Geographical Frontiers Research Articles

Chinese Immigrants - How to cross frontiers?

The issue of racial injustice has always been a topic in today’s democratic world. Especially during the epidemic, the status of Chinese Americans has once again been questioned and discussed. My research method is mainly based on the target of different classes of people. One is the bottom-level people engaged in labor activities, so I found a group of Chinese coolies. The others are Chinese immigrants with capital who can afford to live in other countries. In my research, I championed a case of a two-fold definition for the frontier, one is the geographical frontier, and the corresponding characters are the Chinese coolies, mainly about how they came to Latin America across the vast Pacific Ocean, what is the purpose of their search for this new continent, and what did they experience during their journey. Another definition is about the ideological frontier, mainly referring to the barriers established by racism, social Darwinism, and Manifest Destiny, how Chinese immigrants are socially isolated, and how they use the law weapons against these prejudiced ideologies.

Цифровые экосистемы: двуликий Янус национального государства

Economic security of the national state is traditionally considered to be implemented only at macro level of the national economy. However, a new reality of the XXI era has shown that the key aspects of the national security are being arisen at micro level of economic activity. Innovations have created not only new factors for prosperity but given birth to specific risks and novel threats for the national state. Digital ecosystems (DESs) that have just come to light have been generating a host of state threatening consequences. Nowadays most if not all of the largest world companies are parts of digital ecosystems. Market capitalization, total sales and total business operations of the digital ecosystems equal or even exceed the gross domestic product of many independent states. A typical profile of a digital ecosystem comprises such characteristics as self-regulation and independent business; vague industry and geographic frontiers; absence of clear inner structural elements within the firm; absence or minimization of material (brick-and-stone) assets. The services of the digital ecosystems lie in a variety of highly different production, transportation, market, and after-market spheres including finance and logistics. The intangible power of DESs is based on ICT technology, e. g., M2M and IoT, which could work in an autonomous regime even off Wi-Fi areas. Cloud computing, fog computing and edge computing allow to storage and manipulate big data over the firms’ boundaries and stay off the government control. Although M2M interactions are good for telemedicine, industrial security, payment systems, etc., smart digital activity of DESs might be harmful for national economic security. Firstly, as digital ecosystems are collecting huge amount of private data, they have access to more subtle behavioral aspects of individuals than government offices. Using their private databases, DESs could influence clients in both economic and political areas. Secondly, digital cartels could implement brand-new types of price discrimination which are out of government regulations. Dynamic pricing in both sides of the digital platforms (for content providers and for consumers) could add to national inflation rates. Thirdly, information that is used to elaborate and implement government economic policy could be easily manipulated within DESs due to low quality of IT operators or because of hacker-driven misinformation. It means that the critically important statistics are in fact in the hands of the digital ecosystems, which have been transforming into tacit co-partners of government economic and social policy. In social sphere DESs have introduced a special business model, that is, worker-on-demand. Like video on demand or car sharing, employees can be hired temporarily with no labour contracts, no social security plans, no any feasible limitations on time, place, and conditions of work. Quantity of labour force, level of wages, and other important elements of working life are in the hands of algorithmic management, a special IT program elaborated by DESs’ specialists in the interests of the DESs. Such practices of labour market undermine the government social policy and increase social tensions. Digital ecosystems have changed labour resources in the direction of cyber wars. In order to defense their own infrastructure and virtual space of their activity, DESs are in the process of establishing their own cyber-army. The DES employees usually act as potential (and actual sometimes) cyber-worriers in detecting and eliminating unsanctioned penetration in digital nets of the company. The problems of digital ecosystems having too much economic power are being under consideration in many countries. For example, in China in 2021 the government replaced its former liberal IT policy for tight IT regulation of DESs. Thus, thinking about national economic security, we should take into account a new digital reality in forms of digital ecosystems and their desire (consciously or unconsciously) to substitute national state in its significant economic and social functions.

Slavery and incarceration in the frontier: the origin of convict leasing

ABSTRACT This article uses original archival research to revise the scholarly consensus on convict leasing to demonstrate that it first emerges on US soil in Kentucky’s eighteenth century frontier society (rather than in the Deep South in the wake of the 13th amendment) and that it began in a prison filled with incarcerated white people (rather than as a way to keep African Americans trapped in a condition analogous to slavery). Convict leasing was born on the frontier – in the hazy netherworld between slavery and freedom, between British colonial geographies and the territories settlers seized from indigenous peoples to establish a sovereign republic. I argue that convict leasing constituted a novel financial frontier that tethered slaveholding to new strategies for adjudicating debt to new lease arrangements for private firms. More specifically, I argue that convict leasing was inaugurated in the US in Kentucky because of its unique relationship to three related developments: the birth of the domestic slave trade, the debut of incarceration as a pervasive mode of punishment, and the plight of debtors in the aftermath of the American Revolution. This article demonstrates how Kentucky moved from being foremost understood as a geographic frontier – the expanding boundary of a new republic – to a financial frontier as the westward march of slave coffles prepared Kentucky to launch a hemp industry that was uniquely profitable. The desperate plight of debtors in the context of booming hemp profits made them especially vulnerable to Joel Scott’s innovative model for extracting profit from prison labor based on techniques African workers had developed for transforming a recalcitrant plant into an economic marvel. In this context, incarcerated white people were subjected to a labor regimen that had heretofore largely been restricted to enslaved black workers. This geographic frontier and financial frontier ushered in new legal frontiers, including the threshold marking a shift from colonial subjects to incarcerated citizens.

Grow First, Clean Up Later? Dropping Old Paradigms and Opening Up New Horizons of Sustainable Development

After almost two decades of continuous development in bio, circular, and green economy, it is time to assess the major achievements and challenges that private and public enterprises face today for further enhancing global sustainability concepts. To this end, the present thematic issue accommodates twenty articles on different topics related to circular economy development and green growth, proposing a contribution to the field of environmental economics and policy. The central feature of this Special Issue is the focus on the best practices and challenges in terms of green growth and eco-innovation in developing and transitioning structurally challenged areas. Hence, the study elaborates on the pathways of bio, circular, and green growth and eco-innovation in the context of countries with relatively low per capita income. By doing this, the collection shows that the empirically established environmental Kuznets curve—i.e., the inverted U-shaped income-environment nexus—can and must be critically questioned, at least in the contexts mentioned within the framework of our Special Issue. Hence, the geographic frontiers of environmental upgrading, carbon-saving bioeconomic development, and green growth are not limited to the economically advanced areas.

At-home blood collection and stabilization in high temperature climates using homeRNA.

Expanding whole blood sample collection for transcriptome analysis beyond traditional phlebotomy clinics will open new frontiers for remote immune research and telemedicine. Determining the stability of RNA in blood samples exposed to high ambient temperatures (>30°C) is necessary for deploying home-sampling in settings with elevated temperatures (e.g., studying physiological response to natural disasters that occur in warm locations or in the summer). Recently, we have developed homeRNA, a technology that allows for self-blood sampling and RNA stabilization remotely. homeRNA consists of a lancet-based blood collection device, the Tasso-SST™ which collects up to 0.5 ml of blood from the upper arm, and a custom-built stabilization transfer tube containing RNAlater™. In this study, we investigated the robustness of our homeRNA kit in high temperature settings via two small pilot studies in Doha, Qatar (no. participants = 8), and the Western and South Central USA during the summer of 2021, which included a heatwave of unusually high temperatures in some locations (no. participants = 11). Samples collected from participants in Doha were subjected to rapid external temperature fluctuations from being moved to and from air-conditioned areas and extreme heat environments (up to 41°C external temperature during brief temperature spikes). In the USA pilot study, regions varied in outdoor temperature highs (between 25°C and 43.4°C). All samples that returned a RNA integrity number (RIN) value from the Doha, Qatar group had a RIN ≥7.0, a typical integrity threshold for downstream transcriptomics analysis. RIN values for the Western and South Central USA samples (n = 12 samples) ranged from 6.9–8.7 with 9 out of 12 samples reporting RINs ≥7.0. Overall, our pilot data suggest that homeRNA can be used in some regions that experience elevated temperatures, opening up new geographical frontiers in disseminated transcriptome analysis for applications critical to telemedicine, global health, and expanded clinical research. Further studies, including our ongoing work in Qatar, USA, and Thailand, will continue to test the robustness of homeRNA.

From autonomous to autonomist geographies

Autonomist Marxist ideas and concepts are resurgent and, with their latent spatiality, are well placed to contribute to radical geographical debates. In particular, the methodology of ‘class composition’ analysis provides a rigorous, materialist critique of transforming capitalist social relations. This paper first provides vital historical–theoretical context from the milieu of Italian Operaismo, before emphasising the value of autonomist Marxist analyses of three contemporary geographical frontiers: labour process, migration, and social reproduction. It ultimately argues that the laudable motivations of the autonomous geographies project, explored in this very journal, would be better served through an explicitly materialist autonomist geography.

The American Adam—caught between the myth of innocence and the guilt of perpetration

The collective sense of male identity in the US is founded on a mythic hero that has permeated American literature since the nineteenth century: the American Adam. He is an innocent outsider, living free to conquer the “Wild West” within or—with the loss of the geographical frontier—beyond the national borders of the United States. Through the military machine, a man can release himself from the demands of society and recreate his sense of innocent masculinity. This male ego ideal con-tinues to be influential as the guiding principle for the political leadership of the USA. This is exemplified by psychoanalysing a documentary film about a Vietnam veteran and by an in-depth comparison of the “Adamic” quality of two recent presidents with two of Melville’s literary protagonists: Billy Budd and the Confidence-Man.

JAPANESE GUESTS AND EUROPEAN INQUIRERS: CULTURAL BARRIERS OR FLAWED HERMENEUTICS?

Martin Heidegger’s Dialogie on Language between himself and a Japanese who visited him at his home in Freiburg in March 1954 is the best known but not a singular event of this kind in the last century, either in respect to the topic (the opposition between the East and the West) or setting. The three cases we are referring to in this paper are all communications of the Platonic kind, that is, sites of debate on cultural differences. Generally perceived as statements in the unsurpassable distinctions of mental make-up mapped onto geographical frontiers, these European-Japanese encounters seem, at a closer look, to convey quite the opposite meaning encrypted, however, at a deeper, subconscious level of a false consciousenss nourished by fashionable ideas of the moment.

Battling Food Losses and Waste in Saudi Arabia: Mobilizing Regional Efforts and Blending Indigenous Knowledge to Address Global Food Security Challenges

Food Loss and Waste (FLW) that entail substantial economic, environmental, and social cost is of great concern for a country fulfilling > 80% of food demands through the import of agricultural commodities. The current study mainly aimed at bringing together a wide range of perspectives on FLW by multi-stakeholder engagement in order to enhance cooperation and network building with respect to sharing knowledge and experiences on FLW prevention activities along the entire food supply chain for a country located at the geographic frontier facing stubborn challenges of desertification, water scarcity, and harsh climatic conditions. These challenges are not only being addressed at the national level but have also been made the focus of multilateral activities in 2020 as part of the Saudi G20 Presidency. The Ministry of Environment, Water and Agriculture under the umbrella of the G20 Meeting of Agricultural Chief Scientists (MACS) hosted a regional workshop on FLW in collaboration with the Thünen Institute, Germany, to raise awareness among Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. The present paper provides insights into the current status of FLW by revealing that, overall, 33.1% of the total available food in the Kingdom is lost and wasted during the entire food supply chain. Overall, the GCC countries witnessed higher percentages of food waste compared with food losses. Environmental conditions prevailing in the region necessitate the development of adequate and appropriate cold chain storage facilities for balanced distribution through cold storage transportation facilities along the food supply chain to minimize food losses. However, campaigns and activities to raise awareness with a view of changing attitudes towards reducing FLW by the adoption of good practices, promoting the concept of circular economy practices, and the establishment of food banks for surplus food redistribution are important to mitigate FLW in the Kingdom.

Gaps, biases, and future directions in research on the impacts of anthropogenic land-use change on aquatic ecosystems: a topic-based bibliometric analysis.

Anthropogenic land use change (ALUC) satisfies human needs but also impacts aquatic ecosystems. Aquatic ecosystems are intrinsically linked with terrestrial landscapes, an association that is already recognized as a key factor to address future research and effective governance. However, the complexity and range of the impact of ALUC in aquatic ecosystems have been fundamental challenges and have implicitly routed the analysis to particular segments, drivers, management, or effects of the theme. In this study, we present an attempt to frame the subject in a broader context through a topic-based bibliometric analysis. Our aim is to identify possible biases and gaps in the current scientific literature and detect the main topics that have characterized the theme. Our results show an unequal distribution of articles by country when we analyzed the authors' affiliation and also a slight increase in contributions from social and economic disciplines, although they are still underrepresented. Moreover, we distinguish topics whose prevalence seems to change, especially those topics where the use of scenario analysis and multi-stressors are considered. We discuss the main biases and gaps revealed by our results, concluding that future studies on the impact of ALUC on aquatic ecosystems should better integrate social and economic disciplines and expand geographic frontiers.

New frontiers in international retirement migration

AbstractIntroducing the special issue, this paper provides a state-of-the-art on established and new trends in the study of international retirement migration (IRM) and summarises the five papers that follow. Early studies on IRM were mainly within Europe and drew on the conceptual framework of lifestyle migration, with some reference to the transnational and mobilities paradigms. New frontiers in IRM are presented under three heads. Firstly, new geographical frontiers extend IRM to new destinations within and proximate to Europe, and to new locations in the global South such as Thailand and Ecuador. Secondly, new typological frontiers involve a broadening of the class and wealth backgrounds of the retirees, including the ‘return of retirement’ of labour migrants to their countries of origin, and attentiveness to IRM's gendered aspects. Thirdly, new conceptual and theoretical frontiers of IRM involve a more in-depth investigation of its transnational aspects, exploration of the various regimes of mobility and, most importantly, a political economy perspective which stresses global inequalities and histories of colonialism in shaping access to privileged lifestyles. In the final part of the paper, the original features of each paper in the special issue are highlighted, demonstrating how they are collectively integrated and contribute to the advancement of IRM research.

The Development of Artique - Independent Artists and Online Art Criticism

Learning art online breaks the geographical barriers and frontiers between art students, artists, galleries, and museums. Studio critique can now be performed beyond the brick walls of a physical room through the virtual platform. This research studies on the impact of art criticism in an online gallery for independent artists which was developed through the design and development method (DDR) while Visual Culture Model was employed for Phase One in the Needs Analysis. The positive feedback obtained from five independent artists who participated in the research revealed that it is common for artists to use social networking sites as avenues for art criticism. The use of social networking sites is common among artists and regarded as valuable in their field. The respondents are supportive in the development of an online group for art criticism that could fortify their creativity and ultimately their artworks. Hence, the findings of the interview suggest that a social networking site like ARTIQUE would be a progressive platform for artists’ professional development.

The Persianate World: The Frontiers of a Eurasian Lingua Franca ed. by Nile Green

Reviewed by: The Persianate World: The Frontiers of a Eurasian Lingua Franca ed. by Nile Green Danielle Ross The Persianate World: The Frontiers of a Eurasian Lingua Franca. Edited by Nile Green. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2019. xvi + 340 pp. ISBN 978-0-520-30092-7. $34.95 (paper). The Persianate World sets out to fill a gap in both Persian studies and linguistic history: exploring the geographic frontiers of the Persian-writing world. As Nile Green notes in the book's introduction, the concepts of the "Persianate world" or "Persian zone" as a geographical space in which Persian language, literature, and culture enjoyed hegemony was articulated over fifty years ago by Marshall G. S. Hodgson in The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in World Civilization (3 vols) (Chicago University of Chicago Press, 1974). However, while the concept of a Persianate cultural-linguistic community continues to enjoy currency in Middle Eastern and Inner Asian/Eurasian history, the Persianate community has not gained the same level of prominence in the study of World History as the Latin, Greek koine, Arabic, Sanskrit, or Classical Chinese cultural-linguistic communities. Scholars and laypeople outside the field of Persian studies still tend to associate the Persian language primarily with modern Iran and, sometimes, with Islam in general. The Persianate World's fourteen contributors, an international collective of junior and senior scholars specializing in Ottoman, Russian, Central Asian, South Asia, and/or East Asian history, set out to address these issues by documenting "Persographic" culture (the production and consumption of texts in the Persian language) on the [End Page 161] outskirts of the Persianate zone. Their focus on the "frontier" serves two purposes: (1) to denationalize the history of Persianate culture by emphasizing the role of non-native speakers in Persianate literary production; (2) to challenge the image of Persian as an Islamic language by examining non-Muslim participation in Persian written culture. The Persianate World begins with an introduction in which Green describes the geographical spaces, human communities, and chronological periods that made up the Persianate world. Green's history begins in the 800s C.E. after the spread of Islam into Indo-Iranian-speaking regions and ends in the first decades of the twentieth century as new nation states and national movements promoted printing and education in vernacular languages as an alternative to transnational Persographic culture. The Persianate World focuses on the last five hundred years of this history, 1400 to 1900. The book's first section, "Pan-Eurasian Expansion," explores the spread of Persian writing into peripheral regions of the Persianate world in the 1400s–1600s. Murat Umut Inan details the embrace of Persian in the Ottoman Empire's imperial-bureaucratic and religious-mystical circles. Thibaut d'Hubert traces the use of Persian as a ritual language among villagers in Bengal. Graeme Ford draws attention to Ming bureaucrats' use of Persian as a diplomatic language for communications with Central Asia. Devin DeWeese considers the presence and limits of Persian literature in the Middle Volga region and Siberia. The second section, "The Constraints of Cosmopolitanism," teases out the limits of Persian's influence as a literary language and its decline in prestige from 1600 to 1800. Purima Dhavan uses the careers of several Punjabi authors to explore the failure of Persian to overcome factional competition and create a unified, cosmopolitan intellectual world. David Brophy argues that Turkic replaced Persian as the Qing dynasty's language of diplomatic communications with Central Asia. Alfrid Bustanov shows how students traveling to Bukhara were the main conveyors of Persianate literature to northern Eurasia; these students' choice of other educational destinations (Egypt, Istanbul, Moscow) over Bukhara led to the diminishment of Persian-language knowledge among Russia's Muslims. Alexandre Papas argues that the status of Persian in Eastern Turkistan as an erudite language limited the number of people who mastered it and, ultimately, led to Persian being perceived as a language of the occult. The third section, "New Empires, New Nations," offers four case studies of the complicated fate of Persographic culture in the 1800s–1920s. Michael Fisher argues that Persian enjoyed continued [End Page 162] and even increased prestige in India under British rule...

Reversing retirement frontiers in the spaces of post-socialism: active ageing through migration for work

AbstractThis paper reworks the notion of active ageing through analysis of a case which reverses the retirement-migration nexus – people in the post-socialist realm who approach retirement age and then migrate to begin a new working life. They are thereby introducing a new and complex arrangement to the general concept of ‘international retirement migration’. In the post-socialist world, new retirement migration frontiers emerge in the context of a severe weakening of welfare systems. I illustrate this case with data from long-term research with ageing Latvian migrant women to the United Kingdom and the Nordic countries. Even those whose old-age pensions are more or less adequate nevertheless seek temporary employment and new cultural experiences abroad. However, the dominant trend has been towards the pauperisation of older parents and those approaching retirement age due to the significant decline in state welfare. This case of many older-age Latvians whode factocannot retire due to low disposable income reveals ‘reverse frontiers of retirement’: working as long as they can, pushing their personal geographical frontiers outward by emigrating for work and making national frontiers more porous through transnational practices. Conceptually and geographically, the research holds relevance for a wider discussion of trends and contextual factors in other post-Soviet and post-socialist countries with increasing diversities among retirees.

“And the Image of the Emperor [...] I Have Torn Itinto a Thousand Pieces.” Mental Frontiers in the Năsăud Region at the End of the Great War

The First World War and the events concluding 1918, namely the unification of Transylvania with the old Kingdom of Romania, changed not only the geographical frontiers of the former Austrian-Hungarian province, but also the mental ones, which are less evident from the official documents of the era. The purpose of our exploratory study is to use edited archival documents, memoirs, and parochial chronicles in order to reconstruct the local context in which the transition from the ‘old’ to the ‘new order’ unfolded. The study focuses on a clearly delimited geographical area with a distinctive historical evolution: the region of Năsăud. Using the memoirs of veterinarian Pavel Tofan as a case study, we focused on identifying the symbolic gestures which mentally transformed the inhabitants of this region from loyal subjects of the Emperor in Vienna to Romanian citizens, loyal to the King of United Romania.

New Frontiers in Travel Motivation and Social Media: The Case of Longyearbyen, the High Arctic

Tourism explores new frontiers by traveling around unknown geographical and technological territories that bring new tourism opportunities and hazards to satisfy visitors’ needs and sustainability and responsibility in destinations. This study introduces a composite model for measuring travel motivation and the impact of social media on travel behavior and applies it to the town of Longyearbyen in the High Arctic. Both aspects were surveyed through qualitative semi-structured visitor interviews. While the motivation to visit Longyearbyen depended on travelers’ needs, their travel experiences, and push and pull motivational factors, respondents gave examples of how social media positively or negatively affected different elements of their motivation and visitation. The study indicates the opportunities and hazards analyzed from social media as well as future research directions needed in the pursuit of a more responsible tourism approach while exploring new technological and geographical frontiers.

Correlação entre a distribuição de epicentros e a magnitude de terremotos ocorridos nos Andes de 2003 e 2018

Segunda etapa de projeto de investigação da lei de Gutenberg-Richter (1949) para a relação entre magnitude e frequência de terremotos, este trabalho traduz os resultados de uma investigação feita sobre os sismos andinos, como registrados na base de dados do USGS, entre 2003 e 2018. O recorte espacial contempla toda a faixa tectônica ativa na margem W da América do Sul, mas procura distinguir, entre os fatores que delimitam a análise, não apenas os contatos tectônicos mas também a geometria da margem continental. Além de apontar grande variação na frequência de sismos ao longo da faixa estudada, também se oferece um modelo alternativo para a segmentação dos clusters de epicentros associados a sismos mais profundos.

Secularism and its Evolution in Muslim Society: A Research Study

The concept of Secularism came to the Muslim world after Renaissance. Historically, the initial thoughts on the subject are found in the teachings of Greek Philosophers like Epicurus and Zeno. It was at first a discussion regarding the separation of religion and the state, the scientific advancements and the regime system in Modern Europe. Religion was considered as an obstacle by the West in their progress on the basis of reason and inquiry. Adaptation of secular approach helped the western countries to flourish in material fields. In Islamic world, secularism was not seen as a threat for religion before the twentieth century. Under colonization of many Muslim countries and particularly after the demise of Ottoman Empire which paved way to abolish Caliphate, the Muslim states adopted various western secular laws. Moreover, the Muslim countries went under heavy debts taken from European countries. They relied on foreign advisors and western education system for progress. The concept regarding the authority of Caliph changed. During the twentieth century, Muslim countries suffered politically and their geographical frontiers were changed. It created a kind of revolution in Muslim states. Revival of religious authority in modern political Muslim states is visible in central eastern countries during the last fifty years.

Frontier Intermediaries: Army Laundresses at Fort Davis, Texas

As contested spaces, frontiers are the ideal location in which to study identity, as inhabitants of these landscapes constantly experience and actively negotiate among the multiple lived realities that are shaped by conflicting ideologies. I propose the use of third-space and borderlands theory as frameworks for understanding the fluidity of experiences in the American frontier during the 19th century. Through a look at a community of laundresses in Fort Davis, Texas, I show how life on the edge—or perhaps in the middle—of geographic and social frontiers allowed inhabitants of these contested spaces to construct and redefine new personhoods. Moreover, I assert that women’s participation in food provisioning and preparation allowed them to act as cultural brokers across various scales of community interaction.

Gender boundaries in Saiyūki by Kazuya Minekura: the queer family as a model of leadership

ABSTRACT In the fantasy world created by Kazuya Minekura for the manga series Saiyūki, the Buddhist monk Genjō Sanzō and his three companions are asked to travel from China to India because sinister experiments undermine the possibility of peaceful coexistence between humans and demons in the lands of Tōgenkyō. While the series’ motto ‘Go West’ would seem to suggest clear geographical, cultural and racial frontiers, masculine issues complicate the portrayal of gender boundaries. Accordingly, by drawing on psychoanalysis and gender studies, this contribution will provide insight into Saiyūki’s male relationships, arguing that the protagonists’ journey towards the setting sun may stand as a metaphor for the pursuit of a father figure that is continuously lost and recreated. The persistent hybridisation between the sun and the moon may thus epitomise the attempt to promote androgynous models of leadership, inviting the main protagonist to explore himself through an imposed fatherhood that is nonetheless achieved without the feminine other.