20世纪中国历史地理研究若干进展

以探讨未来中国历史地理学在国际全球变化与可持续发展研究中的作用为目的, 根据近半个多世纪中国历史地理学的相关研究成果, 对20世纪中国历史地理学研究的若干进展进行了简要回顾。内容涉及: ①历代疆域政区研究与历史地图的编制; ②历史气候与自然灾害研究; ③历史时期地表过程研究; ④中华文明起源与发展研究;⑤区域综合与重大历史事件研究; ⑥历史时期人地关系与适应模式研究; ⑦基础资料的积累与新技术应用等 7 个方面。除上述进展外, 中国历史地理学还建立了一套独具特色的研究方法, 构筑了较为完善的学科体系, 并培养了一代又一代的学术继承人和学科带头人。     

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.     

eBay and research in historical geography

The electronic trading forum eBay presents fascinating but under-examined possibilities for research in historical geography. With literally millions of items for sale and millions of users participating in on-line auctions there seems little limit to what one might find. In this essay, three authors briefly trace the history of auctions and of eBay, before explaining how eBay works, and then describing some of the ways that buying (or not buying) research materials on eBay has changed the ways that we think about our work. We further explore some of the implications—empirical, theoretical, methodological and ethical—that the availability of such items to the highest bidder presents, address some of the consequences for the socially constructed and place-specific nature of value that on-line auctioning reveals, and ponder some of the implications of this for contemporary consumption.     

Counterfactual reasoning and method in historical geography

This paper connects philosophical debate concerning the metaphysics and epistemology of counterfactuals to the methodological concerns of historical geography. It argues that counterfactual claims are implied by a wide range of common epistemic judgements, specifically those regarding evidential support and explanatory connection. In addition it argues against those who have sought to restrict the use of counterfactuals to, in particular, rational action, or systems that are inherently chancy. Rather it argues in favour of an expanded role for counterfactual method in history and geography, in the forms of imaginary experiments and the questioning of ‘what might have been’.     

Teaching economic geography in UK higher education institutions

Abstract

This paper examines how the changes in the last decade in economic geography have been reflected in the courses taught in the UK and assesses the impact of recent changes in teaching styles and methods on how the subject is taught. It summarises the findings from a survey of 50 UK Geography Departments. The paper covers three main topics: the significance of economic geography in UK degrees courses; the characteristics of introductory economic geography courses; and the issues involved in the teaching of economic geography.     

Telling small stories: spaces of knowledge and the practice of geography

This article examines how the practice of learning geography, and the arenas in which knowledge-making takes place, can be usefully positioned within changing histories of the discipline. It contends that networks of action – understood through the intersection of social sites, subjects and sources – present a conceptual framework and narrative focus for the re-consideration of specific episodes from geography's past. The interventions made here are informed and illustrated by a 'small story' about the doing of geography. Based on different personal accounts, the story revives a series of events, encounters, dialogues and images dating back to the winter of 1951 at Glenmore Lodge, Scotland. This educational institution in the Cairngorm mountains offered children from urban areas the opportunity to learn field studies and the skills of 'outdoor citizenship'. Initially, the focus falls on Margaret Jack, a 14-year-old field-course participant. Her learning experiences are traced through personal letters, a diary and a field journal dating from that time, and her recent recollections of this event. Margaret's account dovetails with the story of her field studies instructor, Robin Murray. Robin's role is traced through his learning experiences as a geography undergraduate at Aberdeen University, and the recent recollections of Catriona Murray, his wife.     

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。     

Honoring Susan Hanson's 45 years in geography

The essays in this themed section honor Susan Hanson's 45 years in geography. They are written by senior academic geographers who participated in a series of panels at the Annual meeting of the Association of the American Geographers in Boston in 2008 that celebrated Susan's scholarship and her impact on the discipline of geography.     

The Interview Hurdle to Postgraduate Studies and the Job Market

Abstract

This paper explores the educational value of a rural trail—a field visit on foot—using as an example a trail in a small area of countryside near Lancaster in northern England. This trail provides those teaching rural geography in higher education with a means of developing their students’ skills of informed observation and interpretation of field evidence based on study and discussion on‐site. A trail can enhance the appreciation and teaching of conceptual matters such as cultural approaches to rural geography. It also encourages the integration of diverse theoretical approaches to rural studies (based on culture, planning and management) and the simultaneous consideration by students of both local (often personal) details and national (or even global) pressures for change. The paper concludes that the rural trail has considerable pedagogical and academic merit for rural geographers.     

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.     

‘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’.     

Restructuring physical geography

The tripartite division of physical geography into geomorphology, climatology and biogeography is still often quoted, but developments in the last two decades have resulted in restructuring of the discipline. Significant publications by physical geographers now occur dominantly in multidisciplinary rather than in core geography journals. Analysis of the contents of ten journals and of the submissions to the 1996 UK Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) demonstrate the current pre-eminence of two sub-disciplines: geomorphology with hydrology, and Quaternary environmental change. Complementing research in the sub-disciplines, six trends towards a more integrated physical geography are identified as indicators of restructuring that has already occurred. Three futures are suggested for physical geography. The first, the status quo, is thought to be unlikely. The second, the disappearance of physical geography into other disciplinary areas would leave holistic investigations to other disciplines and so is undesirable. Thus, the third alternative, a renaissance of a more integrated physical geography, provides the most likely future. It is supported by existing integrative trends, provides a natural sequel to reductionist specialization, reflects the strong identity for the geographical approach to the earth and environmental sciences and the spatio-analytical approach integrating deductive and inductive studies, and it focuses on human–environmental interactions that could have implications for geography as a whole.     

Teaching critical thinking in world regional geography through stakeholder debate

Using a stakeholder debate based on a real-world case of regional construction – that of Turkey's application to join the European Union – improved students' critical thinking in an introductory world regional geography course. Such courses are a staple offering among US geography departments, and often the only exposure of non-majors to geographic thinking. A stakeholder debate highlighting regional construction, using structured learning activities and reflection on their own thinking, improved students' critical thinking. We describe the stakeholder debate and its revision after one semester, and provide data from assessment and thematic coding of students' reflection papers.     

现代历史地理学对当前淮河流域史研究的启示

在区域史的学术语境下,现代历史地理学对于当前淮河流域史研究具有一定的启示。首先表现在学术理念上,动态时空理念有助于对历史时期淮河流域空间范围的把握,借鉴人地关系、关怀现实这些理念,不仅可以对历史时期淮河流域复杂的人地关系进行学术层面的探讨与研究,同时,对于当前淮河流域的社会经济发展和环境改善也具有现实意义。其次表现在治学方法上,空间要素的分析、综合、比较有助于揭示淮河流域作为一个独立历史地理单元存在的事实,而文献记载与野外考察相结合的方法则可以加深研究者对淮河流域历史与现实的理解。     

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.     

Emotions and affect in recent human geography

This paper seeks to examine both how emotions have been explored in emotional geography and also how affect has been understood in affectual geography. By tracing out the conceptual influences underlying emotional and affectual geography, I seek to understand both the similarities and differences between their approaches. I identify three key areas of agreement: a relational ontology that privileges fluidity; a privileging of proximity and intimacy in their accounts; and a favouring of ethnographic methods. Even so, there is a fundamental disagreement, concerning the relationship – or non-relationship – between emotions and affect. Yet, this split raises awkward questions for both approaches, about how emotions and affect are to be understood and also about their geographies. As importantly, mapping the agreements and disagreements within emotional and affectual geography helps with an exploration of the political implications of this work. I draw upon psychoanalytic geography to suggest ways of addressing certain snags in both emotional and affectual geography.