Playful and multi-sensory fieldwork: seeing,hearing and touching New York

Geographical fieldwork is being reinvigorated through pedagogical and methodological innovations. Yet, while there are many good ideas in circulation, there is less evidence of where these ideas are taking us: what students are getting out of them, and what significance they may have for the discipline. These questions are explored through case studies involving playful and multi-sensory fieldwork: collecting sounds, urban climbing, finding “accidental art” and getting lost. Students tend enjoy this approach to fieldwork, which inspires them to learn actively and creatively, fosters the acquisition of new skills and explores the broader possibilities of playful and multi-sensory geographies.     

Spatial Analysis in Physical Geography and the Challenge of Deterministic Uncertainty

The application of complex and nonlinear dynamical systems (NDS) theory in physical geography and geosciences has proceeded through several stages, and has recently entered a phase where field-testable hypotheses and historical or mechanistic explanations are being generated. However, there are some fundamental challenges. It seems clear that chaos and dynamical self-organization are present, and may be common in earth surface systems, and that these phenomena have spatial manifestations in the landscape. However, NDS theory and methods have been formulated primarily in the temporal domain and are typically ill-suited to real-world spatial data. Spatial analytical methods are not generally capable of distinguishing deterministic complexity and uncertainty from noise. Thus, the detection of the signals of complex deterministic dynamics in real landscapes and spatial data is a major challenge. Entropy-based methods of spatial analysis can be directly linked to nonlinear dynamics, and are at present the best available method to approach this problem. However, there is evidence in the spatial analysis literature suggesting that development of techniques to detect deterministic uncertainty is possible. Pending such a break-through, three general approaches are described, based on spatial analysis of chronosequences, the characteriziation of changes in spatial structure over time, and the spatial-domain testing of specific hypotheses relevant to deterministic uncertainty. Current trends generally suggest a shift in mathematical modeling and spatial analysis in physical geography away from traditional determinism toward approaches that incorporate locational, historical, and scale contingency.     

Minor,Robert N., The Religious the Spiritual and the Secular: Auroville and Secular India

Indo-Iranian Journal -     

Developmentalities and Calculative Practices: The Millennium Development Goals

Abstract: This paper focuses on wide‐ranging governmental discourses that enable new ways of shaping social and economic affairs in the field of development. Directing particular attention to the Millennium Development Goals, we refer to these discourses as developmentalities. As a form of governmentality produced through these Goals, developmentalities draw on the turn of the century to recast certain development problems and offer reformulated solutions to these problems. We argue that they rely on three forms of neoliberal rationalities of government—information profiling, responsibilization, and knowledge networks, and their calculative practices, to shape global spaces and new capacities for individuals and social groups. Our analysis is based on extensive policy documents, reports, and development initiatives affiliated with the United Nations and other organizations, as well as insights derived from in‐depth interviews and conversations with United Nations policy and research personnel from the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) and the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).     

Parenting the Profligate Son: Masculinity, Gentility and Juvenile Delinquency in England, 1791–1814

This case study of fatherhood in early nineteenth-century England examines the conflict between a wealthy East India Company merchant and his increasingly wayward adolescent son, who was transported to Australia in 1814. It argues that fatherhood was often necessarily a reactionary process, that did not conform to a static, historically specific model of ideal or dysfunctional fatherhood. It also traces the origins of much of the disagreement to conflicting ideals of masculinity between father and son, which were exacerbated by their rise in wealth and social status. Since both aspired to the elite status of gentleman, the article demonstrates that competing and compatible ideals can co-exist within different generations of the same family. Thus a study of male family experience suggests that hegemonic masculinity is subject to short-term shifts of emphasis on those values adopted by men of different ages and social status.     

New views on an old forest: assessing the longevity, resilience and future of the Amazon rainforest

The aim of this paper is to investigate the longevity and diversity of the Amazonian rainforest and to assess its likely future. Palaeoclimate and palaeoecological records suggest that the Amazon rainforest originated in the late Cretaceous and has been a permanent feature of South America for at least the last 55 million years. The Amazon rainforest has survived the high temperatures of the Early Eocene climate optimum, the gradual Cenozoic cooling, and the drier and lower carbon dioxide levels of the Quaternary glacial periods. Two new theories for the great diversity of the Amazon rainforest are discussed – the canopy density hypothesis and the precessional-forced seasonality hypothesis. We suggest the Amazon rainforest should not be viewed as a geologically ephemeral feature of South America, but rather as a constant feature of the global Cenozoic biosphere. The forest is now, however, entering a set of climatic conditions with no past analogue. The predicted future hotter and more arid tropical climates may have a disastrous effect on the Amazon rainforest.     

The Effects of Universal Pre-K in Oklahoma: Research Highlights and Policy Implications

Oklahoma is one of only three states in the nation to offer a free pre-kindergarten (pre-K) program to all students in participating school districts on a voluntary basis. Fortuitous circumstances in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the state's largest school district, permitted an unusually rigorous evaluation of the pre-K program in Tulsa. Because four-year-olds beginning pre-K and five-year-olds beginning kindergarten were administered the same test in September 2001 and because strict eligibility cut-offs were applied, based on date of birth, it was possible to control for selection effects, in addition to gender, race/ ethnicity, school lunch eligibility, and precise date of birth. The evaluation showed strong positive effects of the pre-K program on children's language and cognitive test scores. Hispanic children benefited most from the program, and black children also showed sharp gains, especially when they attended full-day programs. The results are discussed in light of contemporary controversies regarding targeted or universal pre-K programs; full-or part-day programming; public school or multiple delivery sites; strategies for ensuring high quality, effective programs; and the need for rigorous program evaluations.     

Team Arab: al‐Jazeera and the flagging of everyday Arabism during the 2008 Beijing Olympics

The linking of living rooms across state borders by al‐Jazeera and other pan‐Arab satellite television channels has prompted claims that a ‘new Arabism’ that undermines state nationalism is emerging. Until now, analysts have mostly focused on the ‘hot’ Arabism in the news coverage of politicised events such as the Israel–Palestine conflict. This article offers a new dimension by suggesting that as important to satellite television's construction and reproduction of Arab identity is the everyday discourse found in less overtly political programmes such as sport. To demonstrate this, it offers an analysis of al‐Jazeera's coverage of the 2008 Beijing Olympics showing how the broadcasts address viewers as a common Arab audience who are simultaneously encouraged to be nationalistic towards their separate nation‐states within a given ‘Arab arena’ of states with whom they should primarily compete. This suggests that new Arabism should in fact be considered a ‘supranationalism’, not a revived Arab nationalism as it simultaneously promotes Arab and state identities in tandem. Finally, it aims to expand our understanding of ‘everyday nationalism’ by adapting Michael Billig's theory and methodology of ‘banal nationalism’ in British newspapers to facilitate the study of sport on supranational Arab identity on satellite television.