Recovering the street: relocalising urban geography

This paper explores how audio walks can help learners re-experience and rethink the nature of urban geography. Urban thinking has increasingly begun to explore the city not from above, but from below; from the street rather than from the elite and in everyday rather than extraordinary ways. The intention has been to reveal the many stories, movements and people that constitute the urban fabric. Drawing on work undertaken in a third year, urban geography module at the University of South Wales, this paper examines how audio walk creation can assist students in comprehending the urban environment as a space that is rich in history, society and culture.     

Jules Sion,Alan Grant Ogilvie and the college des Ecossais in Montpellier: A network of geographers

The ‘new geography’ propounded by Vidal de La Blache in the early years of the 20th century was diffused by his protégés in France and abroad. Field classes played a significant role in the process, with the Collège des Ecossais, established by Patrick Geddes at Montpellier, providing an ideal base for British students to study the natural and cultural landscapes of the component pays of southern France. The careers of Jules Sion and Alan Grant Ogilvie are explored in this article, and practical links between French and British geographers are exemplified through experiences of fieldwork in the Languedoc before and after World War II. Networks of professional contact and friendship are vital in understanding how the practice of modern geography has been shaped.     

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.     

The geography and natural resources of Bolivia

This paper tries to show the main thread of Scottish national identity in the nineteenth century and how Scotland's close connection with the empire did not asuage Scottish desires to retain a national identity. The paper tries to illustrate that the interpretation of the union connection by the Scottish political classes was central to the understanding of Scotland as a nation during the period. Examples are also provided of the way in which the union could be questioned in this century, but this was with the caveat that this would necessarily be limited; for such was the extent to which national identity was played out on an imperial stage. Although Scots never lost sight of their distinctiveness, any extension of the critique of union would have ultimately worked against their ability to confidently display their identity as they did quite successfully in the nineteenth century.     

论汉藏人文地理分界线——以河洮岷地区为中心的分析

历史时期汉藏人文地理分界线在青藏高原东北缘曾有三次较大的变动。文章论述了三次汉藏人文地理分界线的形成、摆动与稳定及其环境意义。认为,雪山(祁连山)—黄河分界线是唐蕃依据地理条件最有利原则下的一种势力范围划分;六盘山—陇山分界线是地理条件决定下的唐蕃分界线;唐蕃以后汉藏人文地理分界线的缓慢西移并最终稳定在河洮岷一线,汉藏民族的经济理性行为是其重要的影响因素。     

Beginnings: women and geography at Northwestern in the 1960s

This brief article attempts to paint a picture of the social and intellectual atmosphere in which Susan Hanson's postgraduate education took place and then discusses her particular experiences in the Geography Department at Northwestern University. It describes the sexist characteristics of American geographical university education in the 1960s and the competitive and male-dominated environment of Northwestern. It suggests that Susan's experiences at Northwestern were an important influence on her subsequent values, skills and interests as a feminist academic.     

‘Taken captive by the mystery of the Great River’: towards an historical geography of British geography and Atlantic slavery

By examining the case of James MacQueen (1778–1870), this paper initiates a research agenda that contributes to what David N. Livingstone has argued remains the most pressing task for historians of geography: to write ‘the historical geography of geography’. Born in Scotland in 1778, MacQueen was one of the many ‘arm-chair’ geographers whose efforts at synthesising contemporary and historical sources were a significant feature of the encounter between Europe and the rest of the world. Indeed, although he never visited Africa, his speculations about the course and termination of the River Niger turned out to be broadly correct. What makes MacQueen a particularly significant figure was the original source of his theory: enslaved Africans in a Caribbean plantation-colony. In this light, a remark that MacQueen's imagination was ‘taken captive by the mystery of the Great River’ carries a dark double-meaning, because ‘captive’ knowledge was the very source of MacQueen's interest in African geography. Beginning with MacQueen's time in Grenada, the paper explores a series of personal relations, textual traces and West African ethno-histories to reveal how his geographical knowledge and expertise were bound up with Atlantic slavery. This shows not only how the colonial economy, centred on the Caribbean, underwrote the production of geographical knowledge about Africa, but also how British geographical discourse and practice might be probed for traces of Atlantic slavery and enslaved African lives. More generally, the case of James MacQueen illuminates a broader field of relationships between Atlantic slavery, West African exploration, and the development of modern British geography in the late eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth centuries. Examining these relationships is key to writing a ‘historical geography of British geography and Atlantic slavery’ and contributes to postcolonial histories of the discipline by revealing the tangled relationships that bound geography and slavery, knowledge and subjugation, that which ‘captivates’ and those held ‘captive’.     

论陈独秀对中国近代农民的认识

在1938年前,陈独秀对近代农民作用的认识的总体思想趋势经历了一个由否定而肯定的转变过程,但他的肯定是留有余地的,他将农民的作用限定在一定的范围内.之所以如此,坚守十月革命的城市道路是一个根本的原因.他对农民的缺点始终有清醒的认识,这是他认识近代中国农民的思想主线.为克服农民的缺点,他一方面主张以解除农民痛苦、改善农民生活作为他们参加抗战的前提,另一方面主张联合中小农民或称参加劳动的"贫农",坚决地反对富农和游民无产阶级.这些观点构成了大革命失败后他的托派思想基础.但他对农民缺点的正视亦具有一定的借鉴意义.     

Constructive comments on D Massey 'Space-time, "science" and the relationship between physical geography and human geography:rsquo;

This paper provides a discussion of Massey's (1999) account of the role of space-time in human and physical geography. Recognizing the relative (but not absolute) paucity of comment from physical geographers on questions of approach and method, the paper seeks to demonstrate three things. First, it casts a history of a narrow part of geomorphology in a similar vein to a part of human geography to demonstrate that it is possible to find strong shared characteristics in the ways in which the two subjects are being approached. This emphasizes the importance of analyses that recognize both space and time in seeking explanation in physical geography and which has important implications for: (i) the nature of laws and processes in geomorphology; and hence (ii) the interpretation of specific landforms and their histories. Second, the paper argues that much of what Massey addresses relates to the closure required to make things amenable to study, something that is characteristic of almost every type of research. This has long been acknowledged in science in general and in physical geography in particular, but is often forgotten. Third, the paper uses this consideration of closure to address the issue of the relational nature of different sorts of space-time models. Following Massey's argument that the sort of space-time model that we adopt needs to be informed by the entities that we study, the paper concludes that some of the space-time models that Massey critiques (e.g. classical Newtonian mechanics) may still be fundamental to what we do, and in no sense necessarily ahistorical.     

Feminist geography in the UK: the dialectics of women-gender-feminism-intersectionality and praxis

Abstract

Feminist praxis has always been about both the individual and the collective; one of the revolutionary and utopian promises of feminism is that of being, bringing, and working together. This piece provides a brief account of some of the significant scholarship and collective activities within British feminist geography over the last twenty five years, with a particular focus on the work of the Women and Geography Study Group/Gender and Feminist Geographies Research Group. We underscore the importance of intersectional approaches to scholarship and praxis in UK feminist geographies in this period, and in going forward, as well as signalling some of the dialectical opportunities and tensions arising from this approach.     

Monitoring the media: student production and use of newspaper resource files in economic geography

Abstract

This article discusses the use of newspaper resource files in economic geography, in particular focusing on a simple method of production involving student participation. It connects two related issues: first, the question of topicality in course content; and second, the problems associated with the collection and collation of up‐to‐date material at a time when there are both teaching pressures and an unrelentingly wide array of information and sources available to economic geographers. Against this background, the paper discusses the rationale for such a student‐based media monitoring activity, the simple procedures that might be used, and the advantages and disadvantages involved. It concludes that media monitoring is useful for students in maintaining up‐to‐date ideas and information in their course activity and that it may also trigger a series of valuable debating points, adding to the richness of the educational experience in economic geography.     

Law and the historical geography of the Galilee: Israel's litigatory advantages during the special operation of land settlement

This article contributes to a re-evaluation of the role of law in historical geography. It focuses on Israeli officials' application of the complex legal process of ‘settlement of title’ to land in the all-Arab central Galilee during the 1950s and 1960s, which was aimed at transforming Jewish–Arab socio-spatial power relations in the region. Expanding Israeli conceptions of state land and the government's focus on contesting land claims of Arab citizens transformed the process into an overwhelmingly litigatory one, triggering thousands of legal disputes between state agencies and Galilee Arabs. Drawing on Galanter's work on repeat player advantage and Kritzer's work on government litigants, this article characterizes the state as a ‘government compound repeat player’, enjoying advantages that not only won cases in the Haifa District Court but that also had direct impact on the subsequent geographical transformation of the region. On a more general level, this article argues that law has played a greater role in shaping historical geographies than the literature might suggest and encourages additional work on the subject.     

Curriculum development and society: West German geographers respond to the American high school geography project

Abstract

Industrial geography courses at the Historically Black Universities (HBUs) and the Historically White Universities (HWUs) in South Africa are a true reflection of apartheid education designed by the government in the 1950s. The education system offers whites good and quality education, while blacks receive poor education. The nature and history of the HBUs have affected the content and the teaching of industrial geography. Unlike the HWUs industrial geography courses at the HBUs do not contain much of the recent changes in the subject.     

因袭与调整:晚期方志中的分野叙述——以山东方志为例

本文梳理了明清以来的山东方志分野,总结了山东方志中各县分野分布,并进一步考察了其叙述方式与理论背景。本文认为,传统分野理论自身本存在矛盾,且关注对象为较大的行政区划。多数地方志编纂者并非盲目因袭经典或官方文献,而是有自发的思考与书写。在这种背景中,方志分野叙述既有对分野理论本身的怀疑,也有刻意地调整与弥合。如将之置于思想史的背景中理解,能帮助我们更好地认识分野理论的传承脉络及其在思想史与地理学史中的内涵。     

Names and their meanings: teaching cultural geography with the poem the names of migrant workers

ABSTRACT

This paper introduces a new teaching method, poetry, into the geography classroom, accompanied by an out-of-class discussion on a blog, and finds that its effects are rather different from those of traditional teaching methods, as it allows new perspectives on instructional content related to migrant workers’ lives and identities in China. The method enables students to analyse content from the perspective of cultural geography, in which poetry acts as an art form that connects people’s identities and social spaces. On the basis of this, we also provide some suggestions to engage students in critical analysis of poetry, from the perspective of cultural geography, through interactive online platforms such as blogs.     

Rethinking electoral geography: spaces and practices of democracy in Nicaragua

Despite engagements with Foucauldian and Deleuzian insights by many geographers, concerns remain that we are still failing to understand the difference geography makes to the exercise of power. This article, which focuses on the 2006 Nicaraguan elections, has three main aims. The first is to explore the relationship between power and space through the lens of an electoral campaign. The second is to contribute to recent attempts to theoretically reinvigorate electoral geography. The third is to provide an alternative reading of democratisation in Nicaragua. Ultimately, this article focuses on how ordinary people in the interests of creating a better life for themselves make do with the circumstances in which they live.     

“Living together separately”: Thoughts on the relationship between political science and political geography

In their provocatively titled book, Living Together Separately, Michael Romann and Alex Weingrod argue that the shared terrain of Jerusalem obscures deep divisions in the physical and social lives of its Arab and Jewish ethnic communities (Romann & Weingrod, 1991). Multiple divisions exist not only among peoples sharing a common space; they are also found among communities of scholars sharing common intellectual interests. This has certainly been the case of Political Science and Political Geography during much of the twentieth century. Members of both disciplinary communities seek insights into the role of politics and political structures in human society, yet until recently they have pursued their work within orbits that only rarely intersected. They attended different conferences and symposia, they employed different methodological tools, and they did not draw heavily on each others published work.Recent theoretical and empirical developments have begun to erode the barriers separating Political Science and Political Geography, and a discussion of the relationship between the disciplines is thus both timely and welcome. Professor Elazar is an appropriate person to place at the center of this discussion, for his work as a political scientist is unusual sensitivity to geography. Professor Elazar's comments about research orientations and career constraints provide an interesting point of departure for such a discussion, but to understand the nature and depth of the divide between the disciplines it is important to consider the core intellectual constructs and practices that have characterized Political Science and Political Geography during the twentieth century. These have fostered theoretical orientations and research approaches that are sufficiently different from one another to create significant barriers to interdisciplinary contact.     

从历史地理看徽商的兴衰

多山少地的生存环境、俭朴的生活、商业中的诚信、儒家思想的影响,对徽商的形成和发展或许都起过作用,但对徽商这样一个商业群体来说,决定性的因素还是商品和市场.从历史地理的角度看,即根据当时的地理环境加以考察,徽商充分利用地理优势,稳定占有以长江三角洲为主的市场,经营的商品也摆脱了原籍的局限.与政治权力的结合使徽商获得食盐营销的特权,并以此迅速致富.徽商的最终衰落也在于市场的丧失和商品落后.     

The field, the museum and the lecture hall: the spaces of natural history in Victorian Cornwall

This paper contributes to our understandings of the geographies of science through an analysis of nineteenth–century natural history and, in particular, of the provincial natural history society. Focusing on nineteenth–century Cornwall and one of the main natural history societies operating in the county at that time – the Penzance Natural History and Antiquarian Society – it is argued that a set of key spaces were integral to the operations and outputs of such societies. The paper details the significance of the Penzance Society's museum, field sites and lecture hall as sites for communal work of local natural historians. They were also important, it is argued, in their construction of West Cornwall as a site of national natural scientific importance. Lastly, these spaces defined an agenda for regional scientific study. In particular, they promoted a taxonomic method that would transform local people into rigorous scientists and the local region into a 'book of nature'.     

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.