Gwiazdzinski L., Straw W., 2018, Geographies of the night. The night and the challenge to geography, Bollettino della Società Geografica Italiana serie 14, 1(2): 3-8. (original) (raw)

Geographies of the night. This is the title of this special issue of the Bulletin of the Italian Geographical Society, which brings together twenty authors, geographers and non-geographers interested in this long neglected dimension. Following on from pioneering work at the end of the 20th century, these authors are pushing exploration further, contributing both to our knowledge of this “ephemeral and cyclical space-time” – of its “inhabitants” and their practices, of the emergence of a particular “geographical object” and a “geography of the night” – but also to the unfolding of a field of transdisciplinary research, that of “night studies,” and to the advancement of a international “night scene” bringing together a variety of actors and extending beyond the domain of academic research. Twenty international contributions allow us to enlarge this reflection to different countries (Canada, France, Italy, Madagascar, Marocco, Switzerland, etc.) on three continents (North America, Europe, Africa), with a predominance of countries from the global North. These contributions range in their concerns from representation to questions of mediation and governance, as well as critical urban exploration, tourism, mobility, youth, partying and clubbing, not to mention “mutation”. The night is subjected to the tools of geography, and geographers from here and elsewhere highlight the key issues which surround it, from perspectives concerned with economy, the environment, the social and the cultural.