Editors’ Introduction

We are nearing the end of our term as editors of Southeastern Geographer. We are now actively working with the new team of Dr. Selima Sultana and Dr. Paul Knapp at the University of North Carolina Greensboro. The official editorial team transition date is July 1, 2019. The submission process through the Scholar-One website will remain unchanged. If you have not yet updated your Southeastern Geographer profile on ScholarOne, please do so; it will help everyone to be working with an up-to-date database. It is especially important that you assure that your contact information is correct and that you select three to four keywords for research expertise. You can easily update or join Southeastern Geographer’s Scholar-One database through our website using your email address. There is no cost, it increases your chances of being asked to review manuscripts (good for professional development), and we respect your privacy by not selling our database.

We also want to thank those who filled out our questionnaires at the 2018 SEDAAG meeting at East Tennessee State University. We appreciate the kind words of survey respondents along with constructive criticisms of how we can continue to meet the expectations of the readership. Surprisingly, only about half of the respondents actively publish in or cite Southeastern Geographer (e.g. every few years). Several suggested increasing social media presence. We’re confident that the new editorial team will continue to work with SEDAAG members and officers, building on the rich tradition of the journal to keep it relevant. The President of SEDAAG, Dr. Joann Mossa, is actively working to reinforce the ties between the society and the journal (see her column, this issue).

This issue of Southeastern Geographer contains four papers and two book reviews. Three of the papers touch on regional monetary issues, while the fourth paper provides innovative spatial analyses of tropical cyclones affecting the region.

In Transfer Payments in Appalachia: Understanding Changes in Per Capita Transfer Payments in an Integrating Region, Ryan D. James and Autumn C. James examine the role of transfer payments—e.g. non-wage income transferred generally through governmental social support systems—in one of the historically poorest regions of the United States. Governmental transfer payments require an individual to first file as well as meet eligibility standards that may change depending upon policy initiatives of prevailing power dynamics. Do local structures (e.g. unemployment) drive transfer payments rather than the neo-classic growth perspective that transfer payments are driven by specific industries? Can Appalachia be considered a homogenous region in terms of economic drivers reflected in transfer payments? What implications can be drawn to guide future policy initiatives? The authors suggest further avenues of research. Even outside of Appalachia, the implications to effectively direct governmental resources to support policy are intriguing, as well as the ways in which local structure tempers broader policy initiatives.

The Appalachian region is not unique among southern States in being characterized nationally as “underdeveloped” or “poor”. Yet Atlanta is home to Delta Airline, one of the largest international airlines. Darren Purcell and Cayton Moore examine how a multi-national corporation promotes its home region in Selling Southern Places: An Examination of Delta’s Sky Magazine City. Theirs is a case study in place marketing by a magazine striving to increase regional appeal to both businesses and tourists. Unlike most other investigations of place-based marketing, Purcell and Moore do not focus on a single locale, but rather on the media outlet of international airline with more than six million passengers/readers per month that are already traveling for business or tourism. Are there related themes among the profiles of Southern cities that might indicate a selling or branding of Southern identity? What is gained or lost in homogenization of Southern city profiles?

In Income Divergence Between Connecticut and Mississippi: Financialization and Uneven Development, 1970–2010, John Posey investigates the effect of financialization on economic inequality. In a synergistic study informed by scholarship financialization, world cities and uneven development, Posey problematizes neoclassical perspectives on income inequality. The comparative analysis of Mississippi, one of the poorest states, and Connecticut...