Publications

Network effects, economies of scale, and lock-in-effects increasingly lead to a concentration of digital resources and capabilities, hindering the free and equitable development of digital entrepreneurship, new skills, and jobs, especially in small communities and their small and medium-sized enterprises (“SMEs”). To ensure the affordability and accessibility of technologies, promote digital entrepreneurship and community well-being,…

COVID-19 had sudden and dramatic impacts on the organisation and governance of urban life. In Part 2 of this Special Issue on public health emergencies we question the extent to which the pandemic ushered in fundamentally new understandings of urban public health, noting that ideas of urban pathology and the relation of dirt, disease and…

The rise of subversive religious beliefs has been recently documented as related to the politico-economic radicalization of places that feel left behind. When is the traditional local religious institution so socio-economically inefficient in providing hope for “not walking alone” to become substituted by subversive religious beliefs on the market for hope? This article suggests a…

The health and wellbeing benefits of engagement with the natural environment are well documented, but a lack of prospective research means that the sustainability of effects is unknown. Nature-based interventions (NBIs) seek to extend benefits to a wide, socially inclusive range of people. The primary aim of this study was to develop an improved understanding…

This article contributes to the ongoing discussion on rural development programs aligning with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in the Global South. The research question examines how the Smart Rural Communities (SRC) framework can support the SDGs as an international cooperation model. The article presents findings from fieldwork action research including a critical analysis of…

Recent, UK-based studies have focused on the construction of working-class masculine identity and documented changes and softer displays among young men. This article contributes to this literature and is based on ethnographic research conducted in Wales, UK, and a sample consisting of the most marginalised working-class young men often associated with protest masculinity, homophobia and…

There is now an extensive literature on the related concepts of soft power and modernity. The former is sometimes known as cultural or public diplomacy and is an international relations factor in what is now called hybrid conflict or even war. As is well-known, Joseph Nye, an American political scientist, coined the term “soft-power” in the early 20th Century….

Territorial cohesion is a guiding set of EU principles to achieve sustainable development. However, evidence suggests that within and across rural and peripheral regions in particular, prosperity and social and economic wellbeing continue to lag behind other regions. The aim of this article is to examine how a spatial justice perspective can provide new development…

COVID-19 has had unprecedented impacts on urban life on a global scale, representing the worst pandemic in living memory. In this introduction to the first of two parts of a Special Issue on urban public health emergencies, we suggest that the COVID-19 outbreak, and associated attempts to manage the pandemic, reproduced and ultimately exacerbated the…

As new municipalism comes of age, prefixes proliferate: from democratic and autonomist to post-growth and care municipalisms. How do all these variegations relate to each other and to the wider movement of which they claim a part? What does all this conceptual creativity amount to, epistemologically and politically? How can we distill the most salient…