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This paper uses Leon Trotsky’s theory of Uneven and Combined Development (UCD) in order to transcend both globalising and methodologically nationalist theories of the global political economy. While uneven development theorists working in economic geography have demonstrated the logical corollary of capitalist development and the completion of the world market in the persistence of geographic unevenness, they fail to specify or problematise the role of states in this process. This leads to an ambiguity about why the states system has persisted under conditions of deep economic integration across states. State theorists, meanwhile, tend to exclude the world market and system of states as conditioning factors in state (trans)formation. For this reason, much state theory offers only a contingent account of the relationship between patterns of capital accumulation and states’ institutional forms. Geopolitical economy, with its focus on the competitive interrelations between states as constitutive of capitalist value relations, is well placed to transcend the pitfalls of these twin perspectives by closely engaging with the theory of UCD. UCD provides a nonreductionist means of integrating global processes of capital accumulation with their distinctive and peculiar national mediations. A research programme is developed to operationalise UCD for purposes of concrete research – something lacking from recent development in the field.

Toward the end of the 20th century, some work within political theory, of a kind that primarily foregrounds ethical considerations and another kind within political geography that links such ethical concerns to explication in terms of social space, territoriality and scale, has resuscitated the notion of contingent universality as an alternative to the either/or embrace or rejection of universality (and consequent denigration/celebration of particularity). As witnessed by the so-called spatial turn in many of the social and cultural sciences, this very circumstance, at least in the English-speaking world, has been one wellspring of current interdisciplinary interest in various geographical concepts and traditions. For political geographers, the idea of contingent universality arguably invites a fecund perspective from which to reflect upon a range of substantive and epistemological outcomes, which this essay will argue, are densely bound up in what, in short hand, is labeled globalization.

Travel and tourism have had a long history in the Nordic countries, but research on tourism has a relatively short tradition in the region. Recently, academic interest in the Nordic tourism space has grown and diversified especially as a result of increasing numbers of academics and institutions involved with tourism geographies and studies and education in the region. The Nordic context has provided thematic focus areas for empirical studies that characterize tourism geographies in the region, with topics including nature-based tourism, utilization of wilderness areas, second-home and rural developments, impacts in peripheries, and tourism as a tool for regional development. In addition, there are emerging research themes outside of the traditional core topics, such as urban, events, and heritage tourism.

To properly assess the relative places of China and the United States in the world system, the fact of the transformation of old, and the emergence of new, centers of capital accumulation needs to be established, and some attempt made to develop means of measuring these developments. This paper, working within the framework of Uneven and Combined Development, will suggest a new metric by which we can assess the geography of capital accumulation in the world economy, a metric with three components. The first component examines national income, both per capita and as shares of the world total. The second component refines the latter to an examination of share of world manufacturing, with a specific examination of distribution of the key sector of high-technology manufacturing. The third and final component examines the distribution of large corporations through the world economy, and introduces a new term – the relative weight of large corporations. All components of this metric suggest that key aspects of the modern economy remain “territorially bound” and clearly reveal the steady, long-term decline of the United States as the dominant center of capital accumulation, and the simultaneous emergence of new centers of capital accumulation in an increasingly multi-polar world economy.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a systematic literature review of the research published on financial inclusion (FI) and financial exclusion (FE) in developed countries using key terms and strict inclusion and exclusion criteria.

In total, 52 papers were deemed to be relevant to the analysis. These works were critiqued using a framework that addressed geographical contexts, topics, methodologies and theoretical frameworks.

This review highlights the uneven level of development of the academic debate between North America, the UK and continental Europe, and identifies the different theoretical frameworks that construe the body of literature in each region. In addition, the findings show the scant offer of work on the impact that the digital economy has on FE, as well as the reduced number of studies which have focused on certain vulnerable groups and the access to some financial services.

The studies reviewed have not analyzed the specific needs of vulnerable groups while considering the different contexts and pathways to exclusion. The evaluation of solutions and strategies to achieve inclusion is one of the least addressed aspects in the literature.

The paper synthesizes the main contributions of the top literature on the redefinition of FI/FE in developed countries, the role of fringe services and new determinants of exclusion. The proliferation of studies regarding FI in low- and middle-income countries has generated a great amount of meta-analysis and systematized reviews of asymmetric results. However, no systematized literature review on the broad scope of FI/FE in developed countries has been published in the last decade. This work sheds light over poorly analyzed areas of research that refer to notable social problems.

This chapter reflects upon the trajectory of research in the geography of tourism in Spain. It begins with a review, including the evolution of the main topics present in the subdiscipline, with a special focus on developments since the 1990s. This is followed by an analysis of the current role and potential impact of academic tourism geography and a discussion on the recent growth in the publication of research results in international journals. Of importance are the institutional factors that explain the increasing recognition of research on the geography of tourism in Spain. Finally, the chapter discusses the hegemony of positivist approaches pivoting on land use, local and regional development, impact analysis, and landscape transformation, as well as the emerging links between Spanish tourism geography and the international mainstream schools of thought.

Depending on the research approach one uses, the development of particular bodies of knowledge over time is the result of a combination of agency, chance, opportunity, patronage, power, or structure. This particular account of the development of geographies of tourism stresses its place as understood within the context of different approaches, different research behaviors and foci, and its location within the wider research community and society. The chapter charts the development of different epistemological, methodological, and theoretical traditions over time, their rise and fall, and, in some cases, rediscovery. The chapter concludes that the marketization of academic production will have an increasingly important influence on the nature and direction of tourism geographies.

The relationship between changing geographies and the notion of citizenship is outlined. As well as focussing on the transformation of the nation-state, it is argued, it is necessary to concentrate on other kinds of geographical transformation. These include changing regimes of mobility, the privatisation of public space and the salience of belonging at the local level. The paper insists on the importance of geography (both material and imaginative) to the process of making up the citizen and this is illustrated through considerations of the ‘denizen’ and the ‘shadow citizen’ in relation to their various geographies. In each case issues of place and mobility lie at the heart of the process by which citizens and their other come to be defined and lived. Recognizing the geographical constitution of the citizen means thinking about the citizen not as a self-sufficient individual body but as a ‘prosthetic citizen’ who is a product of the assemblage of the body and the world.

We start from the assertion that the concept of “global citizenship” is neither simple nor stable. Rather, it is a contentious idea that is often uncritically based upon assumptions of the “global” and “citizenship” as positives. In geography, however, the “global” and how it relates to the idea of the “local” is a complex and debated concept. Drawing upon critical geographic theories of scale, we suggest that the concept of global citizenship should be thoroughly interrogated to understand its problems and paradoxes as well as its possibilities. In this chapter, we offer one such interrogation grounded in the experiences of designing and implementing the Parks and People experience. We identify tensions within the program such as how to sell the program, how to navigate between individual and group experiences, and how to simultaneously support one-time encounters and ongoing relationships. In exploring these tensions, we demonstrate how the everyday practices of “global citizenship” are enmeshed in uneven geographies of privilege. We suggest that our goal should not be to separate ourselves from such inequality, but, rather, to face the complexities of the relationships we are trying to foster in the name of promoting social justice.

Much of the contemporary literature surrounding the barriers to community self‐help in the advanced economies has placed great emphasis on capital‐orientated barriers, such as a household's access to financial capital, time capital, human capital and social capital. Focusing explicitly on one‐to‐one mutual aid, and drawing on rich qualitative data from two urban communities in the UK, this paper aims to re‐visit the barriers to participation that prevent households from doing more for others in their community. In particular, the paper explores a range of entrenched social taboos that underpin the contested spaces of mutual aid. These include: “being aburden to others”, “false expectations/ inappropriate gestures”, “being taken advantage of” and “being unable to say no”. Furthermore, the paper also addresses the potentially problematic implications that the nature of work undertaken through mutual aid has for the social relationships that are involved. Despite finding previous UK‐based research findings focused on capital barriers to be highly appropriate when considering mutual aid, the paper argues that the current emphasis placed on these barriers in policy and practice is disproportionate. To address this imbalance, the paper concludes that a greater awareness of socially‐orientated barriers must be forthcoming if a more nuanced and accurate reading of mutual aid is to be achieved.

The research that is used to inform the findings of the paper is drawn from 100 in‐depth semi‐structured questionnaires conducted within households in the urban wards of West Knighton and Saffron in the city of Leicester, UK. The methods are designed to generate both quantitative and qualitative findings that engage explicitly with the informal work practices of households.

The paper explores a range of entrenched social taboos that underpin the contested spaces of mutual. These include: “being a burden to others”, “false expectations/inappropriate gestures”, “being taken advantage of” and “being unable to say no”. The main conclusions argue that both social barriers and capital‐based barriers to participation in mutual aid must be given more equal consideration in future academic and policy‐making discourse.

The qualitative nature of the research makes it difficult to meaningfully extrapolate the findings beyond the case studies used.

The research focused on the informal coping strategy of mutual aid offers a deeper insight into this coping strategy. In exploring the various capital and social barriers to participation, the findings offer ways for popular, academic and political communities to reflect on their own approaches to informal volunteerism, and if appropriate these can inform future approaches tasked with tackling these barriers and harnessing mutual aid in society.

In discussing the barriers to participation, the paper gives new insight into the contested geographies of mutual aid at the household and community level. To successfully overcome these barriers and further promote mutualism and community self‐help is seen to be both desirable and necessary particularly following the formal economic crisis that has raised serious questions for the economy and society in recent years.

The research not only adds robustness to previous emerging findings related to the resource‐based barriers to participation in mutual aid, but it also constructively asserts the relevance and centrality of social taboos. The paper argues that these social taboos must form a core point of analyses whenever barriers to greater levels of participation in mutual aid are discussed.