Placemaking ‘experiences’ during Covid-19

This article explores the ways in which, during the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, AirBnb’s successful place-based Experiences product was reimagined as a live online offering, marketed to would-be tourists living under ‘stay at home’ orders. Using online ethnographic and interpretive analysis of these new virtual experiences, we highlight a series of core placemaking strategies employed by hosts of the once in-situ experiences to show how they reemerge as interactive digital placemakers. In doing so, we elucidate how live, multimedia digital experiences become part of an evolution in the creation of ‘placemarkets’ that are now fundamental to both global mobility and globalized commercial exchange in the experience economy. Beyond the technological features used for these placemaking experiences, we find that the experience hosts and their manifold strategies to substantively engage participants – particularly through igniting their senses – are at the crux of digital placemaking; it is the affective labor of the hosts that most contributes to experiencing emplacement.

Gaming the gift: The affective economy of League of Legends ‘fair’ free-to-play model

With its release in late 2009, League of Legends (Riot Games) has influenced the game industry in several profound ways. Known for its vast popularity and its pivotal role in pioneering live streaming and electronic sports, League of Legends is also noteworthy for its model of ‘fair’ free-to-play. Described by Riot Games and many industry professionals as ‘fair’ due to its lack of any ‘pay-to-win’ content ( Graft, 2013 ; Nutt, 2014 ), this model of free-to-play has gone on to influence a paradigmatic shift towards ‘games as a service’. In this study, the model of ‘fair’ free-to-play is critically framed as a lucrative affective economy involving reciprocal gift exchanges between players and commercial games developers. Drawing on 49 qualitative Reddit responses from players who buy in-game skins, this study positions the microtransactions of League of Legends as a notable example of affective economics that is bound up in reciprocal forms of commercial exchange. Framing this hybrid model of co-creative relations alongside examples from game, fan and Internet studies, it is the critical aim of this study to frame the microtransactions of League of Legends as an instance of affective valorisation. Paralleling the affective economics of various digital platforms, it is the view of this study that microtransactions in games should be considered as part of the same political economy of the Internet.

Method for Select Best AIS Data in Prediction Vessel Movements and Route Estimation

The prediction of vessel maritime navigation has become an exciting topic in the last years, especially considering economics, commercial exchange, and security. In addition, vessel monitoring requires better systems and techniques that help enterprises and governments to protect their interests. Specifically, the prediction of vessel movements is essential for safety and tracking. However, the applications of prediction techniques have a high cost related to computational efficiency and low resource saving. This article presents a sample method to select historical data on vessel-specific routes to optimize the computational performance of the prediction of vessel positions and route estimation in real-time. These historical navigation data can help to estimate a complete path and perform vessel position predictions through time. This Select Best AIS Data in Prediction Vessel Movements and Route Estimation (PreMovEst) method works in a Vessel Traffic Service database to save computational resources when predictions or route estimations are executed. This article discusses AIS data and the artificial neural network. This work aims to present a prediction model that correctly predicts the physical movement in the route. It supports path planning for the Vessel Traffic Service. After testing the method, the results obtained for route estimation have a precision of 76.15%, and those for vessel position predictions through time have an accuracy of 81.043%.

(Re)connecting the food chain: Entangling cattle, farmers and consumers in the sale of raw milk

This article investigates the growing market for cow’s milk sold directly from the farm, often known as ‘raw milk’. Drawing on qualitative research with UK raw milk producers we add new insights to the sociology of food by demonstrating how knowledge about the ‘goodness’ and ‘purity’ of cow’s milk arises and becomes powerful in producer and consumer groups. Our empirical findings highlight that for a small proportion of producers and consumers, raw milk helps to provide visual, gustatory and sensory points of contact. These contact points, we argue, address some of the contemporary concerns that have arisen over the source, content and ethics of milk by bringing together the means and ends of the food chain. Importantly within this process, cattle and farmyards help forge a powerful entanglement that sustains the commercial exchange. Our findings show that messages about ‘goodness’ and ‘purity’ in raw milk provide a timely counterpoint to the distancing and separation that characterises many modern food chains.

Pacific Alliance Facing Crises

The Pacific Alliance (PA) is an integration process that projects the commercial exchange of value-added products for its members. However, the external and internal crises have made the PA a volatile region in social and economic terms. This chapter analyzes the economic and trade policy trends in PA countries since 1990 and how they faced the different world and regional economic crises. From the particular analysis of the countries, there are similarities and differences in trade trends and the way to control crises. This chapter provides a general framework to review more specific approaches by sectors, industries, and companies.

Peasant Initiative and Monastic Estate Management in 10th Century Lotharingia

This paper examines the degree of economic and political autonomy of peasants in monastic estates in 10th century Lotharingia. While it is beyond doubt that local societies were deeply enmeshed in networks of aristocratic control, it is also possible to identify areas of autonomy. Monastic lordship was not all encompassing as it was structurally limited in its capacity to control every aspect of peasants’ lives and to prevent all forms of disobedience. Despite the violent and sometimes arbitrary nature of aristocratic power, negotiations between peasants and lords played an important role, especially as peasant households developed a form of subsistence economy that involved production for commercial exchange. In this context, some monasteries were willing to grant more productive means and autonomy to peasants. These initiatives were sometimes supported by a paternalistic «vocabulary of lordship» and a «moral economy» that patronized peasants, but could also be mobilized to support their interests.

France in the Levant: Trade and Immaterial Circulations in the “Long Eighteenth Century”

The article analyzes aspects of French trade in the Levant during the eighteenth century by tracing the link between commercial exchange, institutions, and socio-cultural interaction within the system of French échelles in the Eastern Mediterranean. As the paper argues, this trade not only acquired a primary relevance within Ottoman and French economies but also created institutional and social interdependencies that prefigured nineteenth-century developments. The study discusses how economic, institutional, and social aspects are highly intertwined, each of them playing a core role in explaining the relevance of the French presence in the Early Modern Eastern Mediterranean.

Historical dimension of the railway network, its economic and urban impact in San José de Cúcuta

The research aims to analyse the process of coverage of the railway network from England to San José de Cúcuta - Colombia, its impact as a transport system in the urban configuration. The research follows a qualitative approach from documentary analysis, which explores the historical particularities that make this process a significant event in the history of Colombia and the city of Cúcuta and quantitative by analysing mathematical models in productivity. It is concluded that the railway allowed the commercial exchange and development of the region, achieving its highest productivity in the thirties, and initiates a potential decline in the forties.

Hot stuff. Anatomy of the sex market at the dawn of the twentieth century

Drawing on a rich legal dossier on a violation of obscenity laws (the Trafford affair), this article studies the formation of a sex market in early twentieth-century Paris. Books and erotic photographs, contraceptives, sex toys and remedies for increasing sexual potency: the diversity of these products relating to sexual practices is clearly revealed by the case. The dossier demonstrates how this commercial enterprise drew on the benefits of industrialization, mass media and globalization for building its client-base and developing a transnational dimension. It also allows us to understand the strategies deployed to keep the sale of these objects clandestine, in a context where they were increasingly overseen by the authorities, revealing innovative forms of commercial exchange, based on an epistolary transvestism.