Health geography in Canada: where are we headed?

This paper overviews the emergence of medical/health geography in Canada. The paper discusses the key questions that Canadian health geographers have explored in the past two decades, how these enquiries have featured in the field and how they contribute to the wider discourse of human geography. It also addresses questions on emerging themes and where Canadian health geography will go in the years ahead. With shifting health landscapes in terms of changes in social, political and physical environments, and changes in health care restructuring, Canadian health geographers are entering a new phase of research, teaching and policy. The complexity of the questions that health geographers seek to address means it is necessary to continue to highlight the policy implications of their findings. Health geographers need to emphasize the public agenda through interdisciplinary research and by continuing to work with geographers in other subfields.     

Approaching the Approaches

Abstract

Students of political theology need a broad introduction to, and some understanding of how to distinguish between, varying approaches to the discipline. This article argues that differing approaches should be introduced in ways which emphasize the historical, theological, geographical, and ecclesial situatedness of their practitioners. Such introduction to the situatedness of various approaches should not pretend to be objective, but should be sympathetic. Those teaching political theology should also carefully incorporate their own situatedness, showing students how they are working within particular approaches themselves without reducing their teaching to advocacy for their own approaches. The proposal for teaching political theology argued here focuses on inviting students to become active practitioners of political theology, instead of mere consumers of information about the discipline.     

Gendering environmental geography

Despite sharing common interests in being advocates for social change, feminist and environmental geographers have yet to acknowledge interests they share in common. Environmental geographers, particularly those focused on policy and institutional analysis, have not embraced feminist theories or methodologies, while few feminist geographers have engaged issues associated with environmental policy-making. Our purpose is to initiate a dialogue about how linkages might be forged between feminist and environmental geography, particularly among Canadian environmental geographers working on institutional and policy analysis. We begin by illustrating that environmental geographers working on Canadian problems have neglected to introduce gender as an analytical category or feminist conceptual frameworks to guide their research. Second, we identify four feminist research approaches that should also be pursued in environmental geography. Third, we consider examples of how feminist perspectives might be incorporated in three themes of environmental geography: institutional and policy analysis, participatory environmental and management systems and alternative knowledge systems. Fourth, we consider two research frameworks—political ecology and environmental justice—and suggest that these may be useful starting points for integrating feminist analysis into environmental geography. Last, we summarise our suggestions for how future research of feminist and environmental geographers could benefit from a closer association.     

A space for feminist mentoring: the role of Geographic Perspectives on Women (GPOW) specialty group in higher education

Abstract

Higher education and organizations within academic disciplines are important spaces for mentoring and other forms of networking. These spaces, however, are often situated in environments that limit equitable and inclusive opportunities for early career and underrepresented scholars to effectively engage in mentoring. This paper contributes to critical feminist scholarship that examines how organizations in higher education can offer supportive mentoring spaces for women, early career faculty, and scholars from diverse backgrounds. The analysis focuses on the Geographic Perspectives on Women (GPOW) Specialty Group of the American Association of Geographers (AAG) as a space for faculty, students and other geographers to enhance their professional and personal success. Our analysis draws from the results of an international survey, a focus group discussion, and reflexive participation of feminist geographers aligned with this specialty group. We examine the ways in which this academic organization, and the informal and formal networks it cultivates, attempts to foster an anti-oppressive mentoring community of feminist geographers. We also analyze how these networks are shaped by and embedded in neoliberal institutions in the discipline of geography and higher education as a whole. This discussion offers important insights to growing research and initiatives that support mentoring for women, feminists, and others concerned with building more inclusive and socially just spaces in academia.     

Borderland spaces for learning partnership: opportunities,benefits and challenges

This paper uses case studies and secondary literature to critically examine how learning spaces inhabited by geographers might be used productively as borderland spaces for learning partnership. Borderland spaces are novel, challenging, permissive and liminal, destabilizing traditional power hierarchies. In these spaces, students gain confidence in accepting agency in learning, moving towards critical thinking and reflective judgement, thereby developing self-authorship. They acquire new knowledge, skills and facets to their identity. They also feel anxiety as they take on new roles and adopt a partnership ethos. Faculty must guide students to support their successful navigation into and out of borderland spaces.     

Reflections on the Efficacy of a Constructivist Approach to Teaching and Learning in a First-Year Bachelor of Environmental Management Topic

The dynamism of Environmental Management in the 21st century has predicted the need for students to emerge from tertiary programmes with a set of skills that are functional and more widely applicable in the contemporary workplace. To foster the development of such tools and skill sets, there has been an increasing trend amongst teaching practitioners to move from objectivist to constructivist views of learning and teaching. Using the theoretical heritage of constructivism, we in this paper offer an example of the effectiveness of constructive alignment in teaching tools and assessment methods for first year Environmental Management students. Drawing inspiration from the successes reported by Biggs et al. (2010) and Park (2003), we offer further discussion on the merits of such approaches, but from a first-year undergraduate cohort. Through a discursive analysis of student writings and formal feedback received through course evaluation questionnaires, we in this paper demonstrate how this combination of teaching methods led to a cohort that actively participated in their own learning. The results revealed that such methods could be successfully implemented at earlier stages of Environmental Management degree programmes, to encourage normally pragmatic, minimalist work ethic, first-year students, to be active, enthusiastic learners both within and outside the University.     

Developing Geographers through Photography: Enlarging Concepts

This paper explores how photographs can be used to teach urban social geography to second- and third-year university students. In it the author describes her work acquainting students with the skill of ‘directed observation’. She argues that teaching geography through photography is not merely asking students to take pictures but rather, the process of looking with intention. Capturing what is seen on film encourages students to engage with geography by seeing how ideas ground themselves on the landscape. This work also challenges how geographers think about what they require of students and calls into question normative classroom practices. Most importantly, it adds to our understanding of concepts that are central to geographic analyses and heightens our awareness of how well students understand. Photographs provide an opportunity to hear multiple voices in multiple ways. The author suggests that the methodological and pedagogical contributions of photographs have been overlooked in geography.     

Avoiding the “F” word: feminist geography in Iran

Abstract

Little attention has been given to how feminist geography is defined, applied, and taught in non-Anglophone countries, especially in Muslim majority societies where Women’s Rights are quite different from the western world. The case of Iran among other Middle Eastern countries becomes even more isolated due to the several political, linguistic, and cultural limitations opposed on Iranian academics and international collaborations after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Women make half of Iran’s 80 million population, 63% of university graduates, almost half of informal workers, 30% of Iranian professors, 13% of high level management position holders, and under 5% of the Islamic Majlis (Iran’s Parliament). However, feminist geography, the sub-discipline that has been traditionally dedicated to the inclusion of gender as an analytical lens within Geography, is not a recognized field at any departments in Iran. This essay aims to present the current status of feminist geographic research and teaching at selected Iranian Universities. My goal is to offer a better understanding of how the local social and political context affect what constitute feminist geographic work and how geographers navigate the political and hierarchal university systems to engage in gender studies. Through informal interviews via emails and Skype with several Iranian geographers, I illustrate why Iranian geographers often avoid using “feminist” terminology in recognizing their work, even though their work is feminist.     

The Interview Hurdle to Postgraduate Studies and the Job Market

Abstract

This paper explores the educational value of a rural trail—a field visit on foot—using as an example a trail in a small area of countryside near Lancaster in northern England. This trail provides those teaching rural geography in higher education with a means of developing their students’ skills of informed observation and interpretation of field evidence based on study and discussion on‐site. A trail can enhance the appreciation and teaching of conceptual matters such as cultural approaches to rural geography. It also encourages the integration of diverse theoretical approaches to rural studies (based on culture, planning and management) and the simultaneous consideration by students of both local (often personal) details and national (or even global) pressures for change. The paper concludes that the rural trail has considerable pedagogical and academic merit for rural geographers.     

Geography,GIS and employability in Turkey

Although higher education in Turkey does not have especially well-advanced systems and resources for addressing graduate employability, two developments are making it particularly important for Turkish geography departments to give increased priority to this agenda. One is the country’s new Higher Education Qualifications Framework and the other is a major increase in geography student numbers, which means that geographers seeking school teaching posts (traditionally seen as the natural career pathway) now hugely outnumber the posts available. Against this background, this paper proceeds to explore the potential of geographic information systems (GIS) to contribute to geographers’ employability in Turkey through a study involving the views and experiences of academic staff, students and employers. The paper reveals a mixed picture of both opportunities and challenges. It ends with a series of employability recommendations for geography and GIS in Turkey, a number of which could also be of wider relevance elsewhere.     

Capital,Labour and State Relations in the Analysis of Enterprises and Restructuring: An Australasian Debate

The paper arises out of the debate of a group of Australian and New Zealand geographers who attended a workshop in ‘Enterprises and Restructuring’ held in Canberra in September 1988. The paper outlines a framework for a political economy analysis of processes at the heart of economic restructuring and examines the units of analysis, concepts and approaches used by geographers bringing different philosophic positions to the investigation of economic restructuring. It explores how the three threads of production, accumulation and social relations are intertwined in the study of enterprise and restructuring and how an understanding of these dimensions provides a basis for reinterpreting the utility of many analytical categories. The discussion of the meaning, relevance and content of terms such as enterprise, industry, capital and the state confirms the validity and value of concepts derived from different theoretical positions and goes some way towards demonstrating that researchers from opposing positions can meaningfully communicate and cooperate.     

Geography in Higher Education in Australia

Within the last 30 years, geographical information systems (GIS) have been used increasingly in the training of geographers. On the basis of the philosophy of technology and instrumental genesis, we sketch how the use of instruments interacts with learning processes and outline how this can be studied. We empirically analyse students' learning processes and the influences of teaching practice in an introductory course in GIS. We show that students have different strategies for creating their personal instrument for spatial thinking and how teaching interacts with the students' learning processes. Finally, we discuss how GIS may gradually alter future professional development of geographers.     

Islam: Issues of Political Authority and Pluralism

Abstract

Islam and the Muslim world are very much part of the current discussions on religion and global politics. This article looks at some of the more general debates about the gradual rise of Islam in the public and political consciousness. It is not a systematic analysis of Islamic political systems or political thought nor a discussion about key thinkers of the last century. It does, however, provide a glimpse into diverse views about leadership and governance in early and more recent Islamic history. The article concentrates more on Sunni Islam though the author is well aware that this is not the normative tradition in some parts of the Muslim world. Within the context of this diversity, it looks at issues of religious diversity and how they fit into current debates about inter-religious dialogue and pluralism.     

Passing Online Exams

Many controversial subjects characterize geography in the 21st century. Issues such as climate change, sustainability and social exclusion generate much discussion and often involve clear differences in opinion of how they might be addressed. Higher education is an important space for critical engagement with challenging issues. Preparing for and participating in debates enables students to develop critical thinking skills, alongside a variety of oral presentation and discussion skills. This paper reflects on the potential for teaching through debate in geography. The arguments are illustrated through a debate about whether asylum seekers should be allowed to work in the UK.     

Teaching visualised geographies: towards a methodology for the interpretation of visual materials

Abstract

This paper suggests a number of questions which can be used to structure a small‐group discussion about the interpretation of visual images. As many geographers now are demonstrating, geographical knowledges are very often visualised. However, there is currently little on offer methodologically to help students approach the interpretation of visual images critically. This paper hopes to start to remedy this situation. It begins by sketching a theoretical understanding of the meanings of visual images. It then suggests a number of questions that flow from that understanding, which can be addressed to a particular visual image in order to facilitate a discussion about its possible meanings.     

Geographic Connections: Language,Power Relations,and Relevance

The interrogation of language is crucial in all sub‐fields of geography and in related disciplines. This paper interrogates the terms nature, environment, sustainability, and resilience, given their importance in connecting geography with other academic pursuits and with people and organisations that make our discipline relevant. The paper explores how geography may be seen as ‘relevant’ while maintaining a constructively critical approach. It does so through the example of Sydney's metropolitan strategy/plan that was released in December 2014. The concept of resilience as defined and used in this new metropolitan plan fails to address transboundary issues such as climate change, raising concerns about sustainability. As such it serves the needs of political interests aligned with a growth agenda. This is one example highlighting that a challenge for many geographers is to maintain critical thinking while being relevant. It is an important challenge that geographers should relish.     

Can You Hear us Now? Voices from the Margin: Using Indigenous Methodologies in Geographic Research

Indigenous methodologies are an alternative way of thinking about research processes. Although these methodologies vary according to the ways in which different Indigenous communities express their own unique knowledge systems, they do have common traits. This article argues that research on Indigenous issues should be carried out in a manner which is respectful and ethically sound from an Indigenous perspective. This naturally challenges Western research paradigms, yet it also affords opportunities to contribute to the body of knowledge about Indigenous peoples. It is further argued that providing a mechanism for Indigenous peoples to participate in and direct these research agendas ensures that their communal needs are met, and that geographers then learn how to build ethical research relationships with them. Indigenous methodologies do not privilege Indigenous researchers because of their Indigeneity, since there are many ‘insider’ views, and these are thus suitable for both Indigenous and non‐Indigenous researchers. However, there is a difference between research done within an Indigenous context using Western methodologies and research done using Indigenous methodologies which integrates Indigenous voices. This paper will discuss those differences while presenting a historical context of research on Indigenous peoples, providing further insights into what Indigenous methodologies entail, and proposing ways in which the academy can create space for this discourse.     

Performing security: The imaginative geographies of current US strategy

Political geographers have recently focused their attention on the performative nature and imaginative geographies of US security strategies. This work has illuminated a number of mechanisms through which geographical knowledge has been interpreted and reformulated to support specific political agendas. This paper builds upon and develops the insights of these recent studies, arguing that current US security strategies are constructed around a policy of integration, whereby states are encouraged, through a range of measures, to mesh with attitudes and perspectives on the world. It assesses the ways in which these integration strategies are being performed, through an analysis of US National Security Strategy documents, the works of writers such as Kagan and Barnett, and the imaginative geographies and popular geopolitical representations of the US and its enemies. This paper contends that these practices combine to produce the effects that they name, bringing to life an imaginary geography that mirrors and supports the particular logics of the US-led ‘war on terror’.     

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS: CANADIAN GEOGRAPHY IN A MULTILINGUAL WORLD: THE IMPLOSION OF RELEVANCE?

Global social, political, and economic change during the past quarter-century has been profound, particularly in major areas with languages different from those usually employed by Canadian geographers. Surveys by the author suggest that senior Canadian geography graduate students, however, are inadequately prepared to assimilate primary world sources of information, including the relevant research literatures (except those published in this country's two official languages), and that few geography departments any longer require competence in more than one language at any level of study. Nevertheless, geographers and their students could benefit in many ways from foreign language expertise. Suggestions are made whereby geography departments could reinforce their existing rigorous training programs with foreign linguistic and area competence.