Formation of beach‐ridge plains: an appreciation of the contribution by Jack L. Davies

A robust debate among coastal geomorphologists as to the processes by which beach‐ridge plains around Australia have formed was initiated by a former President of the Institute of Australian Geographers. This review gives special consideration to the work of Jack L. Davies, whose academic contributions to coastal geomorphology in Australia have not always been appropriately acknowledged when explaining how similar plains have evolved elsewhere in the world. Davies recognised that relatively steep storm waves caused erosion (cut) on beaches, whereas less steep long‐period swell waves returned sand (fill). He considered the beach berm to be the nucleus on which a beach ridge formed, which could subsequently develop into a foredune, in contrast to cobble ridges that were deposited during storms. Offshore conditions regulate supply of sand to the shoreline, partly through effects on wave refraction, with higher rates of supply where the nearshore is shallow. It was apparent to Davies that the elevation of successive ridges might, but not necessarily, provide evidence of past changes of sea level, despite adornment by variable amounts of windblown dune sand. Morphodynamic understanding of long‐term coastal evolution, based on radiocarbon dating chronologies, has demonstrated that Australian coastal plains formed over the past ~6,000 years when sea level has been close to its present level, in contrast to several documented locations in the northern hemisphere where the sea has been rising for the past few millennia. Particularly insightful were observations by Davies that ridge formation could be influenced by a range of factors including changes in sea level, storminess, or sediment supply. These factors acting singly or in combination seem likely to change in the future. Understanding such responses remains a high priority and can be addressed by new technologies, such as light detection and ranging, optically stimulated luminescence dating, ground‐penetrating radar, and computer simulation.     

Assemblage Biography and the Life Course: An Archaeologically Materialized Temporality of Richard and Sarah Hopkins

A substantial assemblage of material culture deposited ca. 1843–45 in Cambridge, England, is examined from a biographical perspective in terms of what it tells us of the preceding century or so—ca. 1730-1845—rather than the contemporary 1840s. It reveals a materialized temporality, bound up principally with the lives of the college cooks Richard and Sarah Hopkins but also numerous other individuals. The assemblage is also viewed from the perspective of the processes of discard and deposition, and the likely relationship of those involved in this to Richard and Sarah Hopkins.     

Uncommon Ground: The ‘Poverty of History’ in Common Property Discourse

It would not be a great exaggeration to say that scholars of environmental conservation and conflict have re‐discovered the institutional foundations of social and economic life. At the heart of this ‘renaissance’ is the belief that property and property relations have a strong bearing on how people use, manage and abuse natural resource systems, and that institutional arrangements based on the creation and management of common property can have positive impacts on resource use and conservation. Two bodies of thought compete for a voice in this literature. One, which aims to resolve Hardin's tragedy of the commons, is primarily concerned with the problem of encouraging collective action to conserve resources that are both depletable and unregulated. A second, influenced by notions of moral economy and entitlement, deals with the problem of creating and sustaining resource access for poor and vulnerable groups in society. This article argues that the literature on common property has become divided between a body of scholarship that uses deductive models of individual decision‐making and rational choice to explain the ways in which different types of property rights arrangements emerge and change over time, and one whose questions, aims and methods are more modest, and historically‐specific. It then aims to understand this evolution by situating the mainstream common property discourse in the wider intellectual trend of positivism, methodological individualism and formal modelling that has come to dominate social science in the United States. In so doing, it attempts to unravel the political and ideological foundations of what has come to be a dominant mode of understanding environmental problems, and solutions to these problems.     

E-Partizipation als Gesamtsystem

Zusammenfassung  An der Durchführung des elektronisch unterstützten Beteiligungsverfahrens „K?lner Bürgerhaushalt“ war der Bereich „E-Government und Online-Dienste“ ma?geblich beteiligt. Der Bürgerhaushalt, der in den Verantwortungsbereich des K?lner Stadtdirektors Guido Kahlen f?llt, erhielt eine internationale Auszeichnung der UN. Für den STANDORT sprach Dipl.-Geogr. Oliver M?rker mit Guido Kahlen über das Thema E-Partizipation in K?ln.     

Modern Location Factors in Dynamic Regions

Globalization has had an enormous impact on traditional industrial structures. It almost seems that everything is everywhere the same. And yet, in reality, some regions in a single industrialized country enjoy rapid economic growth while others are downsizing or stagnating. Thus there must be some remaining regional competitive advantages—even in the “Age of Globalization”. This paper engages in a quest to discover what these modern location factors might be and how and why they are necessary in creating dynamics and regional growth. In doing so, we link the driving forces behind these modern location factors with regional performance and eventually arrive at a concept of a regional lifecycle and its key dynamics. Using data that paint a comprehensive picture of industry and regional development in Germany we try to find empirical evidence for our approach.