Human Geography Research Articles

Psychological and Academic Adaptation Through Universal Ethnic Studies Classes: Results of a Natural Experiment.

Schools in the United States are increasingly offering ethnic studies classes, which focus on exploring students' ethnic-racial identities (ERI) and critical analysis of systemic racism, to their diverse student bodies, yet scant research exists on their effectiveness for students of different ethnic-racial backgrounds in multiracial classrooms. A policy change to require all high school students in one school district to take an ethnic studies class facilitated a natural experiment for comparing the effects of quasi-random assignment to an ethnic studies class (treatment) relative to a traditional social studies class (control; e.g., U.S. Government, Human Geography). Student surveys and school administrative data were used to compare students' ERI development, well-being, and academic outcomes across ethnic studies and control classes. Participants (N = 535 9th graders; 66.1% ethnic studies) had diverse ethnic-racial (33.5% non-Latine White, 29.5% Black, 21.1% Latine, 10.7% biracial, 2.8% Asian, 2.2% Native American) and gender identities (44.7% female, 7.1% non-binary). Ethnic studies students reported marginally higher ERI exploration and resolution than controls, and sensitivity analyses showed a statistically significant effect on ERI among participants with complete midpoint surveys. Higher resolution was associated with better psychological well-being for all students and higher attendance for White students. Students with low middle school grades (GPA < 2.0) had better high school grades in core subjects when enrolled in ethnic studies than the control class. Overall, the results of this natural experiment provide preliminary support for ethnic studies classes as a method for promoting ERI development, well-being, attendance, and academic achievement for students from diverse ethnic-racial backgrounds.

Toward a Sociology of Water: Reconstructing the Missing “Big Picture” of Social Water Research

In recent years, significant advancements have been made in the field of social water research. This is especially reflected in the emergence and consolidation of three influential theoretical approaches in hydrology, human geography, and anthropology: socio-hydrology, hydrosocial theory, and the multiple ontologies of water, respectively. While the present paper acknowledges the great merits of each of these perspectives, it starts from the identification of two important shortcomings in current social water research: the dispersion of the literature in distinct disciplinary sub-fields and the lack of specifically sociological approaches to hydrosocial issues. Accordingly, the aim of this paper is twofold: to offer a “big picture” of current social water research from a sociological–theoretical perspective and to initiate a fruitful conversation between sociologists and social water researchers from other disciplines.

Reconceptualizing Justice in Human Geography: Landscape as Basic Structure, Justice as the Right to Justification

This article argues that geographers should rededicate themselves to developing a positive theory of justice. In the past fifty years, research has made enormous strides in theorizing injustice, but mostly geographers rely on commonsense and unexamined notions of justice as “fairness.” In this article, I trace this avoidance of justice theorizing to the way geographers originally engaged with Rawls’s foundation work and argue that his A Theory of Justice should be reexamined to better understand one of the central concepts: the “basic structure,” especially as it has been reformulated by feminist political theorists. I argue that the landscape is a key component of the basic structure and understanding it as such offers a first step in a positive theory of justice that is deeper than the commonsense justice-as-fairness. Having established landscape as basic structure, I then argue that a second step toward a full theory of justice would be to understand justice as the “right to justification” (as theorized by the Frankfurt School’s Forst). The end result—combining landscape as basic structure with justice as the right to justification—is a theory that allows for assessing both “minimally” and “maximally” just geographies.

“Mental map” in “Letters of a Russian Traveler” by Nikolay Karamzin and the problem of the national myth representation

The article analyzes “Letters of a Russian Traveler” by Nikolay Karamzin in terms of the symbolic-mythological perception of space, suggesting a view of the countries, depicted in the travelogue, as symbolic-mythological units of the “mental map” in the book. A “mental map” is understood as a holistic image of a geographical space, value-restructured in accordance with the author’s vision of European cultural and the historical situation. The purpose of the work is to reveal the hidden additional plot of Karamzin’s book, which determines the logic of the perception of geographical space and its comprehension, taking into account the historical and political situation witnessed by Karamzin’s hero-traveler. Using the methodology of the structural-semiotic, historical-genetic and comparative-typological reading of the text, as well as the methodology of human geography, the article shows how Karamzin generalizes ideas about the logic of the Western European history and culture development at the end of the 18th century. We also characterize the writer’s symbolic and mythological view of the cultural dialogue between Russia and Europe, the place and role of the “Letters...” of France, Switzerland, England and the countries of the German world on the “mental map”. Conclusions are drawn about the significance of the spatial image of “Letters...” for the design of Karamzin’s historical and political concept of the late 18th century, in which the key role was played by the ideas of the dialogue, the ability to evaluate the achievements of European culture and to develop the potential of Russian culture.

Seachange Migration, Outer Metropolitan Suburbanisation, and Marginality: The Electoral Politics of the Central Coast of New South Wales, 1949–2001

Seachanging and the expansion of suburbia led to important changes in Australia's human geography during the second half of the twentieth century. However, the implications of domestic migration on electoral politics have received only limited study. The Central Coast of New South Wales was one place where these two patterns of movement converged and which came to be routinely identified in public debate as electorally marginal. In reviewing this discursive positioning across both federal and state politics over several decades, the article examines how the region's marginality was often linked to the social mix created by migration primarily from Sydney, among which retirees and long distance commuters received particular attention as cohorts of voters. The analysis then turns to electoral competition in what was thus seen as a contestable space. This spanned national, state, and local issues and the major parties sometimes pre‐selected candidates offering very distinct value propositions. Overall, the Central Coast's regional political discourse reflected wider understandings of voting realignment seen around Australia, including changing perspectives on class, but also highlights how migration created new, formative communities where marginality was viewed as an important part of local political identity and practice.

“These are our children and we got to set them free”: A public health approach to reading reproductive justice in black literature

This paper explores reproductive justice themes in different works of Black literature and juxtaposes that literature with modern scholarship to consider a reproductive justice agenda for public health researchers. Incorporating multiple disciplines including public health, critical geography, and anthropology, this paper goes on to suggest that public health researchers would benefit from engagement with works from beyond academia. Specifically looking into Black fiction, nonfiction, and autobiographical writing, this paper traces reproductive justice themes and suggests that attention to these themes will bolster academic public health scholarship aligned with the reproductive justice movement

Landscape and Social Disruption from Sand Mining and Mining-Related Activities: A Case from the Vietnamese Mekong Delta

The heavy global demand for sand in various sectors of the economy subjects the Vietnamese Mekong Delta to correspondingly high amounts of sand mining—a process that started in the early 1990s contributing significantly to the Vietnamese economy. The impacts of intensive sand mining and mining-related industries damage the integrity of the river and local communities. Much of the literature focuses on the former, exposing people to the deleterious implications of sand mining on the physical environment. This study aims to fill the gap on the less explored latter through the lenses of place and landscape per human geography tradition, using qualitative methods of thirty-five interviews with locals, video recordings, and sound measurements to highlight the impacts of sand mining and mining-related industries. This study revealed that sand mining and its associated activities are responsible for people’s perceptions of notable air, land, and noise pollution, as well as substantial harm to the urban environment. Over 80 percent of interviewed locals acknowledged the disruptions to their daily lives and a substantial loss of their sense of place. These findings shed light on narratives frequently overlooked by policymakers, emphasizing the urgency of addressing these issues for a sustainable future.

Robotics in place and the places of robotics: productive tensions across human geography and human–robot interaction

Robotics in place and the places of robotics: productive tensions across human geography and human–robot interaction

Critical Muslim geographies through a critical geography of Islamophobia

In this commentary, I focus on James Sidaway's contribution to critical Muslim geographies and his suggestions for moving beyond decoloniality that do not hesitate to take a stand against the current direction of mainstream studies on Islam and Muslims. While I agree with many of his points, I detail three critical thoughts around (i) the idea of integrating terminologies specific to Islam and Muslims into the scholarship of Muslim geographies to transcend existing colonial logics; (ii) the need to give a greater voice to Muslim geographers as Black and feminist geographies have done; and (iii) the difficulty of measuring the Muslim identity of geographers. Drawing on my critical thinking about the geographies of Islamophobia, I highlight how normalized structural practices have led to silencing the voices of even the greatest geographers in human history.

For an Anarchist Decolonial Agenda: New Perspectives on Anarchism, Marronage, and Indigeneity from Brazil/Pindorama

AbstractThis paper proposes new perspectives on anarchism, indigeneity, and Afro‐descendent struggles, by discussing the case of Brazilian anarchists’ commitment to luta afroindígena. They mean by this term the intersection of indigenous and Afro‐descendant resistances for the recognition of land, against the violence of states, agribusiness, and extractivism. I argue that this case offers key insights to radical geographies, and to the broader field of decolonial scholarship, to challenge cultural and racial essentialisms by connecting different militant traditions. I also argue that, taking inspiration from indigenous thought and socio‐territorial practices of broader Latin American social movements, these cases enhance decolonial bids for “decolonising methodologies” by showing the importance of starting from practices before theory. My arguments are based on documentary work on past and present relations between anarchism and decoloniality in Latin America/Abya Yala, on personal militant work in Brazil/Pindorama, and on a sample of qualitative interviews with activists.

Dutch inspiration for an engaged pluralist historiography of geography

This paper introduces to an international audience the ‘encyclopaedic approach’ to geographical historiography. This approach was developed at the Free University of Amsterdam between 1961 and 1987 by Marcus Heslinga and Andries Kouwenhoven. Signalling how contemporary geography is hampered by the silofication of different subdisciplines and how a better understanding of our shared and pluriform histories can help overcome these silos, the encyclopaedic approach demonstrates how an ‘engaged pluralist’ historiography of geography could take shape. Testifying to its bridge-building character, the approach was developed in response to decades of acerbic conflict between rivalling schools of human geography in the Netherlands. Its central premises involve an acknowledgement that geography is a dynamic discipline with shifting formal and material objects and an empirical strategy to map and relate these different conceptual fields.

THE GEOGRAPHICAL INTERPRETATION OF THE REGION «CENTRAL EUROPE»

Today on the political map of the world, Europe occupies a special position, plays an important role in defining and shaping the modern global world order. The full-scale war taking place in the heart of Europe indicates the relevance of the problem of civilizational confrontation in the 21st century and the difficulty in geographically defining those territories and natural regions that occupy a buffer position. Such geography not only determines the degree and rationality of the use of natural conditions and resources, but also the intensity and direction of the reconstruction of the landscape structure of the region, the transformation of natural landscapes into various groups of man-made ones, their subsequent changes and anthropogenic layering. Central Europe is a special region of Europe. This territory has always been at the forefront of scientific and political knowledge during the most difficult stages of the historical formation and development of Europe. In the 20s of the 21st century, it did not lose its importance, and the transformational processes shaping the geopolitical situation in the Northern Hemisphere and on the continent of Eurasia confirm this. A.H. Donska notes that the concept of Central Europe characterizes one of the most unstable and uneven parts of Europe. Without a clear geographical designation, Central Europe can be seen as a response to global political challenges. Scientists claim that today there is a need to rethink the regionalization of Europe, the place and role of Central Europe in the processes of dynamic interaction between the Asia-Pacific region and the European Union. The concept of Central Europe, as a component of the concept of Europe, is the spread of the European integration process, Europeanness and civilizational choice. The aim of the article: to explore geographical interpretations of the Central Europe as a scientific category. The study was based on the principle of natural anthropogenic compatibility, which is thoroughly revealed in the works of G. I. Denysyk. General and specific scientific research methods have been used. The article scientifically substantiates and proves that Central Europe is a natural-geographical, socio-geographical, geopolitical and historical-geographical region, which today should be interpreted as a spiritual concept, state of mind, geographical bastion, appropriate institutional basis, as a struggle for "its western" and understanding of Europeanness. The novelty of the study is that Central Europe was considered not only as a geographical materialist territorial entity (natural, social-geographical), but also from the point of view of humanistic geography as a natural-socio-historical-cultural territory, which is constantly changing in the space and time. Key words: Central Europe, natural-geographical region, socio-geographical region, natural-socio-historical-cultural territory.

Maurice Blanchot’s troubling geography: Neutralizing key spatial and temporal concepts in the wake of deconstruction

In dialogue with recent studies that have sought to foreground the negative and the abyssal in human geography and that have struggled in vain to prevent their foreclosure, we introduce the work of the French theorist Maurice Blanchot, whose challenging and thought-provoking writings remain largely unknown within our discipline despite their significance for deconstructing geography’s conceptual architecture. After explicating Blanchot’s neutralization of the problem of negativity and positivity, the paper brings Blanchot’s neutral writings to bear on three areas of contemporary geographical concern: the trouble with subjectivity and identity; the unhinging of space and time; and the disaster of writing.

The Representation of the Placemaking Process of Urban Religious and Secular Turkish Identities: The Case of Kizilcik Şerbeti (One Love) Soap Opera

During a 2-year period, the depictions of religious figures and their interactions with secular individuals in urban daily life became an integral feature of Turkish soap operas that gained popularity in the world after the 1990s. While previous studies have explored the portrayal of various actors in them in terms of age, gender, socio-economic status, and historical perspectives, there is a lack of analysis regarding the interaction between secular and religious urban representations. This research aims to investigate the differences in everyday cosmopolitan perspectives in terms of spatiality and temporality between the two groups. To examine this, the soap opera Kızılcık Şerbeti (One Love) was analysed. Research has shown that when two groups develop their identities in opposition to one another, it leads to the emergence of different temporal and spatial dimensions within the same urban setting. While it seems unfeasible to reconcile the daily routines of both groups in the same place, age, gender, education, and class make negotiation possible in shared spaces. This draws attention to the intersectional approach rather than the binary positions of identities in the placemaking process. The main contribution of this research is to integrate religion, which has been forgotten in human geography, into geographical and sociological discussions by focusing on an intersectional approach in an urban context.

Mapping Geomedia Studies: Origins, Trajectories, and Future Directions

This article explores the formation of and future avenues for geomedia studies. Drawing on a citation network analysis, we map the development of the interdisciplinary research terrain from its origins and identify central citation clusters. The term “geomedia” has been used in the humanities and social sciences since at least the early 2010s. Subsequently, geomedia studies have been advanced through an interdisciplinary scholarship from human geography, media and communication studies, and other related research areas, assessing the increasingly complex interplay between media technologies and the production of space. To detect the origins and growth of geomedia studies as an emerging field, we conduct a bibliographic citation and keyword analysis of 57 references from the Web of Science core collection. The generated charts and network graphs reveal that research on geomedia has mainly evolved within media and communication studies. A citation cluster analysis shows how two sub-communities and approaches have emerged, tentatively called “visual geomedia studies” and “urban-sociological geomedia studies.” A keyword cluster analysis reveals how the approaches are entangled with different theoretical perspectives. Given the societal relevance and the growing vitality of present-day geomedia studies, this article discusses the prospects of both approaches.

Angry Birds… All in a Twitter about Trophy Hunting: Are the Big Five Safe under the Eaves?

Trophy hunting has turned into a contentious global debate opposing urban westerners and rural African communities. The former argue for animal rights. The latter argue for human rights, de-colonialism and legitimacy over their resources, relying on the principle that legal rights should be given back to local people to sustainably use their wildlife. While human geography studies have examined both trophy hunting and social media influences on people and places, conservation as a body of knowledge has not yet caught up with the role of cyber-movements in spreading discourses. This paper presents a case study using netnography, content analysis and the Cycle of Aggression theory to capture the perception of Twitter users towards trophy hunting in Africa. Rural African communities are demanding a new deal in which they are shareholders rather than disempowered stakeholders in their own wildlife resource use and management. Thus, externally imposed bans, including import bans, undermine not only the foundations of sustainable wildlife management but also the rights of local peoples.

Queer Economic Geographies: Sexual Hegemony, Queer and Trans Work, and Homocapitalism

AbstractWhile queer and trans perspectives and theories are significant themes in most areas of critical human geography today, the same cannot be said of economic geography. This paper argues for the importance of theorising the relations between non‐normative sexualities and gender identities in economic geography. This argument builds on research in feminist economic geography and beyond about the centrality of cisheterosexuality to the economy and structures of capitalism. I show how queer and trans geography and feminist economic geography have already contributed to research about the relations between non‐normative sexualities and gender identities and the economy, then outline three queer economic geographies as examples of how economic geography might further engage with sexuality beyond cisheterosexuality: (1) sexual hegemony; (2) queer and trans work; and (3) homocapitalism. Together with existing research on the economy in queer and trans geography, these queer economic geographies—each touching on concepts central to economic geography—contribute further to our understandings of how non‐normative sexualities and gender identities can be theorised in economic geography.

Transdisciplinary approaches assessing unmanaged urban green spaces reveal benefits for biodiversity and people

Rapid urbanization is projected for African cities at the cost of urban green space, which could jeopardize biodiversity and human benefits. Studies focusing specifically on human–green space relationships in the Global South are lacking, and the validity of extrapolating results from studies in the Global North remains questionable and cannot provide local context-specific design solutions. This study combines methods and perspectives from ecology and human geography with landscape design to better understand the benefits for biodiversity and people derived from unmanaged green spaces in the City of Tshwane, South Africa. Based on empirical data from two unmanaged green space areas in disadvantaged communities, we identify benefits for biodiversity and people and define guidelines for inclusive trans-disciplinary interventions. We combine information from a vegetation survey, a community survey of 200 respondents and a rapid assessment of multifunctional benefit provision to formulate in holistic landscape design proposals. We show that the sites have biodiversity value and provide habitat for > 169 different plant species, including protected species, and smaller wildlife. Residents use the spaces for utility, passive and active leisure, and > 76% of residents benefit from the use of these spaces. However, the integrity and provision of benefits from green spaces are threatened by pollution, safety concerns, biological invasions, and land conversion. Context-specific designs could be developed by merging methods across disciplines and involving local stakeholders to integrate the multifunctionality of socioecological benefits into landscape interventions. Collaboration across ecology, human geography and landscape design generates multifunctional perspectives of unmanaged green spaces that consider benefits for biodiversity and disadvantaged communities.

Território como instituto jurídico complexo: uma análise fundamentada nos sujeitos, nas subjetividades e nas territorialidades

Abstract Territory is a legal institute central to Modern Law. In modernity it has been reduced to land, a neutral and universal physical unit, a good that can be traded on the market. Human Geography - especially with Milton Santos - has added complexity to space, showing that it is a social production, where life takes place. Territory has acquired a prominent epistemological status not only for Geography, but also for Law, becoming a central legal institute in the defense of different subjects and dignities. The objective of this article is to delve into the complex interdependence between subjects and territories, making an epistemological dive into this relationship, using the Cultural-Historical theory of subjectivity as a framework. Thus, the problem faced is: what epistemic deepening can the Cultural-Historical theory of subjectivity and human geography provide for the understanding of the legal institute of territory? It is hoped that the conclusions of this article might contribute to the effort to analyze territory as a complex legal institute, inseparable from its subjects and the defense of multiple dignities.

Assessing Competences of Geography Students Acquired through the Competence-based Teaching and Learning Approach in Rwandan Secondary Schools

This study sought to assess the level of competences acquired by Geography students through the Competence-based teaching and learning approach in the Rwandan Secondary Schools. It was conducted in six secondary schools, where geography is taught as a major subject. The study followed a quantitative approach with a cross sectional descriptive design. Data was collected using a test administered to 210 students of senior 5 and senior 6 on the content learned in senior 4 and 5 respectively. The findings highlight that students achieved the assessed competences at a high level. They performed well in human and economic geography than in physical geography. Students from boarding schools performed better than those in day schools in both sub-areas of geography and for both S5 and S6. Urban schools performed better than rural schools in physical geography for both S5 and S6 with exception in human and economic geography. The study recommends more support to all schools to achieve the expected performance in both physical and human and economic geography at an excellent level.