Place Matters Research Articles

DETERMINING THE INDETERMINATE

Reconciling the permanence of existence with the existence of change is a long-standing metaphysical puzzle. Some, following Aristotle, resolve this tension by positing ‘prime matter’, a bedrock which grounds all change. Saint Thomas Aquinas argued prime matter had to be purely potential, thus completely indeterminate and extensionless. This article charitably reconstructs and critically assesses Aquinas’ view, arguing it is far too restrictive. Prime matter need only be maximally potential and determinable, allowing it to take on certain determinate properties. I argue extension is an obvious candidate property and propose five theories positing extended prime matter: (1) a subtle revision of Aquinas' own view, (2) a hylomorphic approach which attributes to prime matter an ‘elastic’ extension, (3) a minimally/infinitesimally extended prime matter inspired by ancient atomism and late-renaissance/early-modern corpuscularianism, (4) a maximally/infinitely extended prime matter influenced by Advaita Vedanta, and (5) a pluralist approach reminiscent of Aristotle's elements. Crucially, by allowing prime matter a determinate characteristic, each proposal demystifies Thomistic prime matter which one could otherwise charge with being so characterless as to slip into the ‘nothingness’ which terrified the Eleatics and motivated the introduction of prime matter in the first place.

Fraud events in the coolest of neighbourhoods: A case study from Gothenburg, Sweden

AbstractIn the current study credit card frauds are analysed. Concepts are taken from crime pattern theory and place-based criminology. The empirical material originates from the urban nightlife of Gothenburg, Sweden, and combines quantitative and qualitative data from different sources. Instead of focusing on the individual’s specific motives for committing crimes, the study has its interest in how place can play a part in fraud events and be a necessary condition in the crime modus operandi. In the conducted analysis, we can clearly see that place matters in the crime series studied, and that the place was not randomly chosen by the offenders.

Local Democracy in America: How Access, Competition, and Place Shape Turnout in Mayoral Races

The vast majority of the roughly half-million elected officials in the U.S. occupy local offices, however, research examining how they get elected to remains scant. The present study examines turnout in local elections, focusing on the effects of electoral rules, the competitiveness of local races, and whether and how place matters. Based on a sample of roughly 10,000 mayoral elections, this study represents the most systematic empirical analysis of local turnout to date. While we find substantial differences in turnout across rural towns, suburbs, and central cities, these differences are largely explained by electoral and contextual factors that are unevenly distributed across the local landscape. Though election timing is far and away the most important factor, uncontested mayoral races, local elections in states with restrictive voting laws as well as those mid-sized municipalities are associated with significantly lower turnout.

1928: Disparities in cervical cancer stage and outcomes: does place matter?

1928: Disparities in cervical cancer stage and outcomes: does place matter?

A Study of Seasonal and Temporal Variances in Ambient Air Quality of Highly Polluted Cities in Rajasthan

The quality of the urban environment in tropical and subtropical densely populated cities is a complicated subject that has garnered a lot of attention in the current setting. Some of the most polluted cities in Rajasthan are Bhiwadi, Jaipur, Kota, and Udaipur, where the air quality has drastically declined over the previous ten years, according to an IQAir report. In order to determine the seasonal and temporal fluctuations in the concentrations of major air pollutants, such as carbon monoxide (CO), ozone (O3), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), sulphur dioxide (SO2), and particulate matter (PM10 and PM2.5), in an urban setting in Rajasthan, this study will examine the ambient air quality in severely polluted cities throughout the state. A comprehensive investigation of the seasonal and temporal variations in ambient air quality throughout Rajasthan's extremely polluted cities was made possible by the application of PCA and the K-Means Clustering Algorithm. We interpreted the intricate patterns of pollution oscillations by means of rigorous time-series analysis, providing insight into the dynamic interactions among meteorological conditions, sources of pollution, and regulatory actions. The results indicate that there were more seasonal variations during the summer, and that levels of particulate matter (PM10 and PM2.5) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) in places like Jaipur, Bhiwadi, Kota, and Udaipur alarmingly rose above pre-pandemic levels. This highlights the significance of identifying and addressing the various challenges caused by air pollution at different times of the year and in different seasons. Furthermore, identifying the main sources of pollution and assessing the effectiveness of current legislation offer insightful information for focused actions.

Bortom servicefronten. E-handelsarbetets platser och ojämlikhetsmönster

The digitalization of retailing is restructuring consumption as well as retail work. Unlike front-line service work in stores, online retail work is defined by indirect service work at a distance from customers at warehouse sites. The rapid pace of change means that knowledge about online retail workplaces and its employees is still fragmentary. Empirically drawing on Swedish national statistics and an ongoing study of five online retail warehouses, this article explores intersections of online retail warehousing, gender and racialization, and meanings of place therein. National statistics show that online retail employs more men and more foreign-born than retailing in general. While retailing is dominated by small workplaces, online retail warehouses are either small or large and the proportion of women and Swedish-born is lower at the larger warehouses than the small ones. Occupational data show that the proportion of women and foreign-born people is significantly lower among online retail managers than among warehouse workers. Further nuances are provided by the qualitative insights from the five studied warehouses. Almost only women worked in the two smaller warehouses, which was explained by references to the nature of the work. At the larger, more gender-balanced warehouses, examples of segregation between employees of the same category were found, as was the importance of place for hierarchies between workers and managers. More so, the study makes evident that place matters also for the boundary making around and between online retail workplaces, especially in relation to racialization processes. While inequality, place and work in retail stores are about conditional access to employment, in online retail warehouses the matter seems to be more about how certain bodies’ lack of mobility and opportunities in the labor market at large left them “stuck” in online retailing.

“This Isn't a Place for Castoffs. We're Here Because We Want to be Here”

Former classroom teacher, teacher educator, and young adult literature scholar, Lisa Hazlett offers insight on her experiences in rural areas and how these experiences prompted her to write her book Teaching Diversity in Rural Schools. In this discussion, she explains the singularity of the Upper Midwest and why place matters when it comes to reading and teaching young adult literature.

Understanding the Perception of Place and Its Impact on Community Violence.

In this article, we explore the responses of 357 African American men between 15- and 24-years old living in four high crime high violence cities to better understand their perception of their environment and its impact on community violence. We focus on study participants' perceptions of their cities, explanations of violence, and their perceived contribution to the level of violence. Respondents describe their cities in grim terms with few opportunities. And, from their perspective, the dangerous environment in which they live necessitates gun possession, potentially perpetuating community violence. Our findings affirm that as with any other public health issue, the perception of place matters in understanding community violence. Further, our findings underscore the importance of seeking and responding to the lived experience of those most likely to be victims and perpetrators of community violence in crafting and implementing interventions.

Does spatial context of Third Place matter? Revisiting the Third Place concept based on user preferences: case of Kolkata, India

ABSTRACT Third Places (TPs), defined by Oldenburg in suburban American context are social informal gathering spaces, except home and workplace. Major literature focused on how TPs create social capital and cohesion within communities, largely benefitting socially, psychologically and even economically. Over the years, the TP concept is contested to globally transform from its initial theme of communitarianism to present dominant forms of neo-liberal consumerism. This posed significant threat to the inherent idea of affordable sociability rooted in characteristic plainness and neutral ground of TP. Moreover, exploring the spatial patterns and the influence of geographical variations on the nature of TP across urban landscapes is largely understudied. This study thus aimed to develop a consolidated understanding of the spatial dynamics of TPs in Indian context. The paper presented a city level, empirical based quantitative study based on online questionnaire survey. Commercial TPs are found to be most preferred. Research findings showed that the types of TP significantly affect the individual’s preferred travel distance. Also, one’s behavioural attributes as a whole significantly affect the catchment of the TPs, influenced by spatial variations. Hotspot analysis demonstrated three significant spatial concentrations across the city based on distance-based clustering. It showed heterogenous agglomerating tendencies of TP.

Emplacement and Emplotment: Media Production in Pandemic Times

Places matter, despite the discursive hype of virtual making or remote locations, in showing the ways that production is a process nested within social worlds. In 2020, global Hollywood promoted a “COVID-friendly ideal” in order to return to work during widespread lockdowns and work stoppages. Yet by focusing comparatively on the stories that film and television workers told about production during COVID, we argue that crisis stories reveal much about the specificity of places in studying production cultures. To illustrate, we compare workers’ pandemic stories as evidence of emplacement in national hierarchies and emplotment in local power dynamics. Drawing on a corpus of seventy interviews conducted in Tel Aviv, Israel and New Orleans, USA in 2020 and 2021, we show that production cultures provide ample critique of normative tales that media industries promote about themselves and their workforces.

Re: placement: Commonwealth, postcolonial, and the politics of positioning

This essay explores the politics of positioning as it has shifted from the paradigms of “Commonwealth literature” to postcolonial studies, and asks if older mechanisms of placing literary and critical endeavours may be emerging refurbished in the present day. It recognizes the ways in which early enthusiasts of Commonwealth literature often tethered texts to firm nation-based foundations while also promoting a transcendentalist vision of literariness. This modus operandi gave way, I argue, to a much more agile and dimensional cognisance of the politics of positioning, for both literature and its critique, which hallmarks postcolonial studies in general. By briefly discussing the work of the writers Zadie Smith and Bernardine Evaristo, the essay calls for the sustaining of postcolonialism’s often sophisticated engagement with positionality at a moment when a less interrogative approach to matters of place, identity, literature, and critique may be circulating — so that the important wisdom of postcolonial studies is not overwritten by newly emergent approaches which seem familiar from old.

China’s Militarisation and the Indian Ocean

What is behind Beijing’s increased assertiveness towards its regional neighbours? Many use the theory of transition of power: that China is becoming a superpower and it challenges the status quo, mostly the United States, and attempts to replace it globally.2 Others tend to believe that China’s real desire is to become a regional hegemon by establishing a China-centred sphere in Asia. Some believe that their only aim is to just simply overcome the “century of humiliation” from its recent past by continuing their economic boom. This paper presents a view that China is trying to reconstruct the status quo, and in order to do that the country needs to establish a China-centred Asia and most importantly a China-centred Indio-Pacific region. In its first section, this paper takes a look at the country’s incredible military modernisation by examining those events and leaders that pushed this development. Then, the section also points out how China plans to reconstruct the regional status quo with the help of its economic power. The second part aims to present the Indian Ocean region’s current status as a “battlefield” between China and India and why does it matter in the first place. Finally, in the third part the paper argues that the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue is the best tool to deter Beijing in the future and it must be strengthened properly by, among other things, a deepened U.S.–India defence cooperation.

A geographer's place matters: Reflections from a ‘local scholar’ and the politics of North/South knowledge production

AbstractThe most prominent and influential Geography literatures about the Global South are predominantly produced by scholars in the North and less so by intellectuals whose homes are located in the Global South—the ‘local scholars’. As a Cambodian scholar, I argue that the challenges of participating in collaborative, English language knowledge production derive not merely from skill disparities between international and ‘local’ academics, but also from constraints in finding the right platforms for research and academic expression. Constrained conditions for knowledge participation and expansion are rooted in a long history of colonialism in the Cambodian education system and the contemporary political economy of academia. Rather than directly engage with international intellectual and political discussions, in many cases, Cambodian scholars largely supply compelling stories—in the form of ethnographic evidence, data, images and affect to fuel theoretical debates taking place in the North. Beyond emphasising this well established inequity in the political economy of knowledge production, I contend that being ‘on the ground’ not only equips local scholars with contextual depths but also confines them to think and act locally.

Splicing under stress: A matter of time and place.

Excision of introns during splicing regulates gene expression. In this issue, work by Sung et al. (https://doi.org/10.1083/jcb.202111151) demonstrates that the timing of intron removal in response to stress is coordinated in nuclear speckles, adding a component of spatial regulation to co-/post-transcriptional splicing.

Gender Differences in Social Support Vary by Environment Among Older People With HIV in South Africa and Uganda.

Sub-Saharan Africa is home to 3.7 million older adults living with HIV, who experience high rates of comorbid conditions. Formal services other than HIV clinical care are largely unavailable. Overall, women are the mainstay of informal social support networks, and older women with HIV may face burdens due to family caregiving expectations. Thus, it is important to understand the extent of informal support provided to older adults living with HIV, and how this is affected by gender. We examined differences in social networks, needs, social support and caregiving, and perceptions of support adequacy among women and men aged 50 and older living with HIV in Uganda (n = 101) and South Africa (n = 108), mostly rural and suburban populations, respectively. We used multiple regression to determine whether there was an association between gender and the amount of social support received and whether that varied by research site. Men were more likely than women to receive support from a partner. Women were more likely to live with offspring, both providing and receiving care. In South Africa but not Uganda, women received more help from family than men did. There was no gender difference in getting help from friends, but it was more common in Uganda. Living alone was strongly associated with less family help and more help from friends. Older women with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa tend to be more heavily involved in social support exchanges-both providing and receiving care-than their male peers, but place matters. Interdependence is high in rural Uganda, where formal services are scarce and needs exceed resources. Given the projected growth in this population, stronger formal supports are needed for communities and older people with HIV, especially those who live alone.

Dualities of Place among Rural and Urban Periphery Homegrown Adults in Israel☆

AbstractFollowing the general idea of place matters and based on the particular features of rural/peripheral settlements, people, and communities, the current study aims at exploring the development and meaning of peripheral identity and its construction, as perceived by adults who were born and raised in the northern periphery of Israel. Using the phenomenological genre, 40 interviews were conducted with adults aged 26–40 who grew up in the periphery at least until the age of 21. Inductive thematic analysis was conducted, based on the principles of grounded theory. The analysis yielded four main categories that represented four dimensions of a conflict or a paradox that characterizes life in the periphery: (1) Personal chronology from childhood to adulthood; (2) Family as an anchor vs. an obligation; (3) Settlement as inner vs. the outside environment; (4) Region as empowerment and powerful vs. deficit and powerless. The findings indicate that the embedded identity of the peripheral homegrown is ambiguous, conflictual, and contradictory. The current study aims to demonstrate how the social constructive approach can challenge the meanings of rurality/peripherally as an experience that is shaped in different ways.

Place Matters

Place matters. In analyzing historical events and rights movements, we need to pay close attention to the divergent locales where they happened. This article focuses on one such event, the lettuce workers’ strike of 1936, as it played out in Salinas, California. The setting of Salinas made a difference in labor relations and race relations, both in the way the strike came about and, just as importantly, in how and why it was ended. Strikers and their adversaries (growers and labor contractors) were multiracial and multiethnic but shared a common bond in their deep attachment to the city of Salinas. They knew one another intimately and had every incentive to heal the breach.

Excerpt from Siteseeing

Between February 2021 and March 2022, Ariel Gordon and Brenda Schmidt wrote a collaborative poetry manuscript, formatted like a call and response. Ariel intended to write about urban Manitoba, the city and its trees, and Brenda was to write about rural Saskatchewan and birds. Over the course of the year, the matter of place took over and the intentions branched and flew apart. They both wrote birds and trees but also moose and mushrooms, pronghorns and wild turkeys, and people making their way through it all. They wrote climate as it was manifested in drought-stressed trees and stunted crops covered in grasshoppers, in wildfires and wildfire smoke hanging over the prairies. They wrote home as they found it.

What makes peripheral places matter? Applying the concept of political capital within a multiple capital framework

Present research focusses on how urbanization has led to ‘territorial inequality’ that marginalizes ‘places that don't matter’, understood as places neglected by politicians. In this strand of literature, rural areas are consequently singled out as belonging to the unfortunate group of ‘left behind places’ and ‘places that don't matter’. However, to what extent can this be supported empirically? Based on a Danish national survey we conducted 2011/2012, and applying the concept of political capital within a multiple capital framework, we attempt to answer three questions: Do rural areas per se have little political power and influence? What makes some rural areas have more political capital than others? Does local political capital influence the local development in rural areas? We measure political capital by asking respondents in 476 rural parishes to assess how much influence local citizens exert on political decisions that concern their own, local area. The results show a significant variation in political capital across the sample. Further, regression analyses show that the local stocks of five forms of capital (physical, economic, human, social, symbolic) are positively related to the level of local political capital. Finally, regression analyses show that the initial level of political capital in 2012 has a positive and long-term effect on rural population growth throughout the period 2012–2023, while controlling for various exogenous factors.

Talking population geographies and a ‘love letter’ to the journal

AbstractVarious significant anniversaries for population geography as a recognisable subdiscipline fall round about now, in 2023, serving as fitting prompts for reflecting upon its character, history and possible futures. This paper offers such a reflection, taking an interview transcript between the two authors as its basis, the format here offering a directness of address not always possible in standard academic papers. Arguments are advanced about widening the focus of the subdiscipline, centring on the complexity of what is taken to constitute a ‘population’ and its ‘demographics’—asking about who and what is being counted, how and why—and considering the many ways in which matters of geography, space and place enter into the ‘biopolitics’ of life and death, nurturance and eradication, survival and abandonment, inclusion and exclusion. Concurrently, claims are made about the value of being outward‐looking, drawing on diverse philosophies, theories, literatures and insights only fleetingly represented in the subdiscipline to date. More specifically, the paper is rooted in one author's intensive use of the present journal, Population, Space and Place, for undergraduate teaching, with commentary and scholarly endnotes (cross‐referencing past contributions to the journal) demonstrating the journal generative role in the past, present and future of population geography.