Consumption,Environmental Sustainability and Human Geography in Australia: a Missing Research Agenda?

‘Consumption’ is a central concept in the global environmental sustainability agenda. However, one important argument from Agenda 21 — that all social actors must now practise ‘sustainable consumption’— has been publicly and politically marginalised in high‐income countries such as Australia. Geographers potentially have a role in bringing consumption back onto the agenda by constructing a critical geography of consumption. Such research can help understand how the contextual use of natural resources is perceived and practised, and how consumption helps to shape contemporary social relations. This body of knowledge is vital for building sustainable development into everyday lives. Yet a focus on urban consumption perceptions and practices appears somewhat lacking in Australian geography. Ways forward can be drawn from international geography, such as in the United Kingdom where a substantial body of work has drawn a complex picture of contemporary consumption and environmental understanding. It has also challenged prevailing ‘ecological modernisation’ policy approaches, which ignore consumption's cultural facets. In sum, considering consumption in Australia can offer insights into cultural practices expressed through consumption; can challenge and add to European geographical literatures, and can also contribute to sustainability debates by offering alternatives to currently ineffective policy discourses.     

Uncommon Groundings: Fred B. Kniffen's Place in Current Cultural Geography

Fred Bowerman Kniffen's academic career started in the 1920s at a time when cultural geography in North America was getting underway. For more than 60 years, Kniffen played a prominent role in its formation and elaboration. His contribution centered on material cultural studies, particularly folk housing, and the patterns and processes of the diffusion of the cultural elements of ordinary people. However, Kniffen's legacy within contemporary cultural geography extends beyond these central concerns. This essay examines Kniffen's relation to mass or popular culture studies, material culture studies, Berkeley school cultural geography and the "new" cultural geography. It considers the bases for Kniffen 's appeal to a diverse following, and suggests why his contributions will not be soon outmoded.     

Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism: Situating al-Qaeda and the Global War on Terror within Geopolitical Trends and Structures

Two North American political geographers situate contemporary terrorism in the world within broad historical trends and geopolitical structures. They employ Rapoport's "four waves of terrorism" to illustrate the changing geography of terrorism (from an intrastate to an international phenomenon) and place it within the context of broad historical shifts in modes of warfare that envisages terrorism as a form of war stemming from imperialism and state-building. The authors broaden the structural setting of terrorism to include geoeconomics and the concept of relative deprivation, using empirical analysis to argue that contemporary terrorism is primarily a feature of the semi-periphery of the world-economy (middle-income countries). Specific characteristics of the Global War on Terror are interpreted by relating processes of imperialism and state-building to a situation in which the U.S. is facing geopolitical challenges and a possible decline in global-power status. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: I390, O100, Y900. 3 figures, 1 table, 52 references.     

Humanists and Travellers,Gorgons and Gorillas: Hanno the Navigator's Periplus and Early Modern Geography (1530–1630)

This article is concerned with early modern interpretations of Hanno the Navigator's Periplus, an ancient travel account of a Carthaginian voyage down the coasts of Africa. The early modern period saw a rise in interest in geographical knowledge, and the ways in which different authors used Hanno's voyage reflects their understanding of the role of geography in conceptualising the world. In these discussions, writers had to negotiate between the confusing portrayals of the voyage in the received classical tradition and new reports brought by voyages of exploration. Here, I will discuss how these syntheses between humanist methods and contemporary travellers' accounts were shaped by the economic and political concerns tied to the first wave of European overseas expansion. Amid this climate, ancient geographical knowledge found pragmatic applications in contemporary issues of navigation, commerce and claims of territorial possession, as well as shaping European perceptions of ‘self’ and ‘the other’. This paper thus seeks to situate humanist practices and classical knowledge within the wider context of overseas voyages and early modern political and economic developments.     

Regional Journals in Geography: A Vision for the 21st Century*

Abstract

This paper (originally published in The North West Geographer, 1997, 1(1), 2–17)) contributes to the debate on journals in geography and the production of geographical knowledge by considering a hitherto neglected issue – the role of regional journals of geography. Initially, an overview is provided which considers issues such as the status of the regional journal within the discipline and its fortune relative to the changing concerns of geography in the late 20th Century. A case study of The Manchester Geographer then critically appraises this particular journal's contribution to geographical knowledge. Finally, and in conclusion, some suggestions are offered which it is believed would ensure that regional journals perform a useful and unique role in the production of geographical knowledge in the 21st Century.     

An interview with Anne Buttimer: an autobiographical window on geographical thought and practice 1965–2005

Anne Buttimer's 40 years of geographical publications have been influential and international in scope. She has also played an important institutional role within the International Geographical Union, culminating in her presidency 2000–2004. The relative invisibility of women's geographical work in histories of the discipline needs to be redressed and it is hoped that this interview might contribute to that wider project. After a brief biographical sketch, the bulk of the article is devoted to an (auto)biographical interview, which addresses Buttimer's work on social geography, values in geography, the humanist and phenomenological schools, the Dialogue Project, and environmental issues, as well as her own gendered career experience and perspectives on gender issues. While Buttimer does not deem herself a theoretical feminist per se, her work has shown sensitivity to gender issues through her concern for the human perspective on geographical issues and knowledge.     

Féministes tant qu’il le faudra! The multiple possibilities of francophone feminist geographies au Québec/Canada

Abstract

This article offers a brief overview of the development of francophone feminist geography in Canada. We begin by situating the review geographically, in order to explain our focus on francophone feminist geography produced in Québec. We then discuss the origins of feminist francophone geography in the 1980s, highlighting the central role of the student reading group, the Collectif de lecture sur l’espace et les femmes, that was formed during that period at l’Université Laval. Tracing the research trajectories of feminist geographical research since then, we argue that feminist geography has become more diverse, but ironically less visible. We conclude by highlighting the central role that graduate and undergraduate students play in pushing forward a feminist geography agenda as they demonstrate the importance of feminist politics era through their research and activism.     

Evolutionary economic geography: reflections from a sustainable tourism perspective

ABSTRACT

Evolutionary economic geography (EEG) is receiving increasing attention from tourism geographers with over 30 publications explicitly incorporating EEG into tourism between 2011 and 2016. Many of these contributions are conceptual, which is not surprising given the novelty of EEG within economic geography, in general, and tourism, in particular. However, a sizeable number of these are built on detailed case studies, using EEG as an analytical lens rather than as a conceptual point of departure. Thus, many tourism researchers have found that EEG has great potential for understanding change in tourism destinations. In this Research Frontiers paper I critically reflect on this early research of EEG in tourism geographies from a sustainable development perspective. In the cases presented, EEG offers a fresh understanding of two related challenges in each of two separate aspects of sustainable tourism development. First, pro-growth governance models can be disrupted by engaged local stakeholders in order to make tangible sustainability gains but these gains remain precarious over time as pro-growth governance models prove tenacious in the very long-term. Second, regional institutional legacies hamper new path emergence in two ways – through institutional inertia which keeps the region's focus on past success in other sectors and through the (possibly competing) institutional imperatives of the dominant and emerging tourism sub-sectors or sub-regions. These challenges are illustrated through two complementary Canadian cases drawn from the extant literature – the mass tourism destination of Niagara and the resort community of Whistler. I highlight how a sustainable tourism perspective can also help to critique EEG theory and empirics in line with other recent political economy critiques in economic geography. I conclude that sustainable tourism, at its best, is an established reflexive lens which will help to develop, validate, and challenge aspects of EEG theory within tourism studies, in particular, and economic geography, in general.     

近二十年来中国文化地理学文献分析

自20世纪80年代以来,我国的文化地理学得到了长足的发展。本文搜集了1985-2004年的文化地理论文文献,将论文按地理类、学报类和其他类三类期刊进行统计分析,运用文献分析的方法,分析了我国文化地理学期刊载文数量的时空分布特点、作者生产率、作者地域分布和单位分布、论文资助情况以及文献研究的内容等方面的问题,揭示了近20年来我国文化地理学发展的状况和特点,为我国文化地理学者了解和把握文化地理学研究热点和发展趋势提供依据。     

Searching for good practice in postgraduate education

Regional geography courses have declined in status and number at many North American universities. Yet it is regional courses which students with limited geographical education at the high school level may identify as typical geography, and thus regional courses may play a significant role in recruitment of geography majors. Regional courses on the students' country or state/province offer an excellent opportunity to showcase how geographic perspectives can enrich our understanding of the familiar, both in terms of place and discipline. This paper discusses the pivotal role a regional geography course has been given in a new university's geography curriculum, and the innovative structuring of the course so as to avoid some of the deficiencies of common instructional patterns which may deter some students from pursuing further geographic education.     

新常态下中国人文地理学空间探究的时代宿命

本文从社会发展与区域科学承担的使命关系出发,论述人文地理学创新侧当代供给的使命,称为新人文地理学。在论述发达国家后现代人文地理学使命的基础上,依据"民本"性的新人本主义公正思想,首次系统论述主流新人文地理学研究空间公正结构的价值思想、理念与理论指向及其内容;其次,借鉴发达国家建构新人文地理学与社会及其区域学科的融合机理,具体地论证该学科具有对空间建构的最终人本判识学理性及其指向;中国已进入社会公平与空间公正建构的时代,本文争鸣性倡导国内人文地理学的研究必须从物质空间结构的景观功能研究转入到以提高人本价值生活质量的社会空间结构、行为空间结构与文化空间尊严结构的建构探讨方面。该方向不但是中国时代要求的使然,也是该学科对当代社会知识供给的宿命,同样也是与区域科学共同构建区域统筹发展与空间全面公正构建的学科融合宿命。在此基础上本文还首次提出社会与空间价值统一的"新区域经营理念"、"区域同步发展观"及其对应"空间体系价值统一规划"研究的新朝向。     

Feminist Geography 30 Years on – They Came,They Saw But Did They Conquer?

Feminist geography emerged in Australia in the 1980s, spurred on by the local Women's Liberation Movement and inspired by the academic activism emanating from England, Canada, and the United States. Producing critical evaluations of male‐dominated geography departments, curriculum, and journals, feminist geographers proceeded to stake claims in each of these spheres while also substantially revising the content of geographical research. There were significant interventions into urban, social, cultural, and economic geography and in environmental discourses, as well as into the gendered research process. Having arrived, identified, and addressed these issues, the discipline was critiqued and transformed over the 1980s and 1990s. Crucial to the strength of this critique were key individuals, the Gender and Geography Group within the Institute of Australian Geographers, and the role played by journals such as Geographical Research and the Australian Geographer in providing spaces for feminist work. However, as the new century dawned, the agenda changed and the anger and urgency dissipated as the broader and university contexts altered. It was a period of consolidation, as feminist insights and approaches were focused on key subject areas – such as the home, identity, and sexuality – and became more mainstream. However, is this work and the presence of women in the academy an indication of success or of co‐option? This paper will trace these various shifts – from the arrival to the mainstreaming of feminist geography – and analyse what might be read as a retreat from feminist politics and practice within the discipline in Australia. I will conclude by re‐stating the case to advance a new feminist agenda in the face of continuing gender inequality within the academy, in Australia, and across the globe.     

南京大学经济地理学发展历程与展望

南京大学是我国地理学研究的重要阵地,在经济地理学领域更是有着深远的影响。本文基于对地理学刊物上发表论文的统计,对南京大学经济地理学发展的历程进行了系统的研究。南京大学经济地理学发展主要分为快速发展期、波动停滞期、复苏繁荣期、蓬勃发展期等四个阶段。在研究内容上,主要涉及区域经济与区域发展、交通地理学、空间结构与空间布局、产业集群与新产业区、企业与区域增长、低碳经济与可持续发展、全球化的经济活动、技术进步与信息化、制度经济地理学等9个主要领域。这9大领域在国内学界有着重要的影响。最后,展望南京大学经济地理学学科发展,提出新经济地理学、制度转向/文化转向、服务国家需求是未来研究的三大主要方向。     

Giorgio Agamben and the new biopolitical nomos

In this paper I reflect on the progressive normalization of a series of geographies of exception within Western democracies and, in particular, the relation of these to the new biopolitical power that is progressively affirming itself in our everyday lives — and that appears to be imposing itself as the new, secret, ontology of the political. I do so by engaging with the work of Giorgio Agamben and, specifically, interrogating the spatial architecture that underpins his theory of sovereign power. Starting from Agamben's spatial conceptualizations, I explore his attempt to trace the contours and the secret coordinates of the contemporary biopolitical nomos, a nomos rooted firmly in the crisis and progressive demolition of that which Carl Schmitt described as the ius publicum Europaeum. I note, moreover, how the definitive dissolution of the geographical nomos that had dominated the two centuries preceding the First World War, and the lack of a new, alternative, geographical nomos in the century which followed, can also be grasped by critically rereading some key episodes in the history of European geography; in particular, the contested legacy of the work of Friedrich Ratzel's grand geographical project and the Geopolitik experiment. What I suggest is that to understand the deep nature of the geographies of exception that arm the global war on terror, it is vital that we think in terms of a theory of space in order to try to unveil the Arcanum, the secret enigma of the empty centre around which turn the wheels of a new, macabre, geo‐biopolitical machine.     

Reassessing Human Geography in the Wake of China's Rise

A prominent human geographer, introducing a series of papers in a Eurasian Geography and Economics mini-symposium devoted to China's emergence, surveys the myriad global impacts of that country's rapid recent rise. The topics covered include the economic (i.e., rapid growth in the size of China's economy, preeminence as an exporter of manufactured goods, and role as a major natural resource consumer, overseas investor, and purchaser of U.S. debt obligations), the geopolitical (increasing involvement in international organizations, rising assertiveness in defense of territorial claims), and the environmental (e.g., carbon footprint, accelerated urbanization, dam building), as well as the implications of China's rise for the study of geography and development. He argues that assessment of the consequences of the country's emergence should not be based on simple extrapolation of present trends, but must take into account a number of looming questions relating to the competitiveness of China's manufacturing labor force (vis-à-vis other developing countries), capacity to innovate (as well as imitate), and transformative societal impacts of modernization and development.     

D'Arcy Thompson's ‘On Growth and Form’ and the Rediscovery of Geometry within the Geographic Tradition

Abstract

D'Arcy Thompson (1960–1948) was one of the most celebrated biologists of his day, best known for his On Growth and Form (1917) which was the first successful biophysical explanation of the size and shape of organisms. In particular, his concept of allometric growth and theory of transformations have informed cutting edge research in biometrics and practice in the fields of fine art, urban design and civil engineering. He was a seminal figure in the development of the spatial analysis tradition within geography in the 1960s and 1970s underpinning major contributions by Haggett and Bunge and inspiring Tobler to develop cartograms which liberated map projections from sole reliance on Euclidean geometry. Re-assessing his contribution to geography fifty years later, it is still to be found in Batty's work on the size, shape and scale of cities and in Dorling's World Mapper project. This re-discovery of the importance of geometry within the geographic tradition over the last half century owes much to Thompson who spent the whole of his academic life in the University of St Andrews and (what was later to become) the University of Dundee.     

Step lightly,then move forward: exploring feminist directions for northern research

I discuss the methodological challenges that research with Aboriginal women poses in historical geography, especially in Northern Canada. Drawing a parallel between historical geography and contemporary Northern studies, I explore how the predominance of climate change as a framework for funding Arctic research creates an environment where women's specific ways of knowing and connecting with the land are not adequately captured. A gender approach that is sensitive to the issues women face in their communities reveals that their experience of climate change, as well as the concerns they have about it, are inseparable from the other economic and social issues they face. I argue for the development of a feminist research agenda in the North that allows Aboriginal partners to locate themselves in the frameworks that are constructed for producing knowledge. At times letting the project ‘fail’ may be the surest way to enable the emergence of a locally‐driven agenda that addresses the present and future needs of Northern Aboriginal Peoples.     

Still a long way to go: gender and feminist geographies in France

Abstract

After recalling some specific elements of the French gender debate, such as French feminism, which threatens the war of the sexes and the fear of indifference, this article distinguishes three moments in the geography of gender in France. The first moment forgotten is the emergence of research on women’s work and urban mobility from a Marxist and feminist materialist perspective. The second, at odds with the first, is distinguished by an approach that is more cultural than social, an inspiration that borrows from the linguistic shift and postmodernism, and that may have its references among the English-speaking authors of radical geography and feminist geography. The last is a moment of consolidation and diversification of themes (masculinities, sexualities, the body) and approaches (queer geography, black feminism, intersectionality). The article then highlights two challenges. The first is to sustain gender by consolidating achievements, developing gender education and promoting gender mainstreaming in all aspects of research. The second is to create common ground and develop solidarity in a context of profound transformations in higher education and research.     

重申全球化时代的空间观:后现代地理学的理论与实践

"空间"是人文地理学研究的核心概念。全球化时代,空间概念的内涵与外延都发生了重要变化。本文通过重述后现代主义哲学、当代城市与区域空间重构的社会实践、当代人文地理学前沿理论三者之间相互印证的理念与事实,重申全球化时代的空间观为空间与社会辨证统一的后现代空间观,并阐述了其对当代人文地理学研究的重要意义。