Spatial and temporal tourism considerations in liminal landscapes

Abstract

Anthropogenic geographic studies in tourism should consider the liminality of the experience. Tourism by definition means a temporal and/or spatial movement takes place. How the tourist interacts and behaves during this transitory experience is a logical progression into human leisure behaviour. Several recent international gatherings of geographers provide the foundation to explore liminality in tourism and we build on those papers in this special issue. The papers are varied in geographies, yet have a central theoretical basis in all things liminal. Invited papers in this special issue are founded on the research presented at two international geography conferences in sessions devoted to tourism. The American Association of Geographers meeting in Boston, Massachusetts in 2017 and the Royal Geographic Society with the Institute of British Geographers in Cardiff, Wales in 2018 gathered geographers from around the world to study this theme. The following papers give the most comprehensive geographic review in tourism to date and we encourage additional dialogue.     

Eclectic and pragmatic: the colours of Dutch social and cultural geography

In the Netherlands, human geography has traditionally been an applied, practical science. Close ties have always existed with spatial planning and regional-economic policy. With good reason, the first generation of planning specialists—in the 1960s—consisted largely of people trained as geographers. Geographers were also the socio-spatial engineers of the welfare state (de Pater 2001b; de Pater and de Smidt 1989).     

NEW FRONTIERS OF IMMIGRATION RESEARCH: CITIES AND FIRMS*

ABSTRACT The increase in international migration to rich countries during the last two decades has spurred research and policy questions. The economic determinants of national and international migrations and the impact of immigrants on labor markets have been investigated by economists, geographers, and regional scientists for a long time. Recently, however, the availability of new and detailed individual data on migrants across regions and localities in several countries has made it possible to analyze the impact of immigration on a richer set of socio‐economic outcomes. Two avenues of research have emerged as particularly interesting and are the focus of this special issue. First, international migrants are particularly concentrated in urban areas but their impact on some outcomes that are particularly relevant in cities (such as crime and housing markets) are not well understood yet. Second, immigrants not only increase labor supply but also affect firms’ productivity, survival and growth through their impact on localized externalities. These two themes link all the contributions of this special issue and show new directions for future research on the impact of immigration.     

Whither labor geography and the rise of the robots?

The rise of the robots suggests a technological revolution like no other. It heralds potentially profound impacts on jobs and labor markets. Geographers have so far remained relatively quiet about such transformations. This commentary suggests ways in which social and cultural geographers can expand upon a robust labor geography and the debates surrounding the relationship between robots, robotic technologies, and labor. Six areas of engagement are offered that outline the richness and nuance of social and cultural geographical analysis related to the ‘rise of the robots’ at a time where much of the popular discourse around robotics is characterized by the extremities of either dystopian angst or positive boosterism. We call on social and cultural geographers to engage in conceptually rigorous and empirically informed research that provides novel ways of making sense of the multiple dimensions of our robotic futures.     

劳动力转移的理论流派与地理学的视角

简单回顾了关于劳动力转移的几种主要理论观点,除综合性的分析外,将劳动力迁移理论归纳为四类分析框架,即二元结构转换理论,以个人决策、成本-收益为主的分析理论,受家庭、社会结构影响的收益-风险分析框架,环境与移民相关分析学派。对人文地理学对劳动力问题的理解,以及近年来国内人文地理学在劳动力转移问题研究的主要议题进行了总结。认为,与现有的成熟理论相比,当前国内地理学对农村劳动力转移的研究存在框架和核心的缺失,偏重于刻画人口/劳动力流动的空间特征,对城市的特别关注,尤其是外来人口对城市空间和城市经济的影响,关注劳动力转移的影响,对劳动力转移的条件、过程的研究不够。对地理学调整改变视角,发挥学科优势,参与中国农村劳动力转移研究提出了建议。     

Effects of commune-internal migration in Finland on the spatial distribution of population and on dwelling house utilization

"The article is based on a programme of research which has been pursued for some years with the purpose of describing the extent and spatial orientation of commune-internal migration [in Finland], a topic about which very little has previously been known, relating this form of migration to total population movement and to dwelling house requirements and utilization. The analysis yields information on the dynamics of population changes occurring in areas on the margins of permanent settlement, while at the same time taking into consideration the effects of regional and in particular housing policy decisions upon the spatial distribution of population."     

On the history and geography of the International Conference of Historical Geographers

The latest meeting in the series of International Conferences of Historical Geographers was held in Kyoto in 2009. The series originated in a meeting of Canadian and British historical geographers held in Kingston, Ontario, in 1975. Four subsequent meetings held in Britain, Canada and the USA saw an increasingly international participation and the sixth meeting, held in 1986, was accorded the title of the Sixth International Conference of Historical Geographers. Eight further such conferences have been held since then, some in locations well beyond Britain and North America. This paper records the basic historical and geographical characteristics of all of the meetings between 1975 and 2009.     

Breaking the Convention: Researching the "Illegal" Migration of Refugees to Europe

The study of refugees by geographers and other social scientists is, almost by definition, framed around a series of legal categories, which provide us with more or less neat categories of types of involuntary migrants. Yet the process of migration emerges in relation to legal categories and is not simply dictated by them. Thus, as legislation on migration in general and the interpretation of the 1951 Geneva Convention in particular have become more restrictive, patterns of migration have increasingly emerged that manipulate, circumvent or simply break existing legislation.
This paper examines the responses by researchers in geography and related disciplines to asylum–seeking and other forms of migration that are increasingly categorised as "illegal" as a result of recent European policy developments. Specifically, the potential for participatory and/or emancipatory research in such circumstances is explored, through comparative analysis of the ethical issues involved in radical research on a range of "trafficking" scenarios. The interaction of such research with public policy–making is also examined.     

Population replacement,social mobility and development in Italy in the twentieth century

Abstract

Many scholars have expressed alarm at the low fertility and sustained immigration that have characterized Italy in the last decade (1.3 children per woman and an increase of more than 200,000 immigrants per year). This article takes a different approach, showing how low fertility and strong migratory balances (involving migration both between Italian regions and from abroad) have enhanced the formation of human capital, facilitating family strategies of upward social mobility, the construction of a more balanced labor market, increases in income and a decline in the graying of the population. The combination of low fertility and sustained immigration, therefore, has been and still is a fundamental resource for development of the population and of Italian society, especially in central and northern Italy. The article also discusses modifications in family and immigration policies suggested by these findings.     

RECENT POPULATION TRENDS IN THE USSR

Pending the publication of new Soviet population data based on the 1979 census, to be hald next January, the author reviews population trends in the 1970's. After a steady decline through much of the Soviet period, birth rates and death rates have stabilized for the country as a whole, although marked regional differences continue. An unexplained rise in infant mortality and an apparent reduction of life expectancy have led to the suppression of data in these areas. No ready explanation is found for a recent increase in female fertility and age-specific death rates. Abnormalities in the age-sex structure, resulting from past population catastrophes, continue to persist and indicate future labor shortages. Geographical differences in population growth rates, resulting from differential rates of natural increase and migration, are analyzed. Urbanization, a typical phenomenon of the Soviet period, continues apace, with the biggest increases in large cities despite a policy designed to discourage big-city growth. A crucial question is the optimal disposition of the growing labor pool in the Central Asian region-whether to foster local employment or encourage migration from Central Asia to labor deficit areas elsewhere in the Soviet Union.     

Why Scotland needs more than just a new migration policy

The Scottish Executive has adopted a policy to combat Scotland's declining population by encouraging inward migration. Using a multi‐state population model this paper presents nine long‐term population scenarios for Scotland using three net international migration levels and three fertility paths. The results show inward migration can slow population decline but makes little difference to population ageing. Without a higher fertility rate Scotland's population will become demographically unsustainable. Our simulations show that a higher fertility rate substantially reduces the future ageing.     

Regional Labor Market Dynamics, Housing, and Migration

Abstract.  This study explores the impact of plant‐level labor market dynamics and housing markets on gross migration flows. The internal and the external reorganizations of regional labor markets are shown to be related. An increase in internal turnover of jobs and workers in regional labor markets is found to increase net‐migration. This effect arises mainly from a reduction in out‐migration. Housing markets constitute constraints for migration. In particular, an increase in regional housing prices and a large share of owner‐occupancy housing discourages net‐migration to a region by reducing in‐migration. In contrast, the out‐migration rate remains largely unaffected by housing markets.     

Forum: Cultural Geography and Cultural Studies

This forum discusses linkages between cultural geography and allied ‘cultural’ disciplines. A symposium on this topic – held at the 2005 conference of the Institute of Australian Geographers in Armidale – was triggered by the targeted inclusion of geography in a cross‐disciplinary network funded by the Australian Research Council. Although non‐geographers in the network have articulated strong interest in and an enthusiasm for geography, their knowledge of, and everyday participation in its disciplinary travails have been limited. Given this, the papers in the forum review geography's long and dynamic consideration of the relations between place and culture, and raise a set of key issues for geographers to consider: how we might interact with other disciplinary debates about the ‘cultural’, retain distinctiveness as the home of intellectual inquiry around issues of space and place, and leverage opportunities to forge more permanent connections to geographers working not in our traditional institutional settings, but in a range of research centres, schools and disciplinary homes.     

The Role of Geographers in Work on a Land Cadaster and on an Agricultural Evaluation of Lands

Geographers have been in the forefront of the campaign to institute a full-fledged land cadastre and economic land-evaluation program in the Soviet Union. Although a State Register of Landholdings was adopted in 1955, it is concerned mainly with the distribution of lands among land-holdings and the composition of agricultural lands (crop land, hay meadows, pastures, etc.) within landholdings. A full fledged cadastral and evaluation program would seek to evaluate land in terms of quality and productivity. In view of the interdisciplinary character of the work, geographers are viewed as most suitable participants.     

Cross‐Disciplinarity in Australian Geography Presidential Address to the Institute of Australian Geographers’ Conference,Melbourne, July 20071

The disciplinary space that geographers conceive to be theirs has all been previously possessed, or latterly colonised, by other disciplines. Geographers defend their existence on the basis of their oft‐asserted, but never tested, cross‐disciplinarity. The journals in which refereed papers were published by members of the Institute of Australian Geographers (IAG) and the papers in Australian Geographical Studies were analysed for the period 1998–2002 to test the hypothesis of cross‐disciplinarity in both subject and method. IAG members do strongly tend to publish in more than one disciplinary area, and a large proportion of papers in Australian Geographical Studies are integrative across subdisciplines in geography, with many using more than one methodological approach. However, transgression of the physical geography/human geography divide was sufficiently uncommon to create a statistical break between sets of subdisciplines. Based on the data used in the present paper, Australian geographers can make a case for being members of a vital, integrative discipline, likely to make substantial advances in the hybrid spaces.     

Peopling the past

The author discusses the importance of studying past populations in order to more fully understand the present. The focus is on regional patterns of population growth and internal migration and their impact on urban social structure in nineteenth-century Great Britain. Aspects considered include patterns of movement, occupation and mobility, the labor and housing markets, dimensions of community, residential mobility, individual experience, and education and social change.     

Geography and the study of Third World underdevelopment re-revisited

Progress in development geography has been recently associated with the shift of the perspective on underdevelopment from a right-wing, conservative standpoint to a leftward, liberal-radical position. Marxism often conceals its message in obscure rhetoric with moral overtones on colonialism, slavery, poverty, and underdevelopment. Liberal academics have lamely acceded to the dogmas of this once-assertive ideology. Marxist view have exerted a stimulus on debates, but could not provide answers to the issues of this discipline. The hopes of development and prosperity a generation ago have evaporated only to be replaced by news of economic malaise, the food crisis, and crushing debt. In the late 1980's geographers addressed Third World environmental issues. Blaikie and Brookfield examined environmental deterioration among elements of the population-environment issue. Lewis and Berry dealt with African environments and resources. Watts and Bassett touched on agrarian and political concerns in West Africa. Adams examined water resources development in Nigeria's Sokoto Valley. Bryceson analyzed the political economy of agriculture in Tanzania. Lawson depicted how government policy bore on agriculture and its regional pattern. Crush detailed the absorption of Swazi labor into the South African economy. Dayal described the deficiency diet of agricultural workers in Bangladesh. Others examined Africa's financial disaster, Japan's trade surplus, and the global population crisis. Nevertheless, the dearth of output on and neglect of Third World issues by human geographers awaits positive research publications.     

Subaltern Empowerment in the Geoweb: Tensions between Publicity and Privacy

Geographers have argued that the emergence of the geospatial web, or geoweb, represents a radical shift away from the state's monopolization of geospatial technologies. Like the public participation geographic information systems (PPGIS) movement before it, the geoweb research agenda has emphasized a desire for empowerment and participatory democracy. However, this research agenda has also inherited a conceptualization of power that emphasizes the linkages between empowerment and public visibility, and this paper argues that this inheritance opens potentially sensitive geoweb data to exploitation. Geographers therefore have an important role to play in emphasizing the need to explore ways of harnessing the power of the geoweb for marginalized communities while nonetheless maintaining those communities' privacy. This paper uses work with the Maijuna indigenous people of Peru as a case study to begin a discussion about how the political goals of disempowered people may be best obtained through both public and private uses of the geoweb.     

地理学期刊与地理学的传统——西方主要国家地理学期刊评价

SCI是世界公认的自然科学领域最为权威的研究成果检索和评价工具,另一方面,一门学科的学会刊物也是反映该领域最重要研究成果的平台。在许多自然学科领域,学会会刊都是SCI的必检刊物,但世界各国多数地理学会的会刊却都不在SCI索引之列。这就产生了一个疑问:如何来评价地理学的研究成果?本文认为,地理学刊物的评价应该遵循其学科特点,以会刊作为成果评价的核心更符合实际。本文介绍了英美德法日等主要国家的地理学会和会刊的情况,并借此呼吁,在当前以SCI期刊论文作为第一标准的中国学术行政体制下,应维护地理学自身的发展规律,保持地理学的传统,建立合理的地理学研究成果评价体系。