Spatial Orderings Research Articles

Elucidating the interplay between entropy-driven and patch-mediated bonding in directing nanoscale assemblies

The interplay between directional patchy attraction and shape-driven entropic forces sculpts the spatial and orientational orderings between anisotropic building blocks, giving rise to symmetry breaking of pre-programmed interactions between particles.

Noticing nature on the waterways

ABSTRACT Noticing nature has often been described as a process through which young people come to know, understand, and care for it. This paper challenges these assumptions through examining practices of noticing nature, as together, young people and adults notice environmental features on urban waterways. Drawing on a project that provided opportunities for young people of Somali heritage to access waterways in Leicester, through canoeing, nature- and heritage-based activities, we examine instances of noticing young people recorded on film. Using the techniques of ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, three fragments of film are analysed: Noticing a heron, ducks, and a dead rat. Through these, we explore the intersubjective social production of noticing, how adults seek to structure that developing sense of noticing, and the role of technologies through which young people notice. Considering how young people disrupt adult spatial orderings, we find that adults and young people do not straightforwardly fall into expert and novice categories in terms of reinforcing norms of noticing nature. Instead, adults sometimes reinforce, sometimes dismiss, young people’s sense of what and how to notice. We reflect on how the urban waterway as disordered spaces are socially produced through in-the-moment noticings, and how young people and adults might categorise desirable and undesirable nature-to-notice.

“You better stay healthy and postpone any illness until I can be with you”: the multidirectional ‘care ecologies’ of migrant women during the COVID-19 pandemic

ABSTRACT Drawing upon the concept of ‘care ecology’, in this paper we explore migrant women’s unpaid caring activities and emotional labour within the spatial orderings of the COVID-19 pandemic in and beyond Aotearoa New Zealand. In dialogue with 12 middle-class migrant women, this paper sketches a complex picture of the ways informal and unpaid caring activities are conducted across multiple scales of body, home, countries of origin and Aotearoa. The findings revealed migrant women’s caring activities were disturbed, intensified, and informed by spatial structures of the pandemic, including border closures, lockdowns and (in)accessibility to care services in Aotearoa and their homelands. These results highlight further that unpaid care, both at transnational and local levels, is not simply due to an individual’s capacity and feelings of responsibility, but is also a collective spatial construction that is shaped by a range of social, cultural, and political factors. Our research emphasises that addressing mental health challenges of migrant women during the pandemic requires targeted policies that acknowledge their invisible emotional labour and cater to their specific needs.

Accurate structural descriptor enabled screening for nitrogen and oxygen vacancy codoped TiO2 with a large bandgap narrowing

• An accurate structural descriptor to represent the doping configurations of N/V O -codoped anatase TiO 2 is constructed. • Machine learning assisted electronic properties screening for the optimal doping configurations is enabled by the structural descriptor. • Two types of doping configurations featured by a linear and corner-sharing TiO 5 N 1 /TiO 4 N 2 octahedron chain with a large bandgap narrowing are identified. • The spatial ordering of N-dopants has been uncovered as the intrinsic reason for a large bandgap narrowing in N/V O -codoped TiO 2 . Nitrogen (N) doping has been widely adopted to improve the light absorption of TiO 2 . However, the newly introduced N-2 p states are largely localized thus barely overlap with O-2 p states in the valence band of TiO 2 , resulting in a shoulder-like absorption edge. To realize an apparent overlap between N-2 p and O-2 p states, charge compensation between N 3− and O 2− via electron transfer from oxygen vacancies (V O ) to N dopants is one possible strategy. To verify this, in numerous doping configurations of N/V O -codoped anatase TiO 2 , we identified two types of V O position independent N-dopant spatial orderings by efficient screening enabled with a newly designed structural descriptor. Compared with others, these two types of the N-dopant spatial orderings are highly beneficial for charge compensation to produce an apparent overlap between N-2 p and O-2 p states, therefore achieving a large bandgap narrowing. Furthermore, the two types of the N-dopant spatial orderings can also be generalized to N/V O -codoped rutile TiO 2 for bandgap narrowing.

Performing an Anti-Homeless City

In the time of globalization, many cities, including the city of Victoria in BC, have engaged in a development model fueled by investment, tourism, and economic immigration. This model requires public authorities to implement policies that contribute to making cities worthy of capital, tourists, and immigrants. Digital connectivity, real estate development, local amenities, and revitalized neighbourhoods are essential ingredients for economic development. In contrast, poverty and urban decay are not good for the way of life that politicians, entrepreneurs, tourists, and urbanites desire. Therefore, all visual manifestations of urban decay, including homelessness, should be restricted by law. In response to this development model, homeless people are forced to perform actions that are banned like building tent cities in parks. In doing so, homeless people challenge exclusionary legal and spatial orderings that support anti-homeless cities.
 This paper develops a performativity-based approach to legal geography to contribute to the debate about homelessness in Canada. Rather than focusing on the social right to housing, my argument in this paper zeroes in on the right to use urban space without being excluded. To this goal, I explore interactions between local authorities, homeless people, and other social actors in Victoria to explain that reiterated human interaction is the means to perform and rectify legal and spatial orderings that segregate homeless people. Thus, the performativity-based approach to legal geography developed throughout this paper illustrates not only how anti-homeless cities are socially performed, but also how they are collectively contested.

Few strongly interacting fermions of different mass driven in the vicinity of a critical point

It was recently argued that one-dimensional systems of several strongly interacting fermions of different mass undergo critical transitions between different spatial orderings when the external confinement adiabatically changes its shape. In this work, we explore their dynamical properties when finite-time drivings are considered. By detailed analysis of many-body spectra, we show that the dynamics is typically guided only by the lowest eigenstates and may be well-understood in the language of the generalized Landau-Zener mechanism. In this way, we can capture precisely the dynamical response of the system to the external driving. As consequence, we show that by appropriate tailoring parameters of the driving one can target desired many-body state in a non-infinite time. Our theoretical predictions can be straightforwardly utilized in upcoming state-of-the-art experiments with ultracold atoms.

The Conquest of the Desert: Argentina's Indigenous Peoples and the Battle for History

The Conquest of the Desert: Argentina's Indigenous Peoples and the Battle for History

The spatio‐temporal ordering of migrant detention: Exclusion, hierarchy, and human disposal

AbstractThis paper analyses the spatialities and temporalities of a U.S. migrant detention centre, to demonstrate the entanglement of migrant exclusion with dehumanisation and racialisation. I examine spatial orderings such as isolation, segregation, and regulated mobilities in detention alongside the arbitrary and deadening tempos and rhythms of detention. I find patterns of inclusionary exclusion through which the “consent” of detained people to their own deportation is conditioned by dehumanising spatio‐temporalities. These patterns are the product of the highly standardised, regulated, and ordered spatio‐temporalities of detention. I ultimately argue that the spatial and temporal ordering of detention, in all of its standardisation, is a racialising project that rationalises exclusion and dehumanisation, placing responsibility for degradation, deportation, and even premature death, upon those in detention.

Cultivating Justice beyond Law

AbstractThinking about justice beyond law involves understanding justice as a process that campesinos (peasants) in Colombia link to aspirations for a good life. I argue that environmental justice draws on distinctive temporalities and spatial scales. By temporality, I refer to how campesinos think about justice as a process to overcome their long history of community injustice, not as a reversal of a single event or action. I also refer to campesinos’ everyday life, through which they define the territorial management underlying their enduring social inequality. Justice does not entail fixed spatial scales but rather the interplay between forms of state and local spatial orderings that may clash or coexist. These spatial‐temporal dimensions have crucial consequences for addressing environmental justice, such as redress beyond individual compensation; thinking about scale beyond legal frameworks of jurisdiction; reflecting on the unequal distribution of responsibilities for environmental changes; and addressing notions of response‐ability—that is, the capacity of campesinos to respond, not only to react, with both patience and urgency to socio‐environmental harms.

Optimization of sum frequency output from intra-cavity sum frequency generation in singly resonant optical parametric oscillator

Theoretical investigation and optimization of output characteristics of intra-cavity sum frequency generation between pump and the signal waves in singly resonant optical parametric oscillators (IC-SFG-SROs) are presented. Under the collimated Gaussian beam approximation, simple models considering different spatial orderings of SRO and SFG processes of IC-SFG-SROs are set up. The calculations based on experimental parameters are in good agreement with experimental results. Output characteristics of IC-SFG-SROs operated at other wavelengths are optimized and predicted. For given experimental conditions (pump wavelength, pump power and SRO crystal length), the optimum length of SFG crystal and SF power are calculated, respectively. Furthermore, when a periodically poled crystal with a cascaded pattern is used as the SRO crystal and SFG crystal, the optimum SFG crystal length and the SF power are also calculated. These calculations and models provide guidelines for designing and optimizing continuous-wave tunable IC-SFG-SROs.

Geometry-induced entanglement in a mass-imbalanced few-fermion system

Many-body systems undergoing quantum phase transitions reveal substantial growth of non-classical correlations between different parties of the system. This behavior is manifested by characteristic divergences of the von Neumann entropy. Here we show, that very similar features may be observed in one-dimensional systems of a few strongly interacting atoms when the structural transitions between different spatial orderings are driven by a varying shape of an external potential. When the appropriate adaptation of the finite-size scaling approach is performed in the vicinity of the transition point, few-fermion systems display a characteristic power-law invariance of divergent quantities.

Healing architecture and psychiatric practice: (re)ordering work and space in an in-patient ward in Denmark.

Healing architecture is a defining feature of contemporary hospital design in many parts of the world, with psychiatric in-patient facilities in Denmark at the forefront of this innovation. The approach rests on the contention that designed clinical spaces and the particular dispositions they express may promote patient recovery. Although the idea that health may be spatially mediated is well-established, the means of this mediation are far from settled. This article contributes to this debate by analysing medical encounters in the context of a new purpose-built psychiatric hospital opened in Slagelse, Denmark in late 2015 as an example of healing architecture for the region. Grounded in qualitative research conducted in two wards between 2016 and 2017, we explore the key material and social effects of the hospital's healing architecture, and the spaces and practices it enacts. Following the work of Michael Lynch, we consider both the designed 'spatial order' of the in-patient wards and the 'spatial orderings' unfolding therein with a particular interest in how order is accomplished in psychiatric work. With much of the existing discussion of healing architectures focusing on their impacts on patient wellbeing, we consider how healing architectures may also be transforming psychiatric work.

Theoretical analysis of a continuous-wave 323 nm laser generated by a singly resonant optical parametric oscillator with intracavity sum-frequency generation

Theoretical calculations of a singly resonant optical parametric oscillator (SRO) with intracavity sum-frequency generation (SFG) (IC-SFG-SRO) are presented to obtain tunable ultraviolet laser radiation at 323 nm. Under the plane-wave approximation, simple models considering different spatial orderings of SRO and SFG processes are set up. The calculations are in good agreement with the experimental results, and some important simulation parameters are also obtained. According to these parameters, the output characteristics of the 532 nm green laser pumped SRO with an intracavity SFG between the pump and the resonant signal near 822 nm and the 1064 nm infrared laser pumped SRO with an intracavity SFG between the pump and the resonant signal near 1644 nm are predicted and optimized. The models and simulation parameters provide guidelines for optimizing the continuous-wave IC-SFG-SRO.

Bomb Alert: Graffiti Writing and Urban Space in London

Based on three years of ethnographic research undertaken in London amongst a loose network of what British Transport Police term ‘serious graffiti vandals’, this article considers how we might conceive theoretically of the interrelationships between graffiti writing, urban space and social control. The article proceeds in two parts. By way of introduction, the first half of the article delineates some of the major subcultural elements that comprise the day-to-day practice of graffiti writing as it exists in present-day London. The second half of the article engages the theoretical work of Henri Lefebvre. It is suggested that graffiti can be understood as simultaneously disrupting authoritative spatial orderings, whilst superimposing its own alternative social geography onto the city.

Narrative, Space and Atmosphere

Since the financial crash of 2008, the strategy of occupation has been widely deployed as a means of expressing and mobilizing political dissent. Within legal studies, responses to this mode of protest have remained wedded to a statist perspective that fails to assess the normative commitments immanent to occupations themselves. Rather than examining the strategy of occupation through a legalistic lens, this article approaches a recent occupation through the theoretical apparatus of the ‘nomosphere’. This term – originally coined by David Delaney but substantially expanded here – allows for an assessment of the spatial, narrative and atmospheric orderings of the Umbrella Movement, a pro-democracy campaign that sustained a 79-day occupation in Hong Kong’s city centre in late 2014. This ‘nomospheric inquiry’ assesses the forms of ordering that animated the movement from within and seeks to foreground the lived and felt reality of the occupation rather than focus on its legalistic or constitutional significance alone.

SILENCING AND AMPLIFYING ETHNICITY IN ESTONIA An Ethnographic Account from Tallinn

Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in the ethnically divided capital of Estonia, this article1 suggests that the tacit norm of reciprocity and neighbourliness in Tallinn is to silence rather than amplify ethnicity. Silencing ethnicity is a continuous, context-dependent interactional process that includes linguistic strategies, as well as spatial orderings. The article discusses how residents of Tallinn negotiate and sustain distinctions between “Estonian” and “Russian” spheres by replicating particular trajectories and ways of doing things on a day-to-day basis. The ensuing separateness of Estonians and Russian-speakers is part of the local culture more than an expression of antagonism, though the two are not mutually exclusive. The article also reflects on the (im)possibilities of studying ethnic interactions at home.

The augmented newsbeat: spatial structuring in a Twitterized news ecosystem

This article deals with the intertwining of digital and nondigital spaces of news reporting. It focuses specifically on how Twitter affects spatial and temporal orderings of news ecosystems. At the New York state government, actors within the space permeate informational barriers through Twitter while enabling others to follow and engage in events from remote locations. The always-on mentality of tweeters not only blurs boundaries between work life and private life but also helps correspondents to get access to and pass on information instantly, as well as to better anticipate events. The proliferation of digital spaces enhances awareness of nondigital spaces but requires coordination between the two. This paper is based on over two years of field research, involving observation, interviews, digital ethnography of the state house twitterverse and content analysis of journalists’ tweets during the same-sex marriage debate.

Symposium 2: Assembling university learning technologies for an open world

This paper considers the emergence of social media in university teaching and learning and the capacity or universities – as complex organisations with disparate interacting parts – to respond to the shift of pedagogies and practices to open networks. Institutional learning technology environments reflect a legacy of prescriptive, hierarchical arrangements associated with enterprise systems, and are a poor fit with the heterarchical and self-organised potential for learning associated with social media and open education practices. In this paper we focus on the tensions that arise from the juxtaposition of these two orientations to learning technologies, and focus on how an emerging online sociality can destabilise established boundaries of learning and connect to other domains of practice. To do this, we examined data from three separate case studies in which participants - both teaching staff and students - reported on student engagement in learning involving social networking activity. We draw on empirical data on student practices that challenge institutional arrangements for learning, and offer insights into the assembly of extended connections for networked learning, in particular the pedagogies of collaboration, knowledge co-construction, and informal social learning. From these instances we draw attention to the interplay of competing metaphors and practices in the organisation as it encounters the potential of more open pedagogies over social and digital networks. Drawing on spatial descriptions of networked learning, we apply Callon’s (1998) notions of framing and overflows to this interplay in order to ask how learning environments were assembled and ordered: what pre-existing configurations were brought to frame and set boundaries for these networks of formal learning; and what activities overflow those boundaries and destabilise these framings. We argue that the adoption of social media by students requires a challenge to the institutional metaphors of containment that implement a default bounded environment. This involves a reappraisal of established learning environments for their pedagogical metaphors and spatial orderings that frame learning, followed by different organisational approaches to account for and enact learning that emerges from the connections, mobilities and flows of social networks. We propose a less integrated, “assembly” approach to institutional learning that attends to the open, fluid connections of networked learning. A spatial articulation of networked learning that bridges both institutional and social networks can equip the university to meet the critical challenges of emerging hybrid learning environments and the potential of more open learning environments.

Symposium 4: Spatial theory in networked learning

Over the years, there has been much discussion of the impact of the internet and new forms of data sourcing and communication for education and the ways in which networked learning breaks down the bounded the institution, classroom, and curriculum. While much attention has been given to the changing spaces of education introduced by new technologies, and the use of spatial metaphors in the framing of educational practices, the impact of spatial theory on the discussion of such education is less well developed. Space is left unexamined as simply a different context, container or backcloth for curriculum and pedagogy. This paper draws upon aspects of spatial theory to examine the ways in which the mobilities and openings made possible by the introduction of technologies also entail mooring and boundary marking in order to give the technologies specifically educational purposes. The paper outlines a number of spatial theories, in particular, the contemporary uptake of theories of (im)mobilities. Work on (im)mobilities has developed from the interplay of post-structuralist theory with complexity and actor-network theory. The paper explores its implications for researching networked learning and suggests that rather than consider education as focussed on practices of learning and teaching, we could more fruitfully consider it as spatial orderings or (im)mobile assemblings in the enactments of curriculum and pedagogy.

Methodologies for animals’ geographies: cultures, communication and genomics

The recent renaissance within animal geography has tended to focus on the spatial orderings of animals by humans, rather than on the lived geographies and experiences of animals themselves. We suggest that one reason for this imbalance is methodological – a persistent commitment to human-centred methods somewhat at odds with the more-than-human aspirations of the sub-discipline. In this paper we review and critically assess methodological developments in three areas that we consider to be especially significant for developing animals’ geographies: (i) techniques for tracking the spatialities of animal culture; (ii) scientific and artistic engagements in inter-species communication; and (iii) geographic tools afforded by genetic analyses. In conclusion, we reflect on the promise and some of the challenges to developing these methods within (what is still largely known as) human geography.