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.     

Kurangara in Queensland?: A Critique of Duncan-Kemp's Account

A particular historical travelling religious complex in northern Western Australia, usually known as Kurangara, has been the subject of anthropological attention since the late 1930s. Overlooked in all the literature is a similar account assigned to 1912–1918, in the distant Channel Country of southwest Queensland. This is in Alice Duncan-Kemp's last book, published in 1968. My examination shows that a good deal of Duncan-Kemp's account repeated parts of a 1954 popular magazine about Kurangara in the Pilbara. In other respects Duncan-Kemp may have drawn on her own childhood experiences, but in the absence of corroboration her account has to be considered unreliable.     

论我国文化地理学研究的前沿走向

基于研究历史及主要学科成绩的回顾,文章考察了我国文化地理学研究现状中学科性质定位、研究内容拓展以及研究手段、方法的变革等问题。认为我国文化地理学今后应该在科学的文化哲学的指导下加强学科理论的研究,充分吸收相关学科的研究成果,在加强渗透研究的同时突出地理科学的特色与优势;为了学科的良性循环和对地理学的发展做出自身贡献,还必须紧跟时代的步伐,强化学科在文化宣传与舆论导向的理性化、科学化,特别是在区域开发、旅游与城市规划、国家(地区)管理、民族政策制定等方面的应用功效。     

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.     

“Academic War” over Geography? Death of Human Geography at the Australian National University

This article analyses how neoliberal economic policies decide what particular aspects of knowledge are valuable and what are not, and who might be the true holder of that knowledge within the tertiary education system. This assessment leads to some disciplines being seen as less valuable to the system. It argues that the more recent “academic wars” in geography are over the very concept of the university and its role in the contemporary society, what comprises useful knowledge, and who comprises the authoritative figure in the production and distribution of that knowledge. Gender of the geographer therefore becomes a crucial element that determines “authority” in the production of geographical knowledge. To substantiate this argument, the paper takes up the important task of analysing the complex career trajectory of geography within the Australian National University (ANU), the department that was gradually reduced leading eventually to its unfortunate closure in 2009.     

White natures: Sydney's Royal Agricultural Show in post-humanist perspective

Few events perform so ritualistically the triumphal narrative of human ingenuity and agency over the natural world, as the metropolitan displays of produce and machinery known as agricultural shows. The Royal Agricultural Show held in Sydney (Australia) is a case in point. Since the 1890s those liminal forms, of Herefords, hay, harvesters and the like that spill over the categories we think of as culture and nature, have been annually assembled. In the showground, they were made to stand as testimony to the successful march of 'civilization' to the colony of New South Wales – with civilization conceived, in European and humanist terms, as a spatialized progression out of an animal-baseline in nature, through an agrarian garden, to the evolved space of the City. This was the trajectory that had long since been presumed to mark out the life of humanity from all other life-forms that simply lived . Rather than reinscribe the privilege of that partial perspective, I use the New South Wales agricultural society and its Sydney show's 'white natures' to think across the referential categories of humanity and nature. By critically juxtaposing the Show's hybrid things with its dramatizations of human invention and ingenuity, the article opens cracks in the normativities of civilization that shaped the conviction of 'the human' as the being who transcends the merely natural. In so doing, the article also offers a fresh line of critique of those pernicious hierarchies that have, and continue to assign, premodern people and livelihoods to an anterior developmental space.     

70年来中国历史民族地理研究的主要进展

历史民族地理是现代中国历史人文地理的一个分支,其研究成果涉及中国民族史、民族学(人类学)、历史人文地理以及边疆史地等多个学科。中华人民共和国成立70年来,历史民族地理的发展也经历了一个曲折而复杂的过程。改革开放以来,随着各个相关学科的蓬勃发展,历史民族地理研究成果丰硕,成绩斐然,已初步成为历史人文地理研究领域的一个重要分支。     

文化锋面的地理学诠释

文化锋面是指两种不同特质的文化相遇所形成的文化过渡现象,是两种社会气团之间的交错带。文化锋面具有不均质性、动态性、复杂性和地域性等特点。根据成因、形态、要素和演化状况等标准,文化锋面可分为许多不同的类型。与文化过渡区(带)、文化边界(界面)等概念相比,文化锋面不仅形象通俗,而且表达准确,内涵丰富。文化锋面和传统文化地理学主题具有密切的联系,但又相互独立,其研究对文化地理学具有重大的理论与现实意义。     

“Looking with intention”: using photographic essays as didactical tool to explore Berlin

ABSTRACT

Although photography has long been acknowledged as an important research method and didactical tool in human geography, we feel the need to redraw attention to this particular form of doing explorative research. Today’s society becomes increasingly “ocularcentral”, yet this trend seems unparalleled with a rise of photography in academic work. Based on 10-year experience of using photographic essays in our graduate course on Urban and Cultural Geography, we show how taking pictures can enhance active and engaged learning, spark feelings of enchantment, and stimulate critical, reflexive and non-discursive thinking by asking students to translate theory to practice and vice versa. Our students have “looked with intention” how certain geographical theories are “congealed” in Berlin’s urban landscape, specifically linking theory to empirical practice and vice versa. Despite the act of photography being inevitably partial, personal, biased, voyeuristic, colonial and possibly unethical, we believe that the enthusiasm and geographical gaze it brings into the classroom outweigh these limitations. The paper illustrates with multiple examples how the embodied practice of photography results in students carefully reflecting on the physical and social world around them and acknowledging the multimodality of the city, not just as built environment but also as a social sphere and lived place.     

The Leeds and Yorkshire Geographical Society c. 1902–17

The Leeds and Yorkshire Geographical Society was one of ten 'provincial' geographical societies in England and Scotland established between 1884 and 1910, of which five were in the North of England. It was conceived in about 1902, formally founded in 1908, but had ceased to exist after 1917. Virtually nothing has been discovered hitherto of the Leeds society's history, functions and contexts. This essay examines the evidence for its conception, inauguration, programmes of activity, and the broader local/civic, national and global contexts within which it operated. Its brief history sheds light upon: the need for commercial information to promote trade in an imperial context; the development of geographical thought in Britain and Western Europe; finally, popular curiosity about new geographical information and ideas promoted by geographical exploration and discovery. Comparison is made with the activities of other English ‘provincial’ geographical societies, particularly those in the North of England. The new evidence derives from papers in the West Yorkshire Archive Service Leeds, the archives and publications of the Royal Geographical Society, and the programmes of meetings promoted via the Society itself and the Leeds Institute, housed in Leeds Central Library, together with reports and advertisements in local newspapers.     

近10年国际社会与文化地理研究的发展及启示——基于《Social and Cultural Geography》论文的统计分析

世纪交替之际\"批判\"社会地理学和新文化地理学不断得到发展和壮大。在这样的背景下,2000年《Social and Cultural Geography》杂志应运而生。经过10多年的发展,目前该杂志已成为展示国际社会和文化地理学术研究成果的重要窗口之一。本文对《Social and Cultural Geography》2000-2010年刊发的516篇论文进行统计分析,从载文量变化、研究案例地分布和研究领域的关注度等方面分析其特征,在此基础上,对期刊设立的22个研究议题进行了内容分析,以期为国内社会和文化地理学者把握国际最新研究趋势,提升自身研究水平、拓展研究新领域,以及加强与国际研究的融合和促进自身发展等提供借鉴。     

新文化地理学视角下的女性主义地理学研究

在文化地理学研究向新文化地理学转向、女性主义运动蓬勃发展、女性主义理论在跨学科过程中日益完善的背景下,西方女性主义地理学从女性经验、性别权利、女性内部差异入手,提供了以女性主义视角分析地理学问题的新的发展领域,并发展出质疑与抵抗男性权威话语的学科范式。本文依循女性主义地理学中对身体、工作、空间和国家/民族等主要议题的探讨,梳理西方学者的研究进展,以期对本土研究提供有益借鉴。     

‘The races and conditions of men’: women in nineteenth-century geography school texts in the United States

Geography schoolbooks published in the United States were important opinion makers in the nineteenth century, often joining the Bible as the main source of information about the world outside North America. The texts examined here are noteworthy for their static and pejorative treatment of non-American cultures and may be seen as playing a key role in forming isolationist and chauvinist American public opinion. They also played a role in reinforcing ideas about the proper niche for women in American society, even though it may seem at first that these books could not have had much influence on ideas about American women because they barely mentioned women, almost always relegating them to illustrations and captions. The few women depicted were usually characterized as ‘poor souls’ in distant lands worthy of pity. We discuss the national political context in which these writers (many of whom were women) were producing geography school texts, the social roles they were fulfilling by reinforcing such limited images of ‘foreign’ women, and the sources they may have used in their research. Furthermore, we demonstrate that much more could have been drawn ethnographically from the illustrations of women. The images of women in these geography schoolbooks reinforced the marginalization of women, particularly non-white and non-western women.     

China and Geography in the 21st Century: A Cultural (Geographical) Revolution?

A noted Singapore-based cultural geographer and specialist on Asia reviews the recent emergence of cultural geographic research on and within China and the implications of China's rise for the study of 21st century cultural geography more broadly. She identifies six major issues modern China is confronting that, when addressed from a cultural geographical perspective, may both enhance an understanding of the country and reshape the practice of cultural geography as a subdiscipline: agricultural reform, economic reform, urban change, rural-urban migration and related social inequalities, the changing family structure, and environmental change. The author argues that if China's cultural geography is to help the subdiscipline at large develop a more international and inclusive approach, it must be driven by questions of significance in China, yield constructive answers of relevance to China, and at the same time derive theoretical ideas that diversify the collective geographical imagination.