Uneven Geographies Research Articles

The uneven geography of the health system and its effect on the individual probability of death by COVID-19

The uneven geography of the health system and its effect on the individual probability of death by COVID-19

Counter-forensics and the geographies of images

Counter-forensics emerged in order to deploy scientific investigative techniques usually wielded by the state against the state. In this article, we theorize how a counter-forensic approach can inform geographical approaches to the study of images. Our counter-forensic approach centers the material and semantic instability of images and highlights the indeterminacy of meaning and thus, the importance of the discursive activity of articulating the relationship between images and political claims. The article offers two case studies that deploy this approach. The first engages with cell phone images made by migrants at sea, showing how they can be read as evidence of the broader spatial politics of Europe’s external borders. The second case study examines the materiality of ultrasound technologies in relation to the changing legal terrain of abortion politics in the United States. Both studies use images as openings to intervene in contested politics that are part of the production of uneven geographies of state domination and control.

Living with, or despite, organized abandonment: social reproduction and real estate speculation on Chicago’s Large Lots

ABSTRACT Between 2014 and 2020, the city of Chicago sold hundreds of city-owned lots for a dollar to property owners across its South and West Side neighborhoods through the Large Lots program. An expedient way of returning city land to tax rolls and offsetting its holding costs, the city cast Large Lots as an effort to empower residents and turn vacant lots into vibrant neighborhoods. This article examines the labor of making vibrant neighborhoods. Against its erasure by the dominant planning imagination, I situate this labor as an important dimension of life's work under regimes of organized abandonment and their attendant economies of real estate speculation. Through interviews and participant-observation with lot owners, I demonstrate that Large Lots has reconfigured relations of responsibility and obligation around vacant land in ways that enroll residents’ social reproductive labor of land care into the production of investable landscapes. Through a property records analysis, I then show that this labor unfolds in tension with renewed channels for speculation established by Large Lots in program neighborhoods. These findings situate social reproduction as a generative vantage point for politically capacious understandings of real estate speculation and the uneven geographies of life-making it engenders.

The uneven geography of venture capital investment in China

The uneven geography of venture capital investment in China

Transformations in the sanitation sector in the State of Rio de Janeiro: neoliberalism and regulatory changes

This article analyzes the reconfiguration of water supply services provided to municipalities across the State of Rio de Janeiro. It seeks to examines how advancements in the neoliberalization of Brazil's basic sanitation sector have contributed to a fragmentation in the provision of services and to the emergence of uneven geographies on a regional scale. This will be conducted through the lens of policy experimentation, particularly after the approval of Law 14.026/2020. The study is based on an approach concerning the commodification of public services within the context of neoliberalism, marked by a complex reformulation of regulatory mechanisms. The methodology combines an analysis of secondary data, documentary research, and thematic mapping. The results reveal that the management of sanitation services is increasingly guided by market logic, with the experimentation of controversial regulatory mechanisms that have exacerbated fragmentation and deepened territorial inequality.

Uneven geographies of COVID‐19: Reviewing geographical research agendas and concepts from a syndemics perspective

AbstractBuilding upon a review of geographic research agendas and concepts related to the uneven geographies of COVID‐19, this first of three articles debates the benefits of geographic analyses to the syndemic approach and, vice versa, of a syndemics perspective to geographic analyses. The syndemics perspective was proposed by critical medical anthropologists. It seeks to deepen the understanding of the structural dimensions and processes that lead to the convergence and cascading of multiple epidemics in specific population groups. Geographers have also highlighted the intersections of multiple health or other crises during COVID‐19, when the pandemic and global health emergency coincided with and escalated existing structural inequalities produced by the climate crisis, environmental degradation, political conflicts and war, socio‐economic disparities and poverty, social divisions, racism, hatred and violence, mental health problems and stress. Geographers have mobilized concepts such as scale, territory, borders and intersectionality to unravel the uneven unfolding and consequences of the global health emergency for diverse population groups. We therefore argue that geography has a lot to contribute to the understanding of the spatial and contextual dimensions of COVID‐19 as a pandemic as well as a syndemic – but it has so far not actively employed the latter concept's analytical lens. Mobilizing the syndemics approach can contribute to more comprehensive accounts of the structural dimensions and processes that continue and cascade in pandemics.

Chaotic charisma: religious noise, crowds, and infrastructural disruption in Dar es Salaam’s Sinza ward

ABSTRACT This contribution explores the weaknesses, breakdowns, and possibilities of religious infrastructure in the Sinza ward, a multiconfessional residential suburb in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. We focus on instances of infrastructural disruption connected to the grassroots activities of charismatic Christian churches and, to a lesser extent, Islamic piety movements. Through interviews, focus groups, fieldwork, and quantitative data, this study shows how the activities of grassroots faith groups exercising their right to the city in an infrastructurally fraught environment may exacerbate urban planning fault lines. This may result in hazards such as noise pollution, traffic congestion, and issues of structural safety and decorum. Religious sites and related assemblages may thus turn into ‘architectures of disruption’ generating uneven geographies of urban wellbeing. We posit that, despite these problems, religiously connoted urban assemblages are here to stay, and infrastructural thinking may productively be applied to this new normal.

Underestimating Racism? Decoupling Race and Redlining

A rapidly expanding body of research has sought to connect the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation’s (HOLC) so-called redlining maps to a wide array of present-day social injustices. The assertion is that these maps helped entrench emerging cogeographies of racial segregation and devaluation that have continued to reproduce racial-spatial inequities through time. We argue that such arguments likely underestimate the ongoing power of racism by narrowly focusing on the map grades rather than on racial segregation itself. To investigate this possibility, we conduct a set of statistical analyses that decouple race from redlining. These analyses produce two main findings. First, postwar Black population growth did not occur in all HOLC redlined neighborhoods evenly but was most concentrated in those areas that either had an initial Black population or that were adjacent to them. Second, whereas HOLC grade was a stronger predictor of neighborhood home values than Black population share until about 1970, the latter has become the more salient factor since. Thus, rather than obliquely highlighting the persistent geographies of racialized devaluation by way of the HOLC grades, researchers should instead focus on the racially uneven geographies of value directly.

“Wow. What's going on?” Emotional geographies of international student mobility to the UK in a time of crisis

Despite attempts to shed light on the precarity and resilience of international students, there has been thus far little engagement with the emotional dynamics of their lived experiences in times of crisis and the implications of these for the geographies of international student mobility. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 13 international (i.e., non-UK) doctoral students in a UK university during the COVID-19 pandemic, we examine how emotions are attached to different places and spaces, and how they are mobilised in various ways as students navigate uncertainties. Building on Kenway and Fahey's concept of ‘emoscapes’, we demonstrate that central to the (im)mobility of international students are emotions produced in and constitutive of particular spaces and in relation to various scales. We showcase the significance of the material and embodied dimensions of learning in the emotional life of internationally mobile students, which informs how the well-being of these students should be and could be supported at policy and practice levels. By illustrating the way in which emotional geographies are produced in pandemic times, we consider whether the emotional dynamics of international students in a time of crisis have the potential to both reconfigure and reproduce the uneven geographies of international student mobility.

Geographies of super-philanthropy: Disaggregating the global philanthropic complex

In recent decades the world has witnessed an unparalleled growth of philanthropic initiatives and institutions that has proven inextricable from the vast accumulation and concentration of wealth on a global scale. Echoing recent calls for geographers to study philanthropy, this paper seeks to advance a critical geographical understanding of globalising philanthropy. Inspired by geographical scholarship on relational thinking, the paper frames the varied manifestations of contemporary philanthropy as a ‘philanthropic complex’ in order to understand philanthropy through central themes of relationality, intermediation and stabilisation. Advancing theories of philanthropy by characterising the complex's geographical unevenness and political functions of depoliticisation, the paper closes by outlining avenues in which relational thinking about philanthropy can advance geographical theories of elites and global development.

Emplacing Eminescu: The Memorial Spatialization of Romania’s National Poet in Urban Street Nomenclature

Besides being canonized as Romania’s “national poet,” Mihai Eminescu was hailed as the “complete man of Romanian culture” and the “absolute Romanian,” among a profusion of encomiastic praises. Eminescu was immortalized in myriads of ways, from the most solemn and official (e.g. state-run rituals) to the most prosaic and banal (e.g. banknotes). In this article, I investigate the spatial dimension of Eminescu’s memory by charting the commemorative landscape defined by toponymy and public monuments honoring the national poet in Romania. Particular attention is given to Eminescu’s presence in urban street nomenclature and its regional distribution across the country. Drawing on several datasets of spatial information, I use statistical modeling techniques to examine the factors underpinning Eminescu’s memorial namescape. Employing logistic regression analyses, the article highlights an uneven geography of Eminescu’s memory and points out the variables structuring its particular spatial patterning. This article was published open access under a CC BY licence: https://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0 .

The young Australian feminine property investor: class, whiteness and heterosexuality

The financialisation of housing is associated with the emergence of new investor subjectivities but, to date, little has been said about how these subject positions are gendered. In contrast, this paper brings a feminist lens to the topic through a textual analysis of the Australian financial self-help book, Smashed Avocado by Nicole Haddow (2019). By illuminating how Haddow’s self-narrated arc (or makeover) from fiscal failure to a successful property owner or ‘Rentvestor’ is inflected by sexuality, whiteness, and class, we highlight previously underexamined dimensions of property investor subjectivity as it is mediated by gender. Furthermore, we argue that gendering of property investment discourses in the feminised genre of self-help, suggests that the growing imperative of fiscal performativity is central to the (re)production of white (settler colonial), middle-class femininity. In concluding the paper, we call for more feminist attention to be given to the uneven geographies of everyday financialisation as they pertain to housing and feminist theorising on the home.

Uneven geographies of power in UK higher education's conjunctural crisis: A response to Gandy

AbstractThis article constitutes a response to Matthew Gandy’s article ‘Books under threat: Open access publishing and the neo‐liberal academy in the form of a conjunctural analysis’. It discusses the UKRI (UK Research and Innovation) open‐access proposal for book publications in the context of broader and chilling attacks on academic freedom driven in large part by the current government and supported by UKRI. It argues that there is a lot at stake, not just our ability as academics to publish in university and activist presses, but also our ability to express our solidarity with Palestine, to defend the rights of transgender people, to withdraw our labour and engage in other political actions and forms of expression in the face of oppression.

Toward a physical Dodge City high voltage direct current (HVDC) electricity hub

A physical Dodge City high voltage direct current (HVDC) electricity commodity hub would foster the kind of risk transfer that would invite the full participation of the financial industry in an interstate transmission system essential to the speedy development of renewable electricity and complementary storage technologies. Obstacles lie in the way of such a vision, however. Chief among them, paradoxically, is the administrative system that has evolved since the late 1990 s to promote regional electricity markets. That system abstracts from investment risk and the nation’s uneven geography of renewable resources. It lodges a kind of monopoly planning and scheduling power in a small group of bureaucratic centralized system operators that mimics a command economy in their own distinct regions, not the kind of market economy that has traditionally driven investment in US interstate energy infrastructure. And yet, in dealing with the vexing transmission constraints faced by the renewable generating sector (the “queue”), the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) continues to pursue ever greater authority for those regional transmission organizations (RTOs). Such FERC action regarding its RTOs in 2022–23 represents a highly evident case of path dependency—a problem—that state or federal policy makers wishing to speed the entry of large-scale renewable generation, and complementary storage technologies, will have find a way either to confront directly or to work around.

Racism and the uneven geography of welfare sanctioning in England

AbstractThis paper presents the first spatial analysis of racial disparities in the UK welfare sanction regime. As part of their austerity programme, the UK government tightened the conditionality of welfare programmes and intensified the use of financial penalties against welfare claimants who failed to demonstrate compliance with these conditions. Analysing Jobseeker's Allowance (JSA) data from the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) and the Office for National Statistics between 2012 and 2019 we draw attention to the spatially uneven and highly racialised geography of welfare sanctions in England. Claimants from racially minoritised backgrounds are consistently more likely to be referred for a sanction by Jobcentre caseworkers and receive an adverse decision at the hands of institutional decision‐makers. Within this, however, there are important scalar and spatial differences that warrant critical attention. In rural England, the risk of being sanctioned is substantially higher for all groups, but especially for Mixed heritage and Black/Black British claimants who in some areas are over twice as likely to be sanctioned as their White counterparts. Since ethnicity data have not been published for Universal Credit sanction decisions, the presented evidence offers critical insight into the potential persistence of racial injustice in applying welfare sanctions. We identify ‘hotspots’ of racism in the sanction regime, most of which are in rural areas, before offering three interpretative frameworks through which spatial and racial disparities might be explained. Any suggestion that such disparities simply derive from the behaviour of DWP staff fails to adequately account for deeply entrenched histories of welfare racism, rural racism and the role of welfare sanctioning in dynamics of racial capitalism: that is, disciplining and impoverishing racialised populations in ways that generate conditions for capital accumulation. By contributing new empirical and theoretical insights to the often neglected study of rural austerity and welfare, the paper calls for scholarship to investigate the variegations of welfare, austerity and racial capitalism in diverse rural contexts.

Millions Owe Trillions

Millions of students in the United States are saddled with trillions of dollars in debt. The debt crisis is a behemoth, though, importantly, it is not monolithic. Experiences of student debt are unequal and uneven, and it is critical to study them as such to address them. There are many organizations bringing attention to the student debt crisis; however, there are surprisingly few institutions dedicated to studying it. Further, there are few studies that link the student debt crisis to other competing, nested crises of the present (e.g., climate change). Using theories of debt and indebtedness to contextualize the student debt crisis, this paper utilizes auto-ethnographic accounts of student debt – as a student debtor and faculty member – and ‘gray literature’ (reports, policies, and statistics) to highlight and analyze the uneven geographies of student debt in the US. The aim of this paper is to argue that a geographic perspective is generative for studying student debt because it allows for a more nuanced understanding of where and why student debt exists and persists with the intention of complementing ongoing activism to abolish student debt. This paper concludes with four potential pathways for future geographic research on student debt and a call for action.

Book review: The Urban Question in Africa: Uneven Geographies of Transition

Book review: The Urban Question in Africa: Uneven Geographies of Transition

Food relief providers as care infrastructures: Sydney during the pandemic

AbstractAustralia has a hidden but growing problem with household food insecurity, revealing the failure of conventional food infrastructures to support human flourishing. Disruptions to employment and livelihoods due to pandemic lockdowns have exacerbated household food insecurity, evincing the uneven geography of food access in countries globally, including Australia. Increasing demand for food relief had been observed prior to the COVID‐19 pandemic and has been met by food relief providers, which we consider as infrastructures of care addressing growing levels of hunger. This paper reveals COVID‐19’s many impacts on the food relief sector across Metropolitan Sydney, New South Wales. It analyses both a questionnaire of food relief providers in 2022 and media articles, social media posts, reports, and websites. It provides much‐needed insights into the impacts of pandemic lockdowns on the demand for food, interruptions to food provisioning, changes to food supply, and alterations made to suppliers’ ways of operating. Those insights show how infrastructures of care are place‐based, responsive, dynamic, and constrained by caring capacities. Such insights are increasingly important for understanding infrastructural failures, documenting the real extent of household food insecurity, and challenging dominant discourses of Australia as a food‐secure nation.

Headquarters locations of the largest US corporations: uneven geographies and migrations

The headquarters of large corporations are the main asset of the economies of the largest cities in the developed world. Based on materials from Fortune-500 companies, an analysis of the spatial dynamics of corporate headquarters in US MSAs for 1980–2019 was carried out. Mapping and geographic analysis of the concentration and directions of migration made it possible to identify the main changes in the spatial pattern of the location of economic decision-making centers in the United States. Headquarters remain highly concentrated: half of them are located in the largest MSAs by population. In terms of revenue, MSA Fayetteville (Arkansas, headquarters of Walmart) stands out, in terms of market value - San Jose (the heart of Silicon Valley, only 36 in population), in terms of the number of employees - MSAs in which retail companies are located (Minneapolis, Atlanta). Geographic mobility of corporate headquarters has increased dramatically over the past 40 years. The main directions of migration: from the Northeast and from California to the MSA New York, the (Post-)Industrial Great Lakes (MSA Chicago), Texas, to the South (MSAs Atlanta and Charlotte) and the Pacific West. There are noticeable trends towards industry agglomeration: IT companies are moving to California, and financial firms are leaving it, moving to Texas. The main areas for the emergence of new headquarters of the largest corporations are: New York, (Post-)Industrial Great Lakes, the South, Texas and the Pacific West. In addition to the usual MSAs-leaders - New York (10% of all new headquarters), San Jose (10%), Chicago, Dallas and Houston - Denver and Richmond stand out. The spatial concentration of locations for new headquarters continues to increase. At the same time, at least one new headquarters appeared in ⅔ of the agglomerations. The identified trends in the migration of existing and the emergence of new corporate headquarters suggest significant shifts in the economic geography of the United States. The rapid growth of cities in the South and Inland South-West shows that the economies of these areas have reached a new level, expressed in the formation of their own “gateways” to the global economy.

Uneven geography of health opportunities among subsidized households: Illustrating healthcare accessibility and walkability for public rental housing in Seoul, Korea.

Planners and policymakers significantly consider providing suitable living environments for marginalized households, beyond creating affordable homes. Previous studies have explored various socioeconomic attributes of neighborhoods with public rental housing (PRH), particularly regarding education, job, and transportation opportunities; however, we have a limited understanding of health opportunities among such subsidized households. This study, therefore, explores the accessibility and spatial equity of emergency medical services (EMS) and primary health care (PHC) for PRH residents in Seoul, Korea. The findings show that neighborhoods with PRHs are associated with lower odds ratios for EMS and PHC accessibility. In particular, the relationships between the locations of PRHs and medical services accessibility in neighborhoods varied across the types of PRHs. While neighborhoods with large-scale PRHs are associated with lower PHC access, those with small-scale PRHs are associated with lower EMS access. In addition, our findings show that PRHs tend to be located in neighborhoods with lower walkability. These results may help in empirically determining the spatial accessibility of PHC and EMS, as well as neighborhood walkability, which may affect the health status of individuals in subsidized households.