This book presents cross-national insights into spatial fragmentation in post-socialist cities in Europe. Trying to rethink the heritage of the last 30 years of transformation and grasp current processes taking urban units of various categories as examples, the book exemplifies typical or unique causes of political, social and ethnic disintegration of cities in Central and Eastern Europe. Presenting spatial studies into different cases of conflict in a cross-national context, the authors apply concepts of contested and divided cities, urban geopolitics, cultural atavism, contested heritage, etc. The book is divided into four parts. The first part raises the issue of genesis, development and contemporary discrepancies of cities divided by political and state borders. The second part includes chapters which deal with the impact of ongoing geopolitical divisions, wars, and ideologies on the social and political tensions as well as their polarising effect on urban territory. The third part comprises reflections on controversial relations of ethnic and national culture with urban space. The fourth part deals with socio-economic transformation of post-socialist cities which went through transition of old patterns of spatial planning and attempts to establish more rational and justice spatial order.

Beyond its housing estates and identikit high streets there is another Britain. This is the Britain of mist-drenched forests and unpredictable sea-frets: of wraith-like fog banks, druidic mistletoe and peculiar creatures that lurk, half-unseen, in the undergrowth, tantalising and teasing just at the periphery of human vision. How have the remarkably persistent folkloric traditions of the British Isles formed and been formed by the identities and psyches of those who inhabit them? In her sparkling new history, Carolyne Larrington explores the diverse ways in which a myriad of imaginary and fantastical beings has moulded the cultural history of the nation. Fairies, elves and goblins here tread purposefully, sometimes malignly, over an eerie, preternatural landscape that also conceals brownies, selkies, trows, knockers, boggarts, land-wights, Jack o'Lanterns, Barguests, the sinister Nuckleavee, or water-horse, and even Black Shuck: terrifying hell-hound of the Norfolk coast with eyes of burning coal. Focusing on liminal points where the boundaries between this world and that of the supernatural grow thin those marginal tide-banks, saltmarshes, floodplains, moors and rock-pools wherein mystery lies the author shows how mythologies of Mermen, Green men and Wild-men have helped and continue to help human beings deal with such ubiquitous concerns as love and lust, loss and death and continuity and change. Evoking the Wild Hunt, the ghostly bells of Lyonesse and the dread fenlands haunted by Grendel, and ranging the while from Shetland to Jersey and from Ireland to East Anglia, this is a book that will captivate all those who long for the wild places: the mountains and chasms where Gog, Magog and their fellow giants lie in wait."

Mobility, accessibility, networks, and interactions across space are at the heart of how spaces and places are brought into being and continue to change. In a series of articles that chart the development of thinking about space, place, and transport, this book highlights the role that a geographic perspective has played in transport studies, raises questions about transport policy, and points to additional questions worthy of research. The volume is divided into four parts covering fundamental concepts, individual behaviour in urban spatial context, inter-regional transport and policy issues.

Focusing on South Africa's three main cities - Johannesburg, Cape Town, and Durban - this book explores South African urban history from the late nineteenth century onwards. In particular, it examines the metropolitan perceptions and experiences of both black and white South Africans, as well as those of visitors, especially visitors from Britain and North America. Drawing on a rich array of city histories, travel writing, novels, films, newspapers, radio and television programs, and oral histories, Vivian Bickford-Smith focuses on the consequences of the depictions of the South African metropolis and the 'slums' they contained, and especially on how senses of urban belonging and geography helped create and reinforce South African ethnicities and nationalisms. This ambitious and pioneering account, spanning more than a century, will be welcomed by scholars and students of African history, urban history, and historical geography.

Between 1975 and 1979, the Communist Party of Kampuchea fundamentally transformed the social, economic, political, and natural landscape of Cambodia. During this time, as many as two million Cambodians died from exposure, disease, and starvation, or were executed at the hands of the party. Thedominant interpretation of Cambodian history during this period presents the CPK as a totalitarian, communist, and autarkic regime seeking to reorganize Cambodian society around a primitive, agrarian political economy. From Rice Fields to Killing Fields challenges previous interpretationsand provides a documentary-based Marxist interpretation of the political economy of Democratic Kampuchea. Tyner argues that Cambodia's mass violence was the consequence not of the deranged attitudes and paranoia of a few tyrannical leaders but of the structural violence, the direct result ofa series of political and economic reforms that were designed to accumulate capital rapidly: the dispossession of hundreds of thousands of people through forced evacuations, the imposition of starvation wages, the promotion of import-substitution policies, and the intensification of agricultural productionthrough forced labor. Moving beyond the Cambodian genocide, Tyner maintains that it is a mistake to view Democratic Kampuchea in isolation, as an aberration or something unique. Rather, the policies and practices initiated by the Khmer Rouge must be seen in a larger, historical-geographical context.

For more than one thousand years the monastic republic of Mount Athos has been one of the most chronicled and yet least accessible places in the Mediterranean. Difficult to reach until the last century and strictly restricted to male visitors only, the Holy Mountain of Orthodoxy has been known in the Eastern Christian world and in western Europe more through representation than through direct experience.

Most writing on Athos has focused on its Byzantine history and sacred heritage. "Imagining Mount Athos" uncovers a set of alternative and largely unexplored perspectives, equally important in the mapping and dissemination of Athos in popular imagination. The author considers Mount Athos as the site of pre-Christian myths of Renaissance and Enlightenment scholarship, of shelter for Allied refugees during the Second World War, and of a botanical and sociological laboratory for early-twentieth-century scientists. Each chapter considers a different narrative channel through which Athos has entered Orthodox and western European imagination: the mythical, the utopian, the sacred, the scholarly, the geopolitical, and the scientific.

Della Dora has assembled a wealth of unique textual, visual, and oral materials without ever having had the opportunity to visit this holy place. In this sense, in addition to making an important contribution to existing scholarship on Mount Athos, the book adds to current theoretical debates in cultural geography and humanities generally about the circulation of knowledge.

"Imagining Mount Athos"'s appeal is international and spans Hellenic studies, cultural geography, environmental history, cultural history, religious studies, history of cartography, and art history. The book will be of interest to scholars as well as to a general audience interested in this unique place and its fascinating history.

Jackson discussed the evolution of the development, use, and perception of landscape--the space around us in the most general sense. The title chapter examines the proliferation of historic parks and monuments and argues that American culture demands a three-step formulation of history.

Shortlisted for the Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year 2020 In Epic Continent, Nicholas Jubber is proposing a compelling and wonderful idea - that it is story that binds us together, that the great tales of Europe are not only far older than the nation-state but offer a more resilient understanding of our diverse and troubled continent. It is a masterly book, adventurous and wise' Philip Marsden 'The prose is colourful and vigorous ... Jubber's journeying has indeed been epic, in scale and in ambition. In this thoughtful travelogue he has woven together colourful ancient and modern threads into a European tapestry that combines the sombre and the sparkling' Spectator 'Compelling, thought-provoking, and courageous, this epic-poetic journey peels back layers of collective emotional and imaginative inheritance. Jubber gets under the skin of our complicated continent and his timing is dead right' Kapka Kassabova 'A genuine epic' Wanderlust Award-winning travel writer Nicholas Jubber journeys across Europe exploring Europe's epic poems, from the Odyssey to Beowulf, the Song of Roland to the Nibelungenlied, and their impact on European identity in these turbulent times. These are the stories that made Europe. Journeying from Turkey to Iceland, award-winning travel writer Nicholas Jubber takes us on a fascinating adventure through our continent's most enduring epic poems to learn how they were shaped by their times, and how they have since shaped us. The great European epics were all inspired by moments of seismic change: The Odyssey tells of the aftermath of the Trojan War, the primal conflict from which much of European civilisation was spawned. The Song of the Nibelungen tracks the collapse of a Germanic kingdom on the edge of the Roman Empire. Both the French Song of Roland and the Serbian Kosovo Cycle emerged from devastating conflicts between Christian and Muslim powers. Beowulf, the only surviving Old English epic, and the great Icelandic Saga of Burnt Njal, respond to times of great religious struggle - the shift from paganism to Christianity. These stories have stirred passions ever since they were composed, motivating armies and revolutionaries, and they continue to do so today. Reaching back into the ancient and medieval eras in which these defining works were produced, and investigating their continuing influence today, Epic Continent explores how matters of honour, fundamentalism, fate, nationhood, sex, class and politics have preoccupied the people of Europe across the millennia. In these tales soaked in blood and fire, Nicholas Jubber discovers how the world of gods and emperors, dragons and water-maidens, knights and princesses made our own: their deep impact on European identity, and their resonance in our turbulent times.

This wide-ranging Handbook is the first major compilation of the theoretical and empirical research that is forging the new and exciting paradigm of evolutionary economic geography. The book's distinguished contributors set out the theoretical, methodological and empirical foundations of an evolutionary perspective on the economic landscape. In so doing, they explore the interplay between organizational dynamics, industrial dynamics and space; analyse the nature and spatial evolution of networks; address the evolution of institutions in territorial contexts; and explore the evolution of agglomerations and clusters. This original reference work will undoubtedly play an important and formative role in influencing the future research agenda of evolutionary economic geography. It will strongly appeal to scholars, researchers and students in economic geography, regional economics, evolutionary economics, industrial economics, management and organizational studies, and related fields.

This book explores the real-world consequences changing ideas and strategies have on effective climate governance. Its main focus is on why accountability matters - both for transformations and transitions in international climate change governance and how international support for environmentally responsible actions, and extending shared accountabilities, might strengthen climate governance globally. A main point of discussion is if and how better understanding of accountabilities and transformations in ecosystems dynamics, the capacities of organisms to adapt, migrate or otherwise respond to environmental or climatic changes, can improve climate governance mechanisms. Bringing together a diverse set of considerations from various fields of study, chapters examine responses to environmental transformations that occur during periods of climatic crisis, such as species depletion, industrialisation, de-industrialisation or urbanisation. Throughout, this book aims to further readers understanding of if or how accountable climate governance can reduce the risks of global political disorder and widespread conflict in the 21st century, arising from environmental transformations of depleted forests, re-routed waterways, coastlines impacted by sea level rises, changed rainfall patterns and industrial practices.

Amongst intellectuals and activists, neoliberalism has become a potent signifier for the kind of free-market thinking that has dominated politics for the past three decades. Forever associated with the conviction politics of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, the free-market project has since become synonymous with the 'Washington consensus' on international development policy and the phenomenon of corporate globalization, where it has come to mean privatization, deregulation, and the opening up of new markets. But beyond its utility as a protest slogan or buzzword as shorthand for the political-economic Zeitgeist, what do we know about where neoliberalism came from and how it spread? Who are the neoliberals, and why do they studiously avoid the label? Constructions of Neoliberal Reason presents a radical critique of the free-market project, from its origins in the first half of the 20th Century through to the recent global economic crisis, from the utopian dreams of Friedrich von Hayek through the dogmatic theories of the Chicago School to the hope and hubris of Obamanomics. The book traces how neoliberalism went from crank science to common sense in the period between the Great Depression and the age of Obama. Constructions of Neoliberal Reason dramatizes the rise of neoliberalism and its uneven spread as an intellectual, political, and cultural project, combining genealogical analysis with situated case studies of formative moments throughout the world, like New York City's bankruptcy, Hurricane Katrina, and the Wall Street crisis of 2008. The book names and tracks some of neoliberalism's key protagonists, as well as some of the less visible bit-part players. It explores how this adaptive regime of market rule was produced and reproduced, its logics and limits, its faults and its fate.

This book addresses how accelerating advances in information and communication technology, mobile technology, and location-aware technology have fundamentally changed the ways how social, political, economic and transportation systems work in today's globally connected world. It delivers on many exciting research questions related to human dynamics at both disaggregate and aggregate levels that attract the attention of researchers from a wide range of disciplines. Human Dynamics Research involves theoretical perspectives, space-time analytics, modeling human dynamics, urban analytics, social media and big data, travel dynamics, privacy issues, development of smart cities, and problems and prospects of human dynamics research. This book includes contributions on theoretical, technical, or application aspects of human dynamics research from different disciplines. Appealing to researchers, scholars and students across a wide range of topics and disciplines including: urban studies, space-time, mobility and the internet, social media, big data, behavioral geography and spatio-temporal-network visualization, this book offers a glimpse at the cutting edge of research on human dynamics.

Offering a rare glimpse of rural life in modern-day Cuba, this book examines how ordinary Cubans carve out their own spaces for appropriate acts of consumption, exchange, and production within the contradictory normative and material spaces of everyday economic life. * Discusses the conflict between the socialist-welfare ideal of food as an entitlement and the market value of food as a commodity * Bridges the fields of human geography and anthropology * Approaches food networks and the scale of food systems in a novel way * Provides a comprehensive look at Cuba today, with coverage of history, politics, economics, and social and environmental justice * Enhanced by vivid photos from the field

Phenomenologies of the City: Studies in the History and Philosophy of Architecture brings architecture and urbanism into dialogue with phenomenology. Phenomenology has informed debate about the city from social sciences to cultural studies. Within architecture, however, phenomenological inquiry has been neglecting the question of the city. Addressing this lacuna, this book suggests that the city presents not only the richest, but also the politically most urgent horizon of reference for philosophical reflection on the cultural and ethical dimensions of architecture. The contributors to this volume are architects and scholars of urbanism. Some have backgrounds in literature, history, religious studies, and art history. The book features 16 chapters by younger scholars as well as established thinkers including Peter Carl, David Leatherbarrow, Alberto Perez-Gomez, Wendy Pullan and Dalibor Vesely. Rather than developing a single theoretical statement, the book addresses architecture's relationship with the city in a wide range of historical and contemporary contexts. The chapters trace hidden genealogies, and explore the ruptures as much as the persistence of recurrent cultural motifs. Together, these interconnected phenomenologies of the city raise simple but fundamental questions: What is the city for, how is it ordered, and how can it be understood? The book does not advocate a return to a naive sense of 'unity' or 'order'. Rather, it investigates how architecture can generate meaning and forge as well as contest social and cultural representations.

In recent years a growing number of social scientists have become increasingly interested in the study of location problems. This interest has been fostered by the integration of national economies within broader spaces such as the EU or NAFTA as well as by their impact on the development of regions and cities. Another important reason for this attention is the growing awareness among economists that a comprehensive economic theory can no longer put space aside. Most economic activities are distributed over space, and for such activities space moulds the very nature of competition between firms. This major collection of classic articles demonstrates the important contribution of location theory and will be an essential source of reference for students or researchers of modern regional science or economic theory.

We are living in the age of the Anthropocene, in which human activities are recognized for effecting potentially catastrophic environmental change. In this book, Joel Alden Schlosser argues that our current state of affairs calls for a creative political response, and he finds inspiration in an unexpected source: the ancient writings of the Greek historian Herodotus. Focusing on the Histories, written in the fifth century BCE, Schlosser identifies a cluster of concepts that allow us to better grasp the dynamic complexity of a world in flux. Schlosser shows that the Histories, which chronicle the interactions among the Greek city-states and their neighbors that culminated in the Persian Wars, illuminate a telling paradox: at those times when humans appear capable of exerting more influence than ever before, they must also assert collective agency to avoid their own downfall. Here, success depends on nomoi, or the culture, customs, and laws that organize human communities and make them adaptable through cooperation. Nomoi arise through sustained contact between humans and their surroundings and function best when practiced willingly and with the support of strong commitments to the equality of all participants. Thus, nomoi are the very substance of political agency and, ultimately, the key to freedom and ecological survival because they guide communities to work together to respond to challenges. An ingenious contribution to political theory, political philosophy, and ecology, Herodotus in the Anthropocene reminds us that the best perspective on the present can often be gained through the lens of the past.

This timely volume provides a thorough analysis of current trends in location and relocation of economic activity globally, regionally and locally. Using robust empirical material this book offers a multidisciplinary, comprehensive overview, critique and extension of long-established theories underpinning patterns of firm (re)location. It explores dominant trends in the mobility and relocation of industries and firms, examines the factors guiding such trends and evaluates their consequences in both developed and emerging economies in Europe, Asia and Latin America. This book will be appreciated by diverse audiences. Geography and regional science researchers of 'economic activity location' can engage with the critical appraisal of key theoretical concepts and an analysis of recent empirical data. Students of human and economic geography, planning, regional development, and global supply chain management in senior years of undergraduate programmes and completing postgraduate degrees will appreciate the accessible language, multiple examples and graphical illustrations of theoretical frameworks underpinning location and relocation of firms and industries, and its consequences. Practitioners, including local and regional policy makers and location consultants will enjoy the comparative discussion of solutions and practices adopted in localities, regions and countries as diverse as China, Brazil, The Netherlands and Poland.

This Handbook provides an overview and assessment of the state-of-the-art research methods, approaches and applications central to economic geography. Understanding spatial economic outcomes and the forces and mechanisms that influence the geography of economic growth is of utmost importance and demands substantial theoretical and empirical research in economic geography, spatial economics and regional science. Such research is critically dependent upon good and reliable empirical data, and it is here that this Handbook contributes, providing a broad overview of up-to-date research methods and approaches. The chapters are written by distinguished researchers from a variety of scholarly traditions and with a background in different academic disciplines including economics, economic human and cultural geography, and economic history. Researchers and academics in economics and economic geography will find this a fundamental reference point and will benefit from the comprehensive assessment of research methods and approaches in the field. Practitioners and policy-makers will also find the practical applications to be of utmost value.

This book offers the first detailed account of the complex geographical dynamics currently restructuring China's export-oriented industries. The topics covered are relevant to post-socialist geography, development studies, economics, economic sociology and international studies. It offers academics, international researchers, postgraduate and advanced undergraduate students in these fields an accessible, grounded, yet theoretically sophisticated account of the geographies of global production networks, value chains, and regional development in developing countries and emerging economies. It is of particular interest to economic geographers and economic sociologists involved in the growing debates over local clusters, embeddedness, global sourcing and global production, and over the global value chain/global production network. It also appeals to national policymakers, since it directly addresses economic and industrial policy issues, such as industrial competitiveness, regional and national development, industrial and employment restructuring and trade regulation.

All leaders are constrained by geography. Their choices are limited by mountains, rivers, seas and concrete. Yes, to follow world events you need to understand people, ideas and movements - but if you don't know geography, you'll never have the full picture.If you've ever wondered why Putin is so obsessed with Crimea, why the USA was destined to become a global superpower, or why China's power base continues to expand ever outwards, the answers are all here.In ten chapters (covering Russia; China; the USA; Latin America; the Middle East; Africa; India and Pakistan; Europe; Japan and Korea; and the Arctic), using maps, essays and occasionally the personal experiences of the widely travelled author, Prisoners of Geography looks at the past, present and future to offer an essential insight into one of the major factors that determines world history.It's time to put the 'geo' back into geopolitics.

Winner of the Enlightened Economist Prize 2019 Winner of Debut Writer of the Year at the Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards 2020 Longlisted for the Financial Times & McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award 2019 'Extreme Economies is a revelation - and a must-read.' Andy Haldane, Chief Economist at the Bank of England To understand how humans react and adapt to economic change we need to study people who live in harsh environments. From death-row prisoners trading in institutions where money is banned to flourishing entrepreneurs in the world's largest refugee camp, from the unrealised potential of cities like Kinshasa to the hyper-modern economy of Estonia, every life in this book has been hit by a seismic shock, violently broken or changed in some way. People living in these odd and marginal places are ignored by number crunching economists and political pollsters alike. Science suggests this is a mistake. This book tells the personal stories of humans living in extreme situations, and of the financial infrastructure they create. Here, economies are not concerned with the familiar stock market crashes, housing crises, or banking scandals of the financial pages. In his quest for a purer view of how economies succeed and fail, Richard Davies takes the reader off the beaten path to places where part of the economy has been repressed, removed, destroyed or turbocharged. By travelling to each of them and discovering what life is really like, Extreme Economies tells small stories that shed light on today's biggest economic questions.

Assembling Export Markets explores the new frontier regions of the global fresh produce market that has emerged in Ghana over the past decade. * Represents a major and empirically rich contribution to the emerging field of the social studies of economization and marketization * Offers one of the first ethnographic accounts on the making of global commodity chains from below * Denaturalizes global markets by unpacking their local engagement, materially entangled construction, need for maintenance, and fragile character * Offers a trans-disciplinary engagement with the construction and extension of market relations in two frontier regions of global capitalism * Critically examines the opportunities and risks for firms and farms in Ghana entering global fresh produce markets

Multiple 'green transformations' are required if humanity is to live sustainably on planet Earth. Recalling past transformations, this book examines what makes the current challenge different, and especially urgent. It examines how green transformations must take place in the context of the particular moments of capitalist development, and in relation to particular alliances. The role of the state is emphasised, both in terms of the type of incentives required to make green transformations politically feasible and the way states must take a developmental role in financing innovation and technology for green transformations. The book also highlights the role of citizens, as innovators, entrepreneurs, green consumers and members of social movements. Green transformations must be both 'top-down', involving elite alliances between states and business, but also 'bottom up', pushed by grassroots innovators and entrepreneurs, and part of wider mobilisations among civil society. The chapters in the book draw on international examples to emphasise how contexts matter in shaping pathways to sustainability Written by experts in the field, this book will be of great interest to researchers and students in environmental studies, international relations, political science, development studies, geography and anthropology, as well as policymakers and practitioners concerned with sustainability.

This multidisciplinary work analyses challenges to sustainable development amidst rapidly changing climate in the world's largest delta - the Sundarbans. Empirical evidence unpacks grounded vulnerabilities and reveals their temporal socio-economic impacts. A novel concept of 'everyday disasters' is proposed - supported by data and photographic evidence - that contests institutional disaster definition. Then it uncovers how the geopolitics of ecological governance and its hegemonic discourse dominate local policies, which in turn fail to address local socio-ecological concerns, adaptation needs and development aspirations. Absence of local vocabularies, cognitive values and socio-cultural contexts along with spatially constricted, exclusionary, top-down techno-science approaches further escalate knowledge-action gaps. Deconstruction of multiscalar conflicts between the global rhetoric and transformative postcolonial geographies offers an ethical, Southern perspective of sustainability.

This book is a valuable work of reference for the study of sea power, especially in China. It analyzes the challenges and problems facing China's sea power and offers a complete set of solutions known as 'sea exploitation.' In this context, it discusses five aspects of China's sea power: 1) It revises the notion of sea power and proposes a cost-benefit analysis framework for it. It holds that sea power is undergoing major changes, that multivariate completion and peaceful competition have become mainstream, that negative and zero-sum games have become positive sum games, and that the pursuit of control over the sea has gradually developed into efforts to establish dominance in a partnership. 2) By analyzing the increase in the benefits of China's sea power, the rise in the nation's ability-to-pay principle and the growth in the public expectation of China's capability of providing global public goods, it points out that the rise of China's sea power is an unavoidable trend. 3) It explores the challenges and problems facing China's sea power, arguing that China is currently in a situation where it is daunted by large countries, troubled by small countries and its neighbors are expanding their armaments, which have combined to increase the cost of improving China's sea power. Meanwhile, factors such as strategy vacuum, poor oceanic management and polices tending to restrict ocean development have substantially undermined the benefits of China's sea power. 4) It summarizes features of China's sea power and stresses that dilemmas of non-sovereign sea power expansion and sovereign sea power expansion, traumatic pressure and transcendental ideals, escalated conflict and peaceful appeal, etc. require China to articulate its stance on sea power on the one hand and possess the wisdom to resolve sea power problems peacefully on the other. 5) It proposes that China should draw on the experience of the Western Han Dynasty of ancient China, which adopted a land exploitation strategy and introduced a sea exploitation strategy, offering a unique way to implement sea exploitation strategies in China based on domestic and foreign practices.