Training ESD change agents through geography: designing the curriculum of a master’s program with emphasis on Education for Sustainable Development (ESD)

To achieve a deep and wide implementation of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) into all forms of education, the capacity of educators and trainers needs to be increased. This paper describes the curricular architecture of a master’s program in Geography with an emphasis on ESD. Based on a first feedback given by graduates, the paper discusses both strengths and weaknesses of the program.     

Policy versus Practice. Behind the Scenes in Dutch Development Aid, 1949–1989

The history of development aid has often been analyzed on the level of international politics and ground breaking ideas on big overriding issues. But the policies developed in the various Western capitals do not in themselves provide a full picture of foreign aid. It is important to examine the field more closely: what did actually happen ‘on the ground’ as a result of intentions and agreements on aid? Did the practice of aid projects influence aid effectiveness? The present article looks at the history of aid provided by the Netherlands, a country that for a long time liked to portray itself as occupying a guiding role in the vanguard of international development. It is based on archival study of project files, set in countries that were at the core of the Dutch aid effort. They are taken from the time span of four decades in which the aid effort was developed and flourished, before the end of the Cold War changed the scenery in 1989. The article aims to shed new light on how policy aims were translated and provides an indication as to why the desired results failed to come about.     

The decline and shifting geography of violence in Russia’s North Caucasus, 2010-2016

Abstract

A spatial analysis of the geography of insurgency in the North Caucasus of Russia from 1999 through the end of 2016, focused on the period since 2010, corroborates other work on the incidence of violence in the region. A sharp drop in the absolute number of conflict events over the past half-decade occurred as violence diffused from Chechnya in the mid-2000s and is attributable to a range of domestic and international factors. Domestically, the decline is broadly linked to the securitization of the region around the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, the return to the use of the Kremlin power vertical as a system of political management after an interlude focused on economic development as a mitigation strategy, and the wider adoption of harsh management tactics at the regional and republic scales. Internationally, potential insurgents have left Russia to fight in the Middle East and Ukraine. Using a conflict-event data-set (N = 18,960) from August 1999 through the end of 2016 and focusing on the period since the creation of the North Caucasus Federal District in January 2010, the paper identifies a set of notable trends within the decline and shift in violence. Key findings include a percentage increase in arrests carried out by Russian security services, a decline in retaliation across conflict actors, and the failure of federal subsidies to contribute to declines in violence in the region. The long-term prospects for continued insurgency in the North Caucasus, specifically in light of the collapse of the Islamic State and Russia’s domestic challenges, remain uncertain and should acknowledge the recent decline in violence in the region.     

试论中国的乡村古聚落文化旅游资源

本文在掌据丰富的乡村古聚落文化及其分布的基础上,着重对我国乡村古聚落文化的特点及其成为旅游资源的优势和开发利用的原则等问题发表了笔者的意见,以便与读者讨论研究。     

二十世纪三四十年代云南史地研究的首次学术总结——《云南史地辑要》概说

1949年底,云南省立昆华民众教育馆出版《云南史地辑要》一书。由方国瑜、凌纯声、陈一得、张凤岐、罗常培、张席、张印堂、何塘、杨、于乃义等著名学者撰写,包括云南沿革、部族、气象、边务、语言、地质史、地形、矿产、农村、文献共十篇,基本上涵盖了云南史地研究的主要内容,时人评论其"学近专门,事不蹈虚"。由于种种原因,该书从出版之日起即陷入"湮没"无闻的境地。本文初步探讨了该书的出版及"湮没"、内容与作者,认为它是对二十世纪三四十年代云南史地研究的首次学术总结,在云南学术史上具有重要的地位。     

Geography's difficult engagement with the psychological therapies

The consideration of psychoanalytic issues presents geography and geographers with a number of difficulties; this paper examines those difficulties from within a humanistic perspective. The most common geographical engagements with the psychological therapies have been with their psychodynamic and, to a lesser extent, humanist methodological forms. A humanist perspective on this engagement suggests that it has led to two associated problems. At a disciplinary level it has resulted in an approach that has tended to privilege intellectual knowledge at the expense of emotion, and at a personal level it has not encouraged an approach that is sensitive to difference. This essay proposes that a commitment to an engaged, 'congruent' listening might help temper these difficulties.