Whither labor geography and the rise of the robots?

The rise of the robots suggests a technological revolution like no other. It heralds potentially profound impacts on jobs and labor markets. Geographers have so far remained relatively quiet about such transformations. This commentary suggests ways in which social and cultural geographers can expand upon a robust labor geography and the debates surrounding the relationship between robots, robotic technologies, and labor. Six areas of engagement are offered that outline the richness and nuance of social and cultural geographical analysis related to the ‘rise of the robots’ at a time where much of the popular discourse around robotics is characterized by the extremities of either dystopian angst or positive boosterism. We call on social and cultural geographers to engage in conceptually rigorous and empirically informed research that provides novel ways of making sense of the multiple dimensions of our robotic futures.     

Illuminating the Victorians

ABSTRACT

From the beginning of the twentieth century, Japanese roboticists have observed specific features in the physical designs of humanoid robots that cause users to react with either fear or affection. Analyzing the sources of these reactions, robotics egineers eliminated from robots those features that might trigger negative associations, and instead embedded their designs with cues to norms, theories, and cultural references valued by their society. By analyzing Nishimura Makoto’s building of an affable artificial human named Gakutensoku, Mori Masahiro’s discovery of the phenomenon of the ‘uncanny valley’, and Ishiguro Hiroshi’s current employment of cognitive, social, and psychological sciences to overcome the ‘uncanny’ impression of his robots, this essay claims that the development of the field of humanoid robotics in Japan was driven by concern with human emotion and cognition, and shaped by Japanese roboticists’ own associations with the social and intellectual environments of their time.     

Private Citizens as Policy Entrepreneurs: Evidence from Autism Mandates and Parental Political Mobilization

Growing bodies of research in the social sciences point to politicians, bureaucratic officials, interest groups, and other actors who serve as policy entrepreneurs. In this paper, we argue that private citizens can also serve a primary role as policy entrepreneurs. To analyze this phenomenon, we investigate the behavior of private citizens and their role in changing state policies surrounding insurance mandates for autism coverage. Using a thematic analysis of focus groups and interviews conducted with individuals active in the push for autism policy change, we demonstrate that private citizens meet all of the requirements identified for policy entrepreneurs in the existing literature. We then investigate when, why, and how these private citizens step forward into the policy process as entrepreneurs. We show that entrepreneurship occurs when private citizens have needed resources, a sense of duty to fix a policy status quo they see as unjust, and a stake in policy change. We conclude by discussing the importance of our findings to the study of public policy and their generalizability beyond autism policy.     

The Politics of Service Delivery Reform

This article identifies the leaders, the supporters and the resisters of public service reform. It adopts a principal–agent framework, comparing reality with an ‘ideal’ situation in which citizens are the principals over political policy‐makers as their agents, and policy‐makers are the principals over public service officials as their agents. Reform in most developing countries is complicated by an additional set of external actors — international financial institutions and donors. In practice, international agencies and core government officials usually act as the ‘principals’ in the determination of reforms. The analysis identifies the interests involved in reform, indicating how the balance between them is affected by institutional and sectoral factors. Organizational reforms, particularly in the social sectors, present greater difficulties than first generation economic policy reforms.     

Heritage statecraft: When archaeological heritage meets neoliberalism in Gazprom's resource colonies,Russia

A growing number of scholarly works in the field of archaeology and heritage studies have been investigating the role of culture in relationship management. By assessing the use of heritage and repatriation of archaeological finds by multinational Gazprom, a natural gas company, in the Russian Federation, this paper contributes to this heritage diplomacy research by critically repositioning some of its core paradigms and its predominant emphasis on interstate diplomatic processes. As explored in this paper, archaeology and heritage are cultural technologies that have to be framed in the broader statecraft policies of the nation state, and are enmeshed with different types of power and include a plethora of agents. By exploring a case study investigating the corporate security initiatives of a resource extraction and transport giant in Russia, this paper contributes to the extensive literature on neoliberalism, corporate social responsibility and federalism in newly developing economies.     

Social Exclusion: Towards an Analytical and Operational Framework

This article attempts to analyse the economic, social and political dimensions of social exclusion. After comparing the concept with the conventional notions of poverty and marginalization, we argue that social exclusion overlaps with poverty broadly defined, but goes beyond it by explicitly embracing the relational as well as distributional aspects of poverty. It is shown that the concept has universal validity although it has not gained much attention in developing countries. Indicators to measure different aspects of social exclusion are discussed; in this context, the article considers how appropriate it might be to use precariousness of employment as a measure. Finally, methodological problems involved in operationalizing the concept as a tool of policy formulation to fight exclusion are underlined.     

“Blue Ribbon” Commissions,Interest Groups,and the Formulation of Policy in the American States

Despite the prevalence of state‐level commissions convened to make policy recommendations, research to date has not systematically investigated the ways in which these bodies impact policy or degree to which state‐level interest groups can use these institutions in that process. We argue that less powerful groups will favor these mechanisms and use them to get issues onto the institutional agenda and to increase the likelihood of legislative success. We also suggest that traditionally powerful groups will oppose the creation of reform‐minded task forces, but will likely use them to hinder policy change once they are formed. We test this assertion in an analysis of the creation and recommendations of task forces convened to study autism insurance mandates, as well as the eventual adoption of such mandates, in the American states between 2001 and 2010. The results suggest that public and industry groups influence the formation and recommendations of task forces, but that the latter appears to have a relatively larger impact. They also suggest that a task force recommendation has a large impact on the likelihood of adopting an autism insurance mandate and that neither the insurance industry nor autism advocacy groups have a direct influence on adoption after controlling for the presence of a recommendation.     

The mead-hall community

The paper provides background context to the Anglo-Saxon concept of the ‘mead-hall’, the role of conspicuous consumption in early medieval society and the use of commensality to strengthen horizontal and vertical social bonds. Taking as its primary starting point the evidence of the Old English verse tradition, supported by linguistic and archaeological evidence and contemporary comparative material, the paper draws together contemporaneous and modern insights into the nature of feasting as a social medium. The roles of the ‘lord’ and ‘lady’ as community leaders are examined, with particular regard to their position at the epicentre of radiating social relationships. Finally, the inverse importance of the mead-hall as a declining social institution and a developing literary construct is addressed.     

Food,faith and community: social well-being of Ghanaian migrants in the Netherlands

This article explores how Ghanaian migrants in the Netherlands enhance their gendered social well-being. We provide an in-depth view of gender-specific places and relations that shape the social well-being of migrants, focusing on place-based lived experiences, by conducting in-depth interviews and observations. Our results demonstrate that social well-being is enhanced by social networks, wherein the participants recreate feelings of self-esteem, belonging and recognition. Furthermore, the special meaning of food and faith also contributes to the social well-being of the participants. Food and faith serve as commemorations of traditions in their home country and alleviate the transition to new traditions in the host country. We also found that specific places, such as shops and churches, contribute to the social well-being of participants in the study. Men and women in our study use different strategies to construct their well-being, and they interpret places and social relations differently, but they all showed to be active agents in enhancing their social well-being. Our female participants in particular look for opportunities in the host country to independently enhance their social well-being, for instance through establishing their own small businesses and social groups. Through its focus on the social well-being of migrants, the study contributes to increase understanding between different cultural groups.     

Presumption,policy and practice

This article aims to analyse the basis for the construction of current policy designed to use museums and galleries as agents of social inclusion in Great Britain. It does this by first analysing their social role and their historical contribution to social policy. The article then goes on to present the findings of a research project that compared the rhetoric surrounding this issue with practice. It concludes that a series of issues are preventing the successful construction and implementation of policy. These are: a lack of policy coherence across different parts of the British Government; an inability to successfully measure social impact; a lack of institutional clarity about how to respond to policy guidance; and a lack of understanding about what constitutes social exclusion. The final and most significant difficulty is the lack of clarity about what can be expected from museums and galleries in this respect. The underlying question of how they function in society remains largely unanswered and means that policy is not based upon firm foundations.     

Loggers,Development Agents and the Exercise of Power in Amazonia

Many believe that Amazonian communities could benefit from the growing market for timber through self‐governed approaches to forest management. However, there is no clear understanding of how communities are to develop such approaches given logging frontiers that are characterized by informal negotiations with loggers and community forestry initiatives that are promoted by development agents. This article reports on research from four study areas in Bolivia, Brazil and Peru which reveals that external players exercise considerable power over communities. First, loggers and development agents impose forest management schemes directly on communities, hindering them from developing their own approaches. Second, paternalistic relationships with loggers and development agents prevent communities from identifying common interests and expressing these through their representative organizations. Finally, loggers and development agents use powerful discourses to shape acceptable schemes in forest management, silencing communities’ voices in debates. Through these different power mechanisms, external agents thwart the emergence of self‐governed community management approaches.     

Sami subsistence activities—spatial aspects and Structuration

In the social sciences, spatial aspects of reality have been rediscovered. I will use certain concepts to describe and clarify the spatial organization of Sami subsistence activities. In this paper, ptarmigan trapping is taken as an example of “situated activities” which, according to Anthony Giddens, characterizes social systems. The siida as old hunting territory is also discussed. I will show that the Sami notions of place are not fixed in temporal and spatial terms. Moreover, I want to emphasize the dynamics of Sami subsistence activities. My claim is that they act as re/producers of Sami traditional ways. These traditions are undermined by the overall mission of the state and its agents of power. Still, the perdurability of the Sami subsistence hunters and their activities help to maintain and develop the old Sami ways in terms of spatiality and social organization.     

The Role of Pilot Projects in Urban Climate Change Policy Innovation

Cities are taking a leadership role in addressing global climate change and reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, but policy innovations are needed to help cities move from goals to outcomes. Pilot projects are one means by which cities are experimenting with new ways of governing and financing climate change mitigation. In this paper, we develop a framework for understanding the role of pilot projects in urban policy innovation: their emergence and rationale, and the means by which they ultimately scale up and out to reduce GHG emissions. We use this framework to evaluate a pilot project for retrofitting social housing buildings in Toronto. We find the initial pilot project helped address the challenges of pursuing deep retrofits of social housing. Scaling these lessons up to the city level required overcoming challenges to financing and coordinating a larger project; scaling out to the provincial level revealed institutional and political obstacles to pursuing the co-benefits of deep building retrofits in social housing. Bridging agents play an important role in both scaling processes. The analysis reveals the additive nature of urban policy innovation and the dynamic interplay of change agents and institutional and political context in innovation processes.     

From high-touch to high-tech: COVID-19 drives robotics adoption

Abstract

Global economic and social life has been severely challenged since the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the COVID-19 disease a pandemic. Travel, tourism and hospitality, in particular, has been massively impacted by the lockdowns used to maintain social distance to manage the disease. Robotics, artificial intelligence, and human-robot interactions have gained an increased presence to help manage the spread of COVID-19 in hospitals, airports, transportation systems, recreation and scenic areas, hotels, restaurants, and communities in general. Humanoid robots, autonomous vehicles, drones, and other intelligent robots are used in many different ways to reduce human contact and the potential spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, including delivering materials, disinfecting and sterilizing public spaces, detecting or measuring body temperature, providing safety or security, and comforting and entertaining patients. While controversial in the past due to concerns over job losses and data privacy, the adoption of robotics and artificial intelligence in travel and tourism will likely continue after the COVID-19 pandemic becomes less serious. Tourism scholars should seize this opportunity to develop robotic applications that enhance tourist experiences, the protection of natural and cultural resources, citizen participation in tourism development decision making, and the emergence of new ‘high-touch’ employment opportunities for travel, tourism and hospitality workers.     

Historical Archaeology and the Recent Urban Past

This paper examines the ways in which international historical archaeologists have explored the recent past, in an effort to inform and contribute to contemporary debates about social identity and social inclusion. It is argued that the archaeology of the mundane and everyday can contribute to contemporary culture by creating a sense of community and developing social cohesion. Emphasis is placed upon the archaeology of the recent urban past and case studies are presented from New York, Sydney and Cape Town. The paper concludes that the study of the materiality of urban social life offers a powerful research tool for social scientists, and that archaeologists and heritage interpreters should make greater use of this form of evidence within the context of early 21st‐century urban regeneration schemes in the UK.     

城市更新中社会网络的保存和发展

本文介绍了城市居住社区中社会网络的内涵和意义,并阐述了以往几种城市改造形式对社会网络产生的影响。进而探讨实现社会网络保存和发展的城市更新有效形式,对城市更新中社区自建和渐进式小规模更新改造等形式的经验进行了回顾。提出应运用渐进式小规模有机更新改造,并借鉴规划师与居民双向交流、共同合作的经验,实现居住社区中社会网络的发展完善。最后本文以盱眙旧城改造为例,分析了城市更新改造中社会网络保存和发展的可行性。     

Counselling Citizens and Producing Patronage: AIDS Treatment in South African and Ugandan Clinics

Global health interventions to provide antiretroviral (ARV) drug treatment for people living with HIV/AIDS in developing countries have linked global and local actors in unprecedented ways. These uneven relationships have been described as creating new forms of citizenship that challenge the liberal understanding of rights and responsibilities bestowed by the state. A comparative case study based on fieldwork from South Africa and Uganda suggests different theoretical understandings of the link between technologies of AIDS treatment and relationships of belonging. Yet, ethnographic data from local clinics in both countries point to similarities that exist across AIDS interventions, and to the importance of counsellors in negotiating the rules of ARVs. Neither patients living with HIV nor the local providers of their AIDS treatment are ‘bare life’ subjects to be acted upon by a global development intervention. As ARV technologies are increasingly prescribed in developing country clinics, diverse social relationships are taught and negotiated as part of the pedagogy of biopolitics. The following discussion demonstrates how local counsellors and clients negotiate the rules of AIDS treatment together for mutual benefit. The article concludes that AIDS treatment creates relationships of therapeutic citizenship and clientship in ways that constrain the possibilities of citizenship and development.     

Parks and People: Livelihood Issues in National Parks Management in Thailand and Madagascar

In many countries, the transformation by the state of increasing areas of land and aquatic resources into strictly protected areas has included a total restriction on the use of park resources by the local people, causing poverty and social conflict, and in some cases further environmental deterioration. This essay examines the forms of management in national parks in developing countries in general, and in Thailand and Madagascar in particular.     

‘Life in Happy Land’: using virtual space and doing motherhood in Hong Kong

This paper examines how a group of Hong Kong working mothers use the internet in performing and realizing their paid work and domestic role identities. The internet is a technology-enabled space and also what Michel de Certeau calls a ‘practiced place’, where its nature and functions are necessarily determined by the actions and practices of agents. Through participant observation and the analysis of a sample of chatroom and forum messages from a user-driven Hong Kong-based parenting website called Happy Land, I examine the relationship between this virtual space and its users. I find that the website has developed beyond its technology-mediated nature into a community of face-to-face friendships and social and emotional support. In effect, this virtual space plays a role in the social reproduction of the contemporary dual-earner family by enabling working mothers who use the website to perform roles in production and reproduction respectively.