Geographical Literature Research Articles

The marginality trap. Deconstructing the administrative framework for a reform of local governance: The case of Calabria between top‐down and bottom‐up dynamics

AbstractThe region of Calabria, already at the Union of Italy in 1861, and even more so at the institution of the Republic (1948), was among the poorest and most marginal regions not only of Italy but also of the European Union. Despite the numerous funding policies active to de‐marginalize the area at both the national and European scale [currently, mainly European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and European Social Fund (ESF); up until 1992 mostly the Extraordinary Intervention for the Mezzogiorno], there has not been a significant improvement or change in this tendency. In this paper, through a processual approach based on historical and geographical literature, I examine the position of the administrative framework of the region as a possible codetermining factor of such a condition of peripheralization, trying to assess whether and how a careful reform of it could improve the potential of current de‐marginalization policies. Ultimately, starting with the reconstruction of the numerous factors leading to Calabria's marginality, this study highlights the dynamic and relevant role of the framework in a perspective of the development and valorization of the area.

“This killing New York life”: Geographies of Illness in Edith Wharton’s Twilight Sleep (1927)

Abstract This article examines the literary geography of Edith Wharton’s Jazz Age New York in Twilight Sleep. It considers the impact of the urban narrative upon the characters, and how this work can be understood as a spatial event. Sheila Hones describes literary geography as the interdisciplinary nexus between literary studies and geography. Building upon this definition, the author extends the interdisciplinarity of narrative spatiality toward the medical humanities. Edith Wharton’s New York is embodied, possessing its own animus like an automaton, being simultaneously alive and dead, dazzling yet breathless, killing but beautiful. There is a sickness to the city which impacts most of the major characters, either physically or mentally. Using the epigraph as a framework, this article offers an innovative consideration of the relationship between fictional place and mental state, highlighting Edith Wharton’s use of space and place in Twilight Sleep to warn of the danger New York represented to female mental health.

Définir l’Afrique par la littérature – le littéraire comme vecteur de l’africanité dans le discours des Congrès des écrivains et artistes noirs (Paris, 1956 et Rome, 1959)

In our paper we show how Black writers (those of Africa and those of the Black diaspora in Europe and America) have contributed to the intellectual work centered on the idea of Africanity. We explain to what extent literature, as one of the domains of culture, reflects different visions of Africa, as formulated in the discourse of the World Congresses of Black Writers and Artists (Paris, 1956 and Rome, 1959). With reference to the official texts presented or elaborated during these events, we expose in which way literature is involved in the decolonial remapping of the geocultural place of Africa and in the remodeling of the postcolonial literary geography while pointing out the precursory or heralding character of certain postulates whose echoes will be heard during the festivals of negro and pan-African art of the 1960s and whose relevance is also confirmed nowadays.

Bottom-up cluster branding through boundary spanners: The case of the Jingdezhen ceramics cluster in China

It is increasingly recognised that for clusters to evolve and initiate new developmental paths, they need to bring in various external resources, especially external human capital. However, external talent often has imperfect knowledge regarding distant places; hence, a key challenge for clusters is to overcome this lack of knowledge and unfamiliarity to ensure that external talent becomes aware of the cluster’s local assets and the possibilities for (re)locating there. It is thus important for clusters to engage in cluster branding: that is, to promote its assets ‘outwards’ and to build-up a positive, renowned brand-name. While place branding is already an established theme in urban geography, cluster branding has hitherto been under-examined in the extant cluster literature in economic geography. Moreover, both the well-researched place-branding literature and the limited cluster-branding literature tend to be primarily concerned with official, top-down branding, initiated by government agencies. This article, instead, shows that branding can also involve organic, bottom-up processes driven by the agency of diverse individual actors, working in tandem with governmental actors. Through a case study of an arts and creative cluster, the Jingdezhen ceramics cluster in China, it unpacks how resourceful individual actors – conceptualised as boundary spanners – have become powerful agents in increasing the cluster’s legitimacy and visibility in the relevant industries through their personal networks and mobility, thereby contributing to attracting external talent into the cluster. More specifically, the study identifies three bottom-up cluster branding mechanisms, namely: convening temporary clusters locally; participating in external temporary clusters; and representing through digital media.

Using Semantic Web to Create and Explore an Index of Toponyms Cited in Medieval Geographical Works

Western thought in European history was mainly affected by the image of the world created during the Middle Ages and Renaissance. The most popular reason to travel during the Middle Ages was taking a pilgrimage. Jerusalem, Rome, and Santiago de Compostela were the most popular destinations. It is not surprising that a lot of works written by travellers as guides for pilgrims exist. By the beginning of the Renaissance, a more precise image of the world was defined, thanks to the discovery of ancient geographical models, especially the work of Ptolemy. The Italian National Research Project (PRIN) IMAGO --- Index Medii Aevi Geographiae Operum --- (2020-2023) aims to provide a systematic overview of the medieval and renaissance Latin geographical literature using the Semantic Web technologies and the LOD paradigm. Indeed, until now, this literature has not been studied using digital methods. In particular, this article presents how we formally represented the knowledge about the toponyms, or place names, in the IMAGO ontology. To maximise the interoperability, we developed the IMAGO ontology as an extension of two reference vocabularies: the CIDOC CRM and its extension FRBRoo, including its in-progress reformulation, LRMoo. Furthermore, we used Wikidata as reference knowledge base. As case study, we chose to represent the knowledge related to the toponyms cited by the Italian poet Dante Alighieri in his Latin works. We carried out a first experiment for visualising the knowledge about these toponyms on a map and in the form of tables and CSV files.

Belonging and Unbelonging in Literary Geography: a Comparative Approach to Johann Koppelstätter’s and Arturo Manzini’s Place-based Detective Fiction

The concept of a sense of belonging to a place has long been the subject of attention in geographical studies. Scholars have consistently highlighted the ability of literary works to convey a spatial sense of belonging on the part of protagonists and authors, as well as to foreground landscape elements that may reveal the characters’ personalities. Within this framework of research, the paper calls attention to the specular concept of estrangement, or unbelonging: a literary geographical quality that characterizes certain novels. A comparative analysis is presented between two different cycles of detective novels set in the Italian alpine areas. Specific elements of the landscape, the social milieu, and the authors’ psychology that might convey such a sense of belonging are identified and categorized. The analysis shows how the relationship between the protagonists and the space in a novel can be based on a sense of estrangement that plays a role in signifying the characters’ psychology and personality. In conclusion, it is proposed to consider the absence of the sense of belonging to place as a literary quality and element of agency within an intra-textual analysis of literary geography.

The construction and enforcement of East Asia’s air defence identification zones: Grey volumes in the sky?

The declaration of China’s Air Defence Identification Zone (ADIZ) over portions of the East China Sea in 2013 has often been interpreted by international relations scholars as an aggressive “land grab” in the sky. However, classical geopolitical perspectives of territory and control, despite their popularity when analyzing the politics of East Asia, fail to present a full understanding of ADIZ creation, adjustment, maintenance, and contestation. Rather than a problem created by the rise of China, conflicts over airspace are a regional phenomenon. By engaging with the critical geography literature on airspace, verticality, and space production, this paper theorizes ADIZs as the partial extension of state sovereignty via assemblages in response to the emergence of new vertical threats and opportunities. It then shows how the Cold War consensus on the function and performance of these volumes has broken down in East Asia, which has paradoxically encouraged both the expansion of ADIZs as well as their systematic violation. These “grey volumes,” which are characterized by debates over the legality, function, and performance of airspace, are explored in a case study of the ADIZs of Japan, South Korea, China, and Taiwan. Ultimately, these patchworks of ambiguous and overlapping airspaces are difficult to reconcile with classical geopolitics’ one-dimensional assumptions of sovereignty and territory.

The Central Asian Elements in the Accounts of Sallam’s Journey (9th – 16th Centuries)

This article examines the story of the itinerary of Abbasid Caliph al-Wathiq’s envoy accomplishing the mission to visit the defensive fortifications established by Alexander Macedonian on the border with peoples “Yajuj and Majuj”. Its topicality consists in the necessity to understand adequately the history of intercultural interactions among the residents of the Eurasia Steppe. This article aims to confirm that the accounts on the traveler’s experience reflex geographical objects of Central Asia and certain custom of the local ethnic groups. Variations of the descriptions on Sallam’s journey in Arabic geographical literature from 9th to 16th centuries, from one hand, and fragments from both Arabic geographic tradition and Chinese historical and geographical works which facilitate the interpretation of the narration of the landscape, settlements and the antique custom within the peoples of Central Asia, from the other hand, are studied. Comparative and chronological approaches are applied to date the episodes of the travel, while historical-ethnological method is employed to identify realistic components in the mythological extract from Sallam’s journey. It is concluded that the story of the travel had reflected the effect of wind erosion on the Central Asian desert as well as history of conquest of the transport artery between Pamir and the Heartland of China by the Tibetans, and moreover, the typical ritual gestures which sometimes permitted the Sogidans to get rid of a complicated political dilemma.

THE CAUCASUS AND ADJACENT REGIONS IN THE COSMOGRAPHY OF FAKHR-I MODABBIR

Among the Muslim texts of the first half of the XIII century, one should highlight the narrative known to researchers as «Shajarai-e ansab-e Mobarakshah-i» («The Tree of the genealogies of Mubarak Shah») or «Bahr al-ansab» («The Sea of genealogies»). This work belongs to the pen of a Persian historian of the late XII - first half of the XIII century. Muhammad ibn Mansur ibn Sa'id or Fakhr-i Moddabir (Mubarak Shah). After the publication of the Persian text of this source, carried out in the first half of the XX century. By Edward Denison Ross, scientists have paid close attention to this work itself, as well as to the biography of its author. However, the most significant attention was focused on those sections of «Bahr al-ansab», where the author described the nomadic Turkic tribes of Desht-i Qipchak, as well as those where Fakhr-i Moddabir outlined the history of the Muslim dynasties that ruled in northern India. Much less attention was paid by specialists to the initial section of the introduction to "Bahr al-Ansab", in which the author proposed cosmography or a description of the world known to people at that time around them. For our part, I would like to understand first of all how, in the author's opinion, this world was arranged, into which regions it was divided, and what place the Caucasus and adjacent lands occupied in it. Here I would like to draw attention to what toponyms associated with the Caucasus Fakhr-i Moddabir mentions and what he reports about them. An equally important task of this study will be to identify the connections of this part of the text «Bahr al-Ansab» with earlier monuments of Muslim geographical and historical literature, which will make it possible to identify borrowings, but also independent reports of Fakhr-i Moddabir regarding the structure of the world known to mankind at that time. We hope that this work will be of interest to specialists in the history of Muslim geographical literature, as well as to researchers of the history of the Caucasus and adjacent regions in the pre-Mongol period.

THE CAUCASUS AND ADJACENT REGIONS IN THE COSMOGRAPHY OF FAKHR-I MODABBIR

Among the Muslim texts of the first half of the XIII century, one should highlight the narrative known to researchers as «Shajarai-e ansab-e Mobarakshah-i» («The Tree of the genealogies of Mubarak Shah») or «Bahr al-ansab» («The Sea of genealogies»). This work belongs to the pen of a Persian historian of the late XII - first half of the XIII century. Muhammad ibn Mansur ibn Sa'id or Fakhr-i Moddabir (Mubarak Shah). After the publication of the Persian text of this source, carried out in the first half of the XX century. By Edward Denison Ross, scientists have paid close attention to this work itself, as well as to the biography of its author. However, the most significant attention was focused on those sections of «Bahr al-ansab», where the author described the nomadic Turkic tribes of Desht-i Qipchak, as well as those where Fakhr-i Moddabir outlined the history of the Muslim dynasties that ruled in northern India. Much less attention was paid by specialists to the initial section of the introduction to "Bahr al-Ansab", in which the author proposed cosmography or a description of the world known to people at that time around them. For our part, I would like to understand first of all how, in the author's opinion, this world was arranged, into which regions it was divided, and what place the Caucasus and adjacent lands occupied in it. Here I would like to draw attention to what toponyms associated with the Caucasus Fakhr-i Moddabir mentions and what he reports about them. An equally important task of this study will be to identify the connections of this part of the text «Bahr al-Ansab» with earlier monuments of Muslim geographical and historical literature, which will make it possible to identify borrowings, but also independent reports of Fakhr-i Moddabir regarding the structure of the world known to mankind at that time. We hope that this work will be of interest to specialists in the history of Muslim geographical literature, as well as to researchers of the history of the Caucasus and adjacent regions in the pre-Mongol period.

Radical Solidarities in Punk and Queer Refusals of Safety and Inclusion Narratives in Planning

Recent call-outs against Ottawa punk venues have fueled public debates about safe space and the inclusivity of local music scenes. The Ottawa Music Strategy released in 2018 translated these debates into cultural development policy that links creative placemaking and safe space discourse. This article examines the civic response to activist call-outs by analyzing how the Ottawa Music Strategy integrates diversity and inclusion strategies into cultural policy, and how cultural policy and safe space policies intersect with cultural revitalization and economic development priorities in the Ottawa Official Plan. Punk counter-narratives developed through grounded ethnographic research in the Ottawa punk scene unsettle normative public safety narratives that frame punk spaces as unsafe. Place-based histories of anti-oppression tactics, logics, and traditions of punk space and activism contextualize alternative responses by local punk venues and promoters. Drawing upon literature in queer planning and queer geography and literature on intersections between radical queer and punk politics, spatialities, and identities, this article discusses punking planning in solidarity with queering planning through alternative community-based responses to issues of safety, inclusion, and participation.

The Segregation Effect: How Residential Isolation Shapes Ethnic Minority Representation in England

AbstractExtant literature argues that ethnic minority representation in plurality systems will benefit from the presence of sizable co-ethnic populations. I argue that the threshold for election depends not only on a minority population's group size but a district's level of segregation. I show that residential segregation can facilitate the increased representation of ethnic minority populations. Contrary to the prevailing literature, however, I find that increased segregation levels in cities with sizable minority populations decrease the percentage of co-ethnics elected to office. I support this argument with evidence from an original dataset on the local representation outcomes of Muslims in England between 2011 and 2021, which covers 434 district council elections. Using threshold modelling, I introduce the concept of the population threshold, above which increases in segregation level decrease Muslim representation. This article contributes to the electoral geography literature on ethnic minority representation.

Placing GIS and NLP in Literary Geography: Experiments with Literature in Portuguese

In this case study we discuss different approaches to the study of literature in digital humanities and try to join two methodologies, namely distant reading and spatial analysis. We first describe shortly the two projects involved, the Atlas of Literary Landscapes of Mainland Portugal and Literateca, highlighting and quantifying the different ways to deal with place in literature in Portuguese. Then we describe some different paths to compare and harmonize the two approaches, focusing on annotation, extraction and geocoding of place names.

A Study on the Placeness and Literary Geography of Wonju in the Folklore

A Study on the Placeness and Literary Geography of Wonju in the Folklore

‘If you believe in a platform world…’ – Corporate banking and digital transformation in investor relations discourse

Recent economic and financial geographical literatures on Fintech have queried how financial incumbents’ operational and business models are changing with digital technologies. Providing financial services that enable firms to operate and internationalize, corporate banking is a key part of Advanced Producer Services (APS) where such transformations are underway. This paper contributes to geographical literatures on Fintech and APS change by developing a Cultural Economy approach to digital transformation in corporate banking at two large European banks - BNP Paribas and ING. Through a focus on discourse, processes and materialities, a Cultural Economy lens can help producing more nuanced geographies of digital transformation at incumbent banks.Building on Investor Relations materials where digital strategies are discursively articulated for investors, the paper explores two tropes marking these discourses: ‘customer experience’ and the ‘digital platform’. Exploring these in depth, the paper contributes two main insights. First, where the trope of customer experience entails a folding of banking into customers’ spatiotemporalities, banks’ discourse reveal key entanglements between this topological digital space and a shifting topographical space of branch networks, established and emerging financial and service centres and entrepreneurial ecosystems. Second, incumbent banks’ discourse on digital transformation manifest, and is shaped by key path dependencies which are economic, technological, and geographic. Notably, questions of legacy IT systems, as well as economic and organizational restructuring following the 2008 financial crisis mark the distinctive ways in which incumbent banks are disputing the discursive field of digital financial re-intermediation vis-à-vis technology and Fintech companies.

On the Determination of the Geographic North on Archeological Plans in Connection with the Problem of the Quality of Geographic Education

The publication is dedicated to the memory of N.A. Bogdanov (1954-2020), Doctor of Geography, Leading Researcher of the Laboratory of Geomorphology of the Institute of Geography of the Russian Academy of Sciences, who participated in the preparation of materials and publication of abstracts on March 1, 2020. The article raises the question of the need for the development of universal geographic education, which forms the cultural appearance of a person and the scientific picture of the world of our era. The consequences of typical technical errors in working with the topographic plan are analyzed: the sides of the horizon are not indicated; north is specified with an error; the original high-quality materials were used incorrectly; magnetic north is indicated, but the year of the topographic survey is not indicated; supplemented topographic maps are superimposed on the historically previous topographic base. The changes in the current situation, according to the authors, are facilitated by the following tasks: to increase the number of hours of teaching geography at school; pay more attention to practical orienteering exercises; expand the selection of popular geographic literature to raise public awareness of the possibilities of classical methods and fundamental achievements of modern geography; and some others. Keywords: cartography, education, archaeological sites, interpretation, information

Target panic: Disrupted ecologies of skill in archery

AbstractThe yips – a phenomenon whereby skilled practitioners suddenly and inexplicably struggle with their performance – has been observed in many sports. With no consensus as to the origins of the yips, it is, for many, a chronic condition bringing an end to careers and hobbies alike. This paper turns its attention to ‘target panic’, a sport‐specific instantiation of the yips found amongst archers. By bringing empirical encounters with target panic into conversation with geographical literature on skill, this paper seeks to invite reconsideration as to how and where the yips manifest. Rather than focusing on whether the yips is psychological or physical in origin, ecological approaches to skill allow for us to understand the yips as stemming from the disruption of the more‐than‐human communicative links on which skilled ecologies are founded. The concept of disruption is used to understand how this breakdown operates. Disruption is seen to be a boundary creating or boundary affirming process which impedes the ability for different actors to attune to one another. By re‐interpreting the yips as a result of disruption and locating it between actors, rather than within them, this paper contributes to ongoing discussions about what it means to be (de)skilled in a disrupted world and presents new possibilities for methods to prevent and treat the yips.

The Financial Industry Sets Sights on Institutional Investors: A Relational Approach to Property Investment Outsourcing

Over the past few decades, pension funds have emerged as major players in global financial markets as the reserves they manage have grown steadily. In this context, trustees are confronted with acute dilemmas regarding how best to generate investment returns to beneficiaries. This involves crucial decisions regarding the diversification of investment portfolios as well as decisions on whether, when, and to whom to outsource investment functions and tasks. The literature in economic geography has frequently treated outsourcing decisions as taken by the asset owners based on criteria such as costs of coordination, availability of information, governance structure, and internal expertise. Focusing on the outsourcing of property investment by Brazil’s largest pension funds and drawing on a relational approach, this article investigates the actions taken by the real estate investment trust (REIT) industry to attract and retain pension fund money into their investment vehicles. It is claimed that REIT managers have acted on three dimensions to capture pension fund money: (1) by influencing the regulatory framework affecting pension funds, (2) by building networks of trust with pension fund managers and trustees, (3) by adapting internal procedures to the expectations and needs of institutional investors. Putting the spotlight on the evolving, power-laden relationships connecting key actors in finance, we were able to demonstrate how the pooling of money by financial institutions is politically and socially constructed and how it changes the geography of money flows.

Beyond the usual suspects: Invisible labour(ers) in futures of work

AbstractInvisible labour exists within all forms of work. In looking to the future of work (FoW), this article reviews the literature on two separate examples; digital work and the 4IR, to uncover invisible labour within these futures. The focus of this article remains on paid work but recognises that ‘employed’ does not correlate with visible. In contributing to feminist labour geography, this review aims to collate, regroup and evaluate the literature on the FoW in a way which recognises ‘invisible labourers’ through redefining ‘work’ and expanding our perception of the ‘workplace’. It does so in three parts. First, feminist labour geography literature is reviewed to situate the article within its call to broaden the definition of ‘work’. Second, the review addresses digital work and the gig economy, to establish which labourers are receiving the most current academic attention and are, therefore, visible. Feminist literature on work and labourers within unrecognised economic spaces is explored through the example of digital sex work to draw on the concept of ‘invisible labour’ in digital FoW. Third, literature on technologies of the 4IR and labour will be reviewed, with particular reference to the global north bias in FoW studies. Finally, the review will apply the regrouping of the literature to the impending wave of automation in the global garment industry. The article identifies a risk of further invisibalising already precarious and marginalised garment workers and the FoW narrative moves beyond low‐skill labour. Highlighting the wider impacts on the FoW, beyond technology itself, this article calls for the labour geography literature to recognise the shift in our conception of ‘industry’ and women's experience of work within it to encompass invisible labourers' roles which are created, mediated and maintained by new technologies.

Neoliberal city and exclusive communities: the politics of contemporary urbanisation in northern India

ABSTRACT This article focuses on a relatively overlooked dimension of urban development in India: the nature of community-making in new urban spaces. Using concepts from sociological and geographical literature on community formation, it examines the relationship between specific forms of urbanisation in contemporary (neo-liberal) India and community-making processes. The study is situated in the city of Noida within the national capital region in northern India. Examining two habitational forms, that of urban middle-class enclaves and urban villages, we suggest that a model of urbanisation involving eminent domain (the state’s power to acquire private property and convert it into public use) to produce gentrified urban spaces may promote conditions for rival forms of exclusivist community-making, including nativist ‘othering’.