Fieldwork in geography education: defining or declining? The state of fieldwork in Canadian undergraduate geography programs

This paper investigates the prevalence of fieldwork in undergraduate Geography programs in Canada. It examines the presence of fieldwork, provided through both field courses and courses that include fieldwork components, by reviewing program requirements and course offerings in undergraduate geography programs. The research explores the extent to which fieldwork is a required component of an undergraduate degree and scrutinizes the integration of fieldwork within geography programs. The results indicate that few programs include fieldwork requirements and that overall there is limited integration of fieldwork in programs of study.     

Temporal trends in violence during the Mississippian period in the Middle Cumberland Region of Tennessee

This study utilizes a biocultural approach to investigate skeletal evidence for violence among Mississippian communities in the Middle Cumberland Region (MCR) of Tennessee. Bioarchaeological evidence for violence is placed within the local environmental and cultural context in order to better understand temporal trends in regional conflict. Bioarchaeological analyses were conducted on the crania of 599 adult individuals from 13 sites in the MCR. Approximately 7.2 percent of the sample (43/599) showed evidence of violent cranial injuries in the form of scalping, sharp force trauma, and blunt force trauma. While overall trauma frequencies appear to increase during the later Mississippian period, this may reflect a shift in the nature of violence, rather than simply an intensification of intergroup conflict. More fine-grained temporal comparisons are made for samples from the late Mississippian Averbuch site. The variability in the frequencies and types of violence observed within the MCR demonstrates the issues inherent in the reliance on broad generalizations about human behavior in the past and highlights the importance of utilizing both a regional and diachronic approach.     

The Sharp Edges of Europe: Extending Schengen Eastwards

The EU's external security concerns have caused it to encourage regional integration at all levels in central and east Europe. However, its emerging internal security policies (contained in the newly integrated Schengen Convention, and in justice and home affairs cooperation) are having contrary effects by reinforcing barriers between countries in eastern Europe. The goals of regional integration and good-neighbourly relations between applicants and non-applicants are still present in the Union's enlargement strategy, but border policies are also being developed that run counter to them. EU border policies are raising new barriers to the free movement of people and goods that inhibit trade and investment between candidates and their non-applicant neighbours. There is a risk that the EU could end up giving the central and east European (CEE) countries the benefits of westward integration with their richer neighbours at the high cost of cutting ties with their poorer neighbours in the east. This bargain is still acceptable overall to most political leaders in central Europe; however, acceptance of the EU's terms has been accompanied by great unease about its unintended consequences for intra-regional relations. Moreover, this is not just a problem for CEE countries: the overall security of Europe depends on preventing the isolation of countries left at the edges of an enlarged Union.     

Environmental Mis‐Assessment,Development and Mining in Orissa,India

Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs) are the pre‐project standard for outlining potential environmental and social risks related to large‐scale mining. Incomplete or disingenuous EIAs mask the potential social, environmental and economic impacts of large projects. To examine the possible misrepresentation of project risks, this article analyses a set of EIAs for the proposed Niyamgiri mine and related Lanjigarh refinery and refinery expansion in Orissa, India. In contrast to their promises of development benefits, it is argued that the project assessments fail to acknowledge the substantial social impacts for project‐affected persons as some face displacement, livelihood change, marginalization and a loss of natural resources. The issues raised here are not unique to these cases, but are representative of a flawed system in which environmental clearance is granted for projects with misleading or mis‐assessed EIAs. This article questions the validation of ‘development’ projects via EIAs which do not thoroughly estimate the social risks and costs of projects.     

The British and Foreign Bible Society in Port Said and the Suez Canal

The Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson visited the Hawaiian Islands from January–June 1889, in the middle of one of the most turbulent periods in its history. While staying on the islands he became associated with King Kalakaua's royalist faction, which was then involved in a struggle for power against the Reform Party, whose members were responsible for leading Hawai‘i first to republican rule (1893) and then to American takeover in 1898. This article examines Stevenson's encounter with the Reverend Sereno Bishop, author of a pamphlet enquiring into the causes of indigenous depopulation, within the context of significant social and political change on the islands. While evidencing the growing politicisation of Stevenson's later years, his experience also bears witness to the development of Americanism in the Reform Party, who prepared the way for annexation by aligning themselves ideologically with sympathetic elements in the United States.     

European Postcolonial Studies and Ireland: Towards a Conversation amongst the Colonized of Europe

In the 1980s, key Irish Studies scholars proposed that Irish culture, politics and economics – both past and present – are most usefully viewed in the context of imperialism, colonialism and anti-colonial nationalism. The result of this intervention is an Irish postcolonial studies which, over the past 35 years, has produced an influential body of scholarship premised on the idea that Ireland is a colony/former colony of the British Empire. Notwithstanding its considerable impact, Irish postcolonial studies has not been without its detractors, with the country's location within Europe forming the basis for one of most persistent objections to the application of a postcolonial framework to Ireland. Given the key role assigned to geography in the postcolonial debate in Ireland, this article explores the implications for Ireland of an emerging postcolonial critique centred on Europe. In addition to discussing the concept of internal colonisation as applied to such Western European countries as Italy and Britain, the article makes reference to postcolonial analyses of the region of Eastern and Central Europe and its relationship with both Russia and Western Europe. The article acknowledges that the branch of European postcolonial studies that focuses on uneven power relationships within and between European countries offers a useful challenge to the argument that Ireland should either be examined within a European framework or a postcolonial one, but argues that the categorisation of a greater number of European societies as colonies or former colonies raises important questions that require further debate.