Local Places Research Articles

Being and becoming local: migrants’ personal social networks and their influence on inclusive visiting friends and relatives tourism experiences

ABSTRACT This paper addresses inclusive tourism in multicultural societies by exploring the domestic tourism experiences of first-generation Italian and Chinese immigrants in Sweden within the context of visiting friends and relatives (VFR) tourism practices and activities. Our results highlight the complex interplay of personal social networks and the hosts’ positionality on VFR experiences and tourism dynamics. We stress the importance of the embeddedness of personal social networks in the host country itself, as well as the immigrant host being local, both of which are crucial to tourist mobility and inclusive tourism experiences. How local the host feels, and how local their network is, changes tourism practices, especially when the local network includes native members. Moreover, we observe how forced immobility during the COVID-19 pandemic led to increased exploration of local places. These observations point to the importance of tourism actors engaging with the wider society and non-tourism industries to co-create inclusivity and provide information and possibilities to engage with different places. The latter can then be used and enjoyed not only in immigrants’ daily lives but also through VFR to create further intercultural exchanges.

Utilizing Extractive Transportation Infrastructures for Subsistence Livelihoods: Experience of Evenki Communities in Eastern Siberia

The availability of natural resources drives the exploration and transformation of remote regions in the Arctic and beyond. Extractive infrastructure is one of the major sources of industrial development and environmental impact on landscapes. For Indigenous people, these landscapes are homely environments full of sentient beings, and for other local communities, they provide a wide variety of subsistence and hunting resources. While extractive infrastructure violence is the evident issue for many Indigenous communities, there are more complicated situations where extractive infrastructure is adopted and utilized for the subsistence and support of other human and more-than-human relations in local and Indigenous communities. Based on materials from interviews and observations with Evenki communities in Eastern Siberia in 2013–2021, the authors discuss the complex relations and sustainability issues entangled around infrastructure objects’ creation, use, maintenance, and transformations. The results demonstrate a wide variety of relations between obshchinas (non-governmental organizations of Indigenous peoples) and extractive companies constructed with infrastructure development of the latter. The paper discusses the shortcomings of the top-down approach in infrastructure planning and the need for contextualization and meaningful engagement with affected communities, some examples of which have already taken place in specific locales. The study concludes by calling for the support of environmentally and socially just infrastructure defined by Indigenous people and local communities as a way to increase sustainability.

Politics of local fiscal discipline with vertical fiscal imbalance

AbstractWe examine the political conditions mediating the effect of vertical fiscal imbalance (VFI) on local government fiscal discipline in Ghana. Based on a panel dataset of 216 local governments in Ghana over the period 1994–2018, we adopt both a static and dynamic approach, in addition to a regression discontinuity design. From the results, while alignment may give “free pass,” local governments could leverage same for effective tax efforts. Further, the benefits of lower political competition may reduce where local governments place reliance on central government grants. There is consistent evidence of a negative effect of VFI on fiscal discipline.

Changing human–nature relationships: Insights from Guinea‐Bissau woodlands

Abstract The ecological impacts of landscape changes resulting in significant simplification of natural systems have been extensively studied worldwide. Yet, few studies have examined how such biophysical changes affect the value local communities place on nature and their relationships with it. In this study, we delve into the case of Guinea‐Bissau, where woodland cover has been increasingly replaced by commercial cashew plantations. Using a sociocultural valuation approach, our empirical research provides a comprehensive assessment of the woodlands' contributions to local communities as well as the potential disruptions caused by the ongoing biophysical changes on the woodlands. We focused on 20 villages of four different ethnic groups—Manjack, Balanta, Mandinka and Fulani—and used a combination of focus group discussions and walks‐in‐the‐woods. The study's participants identified 19 nature's contributions to people from the woodlands, which revealed a combination of instrumental, relational and intrinsic values in ways that reflect their subsistence needs and social–cultural contexts. We also found that these values are being impacted, mostly negatively, by the ongoing biophysical changes in the ‘natural’ landscapes tied to regional and global dynamics. Moreover, our study reveals that local communities are aware of ongoing biophysical changes in their woodlands and perceive them as having negative ecological and psychological consequences for them. Synthesis and applications: Our study highlights the significance of using a sociocultural perspective to investigate how changes in the landscape affect local peoples' values of nature and their relationships with it. This information can help shape policies and management decisions towards creating better futures that are meaningful for both humans and non‐humans. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

Shift Happens

In 1989, Ray Oldenburg coined the term “third place” to describe locations individuals frequent to connect with their local community outside their home and work. Third places add immense value to the local community by fostering social ties, increasing happiness, and fostering a sense of collectivity. Third-place declines have steadily occurred over the past few decades, with a sharp reduction during the Great Recession. This decline primarily affects privately run organizations and food and beverage stores, which often serve as third places, emphasizing the importance of nurturing these community spaces. This paper examines how communicative efforts contribute to community integration in a transient college town, focusing on the role of length of residence and online communication. Focus groups at a local third place found that to expedite the community integration process for temporary residents, third places need to employ overly welcoming communication strategies paired with effective use of social media.

Cultural Streetscape: Its Value-System, Space and Significance in Oyo Town, Nigeria

Cultural streetscape is a remarkable street scene that embodies the local culture. It helps in defining and defending urban forms, improves the physical, economic, and socio-cultural mechanisms of urban streets, provides street views for buildings, and shares communal activities and identities. Streetscape is a significant and multi-dynamic component of urban design that contributes to the success of cities and towns. However, as a result of constant urbanization and neglect, African streets that were previously sites of different cultural expressions and local beliefs are quickly turning into areas devoid of local values and meaning. More so, the significance of a cultural streetscape that facilitates ingenious street views, solves ecological challenges, and retains the local memory of places is becoming scarce in the literature. Through an in-depth interview, analysis of pertinent academic outputs, and firsthand observation of the core residential areas of Oyo town, this study revealed the value and significance of cultural streetscape in building, shaping, preserving and sustaining local place identity. Proper archiving and infusion of cultural streetscape elements into the old and new streets design are necessary to ensure Yoruba place identity does not completely become void.

Locality in the Folk Songs of Gulmi, Palpa and Arghakhanchi

This article draws on the folk songs of Gulmi, Palpa and Arghakhanchi with special focus on how they reflect and represent the sense of locality. Most of the folk songs that carry with them the sense of locality in the given districts are wali, Teej songs, savai and bhajan. People in these districts sing their own local folk songs to express their feelings deeply attached with their own local objects, places, people and gods and goddesses. I studied these folk songs in connection to the local beliefs and sensibilities that are regularly attached with what they do and anticipate in their actual local life. Anyway, the given folk songs duly reflect the local colors of the regional landscape, cultures, memories and music that have their own beauty and taste.

Sleep quality and sleep duration are associated with charitable donations: Evidence from two population-based surveys

Study objectivesInsufficient sleep alters emotional processing, leading to mood disturbances, reduced gratitude, and potentially the withdrawal of compassionate helping. Using data from two national surveys, we investigated whether sleep quality and sleep duration were associated with willingness to donate to local charities and places of worship. MethodsWe conducted secondary analyses of two Gallup-administered studies that used random address-based sampling methodologies to approximate population-representative samples. BRS-5 included 1501 respondents and BRS-6 included 1336 respondents (independent samples). Each survey inquired about sleep quality and whether participants had donated in the last year to local organizations and places of worship. In addition, BRS-5 included questions about sleep duration. ResultsIn both studies, participants who had better sleep quality and better sleep durations were more likely to donate charitably to local organizations and places of worship (ORs of 1.07–1.45). Most associations remained significant when accounting for age, gender, and income. ConclusionBetter sleep was associated with a greater likelihood to donate charitably. Experimental work is needed to determine if the relationship between sleep health and prosocial behaviors is uni- or bi-directional.

Levels of organochlorine pesticides in the chewable and leftover parts of the khat (Catha edulis) sold in local markets of Jimma Town, Southwest Ethiopia

ABSTRACT This study aimed to determine the residual levels of organochlorine pesticides (OCPs) in chewable (tender leaves) and leftovers (mature leaves) of khat sold in local markets in Jimma town, southwest Ethiopia. Samples were collected from various local khat market places in Jimma town, based on their growing origin. A modified QuEChERS method was used to extract pesticides from the samples before their analysis by GC‒MS. The findings indicated that p,p’-dichlorodiphenyldichloroethylene (p,p’-DDE) and p,p’-dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (p,p’-DDT) were detected in 88.3% and 76.6% of chewable samples, and in 86% and 69% of khat leftovers samples. The p,p’-DDE and p,p’-DDT levels found in chewable khat ranged from 10.12–45.39 and 8.53–34.15 µg/kg, respectively. While in leftover khat they ranged from 30.12–45.04 and 6.73–32.16 µg/kg, respectively. It was found that the concentration of p,p’-DDE is greater than its precursor compound p,p’-DDT for each sample, indicating past use of DDT in the study area. None of the detected analytes exceeded the maximum residue level (MRL) values established by the FAO/WHO or European Commission (EC) of 50 µg/kg. However, no information is available regarding these pesticides’ collective and synergetic negative impacts on consumers.

Unpacking the care-related quality of life effect of England's publicly funded adult social care. A panel data analysis.

Adult Social Care (ASC) is the publicly-funded long-term care program in England that provides support with activities of daily living to people experiencing mental and/or physical challenges. Existing evidence suggests that ASC expenditure improves service users' care-related quality of life (CRQoL). However, less is known about the channels through which this effect exists and the effect on outcomes other than CRQoL. We fill this gap by analyzing survey data on ASC service users who received long-term support from 2014/15 to 2019/20 using panel data instrumental variable methods. We find that the beneficial impact of ASC expenditure on the CRQoL of both new and existing users is mostly driven by users aged 18-64 without any learning disability and users with no learning disability aged 65 or older receiving community-based ASC. Moreover, control over daily life, occupation, and social participation are the CRQoL domains that are improved the most. We also find that ASC expenditure has a beneficial effect on several other outcomes beyond CRQoL for both new and existing users including user satisfaction and experience, the ability to carry out activities of daily living independently, whether their home is designed around needs, accessibility to local places, general health, and mental health through reduced anxiety and depression. Greater ASC expenditure, however, does not address the need for other forms of support such as unpaid informal and privately-funded care.

Ka ara ake te akoranga i te whenua: Perspectives from the classroom and the field

Teachers can respond to the climate crisis through deliberate choices about what and how to teach. We suggest that, for history teachers, this requires stepping outside traditional topics that often focus on political change. Instead, they need to select contexts for learning that illustrate how global forces of colonisation impact the ecology of local places and how iwi and hapū resist these changes. While this learning can begin in the classroom, it is not enough on its own. Wherever possible, teachers and students need to head into the field, alongside mana whenua. Furthermore, when this learning is consolidated by place-based projects that centre an Indigenous kaupapa, students become more active agents of change with a deep connection to the whenua. We share some of our experiences through excerpts from a reflective conversation between the three of us, two secondary school teachers and their student.

Spatial Sign Rhetoric in Gulf Poetry at the Turn of the Third Millennium

The presence of spatial signs in the Arabic poem is not limited to being a ‘subject’ that the poet writes about, but goes beyond that to being a ‘technique’ with which the poet writes, and between writing ‘about’ and writing ‘with’ the poem moves and the Arab poet is creative in forming his poetic world, and the aesthetic world of the poem, the poet does not write a newspaper reportage about the place, but he employs a spatial sign, and the sign in turn works to broadcast its intellectual and aesthetic energy, the sign with its linguistic status is a linguistic element that is included in the fabric of the poem and not just an element external to it, which makes it an essential partner in the formation of the poetic text. This makes it a key partner in the formation of the poetic text. Throughout its history, the Arabic poem has presented thousands of spatial signs that participated in the formation of its entity, and necessarily participated in the formation of its aesthetics, but scholars have viewed them as mere subjects or mere elements that form the space of the poem without trying to discover the aesthetics of their presence. The study attempts to adopt a poetic model that has its own artistic nature and its own temporal and spatial boundaries (the Arabic poem in the Arabian Gulf region at the beginning of the third millennium), with the aim of achieving three objectives that discuss its questions and fulfil its hypotheses: To identify the most important spatial signs in the poem, explore the ways in which they appear and recognise the patterns of their presence, and then explore the rhetoric and aesthetics they achieve in the context of the poem. The study seeks to answer two main questions: How was the presence of the sign in the poem? What did the presence of the sign add to the poem? Its material was formed through three main axes that represent spatial circles that expand from the nearest to the farthest geographically: The local place (the poet's country and its spatial spaces), the regional circle (the large Arab world), and the global circle (the places outside the Arab world that the poem under study approached). The study achieved its results by analysing the poetic energy of the studied texts in a primarily aesthetic manner, looking at their deeper levels and the relationships between the spatial signs on the one hand, and the relationship between the spatial sign and other textual elements.

Where the wild places are: Factors associated with people's favourite local and national wild place in the United Kingdom

Where the wild places are: Factors associated with people's favourite local and national wild place in the United Kingdom

Civil society and governance. A survey of local authority and NPO collaboration from an institutional perspective

ABSTRACT There is a renewed interest in third sector organizations with hope for contributions to systems of new public governance and welfare services. This study is based on a survey to the local authorities in Sweden and aims to analyze how collaboration between public and third sector organizations occurs at the local level. A special focus for the study is idea-driven public partnerships (IOPs). The results indicate that collaboration mainly occurs outside of the core fields of welfare and also that the national level agreements set standards to be used in especially the larger local authorities who are more in need of formalized policies to handle the local relations. The institutionalized collaborative relations are diverse and mainly meant to promote a thriving third sector for its democratic values, but there are also certain welfare fields with less local remit such as sports, leisure time activities, and homelessness where NPOs are not crowded out by the public sector. Collaboration with IOPs are more common in larger local authorities and places with a larger proportion of immigrants.

“It’s the Only World We’ve Got.” Children’s Responses to Chris Jordan’s Images about SDG 14: Life Below Water

AbstractBroad and complex ideas about sustainability can be communicated through the Arts. Australian curriculum documents support the integration of Arts education with education for sustainability. Responding to artworks as a viewer is a key aspect of Arts education in Australian schools. Chris Jordan is a US artist whose online media galleries communicate ideas about environmental and social justice themes. This paper reports interview data from a larger project exploring children’s responses to Chris Jordan’s artworks. Conversations were held with 28 children aged between 4 and 12 as they navigated Jordan’s website to explore the images they encountered. Data relating to SDG14: Life below water were selected for the specific focus of this paper. Thematic analysis of the data revealed five themes: connections to prior experience and knowledge, links with local contexts and places, emotional engagement with the images, solutions and action-taking and ideas related to post-humanism and the human-nature binary. These findings endorse the power of Arts-based experiences for enhancing education for sustainability in primary schools and early childhood contexts.

Impact of a place-based educational approach on student and community members’ experiences and learning within a post-secondary GIS course

Students develop personal connections to local places and build critical thinking skills as they engage in meaningful problem-solving rooted in place. At the same time, when students work within local communities, they can contribute to increased community technical capacity and well-being. In this case study, we sought to explore student and community perceptions of a place-based activity integrated within a college-level GIS course in Maine, USA. We partnered with a local conservation organization to develop place-based activities to address our partner’s geospatial needs. We drew on multiple data generation methods including pre-/post-test student responses within a quasi-experimental design, student reflections, and a group interview with community partners to illuminate the diverse benefits and challenges of place-based education (PBE). Our findings indicate that while quantitative results did not detect differences between the place-based, technologically-mediated place-based, and campus-based approaches, qualitative results – such as student reflections and community partner perceptions – depicted complex reciprocal gains resulting from education rooted in local community. Community partners benefit from PBE by increasing their GIS capacity and engaging on a personal level with students. We conclude with implications for GIS instructors seeking to incorporate place-based approaches within their college-level courses, such as the need to engage community partners thoughtfully and transparently, think critically about measurement and assessment of learning outcomes, and remain flexible to student needs.

Thematic Teaching of Augmented Reality and Education for Sustainable Development in Preschool—The Importance of ‘Place’

In this study, we report on a case study of two Swedish preschool teachers’ first experiences of teaching sustainable development goals through the innovative use of augmented reality. Their statements about thematic work, children’s agency, teachers’ perspective, and augmented reality were analysed qualitatively through a theoretical framework based on transduction and place. The innovative use of augmented reality related to the importance of children’s agency in their exploration of local places associated with sustainable development goals is elaborated on, especially with the value of treating augmented reality as a ‘what’, or content, in teaching before it can be used as a ‘how’, or tool, for teaching sustainable development. It is seen in this exploratory study that transducing meaning between different representations such as physical places and the sustainable development goals in augmented reality applications opens up fruitful discussions regarding, for example, democracy aspects and source criticism between children and preschool teachers. Results indicate that the introduction of augmented reality technology is also worth pursuing in early-year teaching.

Exploring the nexus of food citizenship and local food consumption in America's rural-urban blend: Insights from Will County (Illinois)

This paper uses Will County in Illinois as a case study to examine the relationship between food citizenship and local food consumption in what we term to be the rural-urban blend of America. Food citizenship is participating in food-related actions promoting democratic, socially and economically equitable, and environmentally sustainable food systems. On the other hand, local food consumption is choosing and preferring to buy and eat local food over other conventional forms of food. The study used data analysis from a survey of 342 residents in Will County, Illinois, to test a conceptual model that considers various socio-psychological traits that food citizens might have, which could explain their preferences for local food, including local patriotism, perceived similarity with local farmers, social concern for the community's well-being, and environmental concerns. The findings reveal the intertwined nature of local patriotism and place identity, shedding light on their direct influence on food citizens' preferences. The perceived similarity with farmers and active engagement with local food producers deepen food citizens' understanding and connection, ultimately influencing their preferences for locally sourced food. The study also highlights the distinct roles of men and women in local food preferences, with local patriotism being more significant for men aged 40 and above. Finally, the results underscore the Midwest's unique socio-political landscape and the complex interplay of factors shaping local food preferences within rural-urban blends like Will County.

Variable recruitment of distal tuft dendrites shapes new hippocampal place fields.

Hippocampal pyramidal neurons support episodic memory by integrating complementary information streams into new 'place fields'. Distal tuft dendrites are widely thought to initiate place field formation by locally generating prolonged, globally-spreading Ca 2+ spikes known as plateau potentials. However, the hitherto experimental inaccessibility of distal tuft dendrites in the hippocampus has rendered their in vivo function entirely unknown. Here we gained direct optical access to this elusive dendritic compartment. We report that distal tuft dendrites do not serve as the point of origin for place field-forming plateau potentials. Instead, the timing and extent of peri-formation distal tuft recruitment is variable and closely predicts multiple properties of resultant place fields. Therefore, distal tuft dendrites play a more powerful role in hippocampal feature selectivity than simply initiating place field formation. Moreover, place field formation is not accompanied by global Ca 2+ influx as previously thought. In addition to shaping new somatic place fields, distal tuft dendrites possess their own local place fields. Tuft place fields are back-shifted relative to that of their soma and appear to maintain somatic place fields via post-formation plateau potentials. Through direct in vivo observation, we provide a revised dendritic basis for hippocampal feature selectivity during navigational learning.

Play and Playgrounds of a Traditional Urban Festivity

Abstract This article contributes to the development of the concept of “playgrounds”, which has previously been given only sporadic analytical value as a fundamental component of concepts of play. Ethnographic material on the Italian celebration and competition the Palio di Siena is analysed, providing a spatial analysis to support the emotional reading of play. According to this article, the emerging playground of this festivity includes not only local and global public places but also intimate ones. The article investigates how intimacy and publicness are intertwined in specific festive places, and what role global contexts play today in spatial processes of community-building at festivities. Furthermore, festivities are shaped by both participants and outsiders, such as tourists and even “spoilsports”.