| 1. |
- Krzysztofik, Robert, et al.
(författare)
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Landscapes with different logics: A physicalistic approach to semantic conflicts in spatial planning
- 2017
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Ingår i: Quaestiones Geographicae. - : Walter de Gruyter GmbH. - 2081-6383 .- 0137-477X .- 2082-2103. ; 36:4, s. 29-45
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper deals with the ways of categorising landscapes as ‘urban’ and ‘rural’ using a physicalist approach, where these terms have special meaning. The aim of this paper is to elaborate on the question whether such a division is still meaningful with regard to anthropogenic landscapes, not least in spatial planning. The concerns raised in this paper depart from the increasingly complicated structure of geographical space, including that of anthropogenic landscapes. Our standpoint is illustrated using cases of landscape ambiguities from Poland, Germany, Romania and Greece. Leaning on frameworks of physicalist (mechanicistic) theory, this paper suggests an explanation to the outlined semantic conflicts. This is done by pointing to the relationality between the impact of centripetal and centrifugal forces, the specifics of socio-economic development, as well as the varying landscape forms that emerge from the differences within that development.
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| 2. |
- Brauer, Rene, et al.
(författare)
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How to write a REF impact case study? Critical discourse analysis of evidencing practices
- 2016
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Ingår i: “Making an impact: Creative constructive conversations” International Conference, 19-22 July 2016, School of Hospitality and Tourism Management, University of Surrey, Guildford, UK.
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This paper applies critical discourse analysis to scrutinize submissions to the “REF [Research Excellence Framework] 2014 Impact Case Study” platform. More specifically, it focuses on the rhetorical practices used within these submissions to evidence research impact as outlined by the Higher Education Institutions (HEI) within tourism studies. The evidencing practices used within the submissions to Panel 26 (Sport Science, Leisure and Tourism) included quantitative sources and measures (e.g. Google Scholar, citation counts, journal ranking scores, monetary value of research grants, value of policy investment, industry revenue figures, etc.) and implicated ‘high status’-end users (e.g. government bodies, the UN, industry, NGOs) as their main type of evidence. The evidencing of impact did not differ depending on whether the research was of quantitative or qualitative character, neither on the type of research impact claimed. Instead, the disciplining of the epistemic evidencing practices was enforced by the outlined guidelines for submission (verifiable evidence, word count, type of impact). Leaning on Collins and Evans’ (2007) notion of ‘expertise’ used to conceptualize evidencing practices, this paper discusses the implication of such evidencing for an evaluation practice that sets out to assess the quality of research impact. The rhetoric such evidencing evokes, however, is not necessary indicative of the impact claimed. Furthermore, the evidencing practices used within the REF marginalize so-called negative impacts (failures), despite their specific value for research and, consequently, for societal progress at large.
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| 3. |
- Brauer, Rene, et al.
(författare)
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The impact of tourism research
- 2019
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Ingår i: Annals of Tourism Research. - : Elsevier BV. - 0160-7383 .- 1873-7722. ; 77, s. 64-78
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The exceedingly competitive climate of academia has increased the emphasis on performance-based research funding. In this paper we evaluate the UK's government assessment of research impact and critically comment upon the implications for future research conduct. The key findings are as follows; firstly we provide a summary of UK tourism research impact. Secondly, we demonstrate the effect of the resulting significance gap, and comment upon the consequences of the Research Excellence Frameworks' (REF) research impact assessment in terms of a research culture change. Lastly, we proposition that the current assessment structure can have negative long-term consequences in that key issues facing tourism fall outside 'good' research impact.
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| 4. |
- Dymitrow, Mirek, et al.
(författare)
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Conflating land with people a.k.a. the iatrogenesis of rural-urban ideations
- 2016
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Ingår i: Proceedings of the 2nd International Scientific Conference "Geobalcanica", 10-12 June, Skopje, Republic of Macedonia.
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- In this paper we address the concepts of ‘urbanity’ and ‘rurality’ as potentially counterproductive ideas in policy and planning when deployed in areas of severe social deprivation. Using a local example we address this issue in the context of a recently finalized development project, whose focus shifted from ‘urban’ to ‘rural’. We argue that these concepts are not neutral spatial designators but problematic filters added to an already problematic concept of “social sustainability”. Here we draw on the principle of iatrogenesis, which denotes any benevolent action that inadvertently produces negative outcomes. We argue that since many areas lack the presumed conceptual foundation for a specific brand of action, development programs labeled as ‘rural’ or ‘urban’ are not only likely to fail, but also to potentially cause harm. We conclude that more context-sensitive understanding of the human condition beyond inflexible labeling could help arrive at more accurate interventions.
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| 5. |
- Dymitrow, Mirek, et al.
(författare)
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Dancing tango and herding camels as ways to combat social deprivation?
- 2015
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Ingår i: Geographical Imagination: Interpretations of Nature, Art and Politics. 6th Nordic Geographers Meeting, 15-19 June 2015 - Tallinn & Tartu, Estonia.
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Marginalization and social deprivation in urban areas are hardships not necessarily limited to developing countries. Around 80 million Europeans today live in conditions that fall within the definition of poverty. However, certain areas are more prone to affliction than others. Such estates usually consist of concrete slab high-rise buildings and are often characterized by high levels of ethnic segregation, unemployment and crime, as well as low levels of education and health. In the Swedish equivalent of this type of environments, the current situation is not encouraging despite the many urban development programs launched to address the issues at hand. In a wish to eschew conventional explanations of failure, we instead turn our attention towards some more systemic flaws in the conceptual design of these programs, arguing that one of these flaws could be the idiomatic elephant in the room. In this presentation, we undertake a discussion about the probability that, in areas where social deprivation is the greatest, not all signifiers of the presumed concept of urbanity are met. Hence, rigid adherence to ‘urbanity’ as a guiding force in development programs might in fact contribute to counterproductive plans of action. On the basis of experiences from two Swedish suburbs, we problematize the ’urban bias’ of large-scale actions set to target complex issues of social deprivation, whose character may not easily align with a conceptual rural-urban axis. We conclude that more context-sensitive understanding of the human condition beyond inflexible labeling could help arrive at more accurate inferences.
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| 6. |
- Dymitrow, Mirek, et al.
(författare)
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Geography’s three problems seen through the prism of one educational challenge
- 2022
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Ingår i: Multiple Nordic Geographies. - Joensuu, Finland : University of Eastern Finland. - 9789526145853 ; , s. 134-134
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- As the modern society becomes larger and increasingly diverse, its problems become more elusive and solutions far-fetched. This puts pressure on relevant education. Geographical knowledge, whose raison d’être has always been to deal with complexity, should therefore be in high demand, but isn’t. In this presentation we want to investigate why this is the case, by outlining three major problems geography education faces today and what potential solutions there might be. #1) Geography as a societal need: Geography’s traditional status as a synthesizing science is not well translated to the “sustainability mindset” that currently saturates educational curricula. This leads to decreasing numbers of geography students who seek out explicitly “sustainability-oriented” courses, which are often taught by teachers without a solid synthesizing background. Simultaneously, geography’s potential is reduced at pre-university levels where it is still associated with a stereotype (mostly cartography and ‘pub quiz’ knowledge). #2) Geography as an identity: Being “a specialist on being a generalist” is a frustrating motto for many geography students, who are inculcated that expertise is usually vertical. Inability to capitalize on horizontal expertise causes a personal crisis that impedes learning and embracing geography as a professional identity. #3 Geography as a competence: Being a holistic “for real” cannot be reduced to knowing a multitude of facts but requires foremost an understanding of how differences in opinion (underlying diametrically different sustainability strategies and solutions) arise. This requires a broad epistemological base. However, philosophy of science is not taught at pre-graduate level, while new students are becoming increasingly opinionated on contested topics. Departing from teaching experience at 4 Nordic universities, we suggest adding a “sensitizing phase” to the most critical stages of geography’s first-year education. A sensitizing phase is a targeted and deepened/extended course introduction, designed to a) focus on the strengths of geography and its boundaries to other realms of knowledge; b) providing continuous moral support to students to instill geography’s identity; c) teaching techniques how to handle complexity (knowledge reduction, extrapolation, epistemological breadth). We conclude that this approach allays confusion, primes the students towards the relevance of geography knowledge, and inculcates them into a spirit of life-long learning.
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| 7. |
- Dymitrow, Mirek, et al.
(författare)
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Land or people? On the iatrogenesis of conflation
- 2016
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Ingår i: Acta Geobalcanica. - : Geobalcanica Society. - 1857-9833. ; 2:2, s. 63-75
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In a wish to abandon essentialism to contingency, this paper looks into whether the rural-urban binary could be a cultural burden so incompatible with the layered realities of advanced deprivation that instead of helping the deprived, it deprives the help of its carrying capacity. Departing from the idea that cultural mechanisms are capable of allowing for conceptual dichotomies to create oppression, this paper addresses the concepts of ‘rural’ and ‘urban’ as potentially counterproductive ideas in policy and planning when deployed in areas of severe social deprivation. Using a local example, this problem is addressed in the context of a recently finalized development project, whose focus of approach shifted from ‘urban’ to ‘rural’. We demonstrate how ‘rural’ and ‘urban’ are not neutral spatial qualifiers but problematic filters superimposed onto the already problematic concept of “social sustainability”. Here, we draw on the principle of iatrogenesis, which denotes any benevolent action that inadvertently produces undesired outcomes. We argue that since many areas lack the presumed conceptual foundation for a specific brand of action, development programs labeled as ‘rural’ or ‘urban’ are not only likely to fail, but also to potentially cause harm. We conclude that more context-sensitive understanding of the human condition beyond inflexible labeling is needed in order to arrive at more adequate interventions.
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| 8. |
- Dymitrow, Mirek, et al.
(författare)
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Social deprivation and urbanity as the elephant in the room
- 2014
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Ingår i: Urban and urbanization. Eds.: Efe, R., Onay, T.T., Sharuho, I. and Atasoy, E.. - Sofia : St. Kliment Ohridski University Press. - 9789540737720 ; , s. 381-395
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Social deprivation and marginalization in urban areas are hardships that are not necessarily limited to developing countries. Around 80 million Europeans today live in conditions that fall within the definition of poverty. However, certain areas are more prone to affliction than others. Such estates usually consist of concrete slab high-rise buildings and are often characterized by high levels of ethnic segregation, unemployment and crime, as well as low levels of education and health. In the Swedish equivalent of this type of environments, the current situation is not encouraging despite the multitude of urban development programs launched to address the issues at hand. Not only does the condition not improve, it deteriorates. In a wish to eschew conventional explanations of failure, we instead turn our attention towards some more systemic flaws in the conceptual design of these programs, arguing that one of these flaws could be the biggest and most obvious of them all – the idiomatic ‘elephant in the room’. In this chapter, we undertake a discussion about the probability that, in areas where social deprivation is the greatest, not all signifiers of the presumed concept of urbanity are met. Hence, rigid adherence to ‘urbanity’ as a guiding force in development programs might in fact contribute to counterproductive plans of action. In short, an urban development project may lack a satisfactory urban foundation and, by lack of congruence with the formulated ideation of urbanity, is likely to fail. On the basis of experiences from two Swedish suburbs, we problematize ‘the urban’ – or simply ‘the urban bias’ – in large-scale actions set to target complex issues of social deprivation, whose character may not easily align with a conceptual rural-urban axis. We conclude that more context-sensitive understanding of the human condition beyond inflexible labeling could help arrive at more accurate inferences.
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| 9. |
- Dymitrow, Mirek, et al.
(författare)
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Transcending the rural-urban meme: Hammarkullen – a landscape caught in-between
- 2014
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Ingår i: Unraveling the logics of landscape. Eds.: Stenseke, M., Dymitrow, M., Saltzman, K. et al.; 26th session of the Permanent European Conference for the Study of the Rural Landscape, 8–12 September, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg & Mariestad, Sweden. - : University of Gothenburg, Sweden. ; , s. 103-103
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- People’s different relations towards their environment are always the result of how they perceive it and how different spatialities are ascribed symbolic meaning. Taking into account these relations when formulating policies aimed at solving various problems could offer valuable knowledge for more sustainable planning and management. In certain areas, however, achieving this goal might prove extra problematic due to the preconceived vision of how problems associated with certain spatialities ought to be handled. Hammarkullen, a suburb of Gothenburg, is an extreme example of this. For decades facing socio-economic and structural problems, the struggles of Hammarkullen could be described as a “wicked problem”. Many programs have been undertaken to address it, the latest of which is one of Sweden’s largest EU-projects within urban development. In light of the considerable criticism it has received, we evaluated its inadequacy to solve the identified problems through three case studies. We conclude that a major contributing factor is the urban bias impregnating the design of urban development projects. It happens because the concept of “urbanity” is not one-dimensional (there are at least 40 attributes defining it); moreover it is juxtaposed “rurality” as its conceptual counterpart. Since any of the constitutive attributes is neither fully “rural” nor “urban”, different spatialities assume manifold overlapping combinations. Although Hammarkullen has an urban morphology, many of its attributes fall within the conceptual range of “rurality”, and should be addressed accordingly. However, since urbanity is most often viewed as morphology, the “urban shell” of Hammarkullen inadvertently prompts “urban” development projects. In that light, we resort to a landscape approach as an alternative conceptual tool to circumvent the rural-urban impasse in problem-solving. As a relational, non-essentialist technique, a landscape approach has the potential to capture the individual needs of each spatiality, including those that are not necessarily aligned with a conceptual rural-urban axis.
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| 10. |
- Kantor-Pietraga, Iwona, et al.
(författare)
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Environmental hazards as a driver of urban abandonment in Poland
- 2014
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Ingår i: Unraveling the logics of landscape. Eds.: Stenseke, M., Dymitrow, M., Saltzman, K. et al.; 26th session of the Permanent European Conference for the Study of the Rural Landscape, 8–12 September, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg & Mariestad, Sweden. - : University of Gothenburg, Sweden. ; , s. 104-104
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The modern society is often perceived robust enough to withhold the calamities of adverse natural forces, while the phenomenon of complete settlement abandonment might seem as a thing of the past. However, due to an increased rate of environmental change, the issue of human vulnerability becomes all the more pertinent. In this presentation, we focus on the emergence of rural landscapes as a result of urban abandonment due to environmental hazards, here seen as an element in the functioning of the concept of environmental drivers. The underlying assumption is that a characteristic of environmental hazards is their spatial and temporal constancy of impact, whereby processes and phenomena having taken place in the past have their analogies in the present. In order to generate considerations for future research and policy development, there is a need to pay greater attention to the dangerous relationship between humans and the natural environment, not least by drawing lessons from the past. The presentation clarifies the dynamic interactions of drivers and their progression through various stages of urban abandonment with both an analysis of some general trends and an in-depth examination of three selected case studies from Poland. It has two objectives. The first one is to identify the historical role of environmental drivers in the process of urban abandonment, while the second one is to contribute to the typology of environmentally related processes of urban abandonment in order to better identify future calamities. In the first respect, the findings reveal that the relation between environmental hazards and urban abandonment is pertinent in regions with specific geographic conditions and pertains only to certain categories of urban settlements. In the second respect, by drawing on these findings, we propose some alterations and amendments to McLeman’s comprehensive model of settlement abandonment in the context of global environmental change.
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