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This introduction to the themed special issue raises provocative questions about the nature and meaning of co‐production by engaging specifically with voices from the margins – groups and individuals who occupy marginalised embodied subjectivities. Key themes emerging from the papers raise questions about the nature and meaning of co‐production. We suggest a need to move away from a focus on co‐production or even participation towards empowerment and inclusivity. We urge researchers to be explicit about the meaning of the terms "participation" or "co‐production" to think critically about the "communities" with whom we research and how research forges positive social change. The paper highlights the contribution that participative research with groups often positioned in the margins can make to questions of co‐production in geography. We suggest a need to consider power and inclusion rather than participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within feminist geography, there is a growing consensus on the need for research to contribute to social change and transformation beyond the academy, and increased emphasis on the co‐production of impact. In this paper I critically reflect and report on how I co‐produced impact with a participatory audio‐visual research project, conducted in collaboration with women in Bogotá and Medellín and researchers and filmmakers based in the UK and Colombia. I focus particularly on co‐producing 'impact‐in‐process', which builds participants' capacities, creates spaces of reciprocal learning and increases participants' confidence and sense of ownership both during and beyond the research process. Yet, while co‐producing impact‐in‐process benefits research participants and has the potential to contribute to social change and transformation, this form of impact is rarely recognised as such. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Assemblage thinking has increasingly made its way in geographic research and scholarship. Assemblage has been approached as a means of describing socio‐spatial formations, as a set of concepts used to understand their (re)production, and as an ethos animating geographic thought. In this paper, I critically reflect on the third usage, assemblage‐as‐ethos, which remains underdeveloped in assemblage geographies. Assemblage has been heralded as contributing a new or renewed ethos to geographic scholarship in so far as it calls into question the stability and historical necessity of socio‐spatial formations. By forwarding an ontology that privileges potential, transformation, and flux over ideas of identity, structure, and system, geographers claim that assemblage opens up new avenues for thinking about politics and social change. However, I argue here that overly simplistic investments in this ethos can function to obscure the relations of power that indelibly shape socio‐spatial formations, thus rearticulating and naturalising dominant social and symbolic regimes of value. To develop these concerns, I synthesise a set of critiques levelled at assemblage geographies, ones that revolve around the place of agency, history, and structure in its formulation. Adding to these concerns, I argue that assemblage geographies' emphasis on flux, potential, and transformation can rearticulate racialised discourses of neoliberalism, thus undermining claims to being a radical or even critical geographic paradigm. In closing, I provide some avenues for developing assemblage into a more critical ethos for geography. Geographers have celebrated assemblage thinking as a new approach capable of serving as an ethos for geographic research. In this paper, I examine these claims and pose critical questions of them. In doing so, I show why assemblage thinking in geography needs more development, particularly as it pertains to ethics and epistemology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent scholarship has contributed important insights into the political dynamics inherent in the process of making and showing participatory videos. As a research method and an instrument for social change, participatory video has both potential and limitations for overturning the power dynamics embedded within research and in development processes. This paper focuses on experiences of incorporating participatory video in land management projects in four countries in Africa. Along with other participatory methods, the videos represented an effort to include community perspectives and objectives into the research process. Analysis of participatory video has largely focused on examining the tensions and contradictions involved in the process of making participatory videos. There has been less focus on the content of the videos themselves and what it might suggest for empowerment, voice and representation. This paper attempts to address this gap by examining the implications of the narratives that emerge in five different videos. On the surface, the participants appear to repeat dominant national and global narratives about land degradation. However, the fact that farmers present themselves as experts on these topics and the ways in which they appropriate and reconfigure the dominant narratives, can be seen as an act of empowerment. In this way, they preclude the need for external intervention on how to manage their resources. This paper focuses on experiences of incorporating participatory video in land management projects in four countries in Africa. Along with other participatory methods, the videos represented an effort to include community perspectives and objectives into the research process. This paper examines the implications of the narratives that emerge in five different videos. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tracking and explaining patterns and trajectories of social and economic change in the global South is a key challenge for geographers. Panel studies, though rare, offer a particularly rich alternative insight to more usual cross-sectional studies. Drawing on a 25-year longitudinal panel study of two villages in rural Thailand, this paper reveals the complexities of the processes underway, the shifting terrains of explanation, and the surprises that are easily overlooked in cross-sectional studies, particularly when it comes to household life chances and courses. The paper makes a case for the value of such approaches and the insights they can provide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to discuss the use of a participatory documentary process ( PDP) in human geography as a method of constructing critical visual information on territorial histories of dispossession. The process was also used to enhance social change both in conjunction with local communities and within the communities themselves. The project involved 14 local young participants and four professionals who collectively produced a documentary on the rural context of violence in La Toma District, Colombia. By enabling the reflections and intentions of young participants in the research process, PDP gave special value to their social and political commitment to supporting community social organisation, and provided fresh research insights into comprehending territorial conflict. The paper concludes that this method amplifies participatory and action research approaches in geography by producing knowledge that is academically and socially relevant. Such collective, emancipatory and anti-hegemonic visual representations and actions for social change in PDP are especially pertinent in spaces of conflict and violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nothwithstanding crisis and critique, development remains an enduring frame within which much social and economic transformation is interpreted and envisaged. In the context of arguments about the need for a nuanced spatial vantage point on development, this paper asks what this means in the context of new conjunctures and constellations? It focuses on intensified processes and patterns of uneven development manifest as enclaves. The paper explores these drawing on literatures about Southeast Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and the Gulf. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Empirical work on household consumption informed by theories of social practice has grown exponentially in the last few years. This is partly due to conceptual developments positing practices as being comprised of materials, meanings and skills. Such formulations are readily applied to empirical investigations. As the aim of a growing body of empirical work with theories of social practice is to present evidence for how practices can, should, have or might change in the future towards improved sustainability, greater questioning and broader reflection about methods and approaches would be helpful. In the interests of contributing to such methodological discussions and broadening out the range of tools available, this paper is concerned with how to study the processes and dynamics involved in the globalisation of practices. We do so by adapting a method of scrapbooking used as a cultural probe in human–computer interactions research. We apply this method in a qualitative study with international students studying in Australia where we combined interviewing techniques with a purpose‐designed practice memory scrapbook containing a variety of images of current and historical practices. Practices of interest were those related to keeping warm, cool, laundering and bathing. We found the scrapbook useful in four main ways: it facilitated discussion about mundane everyday practices; it uncovered assumptions about “normal” ways of carrying out everyday practices; it foregrounded the absence/presence of material elements; and it facilitated reflection on how practice entities are changing. We conclude that the practice memory scrapbook is a useful and complementary qualitative research method to consider in studies seeking to understand the practice dynamics involved in globalisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the late 1980s, a growing body of academic literature has focused upon the 'evangelicalisation' of Latin America and other, less affluent world regions (e.g. Africa and Southeast Asia). Valuable for exploring a host of interconnected social, political, economic and cultural practices, this research has consistently pondered the implications of changing religious affiliations and what the effects of these changes might hold for society and space more generally. In Brazil, for example - with more Catholics than any country in the world and a rapidly growing evangelical population - researchers suggest that the country's spiritual shift may bring with it significant political and cultural change, particularly in the impoverished urban communities (i.e. favelas) where evangelical churches are most prominent. While numerous accounts exist to document these changes and reflect upon their potentialities, few geographers, as of yet, have contributed to these debates. Still unknown are the spatial changes that accompany this spiritual shift, the ways that neighbourhoods and cities are changing, and the day-to-day effects of new and syncretistic religious practices. Through a case study of a favela community in northeastern Brazil, this paper considers the socio-spatialities of religious diversity and change within Brazil's contemporary urban landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This introduction to the special issue on 'Theorising life transitions: geographical perspectives' makes the case for a greater focus on life transitions in geographical and social research on the life course. Echoing recent calls for a relational understanding of age, it discusses why and how 'transition' needs to be reconceptualised, however, to better capture the precariousness, unpredictability and diversity of life courses without ignoring the structuring effects of state regulation and the institutionalisation of life courses. The paper argues that geographical research has much to contribute to such a reconceptualisation, i.e. by showing the interconnections between social, spatial and life changes and by developing innovative methodologies to capture life transitions in their plurality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we offer a critique and an alternative to current proposals to include the economic and social impacts of research in the next UK audit of academic research. In contrast to most responses from UK academics, our argument is for impact; while the growing marketisation of knowledge is to be deplored, resources and activities within universities do have a vital role to play in progressive social change. The problem is that the current proposals will produce and retrench an elite model of power/knowledge relationships. We propose an understanding of impact based on the co-production of knowledge between universities and communities, modelled in research practice in participatory geographies. This is more likely to result in more equitable and radically transformative impacts of knowledge, making us socially accountable rather than driven by economic accountancy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dominant view in the ecology and anthropology of the 1950s saw populations harmoniously interacting in self-regulating systems; climax forests and stable societies were the ruling hypotheses. Now, however, ecology and social sciences are investigating nature and culture in flux. The flux paradigms of nature and culture describe a human–ecological relationship that is non-equilibrial, historically contingent and constantly negotiated at both material and ideological levels by unequal actors. In this paper, we examine the effect of changing ecological and cultural paradigms on interpretations of environmental change in three areas of East Africa: the North Pare Mountains, Tanzania, the Mkomazi Game Reserve, Tanzania and the Tsavo National Park, Kenya. We explore how discursive and materialist approaches can complement one another, by expanding the domains of ecological inquiry and demanding that analysts cross-check their data for unquestioned assumptions regarding stability, variability and spatial and temporal scales. Rather than testing a ruling hypothesis, we suggest that ecologists and social scientists work with multiple hypotheses, with the aim of understanding the interplay between ecological, environmental and social influences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We engage with scholarship in participatory geographies and critical disability studies to consider the difficulties and prospects of co‐producing knowledge with people with intellectual disabilities in a project examining their uses of urban public space. The research employed an inclusive, collaborative design and had an explicit focus on social change, articulated in the research process (e.g., the development of research and self‐advocacy skills) and outcomes (e.g., lobbying to improve material conditions, challenging ableist assumptions about "intellectual disability"). Our analysis highlights three tensions: the time/spaces constraints faced in "slow" participatory work, the nature and duration of relationships among collaborators and the shifting relations of power and influence within the project. We reflect critically on how these tensions were negotiated and what lessons might be learned for participatory practice. We engage with scholarship in participatory geographies and critical disability studies to consider the difficulties and prospects of co‐producing knowledge with people with intellectual disabilities in a project examining their uses of urban public space. Our analysis highlights three tensions: the time/spaces constraints faced in "slow" participatory work, the nature and duration of relationships among collaborators and the shifting relations of power and influence within the project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on fieldwork with rural teachers in South Africa, this article highlights the significance of cellphone technology in participatory video and its potential to alter the research environment. To date much of the work in the area of participatory visual methodologies (including participatory video) and particularly in the context of working with marginalized communities, has relied on researcher-led projects wherein it is the research team who as outsiders bring cameras for research with the community. In most cases the team departs, taking the cameras with them, but even in cases where the video cameras are left behind, sustainability is still an issue. In the case of cellphones and the production of cellphilms, the dynamics change. We reflect on our fieldwork in two rural schools, where all of the teachers had cellphones and regularly used them for various forms of communication including texting and accessing Facebook. None however, prior to the project had ever produced cellphilms, and only one had used a cellphone in any pedagogical way. In considering critical issues of using participatory video, we address Touraine and Duff's (1981 The voice and the eye: an analysis of social movements Cambridge University Press, Cambridge) notion of the sociological intervention, and ask questions such as: Can this work with cellphones be regarded as a non-interventionist intervention? How does the widespread use of cellphone technology alter the power dynamics related to ownership of both the production and the recording device? To what extent do some of the ethical concerns of previous work become obsolete and to what extent are there new ethical concerns (for example, distribution) to be addressed? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]