The Renaissance of Remote Places

With a particular attention to remote places and marginalised territories, this book provides a conceptualisation of the role of internal and international migration to the local development and resilience of the rural and mountain regions of Europe. The book is a collective effort produced by the international and multi-disciplinary network of the Horizon 2020 project MATILDE. In declaring a public and trans-regional position – in the form of a Manifesto for the renaissance of remote places - the book contributes to a new narrative about migration and rural/mountain territories for the future of the entire continent. Mobilizing new data and scientific-based information, the book calls for putting remote regions and their inhabitants at the core of innovative policies at local, regional, national and EU levels. An important resource for researchers, students and policymakers in human and population geography, rural studies, migration studies, social and political sciences

The contested environmental futures of the Dolomites: a political ecology of mountains

In recent years, the eco-climate crisis has intensified the institutional debate on sustainable environmental futures and the need to boost green transition policies. Scholars in critical geography and political ecology have discussed the controversial nature of these policies and argued that structural transformation is needed, focused specifically on environmental conservation. However, little attention has been paid to mountain environments, which today are significantly affected by the eco-climate crisis and characterized by controversial trajectories of development, conservation and valorization. Therefore, by bringing together the political ecology of conservation and mountain geographies, this contribution reflects on the environmental futures of the Dolomites, in the eastern Alps, through an analysis of governance processes, conservation visions and rising environmental struggles. The Dolomites show the contested nature of environmental futures and their politicization, between ideas of accumulation by sustainability and radical environmental visions. Moreover, they encompass experiences and practices that envision a convivial conservation perspective with the potential to advance the political ecology of the mountain, with specific reference to the Global North

Joint Policy Roundtable - Codesigning an inclusive Europe. Migration and migrants in the EU : challenging narratives - modifying practices - influencing policies

Including migrants in the European Union has not been a uniform process and has revealed several obstacles in the path of making the inclusion and integration of people on the move efficient, humane, and dignified. This roundtable aimed at informing future policy development and research in this field. Findings from ten Horizon2020 projects were presented on legal protection of refugees and migrants, on the (economic, cultural, political) impact of their presence on local, regional, or European constituencies, on innovative solutions to enhancing integration and cohesion, and on the role of domestic agents. The event brought together researchers, practitioners, and policymakers to discuss the potential of re-interpreting existing narratives, to present good practices resulting from the ongoing projects, and to inform political decision-making processes

Rethinking Consumerism, Innovation and Tourism Sustainability in a Post-Viral World: An Exploratory Study of PIRT Usage in Niagara's Geoparks

Tourism resilience in the face of a prevailing pandemic and accompanying global uncertainties remains a concern to many stakeholders. A key area of interest for the industry regards the pandemic's potential to influence change in people's consumption patterns, possibly toward more sustainable, ethical, safe and technologically mediated forms of tourism. Such pandemic-induced attitudinal changes can, in turn, affect how tourism will be consumed in future. These changes may further translate into the need for new exchange relationships, tourism experiences, resources, and innovations to aid interactions between service providers (tour guides), tourists and destinations. With the advent of technology-driven solutions for normalization during the pandemic, some studies have predicted shifts from traditional long-haul travels to virtual tourism as they are considered to be a safer, accessible, and ecologically friendly form of tourism. This exploratory research, therefore, sought to unearth the influence of Covid-19 on Millennial students' preferences for virtual tours in the aftermath of the pandemic. The objectives were to identify factors that can influence intentions for change in people's tourism preferences based on their experience of the pandemic, to explore tourist perceptions about the potential of virtual tour innovations like PIRTs to meet their future preferences, and to investigate how this connection can translate into prospective models in Niagara's geopark tourism sector. Quantitative data was collected from 117 sampled students in the Brock University community through an online questionnaire. The findings revealed that financial, experiential, and ecological concerns are significant factors which will possibly influence Millennials' travel patterns and their inclination to use PIRTS in the post-Covid era. Based on these findings, suggestions are made on how smart tourism innovations such as PIRTs can be harnessed as resilient alternatives to conventional tourism in Niagara Peninsula Aspiring Global Geopark (NPAGG) destinations to promote socio-ecological wellbeing in the region

Aligning Systems for Health: Two Years of Learning

There is no single best practice of partnering, governing, financing, and implementing, but Aligning Systems for Health has uncovered new learnings and practical approaches to align diverse partners who have a common goal of improving health, equity, and well-being. Our new book, Aligning Systems for Health: Two Years of Learning, advances understanding of how people and organizations across health care, public health, and social services sectors can work together in new and sustainable ways to advance health and well-being. With new insights and practical learnings from both research and practice, this book can benefit all who are working to build healthier and more equitable communities

Accompaniment for the climb: Becoming reparational language educators of Spanish as a ‘heritage’ language

University of Minnesota Ph.D. dissertation. December 2017. Major: Education, Curriculum and Instruction. Advisor: Martha Bigelow. 1 computer file (PDF); vii, 342 pages.‘Heritage’ language classes (e.g., native speaker or native language literacy classes) are often taught by already licensed world language teachers. Only a handful of U.S. teacher preparation programs offer explicit and extensive preparation for teaching ‘heritage’ languages (National Heritage Language Research Center, 2017). ‘Heritage’ language pedagogies (Fairclough & Beaudrie, 2014) and teacher preparation (Caballero, 2014; Potowski & Carreira, 2004) are underdeveloped and undertheorized. This dissertation considers what is possible when a teacher learns to teach Spanish as a ‘heritage’ language by attending to raciolinguistic ideologies and raced-language schooling policies/practices, generational knowledge of colonialism and anticolonial resistance, and lineages of collective struggle. This is informative for both the preparation/support of ‘heritage’-language specific teachers and for conceptualizing of critical and humanizing pedagogies that center the desires and possibilities of ‘heritage’ language learners. This dissertation emerges from the participatory design of one multiyear ‘heritage’ language program at a Midwestern city public high school that took shape around reparational aims for educational justice. It draws on five years of participatory research designs and the use of paired collective memory work. Participatory research connected multilingual and multiply racialized youth of Américas descent (self-named as Jóvenes con Derechos), their black multilingual non-Latina Spanish as a heritage language teacher (Toni), and a white multilingual non-Latina teacher educator (Jenna) as co-researchers and co-designers. Over five years, Jóvenes con Derechos youth, Toni, and Jenna engaged in multiple overlapping and interacting participatory action research and design projects that shaped the development of a reparational stance towards ‘heritage’ language education, curriculum, and pedagogical approaches. Youth-led participatory action research projects connected youth with existing movements for social change led by members of their own communities and in solidarity with other communities of color and Indigenous communities in their state and beyond. Using participatory design research components of historicity, instructional thinging, curricular infrastructuring, and role re-mediations, this study offers methodological and conceptual theorizing of participatory and humanizing research and pedagogies. I argue for the need of “methodological arts of the contact zone” and suggest as examples the framework of “interlapping participatory research projects” and collective memory work. This work also outlines an argument for conceptualizing ‘heritage’ language education as reparational in its desires and designs. The methodological framework of interlapping participatory research, accompanied with paired collective memory work, is then used to make visible the processes of becoming reparational language educators through a memory work montage of instructional thinging and necessary role re-mediations over time. Final implications consider what is required of teacher preparation institutions to engage in the formation of critical pedagogues who take a reparational stance to language education that understands multilingual youth of color as co-designers of their educational experience in schools

He old people are the song, and we are their echo: resurgence of w̱ sáneć law and legal theory

This dissertation attends to pressing questions of strategy and tactics in relation to Indigenous law revitalization in the context of the climate crisis. Grounded in my own W̱SÁNEĆ legal order, I provide an accounting of the context in which the resurgence of W̱SÁNEĆ law is occurring, and clarity regarding what we hope to accomplish with the revitalization of W̱SÁNEĆ (and more broadly, Indigenous) law, both locally and in response to global climate crisis. Doing so prompts questioning of the very foundations of Canadian constitutionalism, and indeed, our most basic ideologies and conceptualizations of our place and relationships within the world. From a position that our theory and methodology of Indigenous law revitalization, and our diagnosis and approaches to the climate crisis must be intricately entwined and mutually reflective, the dissertation sets out to argue that nothing short of a fundamental reimagining of our relationships within the world, and thus the social, legal, political, and economic structures those relational understandings condition, is required. Approaching such encompassing questions requires the creation of conversations across fields such as Indigenous law, critical Indigenous studies, and political ecology. Guided by W̱SÁNEĆ law and the responsibilities and obligations it entails, how might we navigate ongoing dynamics of settler colonialism and climate crisis? While some form of “decolonized” relationship with Canada seems necessary but insufficient within the context of a global climate crisis, what would actually be required to meaningfully respond and reimagine healthy relationships between all beings? Will forms of state-delegated authority, such as co-management agreements, or forms of “green capitalism”, such as market measures or carbon offsets for Indigenous-led conservation, ever suffice to address our longstanding, and yet continually unfolding, predicaments of settler colonialism and climate crisis? As I argue for a more foundational re-imagining of our relationships and place within the world, my analysis also reveals that we are not left groundless in this re-imagining as we can draw upon the wisdom and practices housed within our respective Indigenous traditions

Democratic Multiplicity

Our structures of democratic governance are often characterized by 'dysfunctionality', 'hollowing out', and 'gridlock'. This volume proposes an approach grounded in five different modes of democratic praxis. In exploring various democratic traditions, it recognizes that addressing eco-social crises requires coordination and cooperation among them

City marketing and convention bureaus value propositions in the post-covid time

City marketing and convention bureaus value propositions in the post-covid timeThe role of convention bureaus across the world is to market destinations and cities.This paper explores destination marketing in the post pandemic time. It focusses on thevalues that convention bureaus, a key actor in the meetings industry, propose topotential visitors. The concept of value propositions (VPs) is commonly regarded as astrategic tool for organizations to communicate what and how they will provide benefitsto clients in their offerings of products or services (Payne, Frow and Eggert 2017, Payneet al. 2020). A value proposition is a central part of the business model. VPs can bethought of in terms of promises made to clients or to market segments in externalcommunication (Grönroos and Voima 2013). This calls for an appropriate packaging andpresentation of the values in the communication of organisations (Payne, et al. 2017).From a strategic perspective, VPs affects the process communicating and deliveringvalues (Lanning 2020). Previous research of VPs within in tourism studies include valueco-creation and co-destruction in tourism services (Assiouras et al. 2022), value andtourist brand loyalty (Bose et al. 2022), tourism stakeholder value-co creation (Carrasco-Farré et al. 2022), value propositions in digitalisation processes (Endres et al. 2020) valuepropositions for community building (Butler and Szromek 2019), power in tourismmarketing (Kannisto 2016) and values in experience design (Tussyadiah 2014). The topicappears however to be understudied from a communication perspective and also withrespect to how unexpected events, such as the pandemic, frame the processes ofcommunicating values. The aim of this paper is to advance the knowledge about valuepropositions socio-cultural dimensions by exploring how benefits for meetings bookersand visitors are discursively constructed. The study will answer three questions: how isvalue proposed in the marketing communication of convention bureaus, and whatprofessional meetings discourses are formed in the post covid time?Case, method and theoryTexts and images in the online marketing of 20 convention bureaus (CBs) was collectedbetween May 2022 and March 2023. Dispersed across five world continents, most CBsare located in large cities. A CBs main purpose is to increase the number of meetings ina destination. CBs collaborate with companies in its area to market their offerings, andthey are often a unit of a DMO of a city or a municipality's business department. Themeetings industry increased its activity in the beginning of 2022, when all restrictionswere gradually lifted, and therefore the data constitute an example of marketing thatwas planned and executed during a crisis. The material was imported and text-scannedin NVivo software. Codes were created inductively, by identifying presentations ofbenefits in chunks of texts and images that were manually coded as value propositions,screenshot by screenshot. Inspired by discourse theory (Wetherell et al. 2001), thesecond step of the analysis aimed for a more abstract level. The theory wasoperationalized by looking for reoccurring expressions used to propose value, terms,narratives, symbols, metaphors, and images, and by identifying things that are excluded,and ambiguities in the communication. A set of identified values emerged, as a map ofhow convention bureaus on a global level imagine the meetings demand. The analysis2discusses some vantage points that the CBs depart from. The analytical perspective thusprovides a broad societal interpretation of the themes.FindingsTwo main VP discourses emerged. First, the offering of “The meeting in a destination” isconstructed as place-bound meetings. Place is represented in images of historicalbuildings, spectacular nature, or references to place specific professional networks. Thecommunicated benefits emphasise physical interactions and location in relation to otherplaces. The place bound discourse constructs an essential need of being and engaging ininteractions and experience place, for successful meetings. The CBs engage in aplaceification of professional meetings.Second, the “Sustainable meetings” is a morally packaged offering, that is often basedon presenting benefits of ethical concern such as expressions of care for theenvironment or displays of certifications and expert lists of wise consumption choices.This offering thus constructs morally conscious and responsible choices at the center ofa good meeting. Sustainable consumption is constructed as a norm, in this ethicificationof the professional meetings offering. In sum, the representations relate to differentnorms like mobility and the ethical. The first emphasises experiences of place, whichpartly contradicts the offering of sustainability, The placeification contradicts theethicification of meetings, in so far that places require physical infrastructures andtravelling. The ethicification of meetings stress on the other hand travelling aspotentially harmful for the environment. The sustainability theme does not stress lesstravelling, it rather suggests alternative forms.Discussion and conclusionsThe communication can be interpreted as formations of new norms emerging in relationto change in society. The meeting industry has always emphasised the value of a specificlocation for meetings, an essential part of the tourism industry business models.Revenues depend on sold rooms, dinners, and personal service in that place.Experiences of place requires people to be there. This communication may thereforeseem like a given vantage point. However, digitalisation of society has acceleratedduring Covid-19 pandemic and it seems to have paved a way for customer segments thatdo not want to, or cannot not travel to a remote destination, for different reasons.Especially urgent during the pandemic and to some extent still valid, digital meetingformats are still used. The meeting industry have had to address the question ofmobility, where digital meetings formats could be part of a possible venue in asustainable direction. Carbon emissions from aviation is a significant contributor toclimate change while a lot of people around the world go to meetings by plane, on aregular basis. It may be that the industry addresses these challenges by promotingsustainable meetings. Hence the communication discursively establishes the meetingsindustry as a player within sustainable development. Communication can trivializeconceptions of sustainable challenges and this study suggests that value propositionsare powerful communicative tools and that value propositions emerge in relation tochange in society.References3Assiouras, Ioannis, et al. (2022), 'Value propositions during service mega-disruptions:Exploring value co-creation and value co-destruction in service recovery',ANNALS OF TOURISM RESEARCH, 97.Ballantyne, D., P. Frow, R. J. Varey and A. Payne (2011). "Value propositions ascommunication practice: Taking a wider view." Industrial MarketingManagement 40 (2): 202-210.Bose, Sunny, et al. (2022), 'Customer-Based Place Brand Equity and Tourism: A Regional IdentityPerspective', Journal of Travel Research, 61 (3), 511-27.Butler, R. W. and Szromek, A. R. 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