster analysis to identify distinctive development patterns and explore the underlying dynamics that differentiate these towns. By critically examining the varied trajectories of Key Towns, the paper challenges existing narratives associated with small towns in Ireland and provides the empirical data to inform and underpin place-based policy development and solutions to achieve more balanced and inclusive regional development strategies.
{"title":"Challenging narratives of homogeneity: Using PCA and Cluster Analysis to develop a typology of key towns in Ireland","authors":"Zikang Ji , N. Moore-Cherry , D.F. Kogler","doi":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104510","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104510","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Small towns, historically integral to Europe’s territorial structure, remain among its most distinctive features. In Ireland these urban centres, known as Key Towns, are strategic urban areas recognized for their potential to stimulate economic growth, enhance regional connectivity, and improve the quality of life in their surrounding rural and urban catchments. They serve as critical nodes for infrastructure, services, employment, and regional cohesion, especially outside of major metropolitan areas. This study utilises 2022 census data to conduct a comprehensive assessment of Ireland’s designated Key Towns. Although positioned in policy documents as relatively homogenous places, this study employs Principal Component Analysis and cluster analysis to identify distinctive development patterns and explore the underlying dynamics that differentiate these towns. By critically examining the varied trajectories of Key Towns, the paper challenges existing narratives associated with small towns in Ireland and provides the empirical data to inform and underpin place-based policy development and solutions to achieve more balanced and inclusive regional development strategies.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":12497,"journal":{"name":"Geoforum","volume":"169 ","pages":"Article 104510"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2025-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145787743","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-12-15DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104516
Eva Thulin, Bertil Vilhelmson
The normalization of frequent, full-day working from home (WFH) marks a structural shift in the spatial organization of everyday life, with profound implications for time use and well-being. This article contributes to the growing literature on the social consequences of WFH by theorizing the home as a renewed site of socio-temporal anchoring. We propose the concept of home-bound recoupling to capture how WFH practices re-anchor everyday life to place, reshaping temporal experience and individual welfare. Focusing on four key dimensions of well-being – perceived time scarcity, stress, self-reported health, and social participation – we draw on representative data from the 2021 Swedish Survey of Time Use (subsample N = 625), collected shortly after the lifting of Sweden’s Covid-19-related WFH recommendations. We compare individuals engaged in WFH and working from the office (WFO) on a typical weekday, controlling for bounded time spent on paid work. The results reveal gender divergences: WFH is associated with improved well-being among women, who report lower time pressure, reduced stress, and better health relative to their WFO counterparts. For men, the associations are not statistically significant and, in most cases, trend in a negative direction. Social participation remains stable across work settings for both genders. We conclude that WFH can function as a gender-sensitive strategy for mitigating intensifying time pressures in daily life and enhancing everyday well-being. By conceptualizing WFH within broader processes of spatial recoupling, this study advances theoretical debates on digital labor geographies and the restructuring of home-space under post-pandemic conditions.
{"title":"Re-anchored lives: Working from home, gender, and everyday well-being in Sweden","authors":"Eva Thulin, Bertil Vilhelmson","doi":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104516","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104516","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The normalization of frequent, full-day working from home (WFH) marks a structural shift in the spatial organization of everyday life, with profound implications for time use and well-being. This article contributes to the growing literature on the social consequences of WFH by theorizing the home as a renewed site of socio-temporal anchoring. We propose the concept of home-bound recoupling to capture how WFH practices re-anchor everyday life to place, reshaping temporal experience and individual welfare. Focusing on four key dimensions of well-being – perceived time scarcity, stress, self-reported health, and social participation – we draw on representative data from the 2021 Swedish Survey of Time Use (subsample N = 625), collected shortly after the lifting of Sweden’s Covid-19-related WFH recommendations. We compare individuals engaged in WFH and working from the office (WFO) on a typical weekday, controlling for bounded time spent on paid work. The results reveal gender divergences: WFH is associated with improved well-being among women, who report lower time pressure, reduced stress, and better health relative to their WFO counterparts. For men, the associations are not statistically significant and, in most cases, trend in a negative direction. Social participation remains stable across work settings for both genders. We conclude that WFH can function as a gender-sensitive strategy for mitigating intensifying time pressures in daily life and enhancing everyday well-being. By conceptualizing WFH within broader processes of spatial recoupling, this study advances theoretical debates on digital labor geographies and the restructuring of home-space under post-pandemic conditions.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":12497,"journal":{"name":"Geoforum","volume":"169 ","pages":"Article 104516"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2025-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145787674","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-12-11DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104515
Chen Hongfu , Gao Quan
Recent work in human geography has reconceptualized ships as socio-cultural spaces where maritime life is produced and negotiated. Yet, the materiality of vessels and their role in shaping affective and sensory relations with the sea remain under-theorized. This paper thus examines how technological transformations in fishing vessels have reconfigured the spatial practices, embodied experiences, and affective atmospheres of fishermen in Tanmen, Hainan, China. Drawing on 52 in-depth interviews and participatory fieldwork, the study traces three phases of vessel development—pre-1970s wooden sailboats, mechanized boats of the 1980s–1990s, and contemporary GPS-equipped steel-hulled vessels. It identifies three interlinked domains through which these transformations unfold: shipboard experiences of safety and domesticity; generational ruptures and disembodiment in maritime knowledge and identity; and shifting human–ocean entanglements within local spiritual-cultural orders. Technological innovation and the state’s geopolitical heritagization of maritime culture have re-assembled an affective atmosphere of ambiguity, characterized by both comfort and control, yet also by loss, disenchantment, and alienation from spiritual and communal roots. The study argues that ships operate as dynamic socio-material assemblages that mediate labour, affect, and state power, contributing to debates on mobilities, materiality, and the affective geographies of everyday geopolitics.
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