Critical human geography has paid special attention to Indigenous geographies, advancing understanding through various qualitative methods. Research in an intercultural Indigenous context requires more relevant and contextualised instruments, adapted to the territorial reality of each population. Despite this, the construction of instruments such as interviews and debates, and the modifications introduced during their development and application in the field, is not very transparent. The article addresses these issues, explaining the process by which interviews are constructed in an intercultural Indigenous context, while proposing interdisciplinary debate between teams, the application of pilot co-validation from critical perspectives, and the co-construction of questionnaires to reformulate questions that are more relevant to the local Indigenous reality. Empirically, the article is based on a project carried out with Mapuche teachers and professionals in intercultural bilingual education (IBE) in the Maule Region, Chile, where long histories of dispossession and denial have transformed everyday practices and led to the near extinction of Mapuzungun (the Mapuche language), complicating the "standard" imaginaries of the Mapuche. The aim is to construct and strengthen the interview using an intercultural approach to broaden our understanding of the Indigenous world. We conclude that interdisciplinary discussion, pilot co-validation, and the co-construction of questions during interview implementation strengthened the instrument's social and cultural relevance and reduced essentialist assumptions about Indigenous peoples. By making these processes transparent, the article offers a transferable methodological contribution to international geographers working in Indigenous and intercultural contexts.
The adoption of genetically modified (GM) crops is controversial. Some European countries still ban their cultivation while Australia, China, and India maintain restrictions. Gradually, relaxations to these controls are occurring. This paper examines one such move supporting GM: the lifting of the 16 year moratorium on GM crops in South Australia in 2020. Analysis of interviews with key stakeholders and formal submissions to a State Government review provide insights into the political process underpinning the decision, highlighting limitations of the related review and decision-making. Findings illustrate two key themes in responses to GM technology. First, governments fear community views will present a "GM phobia" to override any positive business and technological lobby. In this case study, a narrowly focused consultation process exacerbated stakeholder tensions. The government restricted submissions to public consultation by focusing only on market impacts of GM crop commercialisation, explicitly excluding environmental and health considerations, and GM's potential harm to the "clean and green" image of South Australia-a branding potentially worth millions of dollars to the wine and horticulture sectors. Second, the economics of GM versus non-GM canola seem narrowly conceived and presented, contrasting with resultant market experience regarding financial gains from growing GM. This study provides inputs to wider debates about the nature of deliberative democracy (or its absence) in Australia and beyond when governments seek to approve controversial new technology. The lifting of the moratorium in South Australia has been followed by relaxations on controls on GM in China, India, and the European Union.
Our Earth contains extensive evidence of astronomic bombardment in the form of meteorite impact craters. This paper offers an interpretive account of impact craters as archives that operate as mineral resources, data repositories modelling collision risk, sites of colonial dispossession, and apocalypse-themed tourist spectacles. They also function more prosaically as venues for environmental and cosmological consciousness-raising posing questions about life, death, judgement, and the final destiny of humankind. The paper examines how impact craters are compiled into an archive and epistemologically secured through spectacularizing grammars of astrophysics and geophysics that occlude situated knowledges and ontologies. A critical analysis of how craters are made visitable on-the-ground reveals important patterns of exclusion hidden behind apparently neutral and objective Western scientific frameworks of interpretation. Impact craters, understood as archives, show that just as meteorites are regularly made known through an astro-colonial gaze, the places marked by their landing, craters, are similarly subject to exclusionary re-coding. Nonetheless, they provide important opportunities to re-cast our planetary politics in more plural and inclusive ways.
By combining data from the 2018-2019 National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Survey and 2021 Census using small-area estimation techniques, this study estimates the prevalence of food insecurity among Indigenous households at the Statistical Area 2 level across New South Wales. Results from logistic regressions show a statistically significant associations between household food insecurity and income, financial resilience, household size, housing tenure, and remoteness. Notably, we found that access to financial resources is the primary diving factor of food insecurity instead of access to grocery stores. The research reveals that going without food is more prevalent in urban and regional areas than in remote and very remote areas.
Flooding induced by sea level rise, intense rainfall events, land subsidence, and storm surges adversely impacts coastal cities worldwide. Flooding events are understood to disproportionately affect places, communities, and individuals that are already socioeconomically disadvantaged, while various flood mitigation and prevention actions may inadvertently deepen existing injustice by further redistributing flood risk to marginalised groups. The specific dynamics of these processes in China remain poorly understood. This article examines the dynamics of flooding and injustice in Ningbo, a major Chinese coastal city that is among the top 20 cities globally in terms of flood exposure. By identifying who is affected, who is protected, and who may bear more of the risks from adaptation actions, the article reveals the uneven nature of flooding impacts and protection measures in Ningbo and the intersection with social injustice in Chinese cities. We detail how residents' living locations, socioeconomic attributes, past flood experiences and different adaptation actions shape the dynamics of flood injustice and identify how some residents benefit from flood protection interventions, while others are excluded, thus heightening their vulnerability to flooding. Our analysis speaks to flood (in)justice in coastal cities worldwide by showing how social inequalities shape flood risk.
This study examines trends in senior secondary geography participation in Australia from 1998 to 2023, using data from the Longitudinal Surveys of Australian Youth and published senior secondary data. The research reveals a significant decline in geography enrolment nationally, with the proportion of Year 12 students studying geography falling from 8.1% (1998-2017) to 6.2% (2012-2023). Substantial variations exist across jurisdictions, with Western Australia maintaining the highest participation rates and the Australian Capital Territory the lowest. The study also explores demographic characteristics, finding that independent schools have higher participation rates, and gender balance varies by state. The decline in geography enrolment is contextualised within broader educational trends and compared with selected international patterns. The paper concludes by discussing the implications of these trends for the future of geography education in Australia, highlighting the need for targeted interventions to address the subject's declining popularity and ensure its continued relevance in the curriculum.
Young African fashion microcelebrities are social media influencers who regularly share their outfits of the day and actively engage with their audiences, contributing to the burgeoning phenomenon of youth geographies in Africa. By examining their representations of authentic selfhood through a geographical approach to performativity, we not only suggest that authenticity on social media is both performed and performative but also argue that the performativity of performing authenticity is inherently spatial and relational. Sampling from 100 of the most popular fashion microcelebrities across four African countries, we conduct case studies of two from Nigeria and two from Senegal, illustrating spatial and cultural differences. According to visual methodologies in cultural geographies, qualitative analysis of all the posts made by four figures and their interactions with audiences after posting enables us to identify three strategic performances, namely branding, locating, and peopling authenticity. We further argue that these regularised and interrelated performances become spatial discursive practices, helping form and expand discursive spaces where authenticity is relationally performed and performatively enacted. This finding further develops performativity scholarship in human geography by bringing spatiality and relationality together in both virtual and everyday spaces. For youth geographies, we also emphasise that power dynamics in these spaces are relative and relational: The young African microcelebrities seemingly have full agency to perform authenticity, but they are actually compelled to follow the interactional modes in the ever-changing discursive spaces which they create but cannot control.
Multifunctional landscapes are complex systems that integrate biophysical, cultural-historical, and socio-economic components into unique territorial structures. With increasing pressures from urbanisation, climate change, and overexploitation of natural resources, assessing the sustainability of these landscapes has become urgent. This research develops and parameterises a tool for evaluating multifunctional landscape sustainability by measuring biocultural resilience. The tool integrates biological, cultural, and socio-economic indicators into a single analytical framework, resulting in the Biocultural Resilience Index (BRI). This index provides a holistic view of landscape dynamics, identifying vulnerable areas and aiding in the creation of conservation and sustainable management strategies. This study emphasises the importance of developing suitable tools for assessing and monitoring sustainability, which is vital for the sustainable management of these landscapes and for safeguarding their societal benefits. Our findings indicate that the BRI can be applied in various contexts, including spatial planning, biodiversity conservation, sustainable rural development, and ecotourism. Moreover, the BRI offers a robust and adaptable framework, suitable for different regions and communities, ensuring flexibility in addressing diverse sustainability challenges.
Gully erosion, which is the rapid incision of soils by concentrated overland and/or subsurface runoff, affects India widely. However, Central and Western India suffer from particularly intense land degradation as prolonged gullying has resulted in the formation of extensive badlands therein. Considerable research has been conducted on these badlands, but drivers and characteristics of gully erosion in other regions suffering from widespread gullying are unknown. Employing cluster and hotspot analyses using a novel spatial database of India.s gully landforms, this study provides a regional synthesis of gully erosion in India. Different sets of variables were found to control the spatial patterns of the various gully erosion landforms in India, and analytical results were synthesised using India.s physiographic divisions to identify and delineate six major gully-affected regions across the country, namely, Eastern Uplands, Deccan Uplands, Yamuna Basin, Rajasthan Uplands, Gujarat Plains, and Kachchh. Although gully erosion in the Eastern Uplands was triggered by extensive deforestation in the previous centuries, it remains an active geomorphic phenomenon in this part of India, similar to the Kachchh region in Western India. Contrastingly, gully erosion features of the Deccan exhibit very little to no activity at the present. Not only does this study refute the popular belief that the only hotspots of gully erosion in India are the badlands of Central and Western India, but it also provides useful guidance for future regional and local gully erosion studies, besides adding to the knowledge base of Indian physical geography and potentially aiding in regional land management planning.
There has been considerable research both on-fault and in adjacent wetland environments aimed at understanding the nature and timing of movements on the predominantly strike-slip Alpine Fault in southern Aotearoa New Zealand. Findings have documented significant horizontal displacement on its western side and uplift to the east but have as yet not reported any vertical land displacement to the west. Here, we report on a recent study of drowned forests, subsided soils, exposed tree stumps, and sedimentary evidence from Saltwater Lagoon, western South Island, which suggest multiple subsidence/compaction events. Radiocarbon dating of drowned trees revealed multiple tree ages with at least two buried soils overlain by apparent tsunami and/or slope failure deposits. The overall trend appears to be one of net lagoon subsidence/compaction. The recognition of co-seismic subsidence/compaction events in this area may help explain a geomorphological conundrum where coastal wetlands and lagoons are maintained in a region where substantial sediment supply to the coast should cause infilling and progradation. It is important to gain a far better understanding of the nature and extent of such co-seismic subsidence/compaction on the western side of the Alpine fault in order to determine the possible risks posed to coastal infrastructure. Equally, this applies internationally where there is potential to recognise seismic linkages between regional coastal geomorphologies such as lagoons, wetlands, drowned forests, and uplifted or isolated benches. This work highlights the significance of looking beyond the predominant nature of a fault's movement in order to fully understand a region's seismicity.
This article explores creative interventions that challenge colonial environmental imaginaries of Palestine through a discussion of the 2020 Ramallah-based Weed Control exhibition. The discussion situates environmental imaginaries of the "harmful weed" at the intersection of settler colonialism, visual arts, and the environmental humanities, showing how "weedy" metaphors sustain practices of settler colonial expansion and elimination. Specifically, the article considers the links between the eradication of weeds and the eradication of populations in the Israeli state's pursuit of territorial control. By centring the work of contemporary visual artists, this paper sheds light on the role of Palestinian art in disrupting settler colonial environmental imaginaries. The article offers an alternative reading to the Zionist environmental imaginaries of healing the land infected by weeds through the analysis of three artworks representing three "harmful seeds": namely the Carthamus tenuis, the Tordylium peregrinum, and the Melilotus indicus. These creative interventions trace a continuum ranging from affirmative notions of survival as "rebirth" to more introspective engagements that emphasise survival as "defence" and "withdrawal". The discussion is based on the author's analysis of the artworks in the exhibition and interviews with some of the participating artists. This is combined with secondary sources, including the exhibition catalogue and archival material.
This paper explores the origins and early years of the Flying Doctors of Australia and what I call counter circuits or infrastructures of settler-colonial-evacuative mobilities-an important but overlooked modality of settler-colonial mobility and infrastructural development. While drawing an important distinction between the service today and its origins, I argue that the service's early provision of medical care constituted not only a particular form of settler-colonialism but a particular infrastructural technique that made possible its pursuit. Circuits of evacuative mobility under the logics of supporting the settler-state promised the hope of both projection and an assurance of return-often supported by numerous affective and emotional constructions such as relief, consolation, and reassurance. The Flying Doctors evolved not just as a symptom of colonialism but as a supporting practice, driven by a colonial, administrative and cultural logic that has imagined Australia's inland, and especially its north, as semi-vacant, natural, and problematic. The article is not intended to make any broader application to the services of the present-day, but to rather understand the incredible and difficult origins of the service. It considers what this might tell us about the emergence and evolution of settler-colonial extractive formations through aerial medical infrastructures and mobilities, and how "evacuative" logics of mobility may persist, and complicate and coincide with other more projective or reparative ones.
This study applies spatial relatedness to understand how residential overlaps between two or more groups by country of birth can advance knowledge on community formation in urban space. Based on data over three census periods, we use both pairwise and network analysis measures to identify "supercommunities" composed of multiple migrant groups for the 35 most numerically significant groups by country of birth (34 migrant groups, plus Australia), in Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth, and Sydney. Pairwise analysis reveals both positive and negative spatial relationships driven in part by cultural affinity, while community analysis demonstrates observable spatial regularities between cities demonstrating the presence of supercommunities, which we define as communities of migrant groups from multiple countries whose settlement patterns are bound by spatial homophily from one context to another. The analyses suggest that as cities get larger and migration increases, supercommunities grow in significance and spatial segregation increases, at least in the period immediately following large-scale immigration.
As we move into the second half of the 2020s, it is crucial to reflect on our current promotion of sustainability and consider what lessons can be learned for the post-2030 era. A key consideration in this context is whether the ideal of collaboration, which is seen as essential for just and effective sustainability governance, lives up to its potential. Paying attention to how collaborative efforts to strengthen human-human and/or human-nature relations are scaled can provide nuanced and comprehensive insights into this matter. By analysing current collaborations between the state and Aboriginal peoples in South Australia through the lens of scales as categories of practice, I reveal ongoing restrictions on who has a voice in collaborative decisions, which decisions are made collaboratively, and whose ways of knowing count in these spaces. All these restrictions exist in similar forms elsewhere. My analysis further indicates that overcoming these restrictions requires identifying the right governances for particular contexts and aims, extending collaboration to all aspects of related initiatives, and recognising the validity of multiple co-existing conceptualisations of sustainability. On this basis, I make the case for moving towards sustainability practices that are diverse across contexts, holistic within them, and embedded in diverse ways of knowing, doing, and being. I conclude with a brief reflection on the value of geographical perspectives for this transition.
