ACADEMICIAN N. I. VAVILOV AND THE GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY OF THE USSR

Academician N. I. Vavilov (1887-1943) served as president of the Geographical Society of the USSR from 1931 to 1940. A distinguished plant breeder, geneticist, explorer for wild ancestors of cultivated plants, and geographer, he traveled widely and reported regularly to the Society on his explorations and discoveries. Together with Yu. N. Shokal'skiy, then the honorary president, he brought many new initiatives to the activities of the Society. They arranged for the transfer of the Society from the People's Comissariat of Education of the RSFSR to the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. The First All-Union Congress of Geographers of the USSR was held in 1933, participation in international congresses was arranged, international co-operation was sponsored, membership was increased sharply, sections and commissions were established or revived, a series of public lectures was organized, a lecture hall was opened, and the scientific archives were enriched. Vavilov was especially interested in the work of the Section on History of Geographical Knowledge and participated actively in special issues of Izvestiya of the Society and in commemorative meetings at the Society devoted to individual geographers who had made particularly significant contributions to geographical knowledge (translated by Chauncy D. Harris, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60637-1583).     

N.I. VAVILOV,GEOGRAPHER AND EXPLORER

Academician N.I. Vavilov had an international reputation as a scientist, agronomist, botanist, geneticist, plant breeder, explorer for wild progenitors of cultivated plants, selector of new crop varieties, organizer of expeditions, administrator of a large research institute, and a statesman. Beginning in 1916 in collection of crop varieties in Iran and the Pamirs, he personally explored large segments of the earth. In 1926 he published his famous study on centers of origin of cultivated plants. While head of the Institute of Applied Botany and New Crops, he organized many expeditions to search for new varieties of crops and their wild ancestors and established an international collection of seeds. While President of the Geographical Society (1931-1940) he arranged to have the society transferred from the People's Commissariat of Education of the RSFSR to the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, thus transforming it from the Russian to the All-Union Geographical Society. He presented many lectures to the Society and greatly expanded its program of public lectures. But while on a scientific expedition to the western Ukraine, he was arrested on August 6, 1940. “An unforgiveable crime was committed. There has hardly been a more tragic fate since Galilee: the man who sought to give bread to the people died of starvation… He was a hero who gave his life for his scientific beliefs” (translated by H. L. Haslett, Birmingham, United Kingdom).     

TOGETHER WITH ACADEMICIAN N.I. VAVILOV

A colleague at the Institute of Crop Breeding many years ago, S. V. Zonn, recalls the fame abroad of N.I. Vavilov in contrast to the oblivion to which for a time he was consigned in the Soviet Union. Vavilov opposed the harmful adventuristic projects announced by the evil paranoid “scientist” Lysenko. Among the many contributions of Vavilov, those to research for the development of deserts, largely forgotten, are here recalled. Vavilov organized the Office of Deserts, which established the Aral', Repetek, and Kara-Kalinsk experiment stations, which made major contributions to desert studies and which attracted able productive scientists. In practical work he organized work to provide fresh vegetables and fruits and green amenities to workers at the Balkhash copper combine and the urgently needed vegetables and vitamins to workers at the Bekdash salt works of the Kara-Bogaz-Gol of the Caspian Sea. He advocated scientific principles and applications free from the opportunism and adventurism which at one time flourished in Soviet biological sciences but which should not be repeated. “Recalling all that has happened to N.I. Vavilov, we preserve in our hearts his bright and uncompromising manner, which was devoted to science and society” (translated by Jay K. Mitchell, PlanEcon, Inc., Washington DC 20005).     

李旭旦先生的学术思想和贡献及其他——纪念李旭旦先生诞辰100周年

李旭旦先生是人文地理学家、区域地理学家和地理教育家,毕生致力于地理教育和科学研究,培养了几代地理学人才,桃李满天下。他才思敏捷,知识渊博,治学严谨、执着,有较高的学术造诣。学术上他强调人地协调论和统一地理学,提倡区域研究,致力于地理教育理论的建设,创办《地理知识》杂志,曾任德国《GeoJournal》杂志编委,主编《人文地理学》(中国大百科全书分册)、《人文地理学论丛》、《人文地理学概说》,提出白龙江是我国西部南北地理分界线的科学论断,主张把解决现实问题作为人文地理学的主攻方向,重视野外调查,晚年他提出复兴人文地理学的倡议,把我国人文地理学的发展推向一个新的阶段。他是我国现代人文地理学的奠基人。     

Interview with Gilbert C. Fite

Born in 1918, reared and educated in South Dakota, Gilbert C. Fite took his Ph.D. at the University of Missouri. He is a historian of U.S. agriculture, particularly the impact of technology, economics, and politics on midwestern and southern farming since the late nineteenth century. He has written nine books, co-authored seven more, edited three volumes, and published over sixty articles. Former president of Eastern Illinois University, the Agricultural History Society and the Southern and Western Historical Associations, Fite has long been very active in Phi Alpha Theta and served as its president from 1981–1983. He taught at the University of Oklahoma for twenty-six years and held the Richard B. Russell Professorship of American History at the University of Georgia for a decade. He and his wife, June, were married in 1941, have two sons, and live in Bella Vista, Arkansas, where this interview was conducted by Roger Adelson in August 1993.     

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.     

THE MAP IN THE SCIENTIFIC AND ADMINISTRATIVE ACTIVITIES OF N.I. VAVILOV

Special attention is devoted to Vavilov's use of detailed maps for (a) recording initial results of field work in the study of local agriculture and ranges of domesticated plants in travels across several continents; and (b) presenting information about a large number of processes and phenomena in a concise way, affording the basis for their critical analysis and comparison. He was involved in programs to map Soviet and world agriculture (translated by Jay K. Mitchell, PlanEcon, Inc., Washington, DC 20005).     

Socialist Geography in England: J. F. Horrabin and a Workers' Economic and Political Geography

This paper examines the life and geographical writings of the English socialist J.F.("Frank") Horrabin (1884–1962) and his attempts to construct a socialist geography. Horrabin was an active socialist in the Labour Party, Fabian Society, and other leftwing groups and very involved in working-class education through the Plebs League and National Council of Labour Colleges. He was also a journalist, cartoonist, and gifted cartographer. His 1923 text An Outline of Economic Geography , which sold in large numbers and was translated into nine other languages, attempted to provide workers with an account of economic (and political and historical) geography that used bourgeois "pure geography" but put it within a socialist and historical–materialist framework. Unlike Germany and some other countries, England did not have a strong Marxist theoretical tradition, and Horrabin's approach does not develop theory (though it did attract the admiration of the German Marxist Karl Wittfogel). Rather, it sets out to be engaged in practical political education. Horrabin's work was developed within a particular context, but his geographical writings (and pioneering political cartography) exemplify one way of linking geography with political practice, and this paper examines these relationships. Many of Horrabin's concerns find echoes in current radical geography, and his work deserves belated recognition and a place in the history of geography.     

王兴中先生的学术思想及其对中国人文地理学发展的贡献

王兴中先生是我国著名的人文地理学家。他是中国新人文地理学的倡引者与践行者之一。他的学术思想集中体现在用现代新人文思想引领中国对空间对偶价值观结构的研究,创立了系统的"城市社会生活空间质量观"学理。具体表现在倡导探讨空间(或地点)社会-文化空间秩序的构成规律,引领对人文空间的社会公正与价值尊严结构研究的方向;在此基础上他力践中国新人文地理学在城市空间研究方面的社会空间基础、结构与解构及其规划的系统理念与原理。他的以上学术思想主要体现在现代人文地理学领域中的城市社会空间结构、城市生活空间结构、城市(商娱)场所微区位以及城市社区体系规划等四大领域的系统研究中。人文地理学大师吴传钧先生生前在王兴中先生的前三部代表性力作《中国城市社会空间结构研究》、《中国城市生活空间结构研究》和《中国城市商娱场所微区位原理》的序言中,赞称填补了该三大领域研究的空白,为我国城市社会地理研究提供了新范式。《城市社区体系规划原理》一书为城市空间规划提出了新思想。不仅如此,王兴中先生运用新人文思想对旅游资源景观和行为地理的研究,也取得了开创性的成就。王先生积极投身于我国人文地理研究,成为复兴人文地理学的生力军,通过他的具体工作,创办了我国唯一的人文地理学学术杂志《人文地理》,在我国人文地理学的复兴和发展中起到了重大的作用。特别是2001-2010年,在王先生的带领下,中国地理学会人文地理专业委员会暨全国高校人文地理教学研究会学术会议几乎年年召开,积极地促进了我国人文地理学的发展。王先生对中国人文地理学发展作出的杰出贡献,将载入人文地理学的发展史册。     

‘Mr Neville did all in [his] power to assist me’: A. P. Elkin,A. O. Neville and Anthropological Research in Northwest Western Australia, 1927–1928

From the commencement of his field research A. P. Elkin sought to bring a practical application to his work on Aborigines. He positioned anthropology as an enabling science which had the capacity to reduce conflict, violence and misunderstanding on the frontier. He stated that the ‘object of his mission [field work]’ was both ‘academic and practical’. He declared that the knowledge gained through anthropological field research would serve not only narrow academic aims but would also be put at the service of government. Anthropology's purpose was to inform and influence the formulation of government Aboriginal policy. This paper examines Elkin's first encounter and interaction with government through his relationship with A. O. Neville, chief protector of Aborigines in Western Australia. It illustrates the beginnings of what Gillian Cowlishaw has called a discourse of helping, that is Australian anthropologists in the 1930s constructed a discourse about their usefulness to government. It was a discourse which seemingly lacked critical distance from the policies of government. I argue that this discourse of helping government was heavily influenced by Elkin once he became professor of anthropology but it can be discovered in this earlier period. I conclude by discussing how the implications of this discourse were played out in the decade of the 1930s. The focus of this paper is on Elkin and his relationship with Neville and the consequences of this relationship for Elkin's later actions.     

Geographical knowledge and scientific survey in the construction of Italian Libya

Studies of colonialism and imperial cultures have increasingly recognized the roles of geographical knowledges in European efforts to construct the colonial world materially and imaginatively. Simultaneously, the discipline of geography has undergone a thorough self-critique of its part in the constitution of colonial space. This article discusses the imbrication of geographical knowledges and colonialism in Italy, and especially how the production and circulation of geographical knowledges about Libya worked hand in hand with its territorial occupation and control. In particular, the article discusses the expeditions directed and co-ordinated by the Italian Geographical Society that were despatched into the Saharan interior in the early 1930s to produce 'scientific' representations of the region. The article examines the roles of geographical sciences in the construction of Italian Libya, but particularly how this performance of 'colonial science' surveyed Libya's populations and contributed to their classification as 'primitive' and 'Other'. These conclusions supported Italian authority in the region, but also reinforced the development of a 'colonial consciousness' among Italians as African space and peoples were rendered legible by European epistemologies.     

“Where every breeze speaks of courage and liberty”: Offshore Humanism and Marine Xenology,or, Racism and the Problem of Critique at Sea Level

The 2015 Antipode RGS‐IBG Lecture was delivered by Prof. Paul Gilroy on 2 September at the Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) Annual International Conference. Prof. Gilroy's lecture interrogates the contemporary attractions of post‐humanism and asks questions about what a “reparative humanism” might alternatively entail. He uses a brief engagement with the conference theme—“geographies of the Anthropocene”—to frame his remarks and try to explain why antiracist politics and ethics not only require consideration of nature and time but also promote a timely obligation to roam into humanism's forbidden zones.     

Introduction to Zooarchaeological Method and Theory: a Special Issue Honoring R. Lee Lyman

The Society for American Archaeology presented R. Lee Lyman with the Fryxell award for Interdisciplinary Excellence in Zooarchaeology in 2011. Lyman has produced over 120 journal articles or book chapters, and four single-authored books on the topic, and this issue honors his contributions to zooarchaeological method and theory with six original pieces by his peers. Arguably, his greatest impact has been in the field of vertebrate taphonomy and the development of a means to measure density-mediated bone attrition, but of equal importance was emphasis in the discipline that unit selection, or what one measures, should be linked to a particular research question. Lyman's work has also stressed the importance of making zooarchaeology relevant to modern issues of conservation biology.     

Interview with Frederic Wakeman, Jr.

Born in Kansas City, Kansas, in 1937, reared and educated in the United States and abroad, Wakeman earned his bachelor's degree in European History and Literature at Harvard University, did graduate work in Soviet Studies and Political Theory in Paris, and completed his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Oriental Languages and East Asian History at the University of California, Berkeley. A member of Berkeley's history faculty since 1965, he became the Haas Professor of Asian Studies in 1989 and Director of the Institute of East Asian Studies in 1990. Many of Wakeman's award-winning books on Early Modern, Modern, and Contemporary China have been translated into Chinese. He has held numerous advisory and leadership positions in the American Council of Learned Societies, American Historical Association, Asia Society, and Social Science Research Council, and has facilitated educational and scholarly exchanges with East Asia. The father of two sons and a daughter by a former marriage, Wakeman lives in San Francisco. This interview was conducted on the Berkeley campus in November 1996 by Roger Adelson.     

The boundary dispute between Chile and Argentina

In November 1920, James Young Simpson, Professor of Natural Science in New College, Edinburgh and Trinity College, Glasgow, was invited by the governments of Latvia and Lithuania to chair a commission which would settle the disputed border between the two newly‐independent states. Upon his return to Edinburgh in May 1921, Simpson deposited the papers and final report on the commission's decision with the Royal Scottish Geographical Society, of which he was an active member. This article will explain why and how Simpson came to be involved in diplomatic decisions so remote from his home life and work, and will analyse the significance of the results of Simpson's efforts on the arbitration commission.     

THE CAREER OF L. S. BERG

The following appraisal is by Eduard M. Murzayev, physical geographer and toponymist, with interests in Mongolia and Central Asia, who was a student of Berg at Leningrad University, and since this graduation in 1930 has been associated with the Institute of Geography of the Academy of Sciences USSR, first in Leningrad and after 1936 in Moscow. This article is based on a talk given by Murzayev in March 1976 at a memorial session of the Geographical Society USSR in Leningrad.     

V. P. SEMENOV-TYAN-SHANSKIY'S REGION AND COUNTRY: ITS PRESENT-DAY RELEVANCE AND MEANING (on the 50th anniversary of publication)

A reassessment of a classic Russian geographical work by V. P. Semonov-Tyan-Shanskiy (1870-1942) by a group of young geographers finds that some of its ideas were far ahead of its time and are only now beginning to be understood and conceptualized in the Soviet Union. The reissuance of his book, which has become a bibliographical rarity, is urged. Veniamin Semenov-Tyan-Shanskiy, the son of Pyotr Semenov-Tyan-Shanskiy, another classic figure in Russian geography, was one of the last universalists, with interests ranging from geomorphology to economic statistics. He is probably best known for a multivolume regional geography of Russia, of which 11 of 22 projected volumes appeared between 1899 and 1913.     

New maps

Yu KUNG, the earliest geographical work, is Chinese ; modern geography in China may be considered to have begun after the Revolution of 1911. The progress of geography during the following twenty years was reviewed by Professor Chi‐Yun Chang in the Journal of the Geographical Society of China (1935, 1936). The present survey¹ of Chinese contributions to geography since 1935 is, roughly, a sequel, though the approach is not quite the same. For convenience, the paper is divided into two parts : the first, accompanied by 48 references, dealing with physical aspects, and the second, referring to 53 publications, with human aspects. A much longer paper, in Chinese, with the same title has been contributed by the author to the above‐mentioned periodical. Assistance by C. Y. Wu, H. C. Kuo, and G. C. Dunn is gratefully acknowledged.     

Reinforcing Diversity: From the ‘inside’ and the ‘outside’

This paper focuses on Jan Monk's contribution to reinforcing diversity and collaboration in the field of human geography. It illustrates how gendered diversity and feminism is promoted in her academic work both inside the Anglo-American academic world and outside, by exposing the feminist voices from around the world and mainstreaming them in her collaborative work. Fostering and reinforcing diversity has become a body of knowledge in her extensive publications in which she assesses the varying extent and nature of feminist geography in the Anglophone world and across countries, attempting to interpret differences in terms of geographical and cultural contexts and disciplinary trends. The paper emphasizes how fostering diversity and collaboration in Jan's academic work is not only about writing articles, editing books and producing a film, but also engages the formulation of organizational structures such as the Routledge book series and the initiation and establishment of the Commission of Gender and Geography of the International Geographical Union which have contributed to the production of collaborative feminist geographical knowledge across spaces and places.