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.     

J.G. Granö and Edgar Kant: Teacher and Pupil, Colleagues and Friends

This paper is adapted from an address given at the plenary session of the conference ’From Native and Landscape Research to Urban and Regional Studies‘ held in Tartu on 23 August, 2002, to mark the birthdays of J.G. Granö (120 years.) and Edgar Kant (100 years). The Finnish geographer J.G. Granö was Professor of Geography at the University of Tartu from 1919 to 1923, a period during which that university became the birthplace of many original geographical ideas. Edgar Kant was beginning his studies at that time, and a link was forged between the two scholars which lasted until Granö's death in 1956. The nature of this interaction and its significance for the history of geographical studies are discussed.     

移动地理研究的一种理论框架——基于文献分析

移动性是21世纪人文地理的研究热点和重要议题,它体现了空间科学的社会学转向,属于人文地理学的核心概念和中心命题,其中心性突出体现在它与其他传统和新兴的人文地理分支学科的交叉。本文以表格为工具梳理了地理移动性的研究理路,发现移动地理与其他人文地理分支学科共同聚焦的核心是：时间地理、旅游地理、行为地理的“时空行为”问题,政治地理、社会地理的“权力”“平等”“权利”问题,身体地理的“具身实践”“感官体验”问题,情感地理的“地方依恋”“身份认同”问题,想象地理的“地方感”问题,道德地理的“空间道德感”问题。本文识别这些关键问题为移动地理的“核心要素”,搭建移动地理的框架和体系,指出探查这些要素之间相互作用机制和不同时空移动类型的转化机理是未来移动性的研究方向。根据移动的空间尺度和时间强度,构建了包括日常移动、旅游和旅行移动到永久性移动在内的地理学移动性连续轴类型,并探索了移动地理研究的方法论体系。     

“This Greater Issue of Light against Darkness”: Sereno Edwards Bishop,Missionary Religion,and the Hawaiian Islands, 1827–1909

The history of nineteenth‐century missions provide a fruitful field to explore the development of religious thought and practice in a secular setting. This article shows how the religious views of the clergyman and educator Sereno Edwards Bishop, born in Hawai‘i of American missionary parents, were shaped by his childhood among the mission community in Hawai‘i and by his American college education. These instilled in him a liberal approach to theology that was informed by a spiritually alert sense of Hawaiian geography and environment. Contrary to the notion that he cast his faith aside in addressing matters of wider social and political importance, Bishop emerges as someone who thought critically about mid‐nineteenth‐century Protestant Christianity, grounding his perspective on politics, society, and natural history in Hawai‘i according to his religious principles. Given Bishop’s specific intellectual and cultural heritage, it is difficult to subsume his perspective within broader narratives of American expansion; rather, both Pacific and mainland American elements shaped the thought of such mission‐descended figures.     

21世纪的社区地理学

本文简述了社区地理学的形成、研究现状和面临的形势,对21世纪的社区地理学进行了展望。指出21世纪的社区地理学有12个热点课题,即:(1)社区发展合作组织;(2)社区发展;(3)社区环境;(4)社区规划;(5)社区管理;(6)农村社区城市化;(7)城市社区病态;(8)社区贫困;(9)社区经济;(10)社区文化;(11)精神社区;(12)虚拟社区。从目前世界范围内的社区发展运动看,从21世纪社区地理学研究的领域看,21世纪将是社区地理学的大发展时代。     

人文地理学空间思想的几次重大转折

理解空间思想的演变及其与人文地理学的关系具有重要意义。从思想史角度出发,可将人文地理学空间思想的演变划分为起、承、转、合四个阶段。康德从哲学角度第一次系统地界定地理学为专门的空间科学,抬升了地理学的学科地位。赫特纳-哈特向承袭康德的空间观,将空间科学的抽象规定与方志传统的实际历史结合,把地理学研究对象归约为区域。其后,人文地理学的空间思想出现了四次重大转向,分别是空间几何学、人文空间性、激进的空间、空间的生产;它们体现了人文地理学与数学、哲学和其它社会科学的紧密关联与交叉。20世纪80年代以来兴起的后现代空间思想某种程度上契合康德空间观,但在哲学理念和侧重点上存在很大差异。由于不同空间认识论都有其价值,价值大小也难以评估,所以人文地理学学科地位与身份问题的争论已趋于淡化,这提示了人文地理空间研究可采取多重面向。哲学和其他学科在为人文地理提供依据和工具,使得人文地理学身份陷入迷离的同时也为其增添了活力和魅力,这是人文地理学面临的最大机遇与挑战。     

Marinus of Tyre's place in the Columbus concepts

Summary

Thomas Jefferys (died 1771) was one of the most significant London mapsellers of the mid‐eighteenth century. He enjoyed an international reputation and apparent prosperity as a publisher of American and European maps during the Seven Years War. Yet in 1766 he became bankrupt. The paper offers an interpretation of Jefferys’ bankruptcy in the light of his business activities. After reconstructing the main phases of his career, the conclusion is reached that the causes of bankruptcy only operated in the period after 1765, when he became involved in the production of a series of English county maps based on original field survey. Hitherto, his maps had been compiled from inexpensive secondary sources; the field surveys involved a new set of costs which led to his failure.

The bankruptcy explains an otherwise puzzling change of ownership in some of his maps after 1765—especially the acquisition by Robert Sayer of a substantial share in his enterprises. These events may have wider implications in the history of eighteenth‐century cartography. Many map‐publishers were under‐capitalized and had to survive on low profit margins. These, in turn, may have retarded cartographical progress; the conclusion reached is that plagiarism was frequently an economic necessity for many mapsellers.     

Spinoza's counter-aesthetics

ABSTRACT

Spinoza says very little about art or literature in his work; a fact which partly explains the absence of references to him by the German initiators of aesthetics in the eighteenth century, including Baumgarten, Kant and Hegel. Spinoza's resolute opposition to teleology, however, provides an even more compelling reason for his absence, given the teleological conception of literary and artistic form common to the notion of aesthetics at the time of its emergence. Is it possible to fashion a counter-aesthetics from the materials provided by Spinoza's philosophy? I argue that his reading of the great Spanish Baroque writers, especially Luis de Góngora and Baltasar Gracián (whose works were found in his library), provided him with an alternative conception of literary form based on a rejection of formal coherence and closure in favor of constitutive incompleteness and an opening to the infinite.     

‘Certainly the Muslim is the very devil incarnation’: Islamophobia and The Merchant of Venice

In this paper, we examine Shakespeare's sixteenth‐century play, The Merchant of Venice. Anti‐Semitism is a key theme in this play. The well‐known central character, Shylock, is a Jewish man ridiculed and victimised because of his identity. Much literary research has been done on the anti‐Semitism of the play, and many social studies have compared anti‐Semitism and Islamophobia, but scarcely any research brings a Shakespearean play from the sixteenth century into the context of twenty‐first century Islamophobia. There are a number of similarities between the manner in which Shylock is ostracised and the current victimisation that Muslim communities are facing in Europe and more specifically the UK. With this in mind, we explore contextual and thematic elements of this play and argue that it is possible to apply the way Shylock is unfairly victimised on stage because of his identity as a Jew to the treatment of some Muslims today. In particular, the treatment he faces shares stark similarities with the types, impacts and consequences of Islamophobic hate crime today.     

Friedrich Ratzel and the nature of (political) geography

It is impossible to understand Ratzel's Politische Geographie without placing the figure of its author in the perspective of the critical bourgeois geography of the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth century. From this point of view, Ratzel is the last representative of this bourgeois movement born in the first part of the eighteenth century in Germany with the name of “pure geography” or “natural geography”, and developed in the following century thanks to the great works of Karl Ritter and Alexander von Humboldt. The purpose of bourgeois critical geography was to create a geographical discourse (a reasoning) able to transcend the identification between geographic knowledge and cartographic representation that was maintained by the Staatsgeographen—that is by the state geographers who defended the feudal aristocratic regime. But it is precisely this identification that German bourgeois geographers appropriated in the second half of the nineteenth century, after the bourgeoisie came into power through a compromise with its ancient political opponent. Only Ratzel, direct heir of the Erdkunde tradition of Ritter and von Humboldt, was an exception by opposing the new bourgeois state geography with his own state-based geography.     

Travelling down the road to postdisciplinarity? Reflections of a tourism geographer

Like many other forms of scholarship in geography, tourism geography has evolved as a distinct subfield of inquiry within the discipline, although the contributions of tourism geographers are perhaps more readily acknowledged in the multidisciplinary realm of tourism studies. I trace the evolving relationship of tourism geography to both the discipline of geography and to the field of tourism studies. In doing so, I reflect on such influences as the role of institutions, paradigm shifts, technology, and other factors that affect the creation and management of geographic knowledge in the twenty‐first century. The intent of this article is two‐fold: first, to appeal to geographers for greater recognition of the importance of tourism as a quintessential component of geographic study that in today's world warrants integration into core aspects of geographic enquiry; second, to use current debates within both tourism studies and geography to reflect on issues of disciplinarity, interdisciplinarity, transdisciplinarity, and even postdisciplinarity.     

Overview of Contributions in Geographical Analysis: Waldo Tobler

The academic contributions of Waldo Tobler are noteworthy and significant, spanning essentially all disciplines that involve the study of geographic phenomena. While much attention has been given to his observations of the first law of geography, there is much more substance to his larger body of research. It is especially fitting that this commemorative special issue is appearing in Geographical Analysis as Tobler published extensively in the journal, beginning in the first volume in 1969 up to volume 42 in 2010, making important contributions to quantitative theoretical geography. His research helped to build and sustain the journal, laying the foundation for what is the premier quantitative geography outlet today. This article reviews his publication activity in Geographical Analysis.     

Spekulation und Physik im 18. Jahrhundert. Lomonossow,Kant und Lavoisier in Sachen Erhaltungsgesetz und Äther

As far as the law of preservation of matter and the existence of ether are concerned, Kant, Lomonossow and Lavoisier had very similar views. Nevertheless, according to historical evidence they worked out their theories never taking each other's results for granted. Whereas it is well known that Lavoisier did not base his experiments on the former ones by Lomonossow, it has been argued that Kant based his philosophy of nature on Lavoisier's experiments. I try to show here, that Kant had his philosophy of nature done, prior to Lavoisier's Elements of Chemistry. Further that the only one to have been able to influence Kant was not Lavoisier but Lomonossow. But Kant never mentioned Lomonossow. There is strong evidence that the similarity of views in Kant, Lomonossow and Lavoisier is not due to any kind of interaction between them. This also holds of the (same) mistakes, which Kant and Lomonossow made. The only substantial difference is that Kant thought, that some laws of nature may be logically inferred without experiments.     

段义孚人文主义地理学的哲学视野

段义孚的人文地理学思想,在很多方面来源于20世纪哲学的发展。本文侧重于对他影响最大的实用主义、现象学和符号学三个领域,探索这些哲学思想如何或明确或潜在地影响了他的人文地理学观念。实用主义主要启发了他"日常经验"及其连续性和关联性的关注,符号学为他阅读建筑和城市的一些地理特征关系提供了帮助。而现象学则在更深远的意义上影响了他,从他最初批判地理科学的数学化方法,到后来他对时间和知觉问题的关注,以及由此产生的地方感问题,均在现象学的视野下展开。此外,他以描述和归纳呈现一个"人"的地理经验的视野,也源自与现象学"面向事实本身"的主张。本文最后提及中国哲学和智慧对他的影响,他有效地融合了东西方的思想,使之对人文地理学的发展起到了开创性的作用。     

Materialist hermeneutics,textuality and the history of geography: print spaces in British geography,c.1500–1900

This essay canvasses a range of recent work in literary studies and the history of science advocating a ‘materialist hermeneutic’, an approach to the study of texts which takes seriously their printed format as a bearer of expressive meaning. The essay goes on to show the role of such a hermeneutic in revising our narratives of the history of geographical thought by looking at the print format of British geography books in the era 1500–1900. It is argued that the age of discovery created a ‘problem situation’ for geographical knowledge which was solved by the geographical grammar, this solution only collapsing with the closing of the world in the late-nineteenth century. It is further shown that the so-called ‘new’ geography of the late-nineteenth century developed a radically different print space for geography. The print spaces of early modern and new geography are shown to have been key determinants of the social and intellectual positioning of geography as a scholarly enterprise.     

Australian Geography and Geographic Information Systems

In Australian universities geography has had traditional links with geology, environmental science and the social sciences. Human geographers’ pursuit of links into the humanities has distracted many of them from understanding the implications of the increasing interest shown by computer science, geomatics and other disciplines in geography. The emergence of a dialogue overseas between the humanities and the geographic information systems community is an important development which may result in this new grouping colonising some of the traditional disciplinary areas of human geography. It is clear that although this emerging cross‐disciplinary linkage has not had any influence on the current phase of mergers and cross‐disciplinary linkages in Australia, it will undoubtedly become important locally in the future.     

LYELL AND UNIFORMITARIANISM

T he centenary of the death of Sir Charles Lyell (1797-1875), the most notable earth scientist of the nineteenth century, was celebrated in 1975 by a special joint symposium of the International Union of Geological Sciences and the International Committee on the History of Geological Sciences. Much of what Lyell and his contemporaries regarded as "geology has become intrenched in "physical geography or in "geomorphology," so that any valid revaluation of Lyell's work is of as much significance to geographers as to geologists. It is appropriate at this time that his great contribution be recognized, but it is also a suitable occasion to re-examine some of its limitations.     

A Negative Geography of Necessity

Abstract: One of the many unfortunate results of the long‐lived misconception that Marx was a “determinist” is a lack of engagement with his ideas of necessity and negation. Reading the Grundrisse's famous comments on the annihilation of space by time, I trace the Hegelian roots of these concepts to show that for both Marx ahd Hegel, negation is the very act of critique itself, and necessity is properly understood not as the force of history, but as the object of historical explanation–what makes things the way they are and not another. It is therefore crucial to critical geography's efforts to identify the possibilities for social change, for that analysis must be predicated on an understanding for how things have emerged in their present form, i.e. the one we have to work with. I argue that a negative geography of necessity is the essential basis for anything we might call a communist geography, a geography of “the real movement which abolishes the present state of things”.     

Translating relics: Victricius of Rouen and fourth‐century debate

This article uses a little‐known sermon by Victricius, bishop of Rouen, as an approach to the fourth‐century debate on the translation of relics. In the last third of the fourth century, the cult of martyrs and their relics was promoted by Damasus of Rome, Paulinus of Nola and Ambrose of Milan, but remained controversial in the western churches. Roman law forbade the disturbance of dead bodies, especially where magic was suspected. Christians as well as non‐Christians were repelled by the veneration of bone, bloodstains and dust, and by the extreme asceticism that was often associated with relic‐cult. The sermon Victricius preached, welcoming to Rouen a gift of relics from Ambrose, is here interpreted as an attempt at cultural translation. Victricius deploys a late‐antique education in rhetoric and philosophy to make relic‐cult and asceticism acceptable. Like many others, he uses the adventus, the ceremonial reception of a visiting emperor or his deputy by local aristocracy and officials, as an analogy for the reception of relics by ascetics and clergy. Exceptionally, he equates corporeal relics with the presence of God; but his unique theology of relics was lost to view.