TY - JOUR AU - Kanosvamhira, Tinashe P. TI - The institutionalisation of urban community gardens in Cape Town, South Africa JF - AREA J2 - AREA PY - 2023 SN - 0004-0894 DO - 10.1111/area.12911 UR - https://m2.mtmt.hu/api/publication/34418473 ID - 34418473 AB - Urban community gardens, once seen as a counter to neoliberal subjectivity, are now perceived as inadvertently reinforcing neoliberal dominance, challenging the progressive goals of urban gardening. This study investigates how the state shapes urban community gardens in alignment with neoliberal principles, potentially diluting their intended advantages. By analysing policies and interviewing state actors supporting urban gardening initiatives and activists, I argue that the state actively cultivates neoliberal subjectivities in these contexts. Unfortunately, state policies and projects often fail to address the root causes of food and nutrition insecurity in urban areas. This neoliberalisation of urban community gardening diminishes their potential to act as tools for advancing food justice in historically disadvantaged communities in Cape Town. Nevertheless, there is hope in the agency of gardeners who are not passive participants in this process. I conclude that relying on the state to implement projects for a more equitable food system may not be a dependable strategy. Instead, urban gardeners must carefully select their allies to effectively pursue their goals. LA - English DB - MTMT ER - TY - JOUR AU - Callard, Felicity TI - Towards a critical-conceptual analysis of 'research culture' JF - AREA J2 - AREA PY - 2023 PG - 9 SN - 0004-0894 DO - 10.1111/area.12905 UR - https://m2.mtmt.hu/api/publication/34299066 ID - 34299066 N1 - Funding Agency and Grant Number: Leverhulme Trust [RF-2020-734/8] Funding text: Leverhulme Trust, Grant/Award Number: RF-2020-734/8 AB - Universities and policymakers increasingly use 'research culture' and 'research environment' to govern as well as describe research. Both terms help frame who is considered a research actor; how researchers interact with the contexts in which they make knowledge; and what is considered malleable when attempting to improve how research is done. There are very few conceptual-critical analyses of either term, even as each is a complex abstraction with rich and contested histories and usage. I explore both, largely using the example of the United Kingdom (where improving 'research culture' is currently prioritised by many funders, and will be assessed by the UK's Research Excellence Framework (REF) in 2028). Research culture has a close relationship with the concept organisational culture, which emerged in the late 1970s and 1980s and prioritised particular - frequently psychological - constructs that focused on the norms, values, and attitudes of an organisation. 'Research labour' - the labour relations that underpin how people work together and shape organisational norms, values, and relational dependencies - tends to drop from view. Geographers have much to offer these debates, given how extensively the discipline has contributed to what culture and environment might mean. Institutional, national, and sectoral policies concerning research culture and environment significantly shape how knowledge-making is understood and intervened on. The processes that 'research culture' and 'research environment' authorise and foreclose require greater examination. LA - English DB - MTMT ER - TY - JOUR AU - Dragan, Alexandru AU - Creţan, Remus AU - Bulzan, Raluca Denisa TI - The spatial development of peripheralisation: The case of smart city projects in Romania JF - AREA J2 - AREA VL - 3 PY - 2023 SN - 0004-0894 DO - 10.1111/area.12902 UR - https://m2.mtmt.hu/api/publication/34166978 ID - 34166978 AB - This article addresses the uneven territorial growth of the smart city phenomenon and how the national and local spatial politics of urban smart projects work out in practice. While in previous decades the concept of smart city referred mainly to the digital and technological realm as an indicator of the performance of cities, today it is taking on a broader range of meanings, so as to also cover such areas as governance, environment, housing and people. However, the critical literature on smart cities highlights two potential disadvantages: firstly, that urban planners who decide to pursue a smart city vision run the risk of creating a kind of power and control over residents; and secondly that there appears to be an incompatibility between smart cities and the informal. Moreover, the spatial and the critical dimensions of the governance of urban smart projects are still insufficiently researched. By using a comparative and developmental quantitative methodology for the urban smart projects of Romania and taking the city of Timisoara as a case study, this study highlights the fact that large cities are not always the best represented; our findings show that peripheral small cities and towns may enjoy a more balanced distribution of smart projects. Furthermore, our evaluation of the spatial distribution (centre–periphery) of smart city projects in Timişoara—a European Capital of Culture in 2023—reveals a higher level of investment in smart projects in its urban periphery. By presenting new critical understandings of the spatial interrelationships of smart city development, the study contributes to the geography of smart cities. LA - English DB - MTMT ER - TY - JOUR AU - Fair, Hannah AU - Schreer, Viola AU - Keil, Paul AU - Kiik, Laur AU - Rust, Niki TI - Dodo dilemmas: Conflicting ethical loyalties in conservation social science research JF - AREA J2 - AREA VL - 55 PY - 2023 IS - 2 SP - 245 EP - 253 PG - 9 SN - 0004-0894 DO - 10.1111/area.12839 UR - https://m2.mtmt.hu/api/publication/33245953 ID - 33245953 N1 - Export Date: 21 November 2022 Correspondence Address: Fair, H.; School of Geography and the Environment, United Kingdom; email: hannah.fair@ouce.ox.ac.uk AB - In a time of deepening social and ecological crises, the question of research ethics is more pertinent than ever. Our intervention grapples with the specific personal, ethical, and methodological challenges that arise at the interface of conservation and social science. We expose these challenges through the figure of Chris, a fictional anonymised composite of our fraught diverse fieldwork experiences in Australia, Burma, Indonesian Borneo, Namibia, and Vanuatu. Fundamentally, we explore fieldwork as a series of contested loyalties: loyalties to our different human and non-human research participants, to our commitments to academic rigour, and to the project of wildlife conservation itself, while reckoning with conservation's spotted (neo)colonial past. Our struggles and reflections illustrate, first, that practical research ethics do not predetermine forms of reciprocity. Second, while we need to choose our concealments carefully and follow the principle of not doing harm, we also have the responsibility to reveal social and environmental injustices. Third, we must acknowledge that as researchers we are complicit in the practices of human and non-human violence and exclusion that suffuse conservation. Finally, given how these responsibilities move the researcher beyond a position of innocence or neutrality, academic institutions should adjust their ethics support. This intervention highlights the need for greater openness about research challenges emerging from conflicting personal, ethical, and disciplinary loyalties, in order to facilitate greater cross-disciplinary understanding. Active engagement with these ethical questions through collaborative dialogue-based fora, both before and after fieldwork, would enable learning and consequently transform research practices. LA - English DB - MTMT ER - TY - JOUR AU - Thalheimer, Lisa TI - Compound impacts of extreme weather events and COVID-19 on climate mobilities JF - AREA J2 - AREA PY - 2022 PG - 8 SN - 0004-0894 DO - 10.1111/area.12821 UR - https://m2.mtmt.hu/api/publication/33471072 ID - 33471072 AB - Weather and climate-related human mobility (climate mobilities) including displacement are often viewed as security concerns. The recent coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic adds yet another layer of complexity which calls for unpacking these connections. This paper explores how existing patterns of migration and displacement that are driven by climate change impacts are compounded by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. First, the paper outlines the links between extreme weather events and human mobility to then explore how the impacts from COVID-19 interact, cascade and compound pre-existing vulnerabilities of people on the move. Examining the ways in which climate change is potentially driving or shifting patterns of climate mobility allows a shared understanding of this complex issue to be gained. This paper contextualises the compounding impacts with a geographical focus on Bangladesh, a well-known climate hotspot. The paper contributes to the debates on impacts and human responses to climate change and concludes with a set of policy recommendations. LA - English DB - MTMT ER - TY - JOUR AU - Blažek, Jiří AU - Holická, Zuzana TI - Value capture by companies of different ownership, tier, size, and distance to market. A cross‐sectoral analysis TS - A cross‐sectoral analysis JF - AREA J2 - AREA VL - 54 PY - 2022 IS - 4 SP - 655 EP - 665 PG - 11 SN - 0004-0894 DO - 10.1111/area.12819 UR - https://m2.mtmt.hu/api/publication/34089643 ID - 34089643 LA - English DB - MTMT ER - TY - JOUR AU - Sorina, Voiculescu AU - Octavian, Groza TI - Legislating political space for LGBT families: The 2018 referendum on the definition of family in Romania JF - AREA J2 - AREA VL - -- PY - 2021 SP - 679 SN - 0004-0894 UR - https://m2.mtmt.hu/api/publication/32681240 ID - 32681240 LA - English DB - MTMT ER - TY - JOUR AU - Jones, Aled AU - Taylor, Nick AU - Hafner, Sarah AU - Kitchen, Joanna TI - Finance for a future of sustainable prosperity JF - AREA J2 - AREA VL - 53 PY - 2021 IS - 1 SP - 21 EP - 29 PG - 9 SN - 0004-0894 DO - 10.1111/area.12631 UR - https://m2.mtmt.hu/api/publication/31359309 ID - 31359309 LA - English DB - MTMT ER - TY - JOUR AU - Antonsich, Marco TI - Natives and aliens: Who and what belongs in nature and in the nation? JF - AREA J2 - AREA PY - 2020 PG - 8 SN - 0004-0894 DO - 10.1111/area.12679 UR - https://m2.mtmt.hu/api/publication/31763571 ID - 31763571 AB - The distinction between native and alien species is a main tenet of various natural sciences, invasion biology in particular. However, it is also a contested one, as it does not reflect the biological features of a species, but only its place of origin and migration history. The present paper offers a brief genealogy of the native/alien divide and argues that central to this binary is a national thinking that divides the world into distinct (national) units, enclosed by (natural) borders, with a unique (native) population attached to these spatial units. The paper illustrates this argument by looking at two interrelated processes: the nationalisation of nature, by which the national thinking intervenes as an organising principle in determining ecological inclusion/exclusion, and the naturalisation of the nation, through which the nation is given an ontological status. Taken together these two processes confirm the continuing salience of the nation as a b-ordering principle actively constituting both the social and natural world, also in times of anthropogenic changes and increasing people's mobility. LA - English DB - MTMT ER - TY - JOUR AU - Bundhoo, Dilshaad AU - Lynch, Kenneth TI - Pacing emotional labour of qualitative research in an intractable conflict environment JF - AREA J2 - AREA PY - 2020 PG - 9 SN - 0004-0894 DO - 10.1111/area.12640 UR - https://m2.mtmt.hu/api/publication/31510443 ID - 31510443 AB - Qualitative field research in any type of terrain calls for a practice-oriented reflection on the researcher's emotional labour management in relation to the context of the field before, during, and beyond data collection. Intractable conflict environments (ICE) are characterised by long-running social crises still unresolved. This particularity makes such contexts risk-prone in terms of unpredictable dangers and unexpected outcomes, hence, the requirement for thorough ethical evaluation of field research designs. Field researchers, often working on their own, are expected to safely make ethically sound decisions while gathering high-quality data within complex social realities of which they are often socio-culturally not savvy. This inevitably exacerbates the emotional burden on the researchers and makes fieldwork challenging. Although feminist geographers notably have significantly contributed to highlighting the social dynamics of fieldwork by initiating and deepening discussions of the emotional and ethical challenge, discussions have rarely gone beyond underlining the need for recognition of the field researchers' emotional labour. Despite academic consensus for reflexive analysis and field diary-keeping, little has been discussed on how to systematically manage this effort during the research process. In this paper, building on the first author's PhD fieldwork experience in Israel and the West Bank area, we propose a paced field research organisation method - PFROM - which systematically accommodates time and space for the researcher's engagement with and detachment from the field research's intensity. Applying the concept of pacing - intentionally distributing focused attention in such a way that will reduce fatigue prior to the completion of a task - this framework systematically integrates reflexivity within research designs. The PFROM provides researchers with a tool applicable beyond intractable conflict contexts which has the potential to enhance their emotional labour management. LA - English DB - MTMT ER -