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Mihai Eminescu features prominently at the core of Romania's pantheon of cultural heroes. Soon after his death in 1889, Eminescu was canonized as the 'national poet.' Drawing on several strands of scholarship, this article examines the spatial politics of Eminescu's memorial cult in Romania. In particular, integrating four complete datasets of commemorative artefacts dedicated to Romania's national poet (public monuments, street names, school nomenclature, and the toponymy of cultural centres), this study charts the regional spatialization of Eminescu's memorial posterity. In accounting for the spatial differences underpinning this geography of public memory, the paper outlines two main factors: (1) Eminescu's bio-topic presence, i.e., the memorialization of his journeys within the current day territory of Romania, and (2) the cultural politics of spatial appropriation, which implied the memorialization of Eminescu in the provinces incorporated in the Romanian Kingdom after the WWI (e.g., Transylvania) as a symbolic means of Romanianizing the landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Combining research in political geography and social psychology, this article investigates lay theories of "place effects"—that is, ordinary citizens' beliefs about the effects that urban or rural places have on the individuals who live in them. We do so using a novel survey vignette embedded in a large‐scale survey of the Canadian public. Our results suggest that (1) citizens see rural identities as less malleable than urban identities, (2) lay theories of place effects depend on citizens' own place identities, and (3) lay theories of place effects are stronger for nonpolitical than for political place‐based characteristics. We also find that lay theories of place effects are associated with individual‐level characteristics that are connected to cosmopolitan‐communitarian divides, such as ideology and postsecondary education. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of our findings for the growing literature on urban–rural divides and for research on citizens' implicit theories of places and their political consequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This commentary reflects on a longstanding interdisciplinary exchange across geography and political science, which has crystallised into the scholarship on climate governance. This debate has fundamentally shaped ideas on how climate change can be managed as a societal challenge and with what consequences. The analysis briefly maps the emergence of climate governance as a concept and its progressive embedding in climate policy discourse. Next, the discussion reflects on how the application of associated frameworks may become increasingly 'stretched', as theoretical toolkits travel far beyond the settings in which they were developed. This commentary reflects on a longstanding interdisciplinary exchange across geography and political science, which has crystallised into the scholarship on climate governance. The analysis briefly maps the emergence of climate governance as a concept and its progressive embedding in climate policy discourse. Next, the discussion reflects on how the application of associated frameworks may become increasingly 'stretched', as theoretical toolkits travel far beyond the settings in which they were developed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International student mobilities (ISM) is an important but increasingly complex and controversial topic. Politically, the contested nature of international student mobilities is driven by the confluence of immigration policies, increasing demand for global education, and new higher education funding imperatives. Academically, international student mobilities is a key field of study which intersects with three subdisciplines of geography: political, population and social. Our intervention reveals, for the first time, how current UK migration management policies are actively 'producing' the international student as a population category. We illustrate the effects of this production through its operationalisation into universities and everyday student lives. We achieve this by developing an analytical framework informed by theorisations of 'dynamic nominalism', which is complemented by data from semi‐structured interviews and policy documents. Our findings uncover the existence of multiple populations within the international student category, exposing the inherent complexities, hierarchies of privilege and contradictions therein. Notably, we identify a conceptual and empirical distinction between those produced as 'international students' based on their visa, and those produced as 'international students' via their tuition fee status. The implications of this intervention are important for the contentious landscape of higher education and immigration policy because the paper challenges assumptions about, and raises ethical questions regarding the treatment of, the 'international student'. Our analytical framework also has wider applicability beyond the subject of ISM, through its potential to aid geographers, and those in cognate disciplines, concerned with addressing fundamental questions about how and why categories are produced and the consequences of this production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay revisits geographical debates on empire to clarify how broader geopolitical economies of power and violence have always been experienced at the scale of the everyday as an intimate politics of relation- and difference-making. It is guided by two questions that promise to stretch geographical writing on empire in new ways. They are: how has empire always been a racial project ? And how has imperial race-making historically gone hand-in-hand with imperial place-making? Both questions force us to reckon with empire as a multi-scalar project that entangles the foreign and the domestic, the intimate and the global, and so on. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The surge of populist and radical right phenomena reshaped European political geography. Yet the connections between places of residence and populist or radical right politics tended to be neglected until recently. This paper addresses the gap by exploring how residency relates to support for populism and the radical right in contemporary Europe. Focusing on the distinction between 'cities', 'towns–suburbs', and 'countryside', I conduct an individual-level investigation of populist and radical right votes and attitudes across different residential contexts. The analysis is based on European Social Survey data (2020–22) from 23 countries, in both Western (WE) and Central–Eastern (CEE) Europe. The key finding is that the cleavage between cities and suburban–rural areas is much more related to the thick ideological underpinnings of the radical right—authoritarianism and nativism—than the thin, purely populist, dimension. Nativism particularly is stronger the more rural the place of residence, irrespective of the individual's socio-economic profile, political orientations, the extent to which their region is left-behind, and whether they live in WE or CEE. Hence, future research on the geographical polarization of politics may turn its attention to the radical right, more than to populism per se. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What might methodological approaches drawing on Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and Social Network Analysis (SNA) offer to sub‐disciplines in geography which have traditionally been dominated by qualitative and often micro‐scale research, such as historical or political geography? How might these approaches—often understood as opposing—be brought together to advance transnational research in particular? This article responds to these questions through a reflection on a recent project on the geopolitics of diplomatic training in the mid‐twentieth century. Building on the established use of biography to focus transnational analyses within a complex abundance of sources, the project complemented such close‐reading with computational methods of distant‐reading, able to analyse large datasets to produce prosopographies and network visualisations that help identify diffuse and larger scale political and geographical relationships. The article concludes with a consideration of how such methods might be effectively integrated in the historical or political geographer's toolkit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multinational enterprises (MNEs) take advantage of local differences in their global location of assets and activities. Scholarship in economic geography and international political economy associates value-producing entities organized in Global Value Chains (GVCs), and wealth-protecting entities in Global Wealth Chains (GWCs). At the aggregate level, these are often associated with different geographical manifestations, with GVCs centered around "production hubs" and GWCs around "offshore jurisdictions." This indicates an asymmetrical geography between value and wealth with a low level of entanglement. This does not account, however, for the ways value and wealth are governed within MNEs. We investigate how the firm-territory nexus can be understood across scales and what this implies for the geographical overlap between GVCs and GWCs. While there is seemingly limited entanglement of GVC and GWC activities at the macro scale, at the meso scale there are overlaps and significant entanglement at the micro scale. This implies value and wealth are more geographically aligned than previously thought, and that initiatives aimed at regulating these chains needs to address practices within MNEs rather than targeting arbitrary geographies at the country level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The UK is characterised by spatial inequality between and within regions, alongside an over-centralised asymmetric model of governance. In England especially, these features are stark, and throughout the last decade, politicians have responded by forging a distinctive programme of English devolution focused on city-regions. In this article, we analyse the core drivers of the English devolution agenda to understand its impact on the future trajectory of British politics. We identify the predominance of a narrow economic vision of devolution that systematically negates other agendas. The result is a failure to address the trade-offs inherent in the devolution process, alongside an inadequate engagement with the growing demand for democratic revitalisation. In the long-term, we argue that the empowerment of the largest cities in England and the relative neglect of non-urban areas will exacerbate power asymmetries within the UK political system in both centre-periphery and centre-local relations, a phenomenon we term 'political spatial inequality'. There is a risk of resurgent 'territorially based populism' stemming from this uneven political geography which has the potential to exacerbate political instability and significantly reshape UK politics in the wake of Brexit. English devolution is a prescient example of how policy 'solutions' can in turn create new problems that pose major challenges for policymakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This report provides an overview of contemporary scholarship on the political geographies of oceans. While oceans were overlooked for many years as theories of sovereignty, territory, and borders focused on terrestrial politics, the significant impact of climate change resulted in a new focus on the role oceans place in global environmental and political systems. At the same time, the enclosure of over 40 percent of the oceans as territorial seas, exclusive economic zones, and extended continental shelves through the Convention on the Law of the Sea produced burgeoning literature on maritime borders and conflicts. The report proposes the concept of blue geopolitics to capture an oceanic turn in political geography theories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The notion of vulnerability is gaining traction in EU border protection. On the one hand, the concept refers to vulnerable migrants and their affectedness by insecurity and violence. On the other, it indicates the susceptibility of borders to irregular crossings and cross-border crime. Both forms of vulnerability are assessed through dedicated procedures under the umbrella of the European Border and Coast Guard Agency Frontex. To make sense of these seemingly contradictory conceptual and practical uses of vulnerability, we draw on feminist postcolonial scholarship in security studies and political geography. We argue that a shared colonial matrix of gendered and racialised meanings and problematisations enables analogies between borders and bodies as (un-)deserving of protection. In a discourse-theoretical analysis of Frontex documents, we show how the ambiguous use of vulnerability legitimises the EU border regime and its security practices by constructing EU bordering as neutral and objective and EU borders as objects of care. We conclude that vulnerability becomes increasingly important for normalising the EU's violent borders in the context of the EU's broader claims to liberal values of freedom, protection, and human rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article builds on feminist and decolonial perspectives and engages with political geography literature to rethink the way that peace and violence are understood in the Global South. Building peace that is coherent with planetary and ecological limits and that does not further direct structural violence necessitates breaking with the extractivist model of development that benefits growth and accumulation over the well-being of humans and more than human lives. By theorising the way that degrowth strategies can be understood as furthering climate resilient peace in the Global South, this article proposes two ways that we can understand peace as a liberatory praxis based on the 'room to grow' and 'the right to say no'. Through these two strategies, I aim at centring a liberatory praxis for peace on the need to negate both material and symbolic systems and structures of oppression that produce climate and environmental changes, as well as reproduce direct, structural and cultural violence. A peace praxis focused on the liberation of the Global South identifies that different types of violence linked to climate and environmental changes and underdevelopment are not only connected but that they share their roots in deeper structural systems of extractivism, exploitation and colonisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Turkish Journal of Geographical Sciences / Coğrafi Bilimler Dergisi is the property of Cografi Bilimler Dergisi and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Relaciones Internacionales (1699-3950) is the property of Autonomous University of Madrid, Spain, International Relations Studies Group (GERI) Law Faculty and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Democracies require militaries that protect citizen well-being without threatening to overthrow the government or otherwise jeopardize public safety. The military should therefore be firmly under the command of civilian elected leaders, playing a minimal role in the political process. Previous research examines whether the public thinks such boundaries of civil-military relations should exist, and finds that people can see the military as a check to democratically elected administrations in the opposing party. Here, we ask a parallel question: Does place of residence influence attitudes about the boundaries of civil-military relations? We expect rural individuals and those higher in rural resentment to similarly see the military as a check to a civilian government as previous research suggests that rural residents are resentful towards government and centers of power. Using original survey data, we find that people high in such rural resentment are sometimes more willing to defer to the military. Finally, we successfully replicate findings from Krebs et al. (2023) under a Democratic administration. These results have implications for democratic governance and public support, particularly among facets of the public that have lower trust in government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, researchers of far-right radicalism have shown interest in the contribution of radical conservatives to the modern theory of international relations. This study focuses on the ideas of the German intellectual movement of the New Right in the FRG in relation to the challenges of world politics. The aim of the study is to analyze the evolution of the political language of the movement’s representatives according to two stages: the Cold War phase of the second half of the 20th century; and the modern stage of development from 2013 to the present. The methodological basis of the paper is the analysis of political texts within the framework of the Cambridge School of the History of Ideas. This method allows us to identify the political problems and opponents of the New Right, to reproduce the political contexts in which the theorists acted, and to identify the cultural resources of the ideologues’ political language. The findings of the study illustrate that the main challenge of the New Right throughout its existence is to ensure national security and increase the political power of the Federal Republic of Germany. The fulfillment of this goal required the development of a foreign policy concept that would ensure the dominance of the FRG in Continental Europe. Despite the fact that the intellectual sources of the ideology of the New Right were not directly related to the theory of international relations, the theses of the theorists are closest to the school of political realism. At the same time, the pro-European ideological positions of the New Right appear to be constrained and, as a consequence, irrelevant among right-wing populists of Europe and the United States. This conclusion allows us to reject the assertion that the goal of the New Right is to revolutionize the existing system of international relations.

In recent years, the EU has increasingly applied state-interventionist practices to initiate and implement infrastructure policy projects. This stands in stark contrast to a phase of liberalization of infrastructure networks and services accompanying European integration and fiscal consolidation and infrastructure decay during the euro crisis. This article argues that the new state interventionism is strongly driven by the changing global constellation of a "new triad competition" where the EU is increasingly competing over infrastructures with the US and China. As a consequence, EU infrastructure policy undergoes a geoeconomic turn that aims to control transnational value chains and related political-economic spaces. Drawing on concepts of critical geography and international political economy, the article outlines the core features of this geoeconomic design logic of infrastructures and contrasts it with complementary or competing ones. The article substantiates these arguments by analyzing EU decision-making on two cases of high-tech infrastructure in the fields of communication and energy: the federated data infrastructure Gaia-X and the Hydrogen Strategy. Both cases provide evidence for the geoeconomic turn in EU infrastructure policy. Yet, the analysis also highlights that the turn is at times supported but also hampered by a capitalist logic that is reflected in the positioning of European and non-European businesses, as well as the EU's reliance on private action. Furthermore, it illustrates that an ecological and a social-integrative design logic to key infrastructures are largely subordinated. The conclusions reflect on the discrepancy between the EU's geoeconomic agenda and its less far-reaching implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How, when and where violence is deployed during periods of extreme regime crisis is determined by regime support expectations. Regimes use political geography to direct violence and ensure political compliance. Areas have ‘core’ high regime loyalty, ‘swing’ loyalty where government and opposition have supporters, or ‘costly’ and loyalty opposition support. During elections, regimes accommodate, suppress or force voters in each area. In runoffs, regimes use new information to increase vote share in core support areas, and use violence against suspected defecting voters. In Zimbabwe during 2008, violence patterns maximised the regime’s favourable political geography, placing typically safe communities in danger. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many of the proposed solutions to the global biodiversity crisis rely on national governments to act. The conservation movement needs to motivate governments or face an ongoing extinction crisis. Here we explore how linking biodiversity to electoral systems may assist in motivating government action. Using Australia as a case study, we analyze the intersection of 151 electoral districts and 1651 threatened species. We show all districts contain at least 14 threatened species. Half of the species analyzed (n = 801, 49%) are confined to one district (n = 44), with 1345 (81%) species intersecting with less than five. This geographical information shows that alongside local social and economic issues, the threatened species crisis can be made relevant to all Australian elected representatives. Locally relevant information can encourage integration of species needs into the scope of political representation. As such, linking biodiversity to political geography offers a potential pathway to creating transformative change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) played a central role in delineating the Tennessee Valley as an energy region. Utilizing mapping as critical practice, this study delves into the spatial history of the region, examining how the construction of an integrated network of hydroelectric dams by the TVA underpinned a regime of techno-environmental development. By bringing together historical cartographic information and archival sources, mapping reveals how environmental, technological, and social infrastructures intertwined to create a complex geopolitical terrain. The emergent geography of the region demonstrates the TVA's belief that techno-environmental region-building could serve as a vehicle for progressive social change and provide a substitute for existing racialized political geographies. However, despite the TVA's public intentions, the benefits of development were unevenly distributed, ultimately perpetuating racial disparities and socioeconomic inequities. As our need to rethink energy infrastructure gains urgency, the map and accompanying text hope to provide reflection on the infrastructural underpinnings of the Tennessee Valley, offering potential insight for contemporary discussion on energy transitions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article "The Matter of Material History (and Others)" by Andrea Marston in the Journal of Latin American Geography explores the complexities of Bolivian cooperativa mining, challenging common stereotypes and delving into the intertwined relationships between miners' identities, national sovereignty, and subsoil politics. Marston's material history approach sheds light on the contested dynamics of mining emergence, offering a nuanced perspective on the formation of cooperativas and the tensions between ethnic and mestizo identities. The article also raises important questions about environmental justice, material circulation, and the need for dialogue between mining collectives and communities impacted by the mining sector. [Extracted from the article]

The January 6, 2021 Insurrection at the United States Capitol has renewed concerns that American citizens are becoming more tolerant of political violence, a phenomenon that fits within broader fears that partisan-induced motivated reasoning is driving democratic backsliding within the U.S. and across the Western world. Given the rural origins of many right-wing militia groups, and the widespread set of grievances circulating in rural America, questions and fear abound as to whether rural America is more supportive of political violence. In this paper, we investigate whether there is a substantial geographic component to support for violence against the state or ordinary citizens. Drawing on original survey data collected in the fall of 2021, we present two studies that explore the association between rural geography, rural resentment, and support for political violence. We find that, contrary to popular belief, rural Americans may actually be less likely to support political violence than their non-rural counterparts. Importantly, however, we find that some rural individuals – namely those who harbor higher levels of rural resentment – are more likely, on average, to support violence against the state. The same result is not replicated when looking at support for violence against ordinary citizens. These results provide important insight into the relationship between geographic attitudes and political violence and have noteworthy implications for American national security in our contemporary age of hyper-polarization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper makes a novel intervention in political geography by offering methodological reflections on contemporary radio and podcast listenership. It begins from the starting point that radio and podcasts are important and popular sites of geographical knowledge production with the power to shape how audiences understand, imagine and engage in the world. The paper heeds calls in critical and popular geopolitics to move away from the site of representation towards audience reception and presents the 'playlist‐diary' method as an innovative way of exploring listener responses to BBC radio journalism on migration. This method is then used as a springboard to think more broadly about everyday encounters with radio and podcasts. It argues that situating audience engagements within specific spatialities and temporalities, and considering the digital technologies and platforms though which audio is discovered, consumed and circulated, is critical to developing a nuanced understanding of radio and podcast geopolitics. This discussion reflects growing interest in materialities, networks and assemblages of popular geopolitics and points to a blurring of visual and aural media. Overall, the paper makes the case for amplifying methodologies of listening in political geography and aims to be a catalyst to future scholarship on radio and podcasts. This paper makes a novel intervention in political geography by offering methodological reflections on contemporary radio and podcast listenership. It begins from the starting point that radio and podcasts are important and popular sites of geographical knowledge production with the power to shape how audiences understand, imagine and engage in the world. It argues that situating audience engagements within specific spatialities and temporalities, and considering the digital technologies and platforms though which audio is discovered, consumed and circulated, is critical to developing a nuanced understanding of radio and podcast geopolitics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This commentary revisits the main elements of Paasi's ideas about the institutionalisation of regions and bounded spaces. It reviews his analysis of the identity of a region and the regional identity of its residents (as addressed in his TESG 2002 article). Next, it discusses how his work on bounded spaces contributed to the reinvention of border studies in political geography and how his innovative conceptual work grounded in and written from Finland, was inspiring for a whole generation of researchers working at the margins of the Anglo‐American academic world. Finally, it reasserts the enduring value of his heuristic framework in a time where the complexity of social spatialisation and of spatial socialisation has greatly increased. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Turkish Culture & Haci Bektas Veli Research Quarterly is the property of Turkish Cultur & Haci Bektas Veli Research Quarterly and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The 2021 urban political protests in Russia in support of Alexei Navalny have swept the country, beginning in the Far East and reaching Moscow. They, however, displayed large variation in the number of protesters taking to the streets in the country's regional capitals. While the immediate driver of urban protests is usually a political event or a decision of authorities, the willingness to protest accumulates before that, creating protest potential. To explain why some Russian regional capitals accumulate protest potential while others do not, we perform Qualitative Comparative Analysis of 53 cases. It reveals that a high share of young and educated people and the presence of organized civil society, but not the Internet consumption or the performance of city authorities, are crucial for the accumulation of protest potential in Russian regional capitals. These findings advance our understanding of urban political potential in autocracies as well as of Russia's political geography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent literature at the nexus of geography and political economy notes that local governments are becoming financialised. But it is not always clear what this means. Specifically, what is being financialised? And what is the role of local governments in this process? Building on Whiteside's definition of local state-led financialisation as enabled and internal, this article combines a systematic literature review with the comparative analysis of country-level statistics to clarify this process further. It identifies four channels through which local government financialisation unfolds empirically. First, local governments enable the financialisation of public assets and services through privatisation and outsourcing and by applying financial principles to land use planning. Second, they borrow against their own assets. Third, local governments use bonds and derivatives to manage the risks and costs of their borrowing. Fourth, they invest to generate financial income. Focusing on high-income countries in Western Europe, the article extends the geographical remit of the US- and UK-centric literature. Building on its findings, the article highlights two avenues for further research. First, internationally comparative research can explore how the structural context in which local governments operate shapes their financialisation. Second, critical research into the tension between the objectives and risks of local government financialisation adds nuance to current debates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Starting from the observation that the notion of "multiple geographies" has gained considerable traction in geographical research in the past years while its theoretical foundations have often remained abstract, in this paper we contribute toward elaboration of multiple geographies as a research perspective, recognizing its potential as a valuable framework for analyzing divergent spatial relations. Initially, we provide an overview of the diverse applications of multiple geographies through a review of relevant literature, focusing on papers within the realms of political geographies that mention the term in their title or abstract. Subsequently, we categorize these papers thematically, identifying three main theoretical strains: post‐colonial geographies, uneven geographical development, and feminist geographies. We then propose a theoretical scaffold for navigating the complexities of multiple geographies by engaging with broader discussions on plurality and multiplicity in relation to the aforementioned strains. Finally, we synthesize the insights garnered from this analysis, exploring the potential of a multiple geographies research perspective to contribute to a nuanced understanding of the diverse ways in which space is produced and experienced. Our contribution aims to enrich ongoing debates within human geography on how space can be redefined in more relational, decolonial, socially just, feminist, and diverse ways, opening pathways for pluralistic geographical imaginations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For decades, the "Third World" was an expression used to refer to regions seen as lacking prosperity and progress, on the one hand, and as a rallying call for anti‐colonial struggles on the other. The concept evoked the uneven distribution of power and wealth following World War II, replaced the forms of oppression and disparities distinctive of the former colonial world, and fostered liberatory and autonomous projects. In recent discussions on intellectual decolonization, however, the Global South became a popular way of expressing purportedly similar understandings of what I name as "moral geographies of inequality." This article reviews the genealogies, uses, lives and afterlives of these two concepts, discussing whether the "Third World" and the "Global South" refer to one and the same; the contexts in which these terms are most commonly used; why one term has been substituted for the other; and the possible repercussions of this shift. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this introduction to the special issue, The new tourism geopolitics, we call on scholars to bridge tourism geographies and political geography through the framework of tourism geopolitics. The issue offers novel conceptualizations that extend beyond the study of material borders, passports, and nation-state discourses. Rather, the authors of this issue home in on the entanglements between tourism and geopolitics in the form of events, everyday interactions, ideologies, political economies, and celebritized people and places. The introduction outlines several increasingly pressing questions around the geopolitics of tourism, ones that for too long have been marginal in tourism geography and relatively ignored in political geography. We further identify how political maneuvers at international and domestic, state and non-state, and macro and micro levels trigger the proliferation of geopolitical dilemmas for tourism practices, policies, and flows. The eleven papers in this curated collection offer critical points of departure for bringing tourism and political geographies together to reveal discordant relations of power and oppression in tourism. In doing so, the introduction and papers that follow compel us to account for the significance of tourism in the intimate and extraordinary geopolitical structures of power that shape our lives and our world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tourism and geopolitics are intrinsically linked. However, current studies on the geopolitical facets of tourism are insufficient. This article first reflects on the diversified understandings of geopolitics and how these different interpretations are reproduced in existing tourism geopolitics scholarship. We then elucidate the multiple complicated and intimate entanglements between tourism and geopolitics and highlight the often underestimated geopolitical agency of tourism. Following this, we evaluate the state of the extant research on this topic. Finally, we suggest three directions for future research: (1) deepening theorisation and operationalisation, (2) attending to agency, mechanism, and non-state actors, and (3) adopting a spatially sensitive perspective. In summary, we argue that further conjoining the relatively isolated tourism and geopolitics terrain benefits both disciplines of tourism geography and political geography, and calls for the development of innovative interdisciplinary, theoretical, and methodological approaches to advance the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: We make use of multiple data sources to examine whether there has been geographical polarization in the political behavior of Texas Hispanics from 2012 to 2022. It is widely known that partisan divisions in the American electorate continue to cleave along geographic lines. However, much of this literature on the urban–rural divide does not focus on a specific racial group, and if it does, then it typically highlights differences among non‐Hispanic white voters (Anglos). Methods: Making use of aggregate‐ and individual‐level data, we assess Texas Hispanics' party affiliation, participation, and vote choice according to geographic location. Results: We find notable evidence of geographic‐based partisan polarization among Texas' burgeoning Hispanic population. Conclusions: Although the movement of rural/small town Texas Hispanics toward the Republican Party from 2012 to 2022 pales in comparison to this shift among Texas Anglos, a similar partisan dynamic manifests among the former group. We abstain from using the word realignment to characterize these changes in Texas Hispanics' political behavior according to geographic location, but, nevertheless, it is clear that the Democratic Party's hold on this potentially pivotal group in the Lone Star State's electorate has loosened, and especially among rural/small town Latinos since the rise of Donald Trump. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: The purpose of this article is to examine what drives individual attitudes toward their governor with a focus on the role of place attachment as a means of diffuse support. Methods: Using original surveys from March and May 2020, we test the role of place attachment in explaining gubernatorial approval. Results: We find state or place attachment is a strong predictor of gubernatorial approval especially among individuals who live in a state with a governor from the other party. Conclusion: State attachment can be an important and unique influence on political attitudes toward state politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1990s, border security has been a pressing issue in political geography. With the increasing interactions between China and its neighboring countries, border security has increased the attention of scholars and government officials. Security issues along the China-Myanmar border are particularly eye-catching owing to Myanmar's fast-changing social and political reforms and unrest, as well as the complicated situation in Northern Myanmar that has gathered a large number of armed ethnic minorities. Tensions have resulted in prominent traditional and non-traditional security issues along the China-Myanmar border. Illegal cross-border trade is one non-traditional security problem in the region; specifically, illegal cross-border cattle trade is a particular but understudied case. This study investigates the actors, transportation, and social networks involved in illegal cross-border cattle trade. Using first-hand materials collected in the border area and secondary archives, the study analyzes the spatial and temporal features and operation mechanisms of smuggling. The main conclusions are as follows: (1) From the perspective of the time stage, the study identifies approximately three stages. Before 2004, the illegal cross-border cattle trade, relying on kin relationships, was in its embryonic stage. From 2004 to 2018, the domestic beef market was in short supply, and the illegal cross-border cattle trade, this time relying on nepotism, gradually became more frequent, reaching 1.6-2 million heads per year and entering the development stage. Since the outbreak of COVID-19 in 2018 and 2020, owing to the enhanced border control, the volume of illegal cross-border trade has plummeted, decreasing by around tens of thousands to more than 100,000 each year, and then entering a period of extinction. (2) Spatially, illegal cross-border trade mainly comprises three routes: the northern, central, and southern routes, from northern India to China's Yunnan Province through northern Myanmar. Among the three routes, the middle route sees the largest number of cross-border cattle, among which, the cross-border flow of cattle from Myanmar through the Yunnan Ruili Nongdao channel is the largest, followed by the northern route; the southern route sees the lowest number. (3) The China-Myanmar illegal cross-border cattle trade relies on the trust bond, regulation, and enforcement mechanism provided by the natural geographical environment and cross-border nepotism, thus forming a complete social network trade chain. The study suggests methods to control illegal cross-border trade by simplifying formal trade and strengthening the construction of smart borders. The findings provide reference for the prevention and control of illegal cross-border trade. Although illegal cross-border cattle trade can be regarded as a type of illegal cross-border trade, owing to the large volume of live cattle, the transportation is more difficult, and it is easier to detect. As such, the choice of illegal cross-border routes is quite different from that of general small goods and is more obviously affected by natural geographical conditions and social and interpersonal network factors. Thus, illegal cross-border cattle trade provides a unique case study of the relations between illegal cross-border trade and human, physical, and geographical conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article studies the political economy of local politicians' residential neighborhoods. We use Swedish data on the location of all politicians' and citizens' homes and their socioeconomic traits. A descriptive analysis shows that politicians live in neighborhoods with more socioeconomically advantaged residents and more of their own party's voters. Next, we analyze whether having politicians in a neighborhood reduces the likelihood that new buildings are placed there, since these projects often generate local opposition. This analysis compares the neighborhoods of politicians with different degrees of political power and is restricted to close elections. We find that the presence of more politicians with governing power reduces the neighborhood's proportion of new approved building permits for multifamily homes but not for single-family homes. The result is most likely explained by undue favoritism. We conclude that spatial political representation matters and that unequal spatial representation can increase geographic economic inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyze support for the welfare state across time and space in Great Britain. Using multilevel regression and poststratification with historical data and an original survey, we show that a virtually identical majority of people supported those policies in the mid-1990s and in 2020, but patterns of support were very different. Young and highly educated people are now the strongest supporters, as are the youngest and most highly educated geographic areas, mirroring divides over "second-dimension" issues like Brexit. However, young and highly educated voters are clustered in a small number of places, with the Labour Party struggling to win moderately educated and moderately young areas. As a result, the left's problem in majoritarian systems is not the rise of second-dimension politics per se but rather how its supporters are distributed spatially along that dimension. A majority of voters in favor of welfare and redistribution no longer translates as easily into winning a majority of places in support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past two decades voting by mail has increased. As the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the 2020 political season, absentee voting increased to over 43% of all votes cast in the November Presidential Election. In recent years, many states have passed laws to limit the scope of absentee voting as necessary to curtail voter fraud. Though no evidence exists that fraud is more likely with mail-in voting, such laws have been found to have a disproportionate impact on some groups of voters more than others. This is true of many Native American communities that often rely on absentee voting. This study will utilize geospatial methods to examine postal realities for Native American on reservations in Montana and South Dakota. By illustrating where postal services are or are not located, a fuller contextual analysis of the issue can be provided. Such methods can enhance current methodologies utilized by political geographers.

Armed conflicts, as significant human phenomena, profoundly impact populations and reflect a state's capacity to fulfill its responsibilities. These conflicts arise from various causes, necessitating robust predictive models to understand their spatial distribution. This study employs the Bivariate Frequency Ratio (FR) method to spatially predict the occurrence of armed conflicts across the East African States, drawing on 42 political geography-related criteria. The development of the predictive model involved classifying the region into five conflict-prone categories influenced by critical political geography factors. Geospatial datasets, curated in a GIS environment, were sourced from approved online portals. The findings indicate that Burundi exhibits the highest vulnerability to armed conflict, followed closely by Rwanda, Uganda, and Somalia. Ethiopia and South Sudan show a moderate risk, while predictions for Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Mozambique suggest lower likelihoods of conflict. The model's accuracy was validated using the Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curve, demonstrating its effectiveness. Furthermore, the model's applicability extends to other regions, offering a valuable tool for global conflict prediction.

This document is an interview with Poul Holm, a professor in Environmental Humanities and former president of the European Society for Environmental History (ESEH). Holm discusses the events organized during his tenure, including the ESEH conference in Amsterdam in 2007 and the planning of the First World Environmental History Congress in 2009. He also highlights the challenges faced by environmental history as a discipline, such as its niche status and the conservatism of mainstream history. Holm emphasizes the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration and recognizes the contributions of Verena Winiwarter in establishing the International Consortium of Environmental History Organizations (ICEHO) and the World Congress of Environmental History. [Extracted from the article]

"The Cybernetic Border: Drones, Technology, and Intrusion" by Iván Chaar López explores the evolution and purpose of the border as a techno-political machine for surveillance and management of subjects in the U.S. empire-nation. The text delves into the use of drones, sensors, and information systems to control and classify "intruders," primarily focusing on unauthorized Mexican immigrants. It also discusses the intersection of technology, politics, and racial formations in border enforcement, shedding light on the complexities of border management. The book is praised for its research and analysis, although some readers may find it overly reliant on buzzwords and wish for more concrete examples of how the cybernetic border operates. [Extracted from the article]