Abstracted/indexed

This is a book review of an Italian-language geography book by Marcello Tanca entitled Geografia e fiction. Opera, film, canzone, fumetto. This book uses geographical tools and approaches to study fictional worlds within opera, films, songs and comics. Taking this proposal seriously, this book review mobilises the language of comics, usually associated with fiction, to provide a visual book review.

Based on a critique of statistical and cartographic analyses of migration patterns of young adults in rural areas of Central Germany, we conclude that there is an emergence of cultures of (out-)migration in some rural regions and discuss possible approaches from psychoanalytically informed migration research and complex systems theory that may help us to understand why, in these regions, adolescents often consider leaving the most viable option.

Soil erosion by wind and water is a commonly recognized phenomenon on agricultural land. Erosion in forests is studied less and generally considered to be limited because of the soil protection by vegetation. However, trees, when toppled because of old age or wind, loosen a considerable amount of soil when their roots are pulled from the ground. In addition, the holes left in the ground act as collectors for water and concentrated runoff, causing significant soil loss on forested slopes.

This special issue shows that environmental justice perspectives are useful for analysing current socio-ecological conflicts. It aims at exploring climate and marine narratives, environmental knowledge claims, multiple ontologies, climate change adaptation, and the spatial and temporal shaping of socio-ecological struggles for climate and marine justice in more detail. Furthermore, it takes up current strands of climate and marine justice scholarship and explores avenues for further research.

By means of hermeneutic source criticism, my paper investigates how the events of “Kiel 1969” gave rise to a myth. It concludes that the congress’s participants experienced “Kiel 1969” as the site of an enormously dense social interaction within their science. Most importantly, participants’ suggestive oral reports in the aftermath of the congress turned it into the “myth of Kiel”, which became an essential driving force of German-speaking geography’s modernization.

This article discusses the methodological and ethical challenges of researching prison letters through a narrative approach. After giving insight into the work of the OLGa Collective and its archive of letters, I problematise the environment of prison spaces that shape inmates' subjectivities and then develop a discussion of the narrative approach by exploring the author's role as booklet editor and researcher, spanning activism and academia and his quest of speaking for others.

The field of population geography in the last few years has intensively focussed on populations that are on the move. While the topic of migration is of great interest and will also be in the future, researchers have also started to focus more on immobile populations. In this paper, literature on immobile populations has been collected and analysed. The paper concludes on what we already know about immobilities from extant research and makes suggestions for future research.

Der Artikel diskutiert, warum Lohnarbeit in Europa quer durch die verschiedenen Länder als strukturell krisenhaft angesehen werden muss. Um diese Frage zu beantworten, werden nicht einzelne nationale Sozial- und Arbeitspolitiken diskutiert, sondern es wird das aktuelle europäische Produktionsregime insgesamt betrachtet. Im Zentrum der Analyse steht der Zusammenhang von Transnationalisierung von Produktion und vielfacher und dynamischer sozialräumlicher Fragmentierung der Arbeitsprozesse.

Digital technologies are changing the way farms look and operate. To understand the implications, we analysed functionalities of an Austrian start-up which lets customers take care of plots of acres virtually and from their homes. In this system, technology proposes decisions, and there is no classic farmer any more. Our example shows the manifold new potential that powerful and smart technologies can have for food production, but it also shows the threats to farmers.

Small and medium-sized cities in rural areas that are affected by emigration need support. These cities are often lacking the financial and human resources to address resulting problems such as vacant city centers. The study shows that the city competition "Ab in die Mitte! Die City-Offensive Sachsen" supports such cities through project fundings and promotes knowledge exchange between cities. The funding is small but helps to stimulate positive change.