Variable Resolution Spatial Interpolation Using the Simple Recursive Point Voronoi Diagram

This article introduces a procedure for progressively increasing the density of an initial point set that can be used as a basis for interpolating surfaces of variable resolution from sparse samples of data sites. The procedure uses the Simple Recursive Point Voronoi Diagram in which Voronoi concepts are used to tessellate space with respect to a given set of generator points. The construction is repeated every time with a new generator set, which comprises members selected from the previous generator set plus features of the current tessellation. We show how this procedure can be implemented in Arc/Info and present an illustration of its application using three known surfaces and alternative generator point configurations. Initial results suggest that the procedure has considerable potential and we discuss further methods for evaluating and extending it.     

Narrating intersections of gender and dwarfism in everyday spaces

Dwarfs, midgets, even freaks, are among the terms that have been used to label little people. Feminist theorists have argued that discursive identities of women prevent any meaningful essentialised analysis of their experiences. Similarly, disability researchers have argued against generalising the experiences of disabled individuals. This paper explores the intersection of gender and dwarfism through the narratives of four women who are little people. Findings suggest that the ways women, who are little people, negotiate public spaces are affected by discourses of gender, disability and common conceptions of what is physically normal. Furthermore, these discourses have material implications in the everyday lives of these women. A brief historical overview of dwarfism is followed by narratives that describe experiences in public spaces, perceptions of height related to age and capability, gendered spaces and sexual stereotypes, uncomfortable spaces, violations of personal space and transportation. This paper provides a partial perspective on how discourses of dwarfism are manifest in social spaces and the built environment. Despite these significant commonalities that little people shared with other disabled people, there are socio‐spatial experiences that appear to be unique to people with dwarfism .     

Evaluating an Entropy‐Maximizing Solution to the Ecological Inference Problem: Split‐Ticket Voting in New Zealand, 1999

For geographers, one important aspect of the ecological inference problem relates to the analysis of spatial variations in individual behavior. Obtaining estimates of this behavior, in the absence of direct data, is often difficult, and the “solution” to the ecological inference problem propounded by G. King is not relevant in all circumstances. An alternative, using a different approach, has been used for some time in electoral studies but has lacked “real” data against which to assess the accuracy of its estimates. The availability of such data for New Zealand's 1999 general election allows such an assessment to be made—with very favourable results. The estimates are then used to test hypotheses regarding the spatial variation in split‐ticket voting, again with considerable success.     

Geography: a different sort of discipline?

Debate continues about the inter-relationships between human and physical geography and their different research and publication practices. Relatively little data about these are available, however. Using an analysis of all publications submitted by UK geographers to the 2001 Research Assessment Exercise, this paper identifies a substantial difference between human and physical geographers in their publication strategies. Most physical geographers place their research papers in specialized inter-disciplinary journals and make relatively little use of geography outlets: most human geographers, on the other hand, publish in geography journals. Comparisons with other disciplines – in the earth and environmental and social sciences respectively – also identify differences between geographers and their peers. The overall conclusion is that, with regard to research and publication at least, UK geography cannot be presented as a single academic community with strong internal ties, but rather as a conglomerate of separate communities writing for different audiences.     

Indigenous Professionalization: Transnational Social Reproduction in the Andes

Indigenous professionalization is occurring throughout Latin America at an increasing pace as new careers open up in social development. Under what is heralded as socially inclusive neoliberalism, a "development with identity" paradigm is producing new university courses focused on indigenous issues. Influenced by discourses of social and human capital and addressing intersections of multiculturalism and development, these courses mobilize and help shape definitions of indigeneity; they also create spaces where donors and indigenous activists contest and debate understandings of development. Operating in a range of institutions, indigenous professionalization courses are led by a small elite group of academics and practitioners who move between programs and countries. Students also move transnationally. We argue that these courses, their classrooms and their curricula are intent on understanding intercultural situations transnationally, galvanizing international funding and support from bilateral and multilateral agencies as well as local and state actors. The social reproduction of indigenous professionalization is therefore transnational, yet grounded. At times, indigenous professionalization is socially reproduced by jumping scale; at other times, it works through established social and spatial hierarchies. This essay examines how indigenous professionalization is socially reproduced as a contested process through which notions of "good" and "culturally appropriate" development are constituted and consolidated.     

Technology Evolution and Citizen Activism: The Net and the Rebirth of Limited Government

Stuart Nagel's scholarship often focused on how technology shaped policy. This link constantly evolves as political activists seek new advantages. The Internet has greatly altered today's activism by sharply reducing information costs. This transformation is well illustrated in school politics and tax avoidance. Disgruntled parents no longer need to fight the education establishment directly—non-public school alternatives such as home schooling are now far easier thanks to the Net. The Net has also greatly facilitated tax avoidance by "democratizing" offshore banking. These options now constrain Washington and thus restore a degree of limited government once almost unthinkable.     

Memorial to Stuart S. Nagel

The following memorials to Stuart Nagel attempt to recount his life and works and place these in context. As will be shown, he was highly productive and has left a legacy in policy studies, public administration, public laws, and a number of other areas that is extraordinarily impressive.     

The uncertain state of islands: national identity and the discourse of islands in nineteenth-century Britain and Greece

This paper explores some of the ways in which the island was mapped into the British and Greek national imaginaries in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. From at least the seventeenth century the island, like the body, served as a model for the organisation of knowledge. The island functioned as an ideal body politic, in which political and cultural boundaries were congruent and readily defensible from invasion. In politically and geographically fragmented states the island became an important topos for resolving the problematic relations between nation and state, and between local knowledge and national unity. During the nineteenth century, national cultures were increasingly construed as autonomous, self-sustaining island spaces set apart from other communities beyond. From the second half of the century attention was also paid to those authentic ‘islands’ located within the nation-state. In this expanded topographical definition, the ‘island’ came to signify an identifiably different, contained and stable habitat. A relationship was sustained between these distinct spaces within the nation-state and the island as it was represented in biogeographical and evolutionary writings as a site for observing preserved life forms and diversification. Regional studies, for example, celebrated the survival of an indigenous national culture in geographically confined pockets. Emerging disciplines, such as folklore, sought to protect these spaces from the onslaught of a cosmopolitan modernity that threatened to overwhelm them. The island in this sense was a space in which ‘native’ customs might be preserved and, at the same time, a space in which potentially destructive, atavistic forces might be controlled and ultimately domesticated. It is here that the island emerges as an ambivalent, problematic place: at once a refuge and a prison, a place of innocent childhood adventure and of beastly aggression. Focusing on Britain and Greece as comparative case studies, the paper explores how this concern for internal ‘islands’ fed into and was reciprocally influenced by colonial encounters with ‘exotic’ island cultures.