bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Rethinking young fatherhood : citizenship and compassionate social policy
Authors: Neale Bren , Tarrant Anna
Published: October 2024

This concluding chapter draws together the findings from the empirical study and considers their implications for social policy and professional practice. The discussion reveals the complex constellation of causal factors that shape the parenting experiences of these young men over time, a picture afforded by the qualitative longitudinal design of the Following Young Fathers study. A case is made for the relevance of these findings for wider populations of young fathers, including those who are unable to maintain contact with their children over time. The evidence from this study concurs with and reinforces key findings from the wider body of evidence set out in Chapter 1, but also advances our knowledge and understanding, particularly in relation to the dynamics of these young lives. Overall, the findings have important implications for the way that young fathers are perceived in public discourse and policy responses. The final part of this chapter considers the social citizenship of young fathers as a vital corrective to their image as feckless and irresponsible young men. It concludes by making a case for compassionate social policies that can better support young fathers, their families and their children.
Relationship
Authors: Leigh Jennifer
Published: October 2024

Researchers, educators, artists, and therapists all work with and in relationship to oneself, the world around them, and/or others. However, it is only therapists who receive training on how to form, build, and contain relationships with a specific intent. This chapter draws on psychotherapy to understand the constituents of a therapeutic encounter or relationship so that researchers, educators, and artists might better understand the encounters they have and the relationships they form with their participants, students, or co-creators.
Weaving in
Authors: Leigh Jennifer
Published: October 2024

This final chapter pulls together threads of how qualitative research, and particularly embodied and creative qualitative research, can border onto therapy, education, art, and science. This type of research can be challenging to negotiate, as techniques that intentionally open up the researcher and participant to the emotional content of stories mean that there is also the potential for risk, and to inadvertently wander over a border into uncharted territory.
After the crash: a new crisis of teacher education
Authors: Ellis Viv , Gatti Lauren , Mansell Warwick
Published: October 2024

Chapter One poses the Global Financial Crisis as a point of acceleration in the reorganisation of the welfare state and the intensification of reforms to teacher education motivated by the assumption that improved quality of teaching in schools will lead to improved national economic performance and competitiveness. The chapter introduces the general approach taken in the chapters that follow – critical and cultural political economy analysis – as well as the key concepts of the enterprise narrative and the shadow state. Concluding with an outline summary of the chapters that follow, the chapter also presents the USA, England and Norway as the key national reference points.
‘Growing your own’: producer capture, branding and vertical integration
Authors: Ellis Viv , Gatti Lauren , Mansell Warwick
Published: October 2024

Chapter Three begins with a discussion of the relevance of the idea of producer capture, introduced into the teacher education research literature by the eminent British sociologist Geoff Whitty. Producer capture has been used in arguments about the failure of welfare state institutions. Arising out of this discussion, the chapter then turns to the increasing importance of branding in education generally and teacher education specifically drawing on recent cutting-edge research by Dahle in the Norwegian context (Osloskolen). Branding then leads to an analysis of vertical integration (a concept used in the study of manufacturing supply chains) in the context of teacher education and teacher supply. Three examples of vertical integration in strong education brands are examined: the Knowledge is Power Program and the Match charter school chains in the USA; and multi-academy trusts’ (MATs’) provision of continuing professional development for teachers in England. Original data from a study of teachers’ experiences of continuing professional development in English MATs is analysed. The chapter concludes by showing how the idea of producer capture has been reappropriated in reforms of teacher preparation.
The shadow state: governing choice/controlling markets in continuing professional development for teachers
Authors: Ellis Viv , Gatti Lauren , Mansell Warwick
Published: October 2024

Chapter Five focuses on continuing professional development (CPD) for teachers in the context of changing relations between processes of privatisation, marketisation and the welfare state. Jennifer Wolch’s concept of the shadow state is discussed. Beginning with an analysis of how certain organisations won funding from England’s Teaching and Leadership Innovation Fund in 2016, the chapter goes on to theorise different kinds of shadow state structures, extending Wolch’s original conceptualisation. Co-created shadow state structures are shown to be a distinctive feature of the English teacher education landscape. The chapter then turns to the Relay Graduate School of Education in the USA and its provision of CPD for teachers. The evolution of Relay and its relationship with the US Department of Education is explored so as to reveal the larger political economy of the USA in three sectors of activity: the market, charity and the state. The chapter concludes with a reflection on the different meanings of state/shadow state structures across the three national settings examined as well as a further engagement with Wolch’s later work that highlighted the ‘democratic deficit’ inherent in the growth of powerful shadow state organisations.
Against antiracism
Authors: Warmington Paul
Published: October 2024

Facile postracialism requires a parallel discourse that is aggressively antagonistic to antiracist movements: a kind of ‘contra-’ antiracism. Postracialism and contra-antiracism are symbiotic because if racism is supposed to have declined in social salience, then those who continue to campaign for racial justice must be treated with suspicion, as divisive voices, even as ‘reverse racists’. The ‘contra-’ position aims to delegitimise antiracism, not merely through a hopeful ‘moving on’ narrative but through a discourse of derision and, more seriously, through the machinery of the state. This ‘contra-’ discourse depicts antiracism not just as anachronistic but as actively dangerous and against fundamental British values and culture. Chapter 5 examines the ways in which, in 21st-century Britain, overtly racist and nationalistic discourses of past decades have been rearticulated in modes that are less directly racist but which aim instead to discredit belief in racial justice. In particular, this chapter focuses on the shift between pre-and post-George Floyd antagonisms. After summer 2020’s Black Lives Matter protests, critics of antiracism and multiculturalism ‘gone-too-far’ sought new discursive spaces, urging moral panics against, for instance Black Lives Matter, Critical Race Theory and the Colston statue protests.
The governance of social policy under the Conservatives
Authors: Bochel Catherine , Bochel Hugh
Published: October 2024

This chapter considers the processes of social policy formulation, implementation and evaluation under the Conservative governments from 2015. It notes that preferences for particular approaches to policy making are likely to contribute to different outcomes. The chapter suggests that during the period examined here, there was some divergence between the policy preferences of the Conservatives and the decisions made by governments. This occurred for a number of reasons, including the impact of events such as Brexit and the COVID-19 pandemic as well as divisions within the Conservative Party, which meant that the governments of this time were pushed to greater levels of intervention in the economy and society, and greater use of public expenditure and public service provision, than they might otherwise have wished.
Troubling social policy during turbulent times: children and UK Conservative governments since 2015
Authors: Churchill Harriet
Published: October 2024

This chapter reviews developments in social policy and state support for children and teenagers under recent Conservative UK governments during exceptionally turbulent times. Initially, the chapter reflects on the Coalition government era and its recalibration of state support for children in pursuit of austerity, ‘life chances’ policies and targeted early intervention. The chapter then examines continuities, changes and implications of the Conservatives’ self-proclaimed ‘progressive Conservativism’ agenda as it evolved under successive Conservative governments from 2015 to 2022. The chapter argues that while aspects of progressive Conservativism can be deemed to have merits, recent Conservative reforms have been characterised by severe contradictions and shortcomings fuelling heightened childhood risks and inequalities. An alternative child-centred and social justice approach is urgently needed.
Conservative criminal justice: a strange rediscovery of ‘law and order’ politics
Authors: Squires Peter
Published: October 2024

The years covered by this chapter saw five prime ministers, five home secretaries and six justice secretaries as the Conservative government struggled with internal factions, international crises and repeated instabilities largely of its own making. Boris Johnson’s attempted ‘reset’, Brexit-themed manifesto of 2019 promised to ‘take back control’. It paved the way towards the Beating Crime Plan of 2021, but only began to produce legislative outputs as Johnson’s term of office was drawing to a self-induced premature close. Yet the attempt to return to ‘Tory basics’ on crime was undermined by an austerity legacy that had seen policing numbers cut, staff shortages in the Crown Prosecution Service, Courts Service and penal system that together made it difficult, if not impossible, to achieve the manifesto promises on, for instance, knife crime, violence against women and antisocial behaviour. Towards the end of the period, the pandemic, the refugee crisis and further policing controversies tested the government’s competence still further as it backed deeper into a familiar ideological ‘law and order’ corner.
Conclusions
Authors: Bochel Hugh , Powell Martin
Published: October 2024

This chapter considers the main approaches to social policy during the Conservative governments from 2015 to 2023, under five prime ministers. It notes the impact of Brexit, the COVID-19 pandemic and the period of high inflation from 2022. It sets the Conservatives’ social policies against a framework of alternative political approaches. It then compares the Conservative governments of the period with previous UK administrations, such as the Conservative governments under Margaret Thatcher and John Major, the New Labour governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, and the Conservative–Liberal Democrat Coalition government of David Cameron. It suggests that for the most part there were significant similarities with New Right thinking, but that the impact of ‘events’, and indeed divisions within the Conservative Party, meant that successive prime ministers found it hard to achieve their social policy goals.
The Politics of Police Governance
Authors: Malik Ali
Published: October 2024

This book offers a comprehensive examination of Scottish police governance following the 2012 reform, with a focus on the Scottish Police Authority. The research draws upon documentary analysis and interviews with key stakeholders and policy makers involved in designing and implementing the new arrangements. This monograph captures the nascent years of Scottish police reform, providing insight into the policy discourse that led to the 2012 legislation. It presents a compelling narrative of the Scottish Police Authority and Police Scotland’s formative years as they negotiated their roles and functions while navigating the intricate balance between authority, influence, accountability, and operational independence. The Authority’s composition, emphasising professional skills and expertise, provides a unique opportunity for exploring the role of experts in police governance. This book introduces a framework for knowledge-based governance rooted in the concept of epistocracy. This framework envisions members from diverse backgrounds, possessing a broad spectrum of knowledge, expertise and experience, steering policing policies and robustly holding police organisations to account. Empowered with delegated authority and autonomy, an epistocracy can function as an intermediary between the state and the police, as well as between the police and the public. The legitimacy of experts in police governance hinges on their adherence to processes, rules, and decisions grounded in reasoned deliberation, justification, negotiation, persuasion, and the equitable exchange of knowledge and information. This monograph significantly advances the discourse on democratic policing by presenting a transformative vision of police governance through the framework of epistocracy and providing valuable insights for policy makers, scholars, and practitioners alike.
Developments in police governance: from democracy to epistocracy
Authors: Malik Ali
Published: October 2024

This chapter charts the historical developments in police governance in Britain and situates them within the broader context of networked governance. It then provides a conceptual and philosophical justification for epistocracy in police governance by drawing on the examples of expert regulatory and security organisations within the EU. The chapter argues that direct forms of democratic governance pose conceptual and practical challenges, such as the threat of majoritarianism and partisanship. In the context of these limitations, an epistocracy within a democratic order may not only be justifiable but it may be more desirable than the previously tried and tested methods of democratic governance, which often reduce democratic policing to elections, consultations, and surveys.
Unpacking disruptive methodologies: what do we know about lived experience-led knowledge and scholarship?
Authors: Higgins Maree , Lenette Caroline
Published: October 2024

This chapter highlights the disruptive and decolonial potentials of lived experience-led knowledge to challenge long-held notions about whose knowledge counts in the academy and why. Lived experience-led scholarship aims to achieve epistemic justice in knowledge production by positioning first-hand expertise as a unique and rich form of expertise. The chapter provides contextual and complex understandings of lived experience, states the decolonial aims of the book, and discusses the relevance of lived experience-led knowledge to social justice research. It explains four disruptive methodologies of knowledge production that authors use to share their expertise based on lived experiences, namely Indigenous nation building, talanoa, autoethnography and collaborative autoethnography. It shows how the writing process produced reflexive, candid and textured descriptions of lived experience-led knowledge, speaking to the different contexts and the intersectional nature of social justice issues across disciplines. The chapter concludes with the editors’ statements of positionalities.
On rights and social work
Authors: Forrester Donald
Published: October 2024

This chapter applies the idea of rights and the criticisms considered in chapter 2 to social work. Key approaches to rights within the social work literature are reviewed. It is argued that the general approach to rights in social work has been that they are a good thing, and that social workers should defend and promote rights. This book agrees that rights are an essential feature of a good society, but it focuses on the challenges and tensions they create. It is argued that much of social work practice, including almost all of that in statutory settings, can be understood as dealing with such issues. This is illustrated through a case study which includes different types of rights.
Solving problems
Authors: O'Reilly Carina
Published: October 2024

This chapter begins by defining problems and problem-solving, before exploring SARA as a model for police problem-solving in the UK. It breaks down the four stages of SARA – Scanning, Analysis, Response and Assessment – and discusses the difficulties in implementation, including ensuring the necessary organisational support, managing public expectations and working within the limits of police capacity.
Using peer engagement to support the participation of people who use drugs in research
Authors: Melaugh Brian , O’Hara Andy
Published: October 2024

The purpose of this chapter is to outline the theory and application of using peer engagement to conduct research with people who use drugs (PWUD). A strength of the chapter is a presentation of examples of how research was conducted with PWUD with the aim of informing Ireland’s National Drugs Strategy and the development of Ireland's first Safer Injecting Facility. The chapter outlines the factors that promote and inhibit peer engagement with PWUD. Finally, it offers a summary of the learning of using peer-engagement approaches for social justice research.
Advancing behavioural public policies: in pursuit of a more comprehensive concept
Authors: Ewert Benjamin , Loer Kathrin
Published: October 2024

Behavioural public policy is predominantly based on insights from behavioural economics and psychology in order to ‘nudge’ people to act in line with specific aims and to overcome the dilemma of behaviour that contradicts economic rationality. In contrast, we define behavioural public policy as a multi-disciplinary and multi-methodological concept that utilises insights from the whole range of behavioural research. Based on a scoping review and peer survey we see merit in behavioural insights from disciplines such as anthropology, geography and sociology as well as the application of qualitative methods. Our findings identify the need to advance behavioural public policy conceptually and methodologically. This chapter challenges our current understanding of behavioural policymaking by integrating ‘foreign’ views and approaches that do not (yet) belong to the core discipline. We argue that behavioural public policy should not be a synonym for a limited number of policy approaches (for example, nudges) based on specific research methods (for example, randomised control trials) to reach individual behaviour change. Instead, our findings suggest a redefinition of the scientific footing of behavioural public policy.
Conclusion
Authors: Ewert Benjamin , Loer Kathrin , Thomann Eva
Published: October 2024

Insights emanating from our model support and accelerate the unfinished process of applying behavioural sciences in public policy and administration. This final chapter investigates the opportunities for applying our behavioural model of the policy process in three steps. First, we discuss how the model has been perceived by scholars of public policy and administration so far, in relation to which research topics and contexts. Second, we demonstrate how the model could be used as a theoretical framework to study governance activities in the field of climate change. Finally, we summarize key findings and suggest future avenues in BPP/BPA research.
Marking the absence of an embodied theology: an analysis of how people of faith talk about abortion in Northern Ireland
Authors: MacNamara Nóirín , Bloomer Fiona
Published: October 2024

How people of faith consider the issue of abortion from a prochoice perspective is largely unexplored in academic literature. This chapter offers insight into the positioning of abortion by people of faith in Northern Ireland. We examine the degree to which the embodied nature of becoming and being human, and a sense of God as love or compassion, contribute to study participants’ understandings of ‘the ground’ of the self and the modes of self-assertion these enable.
Between a rock and hard place: discussing Sámi issues in contemporary Finland – a conversation with Ánneristen Juuso
Authors: Juuso Ánneristen
Published: October 2024

In a conversation with the editors of the book, Ánneristen Juuso discusses Sámi identity in contemporary Finland. The interview offers a historical and contemporary analysis of the deracination of Sámi peoples and the intentional and strategic formation of a hegemonic Finnish national identity, a process that renders Indigenous rights and knowledge invisible. The phenomena of Finnish coloniality, and its denial, sets the context for othering immigrants and refugees who also face erasure, othering and enforced dependency.
Theoretical Background
Authors: Bertolini Sonia , Goglio Valentina , Hofäcker Dirk
Published: October 2024

The objective and subjective dimensions of job insecurity have been addressed in sociological literature by several theoretical and empirical studies, with particular attention to the variations associated with welfare regimes and labour market regulations, yet other micro level dimensions have received less attention or findings remain inconclusive.. Furthermore, comparatively little research has investigated how (objective and subjective) job insecurity impacts on later transitions in life, such as mid-career trajectories and transitions from work to retirement. This chapter explores the relationship between objective and subjective job insecurity in the past literature. In particular, it links the results with the types of welfare states systems. The chapters take into account the micro, meso and macro levels.
Conclusion
Authors: Bertolini Sonia , Goglio Valentina , Hofäcker Dirk
Published: October 2024

This book has analyzed the link between objective and subjective job insecurity along the life courses of individuals. While objective job insecurity had been investigated extensively in previous literature, subjective job insecurity had comparatively received lesser attention. In empirical terms, analyzing job insecurity poses a challenge, given that its nature is multidimensional and it is influenced by a complex set of factors at different levels, individual and collective. Earlier research has either looked on objective or subjective job insecurity separately. We addressed the two dimensions in their own specificity, but also analysed the interplay between objective and subjective factors. We could thus additionally highlight inconsistencies between the two dimensions and their relative incidence. Only in this way can we provide a complete picture of job insecurity across welfare states.
Fearless and Fearsome
Authors: Ganapathy Narayanan
Published: October 2024

This chapter serves as one of the empirical chapters, providing an in-depth analysis of various aspects of the Omega gang based on ethnographic data. It explores key elements such as gang membership, organizational structure, activities, and interactions with other criminal gangs, as well as involvement in crime and drugs. The racial affiliation and solidarity within the Omega gang are crucial factors for understanding its operations. These aspects intersect with the hypermasculine orientation of the gang members. The individuals within the gang, who confront multiple forms of marginalization and oppression, have developed a propensity for using violence as a compensatory behaviour. By strategically displaying violence, these marginalized men emphasize their ‘Malayness’ to embody fearlessness and intimidation, thereby attempting to regain what they perceive as lost pride for the Malay race. Simultaneously, they navigate their status in relation to the more established Chinese secret societies within the criminal underworld. Positioning itself as the defender of Malay Muslim rights, the Omega gang has been able to accumulate and capitalize on the symbolic, reputational and social capital associated with this representation. This strategic positioning has facilitated the expansion of the gang’s influence and membership base.
Russian Kleptocrat Luxury, Naval’nyi’s Exposés, and the Global Anti-Policy Syndrome
Authors: Kuldova Tereza Østbø , Østbø Jardar , Raymen Thomas
Published: October 2024

Chapter 2 shows how the image of the dissident, exemplified by Aleksei Naval’nyi, the imprisoned Russian anti-corruption activist, serves a crucial function in the reinvigoration of the moral superstructure of capitalism. We argue that in the context of crisis for the liberal or ‘rules-based’ world order, Russia – a monster with three heads: corruption, authoritarianism, and expansionism – has returned to become the West’s constituting Other. The persecuted anti-corruption activist, on the other hand, represents a positive rallying point devoid of any content except being the opposite of evil. In this sense, corruption has become the new communism, and Aleksei Naval’nyi has become the new Andrei Sakharov. The twin image of totalitarian communism and the humanistic, anti-communist dissidents formed the central moral theme to institute neoliberal reforms in the late 1970s and 1980s. Today, a similar binary – that of corrupt authoritarianism and the morally pure anti-corruption activists – forms the central moral theme of regulatory capitalism, of the eradication of evil through technologically driven anti-policies.
Compliance, Defiance, and the Fight against Crime through the Markets in Art, Antiquities, and Luxury
Authors: Kuldova Tereza Østbø , Østbø Jardar , Raymen Thomas
Published: October 2024

The international art, antiquities and luxury markets are often described as unregulated, easy to exploit by criminal and corrupt actors, oligarchs, and kleptocrats. Art scandals and revelations of financial frauds, money laundering through art, looting of antiquities to finance terrorism, forgeries of both artworks and provenance, tax evasion, ‘abuse’ of freeports, offshore tax havens, and ‘creative compliance’, and so on, have over the past decade attracted public attention and scrutiny, and spurred more (self-)regulatory action. This chapter zooms in on the fight against crime through art, antiquities, and luxury markets as it manifests in AML, CFT, sanctions, and related regulatory regimes that extend the logic of banking regulations and compliance into the art and antiquities markets – a move aligned with the financialization of art, framed by issues of national security, foreign policy, cultural diplomacy, and transnational organized crime. The chapter sheds light on the ideological fantasy of compliance and defiance and shows how this fantasy serves to both disavow and evade the problem at the core, while stimulating the massive proliferation and growth of neoliberal regulation and control apparatuses that not only fail, time and again, to control what they set out to control, but also result in new forms of uncontrollability.
Exploring Menopause Transition in the Workplace
Authors: Atkinson Carol , Duberley Jo , Page Catrina
Published: October 2024

This chapter considers organizational practice, workplace interventions and possibilities for further provisions in this area, with a particular focus on evaluating (potential) employer interventions. It is based on UK survey data gathered and draws on a psychological contract framework, which allows an assessment of a range of menopause considerations and their implications for the employment relationship. Comparing organizational and line managers’ support with women’s willingness to disclose highlights the shared responsibility to create workplaces in which meaningful help and support around menopause can be provided. The chapter concludes with the call that substantial cultural change is needed to normalize the conversation around menopause and the warning that organizations ignore menopause at their peril.
Still Crazy After All Those Years: A Trajectory of Discourses on Youth Subcultures in Korea, from Exclusion to Recognition to Legitimization
Authors: Shin Hyunjoon
Published: October 2024

Discourses on youth subcultures in Korea have changed over the last 50 years, from ‘exclusion’ in the 1970s to ‘recognition’ in the 1990s and ‘legitimization’ in the 2010s. Yet, this evolution has not been smooth and easy, but rather laden with sharp cultural struggles in each period. Moreover, the vernacularized terms for subculture have been contested and adapted over the years as well, whether as pubunmunhwa (literally partial culture), hawimunhwa (literally low-ranking culture), or sŏbŭk’ŏlch’ŏ (transliterated from subculture). This chapter’s (re)investigation of the historical and contemporary discourses on subcultures shows that, first, subcultures in Korea have never been merely imports, transplants, or imitations of what had already been formed in the West, especially the UK and US. Methods of matching ‘Western’ theories to Asian cases is becoming less and less relevant, as evidenced by recent examples such as hikkikomori, Ingyŏ, and tangping, for which exact English (or other European) equivalent words do not exist. Second, the interpretation of Asian subcultures need not and should not rely on cultural essentialisms that revoke national stereotyping from the overly simplistic observation of the differences from their Western counterparts. Rather, the emergence of subcultures and related activisms in Korea and East Asia, like anywhere else in the world, should be perceived as arising from gaps betwixt and between binary divisions: exclusion and legitimization, imitation and creation, East and West, English and non-English, and so on.
Is Alienation Theory Still Relevant?
Authors: Yuill Chris
Published: October 2024

The question arises is alienation a redundant concept? As Ricoeur (1968) observed, alienation is so semantically overridden it has become rendered meaningless. Or it has perhaps been superseded by concepts more capable of analysing the textures of contemporary capitalism, with its flows and relationships and formations of new subjectivities as discussed in previous chapters. As indicated from the outset I believe it is not redundant, and, in fact, the capitalism of the 21st century is as alienative as in previous periods of capitalism. I discuss here how the core relations of capitalism still pertain and that alienation has taken on a new historical but not new logical form.
Introducing Contemporary Economic Geographies: An Inspiring, Critical and Plural Collection
Authors: Johns Jennifer , Hall Sarah Marie
Published: October 2024

What could economic geographies be? What should economic geographies be? Who might be included in this project, what might they contribute, and how can we ensure that this work is valued? These are not new questions, and yet they remain as pertinent as ever. This collection adopts a fresh perspective to these debates, and to economic geographies more broadly, with a focus on plurality. We show how contemporary economic geographies are already plural, as they are critical and inspiring. However, this remains to be widely recognized and celebrated. Such pluralism is, we argue, essential. It includes building upon economic geographies that acknowledge the deeply ingrained racial, gendered and classed power differentials inherent within the economy across space, scale and time; and that propose ways to address these problems. It involves expanding upon the areas that are considered the ‘heartlands’ of economic geography (such as a focus on the regional and national scale, agglomeration and clustering, financial processes and industrial sectors), and advancing the theoretical devices deployed to understand these worlds. Pluralism likewise extends to empirical and methodological imagination, in terms of how, where and with whom economic geographies engage, include and empower. This involves wider engagements across international fields of study, going beyond Anglocentric sites, writings and perspectives, and broadening methodological expertise to encourage innovation and creativity. Working towards more plural economic geographies also means tackling and addressing long-standing concerns about the overbearing heteronormativity of who ‘does’ and who is ‘recognized’ within the subdiscipline.
Entrepreneurship and Innovation: Who Is Forgotten?
Authors: Fu Wenying
Published: October 2024

Innovation and entrepreneurship constitute the indispensable ingredients in contemporary capitalism, yet a large proportion of them occurs within the bulk ‘iceberg’ of economy hidden underneath the water. This chapter critically examines the notion of spatial peripherality and social marginality in the process of innovation-driven capitalism. By an introductory illustration on the manifold definition of the peripheral in the literature, the chapter focuses on three ‘forgotten’ places and social groups that received insufficient attention in mainstream innovation studies, namely the peripheral regions, migrant entrepreneurs, and participants in the informal sector. By critically reviewing the innovation and entrepreneurship dynamics among them, it argues that it is the numerous small and medium-sized business operating in the peripheral regions, in the immigrant entrepreneurial communities, and in the Southern informal sector, that sustain and confront the mainstream innovation. It concludes that the desires of these three groups to link up with the outside world exist in parallel with strong commitment to their own localities and communities characterized by the everyday struggle of selection and resistance to mainstream capitalist practices. This could come in the form of dependence/​interdependence as well as reciprocity/​tension, which is subject to technological cycles, geopolitical complexities and domestic policy narratives. Hence, the investigation on the innovation dynamics within the peripheral capitalism transcends the neoliberal leitmotif, and comes down to a deeper issue of contested political economy and power struggle of everyday practices.
Governance: Climate Change and Land Use in the Anthropocene
Authors: Knox-Hayes Janelle
Published: October 2024

Climate change is disrupting the fundamental conditions of human life, while exacerbating existing inequities by placing further burdens on communities that are already vulnerable. For economic geographers, the challenge is to fundamentally reconsider our economies and the physical, social and environmental infrastructures that underpin them. Climate change also presents an opportunity to transform our social and economic systems and to better integrate social and ecological outcomes. In reducing social values to economic exchange value, a range of social and environmental attributes are stripped out of economic valuation. Climate change requires attention to two critical dynamics: (1) managing the balance of time between socio-economic and environmental systems, and (2) understanding the flows of hydrocarbon cycles and their interrelationship with ecosystems. A sustainable economy would not compress resource values so that their only form of recognition might be the profitability of their exchange, but it should instead give them space for expression, consideration and realization. Rather than address climate change in a silo, as a by-product of fossil-fuel-based energy, climate change should instead be considered within a system of planetary boundaries. Land-based industries, such as forestry, water provision, energy, agriculture, fisheries and even real estate should be integrated through comprehensive systems approaches. In this way, resilience strategies could address not just critical physical infrastructure but also the socio-economic and cultural interdependencies of human and natural systems. This is the only way to truly address a problem with the scope and scale of climate change.
Urban Economies: Learning from Post-Socialist Contexts
Authors: Trubina Elena
Published: October 2024

The production of urban economies through market-led neoliberal policies is widespread. Geographical work on urban economies have typically focused on these instances in the ‘West’, resulting in an uneven examination of different parts of the world. However, the pressure on developing countries to yield to policies of structural adjustment, for instance, has led to the growth of academic reflection on urban development in places that were previously marginalized by mainstream understandings of urban economies. Post-Soviet contexts is one such example. This chapter shows how theory-building in urban studies and economic geography is informed by the active dialogue among the variously understood ‘Easts’ alongside arguments and theories which emerged in the Global North. Empirical urbanization cases may help to understand layered spatial arrangements and uneven spatial development. In this chapter I reflect on the commonalities and specificities of urbanization processes in post-socialist countries, to articulate how a place-based understanding beyond Western contexts is crucial for pluralizing urban economic geographies. I argue that the convergence and divergence of market-led urban development in this context should be understood as part of the ongoing cross-breeding of statism and neoliberalism, including recentralization, electoral clientelism and an increased concern for national sovereignty.
Retail Market Futures: Retail Geographies from and for the Margins
Authors: Taylor Myfanwy , González Sara
Published: October 2024

This chapter makes the case for a renewed focus within retail geography and related disciplines on marginalized retail spaces and practices such as marketplaces and street trading. Such forms of retailing are particularly important to women, low-income groups, migrants and people of colour globally but have often been neglected and obscured in both mainstream and critical retail research. Relatedly, urban policy agendas have generally ignored, undermined or displaced marketplaces and street trading, viewing them as historic or traditional forms of retailing in need of modernization and redevelopment. This neglect and loss is strongly felt by the low-income and other marginalized communities that depend on these retail spaces for livelihoods, provisioning and social interaction. This chapter therefore proposes a renewed focus for retail geography on marginal retail spaces and practices, making visible their wide-ranging roles and functions and their potential to contribute to socially just and inclusive urban and retail policy agendas. The authors highlight the relevance of feminist and postcolonial perspectives as well as collaborative methods, drawing on a major research project on traditional retail markets in the UK.
Mundania
Authors: Willim Robert
Published: October 2024

Digital services, platforms and arrangements are often promoted as smooth and convenient, smart or intelligent. When introduced, devices can appear utterly fascinating or awkward, even disquieting. Eventually, however, they soon disappear in the muddle of everyday life. This is how Mundania takes form. Based on original research, this book uses the concept of Mundania to better understand technological change. Scholar-artist Robert Willim deftly unpacks the interplay between everyday life and the immense complexity of technological infrastructures. Offering imaginative new insights into our relationship with technology, this book will appeal to readers in a range of fields from science and technology through media studies to the arts.
Vanishing Points
Authors: Willim Robert
Published: October 2024

Devices, gadgets and everyday things might be the most obvious tangible entities of Mundania. Present technology. Perceivable and touchable. But what does it mean that something is tangible, and for whom and when is it tangible or graspable? How can different aspects of technologies be controlled in Mundania, and by whom? What do different people have to know about the technologies they live with? What can they know? The aim of this chapter is to approach these questions by closely engaging with some of the devices, materials and details of Mundania, and to start thinking about how they often seem to vanish.
Opacity
Authors: Willim Robert
Published: October 2024

There can be different orientations of Mundania, such as in-between, beyond and beneath. There can also be different properties. One such property pertains to practices and consequences of concealment. Complex systems, organizations and technologies are hard to oversee and to fully see through. Powerful stakeholders, governments, corporations or other conglomerates can hide their businesses for various reasons. Sometimes justly and fairly, sometimes not. There are also intrinsic trade-offs and distributions between simplicity and complexity, as we saw in the previous chapter, ‘Beneath’. Trade-offs between ignorance and knowledge. Between transparency and opacity.
Introduction: My Companions in Misery
Authors: Zimmerman Brandon
Published: October 2024

This chapter introduces readers to the global photographic phenomenon known as dissection photography. Dissection photographs were a popular means for students of all ages, backgrounds, and disciplines to document and commemorate their participation in anatomical dissection, then the earliest defining experience of a medical education. In an age in which photography served to confirm occupation and establish identity, dissection photography became a ritualized tradition inextricably linked to a professional rite of passage. This chapter provides a brief history of the genre’s evolution from 1880 to 1930, as well as the years of its demise from the 1940s to the 1980s. Also discussed are major shifts in the genre, from the introduction of handheld cameras to the creation of dissection postcards, its cultural erasure from any canonical texts on the history of medicine and photography, as well as modern scholarship begot by James S. Terry in the 1980s, and continued in 2009 with the landmark publication, Dissection, by John Harley Warner and James Edmonson.
Is Dissection Photography Really a Genre?
Authors: Zimmerman Brandon
Published: October 2024

What photograph carries more abject significance than an image that coexists in the interstices between social repugnance and a hallowed expression of the cooperative social experiences of legions of students? This chapter legitimizes dissection photography’s role as a pervasive photographic genre by positioning its existence within other forms of abject imagery. It also asks why the supergenre of medical photography, in all its varying forms, has subsisted almost exclusively outside the scope of photographic history’s authoritative canonical texts. While the constant fluidity of the genre’s dominant imagery seemed to confuse early photo historians in terms of defining the genre’s origin, such acts are in fact essential to the formation of a genre as we know it, such as the creation of distinct subgenres. In the case of dissection photography, once student amateur photographers had access to handheld cameras, the psychological turmoil of their initial encounter with the cadaver found tangible expression in the form of a distinct subgenre. Particular attention is paid to this phenomenon, specifically, the formation of the Student Dream subgenre and its relation to the psychosocial conditioning of American medical students.
To Begin without Fear
Authors: Zimmerman Brandon
Published: October 2024

This chapter discusses how for centuries, human cadavers served as the catalysts for student reflection upon their own mortality. Myriad topics are discussed throughout related to religion, religious affiliations, dissection, and photography as evidence. Chief among these topics is how dissection photography repudiates tropes of corporeal idealism and divine materiality by inculcating viewers to the innumerable authenticities and unavoidable imperfections of mortal flesh. The chapter also questions the philosophical and eschatological purpose of the cadaver, and whether its corrupted imago is one which allows for and in fact encourages the perpetration of ridicule; especially when considering the various forms of abjection shown toward the remains of marginalized communities, such as indigent populations and persons of color. Also discussed is how the genre afforded Christian students (Protestantism being the dominant religion of students at the time) both means and opportunity to reference the symbolic and totemic power of the cadaver through various reflections upon its relation to the philosophical function of Jesus Christ’s sacrifice in service to humanity.
Introduction
Authors: Becucci Stefano
Published: October 2024

This chapter introduces the context of the Southern European countries, research design, and the distinction between smuggling and trafficking. Spain, Italy and Greece are destination countries for migrants, with large, informal economies and amnesties that enable irregular migrants to change their illegal status. Within these constraints, the book asks: What is the difference between smuggling and trafficking? What is their current extent in Southern Europe? What organizational methods underly smuggling and trafficking? What economic and institutional factors drive these phenomena? To answer these, the book refers to qualitative and quantitative sources on smuggling and trafficking. Smuggling concerns migrant arrivals in a new country, while trafficking can occur within the victim’s country. The relationship between migrants and smugglers ends when the foreign country is reached, while trafficked people continue to be exploited. Smugglers resort to violence to avoid interception by law enforcement, and traffickers use violence systematically to dominate their victims.
Introduction: Zimbabwe’s Crisis and Immobilities
Authors: Vanyoro Kudakwashe
Published: October 2024

This chapter situates the book’s concern with immobility and crisis in the conversations about migration governance, borders and temporality that have emerged in anthropological migration studies. Based upon an empirical and theoretical inquiry into the constitution of Zimbabwean migrants at the Zimbabwe–South Africa border as political subjects, the three arguments of the book are presented. First, the making of the Zimbabwe–South Africa border and migration governance regime is not merely a territorial process but one situated in time and space. Second, what we are seeing in the context at hand, as elsewhere, is not merely direct regulation of mobility by the state but also through bureaucratisation of displacement in humanitarian institutions that have stepped into matters regarding the management and care of migrant lives. Third, the Zimbabwe–South Africa border is not as knowable as the common power–agency binary may suggest. It is, rather, a site of ambiguity that produces paradoxical effects for immobile migrants in different places and times, culminating in ambivalent political subjectivities. These three arguments are organised within the book’s proposed framework of governing immobilities in an attempt to raise important considerations for the broader landscape of migration and border studies and the African border studies literature.