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.     

Virtual Development and Virtual Geographies: Using the Internet to teach interactive distance courses in the global South

This paper evaluates the delivery and learning outcomes of an interactive postgraduate geography and development MSc programme taught partially over the Internet, to students living in some of the most connectivity-poor regions of the world. It focuses particularly on the experiences of course developers, tutors and students, with the distance strand of a Master's Programme pioneered by Royal Holloway, University of London, and IW:LEARN (International Waters Learning Exchange and Resource Network), a UNDP-implemented project of the Global Environment Facility. Issues of design and implementation are discussed, with particular reference to pedagogical and financial questions and the considerable technical and personnel difficulties encountered. Comparability of experience between distance and residential students forms a central concern.     

Cultivating the Common Good at the Margins of the Commons: An Ethnographic Portrait of Transformative Pluralism in a High-Security Prison

ABSTRACT

Arising from an ongoing research project, this article presents an approach to religious and societal pluralism through ethnography. During a course convened inside a high-security prison, with a combined group of students currently resident in the prison and students currently studying in the University of Cambridge, participants and lecturers from diverse faiths and no faith explored concepts of citizenship and the common good. Bringing Rowan Williams’s proposals for “interactive pluralism” together with the transformative pedagogical framework of the course and its resonance with liberative theologies, I describe how the course participants co-created a space in which we were able to enact a transformative approach to the societal pluralism of which our gathering was a microcosm.     

Perspectives and sensitivities: teaching as the creation of conditions of possibility for geographic thinking

Abstract

Teaching methodological courses means providing students with general ideas to think with, rather than specific facts to think about. Rethinking the teaching task must be informed by an awareness of ideological, philosophical, technical and analytical perspectives, and should look for basic themes uniting apparently different approaches. Almost all quantitative methodologies are actually specific examples of the mathematical operation of mapping. Genuine understanding is achieved by visualisation of a problem, rather than algebraic manipulation, and the teaching task could be aided greatly by employing the power of interactive computer graphics. It is suggested that the analytical and pedagogic approaches used by experienced teachers might be shared initially in an international conference, and so form the basis for more effective and efficient teaching in the future.     

Finding a Relatively Flat Archaeological Site with Minimal Ceramics: A Case Study from Iraqi Kurdistan

ABSTRACT

We present a new technique to detect flat archaeological sites with minimal ceramics using an unmanned aerial vehicle that maps surface stone concentrations. Methods deployed include point pattern analysis of stone concentrations and a machine-learning technique using unsupervised classification of visible stone signature qualities, which are used in simple linear regressions to compare with geophysical and ceramic surface survey results of a site in Iraqi Kurdistan. There is a stronger fit (r^2?=?0.77) between surface stone concentrations and architecture identified by geophysical measurement, while surveyed ceramics show a weaker fit to defined architecture (r^2?=?0.31). Surface stone concentrations are potentially a better proxy than ceramics for determining the presence of past settlement in regions where stone was commonly used, sites are relatively flat, and ceramics are found in low concentrations. The methods advanced here can be scaled to wider areas, particularly in mountainous regions, where surface stone features are present.     

Environmental adjustment and private economic strategies in reindeer pastoralism: Combining game theory with participatory action research

The aim of this article is to suggest a research approach to be used in studies of common‐pool resource problems and the deterioration of reindeer pasture. A frequent strategy in such studies is game theory based on rational choice assumptions. This approach has been criticised, for instance, for the neglect of local knowledge concerning cultural preconditions and for the political implications damaging Saami reindeer‐ecology. Our contention is that such problems can be handled by combining game theory with participatory action research when studying the subject above.     

Dominant,damaged, disappeared: imagining war through videogame bodies

ABSTRACT

Like other pop-cultural forms, videogames commonly reify militarist representations of warfare as straightforward, precise, and moral by obscuring conflict's embodied messiness. But videogames do not just reflect militarist interests in their content; they are materially, symbiotically entangled with militarist interests. Recognising this intimate connection, and the phenomenon of virtuous warfare that results, this paper takes videogames seriously as material cultural artefacts. This paper draws on feminist IR, critical military studies, and game studies to explore three categories of bodies, and their gendered logics, produced by virtualised warfare: the hypermasculine, technologised soldier; the oft-ignored broken bodies of the soldier and game developer; and the obfuscated civilian. Together, this analysis argues that the consumption and production of videogames benefits certain parties, in ways that are reproduced and sustained through the production and obfuscation of bodies. Such entanglements have real consequences for how war, and its popular culture production, is understood and imagined.     

"Silently Farting in the Face of the Empire." Review of Paul and the Imperial Roman Order

Abstract

As the Roman Catholic Church's hierarchy ventures more frequently into the sphere of environmental ethics and makes pronouncements on large-scale environmental problems, its effectiveness will consistently be undercut by its commitment to what is traditionally called "Catholic act analysis," which when used to evaluate a host of commonplace actions leads Catholics to believe that they are morally unproblematic. Yet when these same actions are performed day after day and year after year, they contribute to many large-scale environmental problems that are unquestionably harmful—and are often viewed negatively by the Catholic hierarchy. At some point, this pattern of approving morally of certain actions the cumulative, corporate side effects of which cause pernicious environmental problems will strain the Catholic Church's credibility on environmental matters—and until the hierarchy reexamines its commitment to Catholic act analysis, this dilemma will be unavoidable.     

Discovering the Language of Data: Personal Pattern Languages and the Social Construction of Meaning from Big Data

Abstract

This paper attempts to address two issues relevant to the sense-making of Big Data. First, it presents a case study for how a large dataset can be transformed into both a visual language and, in effect, a ‘text’ that can be read and interpreted by human beings. The case study comes from direct observation of graduate students at the IIT Institute of Design who investigated task-switching behaviours, as documented by productivity software on a single user’s laptop and a smart phone. Through a series of experiments with the resulting dataset, the team effects a transformation of that data into a catalogue of visual primitives — a kind of iconic alphabet — that allow others to ‘read’ the data as a corpus and, more provocatively, suggest the formation of a personal pattern language. Second, this paper offers a model for human-technical collaboration in the sense-making of data, as demonstrated by this and other teams in the class. Current sense-making models tend to be data- and technology-centric, and increasingly presume data visualization as a primary point of entry of humans into Big Data systems. This alternative model proposes that meaningful interpretation of data emerges from a more elaborate interplay between algorithms, data and human beings.     

Public game funding in the Nordic region

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we explore the policies related to support structures surrounding national game industries, with focus on the three Nordic countries Finland, Norway and Sweden, and investigate what kind of context the Nordic welfare state model has provided for game development. The three cases illustrate how Nordic welfare state measures have interacted with the games industry over time. While the political ideals have been fairly similar, our study demonstrates how the objectives and practical means of state engagement have differed significantly. We argue that although the three countries all have support schemes of which game companies can take advantage, there are significant differences in the degree to which each individual country has organized government interventions and support. While the Finnish state has treated game development as an endeavour in business development, the regional Nordic game program and the Norwegian state has developed a cultural policy that primarily aims to protect the cultural heritage. The Swedish state has not established a tailormade policy directed towards game development but has a broad spectrum of general policies for supporting research and business development. We suggest that future research should investigate how the public funding is structured and how discourses are formulated around appeals for more public funding for the games industry.     

Wasserstoff als Energieträger. Herstellung,Lagerung, Transport

Abstract

This essay, written to accompany a lecture to new students on the course of Economic Analytics, at the Institute of Econometrics of the University of Lodz in Poland, provides a broad historical account of the development of econometrics. The context enables students to locate various aspects of econometric analysis. The origin of regression analysis is described and an account of cointegration analysis is presented. This essay is concerned primarily with the propagation of the ideas as distinct from the manner and the circumstances in which they have originated.     

Critical spatial learning: participatory mapping,spatial histories,and youth civic engagement

As digital technologies become ubiquitous in many places, scholars of civic engagement, youth and political life, and geographic education have explored the potential of teaching critical and spatial thinking through digital technologies. This paper examines interactive digital mapping as a technology environment for teaching and practicing critical spatial thinking, in relation to civic engagement. From this participatory and dialogic mapping project with teenage girls in Seattle, Washington, we develop a conceptualization of critical spatial thinking that emphasizes how social and spatial processes intertwine to generate societal inequalities and show how this learning informs students’ social and spatial civic responses. We show how interactive digital mapping pedagogies offer students an opportunity to develop awareness of what happens in their urban geographies, but also how and what they might do to intervene.     

Karstic Wetland Dwellers of Middle Palaeolithic Epirus,Greece

Abstract

The coastal zone of western Greece from the Ambracian Gulf to the Albanian border is the, foreland of the great Pindos range. It is a complicated, actively rising landscape of limestone mountains and closed intra-montane basins. Archaeologically, this karst landscape is distinguished by numerous Middle Palaeolithic open-air sites embedded in the red sediments of the basins. In contrast,further inland, the river valleys of the western flank of the Pindos harbor only sparse cave and rockshelter sites of Upper Palaeolithic age. A land-use strategy in the Middle Palaeolithic focused on predictable and seasonally-dependable features of karstic origin. This long-term pattern of scheduled Neanderthal residential mobility took advantage of wetlands at fixed locations which provided essential resources such as flint, animals, and plants. As the climate deteriorated in the Upper Palaeolithic the exploitation of wetlands declined and humans turned to caves and rockshelters and the pursuit of game on the upland interfluves and in river gorges.     

A STAMPED IMPRESSION ON THE RIM OF A MB II STORAGE JAR

Abstract

The scarab impression on the rim of a Middle Bronze II storage jar is the first of its kind to be discovered in Israel. The pattern on the impression appears on scarabs of the period. The unusual location of the impression may point to a special content of the jar, or alternatively to the owner of this pot. Once the context of the storage jar rim is studied, it may shed some light on the possible association of this jar with the scarab impression on its rim.     

Complicating Decolonisation: Mozambican Indian Experiences in the Twentieth Century

ABSTRACT

This article explores repercussions of independence movements and global decolonisation processes. It argues that an analysis of such processes needs to take into account not only the bilateral dealings between coloniser and colonised, but also needs to include other, perhaps less obvious, actors. Decolonisation involved a power game not only among European powers striving to keep their empires intact at the time, but also between erstwhile empires and emerging nation-states, between statesmen, political activists, and local populations. Through the analysis of Indian experiences in the Portuguese colony of Mozambique after Goa's inclusion in the Indian Union in 1961, this paper illustrates how different parts of the world were interlinked by complex cross-currents during the decolonisation period, and how their connected histories played out in the unfolding of events between the 1950s and 1970s, as well as their ongoing legacy.     

Linking Research and Teaching: A staff‐student interview project

This paper describes a project used in the first-year curriculum that requires students to interview a member of staff about their research as a possible model to link research and teaching in the university. Through a critical evaluation, which draws upon responses canvassed from students and staff, the value of the project is assessed and its scope for application within other institutions suggested.     

After the graduation ceremony: Some thoughts on geography graduate careers

Abstract

An increase in the level of concern with geography graduate careers is needed. Geographers in higher education should undertake fuller and more detailed analysis of career patterns so that they can give careers advice and provide courses that give students some marketable skills. A brief survey of information currently available on geography graduate careers is followed by an analysis of the career patterns of geography graduates from the universities and a polytechnic. Suggestions are made for data improvement and for immediate action.     

From the ground up: cultural heritage practices as tools for empowerment in the Homeless Heritage project

Abstract

The Homeless Heritage project took place across two English cities (Bristol and York) between 2010 and 2014. The project sought to use a range of participatory heritage practices to engage contemporary homeless people in documenting their perspectives on each city. Drawing on data gathered over three and a half years this paper reflects on how collaborative cultural heritage practices can be useful in recording diverse stakeholder perspectives which can become catalysts for social change. It is further argued that two interactive exhibitions that resulted from the Homeless Heritage project contributed to the democratisation of knowledge, aiding negotiation of the complicated politics of contemporary homelessness in valuable ways.