Human geography Books

Book SynopsisThis edited volume brings together debates from the Global South and Global East to explore alternatives to conventional planning in Southern cities. Embracing the evolving post-colonial theory, the volume offers ‘fragments’ of the urban that provide clues to the larger, often-repeated ontological question that continues to hold: Why and what does theory from the South mean? The chapters derive from and speak to the simultaneously homogenous and heterogeneous South. They focus on presenting the alternative realities of Southern cities as critical analytical lenses that can build up to the theorisation of the Southern urban with a potential to (re)understand the contemporary urban world. The contributions explore locally rooted knowledge systems, premised on social and cultural practices, as possible conduits to evolving planning methods. In doing so, the volume breaks apart the linear modernity that urban theory from the North relies on. Chapters [Chapter-1] and [Chapter-11] are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.Table of ContentsChapter 1. Introduction/A Critical Appreciation of Urban Trajectories in the Global South: Mutual Learning Opportunities (Anjali Karol Mohan, Juliana Gomez and Sony Pellissery). - Part I: Emerging Planning Territories: Co-producing Spaces, Knowledge and Vocabularies. - Chapter 2. Addressing Metropolitan Governance through Suburban Space in an Ordinary City Region (Sarani Khatua). - Chapter 3. Planning for the urban mosaic of a mega-city: the case of urban villages in Delhi (Banashree Banerjee). - Chapter 4. Invisible territories: The visibility of an urban crisis in Medellin (Edwar A. Calderón). - Chapter 5. A Tenure Security-Responsive Approach: The Case of Barrio Cantera, San Martín de los Andes, Argentina. - (Claudia Sakay, Silvia Aún, Akiko Okabe). - Chapter 6. Informality, Everyday Practices, and Public Space (re)appropriation: The caseof El Cisne Dos, Guayaquil (Xavier Méndez Abad, Hans Leinfelder, Kris Scheerlinck). - Part II: Planning Histories and Emerging Conflicts: Juxtaposition of the Traditional and the Modern. - Chapter 7. De-Colonising Gray Space: Bedouin-Arabs Resisting Metropolitan Displacement (Oren Yiftachel, Safa Abu Rabia, Erez Tzfadia). - Chapter 8. Urban Planning and Rationality Conflicts in Malawi (Mtafu Manda). - Chapter 9. Reimagining Urban Planning in a Tribal Region: Reflections from a Fifth Schedule Area of India (Aashish Khakha). - Chapter 10. Religious Urbanism: Emergent Mixed-use Approaches to Planning and (re)development in Lagos, Nigeria (Taibat Lawanson). - Chapter 11. New directions in spatial development in Southern Africa: Outlining the background, influences and significance of co-produced spatial production in Namibia (Guillermo Delgado). - Chapter 12. Urban Planning Practices in Mainland China: Evolution and Paradigm Shifts (Zhi Liu). - Chapter 13: Conclusions (Anjali Karol Mohan, Juliana Gomez and Sony Pellissery)

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Book SynopsisThis open access book uses an interdisciplinary approach that not only focuses on social organization but also analyzes how societies and ecological settings were interwoven. How did early modern indigenous Sami inhabitants in interior northwest Fennoscandia build institutions for governance of natural resources? The book answers this question by exploring how they made decisions regarding natural resource management, mainly with regard to wild game, fish, and grazing land and illuminate how Sami users, in a changing economy, altered the long-term rules for use of land and water in a self-governance context. The early modern period was a transforming phase of property rights due to fundamental changes in Sami economy: from an economy based on fishing and hunting to an economy where reindeer pastoralism became the main occupation for many Sami. The book gives a new portrayal of how proficiently and systematically indigenous inhabitants organized and governed natural assets and how capable they were in building highly functioning institutions for governance.Trade Review“The book by Jesper Larsson and Eva-Lotta Päiviö Sjaunja is really fascinating and a definite must-read for anyone interested in the history of reindeer pastoralism and, may be, pastoralism in general.” (Kirill V. Istomin, Pastoralism, June 8, 2022)Table of ContentsPart I: Introduction, Framework, Methods and Starting Points.- Chapter 1: Introduction.- Chapter 2: Linking long-term changes in socioecological systems with the development of property rights.- Chapter 3: Methods and staring points.- Chapter 4: Important variables.- Part II: Land Use, Livelihood and Ecological Settings.- Chapter 5: Fishing.- Chapter 6: Hunting.- Chapter 7: Reindeer husbandry.- Chapter 8: Other.- Part III: Synthesis.- Chapter 9: From private to common – coevolution of land-use practices and property rights.- Chapter 10: Early modern self-governance and colonial structures – the current state of affairs.

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Book SynopsisOn what basis can we challenge Artificial Intelligence (AI) - its infusion, investment, and implementation across the globe? This book answers this question by drawing on a range of critical approaches from the social sciences and humanities, including posthumanism, ethics and human values, surveillance studies, Black feminism, and other strategies for social and political resistance. The authors analyse timely topics, including bias and language processing, responsibility and machine learning, COVID-19 and AI in health technologies, bio-AI and nanotechnology, digital ethics, AI and the gig economy, representations of AI in literature and culture, and many more. This book is for those who are currently working in the field of AI critique and disruption as well as in AI development and programming. It is also for those who want to learn more about how to doubt, question, challenge, reject, reform and otherwise reprise AI as it been practiced and promoted. Trade Review“The book offers a number of useful critiques of AI as it interacts with increasing numbers of Internet users. Readers should take the Marxist perspectives with a grain of salt.” (G. R. Mayforth, Computing Reviews, October 19, 2022)“All of the chapters are well written and the editorial process was clearly very good. … I found four essays particularly noteworthy … . If you are limited on time, these core essays are must-reads. I found this book interesting because it disclosed to me what others outside the computational science community see.” (Anthony J. Duben, Computing Reviews, July 20, 2022)Table of ContentsChapter 1: Introduction: Critical Insights: Bringing the social sciences and humanities to AI.- Section I: Posthumanism.- Chapter 2: Virtually Grown Up: Artificial Intelligence in Youth Fiction.- Chapter 3: The Feminized Robot: Labour and Harawayan Afterlives.- Section II: Human values.- Chapter 4: AI’s fast and furtive spread by infusion into technologies that are already in use – a critical assessment.- Chapter 5: Dumbwaiters & Smartphones: The Responsibility of Intelligence.- Section III: Media and Language.- Chapter 6: Artificial Intelligence: a medium that hides its nature.- Chapter 7: Gender Bias in Machine Translation Systems.- Section IV: Governance.- Chapter 8: Not Anytime Soon: The clinical translation of nanorobots.- Chapter 9: Controversial Covid-19 contact-tracing app in India: digital self-defence, governance and surveillance.- Chapter 10: Intelligent Justice’: AI Implementations in China's Legal Systems.- Section V: Resistance.- Chapter 11: Artificial Intelligence between Oppression and Resistance: Black Feminist Perspectives on Emerging Technologies.- Chapter 12: AI Ruined the Internet – and Everything Else: A manifesto.- Index.

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Book SynopsisMaking Energy Markets charts the emergence and early evolution of electricity markets in western Europe, covering the decade from the late 1980s to the late 1990s. Liberalising electricity marked a radical deviation from the established paradigm of state-controlled electricity systems which had become established across Europe after the Second World War. By studying early liberalisation processes in Britain and the Nordic region, and analysing the role of the EEC, the book shows that the creation of electricity markets involved political decisions about the feasibility and desirability of introducing competition into electricity supply industries. Competition introduced risks, so in designing the process politicians needed to evaluate who the likely winners and losers might be and the degree to which competition would impact key national industries reliant on cross-subsidies from the electricity sector, in particular coal mining, nuclear power and energy intensive production. The book discusses how an understanding of the origins of electricity markets and their political character can inform contemporary debates about renewables and low carbon energy transitions. Trade Review“This book is therefore neither a history of technology work nor even a history of energy. However, Bolton succeeds in making understandable a particular period, that of the incomplete transformation of the electrical sys­tems inherited from the second Industrial Revolution into the fundamental infrastructures of energy transitions.” (Yves Bouvier, Technology and Culture, Vol. 64 (2), April, 2023)Table of ContentsIntroduction.- Britain: Inventing competition.- Trade-offs: Competition or Cash?.- Competition: A work in progress.- Europe: The economic logics of trade.- National electricity regimes: France and Germany.- The political market.- Power exchange: Norwegian origins.- Constructing a multinational market.- Conclusion: Remaking Markets.

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Book SynopsisChapter 1 Introduction: Secondary Cities, Lodging Spatiality and Translocality.- Chapter 2 Urban Development, African Housing and the Spatiality of Lodging in Rhodesia/ Zimbabwe.- Chapter 3 Gweru: A Key Zimbabwean Secondary City.- Chapter 4 Rooms to Rent: Lodging, Spatiality and Environment.- Chapter 5 Lodging Household Dynamics and Livelihoods.- Chapter 6 The Owners: Landlords and Landladies.- Chapter 7 Lifetime Migrations. City Rooms, Translocal Networks and Rural Bases.- Chapter 8 Place, Space and Locale: Lodging Pathways within Gweru.- Chapter 9 Lodging and Community.

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Book SynopsisEnergy Geographies an Introduction to Perspectives from France and Germany.- Peripheries Conflicts Transformations: Contested Geographies of Energy.- The Role of Crises in Shifting German Energy Geopolitics.- The North Sea and the EU's Interregional Energy Politics a Legal Geography Analysis.- Post-Nuclear Redevelopment Trajectories in France and Germany.- The Territories of Coal-Fired Power Plants as Sites for the Reconfiguration of Production Systems: Thoughts on a Meso-Scale of the Energy Transition.- Power Dynamics Below Ground: Investigating Political Geology in Geothermal Energy within the French Energy Transition.- Multidimensional Energy Discourses in the European Cross-Border Region SaarLorLux Hydrogen as a Common Element ?.- The Discursive Production of Hydrogen Imaginaries and their Spatialities in France and Germany.- The Social Profile of Biogas Farmers in their Respective Territories: Research, Design and Methodology.- Anaerobic Digestion and Sustainability of Agriculture in Brittany: Research at the Crossroads of Geography and Agro-Economics for Assessing the Impact of French Energy Policies.- Climate-Adapted Urban Development-Challenges and Opportunities in Planning Practice.- Exploring Households' Energy Vulnerability in Housing and Transportation Residential and Daily Mobility in South-Western France.

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Book Synopsis1. Aging and Economics.- 2. Aging in Social and Economic Dimension.- 3. Housing for Seniors Focusing on the United States.- 4. Housing For Seniors Focusing on Poland.- 5. Empirical Research and Discussion.

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Book SynopsisIntroduction.- Propaedeutic course on inverse landscapes - basic considerations for dealing with contingency.- Concept: Inverse landscapes and their representations - from contingency to irony.- (Self)criticism - an assessment of the situation.- Critique of the concept of inverse landscapes and their representations.- Critique 1: Prerequisites for a neopragmatic landscape science.- Conclusion.

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Book SynopsisChapter 1: Introduction.- Chapter 2: A Sociological Examination of Masculinity in Korean Boys' Love Dramas.- Chapter 3: The change of representation of disability in contemporary Mass media.- Chapter 4: Instagramming Kimchi: An Exploration of the Social Media Landscape of Korean Restaurants in Ankara.- Chapter 5: Changing Meanings of Love and Marriage in South Korea.- Chapter 6: The intersection of ecumenism, feminism, and decolonisation:  The case of Korean Christian women’s work for compatriot atomic-bomb victims.- Chapter 7: Korean Protestant Pastors’ Privilege Not To Pay Income Tax: Analysis of Media Representations.- Chapter 8: Cultivating Change: The Rise of Plant-Based Diets and Environmental Advocacy in South Korea.- Chapter 9: From factory girls to call center girls.- Chapter 10: Intersecting Asias: Coexistence, Connections, and Yemeni Refugees’ Arrival on Jeju Island.- Chapter 11: The embrace and policing of multilingualism and multiculturalism in the ethnoracial landscape of South Korea’s ethnic enclaves.- Chapter 12: Being San/Dara: Self-presentation and flexible citizenship among Korean diasporic celebrities in the Philippines.- Chapter 13: Skills, tradition, and modernity: bread and bakeries in narratives of identity and practice among rice cake manufacturers in South Korea.- Chapter 14: It’s now or never: preservation of present-day urbanity as treasure for the future.- Chapter 15: Negotiating the Utilization of Cultural Heritage: Insights from the “Palace-stay” Program Controversy.

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Book SynopsisChapter 1: Introduction: Food Systems: Prospects for Resilience, Innovation, and Sustainable Transformation in Africa.- Chapter 2: Current State of Africa’s Food Systems.- Chapter 3: An Overview of Food System Transformation Actions in Sub-Saharan Africa.- Chapter 4: The Shifting Role of Small-scale Farms in Agriculture and Food Systems Transformation in a Post-COVID-19 Context: Critical Lessons from Zimbabwe.- Chapter 5: Political Economy of Food Security: Interrogating the Planting for Food and Jobs Policy Intervention in Ghana.- Chapter 6: Gender Relations in the Utilisation of Digital Technologies in the Changing Food Production Systems in Northern Uganda.- Chapter 7: The Intersection of Social Policy, Gender and Food Systems in rural Zimbabwe.- Chapter 8: ‘Command’ agriculture, food security and women empowerment in rural Zimbabwe: Review of the feminist social work perspective.- Chapter 9: Food System Transformation for Safe and Nutritious Diets in Africa.- Chapter 10: African Food Systems: Prospects for Safe Food, Healthy Diets, and Nutrition in Sub- Saharan Africa.- Chapter 11: Warring Food Industry Landscapes in Zimbabwean Cities.- Chapter 12: Implications of the Russia-Ukraine War for African Food Systems.- Chapter 13: Food Systems Transformation in Southern Africa: Challenges and Dilemmas.- Chapter 14: Impact of Global Challenges on the African Food System: A Critical Assessment.- Chapter 15: The Impact of War and Conflict on African Food Systems: A Comprehensive Analysis.- Chapter 16: Conflicts, Land Resources, and Climate Change in Sub-Saharan Africa: Implications for Food Security in Northern Ghana.- Chapter 17: Optimising Transformative AI Technologies: Pathway to Transformation in Digital Agriculture.- Chapter 18: Natural Resource Rent, Food Systems and Sustainability in Ghana:  Does Financial Innovation Matter?.- Chapter 19: Innovative Strategies for Sustainable Food Production and Efficient Resource Management in Sub-Saharan Africa.- Chapter 20: Food Systems Sustainability: Towards Food Waste Reduction in African Tourism Food Outlets.- Chapter 21: Conclusion: Towards Resilient, Innovative and Sustainable African Food Systems.

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Book SynopsisArtificial Intelligence.- Digital Technology.- Media Practice.- Index.

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Book SynopsisFuture Work Models in Asia.- Future Work Dynamics in Asia.- Future Workplace Technology in Asia.- Index.

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Book SynopsisChapter 1: Martin: Bohle. Introduction: Purpose and Authorship.- Chapter 2:Martin Bohle, Dominic Hildebrandt. Earth Sciences in a World of Planetary Change.- Chapter 3:Tony Milligan, Nina Kruglikova. Three Challenges Facing Geosocietal Narratives.- Chapter 4:Christian Wolf. Being a Pragmatist about Planet Earth.- Chapter 5:Nalini Kochupillai, Earth „Observation“ and the Anthropocene: Rethinking the “Observer Effect” from an Eastern Philosophical Lens.- Chapter 6:Jochem Zwier. (In)human Encounters: The Earth as Human or Human as Earth.- Chapter 7:Carsten Herrman-Pillath. Earth as Hybrid Planet of More-than-human Landscapes.- Chapter 8:Simon Schneider. The Dual use Dilemma of Academia - an Extension to Include Sociocultural Aspects.- Chapter 9:Eduardo Marone, Luis Marone. The Heritage of the Enlightenment: Navigating the Anthropocene Through Supradisciplinary Education.- Chapter 10:Cornelia E. Nauen, Dedi S. Ahuri, Kafayat Fakoya. Voices from the Shorelines to Navigate the Anthropocene.- Chapter 11:Nathanael Wallenhorst, Renaud Hétier, Cécile Redondo, François Prouteau. The Anthropocene: Between the Systemic Complexity of Analysing Reality and Simplifying Terminology for Political Purposes.- Chapter 12:Martin Bohle & Cornelia E. Nauen. Rehearsal: Earth Sciences in a World of Planetary Change.- Chapter 13:Thomas Potthast. Epistemological and ethical reflections on the mutual relations between Anthropos, Anthropocene, and Earth Sciences.

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Book SynopsisChapter 1. Distinguished Patterns of India’s Political Geography.- Chapter 2. India’s Neighbourhood Diplomacy.- Chapter 3. India’s Strategic Partnerships.- Chapter 4. India’s Main Geostrategic Challenges.- Chapter 5. India’s Geostrategic Outlook.- Chapter 6. Select Issues Affecting India’s Geopolitics and Geoeconomics.- Chapter 7. India and the Future of Asian Geopolitics.

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Book SynopsisChapter 1: Introduction: Role of Water and Energy in Human Civilization.- Chapter 2: Modern theoretical approaches and methodology for water and hydro energy systems.- Chapter 3: Demand Management Instruments for Water and Energy Security in the SDG Era.- Chapter 4: Sustainable Marine and Offshore Energy Management.- Chapter 5: Circular Water Economy and the Water-Energy Nexus.- Chapter 6: Water-Energy Consumption and Sustainable Behaviour Practices.- Chapter 7: Exploring the complex interdependence nature of marine renewable energy sector: a developing country perspective.- Chapter 8: Renewable Energy Innovations in Urban Sustainability: Water and Energy Synergies.- Chapter 9: Industrial and Agricultural Water Conservation and Energy.

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Book SynopsisIntroduction: Cross-Border Cooperation, Regional Strategies, and Borderlands.- Cross-Border Cooperation as a Multilevel Endeavour.- Theoretical and Conceptual Approaches towards Cross-Border (and) Multilevel Governance in European Border Regions.- Methodological Approach.- “Borderlands of Governance” in the Saarland-Moselle Region: Empirical Insights into the Interplay between Cross-Border Spatialities and Multilevel Governance.- Borderlands of Governance in the Saarland-Moselle Region and Beyond: Summary and Outlook.- Bibliography.

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Book Synopsis

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Book Synopsis

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