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Au cours du mois de février 2007, Neuchâtel célèbre l’inauguration d’un stade de football flambant neuf. Pour le club de Neuchâtel Xamax, qui fait face à des difficultés économiques chroniques, cette infrastructure laisse miroiter un avenir prometteur. On vante alors sans retenue le plus grand confort de la nouvelle enceinte que l’on décrit comme un lieu convivial et propice à la rencontre, sensé attirer un public toujours plus nombreux pour de longs après-midis festifs consacrés au spectacle du football. Analyser l’impact social réel de la modernisation de ce type d’infrastructure s’apparente toutefois à un exercice d’équilibriste. Il implique non seulement une réflexion critique sur des attributs qui peuvent être considérés comme « socialement vertueux » pour la collectivité, mais nécessite également de décrypter le fonctionnement du lieu dans toute sa complexité. Dès lors, cette recherche passe au préalable par la construction d’un outil théorique et méthodologique permettant d’organiser l’étude du « potentiel intégrateur » d’un tel type d’espace. Dans le cadre d’une analyse portant sur le stade de football, l’utilisation de cette grille de lecture nous montre alors que, à Neuchâtel, ce lieu joue un rôle social plutôt important. Fondée sur différentes sources (enquêtes par questionnaire, statistiques relatives aux affluences, analyse des discours sur un forum de discussion en ligne, etc.), la comparaison des situations qui caractérisent l’ancienne et la nouvelle infrastructure conduit néanmoins à tirer un bilan nuancé du processus de modernisation.

International audience; Nous allons comparer quelques discours au sujet de la place Jamaa al Fna de Marrakech, qui, à partir du modern colonial, ont contribue à la transformer spatialement de façon à constituer cette scène qu'aujourd'hui nous pouvons admirer de la terrasse d'un des nombreux cafés français qui la dominent. Cet article cherchera à montrer comment la construction du discours géographique sur un lieu particulièrement imprégné de signifié, de la sédimentation de ses événements historiques et culturels, et des procès qui actuellement l'intéressent, passe à travers la contribution de la littérature également. Après avoir délinéé rapidement les rapports toujours plus intenses et riches entre littérature et géographie, nous réfléchirons brièvement sur le sens du lieu et sur le trajectoire des discours hégémoniques qui ont contribué à transformer Jamaa al Fna en ce mythe colonial et touristique que encore aujourd'hui nous pouvons admirer. Un mythe ainsi résistant et persistent de transférer son aura au reste de la ville et à attirer aujourd'hui des visiteurs de tout le monde, lesquels, ensemble aux protagonistes officiels de la place - les représentants d'une présumée 'maroquinitée' réduite à l'essence - contribuent à recréer chaque jour cette « séduction infinie » dont parlent les brochures touristiques, mais en même temps une série de hybrides culturels qui dérivent du contact des différentes subjectivités modernes dans un espace naturellement post-colonial. La littérature a contribué de manière décisive à construire ce mythe de la place et cet espace hybride post-colonial. Nous tenterons donc d'ébaucher une lecture, parmi tant de possibles, des caractéristiques remarquables de cette contribution, et de montrer comment la description littéraire d'un lieu est aussi une façon de le construire selon des coordonnées spatiales et culturelles déterminées.

Desde una óptica autobiográfica, cinco personas vinculadas a la geografía académica (Abel Albet, Josepa Bru, Claudio Minca, Joan Nogué y Teresa Vicente) expresan su opinión, su relación y su mirada respecto a la disidencia. Se demuestra que la experiencia de ser disidente (y las consecuencias que ello comporta) puede ser hecha, vivida y valorada desde múltiples aproximaciones y definiciones. Des d'una òptica autobiogràfica, cinc persones vinculades a la geografia acadèmica (Abel Albet, Josepa Bru, Claudio Minca, Joan Nogué i Teresa Vicente) expressen la seva opinió, la seva relació i la seva mirada respecte a la dissidència. A la taula rodona es demostra que l'experiència de ser dissident (i les conseqüències que això comporta) pot ser feta, viscuda i valorada des de múltiples aproximacions i definicions. Sous une optique autobiographique, cinq personnes en relation avec la géographie académique (Abel Albet, Josepa Bru, Claudio Minca, Joan Nogué et Teresa Vicente) expriment leur opinion, leur relation et leur regard à l'égard de la dissidence. Il ressort que l'expérience de la dissidence (et les conséquences que cela implique) peut se faire, se vivre et s'évaluer sous différentes approches et définitions. From an autobiographical point of view, five people linked to academic geography (Abel Albet, Josepa Bru, Claudio Minca, Joan Nogué and Teresa Vicente) express their opinions about, their relation to and their perspectives on the question of dissidence. The article shows that the circumstance of being dissident (and the consequences that this gives rise to) can be undertaken, experienced and assessed from multiple approximations and definitions.

This article discusses the case of Rikuzentakata, a town almost completely destroyed by the 2011 tsunami provoked by the Great East Japan Disaster. It shows how the town has directed some of its recovery efforts toward the development of a specific form of post-disaster tourism. Two main strategies implemented by the local authorities are analyzed in detail: first, the celebration of Ipponmatsu, or the Miracle Pine, a symbol of resilience in the face of devastation; second, the promotion of Rikuzentakata as the ‘Hiroshima of the North’. Both these discourses were based on the engineering and the apprehension of specific affective post-disaster atmospheres and perceived by residents and local authorities as key for attracting international visitors. Our analysis highlights how a politics of affect built around the tsunami has been spatialized and grounded using material landmarks (The Miracle Pine), but also narratives of hope and resilience based on comparisons with Hiroshima. Such affective atmospheres, we conclude, were planned and performed as an attempt to facilitate cross-cultural communication and allow visitors to contemplate death and disaster on their own terms, while at the same time involving them in a broader processes of healing from trauma and recovery for Rikuzentakata and its residents.

This paper critically engages with the implications of the “affect turn” in the geographies of development and volunteering. By way of considering “affective life” at a residential youth care centre in Peru through an ethnographic study, we aim to contribute to current discussions of “(self‐)transformation” taking place through affectivity in the experience of volunteering. Conceptually, our approach to investigating “affective life” and volunteering involves two steps. First, we critically review this body of work's recent focus on the individualistic mode of volunteer self‐transformation in encountering “vulnerable others.” We identify the need to think about affect and embodiment also from the perspectives of the “vulnerable” groups whose lives are entangled with the presence of international volunteering. Second, we argue for an affect‐informed approach to socio‐politically shaped vulnerability, with a particular emphasis on lived experiences and affective capacities related to enduring social and material conditions. Against the backdrop of marginalisation of adolescent mothers from rural and indigenous backgrounds, many of whom are survivors of sexual abuse, we analyse the experiences of these youths living at a specific residential care centre and interacting with volunteers on a daily basis. In doing so, we employ a series of perspectives from the residents, while taking into account the organisational environment. We also show the complex ways in which resident–volunteer encounters are at play in life‐enhancing affective states, capacities, and relations emerging among the residents. Our findings on the residents' self‐ and shared capacity of transformation highlights the importance of attending to the spatialities of affective life in academic work focused on the contemporary geographies of international volunteering.

Provocatively drawing inspiration from an episode of the Netflix series Black Mirror and China’s Social Credit System this article critically examines the politics and practices of datafication, quantification and qualification associated to the Airbnb platform. It first explores some of the ideas and ontological claims that endorse Airbnb’s digital infrastructure. Secondly, it looks at how the company’s use of data management and metrics has become increasingly instrumental in maintaining control over hosts and guests and obtaining desirable and profitable outcomes. It does so by unpicking various applications and technologies used by Airbnb to monitor, record and measure the behaviour of hosts and guests. Drawing on in-depth interviews with Airbnb hosts and their participation in forum discussions the article discusses how people understand – and resist – Airbnb’s ‘ranking logic’ and the ways in which their Selves and their homes should be rated and ranked and put into circulation as ‘value’ by the platform. In particular, the article argues that, through the review and rating system incorporated in the platform, both guests and hosts actively contribute to the production of a set of constantly changing hierarchies that represent the driving force of Airbnb as a biopolitical social regulator.

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This article examines how the documentary Vedo Rosso may be seen as a form of Yugonostalgia on the part of the Italian minority living in Rovinj, Croatia. Based on a textual analysis and video elicitation, this project explores the multiple and somewhat ambivalent ways in which this specific community has reacted to a visual reconstruction of the 1980s under socialism. A combination of interviews conducted by the authors and interviews presented in the documentary enables the reconstruction of a memoryscape influenced by intragenerational factors, as well as by the broader geopolitical changes that have transformed, at several times and in several ways, the Istrian Peninsula and the maritime town of Rovinj in particular. Deeper links between memory and nostalgia were the subject of detailed analysis in what is now vast and rich interdisciplinary literature. This article is an attempt to contribute to the existing debates on Yugonostalgia, in the sense that it shows that Yugonostalgia, as a form of memorialization, represents a complex and articulate way to interpret a mutable and uncertain present on the part of a relatively marginal ethno-linguistic minority in contemporary Croatia., Ovaj se članak bavi pitanjem kako se pojava dokumentarnog filma Vedo Rosso mogla shvatiti kao oblik jugonostalgije talijanske manjine koja živi u Rovinju. U radu se na temelju analize teksta i elicitacije pomoću video materijala proučavaju različite i dijelom ambivalentne reakcije te zajednice na vizualnu rekonstrukciju 1980-ih godina socijalističkog razdoblja. Pomoću intervjua koje su proveli autori i intervjua prikazanih u dokumentarnom filmu, u radu se rekonstruira pejzaž sjećanja na koji su, s jedne strane, utjecali međugeneracijski čimbenici, a s druge šire geopolitičke promjene koje su u nekoliko navrata i na različite načine transformirale istarski poluotok, a posebice primorski grad Rovinj. Dublje veze između sjećanja i nostalgije detaljno se analiziraju u postojećoj opširnoj i bogatoj interdisciplinarnoj literaturi. U tom je smislu ovaj rad pokušaj doprinosa dosadašnjim raspravama o jugonostalgiji, kako bi se pokazalo da je taj oblik memorijalizacije kompleksan i bogat način interpretacije promjenjive i nesigurne sadašnjosti od strane razmjerno marginalne etnojezične manjine u suvremenoj Hrvatskoj.

Facing the current growing global archipelago of encampments including concentration, detention, transit, identification, refugee, military and training camps, this article is a geographical reflection on 'the camp', as a modern institution and as a spatial bio-political technology. In particular, it is about the past and present camp geographies and the apparatus of dispositifs that make them an ever-present spatial formation in the management of custody and care characterizing many authoritarian regimes as well as many contemporary democracies. I especially focus on the works of Paul Gilroy, Giorgio Agamben and Reviel Netz to discuss camp spatialities, the normalization of camp geographies, and related biopolitics. In doing so, I advance the argument to resist on present-day proliferating manifestations of camp and 'camp thinking', calling for the incorporation of 'camp studies' into the broader field of political geography to considering the geographies of the camp as constitutive hubs of much broader, modern geopolitical economies. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

L'articolo analizza la frammentazione e compenetrazione di paesaggi nell'area di confine tra Friuli Venezia Giulia e Slovenia compresa tra Redipuglia, Villesse, Gradisca e il Collio, utilizzando il concetto di 'exopolis' di Soja. Applicando tecniche di osservazione participante, interviste sul campo, analisi visuale e testuale, la ricerca riporta e analizza i diversi paesaggi segnati dalla storia della grande guerra, dalla trasformazione dell'area di confine al termine della guerra fredda, con riutilizzo degli spazi militari, abbandono e costruzione di aree commerciali. Il recente insediamento di richiedenti asilo provenienti dalla rotta balcanica e le pratiche sociali in questi spazi pubblici determinano una sovrapposizione e contaminazione di paesaggi di abbandono, commercio, turismo, campagna, militarizzazione, dove le diverse funzioni sociali dei luoghi non si intersecano, ma producono una frammentazione del paesaggio con polarità e ineguaglianze sociali, arrocamenti difensivi, aree abbandonate e altre candidate all'Unesco come patrimonio dell'umanità.

This thesis examines the role of space in the work of the German legal and political theorist Carl Schmitt (1888-1983). It has two fundamental aims. Firstly, to identify what role spatial concepts play in Schmitt's work. Second, to examine what relevance Schmitt’s spatial thought might have for thinking about the relation between space and politics today. In response to the first question the thesis argues that spatial concepts occupy a structural position throughout Schmitt’s work that has thus far been overlooked. The central claim is that Schmitt understands political order, in the absence of necessary foundations, to be fundamentally grounded upon the division of space. The division of space allows political relations to be managed within a formal framework. However, Schmitt understood this relationship between spatial division and political relations to be in crisis in the twentieth century. The thesis traces Schmitt's various attempts to address this crisis first within the horizon of the state and then on the basis of new global spatial divisions beyond the state form. In answering the second question the thesis argues that in order to assess the contemporary relevance of Schmitt's spatial thought it must be contextualized in relation to both the central concerns of his work as a whole and the political contexts within which it emerged. This is of particular importance in judging how Schmitt's involvement with National Socialism bears on the contemporary value of his thought. In conclusion the thesis argues that whilst a critical awareness of his troubling past is necessary in approaching Schmitt's work it none-the-less raises fundamental questions of enduring relevance.

This article examines the spatialities of Nazi genocidial practices. It does so by engaging with the concepts of selva and città, as inspired by Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben and drawing upon a broader tradition in human geography. Although the historical events that we recall have been extensively discussed elsewhere, we revisit them here through the lens of two geographical metaphors, the selva and the città, in order to gain new insight into the spatial and philosophical dimensions of Nazi geopolitics and biopolitics. We also comment on how these latter have contributed to the merging of the ‘ideal’ and the ‘factual’ realms of the Nazi geopolitical project for the creation of new vital space for the German people. We suggest that much can be learned from an examination of the ways in which particular understandings of (imagined and material) space marked the genocidial plans and practices of the Nazi perpetrators, producing a specific geography of genocide, where (spatial) theory and the implementation of extermination came together.

The Tornio River, running through what was once the northernmost part of the Kingdom of Sweden, is a waterway whose meaning changed dramatically in 1809 when Sweden lost its ‘eastern provinces’ to Russia in the Finnish War. Up to that point the river had been a 410-km-long inland watercourse that provided means for mobility and a livelihood for the predominantly Finnish speaking inhabitants of the Tornio River valley. In 1809 the river gained a new function as an international boundary, first between Sweden and the Russian Empire and then, after 1917, between Sweden and the independent Republic of Finland (Lunden and Zalamans 2001).