This article analyzes how queer art produces place within the in-between spaces of the city. It takes as its point of departure the argument that the gay body, when activated through artistic practices in public space, operates as a sensitive agent capable of challenging regimes of circulation, visibility, and urban memory. Drawing on a dialogue between performance studies, geographies of sexualities, and the political philosophy of aesthetics, the text examines how such interventions establish sensitive economies of the gaze, transforming functional displacements into aesthetic-political events and reconfiguring the distribution of the sensible in the city. The article argues that place does not precede the artwork but rather emerges from the sensitive exchange between art, body, and public, generating experiences that challenge normative protocols of appearance. It further contends that these practices produce non-monumental memories, capable of reinscribing dissident presences in territories conceived for transience. The conclusion suggests that queer art does not occupy the city but sensibly reprograms it, making the gay body a vector for the rewriting of the urban common.

There are some patients for whom otherness disrupts precarious experiences of personal coherence and stability. Analysts and patients are thus sorely challenged to find bridges between inside and outside, fantasy and reality, self and other, subjectivity and objectivity—the in-between spaces that give psychoanalysis its particular power. This article explores the clinical dilemmas in working with such patients who tend to present as either lost in subjective experience with little connection to externality, or as trapped in an objectified reality devoid of personal vitality. Winnicott’s conceptualization of transitional space, and Sheldon Bach’s elaboration of related capacities to move fluidly between states of subjective and objective self-awareness, are used to: 1) illuminate what’s missing in both presentations, and 2) describe the enactments that unfold between “me” and “not-me.” To the degree that its present, subjective experience is either disconnected from, or conflated with, externality. For patients without access to transitional space, its emergence will likely be from within these pathological organizations in which both members of the dyad struggle to keep inner and outer both separate and related.

Purpose This paper aims to explore the various collective mitigation strategies used by coastal communities affected by disasters related to sea level rise (SLR). Climate change has increased SLR each year, resulting in disasters associated with SLR in several coastal areas. By exploring ways of managing space as a form of collective adaptation, it may be possible to identify strategies for disaster mitigation in coastal areas. Design/methodology/approach In this study, a qualitative method was used to conduct the research in Tambaklorok, Semarang and Morosari, Demak. The case study was chosen because of the unique way in which this community adapts to the disaster of SLR, as well as how this community negotiates with water daily. Direct observation, interviews regarding local practices and recording of location conditions were used to collect data. Data analysis is conducted through the use of diagrams to interpret spatiality strategies. Findings This study concluded that there is a collective community strategy in coastal areas, consisting of three components: (1) regulating affordability, (2) occupying in-between spaces and (3) repurposing submerged land. This paper shows that local context-based disaster mitigation strategies enable the emergence of regional spatial forms with specific characteristics. Originality/value The findings of this study provide the basis for the creation of a disaster mitigation model based on SLR that takes into account local conditions and practices as opposed to generalizing them across different regions.

ABSTRACT Two Asian American/immigrant motherscholars conducted a collaborative critical autoethnography to reflect on the lived experiences of their 1.5-generation sons, born in Asia and raised in the United States, from early childhood through adulthood. Their narratives uncover the complexities of cultural negotiation and identity formation faced by this often-overlooked group. Guided by the tenets of Asian Critical Theory, particularly Asianization, transnational context, and intersectionality, this study reveals how 1.5 generation young adults are juggling an in-between space, neither fully belonging to their birth cultures nor fully accepted in U.S. society. This study challenges linear models of assimilation and adds nuance to existing theoretical frameworks to better account for the fluid and transnational identities of 1.5 generation Asian Americans. Through their dual roles as immigrant mothers and scholars, the authors offer a personal and analytical lens that urges a refined understanding of this complex group.

Abstract This paper explores the multiple stories and affective traces that wetlands and swamps generate in more-than-human environments. Situated on what was once a swamp, Naarm (Melbourne) provides the setting for the authors’ collective creative inquiry. This work explores more-than-human methodologies of knowledge creation, examines how these approaches impact multispecies justice and investigates how wetlands can serve as transitional, unstaged spaces that challenge and disrupt colonial infrastructures. While drawing back on memories and experiences of wetlands in Southern China and Southeast Europe, the authors incorporate poetic mappings and autoethnographic interviews in exploring the reminisces and encounters living with more-than-human pasts and presents. Following the way of wetlands, the authors seek to foster unexpected ecologies between water, land, species and a multiplicity of ontologies in the abundance of in-between spaces as a generative learning-creation site.

This article proposes to examine the interrelationships between food security, identity, and precarity in Chronique de la dérive douce (1994) by Dany Laferrière, while also drawing on L’énigme du retour (2009), often considered its “companion” text. These two novels, which retrace the journey of the narrator-protagonist from Port-au-Prince to Montreal at the end of the 1970s, and then from Montreal back to Port-au-Prince three decades later, develop a reflection on exile through the sensory and everyday experience of a young man who arrives alone in Montreal and gradually discovers the new social and cultural codes of his environment. We will first examine the representation of space in Chronique de la dérive douce, emphasizing its transitional dimension: non-lieu (Augé 1992), in-between space, or third space (Soja 1996), situated at the intersection of Montreal and Haiti. This floating space, initially unstable, gradually takes shape, reflecting a process of identity anchoring. We will then analyze the role of food in the migratory and post-migratory context (Abdullah 2010). Omnipresent throughout the narrative, food accompanies the transformation of the narrator-protagonist, serving as a vector of adaptation, a marker of social injustices, a tool of identity mediation, and a factor in creating social bonds. It thus contributes to the construction of a livable space despite the economic and emotional precarity that marks the beginning of his immigration. Finally, we will pay particular attention to the tone of the novel, which oscillates between derision, lucidity, and humor, reflecting both the fragility of the migrant condition and the complexity of the dynamics of rooting oneself.

Cet éditorial introduit le numéro Penser au-delà de la binarité dans les littératures et discours francophones, consacré à l’analyse critique des logiques binaires et de leurs effets dans les pratiques discursives, les constructions symboliques et les imaginaires contemporains. Il propose un cadre théorique commun aux contributions réunies, en distinguant les plans logique, linguistique, cognitif et social, afin de montrer que la binarité ne saurait être pensée comme un principe naturel ou universel, mais comme un mode de formalisation historiquement situé et discursivement mobilisé. En revenant sur certaines références philosophiques majeures, de la logique aristotélicienne aux pensées contemporaines de la complexité, l’éditorial met en évidence l’existence de zones d’indétermination, de tiers et d’entre-deux qui échappent au schéma du « ou bien / ou bien ». Il souligne également le rôle central du langage dans la production de la binarité, à travers des mécanismes discursifs tels que l’antonymie et la polarisation interprétative, qui tendent à rigidifier des oppositions pourtant graduelles ou relationnelles. L’éditorial situe enfin les contributions du numéro dans les débats actuels des études francophones, notamment en linguistique, en philosophie, en études de genre et en écocritique. Il montre que penser au-delà de la binarité ne revient ni à abolir toute distinction ni à promouvoir une indifférenciation généralisée, mais à interroger les conditions de construction, de légitimation et de dépassement des dualismes, afin d’ouvrir des cadres d’analyse plus attentifs à la complexité des expériences, des identités et des relations au monde. Abstract This editorial introduces the issue Thinking Beyond Binarity in Francophone Literatures and Discourses, devoted to the critical analysis of binary logics and their effects in discursive practices, symbolic constructions, and contemporary imaginaries. It proposes a shared theoretical framework for the collected contributions, distinguishing between logical, linguistic, cognitive, and social levels, in order to show that binarity cannot be understood as a natural or universal principle, but rather as a historically situated mode of formalization mobilized through discourse. By revisiting several major philosophical references, from Aristotelian logic to contemporary theories of complexity, the editorial highlights the existence of zones of indeterminacy, third terms, and in-between spaces that escape the “either/or” model. It also emphasizes the central role of language in producing binarity, through discursive mechanisms such as antonymy and interpretive polarization, which tend to rigidify oppositions that are in fact gradual or relational. Finally, the editorial situates the issue’s contributions within current debates in Francophone studies, particularly in linguistics, philosophy, gender studies, and ecocriticism. It shows that thinking beyond binarity does not mean abolishing all distinctions or promoting generalized undifferentiation, but rather questioning the conditions under which dualisms are constructed, legitimized, and transcended, in order to open up analytical frameworks more attentive to the complexity of experiences, identities, and relationships to the world. Keywords: Binarity; complex thought; discourse and categorization; third term/in-between; deconstruction of dualisms

As marked by escalating urban crises, socio-spatial fragmentation, and environmental uncertainty, the resilience of cities increasingly depends on their capacity to foster inclusive and sustainable modes of everyday interaction. Within this context, urban in-between spaces—often overlooked or underutilized—emerge as critical arenas for nurturing social cohesion, adaptability, and continuity. This paper positions such spaces as not merely residual voids but as active socio-spatial interfaces that can significantly contribute to urban social sustainability, especially in cities grappling with the long-term effects of socio-economic instability and spatial polarization. In-between spaces function as essential socio-spatial interfaces between public, collective, and private realms, yet their contribution to everyday social sustainability remains insufficiently theorized and empirically documented. This study investigates their spatial and social potentials across three cooperative housing settlements—Tekgül Site, Tarımsal Site, and 184 Evler Site—constructed within the Ankara Batıkent Project, one of Turkey’s largest participatory housing initiatives. Employing a multi-scalar morphogenetic methodology that integrates diachronic spatial mapping, typomorphological sequencing, layered interface analysis, and on-site morphological surveys, the research evaluates how intermediary spatial layers evolve over time and shape patterns of everyday social interaction. Findings indicate that the physical existence of in-between spaces alone does not ensure social sustainability. Instead, it depends on the continuity of public-space networks, spatial permeability, the preservation of collective-use layers, and sustained user participation. Conceptualizing in-between spaces as active social infrastructures, the study offers design-relevant insights for developing socially sustainable housing environments and resilient community structures.

This article examines Jewish cemeteries in Tehran as minority heritage landscapes shaped by urban marginalization, communal resilience and contested visibility. Rather than approaching these sites solely as funerary or architectural artifacts, the study conceptualizes them as spatial archives in which memory, religious practice and urban politics intersect. Based on fieldwork, visual analysis and site-based observation, the article explores how material culture, such as gravestones, inscriptions, spatial organization and maintenance practices, mediates the presence of a long-standing yet politically and demographically constrained Jewish community within Tehran’s urban fabric. Situating the Tehran case within broader debates in Jewish heritage studies and Middle Eastern minority history, the article argues that Jewish cemeteries function neither as abandoned relics nor as fully institutionalized heritage sites, but as in-between spaces sustained through community-led practices of continuity. In doing so, the article challenges dominant narratives of Iranian urban heritage that have systematically marginalized minority spaces, while contributing to comparative discussions on Jewish funerary heritage beyond Euro-American contexts.

Abstract International organizations (IOs) have inner and external environments with which they interact. In this paper, we follow up on this idea and add the notion that IOs also have environments that exist in-between the internal and external sphere. We focus on entities which take part in the IOs proceedings to some degree, but still remain on the boundaries of the organization. We assume that these in-between spaces can appear either in an informal manner or in formalized structures, and include various actors from the IO’s environment. The in-betweens are conceptualized as spaces where IOs and entities from their environment interact with each other more closely, for instance by incorporating external actors into the organizational procedures and blurring boundaries. By conceptualizing IOs as open systems, we explore the idea of in-between -environments and examine how they are constituted and what characterizes these spaces on the organizational boundaries of IOs. To explore the various manifestations and functions of the in-between -environments, we examine them in the context of the International Labour Organization and Arctic Council. We find that the constitution of the in-between depends on the IO’s institutional design, and is characterized by its degree of formality, by fragility and intentionality.

ABSTRACT The tensions in Black African marriages due to the conflict between indigenous (traditional) African marriage norms and the influence of westernisation and its consequent culture pose challenges among couples both on the African continent and in other global (diaspora) spaces. Couples are trapped in an in-between space where they oscillate between traditional marriage expectations and Western norms. In this situation, the following emerging questions are posed: What are the root causes of the tensions in modern African marriages? What pastoral care interventions can be employed to mitigate the destructive effects of these tensions and foster marriage stability and flourishing? This article employs public pastoral intervention as a practical theological hermeneutical prism to understand marriage tensions and develop a framework to guide modern African marriages. The article discusses the causes and sources of tensions in modern African marriages and proposes a public pastoral care intervention where a “tension approach” is utilised to diffuse challenges in modern African couples to promote flourishing in marriage.

The In-Between Space of Uncertainty, Upheaval, and Untrust

In this article the author presents an autoethnographic reflection on Turkish-Muslim identity through the lived experience of a Japanese anthropologist himself who embraced Islam and has made Turkey his home for nearly two decades. Rather than treating personal narrative as anecdotal memory, the study takes it as a valuable site of knowledge production, where individual experience intersects with larger cultural and social dynamics. At the same time, drawing on the principles of autoethnography and reflexive anthropology, the paper situates the author’s own trajectory as both a methodological tool and an ethnographic text in its own right. This article looks at how the experience of religious conversion unfolds in social, emotional, and intellectual terms. It pays special attention to the ways in which Islamic values both connect with and differ from Japanese ethical traditions, and to how Turkish Islamic culture shapes everyday practices of faith, bodily discipline, and a sense of belonging. Rather than seeing conversion only as a private change, the study shows it as an ongoing negotiation with cultural codes, community norms, and expectations about identity and authenticity. In the Turkish context, where Muslim identity is often perceived as inseparable from ethnic Turkishness, the study highlights the paradox of inclusion and exclusion. While conversion may invite acceptance into the religious community, it simultaneously exposes the convert to subtle forms of othering that reinforce perceptions of foreignness. To illuminate this tension, the paper draws on Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of habitus, Judith Butler’s notion of performativity, and Victor Turner’s theory of liminality, showing how the self navigates dissonance, manages social roles, and inhabits spaces of ambiguity between belonging and marginality. This reflection is also situated within the broader field of Islamic studies in Japan. It looks back to the semantic philosophy of Toshihiko Izutsu and then moves forward to the more recent sociological and anthropological studies of scholars such as Akiko Komura. Seen against this backdrop, the author’s own position comes into focus: living both as an observer and a participant, as Japanese and Muslim, as someone who belongs and yet remains slightly outside. It is in this in-between space that fresh ways of understanding, critique, and identity-making become possible. In conclusion, the author suggests that Turkish-Muslim identity cannot be reduced to a fixed or uniform essence. Rather, it should be understood as a fluid and evolving process that is constantly reoriented through cultural encounters, historical legacies, and the lived negotiations of everyday life. His identity is not something passively inherited, but something actively practiced and reinterpreted related to shifting social expectations, personal struggles, and moments of reflection. In this respect, religious or cultural belonging emerges less as a permanent state than as an ongoing experience of becoming, in which individuals continually redefine what it means to be both Turkish and Muslim across different contexts and circumstances. The author’s journey to the “True Path” thus illustrates how anthropology, when practiced through autoethnography, ca n bridge personal experience and scholarly analysis to reveal the complexity of religious and cultural belonging.

Engelbert Mveng’s poetry collection Balafon reads as a window onto the world. This impression arises from the diversity of peoples, cultures, and territories that find expression within its verses. In this collection, the poet undertakes a genuine poetic exploration of the world in both its geographical and cultural multiplicity, framing friendship and fraternity as essential conditions for a fulfilled humanity. Mveng thus aligns himself with authors of a hybrid thought that transcends borders and embraces a multicultural existence (living together) within a globalized context characterized by migratory flows that increasingly give rise to identity withdrawal, exclusion, xenophobia, and racism. In the vein of Glissant’s poetics of relation, the poet claims affiliation with the cultures of all the territories he has traversed. He distances himself from singularity and roots his work in multiplicity, without forgoing his own identity, employing a mode of writing free from the established norms of Classicism. Accordingly, and through several poems, emerge vivid portrayals of landscapes from both his native land and distant elsewhere, intertwining African beliefs with those of other continents. This results in a rich interweaving of territories and traditions that ultimately situates the reader in an in-between space, within the realm of diversity. The reader is immersed in a universe that unites races by highlighting what is uniquely their own in terms of territory and culture. In light of several studies on cultures in relation, this article examines the contours of diversity, considering that the poet’s multidimensional experience be it as ethnologist, Jesuit priest or historian, underpins the territorial and cultural heterogeneity that characterizes many of his poems. Thus, after demonstrating how Balafon produces a mosaic of territories through the transcendence of borders (displacement), the analysis leads to the emergence of a composite identity born of the poet’s assimilation of diverse belief systems throughout his journey.

ABSTRACT Public in-between spaces – urban thresholds connecting buildings, streets, and open areas – play a crucial role in mediating movement, legibility, and social experience. However, despite their importance, there remains a lack of quantitative frameworks capable of assessing their transitional quality in an integrated and replicable manner. Existing approaches tend to address spatial configuration, visual perception, or environmental comfort separately, leaving a methodological gap in evaluating these dimensions together. This study introduces a Transitionality Index (TI) that bridges this gap by integrating spatial, perceptual, and environmental indicators into a unified, data-driven evaluation model. The framework combines space syntax metrics (integration, choice, and connectivity) with visibility analysis (VGA), functional diversity, and environmental factors (surface typology, solar shading, and vertical diversity). Indicators are normalized and weighted using Shannon entropy to construct a composite index applicable across urban contexts. Applied to three large public complexes in Istanbul – Zorlu Center, Torun Center, and the Gazhane Museum – the results reveal that functional diversity is the most influential factor shaping transitional spatial quality. The study concludes by demonstrating how the TI model provides an integrative and reproducible framework for evaluating the experiential potential of public in-between spaces, addressing a long-standing methodological gap in urban design research.

This article introduces the concept of nearby and brings it into dialogue with the decolonial efforts in qualitative studies in education. As a lived, in-between space, the nearby connects the very far (such as the world, grand narratives, and abstract norms) with the very near (the self). It offers a way to rethink key tensions in qualitative inquiry, including the binaries of researcher/participant, insider/outsider, home/field, self/other, and Western/non-Western. By foregrounding the nearby as a relational tool, we explore how it can help us move beyond these dichotomies and open up new possibilities for decolonizing research practices. Drawing on our ethnographic studies in China, we reflect on the transformative potential of approaching the field and participants not as distant objects of knowledge, but as the nearby presences that shape and challenge our ways of seeing, knowing, and writing. In doing so, we offer the nearby as both an epistemological orientation and a methodological strategy for decolonial work in and beyond education.

This essay aims to describe and analyze the short film Pattaki (2018), by Black intellectual and director Everlane Moraes, while interrogating and challenging notions of Africanness in diaspora. The film was made between 2015 and 2018, during the period when Everlane studied Documentary Directing at the Escuela Internacional de Cine y TV (EICTV) in San Antonio de Los Baños, Cuba. This paper discusses the director’s trajectory in the audiovisual production in the state of Sergipe, Brazil, while also reflecting on aspects of her time at EICTV. The description and analysis of the film highlight the diasporic encounter—between Afro-Brazilian and Afro-Cuban cultures—in a work that positions itself as an offering to the Orixá Iemanjá. It concludes that, through the movement of the diaspora, emerge the encounters and disencounters that compose the heterogeneity present in a narrative that celebrates the protagonism of Black women. The film, which we regard as a point of arrival, also becomes a point of departure—an anchor that evokes a place of return, while simultaneously allowing for escape upon arrival. It conveys the in-between space of the diasporic movement, celebrating the struggle and resistance of Black people. Key words: Black Cinema; African Diaspora; Latin American Cinema; Pattaki (2018); Everlane Moraes.

The title of this inaugural issue was directly inspired by the range of submissions we received. Our contributors, whose pieces range from traditional scholarly articles to reflective essays by practitioners, revealed that opera’s colonial entanglements and (de)colonial reverberations cannot be confined to a single conceptual framework. The initial call for submissions foregrounded “de/coloniality“, but the breadth of perspectives led us to adopt the broader title “Reverberations of Empire? Opera in the Context of (De)Colonial and Postcolonial Thought”. This revised title acknowledges the diversity of approaches in the issue and emphasises the productive tensions between critique, practice, and historical legacy that define this field. Accordingly, the issue is conceived as a forum for reflection, collaboration, and critique. It provides a platform for voices that unsettle, reimagine, and recompose what opera and music theatre can mean in the wake of empire, moving between postcolonial reflection and decolonial re-imagining. The project builds on recent critical studies of Eurocentric music theatre and foundational works on Black opera, race, and cultural identity, while pushing those conversations into newer territory. The contributions in this first issue can be understood as performing postcolonial or decolonial gestures in dialogue with one another – often resonating in productive friction rather than in unanimity. Together, they occupy in-between spaces: between what Diana Taylor would call “the archive and the repertoire”, between listening and voicing, between institutionalised structures and fluid formats, between myth and memory.[It is precisely in the contexts of opera and music theatre as spaces of knowledge, representation, and memory that colonial and decolonial narratives are performed, heard, negotiated, and overwritten.

The region of Southeastern Europe has been going through a series of transition processes in the last thirty years, and Bosnia and Herzegovina is one of the states most strongly affected by all these events and, therefore, continues to face problems whose “tails” reach into the near and distant past. Aggressive raids by neighbors during the disappearance of the common state of the South Slavs, demographic collapse and war destruction, and burdensome national relations have burdened democratic processes to the point where every issue is the subject of major and fundamentally important discussions. One question stands out and the top answer is what will be the future of the country. It is a question of security and overall Euro-Atlantic integration. In the new and fundamentally changed geopolitical circumstances that led to the growth of new centers of power, the growth of a multipolar world, the area of the (Western) Balkans becomes a significant zone of conflict between global powers. The region of Southeast Europe is not at all immune to impulses coming from the Eurasian area, especially after the NATO alliance's attempt to move the “big border” to the banks of the Dnieper. Serious opposition to this approach in Europe, first in Hungary and then in Slovakia, led to a series of complex political processes in Central and Southeastern Europe. With growing Turkish dissatisfaction with the attitude of Western partners towards Ankara, the question of NATO's strategic goals began to arise. The withdrawal from Afghanistan pointed to the American understanding that they found themselves in front of a great burden (imperial overstretch), but it also opened up a discussion about the future of the global influence of liberalism and the West in general. This crisis of liberal hegemony, which led to a new approach and repositioning of world powers and rising powers, which began to be clearly observed after 2016 in the actions of China as well as the emergence of a new American isolationism. The first quarter of the 21st century opened up a multitude of new opportunities for rising powers thanks to the difficulties faced by the US, the undisputed global authority since the early 1980s. The great pressures that led Washington towards strategic withdrawal also crystallized a new concept of US foreign policy – the construction of an Anglo-Saxon alliance and the dubious treatment of the EU as a partner suitable for the role of guardian of American interests towards Eurasian powers. Likewise, the new geopolitical game in which various integrative processes stirred up world politics (primarily BRICS and its rapid growth and importance) began to create conditions for the emergence of new axial poles. Just as they rejected many instruments of the liberal order, they also sought to promote a new type of governance and global coexistence based on their own worldviews and values. The context opens up the great topic of a multipolar world and a new order, so that the entire European continent, due to its visible loss of position on the global level, can be problematized as a space of possible polar non-belonging. Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Balkan Peninsula in this sense, as the “soft belly” of European geopolitics but also a centuries-old “in-between space”, are in a dead end bordered by regional hegemons and their national interests on the one hand and the aspirations of pro-democratic, weaker forces on the other. That is why, over time, the future of the Western Balkans began to be defined by resolving the complex issue of the integration of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia into the NATO alliance. The issue and problem of cooperation between the NATO alliance and these two states is one of the most sensitive security policy issues on the southern wing of the Alliance, and old “fraternal” alliances and cultural matrices play a significant role in the success or failure of the integration.

The act of intentionally pausing becomes not only a teaching strategy but a spiritual practice, reminding us that God meets us in the in-between spaces of chaos and calm; this explicit method of pausing for even the smallest moment of time gives educators space for reflection and reaps fruit with intentional pause and reflection on teaching dispositions. This essay, written as a dual autoethnographic reflection, explores the development of collaborative workshops two professors held over two years, which invited pre-service teachers to cultivate dispositions of empathy, adaptability, gratitude, and hope through creative pausing. Through stories and those of the professors' students, the authors illuminate how choosing to pause and reflect on specific dispositions became vehicles for both professional resilience, flourishing, and Christ-like transformation. Recognizing that reflection is an integral and traditional part of pre-service education, the authors chose to create elevated opportunities for teacher candidates to pause and reflect on distinct dispositions.