Environmental interpretation is flowering in Denmark

Abstract

Environmental interpretation is flowering in Denmark. In 1986 it was decided to carry out a three‐year experimental project with 14 environmental interpreters. Today the number of environmental interpreters has grown to 230. The inspiration came from abroad, but the project is established according to Danish cultural and democratic traditions. Some Environmental Interpreters are employed by the State in the National Forests, others by counties, local authorities, museums or ‘green associations’, but they are all linked together in the Environmental Interpreter Service with secretariat in The National Forest and Nature Agency. A modern organisation provides training courses for the interpreters and has developed a series of active interpretation methods in order to make experiencing nature an important tool in modern Danish environmental management and inspire a positive attitude to the future—to sustainable development and management. The aim of setting up an Environmental Interpreter Service was to give people interesting experiences in and knowledge of the countryside and thereby a greater understanding of the complexity of nature, the conditions for agriculture and perhaps an increased environmental consciousness. It was also the hope that if people had a greater understanding of nature, they will love and care for it better. The Brundtland Report ‘Our Common Future, the conference in Rio in 1992 and Agenda 21 has changed the Environmental Interpreters’ work. We have recognised, that it is important to use live Interpreters and not only technical media in this important work. People respond best to personal, face‐to‐face interpretation. The interpreters try to create a love of nature, and at the same time, create an understanding of local and global environmental conditions.     

The challenges facing forest interpretation

Abstract

The article examines the development of forestry interpretation programmes in Cumberland State Park, near Sydney, Australia. The programme seeks to conserve the environmental resources by raising community awareness of the issues. The aim is to empower the greater community to take responsibility for its own actions and its effect on the environment.     

Mobility and the diversity of Early Neolithic lives: Isotopic evidence from skeletons

Isotopic analyses of tooth enamel from early Neolithic skeletons in southern Germany adds diversity to the picture of the Neolithic transition in central Europe, which has often been described as a wholesale shift in diet and technology. Over the past decade, these isotopic studies have suggested some degree of immigration from nearby indigenous groups, as well as social differences within early Neolithic communities that correlate with immigration patterns. In general, there emerges pattern a pattern of patrilocal kinship that is consistent with independent genetic evidence, and anthropologically consistent with the potential identification of Neolithic ‘nuclear families’; and finally, specialisation of subsistence activities, such as livestock herding and cultivating, probably along hereditary lines.     

A typology of representative institutions in late medieval Europe

This article attempts to follow the tradition established by Hintze and Elias in comparing several aspects of representative institutions throughout medieval Europe. It uses numerous recent case studies and a new more detailed examination of the Low Country sources and it tries to take into account the criticisms levelled at the rather unsophisticated generalizations of earlier scholars. Attention is given to the structure of the institutions, their actual working and their functions.Comparisons are made whenever the available information permits, if possible by quantification, although our information is often too vague and incomplete to permit this. A number of ideal types are formulated as a working hypothesis for further investigation, based on the social structures within which these types of institutions functioned. The essential variables were the extent of urbanization in a particular territory, the form of government and the economic and juridical situation of the nobles and peasants.     

“I spent the first year drinking tea”: Exploring Canadian university researchers’ perspectives on community‐based participatory research involving Indigenous peoples

Community‐based participatory research (CBPR) is generally understood as a process by which decision‐making power and ownership are shared between the researcher and the community involved, bi‐directional research capacity and co‐learning are promoted, and new knowledge is co‐created and disseminated in a manner that is mutually beneficial for those involved. Within the field of Canadian geography we are seeing emerging interest in using CBPR as a way of conducting meaningful and relevant research with Indigenous communities. However, individual interpretations of CBPR's tenets and the ways in which CBPR is operationalized are, in fact, highly variable. In this article we report the findings of an exploratory qualitative case study involving semi‐structured, open‐ended interviews with Canadian university‐based geographers and social scientists in related disciplines who engage in CBPR to explore the relationship between their conceptual understanding of CBPR and their applied research. Our findings reveal some of the tensions for university‐based researchers concerning CBPR in theory and practice.     

Searching for the Promised Land: Examining Dr Martin Luther King's Concept of the Beloved Community1

Abstract: 4 April 2008 marked the 40th anniversary of Dr King's assassination in Memphis, Tennessee. Since his murder we have seen Dr King's message of social justice, the growing threat of militarism, the threat the USA's burgeoning empire posed, and his goal of ending injustice boiled down to a few words spoken in Washington DC when he declared his dream to see his children grow up in a society free of race prejudice. This paper engages with Dr King's work and presents a more geographically sophisticated understanding of King's legacy than the oft repeated Washington speech. Through an analysis of Dr King's concept of the Beloved Community, I argue that Dr King's work stems from the experiences of the Black Atlantic world. Consequently, we should see Dr King's social theory as part of a larger anti‐colonial struggle which sought to integrate African American and Western notions of community, which holds contemporary importance as a counterpoint to current neoliberal conceptions of community.     

People with intellectual disability in neoliberalizing community spaces

This paper analyzes how personalized disability support interacts with the uneven and incomplete neoliberalization of community organizations and how this affects access and inclusion for people with intellectual disability. In many countries, the introduction of individual budgets for disability support has shifted some responsibility for community inclusion onto individuals with disability and their carers. Concurrently, geographers have shown that community organizations have adopted commercial and bureaucratic qualities while continuing to facilitate opportunities for active citizenship and participation. This paper highlights how personalized disability support funding interacts with community organizations that have adopted some neoliberal ideas about responsibility and entrepreneurialism. Drawing on in-depth interviews with people with intellectual disability and the managers of community centres in the state of Victoria, Australia, the paper analyzes how the resultant community spaces shape the terms on which people with intellectual disability participate. The paper demonstrates that individual support packages issued by the federal government turn people with disability into entrepreneurial employers and that this comes up against a branch of community organizations that has come to understand its responsibility for inclusion in entrepreneurial terms. The paper offers avenues for future geographical work on disability inclusion and for understanding neoliberalization that go beyond direct state interference.     

Japan’s role conception in multilateral initiatives: the evolution from Hatoyama to Abe

This article examines Japan’s role conception in its multilateral commitments to the Asia-Pacific after the global financial crisis in 2008. The Hatoyama government launched an East Asian Community initiative, which aimed to assume a kingmaker role in creating a new order in East Asia. However, the East Asian Community initiative did not develop due to stress on self-reliance and distance from partnership with the USA. The Abe government sought to play a dual role in its major multilateral commitments. On the one hand, the government sought to play a follower role in enhancing the position of the East Asia Summit with an eye to consolidating the US-based institutional framework. On the other, Abe’s new multilateral initiative of the Free and Open Indo-Pacific represented Japan’s kingmaker role in maintaining a free and open maritime regime, and to keep a liberal and open economic regime under the emergence of the Trump administration.     

The Labour government and the battle for public opinion in the 1975 referendum on the European Community

An upsurge of historical research in this century has assessed various campaigns that promoted European Community (EC) membership to the British people. This article, concentrating on the Labour government’s approach to the 1975 referendum on the EC, uses sources such as official records at The National Archives and political papers of some of the key agents; these sources have hitherto been underused for investigating public opinion-related activities on Europe in 1975. Although acknowledging that the interpretation of a government-controlled referendum applies up to a point, the article emphasises, as its key theme, the government’s difficulties in controlling events during the campaign itself. Despite having much support from newspapers, the government often had difficult relations with the mass media as a whole, and the article challenges the belief that it was effective here. This article also contests the idea that the campaign made much impression on the public. These findings further apply to other campaigns on the EC in the 1960s and 1970s and potentially in contemporary British politics.     

宋元泉州外侨社区的兴衰及其启示

宋元泉州外国侨民社区的形成是一个相当值得注意的问题。作为泉州港对外经济文化交流的作业平台,它的存亡与港口的兴衰有着密切的互动关系,无论其成功的经验还是衰落的教训,对我们今天建设海洋文化、重振古港雄风都是弥足珍贵的。