Introduction:lieux de savoir and archéologie du savoir

The introduction to this special collection addresses a fundamental issue: the link between savoir/knowledge and the spatial turn in the humanities. This point, which will be the connecting thread of the articles to be published in the collection, is addressed and discussed through an analysis of two books that have significantly influenced theoretical reflection in the mentioned field: Michel Foucault's L'Archéologie du savoir (1969) and Christian Jacob's Qu'est-ce qu'un lieu de savoir? (2014). Keeping in mind the theoretical developments of the past half century, the introduction will look back on Foucault's concepts in order to see how they can be re-read in the light of recent developments in the spatial humanities and in particular in connection with the concept of lieux de savoir and the history of (religious) reading and knowledge transfer in medieval and early modern culture

Travel to work, travel to play: On russian tourism, travel, and leisure

In the introduction to this special issue, Diane P. Koenker discusses the interrelated categories of travel, tourism, and leisure, looking at contrasting definitions of the traveler and the tourist and situating Russian and Soviet experience in a broader literature. Among the themes raised in the issue's articles, she enumerates the quest for knowledge and the premium placed on: knowledge-producing travel and leisure activities, the tension between normative values and the desire of tourists and travelers to create their own autonomous experiences, and the ways in which the socialist project revalorized the role of the collective touring experience. She also considers the ways in which travel created both national identities and cosmopolitan ones and discusses some of the implications of spatial and gender analysis for studies of travel, touring, and leisure away from home

African cities and violent conflict : the urban dimension of conflict and post conflict dynamics in Central and Eastern Africa

This article forms the introduction of a special issue on the relation between dynamics of violent conflict and urbanisation in Central and Eastern Africa. The aim of this collection of articles is to contribute to a profound understanding of the role of ‘the urban’ in African conflict dynamics in order to seize their future potential as centres of stability, development, peace-building or postconflict reconstruction. This introduction argues for the need to bridge both the ‘urban gap’ in African conflict studies as well as the ‘political’ gap in African urban studies. Building on empirical and analytical insights from multi-disciplinary research in different African conflict settings, the author presents urban centres in Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, DR Congo, South Sudan and Kenya as crucial sites of socio-spatial and political transformations and productions. The main argument running through its analysis is that emerging urbanism in the larger Great-Lakes region and its Eastern neighbours present fascinating lenses to better understand the transformative power of protracted violent conflict. This will be demonstrated by elaborating on the conflict induced production of urban landscapes, urban governance, and urban identities. Finally, this will lead us to crucial insights on how protracted regional dynamics of political violence, forced displacement, militarised governance and ethnic struggles strongly reinforce the conflictual nature of emerging urbanisation and urbanism

Introduction for the Special Issue on Beyond the Hypes of Geospatial Big Data: Theories, Methods, Analytics, and Applications

We live in the era of ‘Big Data’. In particular, Geospatial data, whether captured through remote sensors (e.g., satellite imagery) or generated from large-scale simulations (e.g., climate change models) have always been significantly large in size. Over the last decade however, advances in instrumentation and computation has seen the volume, variety, velocity, and veracity of this data increase exponentially. Of the 2.5 quintillion (1018) bytes of data that are generated on a daily basis across the globe, a large portion (arguably as much as 80%) is found to be geo-referenced. Therefore, this special issue is dedicated to the innovative theories, methods, analytics, and applications of geospatial big data

Urban informality and confinement: toward a relational framework

In the 21st century, a growing number of people live ‘informal’ lives within fissures between legality and informality. Concomitantly, power relations are increasingly expressed through devices of confinement. While urban informality and confinement are on the rise often occurring simultaneously, scholars have so far studied them separately. By contrast, this article proposes a new framework for analysing urban informality and confinement relationally. It generates new insights into the role of informality in the (re)production of confinement and, vice versa, the role of confinement in shaping informal practices. While these insights are valuable for urban studies in general, the article charts new lines of research on urban marginality. It also discusses how the six articles included in this special issue signal the heuristic potential of this relational framework by empirically examining distinct urban configurations of ‘confined informalities’ and ‘informal confinements’ across the Global North and the Global South

ESPON Project 2.3.1., Application and effects of the ESDP in Member States. First Interim Report

This First Interim Report includes the initial results of the project "Application and Effects of the ESDP in the Member States" within the ESPON Programme 2000-2006. The focus of the study is the application of the European Spatial Development Perspective (ESDP), which was adopted at the Potsdam European Council meeting in May 199

World cities and global commodity chains: an introduction

The purpose of this special anniversary issue is to assess the possible cross-fertilization between two prominent analytical frameworks: the World City Network framework, in which researchers have studied the emergence of a globalized urban system for the provision of a host of advanced corporate services: and the Global Commodity Chain framework, in which researchers have scrutinized the inter connected functions, operations and transactions through which specific commodities are produced, distributed and consumed in a globalized economy. These two approaches have developed in parallel but have rarely been brought together. This introductory essay identifies the common roots and recent history of these two frameworks, and outlines how the six articles contribute to their theoretical and empirical cross-fertilization

Collective behavior and evolutionary games - An introduction

This is an introduction to the special issue titled "Collective behavior and evolutionary games" that is in the making at Chaos, Solitons & Fractals. The term collective behavior covers many different phenomena in nature and society. From bird flocks and fish swarms to social movements and herding effects, it is the lack of a central planner that makes the spontaneous emergence of sometimes beautifully ordered and seemingly meticulously designed behavior all the more sensational and intriguing. The goal of the special issue is to attract submissions that identify unifying principles that describe the essential aspects of collective behavior, and which thus allow for a better interpretation and foster the understanding of the complexity arising in such systems. As the title of the special issue suggests, the later may come from the realm of evolutionary games, but this is certainly not a necessity, neither for this special issue, and certainly not in general. Interdisciplinary work on all aspects of collective behavior, regardless of background and motivation, and including synchronization and human cognition, is very welcome.Comment: 6 two-column pages, 1 figure; accepted for publication in Chaos, Solitons & Fractals [the special issue is available at http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/09600779/56

'“A strange enough region wherein to wander and muse": Mapping Clerkenwell in Victorian Popular Fictions'

Drawing on the work of Bertrand Westphal, this essay attempts to perform a geocritical reading of the London district of Clerkenwell. After discussing the spatial turn in the Humanities and introducing a range of spatial critical approaches, the essay “maps” literary Clerkenwell from the perspectives of genre hybridity and intertextuality, spatially articulate cartography, multifocal and historically aware public perception and potentially transgressive connection to outside areas. Clerkenwell is seen to have stimulated a range of genre fiction, including Newgate, realist, penny and slum fiction, and social exploration journalism. In much of this writing, the district was defined by its negative associations with crime, poverty, incarceration and slaughter. Such negative imageability, the essay suggests, was self-perpetuating, since authors would be influenced by their reading to create literary worlds repeating existing tropes; these literary representations, in turn, influenced readers’ perceptions of the area.Intertextual, multi-layered and polysensorial geocritical readings,the essay concludes, can producepowerful andnuanced pictures of literary placesbut also face a formidable challenge in defining an adequate geocentric corpus