Pub Date : 2024-05-01DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2023.103848
Karen P.Y. Lai, Paul Langley
This paper examines how digital gamification techniques, which incorporate video gaming elements (rather than full-fledged games) into apps, are reshaping the logics and practices of intermediation that are core to FinTech economies. First, we argue gamification brings into view socio-technical knowledges, such as behavioral science, digital marketing, and user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) design, which are increasingly important to constituting FinTech intermediation. Second, gamification features specialist firms that are presently overlooked by research into the roles of changing advanced producer services (APS) complexes in FinTech and financial intermediation. Third, gamified apps are deployed to advance competitive intermediary positions which playfully capture user attention and configure user behavior, contrasting with FinTech strategies that typically promise users’ ease of access, reduced transaction costs and personalized products and services. We illustrate these arguments through three firm-level case studies from across Asia, where the development of gamified FinTech apps has been especially prominent.
{"title":"Playful finance: Gamification and intermediation in FinTech economies","authors":"Karen P.Y. Lai, Paul Langley","doi":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2023.103848","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2023.103848","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This paper examines how digital gamification techniques, which incorporate video gaming elements (rather than full-fledged games) into apps, are reshaping the logics and practices of intermediation that are core to FinTech economies. First, we argue gamification brings into view socio-technical knowledges, such as behavioral science, digital marketing, and user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) design, which are increasingly important to constituting FinTech intermediation. Second, gamification features specialist firms that are presently overlooked by research into the roles of changing advanced producer services (APS) complexes in FinTech and financial intermediation. Third, gamified apps are deployed to advance competitive intermediary positions which playfully capture user attention and configure user behavior, contrasting with FinTech strategies that typically promise users’ ease of access, reduced transaction costs and personalized products and services. We illustrate these arguments through three firm-level case studies from across Asia, where the development of gamified FinTech apps has been especially prominent.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":12497,"journal":{"name":"Geoforum","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.5,"publicationDate":"2024-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016718523001744/pdfft?md5=3c9beab8f93a9235e81007117139034e&pid=1-s2.0-S0016718523001744-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135388511","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-05-01DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2023.103720
Julien Migozzi, Michael Urban, Dariusz Wójcik
This paper explores the potential of FinTech to change the geography of finance and financial centres through a longitudinal and multiscalar analysis of FinTech in India. Using a financial ecology approach, we combine quantitative data on firm creation and funding with insights from corporate interviews to unpack and examine the key elements of the Indian FinTech ecosystem. At the national scale, our results highlight how the export-oriented ICT sector, the implantation of large-scale, open digital infrastructures and enabling regulatory frameworks have enabled and shaped the growth of FinTech as a state-supported, tech-driven “Tech-Fin-State” ecosystem. At a city scale, the paper demonstrates how FinTech transforms India’s financial geography in two directions. First, locational patterns and investment networks have established New Delhi and Bangalore as international FinTech hubs, ahead of Mumbai. Second, the re-intermediation of finance by FinTech firms should be understood as the connection between the two distinct yet complementary ecosystems of Bangalore, India’s FinTech capital, and Mumbai, the incumbent financial capital, while advancing regional integration beyond India.
{"title":"“You should do what India does”: FinTech ecosystems in India reshaping the geography of finance","authors":"Julien Migozzi, Michael Urban, Dariusz Wójcik","doi":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2023.103720","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2023.103720","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This paper explores the potential of FinTech to change the geography of finance and financial centres through a longitudinal and multiscalar analysis of FinTech in India. Using a financial ecology approach, we combine quantitative data on firm creation and funding with insights from corporate interviews to unpack and examine the key elements of the Indian FinTech ecosystem. At the national scale, our results highlight how the export-oriented ICT sector, the implantation of large-scale, open digital infrastructures and enabling regulatory frameworks have enabled and shaped the growth of FinTech as a state-supported, tech-driven “Tech-Fin-State” ecosystem. At a city scale, the paper demonstrates how FinTech transforms India’s financial geography in two directions. First, locational patterns and investment networks have established New Delhi and Bangalore as international FinTech hubs, ahead of Mumbai. Second, the re-intermediation of finance by FinTech firms should be understood as the connection between the two distinct yet complementary ecosystems of Bangalore, India’s FinTech capital, and Mumbai, the incumbent financial capital, while advancing regional integration beyond India.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":12497,"journal":{"name":"Geoforum","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.5,"publicationDate":"2024-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016718523000465/pdfft?md5=010ce191d55651d1e014c101ec07facd&pid=1-s2.0-S0016718523000465-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44009746","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-05-01DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2023.103721
Francisco Trincado-Munoz , Michiel van Meeteren , Tzameret H. Rubin , Tim Vorley
The Advanced Producer Services (APS) sector, long considered to be the vanguard of the knowledge economy and world-city formation, is undergoing a digital transformation. Digital transformation entails an increased engagement with digital technologies in the operation, product offerings and strategies of APS firms, with potentially transformative implications. Such digitization processes are well-established in the morphing of finance into FinTech, with the other APS sub-sectors now allegedly catching-up as evidenced by the arrival of LegalTech, AccountTech, RegTech, PropTech, and AdTech. Moreover, the digital transformation could imply that Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) services are again becoming central to the APS complex after two decades of being largely omitted from world city research. Adopting an evolutionary economic geography perspective, we introduce a new approach that utilizes near real-time data sources to compare local technology spaces with the global picture of digital transformation in world cities. Building a dataset containing information from 40,754 APS start-ups and scale-ups derived from Dealroom.co, this paper explores the geographically uneven digital transformation of the APS sector across European and North American world cities. This allows gauging the extent of digital transformation within APS sectors for each selected city, develop new understandings of the division of labour between world cities, and highlight where sector coalescence between APS sectors is occurring and is more likely to occur. In the process we develop new technological indicators of world-cityness that can be used alongside the classic world city connectivity indicators.
{"title":"Digital transformation in the world city networks’ advanced producer services complex: A technology space analysis","authors":"Francisco Trincado-Munoz , Michiel van Meeteren , Tzameret H. Rubin , Tim Vorley","doi":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2023.103721","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2023.103721","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>The Advanced Producer Services (APS) sector, long considered to be the vanguard of the knowledge economy and world-city formation, is undergoing a digital transformation. Digital transformation entails an increased engagement with digital technologies in the operation, product offerings and strategies of APS firms, with potentially transformative implications. Such digitization processes are well-established in the morphing of finance into FinTech, with the other APS sub-sectors now allegedly catching-up as evidenced by the arrival of LegalTech, AccountTech, RegTech, PropTech, and AdTech. Moreover, the digital transformation could imply that Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) services are again becoming central to the APS complex after two decades of being largely omitted from world city research. Adopting an evolutionary economic geography perspective, we introduce a new approach that utilizes near real-time data sources to compare local technology spaces with the global picture of digital transformation in world cities. Building a dataset containing information from 40,754 APS start-ups and scale-ups derived from <span>Dealroom.co</span><svg><path></path></svg>, this paper explores the geographically uneven digital transformation of the APS sector across European and North American world cities. This allows gauging the extent of digital transformation within APS sectors for each selected city, develop new understandings of the division of labour between world cities, and highlight where sector coalescence between APS sectors is occurring and is more likely to occur. In the process we develop new technological indicators of world-cityness that can be used alongside the classic world city connectivity indicators.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":12497,"journal":{"name":"Geoforum","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.5,"publicationDate":"2024-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016718523000477/pdfft?md5=69a1310bf7cc7babaa29c9baa6ecde43&pid=1-s2.0-S0016718523000477-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48204043","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-05-01DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2022.08.001
Matthew Zook , Michael H. Grote
The potential of blockchain-technology to disrupt the financial and related sectors by making many intermediaries superfluous is subject of frequent discussions. We analyze the current and potential structural effects of blockchain-based business models. In order to make “disruption” more traceable, we define three dimensions of it: space, agency and scale. Using a combination of Crunchbase data, interviews and participant observation at workshops and conferences, and case studies we outline areas in which companies are seeking to implement blockchain in financial functions and assess the extent to which this represents structural changes in finance and associated advanced producer services (APS). We find that while the expectations for blockchain as a transformative force in finance/APS are high, the actual structural effects are much less clear as we see established industry players (e.g., banks) capturing these efforts and/or new entrants essentially recreating the existing structures and functions of the current financial sector. We outline a number of possibilities as to why to date blockchain has not met these expectations of disruption. We explore how scale emerges as a theoretically fruitful avenue for understanding which phenomena are actually well placed to fundamentally alter the structure of the financial sector including related advanced services. Three case studies on initial coin offerings, real estate investments and the “money memory” associated with blockchain-based currencies show that potentially transformative effects derive from blockchain technology being able to shift scale.
{"title":"Blockchain financial geographies: Disrupting space, agency and scale","authors":"Matthew Zook , Michael H. Grote","doi":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2022.08.001","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2022.08.001","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>The potential of blockchain-technology to disrupt the financial and related sectors by making many intermediaries superfluous is subject of frequent discussions. We analyze the current and potential structural effects of blockchain-based business models. In order to make “disruption” more traceable, we define three dimensions of it: space, agency and scale. Using a combination of Crunchbase data, interviews and participant observation at workshops and conferences, and case studies we outline areas in which companies are seeking to implement blockchain in financial functions and assess the extent to which this represents structural changes in finance and associated advanced producer services (APS). We find that while the expectations for blockchain as a transformative force in finance/APS are high, the actual structural effects are much less clear as we see established industry players (e.g., banks) capturing these efforts and/or new entrants essentially recreating the existing structures and functions of the current financial sector. We outline a number of possibilities as to why to date blockchain has not met these expectations of disruption. We explore how scale emerges as a theoretically fruitful avenue for understanding which phenomena are actually well placed to fundamentally alter the structure of the financial sector including related advanced services. Three case studies on initial coin offerings, real estate investments and the “money memory” associated with blockchain-based currencies show that potentially transformative effects derive from blockchain technology being able to shift scale.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":12497,"journal":{"name":"Geoforum","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.5,"publicationDate":"2024-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41612902","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 : 2024-05-01DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2023.103695
Mariana Santos
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.
近期有关金融科技的经济和金融地理文献对金融从业者的运营和业务模式如何随着数字技术的发展而改变提出了质疑。企业银行业务提供金融服务,使企业能够运营并实现国际化,是先进生产者服务(APS)的重要组成部分,这种变革正在进行之中。本文通过对法国巴黎银行(BNP Paribas)和荷兰国际集团(ING)这两家欧洲大型银行的企业银行业务数字化转型采用文化经济学方法进行研究,为有关金融科技和先进生产者服务变革的地理文献做出了贡献。通过对话语、流程和物质的关注,文化经济视角有助于对现有银行的数字化转型进行更细致入微的地理描绘:客户体验 "和 "数字平台"。通过深入探讨,本文提出了两个主要观点。首先,"客户体验 "意味着将银行业务折叠到客户的时空中,而银行的话语则揭示了拓扑数字空间与不断变化的地形空间之间的主要纠葛,这些地形空间包括分支机构网络、成熟的和新兴的金融与服务中心以及创业生态系统。其次,现有银行关于数字化转型的论述体现了经济、技术和地理方面的关键路径依赖关系,并受其影响。值得注意的是,2008 年金融危机后遗留的 IT 系统问题以及经济和组织结构调整,标志着在职银行与技术和金融科技公司在数字金融再中介话语领域的独特争议方式。
{"title":"‘If you believe in a platform world…’ – Corporate banking and digital transformation in investor relations discourse","authors":"Mariana Santos","doi":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2023.103695","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2023.103695","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>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.</p><p>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.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":12497,"journal":{"name":"Geoforum","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.5,"publicationDate":"2024-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43083570","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 : 2024-04-30DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2024.104012
Mengyu Luo , Jian Xiao , Zheng Wan
The “Shanghai Ark” is an urban regeneration project in Shanghai’s Hongkou (Hongkew) District, aiming to transform the built environment and cultural legacy of the former Jewish refugee community, Hongkew Ghetto, into the present Shanghai Ark neighbourhood, showcasing the city’s and the nation’s cosmopolitanism and generosity. This article re-evaluates the notion of representation and explores the interplay among top-down representations, emotional resonances, and atmospheric practices in urban spaces. By employing discourse analysis and ethnographic data, we examine perceptions and practices of various stakeholders, including officials, citywalk leaders, museum curators, residents, local visitors, and foreign visitors. The findings reveal that affective atmospheres emerge from the interweaving of top-down narratives, personal experiences and memories, and emotional resonances between bodies and material environment, as well as the emotional interactions among people. By reconsidering representations in shaping affective atmospheres, this study sheds light on the fluid and dynamic nature of cultural regeneration, offering a deeper understand of the multifaceted experiences and emotions that underlie urban development.
{"title":"From Hongkew Ghetto to Shanghai Ark: Rethinking representation in the (re)making of affective atmosphere during cultural regeneration","authors":"Mengyu Luo , Jian Xiao , Zheng Wan","doi":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2024.104012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2024.104012","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>The “Shanghai Ark” is an urban regeneration project in Shanghai’s Hongkou (Hongkew) District, aiming to transform the built environment and cultural legacy of the former Jewish refugee community, Hongkew Ghetto, into the present Shanghai Ark neighbourhood, showcasing the city’s and the nation’s cosmopolitanism and generosity. This article re-evaluates the notion of representation and explores the interplay among top-down representations, emotional resonances, and atmospheric practices in urban spaces. By employing discourse analysis and ethnographic data, we examine perceptions and practices of various stakeholders, including officials, citywalk leaders, museum curators, residents, local visitors, and foreign visitors. The findings reveal that affective atmospheres emerge from the interweaving of top-down narratives, personal experiences and memories, and emotional resonances between bodies and material environment, as well as the emotional interactions among people. By reconsidering representations in shaping affective atmospheres, this study sheds light on the fluid and dynamic nature of cultural regeneration, offering a deeper understand of the multifaceted experiences and emotions that underlie urban development.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":12497,"journal":{"name":"Geoforum","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.5,"publicationDate":"2024-04-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140813602","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 : 2024-04-30DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2024.103998
Elliot Rooney
This paper looks at a viable response to failed privatisation in Dar es Salaam in the wake of aborted privatisation in 2005. The city’s experience highlights the inherent failings and the implicit assumptions that are central to the privatisation model. Set against an illustration of the global political economy of water supply privatisation as well as the specific political economy of that in Dar es Salaam, the paper reviews the evidence base for an alternative mechanism for strengthening water supply governance, the public-public partnership (PuP), through which technical and managerial expertise is mobilised among public and not-for-profit providers. This model is observed in Dar es Salaam at different scales, from CBOs and mitaa at the local level, to a contract arrangement between asset holder (DAWASA) and operator (DAWASCO), up to international partnerships with other public water utilities, governments, and NGOs. At these scales, PuPs have been able to channel investment in pro-poor access, knowledge exchange and capacity development, and to build public trust. Despite gains, issues such as the predominance of commercial normativity remained and undermined some of the core principles of PuPs. In 2018, the PuP contract was ended, and national policy once again targets private sector expansion.
{"title":"Failed privatisation in urban water utilities: Can PuPs pick up the pieces? Reviewing evidence from Dar es Salaam, 2005–2018","authors":"Elliot Rooney","doi":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2024.103998","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2024.103998","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This paper looks at a viable response to failed privatisation in Dar es Salaam in the wake of aborted privatisation in 2005. The city’s experience highlights the inherent failings and the implicit assumptions that are central to the privatisation model. Set against an illustration of the global political economy of water supply privatisation as well as the specific political economy of that in Dar es Salaam, the paper reviews the evidence base for an alternative mechanism for strengthening water supply governance, the public-public partnership (PuP), through which technical and managerial expertise is mobilised among public and not-for-profit providers. This model is observed in Dar es Salaam at different scales, from CBOs and mitaa at the local level, to a contract arrangement between asset holder (DAWASA) and operator (DAWASCO), up to international partnerships with other public water utilities, governments, and NGOs. At these scales, PuPs have been able to channel investment in pro-poor access, knowledge exchange and capacity development, and to build public trust. Despite gains, issues such as the predominance of commercial normativity remained and undermined some of the core principles of PuPs. In 2018, the PuP contract was ended, and national policy once again targets private sector expansion.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":12497,"journal":{"name":"Geoforum","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.5,"publicationDate":"2024-04-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016718524000599/pdfft?md5=1cbd48f9223971ff52beb07896087223&pid=1-s2.0-S0016718524000599-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140815880","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-04-26DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2024.104013
Jamie Arathoon , Daniel Allen , Alicia Hallatt
Pets are socially, culturally, emotionally, and economically entangled in human lives. For humans, pets are loved, and the bond between human and pet extends beyond companionship to incorporate emotional and mental health benefits. Pet theft is a crime that exploits these emotional relationships with pets being stolen for ransom, reward, resale, and breeding. In this paper we explore the emotional geographies of online search/ing for missing and stolen pets. To do so, we utilise interviews with people whose dogs are stolen and have not returned, those whose dogs have been reunited, and with groups dedicated to reuniting missing and stolen pets. We also make use of posts from 20 Twitter/X1 accounts dedicated to missing and stolen pets. In sharing posts online, humans utilise several search tactics. First, posts are shared with the idea of making pets “too hot to handle”. This involves using images and hashtags to “go viral”. Second, the posts are imbued with emotions, detailing the difficulties of losing a pet. Third, the use of images and descriptions of the pets’ charismatic qualities and characteristics are used to make their pets present online. The findings here have relevance to literature on absence and presence, emotional and digital geographies of human-animal relations, and online identity-making. The paper also provides practical insights into (in)effective strategies of online searching, which can inform public engagement practices of lost and stolen animal support groups and individuals looking to make lost and stolen pets present in virtual space.
{"title":"“Too hot to handle”: Making lost and stolen pets present in virtual space","authors":"Jamie Arathoon , Daniel Allen , Alicia Hallatt","doi":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2024.104013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2024.104013","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Pets are socially, culturally, emotionally, and economically entangled in human lives. For humans, pets are loved, and the bond between human and pet extends beyond companionship to incorporate emotional and mental health benefits. Pet theft is a crime that exploits these emotional relationships with pets being stolen for ransom, reward, resale, and breeding. In this paper we explore the emotional geographies of online search/ing for missing and stolen pets. To do so, we utilise interviews with people whose dogs are stolen and have not returned, those whose dogs have been reunited, and with groups dedicated to reuniting missing and stolen pets. We also make use of posts from 20 Twitter/X<span><sup>1</sup></span> accounts dedicated to missing and stolen pets. In sharing posts online, humans utilise several search tactics. First, posts are shared with the idea of making pets “too hot to handle”. This involves using images and hashtags to “go viral”. Second, the posts are imbued with emotions, detailing the difficulties of losing a pet. Third, the use of images and descriptions of the pets’ charismatic qualities and characteristics are used to make their pets present online. The findings here have relevance to literature on absence and presence, emotional and digital geographies of human-animal relations, and online identity-making. The paper also provides practical insights into (in)effective strategies of online searching, which can inform public engagement practices of lost and stolen animal support groups and individuals looking to make lost and stolen pets present in virtual space.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":12497,"journal":{"name":"Geoforum","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.5,"publicationDate":"2024-04-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016718524000745/pdfft?md5=87ea2987b4a86708cd15a2046885f4e6&pid=1-s2.0-S0016718524000745-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140649993","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-04-24DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2024.104008
Laura Cattonar, Jungho Suh, Melissa Nursey-Bray
The mining industry’s generation of environmental risks has galvanised increasing social upheaval worldwide, leading to its Social License to Operate being called into question. The coal mining industry is no exception. Nonetheless, the industry remains a crucial supporter of many regional Australian economies, providing communities with employment opportunities and vital amenities. However, this support comes at the expense of direct exposure to particulate matter emissions or ‘coal dust’, a pollutant known for its adverse long-term health outcomes. Thus, communities are dealt an intriguing social dilemma: ‘Do you bite the hand that feeds you?’ This paper explores how Singleton and Clermont, regional Australian coal mining towns in New South Wales and Queensland, respectively, have exemplified such a phenomenon. Based on 34 thematically analysed semi-structured interviews, this paper develops its argument that the Social License to Operate, as a metric for community acceptance and approval, may be rendered useless when communities are economically dependent on coal mining. This paper aims to ultimately shed light on the factors affecting the Social License to Operate using regional Australian perspectives, highlighting the malleability of community acceptance.
{"title":"Coal dust pollution in regional Australian coal mining towns: Social License to Operate and community resistance","authors":"Laura Cattonar, Jungho Suh, Melissa Nursey-Bray","doi":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2024.104008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2024.104008","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>The mining industry’s generation of environmental risks has galvanised increasing social upheaval worldwide, leading to its Social License to Operate being called into question. The coal mining industry is no exception. Nonetheless, the industry remains a crucial supporter of many regional Australian economies, providing communities with employment opportunities and vital amenities. However, this support comes at the expense of direct exposure to particulate matter emissions or ‘coal dust’, a pollutant known for its adverse long-term health outcomes. Thus, communities are dealt an intriguing social dilemma: ‘Do you bite the hand that feeds you?’ This paper explores how Singleton and Clermont, regional Australian coal mining towns in New South Wales and Queensland, respectively, have exemplified such a phenomenon. Based on 34 thematically analysed semi-structured interviews, this paper develops its argument that the Social License to Operate, as a metric for community acceptance and approval, may be rendered useless when communities are economically dependent on coal mining. This paper aims to ultimately shed light on the factors affecting the Social License to Operate using regional Australian perspectives, highlighting the malleability of community acceptance.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":12497,"journal":{"name":"Geoforum","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.5,"publicationDate":"2024-04-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016718524000691/pdfft?md5=69c1c2059beaed37206c3f5830e8dca9&pid=1-s2.0-S0016718524000691-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140645765","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-04-22DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2024.104011
Liam Saddington , Fiona McConnell
Simulation and role-play have a proven track record as pedagogic techniques to provide students with insights into geopolitics, diplomacy, and international relations. Since the first Model United Nations (MUN) in 1947, simulations have proliferated within secondary and tertiary educational settings. However, these activities overwhelmingly focus on recognised nation-states, neglecting polities that are not UN member states, but that are often acutely affected by conflict and human rights abuses. This paper is part of a broader project that is seeking to bring the realities and stories from such communities, territories, and peoples – a number of which have come together as the ‘Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization’ (UNPO) – to a wider audience. Loosely based on MUN simulations, the ‘Model UNPO’ exercise involves participants being assigned a UNPO member, researching that polity’s context and rights claims, and coming together for a structured role-play debate. Drawing on participant observation of Model UNPO exercises with 16–18 year old students at thirteen UK secondary schools we examine how geopolitics can be taught and learned within school classroom settings, how young people make sense of geopolitics, and how they imagine and articulate alternative internationals. We assess what simulation exercises can offer to understandings of the intersection of young peoples’ geopolitics and geographies of education. In doing so, we analyse how students draw on ‘known worlds’ and advocate for possible worlds through role-playing unrepresented diplomats, and examine the role of clause writing in the scripting of geopolitical imaginaries, and how role-playing forges empathy and solidarities. We conclude by making the case for foregrounding young people as critical and creative geopolitical thinkers.
{"title":"Simulating alternative internationals: Geopolitics role-playing in UK schools","authors":"Liam Saddington , Fiona McConnell","doi":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2024.104011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2024.104011","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Simulation and role-play have a proven track record as pedagogic techniques to provide students with insights into geopolitics, diplomacy, and international relations. Since the first Model United Nations (MUN) in 1947, simulations have proliferated within secondary and tertiary educational settings. However, these activities overwhelmingly focus on recognised nation-states, neglecting polities that are not UN member states, but that are often acutely affected by conflict and human rights abuses. This paper is part of a broader project that is seeking to bring the realities and stories from such communities, territories, and peoples – a number of which have come together as the ‘Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization’ (UNPO) – to a wider audience. Loosely based on MUN simulations, the ‘Model UNPO’ exercise involves participants being assigned a UNPO member, researching that polity’s context and rights claims, and coming together for a structured role-play debate. Drawing on participant observation of Model UNPO exercises with 16–18 year old students at thirteen UK secondary schools we examine how geopolitics can be taught and learned within school classroom settings, how young people make sense of geopolitics, and how they imagine and articulate alternative internationals. We assess what simulation exercises can offer to understandings of the intersection of young peoples’ geopolitics and geographies of education. In doing so, we analyse how students draw on ‘known worlds’ and advocate for possible worlds through role-playing unrepresented diplomats, and examine the role of clause writing in the scripting of geopolitical imaginaries, and how role-playing forges empathy and solidarities. We conclude by making the case for foregrounding young people as critical and creative geopolitical thinkers.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":12497,"journal":{"name":"Geoforum","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.5,"publicationDate":"2024-04-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016718524000721/pdfft?md5=d0399196be2aeb9f40ea4528bfab2c64&pid=1-s2.0-S0016718524000721-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140631714","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}