THINGS THAT ARE ALMOST BUT NOT QUITE WELL KNOWN IN PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY

The author, a physical geographer, sees no need to despair about the present state of the discipline and the future of geography. He places geography in context among the sciences and finds a need for a synthesizing discipline that pulls together the findings of the particular disciplines. Such a function might be performed by landscape science and regional geography. In general, geographers are found to go too far afield in their research and there is a need to define the focus of the disciplines to eliminate the present centrifugal tendencies. Such a unifying focus might be found in geographical prediction. Geographers should be aware of the limits and capabilities of their discipline; geography is most effective in fostering solutions in conjunction with other disciplines. Fieldwork per se is criticized; some geographers make a fetish of fieldwork, spending their life in the field without ever writing up the results as a contribution to science. The language of geographical exposition must be cleansed of pseudoscientific jargon; too much geographical writing is incomprehensible. The use of mathematics in geography should be placed in historical perspective; it is not the panacea for all that ails geography.     

ON THE CONTENT AND THE TASKS OF HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY (AS THE HISTORY OF NATURE MANAGEMENT)

A Pleistocene geologist calls for a totally new approach to the study of geography as the basic discipline concerned with the man-nature relationship, or what he terms nature management (Russian, prirodopol'zovaniye). He views the basic study object of an essentially unified geography as natural-technical territorial complexes (biotechnocenoses or geotechnocenoses), requiring investigation in three time dimensions—the past (historical geography), the present (dynamic geography) and the future (predictive geography). In keeping with the proposition that historical geography should be a separate, unified discipline, a distinctive historical-geographic periodization is proposed, differing from the periodizations in use in paleogeography, anthropology, archeology and history.     

Let's Not!

Armand finds that Anuchin painted an overly dark picture of the future of geography in the Soviet Union. The issue of a unified geography versus two or more geographies is regarded by Armand as a fruitless terminological argument. He holds that geographers can make their research count increasingly in national planning by making more use of mathematical apparatus, familiarizing themselves with related technical disciplines, and by being bolder in making practical recommendations to policy makers.     

An Introductory Lecture to First-Year Geography Students

The author describes a lecture in which he attempted to introduce new Moscow University students to geography. He stressed that geography had reached a turning point toward a more constructive approach, with greater practical applications, and he said that the new approach also required a new content and new methods, which are still being resisted by conservatives.     

Problems of General Economic Regionalization at the Present Stage

Professor Ryabchikov, Dean of the Geography Faculty of Moscow University, finds that Soviet teachers colleges are adequate to supply geography teachers to the middle schools, especially in view of a gradual reduction of the number of class hours devoted to geography in those schools. He sees the primary function of university geography as the training of specialized geographers for industry, agriculture and other segments of the national economy. Universities are therefore urged to reorganize their curricula from the present somewhat academic approach to a greater practical and applied content that would benefit graduates in their new jobs. The author calls on universities to strengthen their ties with industry by taking advantage of the Soviet system of contractual research for production organizations.     

Re-emerging China and Consequences for Economic Geography

A noted specialist on the spatial dimensions of China's economy surveys questions and opportunities for economic geography raised by the re-emergence of China. He explores the ways in which the rise of China may alter economic geography's object of study (the organization of the world economy), force re-conceptualization of some fundamental concepts and theories, and affect the way the discipline conducts its work. The paper argues that cooperation of Western and Chinese scholars in forging a new economic geography is contingent on a redirected focus away from concerns relevant only to the West and the discarding of research frameworks that bracket China off from experiences in the West.     

Basic Problems of Middle-School Geography Education in the USSR

The author finds geography education neglected because educators lack a proper understanding of the role that can be played by geographic knowledge. He criticizes the present structure of geography courses as being excessively factual and encyclopedic, ignoring general concepts and failing to instill in students an ability to think for themselves in geographic terms. A new sequence of geography courses with improved content and methodology is proposed.     

The Place of Regional Economic Geography in the System of Geographical Sciences

The author holds that regional geography cannot be regarded as an independent geographic discipline because it lacks its own system of laws, such as the natural laws that operate in physical geography and the social laws that operate in economic geography. He agrees with the view that both physical and economic geography fall into theoretical and regional departments, and that regional studies test the localized application of the general laws formulated by the theoretical departments of the two great divisions of geography.     

南京大学人文地理学发展系谱

本文梳理了南京大学人文地理研究机构的发展历程,总结南京大学人文地理研究机构由基础层、应用层、联合应用层三个层级组成。将南京大学九十年的人文地理学科发展历程划分为三个历史时期,即1919年到建国初期的近代中国人文地理学源地与人才培养的摇篮,建国初期到20世纪70年代末80年代初承担全国性科学研究和生产任务的先行者,20世纪80年代初期至今的优势学科凸显,同时"大人文地理科学"蓬勃发展与国际化阶段。认为南京大学对中国人文地理学科发展有四大贡献,即中国人文地理学的摇篮与创新源地,中国人文地理学思想理论发展的中坚,中国人文地理学主要分支学科建设的引领者,以及中国人文地理学承担国家重大项目的主体。     

On the Subject of Historical Geography (Landscape and Ethnos,III)

The author develops a methodology of historical geography revolving around the relationship between an ethnos, or ethnic community, and the “encompassing landscape.” He finds that under the conditions of the nomadic stockherding peoples of the steppe, where this relationship is most clearly expressed, the nomads become an inseparable part of the landscape, together with plant and animal life.     

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。     

Problems of Geographical Education in the USSR

Geography education in the Soviet Union is found to lag behind advances in geography as a research discipline. Courses in both elementary and secondary schools and at the college and university level are overloaded with factual material at the expense of theoretical problems and general concepts. An essential requisite for improving the content of geography education is better training of geography teachers. Soviet geography teachers are now being trained mainly in the combined geography-biology faculties of teachers colleges. Combined training in more than one teaching discipline is essential because a teacher trained in geography alone would not have a full teaching load of 18 hours a week in most schools. However, the geography-biology combination does not appear to be optimal because the emphasis in biology is no longer on botany and zoology, as in the past, but on human physiology and genetics, with less relevance to geography. It is recommended that geography as a teaching discipline be combined with other subjects of instruction having greater relevance to geography teaching, possibly chemistry, physical education or foreign languages. Less emphasis on fact-loaded regional courses and more stress on systematic courses is recommended, together with training in mathematical techniques.     

Past‐president's address: is geography (the discipline) sustainable without geography (the subject)?

We commonly define geography as the 'integrative' discipline, but there is more rhetoric than reality in the notion that our discipline has a coherent view of the world. Academic geography is dominated by increasingly esoteric topical specialties, and too often practiced as if it didn't exist outside the universities. By ignoring the popular conception of what geography is, we foster a dangerous opposition between geography as a popular subject and geography as a discipline. I argue that the survival of the discipline requires a collective rediscovery of a common core, which could be built around 'regional' geography—not the outmoded capes, bays and main export regional geography of the past, but one informed by modern theory, and attending to causal structures rooted in current realities. Our introductory courses are the best place to demonstrate a renewed commitment to a holistic geography grounded in an understanding of the world. Eclectic, curiosity-driven research is also essential to the survival of the discipline, but disciplinary diversity is a strength only if it is grounded in an identifiable core. Excessive pluralism and intellectual arrogance may lead to 'disciplinocide'.     

Critical GIScience in Canada in the new millennium

Critical GIS (CGIS) is an approach to evaluating GIS technology that draws upon multiple intellectual tool kits—from geography, social theory and computing science. While its roots are in the battles between human geographers and GIScientists in the 1990s, CGIS has emerged as an independent, constructive approach to enhancing the power and appeal of GIS. CGIS is also beginning to gain acceptance as a legitimate component of the broad tent that is GIScience. This short article reviews the emergence of CGIS, discusses its influence on the discipline of GIScience and finally explores the state of CGIS in Canada.     

Resolution of the Fifth Congress of the Geographical Society USSR

A 1978 collection of articles devoted to geocybernetics, a subfield of geography concerned with spatial aspects of management, focuses on the problem of administration of the Soviet economy through a system of socio-economic regions at three levels–macro, meso and micro levels. The reviewer examines critically some of the basic ideas of regionalization underlying the proposed new discipline. He questions, in particular, what he considers an exaggerated research emphasis on problems of middle–level and lower–level regionalization without adequate attention to the issue of the Soviet Union's macroregions.     

南京大学旅游地理学的历史回顾与研究展望

旅游地理学是一门关于研究地表旅游现象的人地关系作用规律及其规划实践的科学,是地理学衍生的具有相对独立专业知识体系的分支学科。南京大学以及中国旅游地理学的发展最早可追溯到任美锷1940年在《地理学报》发表的《自然风景与地质构造》一文。改革开放后,南京大学旅游地理经历两个阶段:1979-2002年,旅游地理深植于传统优势的地理学科;2002至今,旅游地理向纵深发展,在国内外核心期刊发表论文600多篇。在《地理学报》、《地理研究》、《地理科学》等地理学权威期刊上,南京大学发表旅游论文数量位居国内所有高校与科研院所的首位。重点研究领域有旅游地理学的基础理论与方法、旅游资源评价与区域旅游开发、旅游环境变化与旅游人地关系等三个方面。篇末展望了旅游地理学中旅游资源评价、旅游市场分析、旅游空间结构、区域旅游影响、旅游规划理论、旅游地理范式等基本问题的研究趋势。     

On the Problems of Geography and the Tasks of Popularizing Geographical Knowledge

A Moscow University geographer who advocates a unity of geography uses the medium of the Znaniye [Knowledge] Society, an organization for the popularization of scientific knowledge and communist ideology, to review the basic problems confronting geography as a research discipline. He reviews the historical sequence of philosophic concepts relating to the man-environment system in an attempt to justify his approach to the system as one in which both natural and social laws operate. Anuchin stresses the need for pure theoretical research in geography and polemicizes with those who seek prompt practical results. He restates his definition of the geographical environment as that part of the earth's landscape sphere in which nature and society interact as two parts of a single whole governed by distinctive laws. The metachronous character of development of the landscape sphere, with several parts formed at various times, is cited as an example of such a universal law. Anuchin agrees with the authors of The Science of Geography, the 1965 report of the Ad Hoc Committee on Geography, Division of Earth Sciences of the National Academy of Sciences-National Research Council, that geography's overriding problem is to gain an understanding of the man-environment system and to develop tools for geographical prediction. An ability to predict the consequences of man's interference in natural processes is depicted as the principal contribution that geography can make to the pursuit of knowledge at the present stage of human development. If geography is unable to meet its responsibilities, the problem of geographical prediction may have to be taken over by other disciplines. Soviet biologists have already suggested the creation of a new science, geohygiene, to deal with the man-environment relationship.     

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.     

Population Maps in National Atlases

The author finds that population maps in national atlases should, as a minimum, treat population from four aspects: population numbers and density, geography of settlements, social and economic characteristics, and ethnographic characteristics. He notes that published national atlases generally slight the social and economic aspects in favor of strictly demographic characteristics of population.