On Dittmer's Popular Culture,Geopolitics, and Identity as a classroom resource

In this intervention, four geographers, all of whom have used Jason Dittmer's book, Popular Culture, Geopolitics, and Identity, in their classes, assess its status as a teaching resource. All have had considerable success using Dittmer's book, alongside other resources, to cultivate critical thinking and critical knowledge production in a wide range of classes.     

Cultural Identity and the Canonization Of Music in Early China

This article shows that over the course of the Warring States period (479–221 BCE) authors began to organize and categorize music in a manner that helped define and reinforce their conceptions of themselves as a distinct cultural or ethnic group: variously referred to as the Huaxia, Zhuxia, and Zhou. By examining how Ruist (Confucian) authors articulated distinctions among various types of music, and by showing how such identifications denigrated nefarious forms not associated with the Zhou court and its culture, I show how authors endeavored in a process of musical canonization while also consolidating a sense of an ethno-cultural self. The fact that these writings distinguished among and evaluated musical types not primarily through a discussion of musical form or theory but via a morally-laden language rooted in the civilizing rhetoric of the day suggests that music was a primary site for formulating, expressing, and promoting cultural identity.     

The Citation Relationships between Journals of Geography and Cognate Disciplines

There is an ongoing debate concerning the relationship between the disciplinary ends of the broad spectrum that is geography and also the relationship between geography and other disciplines, including the extent to which it is self-focussed or inward looking. These issues were assessed using an analysis of citation relationships between journals in the Thompson Scientific Journal Citation Reports databases at the category level. Thirty-four categories were used, comparing the two geography categories (‘Geography’, representing human geography and ‘Geography, Physical’, representing physical geography) with 32 other cognate categories. A matrix of the citation relationships between each category was developed using a relatedness factor that corrects for the opportunity for citations to occur. The resultant matrix of factors indicates that human geography journals are considerably more likely to cite their own papers than are those of physical geography, but that they are by no means the most self-citing of the journals assessed. Both human and physical geography journals have strong citation relationships with several other disciplines, with those for human geography most often being net export relationships in the sense of a balance of trade. This finding contradicts previous assertions that human geography imports more than it exports. The citation relationships of physical geography are smaller than those of human geography, and are typically small net imports. The relationship between human and physical geography journals is a small net export from physical geography to human geography, but their total trade volume is considerably smaller than their respective relationships with other disciplines. These results are likely to be caused by many factors in addition to the actual relatedness between disciplines and sub-disciplines, but they do represent a benchmark against which more detailed analyses can be assessed.     

Research note: The Scottish household survey

Abstract

My personal recollection of the ‘relevance revolution’ in the 1970s is that it was a reaction to a quantitative geography that was overly-focused on technique and under-concerned with real-world issues. The consequent search for relevance took the form of a commitment to liberal- and left-leaning ideologies and issues. This differed from concepts of relevance as pertinence/timeliness, or as applied geography. Postmodern thought is significant in current debates on relevance in all three of its manifestations: relevance as commitment, pertinence and application.     

Announcing: The Janice Monk Lecture in Feminist Geography

In this brief announcement we have the pleasure of introducing the inaugural Janice Monk Lecture in Feminist Geography. The lecture will appear annually in the pages of Gender, Place and Culture. The first lecture, printed here, is by Ruth Fincher of the University of Melbourne. Her article is preceded by four papers that pay tribute to Jan Monk's academic achievements and her dedication to encouraging and guiding the careers of emerging scholars around the world.     

Dreaming of a Golden Bengal: Discontinuities of Place and Identity in South Asia

This article analyses five different representations of the homeland category “Bengal”. The region of Bengal was partitioned twice in the twentieth century and imagined in a multitude of forms at different historical moments. The article describes the conditions that allowed different territories and peoples to crystallise as “Bengal” and “the Bengalis”, and investigates why some versions of the Bengali homeland proved durable as others faded away. Rather than asking who is the real Bengali and where is the real Bengal, it investigates how particular identity categories become popularly practised and why particular images of the homeland come to be perceived as true, legitimate and authentic. It concludes that homeland categories are never fixed and finalised, but are rather always in a process of becoming, and are contested, reimagined and redefined as socio-political contexts change.     

Geographers in Their Ivory Tower: Academic Geography and Popular Geography in Paris 1931

Abstract: French academic geography achieved remarkable success during the 1920s making Paris an appropriate location for the XIIIth International Geographical Congress to meet in 1931. These scholarly activities were counterpoised by expressions of an exotic 'popular geography' at the great Exposition Coloniale staged in the French capital at the same time. At the Congress, French academics displayed their research achievements in denudation chronology, rural settlement studies and cartography, extending their work from the Hexagon to parts of the Empire. Patronage by leading professors in Paris and Grenoble clearly played a vital role in shaping the discipline. The location and content of excursions for visiting scholars also highlighted French achievements and suggested what remained to be done. Scrutiny of activities at the XIIIth IGC reveals a profession whose official pronouncements appear isolated from the momentous economic and political changes triggered by global depression at that time.     

Edgar Kant and The Rise of Modern Urban Geography

In every theory and worldview there are subjective and contextual elements. While knowledge is embedded and rooted in socio‐spatial contexts, it is also located in the bodies of researchers and travels with them. A travelling theory of knowledge is based on several context‐sensitive theories and concepts. This paper discusses Edgar Kant (1902–1978) and his work in the context of its important contribution to early modern urban geography. Kant as a person and his work is seen in the Estonian societal and academic context.     

社会心理学视域中的“社会认同”

社会认同理论是二十世纪八十年代以后逐渐兴起的社会心理学理论。伴随着全球化浪潮与社会认同、自我认同危机的逐渐显现,社会认同理论逐渐蔓延到社会学、政治学、民族学、人类学等社会科学研究之中,成为当代社会、文化、族群心理研究的重要理论之一。为了使我们更好地了解、运用社会认同理论,本文从社会心理学的角度就社会认同的概念、内涵及形成机制、支撑体系进行了梳理。     

Religion and relevance in human geography: Some further issues

In this paper I provide further discussion of a number of issues relating to the relevance of religion for a relevant human geography. These include the importance of a normative approach, the nature of relevant research, the implementation of research findings, and the value of a religious perspective for research in human geography and as an input to policy formulation.     

试论旅游形象的理念识别

本文从遗产类旅游产品和现代类旅游产品两个侧面,探讨了文化学范畴的旅游形象理念识别.     

论旅游地理学的研究核心

本文从闲暇、游憩和旅游三个概念出发,首先讨论了旅游地理学的研究对象。然后从旅游客源地、旅游通道和旅游目的地的分析提出了旅游地理学的研究核心,简析了每一项研究内容。最后结合中国旅游业发展的现状,探讨了90年代中国旅游地理研究应注意的问题。     

Cardinal Markers of Finland's Identity Politics and National Identity

This paper analyzes geopolitical themes prevailing in dominant sectors of the Finnish government and society that have shaped Finland's national identity from the early 19th century to the present. The focus is on the ways cardinal markers (compass directions) have become geopolitical and identity markers. Notions of "West," "Between East and West," "Neither West nor East," and "North" have been used both to position Finland on the world political map and to forge a Finnish national identity. The influence of Russia and Karelians are examined at some length as part of the eastern dimension of Finnish identity. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: O52, Z13. 1 figure, 1 table, 94 references.     

论人口地理学应用研究的发展

本文从应用研究角度对人口地理学发展作一次理论和实践上的分析探讨。通过对人口地理学应用研究发展历程的回顾,对比中西方在发展上的差异,指出我国人口地理学是从实践应用开始走入发展的轨道,但同西方人口地理学相比,表现出应用研究方面的相对不足,而在由八十年代进入九十年代之际,应用研究作为当今学科发展的动力,促进人口地理学应用研究的发展出现定量化、社会化、中微观化的趋向,进一步显示学科的理论应用价值。意在加强我国人口地理学的发展,注重以应用为目的,密切结合当前生产实际问题的研究,扩展应用研究的范围、深化应用层次,不断改进应用研究的方法。     

The Royal Indian Navy Mutiny of 1946: Nationalist Competition and Civil-Military Relations in Postwar India

This article argues for the importance of the Royal Indian Navy mutiny of 1946 in two key aspects of the transition towards Indian independence: civilian control over the Indian military, and a competition for power between Congress and communists that undermined Indian workers and their student allies. The article begins with an investigation of the mutiny drawing on three sources: a first-person account from a lead mutineer, a communist history of the mutiny, and the papers published in the Towards Freedom collection. In 1946 a handful of low-ranking sailors sparked a naval mutiny that ultimately involved upwards of 20,000 sailors, and then crashed into the streets of Bombay with revolutionary fervour. The Communist Party in Bombay seized upon the mutiny as an opportunity to rally the working class against the British raj, with the hope of ending British rule through revolution rather than negotiation. Yet the mutiny proved less of a harbinger of what was ending and more of a bellwether for what was to come. Congress, sensing the danger of the moment, snuffed out support for the mutiny, and insisted on a negotiated transfer of power. Congress’s action thereby set a precedent for civilian dominance over the military in post-independence India. At the same time, however, Congress betrayed the effectiveness of some of organised labour’s strongest advocates, namely the Communist Party, Bombay students and Bombay labour, thereby undermining their costly mass protest, and hobbling them in future conflicts against Indian capitalists.     

海外印度移民及印度政府的侨务政策

作为人口大国之一 ,印度与中国一样 ,有着庞大的海外移民群体及其后裔。目前 ,海外印度人已超过二千万人 ,分布在 1 1 0个国家和地区。上世纪 90年代以来 ,随着海外印度人对所在国和印度影响的增强 ,海外印度人在印度及海外都引起了比以前更多的关注。印度政府采取了一系列措施 ,以吸引更多的海外印度人投身印度国内的经济建设 ,为印度的发展作贡献。本文概述海外印度移民的基本情况 ,分析海外印度人与印度的联系及对印度的影响以及印度政府对海外移民的政策 ,希望从中能得到某些启示 ,从而对中国的侨务政策提供某些参考和借鉴。     

Shades of Orange: The Electoral Geography of Ukraine's 2004 Presidential Elections

Two American geographers and noted specialists on the electoral geography of post-Soviet Russia and Ukraine describe and analyze the three rounds of Ukraine's pivotal and highly contested presidential elections in late 2004. In an effort to shed light on the underlying demographic and socio-economic correlates of the vote (e.g., age, income, urban/rural residence, language/ethnicity), the authors pay special attention to changes among the rounds, providing background to widespread allegations of electoral fraud in round two (first runoff). Finally, they summarize results of bivariate and multivariate regression analyses that reveal which among the various correlates contribute most to explaining differences in the vote. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: H10, O18, R10. 6 figures, 5 tables, 26 references.