China's New Leaders: Perspectives on Geographic Trends and Realities

A senior American specialist on the geography of China examines several aspects of China's society, economy, regional organization, and geopolitical position in light of the change in the country's leadership at the 18th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in November 2012. After a brief comparison of the incoming and retiring leadership groups in terms of backgrounds and past policy pronouncements (as well as discussing the challenge posed by corruption), the author proceeds to discuss a series of key social and regional development policies that may be subject to some degree of change under the new leadership, including hukou and the one-child policy. He then focuses on the 12th Five-Year Plan, which provides a broad outline of the new leadership's goals, and particularly its emphasis on balanced regional development (a commitment to further develop the interior of the country as well as to revitalize the old heavy industrial region, the Northeast). The author then turns to China's growing military (and particularly naval) power in connection with its increasing assertion of territorial claims in the South and East China Seas as well as ability to project naval power across the Taiwan Strait and beyond into the Pacific and Indian Ocean theaters.     

Logical Problems in Geographic Science

Logicalization, or the conversion of a science to logical form, is viewed as an essential step in the formulation of theoretical geographical concepts. Three stages of logicalization are envisaged: (1) the identification of a limited number of fundamental concepts from which all other concepts can be deduced by logical operations; (2) the formation on the basis of these fundamental concepts of a set of axioms in geography; (3) the construction on the basis of these geographical axioms of a set of geographical theories in the form of formalized deductive systems. Among the fundamental concepts in geography are the concepts of geosystem and its geospace. Proposed axioms are: (1) a geosystem (and therefore its geospace), if viewed as a finite set of elements, forms an intersection with itself, meaning that nothing can be added or subtracted and the set must remain unchanged; (2) the number of geosystems is finite. Two essential conditions for the existence of a geosystem are postulated: (a) the intensity of the internal field of interaction must exceed the intensity of the intersystemic field of interaction, linking the given geosystem with other geosystems; (b) over a certain interval of time, a geosystem may become stronger through the incorporation of other systems and turn into a geosystem of higher rank, or it may break down under the impact of other geosystems.     

Geographic Information Science as a Method of Integrating History and Archaeology for Battlefield Interpretation

Abstract

Geographic Information Science (GIS) and technology can be used to integrate history and archaeology for synthesis and interpretation. This study applies Geographic Information Science and technology to reconstruct the events related to a patrol from G Company, 2nd Battalion, 328th Infantry Regiment of the American Expeditionary Forces on October 8 1918 outside the village of Châtel Chéhéry, France that resulted in the award of the Medal of Honor to Alvin C. York. Evidence from documentary records, historic maps, and artefacts from a metal detector survey were incorporated in a spatial database. Spatial analysis of the database using GIS provided a more complete picture of events than either history or archaeology individually.     

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.     

Soviet Geographic Science and Problems of the Transformation of Nature

The author discusses the contribution that Soviet geography can make in solving broad problems of transformation of the natural environment. He cites as examples the Caspian problem, the problem of the surplus moisture of the West Siberian plain, the problem of Central Asian irrigation, the problem of snow-cover control, and the problem of altering the over-all water balance of a given area for the benefit of man.     

Teaching Geographic Information Systems in a Problem-Based Learning Environment

How, where and why GIS is taught has been debated heavily in the geography literature. This article is a contribution to that debate, because it offers a new perspective from which to teach GIS: problem-based learning. In a problem-based learning classroom, theoretical foundations and the real world of problems are understood as constitutive of one another, rather than theory being prioritised over the real world of experience. In this paper, the author describes an introductory-level GIS class in which GIS was taught with a problem-based learning pedagogy. The problem around which the class focused was a proposal to add a new school district in the San Antonio, Texas metropolitan region. This article describes the class, including the nature of the problem and the way GIS skills were sequentially taught and integrated into the analysis of that problem.     

Beyond Knee-Jerk Environmental Thinking: Teaching Geographic Perspectives on Conservation,Preservation and the Hetch Hetchy Valley Controversy

Attention to scale, use of space and connections between places and regions are general, yet distinctive, geographical concepts that may be employed in introductory level human-environment geography courses to distinguish them from other environmental studies offerings. This article demonstrates how attention to the aforementioned concepts provides fresh insight into the notions of exploitation, conservation and preservation for many environmental studies students. Furthermore, it is suggested that the Hetch Hetchy Valley controversy, commonly used in many US environmental studies textbooks to demonstrate the difference between conservation and preservation, is actually quite problematic when critically assessed from alternative geographic perspectives.     

Teaching Introductory Geographic Information Systems through Problem-based Learning and Public Scholarship

This paper is concerned with the transition from school/college to higher education and discusses the outcomes of surveys of first-year undergraduates enrolled on geography degrees with respect to their experiences of field study as part of GCE Advanced level programmes prior to entry. Despite the core status given to fieldwork in the geographical training offered at Advanced level, the surveys show substantial variation among students in terms of field days, ranging from zero to 11 days. Consequently, each student cohort has a very uneven background of field study. Additionally, although students have developed generally positive attitudes to field study, a number of preferences and prejudices are identified. Many students have clearer recollections of data collection and recording techniques than of the character of the places in which investigations occurred. The resultant implications for field study within undergraduate programmes are discussed.     

Perspectives on Pompidou

Abadie, F., and Corcelette, J.‐P., Georges Pompidou 1911–1974: Le désir et le destin (Balland, 1994), 460pp., 110F.

Esambert, B., Pompidou, capitaine d'industries (Odile Jacob, 1994), 277pp., 140F.

Jullian, M., La France à voix haute: Le Soldat et le Normalien (Fayard, 1994), 272pp., 120F.

Roussel, E., Georges Pompidou 1911–1974, 2nd edition (Jean‐Claude Lattès, 1994), 686pp., 195F.     

Perspectives on ritual

de Coppet, Daniel, ed. Understanding Rituals. London: Routledge, 1992. viii + 120 including chapter references and index. $59.95 cloth, $14.95 paper.

Bell, Catherine. Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. x + 270 including references and index. $35.00 cloth, $15.95 paper.

Drewal, Margaret Thompson. Yoruba Ritual: Performers, Play, Agency. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992. xxii + 241 including notes, glossary, references, and index. $35.00 cloth, $14.95 paper.

Schechner, Richard. The Future of Ritual: Writings on Culture and Performance. London: Routledge, 1993. x + 283 including chapter notes, reference, and index. $27.50 cloth.     

Perspectives on food systems

Fenton, Alexander, and Eszter Kisbán, eds. Food in Change: Eating Habits from the Middle Ages to the Present Day. Edinburgh: John Donald Publishers, Ltd., 1986. viii + 166 pp. $29.95 paper.

Harris, Marvin, and Eric B. Ross, eds. Food and Evolution: Toward a Theory of Human Food Habits. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987. ix + 633 pp. including references and indices. $44.95.