Human Geography Commons^™

State Life: Land, Welfare And Management Of The Landless In Kerala, India, R. C. Sudheesh

Articles

The pressing need to manage the spiralling number of landless people around the world has compelled several states to experiment with scattered land distribution programmes in combination with welfare transfers, instead of comprehensive land reform. This article examines the chasm between land demands and state responses in such contexts. Focusing on the Aralam resettlement site for the landless Adivasis in Kerala, India, it argues that management of the landless could take the form of ‘state life’ — a life envisaged by the state rather than the life the people wish to lead. Three interlinked processes are shown to shape state …

Pathways To Sustainability: Industry, Development, Business, Agriculture, Economy, And Politics, Andreas Hernandez, Pablo Arias-Benavides, Dayana C.M. Machada, Ousmane Pame, Alice Main, Per Moller

Geography and Environmental Studies Faculty Publications

In this chapter we examine six compelling on-the-ground experiences, which are demonstrating pathways to sustainability, resilience and regeneration. Each case opens a pathway to sustainability in a key sphere of human activity: industry, development, business, agriculture, economy and politics. These experiences are creating new social imaginaries embodied in the practical forms of new politics and economics aimed at profound democratizations of human life, and towards a creative realignment of humans with the rest of the web of life. These social imaginaries are both open and encompassing. They are open in the sense that they can be filled with new possibilities …

Hawker Culture And Its Infrastructure: Experiences And Contestations In Everyday Life, Lily Kong, Aidan Marc Wong

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

Hawker foods characterize urban Asia, with similarities and differences across cities that forge both cultural commonalities and distinctions. From the itinerant to the fixed location, from the temporary sites to the purposebuilt, hawker foods are served in informal settings, with varying degrees of tradition and innovation, hygiene and squalidness, local authenticity and globalized influence. In the side-streets of Beijing where local delicacies such as scorpion are served, to the abundant food cart vendors on Bangkok streets, to the warung (small, typically family-owned eateries) in Surabaya, and the carefully planned and designed hawker centres in Singapore, hawker culture is a distinctive

The Political Ecology Of Death: Chinese Religion And The Affective Tensions Of Secularised Burial Rituals In Singapore, Quan Gao, Orlando Woods, Lily Kong

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This paper explores the political ecology of death and the affective tensions of secularised burial rituals in Singapore. Although scholars have recently acknowledged the roles of biopower and affect in shaping environmental politics, religion and death as socio-affective forces have not been substantively engaged with by political ecologists. We argue that death is inherently both a spiritual and ecological phenomenon, as it exposes not only the spiritual geographies that structure how people see the natural world, but also the affective tensions and struggles over what counts as a “proper” form of burial in relation to religion and nature. First, we …

Unequal Burdens: Cost Burdens In The New York Metropolitan Area, 2000-2017, Marco Castillo, Kasey Zapatka

Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies

Introduction:

This report analyzes different demographic cross-sections for cost-burdened households at various times over the study period (2000, 2010, and 2017).

Methods:

The metro areas include the Public Use Micro Areas (PUMAs) associated with following counties for New York (Rockland, Orange, Westchester, Putnam, Duchess, Nassau, Suffolk, Bronx, Kings, New York, Queens, and Richmond), New Jersey, (Passaic, Bergen, Hudson, Essex, Union, and Middlesex), and Connecticut (Fairfield). Since counties are not identified in public-use microdata from 1950 onward and PUMAs change over time, we used consistent PUMA boundaries from 2000 to 2010 (https://usa.ipums.org/usa-action/variables/CPUMA0010#description_section). For more on this see a discussion here https://forum.ipums.org/t/i-can-see-couple-of-distinct-countyfips-whereas-the-rest-of-them-are-under-0-countyfips-for-minnesota/1585/4 …

Did The Covid Pandemic Result In An Exodus Of The Latino Population Of New York City And The New York Metropolitan Region?, Laird W. Bergad

Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies

Data released by the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey 2021 One-Year samples indicate that despite the catastrophic health impact of COVID on the Latino population of the region, there was not a mass exodus of Latinos from the City or the metro area. The 2021 ACS One-Year samples, when compared with previous ACS One-Year samples, indicate that the City’s overall population increased by 0.5% between 2018 and 2021 and 1.3% between 2019 and 2021. The ‘Hispanic’ population, excluding Spaniards, rose by 0.2% between 2018 and 2021 and 1.4% between 2019 and 2021 according to these data.

Nebraska’S Rural Population: Historical Facts And Future Projections, Cheryl A. Burkhart-Kriesel

Cornhusker Economics

Drive down any rural highway in our state and you will quickly conclude that we are a collection of small towns and villages, with a few larger cities thrown in. Some of them are thriving while others are not. You might ask yourself, why the difference? To fully appreciate this current situation, you need to think back to how our state developed.

Our state has 530 incorporated places with 89% of these communities having fewer than 3,000 people. Nebraska is not alone in this fact, with our neighboring states of Kansas, Oklahoma, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Iowa in the …

The Arts And Changing Rural Places, Bernadette Quinn Dr

Blog Posts

This blog post reflects on how recent changes to rural Ireland is influencing the arts. It recognises that rural places are very vibrant and dynamic, and that this offers many opportunities and challenges from an arts perspective. The blog also reflects on a panel discussion that the FADE project team hosted on ‘The arts and changing rural places’ at the Arts Council & Local Government’s biennial Places Matter conference in March 2022.

The research activities conducted for this publication were funded by the Irish Research Council.

Intersecting Mobilities: Beyond The Autonomy Of Movement And Power Of Place, Miriam Ticktin, Rafi Youatt

Publications and Research

It is widely understood that we live in a world where people, goods, species, and things of all sorts are on the move, and that the politics around mobility and its regulation and meaning are critical to contemporary political and social life. Human migration has been globally intensive for well over a century; industrial economic production, consumption, and trade move goods around the world; transportation infrastructure moves all sorts of cargo around, human and nonhuman; regular and irregular ecological processes and changes are creating new patterns of nonhuman movement; variants of viruses race around the world; even geological elements are …

Step By Step: Understanding Perceptions Of Time And Space In Nepal, Lillian Norton-Brainerd

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Time and space are part of everyone’s daily life; however, these concepts are rarely explicitly discussed. Hegemonic interpretations of time and space are part of capitalist, colonialist structures, thus understanding alternative perceptions is important to resisting these structures. To understand perceptions of time in Nepal, I spent a month in Gre, a small village near Langtang National Park. I interviewed villagers and spent time observing how people spend their time, talk about time, and give directions to physical places. While there is not one perception of time and space, I learned how time and space influence each other. Geography and …

Leases As Forms, David A. Hoffman, Anton Strezhnev

All Faculty Scholarship

We offer the first large scale descriptive study of residential leases, based on a dataset of ~170,000 residential leases filed in support of over ~200,000 Philadelphia eviction proceedings from 2005 through 2019. These leases are highly likely to contain unenforceable terms, and their pro-landlord tilt has increased sharply over time. Matching leases with individual tenant characteristics, we show that unlawful terms are surprisingly likely to be associated with more expensive leaseholds in richer, whiter parts of the city. This result is linked to landlords' growing adoption of shared forms, originally created by non-profit landlord associations, and more recently available online …

The Psychology Of Separation: Border Walls, Soft Power, And International Neighborliness, Diana C. Mutz, Beth A. Simmons

All Faculty Scholarship

This study assesses the impact of international border walls on evaluations of countries and on beliefs about bilateral relationships between states. Using a short video, we experimentally manipulate whether a border wall image appears in a broader description of the history and culture of a little-known country. In a third condition, we also indicate which bordering country built the wall. Demographically representative samples from the United States, Ireland, and Turkey responded similarly to these experimental treatments. Compared to a control group, border walls lowered evaluations of the bordering countries. They also signified hostile international relationships to third-party observers. Furthermore, the …

Mobile Passages: Unpacking The Seasonal Lifestyle From Quebec To Topeekeegee Yugnee (Ty) Rv Park, Broward County, Southeast Florida, Tara Kai

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study seeks to investigate the lived experiences of multi-locational actors and the production of unique forms of socialization and community using the seasonal movements and settlements of the Québécois population (also referred to as “Floribécois”) in Broward County, Florida during the winter months. This study employs interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) which is theoretically rooted in hermeneutic phenomenology. IPA recognizes that there are shared perspectives and lived experiences of a group of people about a concept or a phenomenon. This analysis comprises of collectively shared meanings, while being mindful of the unique experience of a single individual and/or subgroup. The …

Evaluating Urban Parks Accessibility And Equity: A Case Study Of Hartford, Ct And New Haven, Ct, Natalie Roach, Mara Tu

Honors Scholar Theses

Public parks provide cities with environmental benefits, positive health effects, recreational opportunities, community building, educational spaces, and public amenities. However, certain populations have been systematically denied their fair share of these benefits because of unjust practices in the creation and maintenance of urban parks. With a lens of environmental justice, the goal of this research was to assess park quality and accessibility of two Connecticut cities, Hartford and New Haven, by gathering publicly available information as well as using GIS tools.

The Trust for Public Land (TPL) has an existing ParkScore rating system that evaluates the quality of a city’s …

Latinos In Brooklyn: Demographic And Socioeconomic Transformations In Sunset Park/Windsor Terrace And Bushwick, 1990-2017, Sejung Sage Yim

Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies

Introduction:

This report examines the key demographic and socioeconomic trends in Brooklyn, New York between 1990 and 2017. The report focuses on the two community districts that have the first- and second- largest Latino populations in the borough: Bushwick (community district 4) and Sunset Park/Windsor Terrace (community district 7).

Methods:

This report uses the American Community Survey PUMS (Public Use Microdata Series) data for all years released by the Census Bureau and reorganized for public use by the Minnesota Population Center, University of Minnesota, IPUMSusa, (https://usa.ipums.org/usa/index.shtml). See Public Use Microdata Series Steven Ruggles, J. Trent Alexander, Katie Genadek, Ronald Goeken, …

Gentrification And The South Bronx: Demographic And Socioeconomic Transformations In Bronx Community District #1, Lawrence Cappello

Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies

Introduction:

In recent decades skyrocketing real estate values throughout New York City have prompted residents to seek out reasonably priced housing and speculative investment opportunities in traditionally poorer neighborhoods. This is commonly referred to as “gentrification."

This report examines the extent of gentrification in the South Bronx neighborhoods of Melrose, Mott Haven, and Port Morris – officially designated Bronx Community District #1 – widely known as one of New York City’s prominent Latino areas. It presents key socioeconomic and demographic trends between 1990 and 2017. It also looks at topics such as employment, income structures, poverty rates, language acquisition, race/ethnicity, …

Lgbtqc: Queer Perspectives On The Illinois-Iowa Quad Cities, Robert Burke

Anthropology: Student Scholarship & Creative Works

Cities are broadly conceived to be queer utopia when compared with rural spaces. While the Quad Cities of Illinois and Iowa fit this simplistic model in some ways, the region has several unique characteristics that warrant their own investigation. I argue that the social climate of the Quad Cities is generally perceived as welcoming and inclusive by the LGBTQ+ community. However, despite an assortment of community-building institutions, some find socialization and partner-seeking a bit difficult. Many advocate for investment in a variety of physical LGBTQ+ “third places” (public gathering places), which would yield a variety of benefits for this community. …

When Nature Invades: Resident Perceptions Of The Austerity-Driven "Rewilding" Of An Urban Park In Rock Island, Illinois, Christian S. B. Elliott

Anthropology: Student Scholarship & Creative Works

In an era of rapid urbanization, changing climate, and increasing political division, parks represent increasingly important places for urban residents to interact with and feel connected to the natural environment and receive a number of mental and physical health benefits. Unfortunately, in an age of austerity politics, parks and recreation departments in Midwest Rust Belt cities often lack adequate funding to maintain such public spaces. Recently, the business-minded Rock Island, Illinois Department of Parks and Recreation has implemented a creative cost-saving management solution: “naturalizing” sections of its city parks. This interdisciplinary study uses a mixed methods approach to discover how …

Quiet River, Heavy Waters: Un-Silencing Narratives Of Social-Environmental Inequalities In The Cradle Of Soviet Plutonium, Rosibel Roman

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In December 1948, the Soviet Union’s first plutonium production facility, Mayak Production Association (PO Mayak), began operation in the Southern Urals region of Russia, at the western edges of Siberia, near the restricted city of Chelyabinsk-40, known in the present day as Ozyorsk. Since then, rural communities located downstream from PO Mayak have experienced health, economic, ecological and social impacts of contamination from high-level radioactive wastes released by the facility into the Techa River and its surrounding ecosystem. My research, drawing from archival research conducted in Russia and the United States, as well as secondary sources in English and Russian, …

Gentrification In Upper Manhattan? Demographic And Socioeconomic Transformations In Washington Heights/Inwood, 1990 - 2015, Lawrence Cappello

Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies

Introduction: This report examines the impact and extent of gentrification in the Washington Heights/Inwood area – traditionally one of Manhattan’s most quintessential Latino neighborhoods.

Methods: This report uses the American Community Survey PUMS (Public Use Microdata Series) data for all years released by the Census Bureau and reorganized for public use by the Minnesota Population Center, University of Minnesota, IPUMSusa, (https://usa.ipums.org/usa/index.shtml).

Results: The Latino community of Washington Heights/Inwood is not being displaced in any meaningful way. While there has certainly been an increase in the number of wealthy non-Hispanic Whites over the last decade, as of 2015 Latinos maintained the …

The Influence Of Tourism And Amenities On Place Attachment And Entrepreneurship In Remote Communities: A Case Study Of Tofino, Bc, Sreya Kumar, Nicole L. Vaugeois

TTRA Canada 2018 Conference

This study was undertaken to provide a better understanding new migrant entrepreneurs and what attracts them to rural and remote communities. Conducted as a case study in Tofino, the study was done using mixed methods including content analysis of place based promotional tools and semi-structured interviews with a sample of new migrant entrepreneurs who had moved to the community within the past 15 years . The study found that although there were no specific place promotion efforts directed at attracting entrepreneurs, businesses were often established as an indirect outcome of promotional efforts aimed at attracting tourists via destination marketing organizations. …

Geopolitical Relations: Uganda’S Role In The Development Of The River Nile, Jordan Williams

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This study examined the geopolitical relations of the Nile Basin by looking at Uganda as a case study, and analyzed Uganda’s use and development of the River Nile. It reviews the history of transboundary politics and treaties along with Uganda’s development projects in the region. The paper then discusses modern relations and agreements, with a focus on the most recent agreement between the Riparian States, the Cooperative Framework Agreement, and how Uganda fits into them with regards to their interest in hydropower development within their borders on the Nile. It then explores possible future developments on the river and the …

No-Place, New Places: Death And Its Rituals In Urban Asia, Lily Kong

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

In many Asian cities, particularly those that confront increasing land scarcity, the conversion from burial to cremation has been encouraged by state agencies in the last several decades. From Hong Kong to Seoul to Singapore, planning agencies have sought to reduce the use of space for the dead, in order to release land for the use of the living. More secular guiding principles regarding efficient land use in these cities had originally come up against the symbolic values invested in burial spaces, resulting in conflicts between different value systems. In more recent years, however, the shift to cremation and columbaria …

Ethnobiology In The City: Embracing The Urban Ecological Moment, Marla R. Emery, Patrick T. Hurley

Environment and Sustainability Faculty Publications

More than half the world's human population resides in cities (United Nations Economic and Social Affairs Population Division 2015). Unpacking this singular statistic, it becomes clear that people come to live in urban environments via numerous routes. Some have lived in cities all their lives and are descendants of city dwellers. In other cases, cities spread and encircle them (Hurley et al. 2008; Unnikrishnan and Nagendra 2015). Increasingly, rural residents are national and transnational migrants to cities, pushed by armed conflict, natural disasters, and economic need or opportunity (United Nations Economic and Social Affairs Population Division 2013). In the case …

Independent Study Project: Investigation Into The Implications Of Zooarchaeological Studies For Climate Reconstruction In The North Atlantic; Zooarchaeological Research At The Agricultural University Of Iceland, Reykjavík, Hazel Cashman

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Zooarchaeology, the study of animal remains from archaeological sites, is crucial to the understanding of human interaction with the environment in the North Atlantic region and in Iceland, where the archaeological record is quite rich (Dugmore et al., 2005). Since its inception, zooarchaeology has drawn methods and concepts from both the natural and social sciences, as well as from history and the humanities, to inform an interdisciplinary understanding of the interactions between humans and their environments and the consequences of these interactions for humans and animals (Reitz and Wing, 2008). In this way, zooarchaeology can inform discussions about historical anthropogenic …

Rural Emergings, Urban Imaginings: The Effect Of Urbanization On Senegalese Ethnic Identity, Arianna Calabrese

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

For the past 40 years, Dakar has been the destination of Senegal’s massive rural exodus, with millions of rural villagers flocking to the city in search of work and education. The rural exodus has produced a unique multi-ethnic environment, where villagers, traditions, cultures, and languages from across the country converge. Ironically, therefore, Dakar’s landscape has been distinguished by the creation of an urban culture by a population of rural inhabitants. This paper examines the effects of urbanization on ethnic identity and affiliation, and further discusses the impact of Urban Wolof on personal identification among Dakar’s citizens. It then demonstrates how …

Which Came First, People Or Pollution? A Review Of Theory And Evidence From Longitudinal Environmental Justice Studies, Paul Mohai, Robin Saha

Environmental Studies Faculty Publications

A considerable number of quantitative analyses have been conducted in the past several decades that demonstrate the existence of racial and socioeconomic disparities in the distribution of a wide variety of environmental hazards. The vast majority of these have been cross-sectional, snapshot studies employing data on hazardous facilities and population characteristics at only one point in time. Although some limited hypotheses can be tested with cross-sectional data, fully understanding how present-day disparities come about requires longitudinal analyses that examine the demographic characteristics of sites at the time of facility siting and track demographic changes after siting. Relatively few such studies …

Placeness: Mongolia A Call For The Creation Of A Human Impact Assessment, C. Winston Kies

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Sense of place, place-­‐based identities, and “placeness” are fundamental ways through which human beings understand their physical place in the world. The means by which most Mongolians—and indeed most human beings—strive for placeness is fairly simple. First, one decides what location will become their place. Their place may be predetermined (i.e. a birthplace) or chosen (based on the wildlife, the scenery, the neighborhood, etc.). Once one has a place, sense of place necessarily follows. One’s place becomes the standard by which locations are understood, and by which one understands oneself. The latter process constitutes the formation of place-­‐based identities, which …

A Research Framework For The Geographic Study Of Exotic Pet Mammals In The Usa, Gabrielle C. Tegeder

Department of Geography: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Exotic animals are not well-represented in geographic studies, even in the emerging sub-field of animal geography. With the dearth of exotic animal studies, and the relevance of exotic pets in the public consciousness and in the news, a basic, introductory study such as this is necessary to begin examining the myriad ways in which exotic pets intersect with, and have influence in, both the site and situation of modern human-oriented environments.

Exotic pet attack incidents and both state and federal laws regarding the private ownership of exotic mammals as pets were examined in detail within the scope of this research. …

Hidden In Plain Sight: Exploring The Vulnerabilities Of Street-Working Boys In Se Asia, Jarrett Davis, Glenn Miles

Sixth Annual Interdisciplinary Conference on Human Trafficking 2014

The sexual exploitation of men and boys is often little understood and commonly goes ignored. Internationally, it is said that 1 in 6 boys are sexually abused before reaching adulthood and in some nations the exploitation and abuse of boys far outweighs that of girls. Social and cultural norms often assume men and boys to be inherently strong and/or invulnerable to sexual exploitation; however, research in this area continues to show these assumptions to be false. Because of this lack of awareness, the efforts of the organizations and individuals who work to provide for the needs of male victims are …