COVID-19, mental health,and rurality: A pilot study

COVID-19 has caused enormous economic and social disruptions that may have lasting effects on employment, income, and working conditions. Critically, these disruptions often have a negative impact on mental health. While significant research has examined the relationship between COVID-19 and mental health, most of these studies focus on urban centres. This paper presents results from a pilot study conducted in two rural counties in Ontario, Canada on the experiences of residents from small and rural communities related to COVID-19. Based on 3496 survey results, this study quantifies the negative impact of COVID-19 on overall mental health and the confounding role of gender, income, and age. Results must be used to expand the dialogue around rural mental health and to ensure appropriate programs and policies are developed.     

‘They shut them out the road’: Migration,mental health and the Scottish highlands

There is a small literature tackling migration and mental health, but less is said about the migration of people with mental health problems (incipient or diagnosed). The present paper considers what might be claimed about such migration, particularly when entailing movement into rural and remote areas where lack of anonymity, high social visibility and certain differences in how ‘locals’ and ‘incomers’ are treated may have serious consequences for those displaying psychological and behavioural differences. Drawing upon qualitative evidence from in‐depth interviewing of in‐migrants with mental health problems living in the Scottish Highlands, light is thrown on the connections between their problems and the decision to relocate to this predominantly rural region. Attention also focuses on dissonances between expectations regarding their new situation and their actual experiences of it in terms of both natural landscapes and, more importantly here, social milieux. There are further implications for changing regional attitudes towards mental health, suggesting certain impacts that arise not just from the in‐migration of people themselves who have mental health problems, but also from the ideas and practices that they often carry with them.     

Rural mental health and social geographies of caring

This paper contributes to an emerging geographical literature on the social geographies of caring. Drawing on recently undertaken empirical work in the Scottish Highlands, personal accounts about the provision of both formal and informal care for people with mental health problems are evaluated. The notion of ‘community care’ is critiqued, as too are claims about how rural and remote rural locations engender particular configurations of caring roles, practices and relations. It is shown that geographical distance, social proximity, stoic cultures and rural gossip networks all have a part to play in how caring occurs in such places. The paper concludes by suggesting areas of future research.     

Masculinities and geography,moving forward: men’s bodies,emotions and spiritualities

Geographical work on men and masculinities has expanded and diversified since the 1990s. Gender, Place and Culture has been, and continues to be, a significant outlet for this research. Geographies of masculinities now range across diverse sub-fields – social, cultural, economic, health, post-colonial, urban and rural geographies. We provide a brief overview of this scope, including the expansion of geographies of masculinities beyond the Anglo-American sphere. We then focus on two vibrant fields of research on geographies of men and masculinities, which cut across the various sub-fields of the discipline: men’s embodied and emotional geographies, and their experiences in relation to religion, faith and spirituality. We discuss these fields, suggesting further productive developments for geographies of masculinities, which include work on the body and wellbeing, body size, male care giving, men’s experiences in diverse faith communities, and men and alternative spiritualities. Ongoing development of geographical work on men and masculinities is important for helping to contest patriarchal structures and knowledge production.     

Rural futures? Mapping newcomers' hopes about potential resettlement in Canadian rural areas

The Canadian government recently launched initiatives to promote immigrant settlement outside of traditional gateway cities, in small towns and rural areas. These initiatives attempt to mitigate socio-economic impacts of population decline, and address barriers to successful integration in urban areas. Drawing on the geographies of hope, this paper examines how newcomers navigate hopes as they imagine rural resettlement in Ontario. Based on focus groups with immigrants (n = 50), the findings suggest that newcomers' imagined rural futures are a dynamic and mobile process, shaped by competing hopes for a stable life. Rural imaginaries can sometimes provide a generative space to realize hopes and develop new future aspirations, other times they can constrain hopes for intergenerational futures. We contend that newcomer hopes arise in moments of relocation uncertainty, shaped by competing visions, interests, and priorities at individual and collective scales. Newcomers' expectations of rural futures are always enlivened with a sense of optimism for what has not yet become, but are equally replete with angst and anxiety for the future. This article concludes that future geographic research on migration-hope-place interactions, particularly in the health subfield, should engage constructions, experiences, and enactments of hope that mediate relocations and the policies governing them.     

Female Migration and Urban Labour Markets in Tianjin

The spontaneous, large-scale population movement from the countryside to the cities witnessed in China since the early 1980s has drawn increasing attention in academic circles. However, research has tended to focus on quantitative macro-level data collection and interpretation rather than on the experiences of those involved in the migratory process. Using qualitative research methods, this article presents the experiences and perceptions of the Chinese rural female migrants as narrated by themselves. It attempts to identify by this means the major forces behind rural women's out-migration and the institutional changes and structural barriers that have shaped women's lives and experiences in the migratory process. The author argues that women are actors and agents in this unprecedented economic and social transformation. Through their active engagement in the urban labour market, female migrants have challenged both the traditionally defined gender roles and the spatial and socio-economic boundaries that have been structurally designated to them. Their actions may catalyse a radical rearrangement of the social, political and sexual orders.     

Indigenous health organizations,Indigenous community resurgence,and the reclamation of place in urban areas

Research around the world has been nearly unanimous about the positive impacts of Indigenous‐led health organizations on Indigenous peoples' qualitative experiences in health care, in the face of often negative experiences in non‐Indigenous‐led health care settings. Urban environments, including health care environments, are areas of increasing attention with regard to Indigenous peoples' health in Canada. In this study, which took place in the northern city of Prince George, British Columbia, 65 Indigenous community members and health services workers participated in interviews and focus groups, describing their experiences with urban Indigenous‐led health organizations—defined in this study as non‐governmental organizations that prioritize the values and practices of local Indigenous communities. Employing perspectives on place and relationships drawn from Indigenous critical theory and Indigenous community resurgence to analyze the findings of this qualitative study leads to a focus on how relationships impact and can even constitute places, enabling new understandings of the roles of Indigenous‐led health organizations in urban Indigenous community resurgence.     

Growing up in a tourist destination: negotiating space,identity and belonging

There is little research on children’s experiences of growing up in a popular tourist destination, where place and space are contested with visitors, migrants and temporary residents. Existing literature on young people’s experiences of their socio-spatial surroundings has focused predominantly on the rural/urban dichotomy, often neglecting to explore how identity and belonging are negotiated in complex community contexts such as tourist destinations. This paper reports on recent research that suggests that young people’s experiences of growing up in such an environment are nuanced and diverse, with their rich narratives disrupting socially constructed distinctions between the rural and the urban, merging experiences from both worlds.     

Rural–Urban Migration and Gender Disparities in Child Healthcare in China and India

This article assesses the impact of rural–urban migration on gender disparities in children's access to healthcare in China and India. Much research has shown widespread discrimination against girl children in both countries, including in health investments, contributing to the well‐known problem of Asia's ‘missing’ women. Much less clear is the impact of the massive rural–urban migration now occurring in China and India on discrimination against daughters. Migration is usually thought to have a positive effect on child health, because of improved access to healthcare facilities, but this is not necessarily equally beneficial for both sons and daughters. Based on fourteen months of fieldwork with rural migrant families in Shenzhen (China) and Mumbai (India), this article argues that where migration improves access to healthcare, it may increase rather than decrease the gender gap in treatment of child illness in the short term, as resources are concentrated on the treatment of sons. Furthermore, it is not the case that rural–urban migration necessarily leads to better access to healthcare even for sons: some forms of migration may actually have an overall negative effect on child health outcomes. For these two reasons, development strategies focusing on large‐scale rural–urban migration should not be seen as a short‐term solution to problems of gender inequity in child health.     

Social and Spiritual Capital: Building ‘Emotional Resilience’ In Communities and Individuals

Abstract

The article examines the relationship between mental health, mental health promotion, religious communities and general issues of public health. It begins with an exploration of what is meant by mental health drawing a distinction between it, mental illness and mental health promotion, and argues that mental health can have a profound impact on physical health. The relationship between religious communities and the mentally ill is analysed next. Despite the attitudes of many in mental health provision, religious communities can offer a supportive environment for the mentally ill. The article avoids a ‘faith communities—good’, ‘mental health services—bad’ dichotomy, recognizing that religious communities can be excluding and discriminatory. The ambiguity of some experiences is recognized: are they forms of religious experience or symptoms of psychosis? The article highlights the inceasing advocacy of the user/survivor movement. In the final section, the relationship between mental health and public health is explored. It is suggested that religious communities can be places for the promotion of mental health. Mental health promotion is understood as aiming to strengthen both individuals and communities; its value is explored in relation to public health issues. It is suggested that those who are socially excluded are at a greater risk of some form of mental illness and that this may well impact on their physical health. Related to this are the beneficial effects of opportunities for participation in decision making, be it in the workplace or the local community. The article ends by arguing that service providers and service users need to be involved in decisions and planning. Further, some elements of mental health promotion will need to involve those outside the statutory sector.     

Working with Strangers in Saturated Space: Reclaiming and Maintaining the Urban Commons

The commons is increasingly invoked as a way to envision new worlds. One strand of commons research focuses at the local scale, on small groups in “traditional”, mostly rural societies; this research asks how commons are maintained over time. Another strand focuses on the commons at a global scale; this is political research that asks how commons can be reclaimed from a capitalist landscape. Here, I bridge these two approaches by theorizing the commons as reclaimed and maintained in the context of the city, through examining the experiences of limited‐equity housing cooperatives in Washington, DC. I argue that the urban commons is marked by two distinct traits: it emerges in space that is saturated with people, competing uses, and financial investment; and it is constituted by the collective work of strangers. The challenges of reclaiming and maintaining an urban commons are substantial, but the need for them is urgent.     

Urban Settlement Systems and Rural Sustaining Communities: An Example from Chan Chan's Hinterland

Abstract

The study of prehistoric cities has often been marked by research strategies that focus completely on urban centers and thus preclude the delineation of entire settlement systems by ignoring the interrelationships between cities and their rural sustaining communities. A major focus of recent research in the Moche Valley on the Peruvian North Coast has been on elucidating the nature of urbanrural relations between the prehistoric Chimú city of Chan Chan and contemporaneous sites located in its hinterland. Excavation at the village of Cerro la Virgen together with additional evidence obtained from other sites in Chan Chan's rural sustaining area has provided insights into Chimú lifeways in nonmetropolitan areas, as well as evidence suggesting a multifaceted plan for organizing lands outside the civic center of Chan Chan. The archaeological data indicate that an important aspect of the organization of rural argicultural zones was the restriction of settlement to villages circumscribed by the Chimú state.     

Farmwomen's emotional geographies of care: a view from rural Ontario

This article contributes to geographies of rural women's health by investigating farmwomen's perceptions of their caring roles and responsibilities, which are crucial to the wellbeing and sustainability of rural people and their communities. Featuring a thematic analysis of interviews and a focus group with farmwomen from Ontario, Canada, the research examines farms and farming as unique places and spaces of care. Informed by the literature on emotional geographies, the article examines how care is situated and performed through farmwomen's negotiation of multiple, overlapping identities and how these are embodied and affective in emotional work. The findings not only confirm the paramount role of women in rural care, they demonstrate the interdependence of family, community and work as central to the challenges of rural women's health. The article argues that the link between health and productivity on the farm is crucial to understanding farmwomen's caring, and highlights the paradox that their emotional work is as much about opportunities for power and resistance as it is about obligation and subordination.     

复杂理论视角下城市健康地理学探析

城市公共健康问题是根植于所依托的地域空间背景下的复杂问题,因而,目前学界主要以还原论的模型假设来分析影响城市健康的复杂多因子关系时存在一定局限。本文在分析城市健康地理问题的"地方"复杂性基础上,提出用复杂理论认识城市的健康问题,将城市健康地理系统看作为具有开放性、组分的知识局限性、自组织性、路径依赖、涌现性、正反馈和锁定特征的复杂系统。从复杂理论视角探讨了当前城市健康地理学研究的三个主要议题,进而提出复杂理论视角下城市健康地理学研究框架及未来研究展望。     

Thinking Past Henri Lefebvre: Introducing “The Theory of Ground Rent and Rural Sociology”

This introduction to the translation of Henri Lefebvre's 1956 essay “The theory of ground rent and rural Sociology” moves through three stages. First, it suggests that Anglophone appropriations of Lefebvre have tended to focus too much on his urban writings, at the expense of understanding his early work on rural sociology, and failing to recognise how his urban focus emerged as a result of his interest in rural–urban transformation. Second, it provides a summary of his wider work on rural questions, including his unfinished work on a major treatise of rural sociology; and outlines the key themes of the present essay in relation to these other projects. Third, it connects Lefebvre's issues to wider debates in political economy and geography about aspects of the rural, land and ground rent, not least including the work of Antonio Gramsci and José Carlos Mariátegui.     

Spatial imaginaries and collective identity in women’s human rights struggles in Honduras

In recent years, geographic analysis on social movements has emphasised the influence of actors’ concepts, lived experiences and perceptions of space on the emergence of collective action. Cultural approaches to social movements in Latin America as well as feminist scholarship have revealed that women’s collective action is shaped by their perceptions of institutional and societal challenges, which are rooted in authoritarian and patriarchal culture prevalent in their society. This article combines geographic and cultural approaches to social movements as well as transnational feminist theories to explore women’s human rights mobilisation in Honduras after the coup d’état in 2009. It investigates how a group of urban and rural activists that included feminists, rural women, students and community leaders, adopted human rights discourses and practices to respond to the coup. The article draws on interviews and focus group discussions to suggest firstly, that protests in response to the coup shaped the interviewees’ spatial imaginaries and particularly considers how urban feminists’ spatial imaginaries were merged with those of rural women under the collective framework of human rights. Secondly, the study demonstrates that a collective identity as women human rights defenders was crucial for the emergence of collective action and also prompted the establishment of a national network. This case study contributes to research on women’s collective action to negotiate women’s rights, human rights and social justice in changing political processes.     

Liminality in nature-based tourism experiences as mediated through social media

Abstract

The intersection between social media, liminality and nature-based tourism experiences hasn’t been the focus of previous tourism research. Such intersection, on the other hand, is illustrative of how social media relate to the constitution and performance of tourism spatialities, tourist identities, storytelling and place-making, and can lead to relevant theoretical contributes. We aim to investigate how liminality is expressed in relation to nature-based experiences by tourists on social media, and what role social media plays in mediating liminality during nature-based tourism experiences. The analysis is based on a participatory netnography of images and text posts, as well as online interviews with users of the popular social media Instagram. Findings show that the expression of tourism experiences in nature is closely related to specific notions of liminal otherness as opposed to the urban life and the everyday, where nature and wilderness are expressed as related to the genuine, the authentic and a true inner self. Creative combinations of pictures, captions and hashtags make it easier for tourists to express the contrast between the natural landscape and the everyday landscape once they returned home. These combinations also relate closely to performances of resistant and alternative selves and communities. At the same time, such performances are mediated and contested between freedom of self-expression, surveillance and social norms, an aspect that makes their liminal nature ambiguous.     

‘It’s a very isolating world’: the journey to HIV care for women living with HIV in British Columbia,Canada

HIV health services research conventionally defines place in terms of proximity to care. However, understandings of place must also include the social spaces that women living with HIV (WLWH) occupy which shape their experience of health and access to care. Drawing on focus group data from the Canadian HIV Women’s Sexual and Reproductive Health Cohort Study, we explored how 28 WLWH navigate geographic place and social space in attempting to access HIV-related healthcare within and across a range of urban to rural localities in British Columbia (BC), Canada. We describe how existing services, even if physically close, can be socially marginalizing as women confront HIV stigma, racism, and classism, which operate to exclude women from the places and spaces they must access for care. We also emphasize how women enact ‘geographies of resistance’ and succeed in carving out their own safe options for care and support. Finally, we share recommendations identified by women themselves towards developing local and community-driven ‘geographies of change’ that support the health and healing of diverse communities of WLWH. Our findings stress the urgent need to acknowledge and redress socio-spatial barriers to care and to work with WLWH to co-create a therapeutic landscape that reflects women’s diverse identities, localities, emotions, and experiences.     

江苏省城乡公共服务发展差距及其障碍因素分析

以江苏省13个省辖市为研究样本,通过构建评价教育、卫生、环境和基础设施等公共服务指标体系,运用熵值法、协调度模型和障碍度模型等方法,对江苏各省辖市的城乡公共服务发展水平进行综合评价。结果表明:①城乡公共服务发展水平区域分异明显;②不同类型公共服务发展水平城乡差距各不相同,基础教育服务城乡差距明显,医疗卫生服务乡村远落后于城市,生态环境服务城乡差距相对较小,基础设施服务城乡差距位居中等;③城乡公共服务协调发展水平可以划分为四种类型,城乡基础教育和医疗卫生等服务领域发展水平差距是影响多数省辖市城乡公共服务协调发展的最大障碍因素。     

我国城乡关系的定量研究——基于城乡投入产出表的视角

城乡关系是地理学研究的重要议题。本文运用城乡投入产出模型,构建了"乡村支持城镇、城镇反哺乡村"的定量模型,分析了我国1987-2012年间城乡间的经济联系。结果发现,从经济联系角度看,虽然城镇对乡村的反哺作用有了较大的提升,但总体上我国城乡关系仍处于乡村支持城镇阶段。乡村对其他服务业（如教育、医疗）的消费是导致乡村支持城镇的主要来源,且其作用有增大趋势。而城镇对农业的消费、对建筑业的投资以及纺织服装业的出口是城镇反哺乡村最主要的经济活动。因此,减轻乡村居民在其他服务业领域的支出负担,刺激城镇居民对乡村农产品的消费,保持建筑业投资力度,扩大纺织服装行业的出口水平有利于提升我国城镇反哺乡村的水平。