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The ambition of this issue of Portal is to reach across the methodological boundaries of history, politics, literature and geography to apply their complementary perspectives to the study of identity and its relation to space and place, an aim that involves attempting to identify the many different ways the notoriously slippery concepts of identity and geography may intersect.For this issue we have selected articles that cast a fresh perspective on two areas where identity and geography intersect: the construction of identity through the imaginative recreation of place in literature: Mapping Literary Spaces; and the study of the shifting relationships of centre and periphery, exclusion and inclusion in urban settings and geopolitical confrontations: Social and Political Peripheries.Gerard Toal has written that geography is not a noun but a verb: it does not describe what space is but studies what we do with space, imaginatively and politically. The articles in this issue illustrate the exercise of the literary and political imagination and the role of materiality and memory in the creation of geographic representation. They show too a new awareness of the centrality of space in the constitution of identities, and the need for a new geocritical reading of its discourse, as the interrelations of place and community are played out on the many scales of social and political life, from the local to the global. The special issue is organised thus:IntroductionMatthew Graves (Aix-Marseille University) & Liz Rechniewski (Sydney University): "Imagining Geographies, Mapping Identities."I. Mapping Literary Spaces- Isabelle Avila (University of Paris XIII), "Les Cartes de l'Afrique au XIXe siècle et Joseph Conrad : Perceptions d'une Révolution Cartographique."- Daniela Rogobete (University of Craiova), "Global vs Glocal: Dimensions of the post-1981 Indian English Novel."II. Social and Political Peripheries- Elizabeth Rechniewski (Sydney University), "The Perils of Proximity: The Geopolitical Underpinnings of Australian views of New Caledonia in the 19th Century."- Annie Ousset-Krief (Paris III), "Le Yiddishland newyorkais."- Carolyn Stott (Sydney University), "Belleville: Space, Place and Identity."- Esme Cleall (University of Sheffield), "Silencing Deafness: Marginalising Disability in the 19th century."

The ambition of this issue of Portal is to reach across the methodological boundaries of history, politics, literature and geography to apply their complementary perspectives to the study of identity and its relation to space and place, an aim that involves attempting to identify the many different ways the notoriously slippery concepts of identity and geography may intersect.For this issue we have selected articles that cast a fresh perspective on two areas where identity and geography intersect: the construction of identity through the imaginative recreation of place in literature: Mapping Literary Spaces; and the study of the shifting relationships of centre and periphery, exclusion and inclusion in urban settings and geopolitical confrontations: Social and Political Peripheries.Gerard Toal has written that geography is not a noun but a verb: it does not describe what space is but studies what we do with space, imaginatively and politically. The articles in this issue illustrate the exercise of the literary and political imagination and the role of materiality and memory in the creation of geographic representation. They show too a new awareness of the centrality of space in the constitution of identities, and the need for a new geocritical reading of its discourse, as the interrelations of place and community are played out on the many scales of social and political life, from the local to the global. The special issue is organised thus:IntroductionMatthew Graves (Aix-Marseille University) & Liz Rechniewski (Sydney University): "Imagining Geographies, Mapping Identities."I. Mapping Literary Spaces- Isabelle Avila (University of Paris XIII), "Les Cartes de l'Afrique au XIXe siècle et Joseph Conrad : Perceptions d'une Révolution Cartographique."- Daniela Rogobete (University of Craiova), "Global vs Glocal: Dimensions of the post-1981 Indian English Novel."II. Social and Political Peripheries- Elizabeth Rechniewski (Sydney University), "The Perils of Proximity: The Geopolitical Underpinnings of Australian views of New Caledonia in the 19th Century."- Annie Ousset-Krief (Paris III), "Le Yiddishland newyorkais."- Carolyn Stott (Sydney University), "Belleville: Space, Place and Identity."- Esme Cleall (University of Sheffield), "Silencing Deafness: Marginalising Disability in the 19th century."

In the wake of the COVID‐19 pandemic, a range of technological as well as legislative measures were introduced to monitor, track and prevent the spread of the COVID‐19 virus across the world. The measures taken by governments across the world have relied upon the use of geoinformation from satellites, drones, online dashboards and contact tracing apps to render the virus more visible, which has been instrumental in two ways. First, geoinformation has been helpful in organizing efforts for capacity building, in mapping communities living in deprived urban areas (referred to commonly as 'slums') and their response to COVID‐19 measures. These efforts have been part of initiatives by the United Nations as well as NGOs, using geoinformation to inform urban policymaking by representing the social, political and environmental issues facing those living in deprived urban areas. And secondly, geoinformation has also been used to control the spread of the pandemic by monitoring and limiting the behaviour of citizens through various technologies. This form of geoinformation‐driven governmentality, I will contend from critical geography and surveillance studies perspective endangers ethical values such as trust and solidarity, agency, transparency along with the rights and values of citizens.

In the creation of trade policy, business actors have the most influence in setting policy. This article identifies and explains variations in how economic interest groups use policy networks to affect trade policymaking. This article uses formal social network analysis (SNA) to explore the patterns of articulation or a policy network between the government and business at the national level within regional trade agreements. The empirical discussion herein focuses on Brazil and the setting of exceptions list to Mercosur&rsquo ; s common external tariff. It specifically concentrates on the relations between the Brazilian executive branch and ten economic subsectors. The article finds that the patterns of articulation of these policy networks matter and that sectors with stronger ties to key government decision-makers have a structural advantage in influencing trade policy and obtaining and/or maintaining their desired, privileged trade policies, compared with sectors that are connected to government actors with weak decision-making power, but might have numerous and diversified connections. Therefore, sectors that have a strong pluralist&ndash ; clientelist policy structure with connections to government actors with decision-making power have greater potential for achieving their target policies compared with more corporatist policy networks.

Despite rapid and vast development of wind turbines across the Canadian province of Ontario, there is no map available indicating the location of each wind turbine. A map of this nature is crucial for health and environmental risk research and has many applications in other fields. Research examining health and wind turbines is limited by the available maps showing the nearest community to a wind farm as opposed to each unique wind turbine. Data from provincial-level organizations, developers, and municipalities were collected using government development approval documents, planning documents, and data given directly from municipalities and developers. Wind turbines were mapped using Google Earth, coordinate lists, shapefiles, and translating data from other maps. In total, 1,420 wind turbines were mapped from 56 wind farms. The limitations of each data source and mapping method are discussed. There are numerous challenges in creating a map of this nature, for example incorrect inclusion of wind farms and inaccuracies in wind turbine locations. The resultant map is the first of its kind to be discussed in the literature, can be used for a variety of health and environmental risk studies to assess dose-response, wind turbine density, visibility, and to create sound and vibration models.

This chapter mainly engages with contextual reasons and rationalities that lead to a myriad of initiatives which may be fully or partly subsumed by an umbrella "personalisation" idea. The very action of documenting a plurality of theoretical perspectives, cultural and political contexts cannot logically lead to finding or proposing a stable definition. A sociological and comparative endeavour focused on how this issue is understood, its ingredients and meanings, cannot engage at the same time with a normative pedagogical approach and thus cannot offer the reader "the answer" to the question: "what does personalisation really mean?". Much more relevant are its conceptual plasticity and political flexibility, which I have attempted to capture through the contributions to this volume, and map in this final chapter.

AbstractThis article provides an introduction to the special issue onMapping Shia Muslim Communities in Europe.1 With six empirically rich case studies on Shia Muslim communities in various European countries, this issue intends: first, to illustrate the historical developments and emergence of the Shia presence in Europe; second, to highlight the local particularities of the various Shia communities within each nation state and demonstrate their transnational links; and third, to provide for the first time an empirical comparative study on the increasingly visible presence of Shia communities in Europe that fills an important gap in research on Muslims in Europe.

Pennine Street is a cartographic art experiment, twinning High Street 2012 in London with the Pennine Way, a long-distance footpath running between the Peak District and the Scottish Borders. Pennine Street was initially prompted by the London 2012 Olympic spectacle ; more specifically, by the militarization of the Games through the proposed deployment of surface-to-air missiles at sites in London. The project initially took the form of three organized walks along the route of High Street 2012, from Aldgate to Stratford. Readings were made while walking on each occasion, and both photographic and textual collages emerged out of the initial walks. The project engages the idea of trespass as a political action, as both potent and futile, and traces the development of modes of photographic and textual "trespass", or transgression. Textual collage is employed to investigate the possibility of articulating Pennine Street as a "space-between" the empirical and the imagined.

"Everything happens somewhere", a popular phrase nowadays to emphasize the importance of good and reliable geographic information. National Spatial Data Infrastructures (NSDI) are popping up in many countries in the world as governments realize that a wealth of geo-data is produced, but that this data is not known or available to other organizations. An NSDI channels this information to the users. Availability of geo-information and efficiency in the production are the key drivers. Another big driver is the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). To monitor the development of the progress of the SDG's, a wealth of statistical information on economic, social and environmental phenomena is collected. All this data is referring to a specific place on earth. Therefore, good and reliable geo-information is critical for the development of the SDG's of a country. Topographic maps describe the land that belongs to a country, its sovereign territory. But they are also used for orientation, for the defense of your country, as a time stamp of how your country looks like at a specific moment in time, and many other applications. Topographic maps are therefore an indispensable asset in an NSDI. They link thematic information of any kind to a specific location. It is this location that is the linking pin to many other sources of information. However, the reality of today is that many developing countries lack any up-to-date topographic maps. They have to rely on old maps, often produced more than 40 years ago; there is no money or, more importantly, no expertise available to update these maps. In other cases, they rely on online mapping sources like Google Maps, OpenStreetMap, etc. These are good, but consistency in quality is an issue. Some countries already have topographic maps, but these date back from colonial times, and were not updated ever since. Others produce specific map series but are depending on the availability of reliable source material, like aerial photos and satellite imagery, purchased by the government. Or in some cases they have to organize partnerships with other national institutions to be able to purchase the necessary photo's or imagery. Regular maintenance of these maps is then often a real issue. In general, every country has its own development stage, but when it comes to topographic mapping, it can be classified into 4 stages: 1. No topographic map available 2. Out of date analogue topographic map available 3. Digital, but out of date topographic map available 4. Digital and recent topographic map available This paper describes these different stages of official map production that exist in countries around the world, each stage with its own characteristics, timeframe, roadmap and needs. It is not focusing on the technology but concentrates on the institutional aspects of topographic map production and what could be done to develop the production processes into sustainable work procedures.

The Mapping Digital Media project examines the global opportunities and risks created by the transition from traditional to digital media. Covering 60 countries, the project examines how these changes affect the core democratic service that any media system should provide: news about political, economic, and social affairs.In Argentina, there have been few changes in media and news consumption that can be linked to digital migration. Television continues to be the medium of reference.Digitization and the consequent rise in the use of social networks and digital platforms on the part of Argentinean society are changing the system of social production and the circulation of information and entertainment in a country where the expansion of broadband connections has doubled over the past five years. There is a dramatically increasing number of blogs that contribute to the political debate and offer news and opinions from various fields of expertise and that feed back into the workings of mainstream media.The digital divide remains a central issue, not only in terms of social groups without the economic means and the skills to use the net, but also in terms of the uneven quality of the access provided in different parts of the country.In any case, the transformative potential of digitization will no doubt be affected by the polarization of the social and political forces of Argentina that prevents rival groups from acknowledging shared goals and agreeing on a course of action to obtain all the possible benefits of this transformation