Vincent J. Del Casino

Representations and identities in tourism map spaces

Tourism maps remain underexamined in geography. Despite recent trends in critical cartography and tourism studies that redefine the relationship between space and representation, these geographic texts are rarely explored for their intertextual relationships with the spaces they claim to represent. In this article, we argue that tourism maps and other representations play an important role in the production of tourism spaces. We begin with an examination of the parallel trends in critical cartography and tourism studies and then push these intial theoretics further by integrating theories of identity, space and representation. We define tourism maps, spaces and identities as inter-related processes rather than final products. The creation of maps as processes inevitably includes the ambiguities introduced in the production of spaces and the formation of identities by changing social contexts. These ambiguities are readable in maps and they permit us, and potentially other map readers, to understand the spaces and identities of tourism in ways not fully circumscribed by a maps immediate production context and purpose. To explore this theoretical argument further we read one tourism map for the inter-related, ambiguous and therefore contested processes reproducing, but never fully fixing, tourism spaces and identities.

Methodological frameworks for the geography of organizations

Abstract In this paper, we present three methodological frameworks for the geographic study of organizations. These are situated within three meta-theoretical perspectives in human geography: spatial science, critical realism, and post-structuralism. Each framework offers a different theorization of organizations, and each prompts different research questions that can be used to guide their geographic study. The research questions we offer are general, and are pertinent to all types of organizations. To supplement the methodological contributions of this paper, we suggest how each of these frameworks might inform empirical investigations of Appalshop, a media arts organization located in Whitesburg, Kentucky.

Homelessness, travel behavior, and the politics of transportation mobilities in Long Beach, California

The geography of homelessness is often characterized as containment in marginalized spaces of cities or as placelessness necessitating continuous travel. These characterizations, which reflect discourses about ‘the homeless’ as an imagined deviant homogeneous group, have had substantial effects on policy formation and critiques of punitive turns in urban governance. Suggested policy responses frequently assume straightforward relationships between power/powerlessness and mobility/immobility binaries that do not appropriately portray actual mobility patterns of homeless individuals. Through focus groups and structured interviews, this paper examines the daily mobility of homeless adults in Long Beach, California, to identify the ways in which the everyday travel of homeless individuals compares with these ‘imagined’ characterizations and with national US household travel patterns. Results show that homeless mobility is highly spatially constrained and structured by sociocultural relations of stigmatization, economic productivity, and personal responsibility that are reflected in the operational conventions and institutional practices of transportation and social welfare systems. Nonetheless, during the course of a day, homeless individuals move among spaces where they experience varying levels of inclusion and exclusion, thus complicating static, homogeneous characterizations. This analysis contributes to both the urban transport and social geography literatures by demonstrating the value of combining sociocultural approaches to the study of mobility with more typical transportation geography analyses of individual travel behavior.

Social geographies II: Robots

This report examines how social geographers are engaging with the questions that robots and robotic technologies provoke. First, it discusses Marxist analyses of machines and troubles the role that robots play in social production and reproduction. Second, robots as actors in assemblages of sociospatial relations are interrogated for their role in state violence. Third, the dynamic change brought about by smart cities and their algorithmic subjects is discussed. The concluding section is speculative, discussing robots and the ethics of care. This report asks social geographers to reimagine their social geographies in relation to the role of robots in everyday life.This report examines how social geographers are engaging with the questions that robots and robotic technologies provoke. First, it discusses Marxist analyses of machines and troubles the role that robots play in social production and reproduction. Second, robots as actors in assemblages of sociospatial relations are interrogated for their role in state violence. Third, the dynamic change brought about by smart cities and their algorithmic subjects is discussed. The concluding section is speculative, discussing robots and the ethics of care. This report asks social geographers to reimagine their social geographies in relation to the role of robots in everyday life.

Scaling health and healthcare: re‐presenting Thailand's HIV/AIDS epidemic with world regional geography students

Authors of world regional geography textbooks have recently become more interested in the broader theoretical changes that have emerged in human geography. Relying on feminist and other critical perspectives, concepts such as space, place and scale are being re‐imagined in this ‘new world regional geography’. This paper intervenes on behalf of a more critical world regional geography by suggesting how world regional geography teachers can educate students about scale as a social construction through the use of empirical data. Relying on fieldwork conducted in Thailand, this paper lays out a lesson on the HIV/AIDS crisis and how different representations of that crisis, from the national to the individual, offer different ‘ways of knowing’ the epidemic. Furthermore, this paper examines how we can push students to consider the ways in which scales of analysis are constructed and constituted through our own geographic practices.

The slippery geographies of polio

The 2013 deadline for the worldwide goal to eradicate polio has come and gone, with a new endgame set for 2018.1,2 Although cases of polio have decreased by 99% worldwide since 1988, geopolitical conflicts have exacerbated its spread—Syria, Ethiopia, and Kenya have reported polio infections, and Afghanistan, Nigeria, and Pakistan remain endemic.3,4 The virus has resurfaced in Israel, and might be linked to use of intravenous inactivated polio vaccine (IPV).5 Transnational mobility also contributes to polio’s persistence, and circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus (cVDPV) in Yemen, Mozambique, and Madagascar is further complicating eradication efforts.6

Whither labor geography and the rise of the robots

Abstract The rise of the robots suggests a technological revolution like no other. It heralds potentially profound impacts on jobs and labor markets. Geographers have so far remained relatively quiet about such transformations. This commentary suggests ways in which social and cultural geographers can expand upon a robust labor geography and the debates surrounding the relationship between robots, robotic technologies, and labor. Six areas of engagement are offered that outline the richness and nuance of social and cultural geographical analysis related to the ‘rise of the robots’ at a time where much of the popular discourse around robotics is characterized by the extremities of either dystopian angst or positive boosterism. We call on social and cultural geographers to engage in conceptually rigorous and empirically informed research that provides novel ways of making sense of the multiple dimensions of our robotic futures.

Social geography I Food

This review discusses the social geographies of food, focusing on how social geographic research has been taken up in and influenced by the wider discussions of food geographies in the discipline. ...This review discusses the social geographies of food, focusing on how social geographic research has been taken up in and influenced by the wider discussions of food geographies in the discipline. It does so with particular attention to: the spatial politics of food deserts, food security, and food justice movements; the socialities of food identities; and the embodiments of food. This tripartite discussion of the social geographies of food is intended to highlight the complex theoretical and methodological approaches that geographers are employing when interrogating this particular object.

US Social Geography, alive and well?

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Social geography(ies) III: Bugs

This report examines how social geography engages with nonhuman subjects; in this case, bugs. The report focuses on how social geography is rethinking its core concepts of difference and inequality through scholarship that examines the relations between bugs and human inequality, bug management and molecular intervention on/in bugs, and the biosocial relations bugs help forge. It does so while opening up what bugs – not just insects, but also a wider range of bugs, such as viruses, bacteria, and parasites operating within and beyond the human body – offer to our theorization and examination of everyday social life.This report examines how social geography engages with nonhuman subjects; in this case, bugs. The report focuses on how social geography is rethinking its core concepts of difference and inequality...