The Arizona community data set: a long‐term project for education and research in economic geography

Abstract

The teaching of economic geography has received considerable attention in the literature over the last three years. This paper contributes to the debate by illustrating and analyzing a project based at the University of Arizona, the Arizona Community Data Set (ACDS). The ACDS is a long‐term field‐project that has given students the opportunity to go in the field to collect and analyze regional economic data and to apply theory and techniques learned in the classroom. This unique data set has yielded additional benefits in the area of basic research. It is argued that projects such as the ACDS complement some of the theoretical and analytical curriculum developed and recently published by other instructors in economic geography. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that some of the limitations commonly associated with field projects, especially the cost, can partly be overcome through sponsorship by community agencies.     

Challenges to geography's public and practitioners

Abstract

Economic geography is in a state of flux. This paper argues that there is a need to develop a relevant and theoretically informed economic geography. Some of the more difficult challenges facing both teachers and students are outlined, and the author describes how such difficulties have been tackled through an Enterprise in Higher Education initiative centering on innovative assessment procedures for group research projects. The project is evaluated in terms of potential gains to both staff and students.     

Teaching industrial location — secondary data: second best?

Abstract

The study of industrial location has undergone several changes of emphasis. Neo‐classical location theories have been supplemented by studies based on the locational behaviour of individual firms. In turn, the value of these has been challenged by those of a structuralist persuasion. In order to engage in the resultant academic debates in an informed way, students need to know how specific businesses use geographic space. Ways of enhancing their knowledge by linking documentary searches with group presentations and field days are described here, both in general terms and by means of a case study.     

Equity Policies for the Production and Distribution of Wealth

Abstract

This paper applies the methodological approach of “see-judge-act” put forward in Pope John XXIII’s encyclical letter Mater et Magistra (1961) to argue in favour of a greater emphasis on social equity considerations in development policies, rather than a more restrictive emphasis on the promotion of wealth alone. As countries move from conditions of underdevelopment and poverty to new levels of economic sustainability and prosperity, the question of who benefits from the distribution of wealth remains crucial. Too often, the rich benefit at the expense of the poor.     

Editorial

Abstract

Solidarity has become a central concept in Christian ethics. Although solidarity or analogous concepts can be found in other Christian traditions, as well as other religious and philosophical systems of ethics, the Catholic social tradition has perhaps most fully developed a concept of solidarity over the last century. This article contends that solidarity as conceived in Catholic social teaching (CST) provides a robust and useful understanding of the social obligations of individuals, communities, institutions, and nations. As a general overview of the concept of solidarity in CST, the article elucidates its biblical, theological and experiential foundations, its historical antecedents, and the goals, methods and scope of solidarity. The article also describes contemporary applications of the Catholic ethic of solidarity, and theoretical and practical challenges to its realization.     

Death at St Bernard's: Anti-vivisection,Medicine and the Gothic

Displaying a Gothic fascination with the misapplication of science, Edward Berdoe's St Bernard's: The Romance of a Medical Student (1887) was one of a number of novels in the 1880s that repackaged the horrors of vivisection for public consumption. Although the novel can be dismissed as derivative, it departed from standard themes found in other anti-vivisection texts. Through the device of a hero struggling with the moral implications of science and the reckless treatment of patients, St Bernard's challenged the legitimacy of the teaching hospital. The present article moves debate about the Gothic, literature and science beyond well-known texts by Stevenson and Wells to examine how St Bernard's combined ‘the methods of science with the methods of romance’ and shifted the anti-vivisection narrative into the hospital. In locating the novel within anti-vivisectionist uses of fiction and late-Victorian anxieties about experimental medicine and the teaching hospital, the article explores the novel's relationship with other anti-vivisection texts and Gothic fiction, and examines what it says about scientific practices and mentalities. St Bernard's fashioned a very different hospital from existing representations to warn readers of how brutish students and cruel doctors tortured patients. In doing so, the novel recast the teaching hospital as an uncanny and dangerous place.     

Is Feminist geography relevant?

Abstract

As the whole point of feminism is to empower women and girls and to improve the circumstances of their lives, most feminist geographers would claim that indeed feminist geography is — or at least aims to be — relevant; they would then hasten to point to the contradictions and ambiguities inherent in this claim: what counts as relevant and relevant to whom are complicating questions. The work of feminist geography encompasses teaching, activism and scholarship — all potentially relevant activities. In considering what counts as relevant, I discuss the difficulties of equating relevant with applied and of knowing whether or not our teaching, research and activism will turn out to be relevant. Complicating any claim to relevance is our inability to know, and lack of control over, how others will use our work. Asking ‘relevant to whom?’ points to the difficult truth that what some women view as positive change others may see as harmful to their interests; in this senserelevance is specific to particular contexts, scales and places. At the same time, relevance can enter the intricate web of global interconnections and transcend particular contexts, scales and places. Relevance itself is therefore a geographic concept. Feminist geographers struggle to hold together these sometimes contradictory geographic dimensions of relevance. I close by arguing that the growing body of feminist geography work engages with a range of social issues around the world and certainly has the potential for relevance at a variety of scales. But the relevance question will remain a complex and ambiguous one for feminist geographers.     

高职学院体育教学改革中《双主互动》教学模式的探讨

传统的教学模式已不适应新时期人才培养的需求。本文探讨的"双拥互动"教学模式,其内涵是教师主导作用与学生主体作用,相互激励,相互作用。其原则是,致力于导,营造氛围,创设情景,导学民主,其实施细则是以天津高职学院体育教材为载体,通过目标教学法,兴趣教学法,测试训练法,比赛训练法而体现。其关键是,区别对待,"导"放结合,精心设计,手段巧妙。     

孔子、苏格拉底思想比较研究

孔子和苏格拉底分别被誉为东西方的伦理学之父,作为轴心时代的文化英雄,他们的思想言行对后世产生了巨大的影响。本文就孔子对中国历史、伦理本位及注入式教学等的影响,苏格拉底对西方理性、平等、自由及启发式教学的影响等进行了比较研究,以期探讨当下人类面对的文化困境和生存危机。