This book advances research on mobile robot localization in unknown environments by focusing on machine-learning-based natural scene recognition. The respective chapters highlight the latest developments in vision-based machine perception and machine learning research for localization applications, and cover such topics as: image-segmentation-based visual perceptual grouping for the efficient identification of objects composing unknown environments; classification-based rapid object recognition for the semantic analysis of natural scenes in unknown environments; the present understanding of the Prefrontal Cortex working memory mechanism and its biological processes for human-like localization; and the application of this present understanding to improve mobile robot localization. The book also features a perspective on bridging the gap between feature representations and decision-making using reinforcement learning, laying the groundwork for future advances in mobile robot navigation research.

A MacArthur Award–winning scholar explores the explosive intersection of farming, immigration, and big business At the outset of World War II, California agriculture seemed to be on the cusp of change. Many Californians, reacting to the ravages of the Great Depression, called for a radical reorientation of the highly exploitative labour relations that had allowed the state to become such a productive farming frontier. But with the importation of the first braceros—""guest workers"" from Mexico hired on an ""emergency"" basis after the United States entered the war—an even more intense struggle ensued over how agriculture would be conducted in the state. Esteemed geographer Don Mitchell argues that by delineating the need for cheap, flexible farm labour as a problem and solving it via the importation of relatively disempowered migrant workers, an alliance of growers and government actors committed the United States to an agricultural system that is, in important respects, still with us. They Saved the Crops is a theoretically rich and stylistically innovative account of grower rapaciousness, worker militancy, rampant corruption, and bureaucratic bias. Mitchell shows that growers, workers, and officials confronted a series of problems that shaped—and were shaped by—the landscape itself. For growers, the problem was finding the right kind of labour at the right price at the right time. Workers struggled for survival and attempted to win power in the face of economic exploitation and unremitting violence. Bureaucrats tried to harness political power to meet the demands of, as one put it, ""the people whom we serve."" Drawing on a deep well of empirical materials from archives up and down the state, Mitchell's account promises to be the definitive book about California agriculture in the turbulent decades of the mid-twentieth century.

Begging, thought to be an inherently un-Swedish phenomenon, became a national fixture in the 2010s as homeless Romanian and Bulgarian Roma EU citizens arrived in Sweden seeking economic opportunity. People without shelter were forced to use public spaces as their private space, disturbing aesthetic and normative orders, creating anxiety among Swedish subjects and resulting in hate crimes and everyday racism. Parallel with Europe’s refugee crisis in the 2010s, the “begging question” peaked. The presence of the media’s so-called EU migrants caused a crisis in Swedish society along political, juridical, moral, and social lines due to the contradiction embodied in the Swedish authorities’ denial of social support to them while simultaneously seeking to maintain the nation’s image as promoting welfare, equality, and antiracism. In The Begging Question Erik Hansson argues that the material configurations of capitalism and class society are not only racialized but also unconsciously invested with collective anxieties and desires. By focusing on Swedish society’s response to the begging question, Hansson provides insight into the dialectics of racism. He shrewdly deploys Marxian economics and Lacanian psychoanalysis to explain how it became possible to do what once was thought impossible: criminalize begging and make fascism politically mainstream, in Sweden. What Hansson reveals is not just an insight into one of the most captivating countries on earth but also a timely glimpse into what it means to be human.

Begging, thought to be an inherently un-Swedish phenomenon, became a national fixture in the 2010s as homeless Romanian and Bulgarian Roma EU citizens arrived in Sweden seeking economic opportunity. People without shelter were forced to use public spaces as their private space, disturbing aesthetic and normative orders, creating anxiety among Swedish subjects and resulting in hate crimes and everyday racism. Parallel with Europe’s refugee crisis in the 2010s, the “begging question” peaked. The presence of the media’s so-called EU migrants caused a crisis in Swedish society along political, juridical, moral, and social lines due to the contradiction embodied in the Swedish authorities’ denial of social support to them while simultaneously seeking to maintain the nation’s image as promoting welfare, equality, and antiracism. In The Begging Question Erik Hansson argues that the material configurations of capitalism and class society are not only racialized but also unconsciously invested with collective anxieties and desires. By focusing on Swedish society’s response to the begging question, Hansson provides insight into the dialectics of racism. He shrewdly deploys Marxian economics and Lacanian psychoanalysis to explain how it became possible to do what once was thought impossible: criminalize begging and make fascism politically mainstream, in Sweden. What Hansson reveals is not just an insight into one of the most captivating countries on earth but also a timely glimpse into what it means to be human.

This book advances research on mobile robot localization in unknown environments by focusing on machine-learning-based natural scene recognition. The respective chapters highlight the latest developments in vision-based machine perception and machine learning research for localization applications, and cover such topics as: image-segmentation-based visual perceptual grouping for the efficient identification of objects composing unknown environments; classification-based rapid object recognition for the semantic analysis of natural scenes in unknown environments; the present understanding of the Prefrontal Cortex working memory mechanism and its biological processes for human-like localization; and the application of this present understanding to improve mobile robot localization. The book also features a perspective on bridging the gap between feature representations and decision-making using reinforcement learning, laying the groundwork for future advances in mobile robot navigation research.

The act of eating defines and redefines borders. What constitutes "American" in our cuisine has always depended on a liberal crossing of borders, from "the line in the sand" that separates Mexico and the United States, to the grassland boundary with Canada, to the imagined divide in our collective minds between "our" food and "their" food. Immigrant workers have introduced new cuisines and ways of cooking that force the nation to question the boundaries between "us" and "them." The stories told in Food Across Borders highlight the contiguity between the intimate decisions we make as individuals concerning what we eat and the social and geopolitical processes we enact to secure nourishment, territory, and belonging.

The problem of homelessness in America underpins the definition of an American city: what it is, who it is for, what it does, and why it matters. And the problem of the American city is epitomized in public space. Mean Streets offers, in a single, sustained argument, a theory of the social and economic logic behind the historical development, evolution, and especially the persistence of homelessness in the contemporary American city. By updating and revisiting thirty years of research and thinking on this subject, Don Mitchell explores the conditions that produce and sustain homelessness and how its persistence relates to the way capital works in the urban built environment. He also addresses the historical and social origins that created the boundary between public and private. Consequently, he unpacks the structure, meaning, and governance of urban public space and its uses. Mitchell traces his argument through two sections: a broadly historical overview of how homelessness has been managed in public spaces, followed by an exploration of recent Supreme Court jurisprudence that expands our national discussion. Beyond the mere regulation of the homeless and the poor, homelessness has metastasized more recently, Mitchell argues, to become a general issue that affects all urbanites.

Occupy Wall Street did not come from nowhere. It was part of a long history of riot, revolt, uprising, and sometimes even revolution that has shaped New York City. From the earliest European colonization to the present, New Yorkers have been revolting. Hard hitting, revealing, and insightful, Revolting New York tells the story of New York's evolution through revolution, a story of near-continuous popular (and sometimes not-so-popular) uprising. Richly illustrated with more than ninety historical and contemporary images, historical maps, and maps drawn especially for the book, Revolting New York provides the first comprehensive account of the historical geography of revolt in New York, from the earliest uprisings of the Munsee against the Dutch occupation of Manhattan in the seventeenth century to the Black Lives Matter movement and the unrest of the Trump era. Through this rich narrative, editors Neil Smith and Don Mitchell reveal a continuous, if varied and punctuated, history of rebellion in New York that is as vital as the more standard histories of formal politics, planning, economic growth, and restructuring that largely define our consciousness of New York's story.

All 28 episodes from season one of the classic US cop show, following the cases of wheelchair-bound chief of detectives Robert T. Ironside (Raymond Burr). Paralysed by a sniper's bullet, the San Francisco Police Department's top detective is now head of his own special unit, ably assisted by sergeant Ed Brown (Don Galloway), policewoman Barbara Anderson (Eve Whitfield), and African-American ex-con Don Mitchell (Mark Sanger). Episodes comprise: 'Message from Beyond', 'The Leaf in the Forest', 'Dead Man's Tale', 'Eat, Drink and Be Buried', 'The Taker', 'An Inside Job', 'Tagged for Murder', 'Let My Brother Go', 'Light at the End of the Journey', 'The Monster of Comus Towers', 'The Man Who Believed', 'A Very Cool Hot Car', 'The Past Is Prologue', 'Girl in the Night', 'The Fourteenth Runner', 'Force of Arms', 'Memory of an Ice Cream Stick', 'To Kill a Cop', 'The Lonely Hostage', 'The Challenge', 'All in a Day's Work', 'Something for Nothing', 'Barbara Who', 'Perfect Crime', 'Officer Bobby', 'Trip to Hashbury', 'Due Process of the Law' and 'Return of the Hero'.

Don Mitchell's new collection of short stories, set among tribal people on Bougainville Island in the late 1960s, demystifies ethnography by turning it on its head. The narrators are Nagovisi - South Pacific rainforest cultivators - and through their eyes the reader comes to know the young American anthropologist, himself struggling with his identity as a Vietnam-era American, who's come to to study their culture in a time of change. Beautifully written, evocative, and utterly original, A Red Woman was Crying takes the reader into the rich and complex internal lives of Nagovisi -- young and old, male and female, gentle and fierce -- as they grapple with predatory miners, indifferent colonial masters, missionaries, their own changing culture, their sometimes violent past, and the "other" who has come to live with them.

A MacArthur Award-winning scholar explores the explosive intersection of farming, immigration, and big business At the outset of World War II, California agriculture seemed to be on the cusp of change. Many Californians, reacting to the ravages of the Great Depression, called for a radical reorientation of the highly exploitative labour relations that had allowed the state to become such a productive farming frontier. But with the importation of the first braceros-""guest workers"" from Mexico hired on an ""emergency"" basis after the United States entered the war-an even more intense struggle ensued over how agriculture would be conducted in the state. Esteemed geographer Don Mitchell argues that by delineating the need for cheap, flexible farm labour as a problem and solving it via the importation of relatively disempowered migrant workers, an alliance of growers and government actors committed the United States to an agricultural system that is, in important respects, still with us. They Saved the Crops is a theoretically rich and stylistically innovative account of grower rapaciousness, worker militancy, rampant corruption, and bureaucratic bias. Mitchell shows that growers, workers, and officials confronted a series of problems that shaped-and were shaped by-the landscape itself. For growers, the problem was finding the right kind of labour at the right price at the right time. Workers struggled for survival and attempted to win power in the face of economic exploitation and unremitting violence. Bureaucrats tried to harness political power to meet the demands of, as one put it, ""the people whom we serve."" Drawing on a deep well of empirical materials from archives up and down the state, Mitchell's account promises to be the definitive book about California agriculture in the turbulent decades of the mid-twentieth century.

War hero, test pilot, American astronaut, and U.S. Senator--for John Glenn, serving his country has always been a joyous adventure. How does a boy from a small Ohio town grow up to become one of the most enduring heroes in American history?
Young readers find out as they follow his inspiring story from his schoolboy days in New Concord, Ohio, to his adventures as a highly decorated Marine Corps pilot in both World War II and the Korean War, a test pilot, one of the seven Mercury astronauts and the first American to orbit Earth, a successful businessman, a U.S. Senator, and, at the age of 77, the oldest human being in space.
Don Mitchell skillfully weaves highlights from John Glenn's extraordinary life with inspirational quotes and dynamic images to create an intimate portrait of a man whose challenge to young people everywhere is to become dedicated "to a purpose larger than themselves."
This superbly illustrated book follows the life trajectory of a very focused, highly competitive man, driven by a sense of duty to his country and an innate sense of obligation towards others. Readers will find themselves inspired to "liftoff" to new heights of achievement.

In the wake of recent terrorist attacks, efforts to secure the American city have life-or-death implications. Yet demands for heightened surveillance and security throw into sharp relief timeless questions about the nature of public space, how it is to be used, and under what conditions. Blending historical and geographical analysis, this book examines the vital relationship between struggles over public space and movements for social justice in the United States. Presented are a series of linked cases that explore the judicial response to public demonstrations by early twentieth-century workers, and comparable legal issues surrounding anti-abortion protests today; the Free Speech Movement and the history of People's Park in Berkeley; and the plight of homeless people facing new laws against their presence in urban streets. The central focus is how political dissent gains meaning and momentum--and is regulated and policed--in the real, physical spaces of the city. Key Features *Written by a leading critical geographer *Covers civil liberties issues with special relevance after 9/11 *Integrates geography, legal studies, American history, and urban affairs

Occupy Wall Street did not come from nowhere. It was part of a long history of riot, revolt, uprising, and sometimes even revolution that has shaped New York City. From the earliest European colonization to the present, New Yorkers have been revolting. Hard hitting, revealing, and insightful, Revolting New York tells the story of New York's evolution through revolution, a story of near-continuous popular (and sometimes not-so-popular) uprising. Richly illustrated with more than ninety historical and contemporary images, historical maps, and maps drawn especially for the book, Revolting New York provides the first comprehensive account of the historical geography of revolt in New York, from the earliest uprisings of the Munsee against the Dutch occupation of Manhattan in the seventeenth century to the Black Lives Matter movement and the unrest of the Trump era. Through this rich narrative, editors Neil Smith and Don Mitchell reveal a continuous, if varied and punctuated, history of rebellion in New York that is as vital as the more standard histories of formal politics, planning, economic growth, and restructuring that largely define our consciousness of New York's story.

This edited volume illuminates critical research issues through the particular lens of homelessness, bringing together some of the leading scholars in the field, from an array of disciplines and perspectives, to explore this condition of marginalization and the ethical dilemmas that arise within it. The authors provide insights into the realities and challenges of social research that will guide students, activists, practitioners, policymakers, and service providers, as well as both novice and seasoned researchers in fields of inquiry ranging from anthropology and sociology to geography and cultural studies. Although many texts have explored the subject of homelessness, few have attempted to encapsulate and examine the complex process of researching the issue as a phenomenon unto itself. Professional Lives, Personal Struggles examines the many challenges of conducting ethical research on homelessness, as well as the potential for positive change and transformation, through the deeply personal accounts of scholars and advocates with extensive experience working in the field.

The beauty of the California landscape is integral to its place in the imagination of generations of people around the world. In this book, geographer Don Mitchell looks at the human costs associated with this famous scenery. Through an account of the labour history of the state, Mitchell examines the material and ideological struggles over living and working conditions that played a large part in the construction of the contemporary California landscape. "The lie of the land" examines the way the California landscape was built on the backs of migrant workers, focusing on migratory labour and agribusiness before World War II. The book relates the historical geography of California to the processes of labour that made it, discussing not only significant strikes but also on the everyday existence of migrant workers in the labour camps, fields, and "Hoovervilles" where they lived. Michell places class struggle at the heart of social development, demonstrating concretely how far workers affected their social material environment, as well as exploring how farm owners responded to their workers' efforts to improve their living and working conditions. Mitchell also places "reformers" in context, revealing the actual nature of their role in relation to migrant workers' efforts - that of undermining the struggle for genuine social change. in addition, this volume captures the significance of the changing composition of the agricultural workforce, particularly in racial terms, as the class struggle evolved over a period of decades. Mitchell has written a narrative history that describes the intimate connection between landscape representation and the material form of geography. This book places people squarely in the middle of the landscapes they inhabit, shedding light on the complex and seemingly contradictory interactions between progressive state agents, radical workers, and California growers as they seek to remake the land in their own image.

The problem of homelessness in America underpins the definition of an American city: what it is, who it is for, what it does, and why it matters. And the problem of the American city is epitomized in public space. Mean Streets offers, in a single, sustained argument, a theory of the social and economic logic behind the historical development, evolution, and especially the persistence of homelessness in the contemporary American city. By updating and revisiting thirty years of research and thinking on this subject, Don Mitchell explores the conditions that produce and sustain homelessness and how its persistence relates to the way capital works in the urban built environment. He also addresses the historical and social origins that created the boundary between public and private. Consequently, he unpacks the structure, meaning, and governance of urban public space and its uses. Mitchell traces his argument through two sections: a broadly historical overview of how homelessness has been managed in public spaces, followed by an exploration of recent Supreme Court jurisprudence that expands our national discussion. Beyond the mere regulation of the homeless and the poor, homelessness has metastasized more recently, Mitchell argues, to become a general issue that affects all urbanites.