Geography Compass最新文献

Causality is at the core of much contemporary discussion in social sciences, philosophy, and computer science—from the establishment of basic definitions of causality to developing methods for causal inference, this discussion is increasingly finding voice within geographical literature. However, geographers have long discussed (and differed) about the role “causality” plays in our work. We present a history of contemporary definitions of causality arising from philosophy and examine how these intellectual currents interact with past and present geographical thinking about causal relations. In particular, we focus on how new thinking about counterfactual causality can help re-route inquiry around a well-known impasse: law-based causality in geography. In other words, while different perspectives around “laws” of geography exist, we argue that it is more productive to put aside these differences and find common ground in counterfactual causal thinking. To demonstrate, we outline new kinds of scholarship enabled by counterfactual causality and contemporary challenges that counterfactual causality faces in spatial analysis. Throughout, we refer interested readers to contemporary work on spatial causal inference and methods useful for scholars interested in analysing causal relationships in geographical systems.

This paper aims at calling geographers' attention to the works of Italian historical demographer Massimo Livi Bacci, who authored fundamental texts on the indigenous genocide in the Americas, on the history of world population, on global migrations and on population's environmental ‘sustainability’. In denouncing colonial crimes, critically questioning commonplaces of Malthusian origin and challenging sovereignist prejudices against migrations, Livi Bacci stresses the need for scholars to fully address the complex relations between space and population in both analyses of empirical cases and elaborations of broader theoretical models. He explicitly raises geopolitical matters on the potential political consequences of demographic and migratory dynamics. Yet, Livi Bacci's huge scholarly production is highly influential among historians and demographers, but seems to have been overlooked by most geographers hitherto. For these reasons, I argue that scholars committed to critical, radical and decolonial geographies of population (past and present) should (re)discover Livi Bacci's contributions. Re-reading Livi Bacci's works through geographical lenses and connecting them with current geographical scholarship, I show how ‘geo-demography’ can help geographers to address demographic matters at different scales, by providing insights for a new critical geo-history of population. This interdisciplinary engagement with the relations between geopolitical matters on sustainability and the ongoing changing in global population has the potential to plurally nourish critical geographical agendas, including on global migrations and colonial legacies.

This paper reviews contemporary geography literature pertaining to the development and experience of underwater spaces. Examining the underwater world as a space of practices, experiences, and visions that are both phenomenologically and geopolitically rich, the review covers research studies from human geography and cognate fields concentrating on the tourism and travel literature. After a brief overview of the many activities taking place underwater worldwide—from the evolution of the mythical Atlantis to the development of modern-day Atlantis such as underwater hotels—the paper focuses studies in three areas: the consumption of cultural and natural heritage, Self-contained underwater breathing apparatus diving and divers' experiences, and the possibility of human inhabitation of underwater realms in habitats such as underwater hotels and submarine research sites. It is argued that by becoming more familiar with underwater spaces, geographers who concentrate on tourism and marine environments can gain new perspectives that are likely to challenge the terrestrial imagination.

Right-wing populism has become increasingly embedded in contemporary political systems. It poses challenges not only for societies but also for geographical analysis. This review article develops a fresh perspective through examining how right-wing populists are engaging with urban infrastructure. Examining the literature on populism and urban infrastructure we outline ‘infrastructural populism’, a general heuristic to understand an emerging agenda of right-wing politics. Four political fields are identified: (i) urban infrastructure as a field of morals to frame the ‘people’ and the ‘elite’, (ii) urban infrastructure as a field of ideological struggle, (iii) urban infrastructure as a field of national statecraft and (iv) urban infrastructure as a field of everyday practices and politics. The review throws new light on right-wing populism by showing how central infrastructure is becoming to its contemporary articulations, and how the inherently elusive and extensive qualities of populism result in often contradictory political agendas that are both aligned with and articulated against existing politics of urban infrastructure.

Greenwashing is a well-understood concept, describing the use of false or misleading claims and symbolism to give an impression of a company or organisation's commitment to environmental protection and sustainability. While many environmental groups use the concept widely to criticise the ‘optics’ strategies of organisations wanting to improve their image while maintaining a business-as-usual approach, it has largely been ignored in Geography and related disciplines. This paper argues that we need to take greenwashing seriously. It develops a broad concept of greenwashing, suggesting that the processes of obscuring social and ecological relations via greenwashing are central to the (dis)functioning of contemporary capitalism. A critical theory of greenwashing, therefore, is not simply about challenging ‘bad actors’, but is an essential part of a wider critique of ‘green’ capitalism and Sustainable Development.

There is a growing recognition of the importance of research into the effects of climate change on mental health and wellbeing. This paper provides an overview of the pathways through which climate change can affect mental health and wellbeing, highlighting the valuable contribution that health geography can make in this field of study. Given expertise in spatial processes, human-environment interactions, and diverse research methods, health geographers are well-equipped to enhance our understanding of the connection between climate change and mental health and wellbeing. The paper proposes two key areas of future focus: (1) exploring the reciprocal relationships between mental health and place, and (2) integrating knowledge from health geography and environmental sustainability. Health geography can play a critical role in developing knowledge to support mitigation strategies and promote mental health and wellbeing in the face of climate change.

To emphasise the contribution of situated perspectives to the advancement of the field, this review provides a genealogy of night studies across southwestern Europe. This interdisciplinary field of research has significantly developed in English-speaking scholarly communities, and it has only more recently been growing in importance on southwestern European scholars' research agendas. Usually, they produce research outputs in both English and a Romance language. As a result, intertwined lines of scholarly literature emerge and contribute to the advancement of night studies to different degrees, depending on international readers' proficiency in the employed (Romance) language and (inter)disciplinary interests. To help handle this accessibility issue, this review focuses on what brings night studies together, despite their heterogeneity. That is, the geographical understanding of local night space–times as situated phenomena frequently referred to as nightscape. Accordingly, the review suggests reframing the geographical nightscape as a connective concept to bridge the gaps between multilingual and multidisciplinary research, fostering the interpretation and assemblage of hybrid theoretical frameworks for situated investigations that delve into the diverse and interdependent relations co-producing local night space–times.

Resource storage has long played a key role in the production of socio-ecological arrangements and economic relations. Even so, storage as a concept has remained somewhat marginal within geographical scholarship, often obscured by an analytical focus on the dynamics of movement. Reviewing recent works from geography, science and technology studies, and anthropology that center sites and practices of storage, this essay elaborates the diverse ways in which storage arrangements mediate resource circulation and the production of space. This literature demonstrates that thinking systematically with storage can illuminate a range of novel temporal, material, and value entanglements in-the-making, pointing to potentially fruitful avenues for future research.

A spatial perspective on microtoponyms, informal non-standardized names of small objects and places known to the locals, is an often-neglected segment of urban political toponymic theory and practice. Though critically-oriented thinkers have acknowledged the role of vernacular place names in the spatial organization of symbolic cultural landscapes, place-making processes, and the everyday life of people and their communities, conceptual spatial-political theorizations on this subject have been relatively rare. Driven upon the critical toponymic theory, this paper aims to delineate a conceptual framework for studying urban microtoponyms as spatial phenomena by integrating the toponymic plurality notion. Based on examples primarily from non-Western geographical contexts, this paper offers a fresh perspective on urban place naming practices and related spatial processes providing some analytical pathways for critical scholars in urban toponymy and guiding potential empirical investigations in this field.

Accumulation by adaptation names the phenomenon by which political and economic elites profit from climate adaptation efforts. As with the notion of ‘accumulation by dispossession’ from which it derives, the term speaks to the injustice of capital accumulation—in this case, accumulation associated with configuring some groups' vulnerability to climate change as business opportunities. However, unlike accumulation by dispossession, the mechanisms by which accumulation by adaptation proceeds have not been adequately conceptualized. This review synthesizes critiques of Marx's formulation of primitive accumulation, recent scholarship on colonial racial capitalism, and critical adaptation studies to locate how capital circulates through and reproduces the violence of climate change.