Using a visual critically reflective narrative method and drawing on the tradition of urban walking, this paper tells of an encounter with the boundary of Paris. Contextualised within the academic literature and wider cultural contexts of borders and frontiers, it applies the technique of "found drawing" to photographing the boundary space around the P & eacute;riph & eacute;rique. Images are taken "sans contexte" deliberately to focus on the application of theoretical ideas to the space. It concludes that photography removes distraction and encourages the researcher to both look and think, and that the boundary is a distinct place where border and frontier literature can be translated into a personal visual and spatial interpretation of the boundary of Paris. Creative interpretations of the spaces we inhabit allow for new stories and understandings to be revealed.
This paper examines the emergence of overseas Chinese bookstores as community hubs for Chinese diasporas in the post-pandemic era, focusing on how bookstore-based placemaking responds to evolving community needs. It first analyzes the formation of a new diasporic identity among middle-class Chinese migrants during COVID-19, shaped by China's lockdowns and characterized by double displacement: disillusionment with the Chinese state and uncertainty in host societies due to the rising anti-Asian racism. Drawing on theories of placemaking and diaspora studies, as well as ethnographic fieldwork in Chinese bookstores in Japan and the United States, the study argues that bookstores have become community spaces because of their distinctive spatial affordances. Through book collections, spatial arrangements, and public events, bookstores support diasporas in shared reflection on displacement and rebuilding of belonging. The findings highlight the continued importance of physical spaces for social engagement in the digital age and underscore the need for planners to consider how different spatial forms respond to shifting social conditions.
This empirical essay explores the history, cultural significance, and contemporary challenges of mezcal production in Oaxaca, Mexico. This work was informed by a week-long field visit (and the months of preparation that went into it) in Oaxaca, wherein we soaked up the brights colors and flavors of the ruta del mezcal and sought out the wisdom of mezcaleros/as, mezcal researchers, and other local actors and advocates across the mezcal industry via interviews, site visits, and other participant observation activities. We asked questions about the environmental components, the economics, and the social (equity) context - the sustainability - of production and distribution of this ancient, modern product. Based on insights we gained in the field, in this essay, we emphasize the importance of natural resources, the significance of cultural heritage, and the gravity of economic transitions in the region. We highlight the environmental implications (e.g. deforestation, water pollution) of mezcal's growing popularity and increasing production. Ultimately, we outline proposed pathways forward, as offered by those we encountered, including encouraging cooperatives, improving waste management, and promoting biodiversity. In sum, the paper underscores the need to balance economic growth with environmental conservation and social equity, ensuring the preservation of mezcal's cultural and ecological legacy.
The article examines the ideological transformation of memory spaces along the Ulus-K & imath;z & imath;lay axis in Ankara, arguing for the importance of analyzing this transformation through both top-down (conceived space) and bottom-up (lived/third space) perspectives. It highlights that most memory studies in T & uuml;rkiye tend to be linear and one-dimensional, and instead proposes a spatial-historical method that traces monuments, squares, and institutions from 1923 to the present. Ultimately, it argues that memory in T & uuml;rkiye is continuously rewritten through ideologically driven spatial productions, that suppressed pasts are recalled in different periods, and that counter-memory practices do more than resist they carry founding potential for new political subjectivities and emancipatory forms of collectivity. Moreover, the dual approach developed through the Ankara case demonstrates that space is constantly rewritten through both top-down interventions by power and grassroots counter-practices. The article concludes that the Turkish case provides an analytical framework for transnational memory debates.
In 2015, the West African archipelago country of Cabo Verde enacted rules governing the production of grogue, a place-based sugarcane spirit primarily produced on the islands of Santiago and Santo Ant & atilde;o. This "grogue law" not only (re)defined the alcohol but established how grogue should be made and marketed according to food safety, environmental, and public health standards. These regulations include 11 labeling parameters required on the liquor bottles. This study assesses how grogue bottle labels both signal compliance with the law and serve as marketing strategies to shape local identity and a sense of place in an evolving industry. Using a neolocalism framework originally developed for the craft beer industry and now applied in the context of distilled spirits, this study evaluates how grogue producers establish local place-based identities through a content analysis of 50 different grogue labels. The analysis is supported by interviews with grogue producers. The findings illustrate how producers meet label regulations while strategically deploying local imagery and textual elements that construct and cultivate place-based identity, product-authenticity, and a sense of belonging among local consumers. Exploring these approaches to alcohol branding and marketing reveals how grogue producers signal compliance with the law while also perceiving local attachment to the values of place.
With his band the Velvet Underground and over several decades as a solo musician and performer, Lou Reed was motivated by an artistic interest in observing, understanding, and empathizing with the people of New York City. Reed's grounded approach to songwriting generated albums full of urban geographic stories. This paper examines the emotional geographies contained in Reed's songs featuring characters based on gay, queer, and trans individuals who were a part of Reed's music career and life. Using concepts from the disciplines of geography and psychology, the authors interpret the emotional stances of Reed's lyrics and their association with urban spaces that were produced and inhabited by members of the gay, queer, and trans communities of New York. Reed's song lyrics elicit emotions at different geographic scales, from body-world relations to private home spaces, public city spaces, spatial interactions across the metropolitan region, and the movements of people and phenomena into New York. The authors discuss the characters, spaces, and incidents portrayed in Reed's songs in relation to the academic literature on gay, queer, and trans geographies published in the decades after their commercial release. The paper concludes with a contemplation of the empathic power of Reed's song lyrics.
Research on rural "placeness" usually focuses on settled agricultural communities. However, another form of countryside - pastoral areas - hahas been largely overlooked, despite their distinct social structures and local conditions compared to those of agricultural societies. Through a three-month ethnographic survey, I examined the loss of placeness and its root causes in northern pastoral areas of China since the introduction of fenced grazing. As a derivative of the Grassland and Livestock Contract Responsibility System, fenced grazing has transformed northern pastoral areas from collective nomadism to individual settlement and fixed grazing. Research conducted in Damao Banner, Inner Mongolia, indicates that the placeness of northern pastoral areas has declined since the introduction of fenced grazing. Traditional landscape symbols have disappeared, while herders have been separated from traditional nomadic practices, resulting in their bodies and spirits falling into unstable "placeless" state. Their initial experiences and perceptions of "place" are being altered, and their sense of belonging to this place is dissipating. The root causes of this loss lie in social fragmentation, a new type of population "re-mobility", ecological crises, livelihood vulnerabilities, and the dissolution of traditional spiritual culture.
This article revisits the legacy of Abu Rayhan al-Biruni's Kitab al-Hind (ca. 1030 CE) through the lenses of cultural geography and Islamic intellectual history. Rather than treating al-Biruni as a linear antecedent of modern geography or anthropology, we argue that his work constitutes a methodological model rooted in the ethics of translation, plural rationality, and epistemic humility. By situating the Kitab al-Hind within its Islamic cosmological and political context, we demonstrate that Al-Biruni's engagement with Hindu knowledge systems, and his critique of caste-based exclusions, models an ethics of inter-epistemic translation. We further trace how modern receptions, particularly in Eurocentric scholarship, recast his legacy within secularist binaries, obscuring the relational ethics that anchor his method. Rather than recuperating al-Biruni as a token precursor, we propose that his work reorients geography: shifting it from a discipline of description to one of ethical encounter, plural reasoning, and epistemic care.
Leaving the childhood home can be a central transition in young adults' lives. In this article, I explore how young adults negotiate their sense of home through affective home-making practices after they have left their childhood homes. Drawing from solicited video and written diaries and subsequent interviews of Finnish young adults in higher education, I analyse affective home-making practices relevant to these young adults, and how they (re)create their sense of home. Firstly, young adults decorate and arrange the materiality of their home to reflect their personalities, memories, and their ideas of what is needed at home. Secondly, they relax at home, (re)making the home as a safe and comfortable place. Thirdly, they manage rhythms and skills for household chores as a part of the responsibilities of living on their own. I argue that through ongoing home-making, young adults (re)create their sense of home as their own place that reflects them, allows them comfort and safety, and is their own responsibility. Their sense of home is shaped by the positive feelings maintained and strengthened through these practices, while they also negotiate their understanding of themselves as capable of living on their own.
This article focuses on the role and significance of place in the creative process of contemporary novelists. Previous studies have shown that there is a symbiotic relationship between literature and place. However, little is known about how this relationship is established in practice. How do writers draw inspiration from existing locations? Which places are chosen as the background for a story and how do these places influence the creative process? Based on in-depth interviews with sixteen Dutch writers, this article shows how the role of place has three facets: existing places and landscapes are an important source of inspiration during the preparation of a novel, serve as a spatial framework for the actual writing process and function after publication as a material afterlife for the story and its characters. Taken together, these themes demonstrate how place plays a crucial role in the creative process and - in theoretical terms - how the narrative articulation of literature at a spatial level can be interpreted as a bundling and intensification of place identities. As such, this article offers a new perspective on the synergy between literature and landscape, examined from the perspective of novelists and with reference to their "modus operandi".
In this article, I reflect on my three years working as a lecturer in the Fiji Islands and conducting ethnography on soccer history at the same time. With this period in my life fading in my memory since it took place a decade ago, I then reflect on postethnography, including short visits back to Fiji in 2017 and 2019. I recall various stories from my time in Fiji (2013-15) and then from my later two trips. I compare and contrast the time when I was fully committed to living and working in the island nation, integrating myself into the society, and blessing others through my research and charity (for want of a better word), and my time back on short visits when I had been "relegated" in my own and others' minds to "just a tourist". I explore the guilt, sense of loss and sense of disorientation on meeting old research participants now that my life had "moved on" (as had theirs), and we were no longer sharing life experiences.
