Global Geography Research Articles

GISphere Knowledge Graph for Geography Education: Recommending Graduate Geographic Information System/Science Programs

ABSTRACTThe growing global interest in Geographic Information System/Science (GIS) programs has led to an increased demand for higher education in this field. However, students often struggle to identify suitable programs and faculty due to the overwhelming options and the lack of personalized guidance. This paper presents GISphere‐KG, an AI‐powered platform based on the GISphere project. It combines knowledge graph (KG) and large language models (LLMs) to enhance the search and recommendation of GIS‐related graduate programs. GISphere‐KG offers four key features: (1) interactive conversation that provides natural language responses to applicants' inquiries; (2) efficient information retrieval through semantic relationships built within the KG; (3) discovery of professors whose research interests align with those of the applicants, offering more choices within specific research fields; and (4) personalized program recommendations tailored to applicants' academic and career developments. Our platform aims to provide a user‐friendly tool that assists prospective students in achieving their career goals and enriching the geography community by attracting more talent and promoting global geography education.

The Gene Editing Business: Rent Extraction in the Biotech Industry

ABSTRACT This article analyses the mechanisms governing the extraction, circulation, and distribution of rent in the biotech industry. Building on recent scholarship, it contributes to debates surrounding the importance of rent in technoscientific capitalism. We analyse genome editing as a global labour process. Part One examines the ongoing patent battle over CRISPR-Cas9 as a struggle for control over a foundational biotechnology increasingly central to several industrial sectors: a process of enclosure that facilitates a shift towards monopoly, rent extraction, and financial speculation. Part Two then details how patented CRISPR technologies are valorised through the construction of global, multi-layered infrastructures of rent extraction based on complex webs of financial and licensing deals. Part Three maps the uneven global geographies of CRISPR patenting. It considers how monopoly power emerges through the continuous conversion of public research into private assets, and how this enclosure reinforces profoundly unequal systems of distribution of royalties and rents in the global biopolitical economy. We interrogate how CRISPR technologies cement and expand neocolonial geographies of rent extraction, privatising the economic benefits and socialising the ecological risks. Finally, we argue that an increasingly monopolistic corporate biopower mediates how genome editing technologies are developed, and which mutant ecologies are socially produced.

Compute North vs. Compute South: The Uneven Possibilities of Compute-based AI Governance Around the Globe

Governments have begun to view AI compute infrastructures, including advanced AI chips, as a geostrategic resource. This is partly because “compute governance” is believed to be emerging as an important tool for governing AI systems. In this governance model, states that host AI compute capacity within their territorial jurisdictions are likely to be better placed to impose their rules on AI systems than states that do not. In this study, we provide the first attempt at mapping the global geography of public cloud GPU compute, one particularly important category of AI compute infrastructure. Using a census of hyperscale cloud providers’ cloud regions, we observe that the world is divided into “Compute North” countries that host AI compute relevant for AI development (ie. training), “Compute South” countries whose AI compute is more relevant for AI deployment (ie. running inferencing), and “Compute Desert” countries that host no public cloud AI compute at all. We generate potential explanations for the results using expert interviews, discuss the implications to AI governance and technology geopolitics, and consider possible future trajectories.

Foreign investment screening mechanisms and emergent geographies of (post)globalization

Technologically advanced states and large emerging economies increasingly use foreign investment screening mechanisms (FISM) to block inward foreign investment targeting sectors considered critical. Is the proliferation of FISM auguring an era of deglobalization, a re-assertion of national-state sovereignty over globalized economic ties, and the end of neoliberal orthodoxies of liberalized investment regimes? To answer these questions, the article draws upon geographic political economy and legal geographies. It argues that the multiplication of FISM is a response to a strategic context defined by three macrogeographic trends: (1) contemporary industrial restructuring and the salience of intellectual property-based monopolies; (2) a historic episode of centralization of capital driven by strategic mergers and acquisitions; and (3) evolving landscapes of state capitalism under conditions of intensified geoeconomic competition. Although FISM reproduce the fiction of state power as expressing the will of the sovereign nation to defend itself against foreign interference, market distortion, and technology theft, they consist of legally enshrining state authority to support national champions, and making sure they engage favorably with competitive dynamics of capital centralization, notably by conserving their monopoly over key intangible assets and strategic resources. FISM are best seen as tools that explicitly mobilize state power and coercion to aggressively (re)negotiate globalization.

The global geography of artificial intelligence in life science research

Artificial intelligence (AI) promises to transform medicine, but the geographic concentration of AI expertize may hinder its equitable application. We analyze 397,967 AI life science research publications from 2000 to 2022 and 14.5 million associated citations, creating a global atlas that distinguishes productivity (i.e., publications), quality-adjusted productivity (i.e., publications stratified by field-normalized rankings of publishing outlets), and relevance (i.e., citations). While Asia leads in total publications, Northern America and Europe contribute most of the AI research appearing in high-ranking outlets, generating up to 50% more citations than other regions. At the global level, international collaborations produce more impactful research, but have stagnated relative to national research efforts. Our findings suggest that greater integration of global expertize could help AI deliver on its promise and contribute to better global health.

Ferdinand Magellan's Circumnavigation: Revolutionizing Global Navigation, Trade, and Cultural Exchange

Ferdinand Magellan's first circumnavigation of the globe marked a pivotal moment in worldwide exploration, profoundly shaping navigation, geography, and trade. This study examines the motivations behind Magellan's voyage, focusing on the strategic and economic significance of the Moluccas, and explores how the expedition revolutionized European understanding of global geography. Utilizing primary sources, particularly Antonio Pigafetta's detailed accounts, the research highlights Magellan's journey's contributions to cartography, the establishment of new trade routes, and the cultural exchanges between Europeans and indigenous peoples. The findings underscore the expedition's role in enhancing global trade networks and expanding scientific knowledge, paving the way for future explorations and integrating a globalized world.

The social reproduction of agrarian change: Feminist political economy and rural transformations in the global south. An introduction

AbstractThe last decade has seen a renaissance of feminist political economy studies centred on the concept of ‘social reproduction’. These aim at studying global capitalism from the vantage‐point of what produces and sustains life, expanding the social boundaries of processes and subjects analysed in political economy. Contributing to this research agenda, the special issue we present in this Introduction explores the Social Reproduction of Agrarian Change. Building on the contributions comprising this collection, we argue that the study of agrarian change through social reproduction enables us to de‐invisibilise processes of life‐making behind agrarian transformations in three distinct ways. First, the lens of social reproduction enables us to better grasp the regeneration of ‘classes of labour’ in rural areas; gender processes of de‐agrarianisation and their implications for livelihoods; and centre reproductive labour within and beyond the household ‐ across spaces and temporalities ‐ as central to life in the countryside. Secondly, this lens also allows us to complicate the land question beyond productivist readings, explore its significance for life in rural settings, and multiply the agrarian questions of our times, whose histories and trajectories must grapple with debates on economic justice. Finally, the study of the social reproduction of agrarian change also provides us with a novel vantage point to read the formation and reorganisation of complex global geographies of the rural, their relation to crises of social reproduction and the ability to redraw the urban–rural divide. All contributions in this issue insightfully advance debates on methods in social reproduction analysis. The study of the agrarian lifeworlds analysed here also contributes significantly to social reproduction debates. It challenges rigid dichotomies between the ‘productive’ and ‘reproductive’. It problematises the households as a unit of analysis and sets land as central to planetary debates on crises of social reproduction and their resolution.

Mapping the global geography of cybercrime with the World Cybercrime Index

Mapping the global geography of cybercrime with the World Cybercrime Index

Mapping the global geography of cybercrime with the World Cybercrime Index.

Cybercrime is a major challenge facing the world, with estimated costs ranging from the hundreds of millions to the trillions. Despite the threat it poses, cybercrime is somewhat an invisible phenomenon. In carrying out their virtual attacks, offenders often mask their physical locations by hiding behind online nicknames and technical protections. This means technical data are not well suited to establishing the true location of offenders and scholarly knowledge of cybercrime geography is limited. This paper proposes a solution: an expert survey. From March to October 2021 we invited leading experts in cybercrime intelligence/investigations from across the world to participate in an anonymized online survey on the geographical location of cybercrime offenders. The survey asked participants to consider five major categories of cybercrime, nominate the countries that they consider to be the most significant sources of each of these types of cybercrimes, and then rank each nominated country according to the impact, professionalism, and technical skill of its offenders. The outcome of the survey is the World Cybercrime Index, a global metric of cybercriminality organised around five types of cybercrime. The results indicate that a relatively small number of countries house the greatest cybercriminal threats. These findings partially remove the veil of anonymity around cybercriminal offenders, may aid law enforcement and policymakers in fighting this threat, and contribute to the study of cybercrime as a local phenomenon.

National tourism organizations and climate change

There is a consensus that the global tourism system needs to undergo decarbonization and achieve net-zero emissions by mid-century. However, given the anticipated growth in the most energy-intensive subsector of tourism, air transport, achieving this goal seems unlikely. This paper focuses on the role of distance in the global geography of tourism, against evidence that National Marketing Organizations (NTOs) often seek to attract visitors from all over the world. The analysis of data for a sample of 12 NTOs in Europe, the USA and Canada reveals that the number of markets targeted varies between six and 33, with significant differences in the average distance to markets (<4,000 to 8,000 km), as well as emissions per arrival by market (0.2 t CO2 to 2.5 t CO2). For the countries studied, the 17% of the most distant arrivals cause 62% of the emissions. Results also show that more distant markets are more sensitive to disruptions such as COVID-19. These findings have relevance for destination marketing that point to new climate change related roles for NTOs such as rebranding, demarketing, market segmentation, and communication.

Skilled Immigrants, Firms, and the Global Geography of Innovation

This article begins with an overview of the policy environment in the United States and abroad for skilled immigration, with a particular focus on “supply-driven” versus “demand-driven” systems. The overview emphasizes that firms play a central role in the skilled immigration process in most countries. I then survey the ample evidence that skilled immigrants have a strong positive effect on firm outcomes, followed by a discussion of the many margins of adjustment that firms have when their access to skilled immigrants is affected by national immigration policy. Finally, given such margins of adjustment and the importance of skilled immigrants to firms, I consider how the policies that affect skilled migration shape the global geography and quality of innovation. I conclude by discussing policy implications and open questions. In particular, I emphasize that evaluations of the impact of skilled immigration should not be constrained within borders: immigration flows and national immigration policies affect the global geography of innovation and investment.

Research on the Application of Global Geography in the Geography Teaching of the Second Year of Junior High School at Chuxiong Normal University Affiliated High School

Research on the Application of Global Geography in the Geography Teaching of the Second Year of Junior High School at Chuxiong Normal University Affiliated High School

Jewish Global Geography: From the Second Temple Period to Rabbinic Literature

Jewish Global Geography: From the Second Temple Period to Rabbinic Literature

Are AgriFoodTech start-ups the new drivers of food systems transformation? An overview of the state of the art and a research agenda

AgriFoodTech start-ups are coming to be seen as relevant players in the debate around and reality of the transformation of food systems, especially in view of emerging or already-established novel technologies (such as Artifical Intelligence, Sensors, Precision Fermentation, Robotics, Nanotechnologies, Genomics) that constitute Agriculture 4.0 and Food 4.0. However, so far, there have only been limited studies of this phenomena, which are scattered across disciplines, with no comprehensive overview of the state of the art and outlook for future research. In this paper, we argue that AgriFoodTech start-up ecosystems should receive more attention by researchers and policy makers as a relatively new, and potentially transformative, component of agrifood innovation systems, which adopt a narrative of offering a solution to the global challenges of sustainability and food security. To this end we review the extant literature and provide a brief overview of this emerging field of study, in which we sketch what constitutes an AgriFoodTech start-up, the start-up ecosystems from which they often emerge and show the potentials and pitfalls of the contribution of AgriFoodTech start-ups to food security and food systems transformation. In order to spur further research in this area, we outline four main lines for a research agenda: 1) the global geography of AgriFoodTech start-up ecosystems; 2) the role of AgriFoodTech start-ups in different food system transformation pathways and resolving food security challenges; 3) the effect of AgriFoodTech start-ups on agrifood innovation, and; 4) the influence of public policies on AgriFoodTech start-up ecosystems.

The “European Yellowstone”: Entrepreneurs of the Wilderness and Transnational Elites in the Romanian Carpathians

AbstractCarpathia—dubbed the “European Yellowstone”—is a private nature conservation project in Romania. Its establishment activates a critical linkage between entrepreneurs of the wilderness and transnational conservation elites. We indicate the contribution of entrepreneurialism to the expansion and adaptation of neoliberal conservation and reveal how biographical contingencies are involved in the making of conservation projects. At the same time, the focus on transnationalism reveals how local projects are designed, scaled‐up, and connected to global neoliberal conservation networks. Carpathia reveals the adaptability of neoliberal conservation and its expansion into the Eastern European peripheries through transnational elites. Its establishment illustrates how private conservation projects become essential sites for securing privileged access to nature in times of global ecological crises and uncovers the varieties of the global geographies of capitalist conservation.

The coloniality of green extractivism: Unearthing decarbonisation by dispossession through the case of nickel

This article elaborates on the notion of “decarbonisation by dispossession” in order to shed light on the contradictory character of capital-driven energy transitions. First, we suggest conceptualising “decarbonisation” as a “socio-ecological fix” to intersecting, climate-induced crises of accumulation and hegemony, aimed at saving capital rather than the planet. Second, reflecting on the mineral intensity of “low carbon” technologies such as industrial-scale solar and wind farms, we approach ongoing transitions as a form of “extractivism”: a form of predatory appropriation of land and resources, embedded in global geographies of unequal ecological and value exchange. Third, examining the case of nickel, we argue that, despite elements that complicate a clear North-South binary, capital-driven transitions are ultimately reinforcing the colonial character of energy provision; they are causing an expansion of “transition mineral” frontiers and associated dispossession effects, and creating sacrifice zones of extraction and processing concentrated in formerly colonised countries. Considering also the contradictory outcomes of mineral-intensive transitions in terms of CO2 emissions reduction, our findings point to a structural inability of capital to solve its ecological contradiction. We conclude that radical proposals for a genuinely “just” transition, including those that mobilise a Green New Deal framework, should aim to decouple energy provision (and the reproduction of life more generally) from the material and epistemic violence of colonial-extractive capitalism.

Territories of War: A Spatial Reading of Grotius' Ius Belli

This article considers how Grotius' ideas on war have mirrored the nexus between the construction of a territorialized order of sovereign states, the emergence of a world-wide system of exchange and accumulation, and the dynamics of imperial expansion. It will be argued that in order to understand the scope and the ambivalences of the jurist's multifaceted account of the laws of war and his dealings with the traditional literature on just war, it is necessary to elucidate the spatial frameworks underlying his theory, as well as the complex and global geography of power existing in the early seventeenth century.

The Timing of Global Floods and Its Association With Climate and Topography

AbstractUntil recently, the development of a global geography of floods was challenged by the fragmentation and heterogeneity of in situ data and the high costs of processing large amounts of remote sensing data. Such geography would facilitate the exploration of large‐scale drivers of flood extent and timing including wide latitudinal, climate, and topographic effects. Here we used a monthly data set spanning 30 years (Global Surface Water) to develop a worldwide geographical characterization of slow floods (1‐degree grid), weighting the relative contribution of seasonal, interannual, and long‐term fluctuations on overall variability, and quantified precipitation‐flooding delays where seasonality dominated. We explored the dominance of different flooding timings across five main Köppen‐Geiger climates and seven topography classes derived from modeled water table depths (i.e., hydro‐topography) to contribute top‐down insight about the most salient, cross‐regional flooding patterns and their likely large‐scale drivers. Our results showed that, globally, the mean extent of floods averaged 0.48% of the global land area, predominantly associated with hydro‐topography (&gt;2× more extensive in flatter landscapes). Climate drove flood timings, with predictable, seasonally dominated fluctuations in cold regions, interannual, and mixed patterns in temperate climates, and more irregular (higher variability) and unpredictable (less seasonal) patterns in arid regions. Net gains of flooded area dominated temporal variability in 9% of the cells including boreal clusters likely affected by warming trends. We propose that this new geographical perspective of floods can aid different avenues of hydrological research in the upscaling and extrapolation of field studies and the parsimonious representation of floods in hydroclimatic models.

Economic Activity across Space: A Supply and Demand Approach

What do recent advances in economic geography teach us about the spatial distribution of economic activity? We show that the equilibrium distribution of economic activity can be determined simply by the intersection of labor supply and demand curves. We discuss how to estimate these curves and highlight the importance of global geography—the connections between locations through the trading network—in determining how various policy relevant changes to geography shape the spatial economy.

Localizing Globality in Early Capitalist Basel

Abstract This paper seeks to locate globality in Basel’s urban society during the emergence of capitalism (1670–1780). It seeks to globalize patrimonial historiography and local history by “inverting the telescope” as micro-historians have suggested. It analyzes how the leading actors in a Swiss city situated on the borders of France and the Holy Roman Empire participated in the new capitalism and positioned their society within a new global geography increasingly shaped by an Atlantic beyond the empires. To do so, it asks how the city’s cosmopolitan elite bonded locally and acted globally in times of accelerated economic and social transformation. Exploring people who capitalized social, economic, and political borders deepens our understanding of the multi-layered process of early globalization and contributes to the new history of capitalism. The micro-global focus on Basel’s specific locality illuminates the conceptual potential for global history in the nexus between war capitalism and global capitalism.