Mobile Domiciles of the Eurasian Steppe: Archaeological Evidence of Possible Dwelling Space during the Early Iron Age

Very little precedent exists in Mongolia for excavating an ephemeral habitation site of prehistoric mobile pastoralists. This is due to an assumption that the kinds of nonpermanent structures constructed from perishable materials by mobile pastoralists (e.g., yurts) would be virtually undetectable in the archaeological record. Working in the Tarvagatai Valley of north-central Mongolia, the goal of the current research is to test the viability of methodological and analytical techniques used in the investigation of Palaeolithic hunter-gatherer habitations for the purpose of identifying a mobile pastoralist domicile of the Early Iron Age. The following study presents an overview of the methodology implemented during the excavation and the analysis used to identify what appear to be indications of one of the earliest mobile structures so far identified in the Mongolian steppe.     

Interpretive walks: advancing the use of mobile methods in the study of entrepreneurial farm tourism settings

This article draws on the application of interpretive walks in a socio‐geographical study of tourism‐oriented entrepreneurial activity on multi‐generational family farms in New Zealand. We highlight the great potential this method holds for tourism researchers interested in the ways tourist spaces are produced in processes of place‐making. Mobile methods have been a feature of qualitative field research in several disciplines for some time, particularly in cultural geography with its emphasis on human interactions in and with landscapes. The interpretive walk, known also as the walking interview, has been applied mainly in urban neighbourhood, health, transport, and housing research, where it has proven very useful for revealing human connections to place that have been difficult to elicit using stationary face‐to‐face interviews. This article is one of the few that reports on the use of the method in a farm tourism setting. It is also one of few applied studies seeking to understand the local geographies of farm tourism and their connections to the farm site as both family home and place of primary production. The method is characterised as an effective tool for navigating and interpreting the socio‐spatial settings in which new rural tourism ventures emerge, evolve, and are embedded. The approach allows for unexpected encounters with spatial practices and strategies, projects, and objects, behind which lie stories of changing human relationships with the land, economy, and community, and of the exigencies of everyday life that are less readily unearthed using conventional interviews.     

Liminality at work in Norwegian hotels

ABSTRACT

Hotels are spaces of temporary accommodation, but they are also important temporary spaces for an increasingly mobile and segmented workforce with different backgrounds and motives. In this paper we wish to address the temporary and transitional nature of hotel work by employing the term ‘liminality’. More specifically, we analyse the hotel as a liminal space for transient workers that view this work as a temporary endeavour. By drawing upon data from a study of hotel workers in Norway, we discuss how the liminality of hotel work may be understood. Here, we turn to an important debate within tourism studies on the blurring relationships between consumer and producer identities in resorts, often referred to in terms such as ‘working tourist’ or ‘migrant tourist-worker’. For a relatively privileged group of workers, the hotel becomes a space of liminal lifestyle pursuits as well as a space of work. We also contrast this privileged group with a different and less privileged liminal group of ‘expatriate workers’. Transient lifestyles and consumption of recreation among workers can have problematic effects in terms of reducing solidarity, and we wish to develop this further by investigating how worker representation and solidarity develops in liminal spaces of work. While strategies of liminality may have a transformative impact on the individual, their aggregate effects might simultaneously alter the way in which hospitality work is negotiated – from the collective to the individual level. As such, hotels as employers of working tourists pose a great challenge to collective representation, and may undermine effective worker action for less privileged groups of workers. The final section of this paper addresses this challenge, asking what bearings the individualism that dominates liminal work spaces has for trade unionism in the hospitality industry.     

The Politics of Media Infrastructure: Mobile Phones and Emergent Forms of Public Communication in Papua New Guinea

Recent work in anthropology proposes that the ethnographic study of infrastructure offers a productive way to think about how states and corporations, citizens and consumers, all define their relations and obligations to each other. This article considers the politics of media infrastructure in Papua New Guinea (PNG) by tracing the moral economy of mobile phones. It focuses on (1) how mobile phone users have taken to social media to express dissatisfaction with the dominant mobile network operator, Digicel, a privately owned foreign company; and (2) how the PNG state has attempted to regulate the use of mobile phones and social media through cybercrime legislation and registration of Subscriber Identity Modules (SIM cards). Consideration of these two issues – matters of concern that gather publics around them – enables an assessment of the promise of improved telecommunications and social media, in particular, to make government in PNG more accountable and transparent.     

基于手机APP的居民线上行为空间分布特征研究——以南京中心城区为例

智慧社会时代,线上服务逐渐成为大众日常生活的重要组成,深刻影响城市居民的生活、工作及出行方式。论文基于手机信令数据等多源数据,分析了不同年龄段居民在居住区空间基础上的手机APP使用特征,进而总结了休闲娱乐、网络购物及日常服务三类APP的使用强度分布特征。结果表明：(1)休闲娱乐、网络购物与生活服务等成为居民高频使用APP类型,不同年龄段对APP类型存在偏好差异;(2)三类APP高使用强度集聚区与城市中心分布基本吻合,主要分布在商业集聚区、大型居住中心以及大学、景点等周边小区,遵循技术扩散假说,不符合效率假说;(3)不同年龄段使用强度城市分布热点存在差异,另保障房类型居住区其使用三类APP使用强度偏低。     

Rein Ahas基于手机定位数据的方法创新与地理研究

本文对爱沙尼亚塔尔图大学人文地理学教授Rein Ahas基于手机定位数据的方法创新与地理研究做了相对全面的梳理与综述。随着信息与通信技术的快速发展以及手机的大规模普及,手机定位数据可以突破有限的时空框架,实现海量、客观、实时、准确和电子编码的数据收集,从而便于研究者发现人的时空间行为模式和规律。Ahas以社会定位法为主线,以手机定位数据为主要数据源,以地理可视化为分析手段,不断地通过时空间行为和活动空间研究参与到旅游、通勤、交通、社会隔离和智慧城市等多样化的领域中。他的研究方法及经典案例有助于国内学者扩宽视野,更加深入理解这一新型数据源的使用特点和应用潜力,并进一步对其进行理论与方法上的挖掘与探讨。     

顾客融入行为对旅游移动平台忠诚度的影响研究——以携程App为例

近期学术界和业界关于顾客融入的后果因素讨论不断,特别是忠诚度的讨论热度较高。旅游和酒店业也已开始通过管理顾客融入行为来增强顾客—品牌关系,但顾客融入行为的实证研究仍较少。文章在旅游移动平台情境下采用层级回归方法研究了顾客融入行为和平台忠诚度的关系。结果显示,顾客融入行为是包括消费性融入行为、贡献性融入行为和社交性融入行为的二阶构念;顾客融入行为可增强满意度和平台忠诚度,表明平台忠诚度可通过非交易行为的融入行为得到加强。其中,消费性融入行为的影响最强,其次是社交性融入行为,再次是贡献性融入行为;满意度在融入行为和平台忠诚度之间起部分中介作用。最后文章对旅游移动平台的运营和管理提出了一些建议。     

基于居民出行大数据的我国都市圈识别及其分布格局

都市圈是大城市发展到一定阶段的产物,当前都市圈空间范围界定还存在争议,本文梳理了都市圈的概念和内涵,采用手机信令出行数据识别了全国都市圈的空间分布格局。分析发现,我国大部分都市圈仍处于发育阶段,当出行率阈值为 1% 时全国识别出 27个都市圈。都市圈的分布格局与经济发展水平密切相关,经济发达地区的都市圈数量多、分布密集,如东部沿海和城市群地区。中心城市的人口和经济规模,以及圈域出行距离影响了都市圈的空间范围和圈内联系程度,圈域出行规模与中心城市人口规模呈正相关,外围城市向中心城市的出行率与中心城市经济首位度呈正相关,且符合距离衰减规律。     

An Experimental Technological Study of Upper Paleolithic Kostenki-type Figurines

Principal stages in the manufacture of zoomorphic, polyiconic, and anthropomorphic Upper Paleolithic figurines are reconstructed. General factors determining their characteristics include universal conventions of representation and the limited set of technological operations available, whereas local factors include specific ways of processing materials and combining artistic techniques, the manner of individual masters, technological faults and accidents, as well as taphonomic processes.     

Augmenting the landscape scene: students as participatory evaluators of mobile geospatial technologies

This paper provides a two-phase study to compare alternative techniques for augmenting landscape scenes on geography fieldtrips. The techniques were: a pre-prepared acetate overlay; a custom-designed mobile field guide; a locative media app on a smartphone; a virtual globe on a tablet PC; a head-mounted virtual reality display, and a geo-wand style mobile app. In one field exercise the first five techniques were compared through analysis of interviews and student video diaries, combined with direct observation. This identified a particular challenge of how to direct user attention correctly to relevant information in the field of view. To explore this issue in more detail, a second field exercise deployed “Zapp”, a bespoke geo-wand-style app capable of retrieving information about distant landscape features. This was evaluated using first-person video and spatial logging of in-field interactions. This paper reflects upon the relative merits of these approaches and highlights particular challenges of using technology to mimic a human field guide in pointing out specific aspects of the landscape scene. We also explore the role of students acting as design informants and research co-participants, which can be mutually beneficial in promoting a critical appreciation of the role of technology to support learning about the landscape.