Geographical Research最新文献

Amidst intensifying climate breakdown and inadequate climate change education, young people are increasingly taking part in a global movement for climate justice. Young climate justice activists are disseminating stories of injustice and possibility intended to inform and activate their peers, parents, politicians, powerholders, and the public for sweeping systems-level change. Using in-depth interviews with 16 youth activists aged 15 to 17 from the United States, this study explored youths’ stories into activism, defined as the counterstories motivating youths’ initial and sustained engagement in the climate justice movement. Using reflexive thematic analysis, two interrelated thematic categories were generated: redefining the problem of climate breakdown and challenging dominant climate solutionism. First, activists spoke of questioning dominant, depoliticised discourses that regard climate change as a primarily scientific or environmental problem that adults are currently “solving” to prevent future harms. Youths’ counterstories emphasised that climate change is an issue of present-day and future injustices perpetuated by inadequate action by today’s adult leaders. Second, youths’ counterstories emphasised the powerful role of young people in spurring societal transformation towards climate justice—an inherently political and radical project requiring systems change through collective action. The research draws upon and contributes to recent scholarship in children’s geographies and critical geographies of education, while responding to urgent calls for reimagining climate pedagogies with young people’s well-being and political agency at the centre. By examining the counterstories employed by young activists, this research highlights storylines educators may mobilise to activate learners’ political imaginations and spur their active engagement in societal transformation.

Urban community gardening is emerging as a form of quiet activism challenging the corporate food system. In urban community gardening, quiet activism subtly challenges the dominant corporate food system. However, research tends to overlook its presence and impact in global South cities, where issues of food insecurity and corporatisation are acute. There is a gap in research on urban community gardening activism, with a focus mainly on global North cities. Global South cities and populations face unique challenges in the corporate food system that require attention and exploration in scholarly literature. We draw on qualitative research conducted with urban community gardeners in Cape Town, South Africa. Through interviews and observations, the study investigates how these gardeners engage in quiet activism to challenge the corporate food system. We find that community gardens are subtle but potent platforms for bolstering local food movements and fostering healthier dietary practices by cultivating and sharing produce. Quiet activism through community gardening offers a nuanced approach to challenging the corporate food system. The study highlights the need to recognise and understand varying levels of activism intensity and their implications for reshaping urban food systems. We underscore the need to discern the distinct embodiments necessitated by different modes of activism. Understanding these different modes of activism is crucial for comprehending their varying impacts on challenging and reshaping the corporate food system. This nuanced approach reveals the transformative potential inherent in community gardening practices. Community gardening in Cape Town exemplifies the transformative potential of understated acts in food activism.

The Canterbury Earthquake Sequence of 2010–2012 was devastating for Christchurch, New Zealand, a city built on a floodplain. The sequence resulted in widespread damage across the central business district (CBD) and residential areas. Alongside, and in contrast to, orthodox planning responses by the New Zealand Government, playful, creative, and temporary projects emerged in vacant spaces. These were designed to bring back life and energy to the city centre, and such types of activity are referred to by scholars as do-it-yourself (DIY) urbanism. A primary critique of DIY urbanism in the literature relates to how it has the potential to contribute to gentrification, despite its amateurish appearance and mildly subversive politics. In Christchurch, a venue built from pallets—known as the Pallet Pavilion—was constructed by an organisation known as “Gap Filler” with the help of volunteers. Gap Filler emerged after the first earthquake, inserting creative projects to bring back life and energy to the damaged CBD. By examining the Pallet Pavilion, we show that, despite its potentially gentrifying effects, DIY urbanism interventions may open up a more inclusive politics of the city. Also, and paradoxically, in the case of the Pallet Pavilion, the exercise of privilege made this inclusive politics possible.

In view of heightened food security issues in COVID-19 times, we employ a transnational lens to give bifocal attention to migrant women’s experiences during the pandemic, as they sought to secure access to food for themselves and for left-behind children and family members in Indonesia and the Philippines. In conjunction with the classic idea of global care chains and the notion of foodwork, we propose the idea of transnational foodcare chains. This distinctly agentic, migrant, and maternal food labour came to the fore under exceptional times of pandemic-induced social distancing, economic precarity, and limited travel. First, we argue that these foodcare chains are multi-relational, involving interdependence and reciprocity among a web of caregivers to secure food gaps. Second, we suggest that foodcare chains also extend to friendship networks forged among fellow migrant domestic workers in Singapore. Third, under pandemic conditions, we argue that foodcare chains enter the domain of well-being and healthcare as food becomes evoked as medicine and cures. Drawing on findings from 40 qualitative interviews with Indonesian and Filipino migrant domestic workers in Singapore, we focus on developing, within studies of food (in)security, the idea of foodcare chains by foregrounding the maternal, relational, and often invisible labour of achieving food security for migrant women and their left-behind families.

Through a range of activities and impacts, humanity now plays a dominant role in transforming the global environment. This dominance can be seen in varied physical and societal processes, including global climate change, land degradation, urbanisation, species extinction, pollution, and habitat fragmentation, which are often encapsulated in the term “the Great Acceleration” and are represented by physical and socioeconomic environmental measures that span from 1950 CE (Steffen et al., 2015, 2018). The spatial and temporal scales of these transformational processes have resulted in the development of a proposed new geological unit called the Anthropocene that is being used to highlight human impacts on the Earth System and to develop actions to address these significant global issues (Boivin & Crowther, 2021; Crutzen, 2002). Currently, there is a debate about the benefits of formalising the Anthropocene as a geological unit, and this commentary will examine that debate and consider the key role that geography and geographers play in understanding the Anthropocene.

The concept of the Great Acceleration was first presented in 2004 and highlighted a range of physical, environmental, and socioeconomic data from 1750 to 2004 presented in a graphical format that encompassed an upward trajectory and focused on a global scale (Steffen et al., 2005). Socioeconomic trends included human population, real gross domestic production, foreign direct investment, urban population, primary energy use, fertiliser consumption, large dams, water use, paper production, transportation, telecommunications, and international tourism. Physical environmental (or Earth System) trends included atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations, atmospheric nitrous oxide concentrations, atmospheric methane concentrations, stratospheric ozone loss, earth surface temperature, ocean acidification (pH of ocean water), marine fish capture, shrimp aquaculture production, nitrogen coastal zone input, tropical forest loss, percentage of domesticated land, and terrestrial biosphere degradation (mean species loss) (Steffen et al., 2005). The 1750 CE date was selected to encompass the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in western Europe, which was thought to be an appropriate starting point.

However, more recent arguments have put forward the view that the beginning of the Great Acceleration should commence at 1950 CE, when the most rapid increase in many of the indicators are apparent in the original 2004 graphs (Steffen et al., 2015). In addition, to capture the different rate of acceleration between developed and developing nations, there have been suggestions that socioeconomic indicators should separate OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries, BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, and the United Arab Emir

This research deals with issues of Indigeneity and autonomy in Taiwan by notionally turning things inside-out. We aim to contextualise international geopolitics and local polity by considering the Tayal people, one of 16 nationally recognised Indigenous groups living in northern Taiwan. We reject the conventional geopolitical lens of Great Power claims as the only and best way to understand contemporary Taiwan and chooses to refocus and rescale the geopolitical lens. We seek to reconsider Taiwan’s history, geography, and territory by reference to the conceptual lenses that apply to Tayal peoples’ experiences. The research methods employed include geographical fieldwork, literature reviews, and archival studies. The research acknowledges Tayal people’s custodianship over their territory and provides an in-depth discussion on the colonial history and geography of Taiwan. In the process, we unsettle what is taken-for-granted and rescale erasure, violence, and resistance in Indigenous Taiwan. In building a Tayal-centred positionality, we reframe geopolitical dynamics as connections within territories and across boundaries rather than as disputes over deeply contested boundaries. Neither Tayal people nor other Indigenous peoples in Taiwan ever ceded their sovereignty. Regardless of any broader geopolitics shifts, Tayal territory remains just the way it always has—Tayal territory.

COVID-19 substantially disrupted daily life globally. Human geography and environmental psychology scholars have argued that dramatic shifts in how people used urban environments during the pandemic could have important implications for those studying human–environment relationships and for planners designing urban spaces. Nevertheless, empirical data that examine shifts in human–environment relationships in urban areas during the pandemic are still limited. We explored how COVID-19 influenced sense of place and investigated how sense of place and changes to daily life because of the pandemic affected environmentally friendly behaviours. A case study involved working with 10 interview participants and 302 survey respondents in Wuhan, China—the city where the pandemic started, and which experienced very strict lockdowns. Data collection occurred in June 2021. The results reveal three main findings. First, stronger emotions directed towards the pandemic and heightened pandemic responses positively affected sense of place, with response behaviours including taking disease prevention measures, spending more time with families/friends, and helping others during the crisis. Second, sense of place and behavioural response to the pandemic were both associated with environmentally friendly behaviours, but not with environmentally friendly attitudes. Third, the nation and city, rather than the community level, are the geographic scales most consonant with respondent notions of place; sense of place grew most at these scales during the pandemic. We conclude that contrary to some speculation, sense of place was enhanced during the pandemic, at least in Wuhan. The pandemic also provided an opportunity for behaviour transitions, but not necessarily via changes in sense of place.

Despite the economic and cultural significance of Christmas in many nations, there has been relatively little geographical research on how it shapes people’s socialities, spatialities, and subjectivities. In this paper, practice theory was used to reflect on the materials, meanings, and competencies associated with older people who host the celebration at home, and thematic analysis of qualitative interviews with 20 individuals aged 65+ explored participants’ experiences of doing so. Findings reveal that homes’ material forms affect older people’s ability to host, while the ‘stuff’ of Christmas such as decorations, special foods, or gifts shape those homes as festive and welcoming places. Food sourcing and preparation were critical competencies for female participants, and shifting capacities to be a host influenced participants’ sense of autonomy and identity. Regardless of the extent to which participants celebrated Christmas, the meanings of hosting centred on social connection, contribution, and shoring up family. Choosing not to host or being unable to contribute in expected ways at Christmas could signify failure, exclusion, or incapability as an older person, parent, or citizen. Examining these issues in the case study, based in Aotearoa/New Zealand, reveals the existence and effects of the social expectations, norms, and obligations that typify Christmas. More broadly, the study highlights the need for geographers to attend to the ways in which celebrations shape and are shaped by diverse practices, places, and peoples and are assembled, reproduced, and resisted.