Tag,you're different: the interrupted spaces of children at risk of anaphylaxis

Several contributions to understanding the emotional aspects of everyday lives have been made by geographers. What we undertake in this research is to focus that lens on the emotional context of experiences of children at risk and in particular on anaphylactic risk-scapes, particularly within the school environment. This research attempts to go beyond the policy response by privileging the voices of the affected children (and their parents) in order to understand the emotionality of their risk experience; how it is articulated and negotiated in place, and how bodily boundaries are interrupted. Qualitative methods were used to explore children's perceptions of, and experiences with, anaphylactic allergy in the school environment. In-depth interviews were conducted with 10 children (aged 8–12 years) and 10 adolescents (aged 13–17 years) and their parents. Children were also asked to draw a picture of ‘what it was like to live with a severe food allergy’ and to then explain their illustration. Results revealed how the spaces of children at risk of anaphylaxis were interrupted; social spaces were interrupted through their bodily experiences of risk as they negotiated in and through school environments. These findings suggest allergic children contest school and policy constructions of ‘safe place’ through the interrupted spaces and bodily disruptions of emotion.     

Discussion Of The Volume Priroda I Obshchestvo [Nature and Society]

In March 1969, a group of geographers at the Geographical Society USSR in Leningrad convened a meeting to discuss the volume Priroda i obshchestvo (Moscow, 1968), a collection of articles concerned with the role of geography in investigating the man-nature relationship. Selected articles appeared in Soviet Geography, May 1969. Some of the discussants were critical of certain authors on the ground that they argued in favor of a unified geography to deal with the man-nature relationship as a whole and did not differentiate between socioeconomic systems (capitalism, socialism) in appraising society's attitude toward nature. The official report of the meeting, in which five principal discussants participated, follows.     

Russia's Electoral Geography: A Review

A noted specialist on the electoral geography of Russia reviews the existing body of work on the subject based on national elections, beginning with the RSFSR returns from the March 1989 voting for seats in the the USSR Congress of People's Deputies and extending to the presidential race of 2004. The author identifies major themes and methodologies relevant to a discussion of the political topography of Russia, before assessing the extent to which the country's emergent electoral landscape has been described. He emphasizes the importance of scale in interpreting the spatial patterns of electoral outcomes, as well as the social and economic correlates of voting across the regions. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: H10, O10, R10. 4 figures, 84 references.     

A Multi-ethnic City in Transition: Vilnius's Stormy Decade, 1939-1949

An American historian traces major changes in the demographic character of Vilnius during 1939-1949, a period encompassing the dislocation of its population and destruction during World War II as well as the city's ethnic and physical transformation prompted by incorporation into the USSR. More specifically, the paper, based in part on archival material, details and contrasts the circumstances prevailing during several distinctive periods in the city's mid-20th century history (September 1939-June 1941, June 1941-July 1944, and July 1944-1949), when it was exposed to five successive state jurisdictions (Poland, Lithuania, twice USSR, and Nazi Germany) and became the new Soviet capital of Lithuania. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: O15, O18, R14. 1 figure, 89 references.     

Visualizing the directional bias in property crime incidents for five Canadian municipalities

There are three interconnected and fundamental elements that define the spatiality of crime: places, distances, and directions. Over the past 180 years, research has flourished for the first two fundamental elements with relatively little research on directionality. In this article, we develop a visualization technique allowing for the display of the directional bias for a large number of offenders that aids in subsequent analysis. We show that a directional bias in criminal activity is present overall, but is not monolithic. Consequently, urban form and understanding place play a strong role in criminal directional biases for moving through our environments.     

“They have the right to throw us out”: Élisée Reclus'New Universal Geography

Abstract: The anarchist and geographer Élisée Reclus (1830–1905) argued for the idea of universal brotherhood for all the peoples of the world in his encyclopaedic work the Nouvelle Géographie Universelle (NGU) (1876–1894). The nature of Reclus' argument and its representations of Europe, otherness and colonialism, however, are contested today, and it is unclear what insights it might offer to contemporary students of colonialism and post‐colonialism. In this paper I engage with two emblematic cases—British rule over India and French occupation of Algeria—as they are presented in the NGU, considering Reclus' analysis of imperialism and his novel critique of colonial power. In doing so I wish to demonstrate that far from being conventional, the NGU is a radical and interesting resource for those struggling to construct a critical discourse on Europe, otherness and colonialism.     

Surveying Subjective Phenomena: A Review Essay

Abstract

The geographic perspective on human behavior emphasizes the notion of context. Context suggests that human behavior is partly determined by the place in which individuals and groups act, and in turn these actions re-create places. It follows that an element of history is the contextual setting of activity. Spatial statistics are introduced as a tool for modeling context in historical studies. Spatial dependence serves to operationalize the specificity of place and the diffusion of processes between places. Spatial heterogeneity serves to operationalize the idea that behavior is regionally specific rather than uniform across space. Both spatial dependence and spatial heterogeneity are included in spatial regression models. A spatial statistical analysis of the Nazi Party vote in Bavaria between 1928 and 1932 is adopted to illustrate the argument.     

From Urban Social Space to Social and Environmental Justice: Observations on Laurence Ma's Essay

A senior American specialist on China and noted geographer evaluates the merits of an essay by an equally prominent specialist who advocates reflexive activism as a method designed to generate more relevant studies of the country. The author of the evaluation stresses the value of empirically based work, noting a number of contributions by geographers to the study of China's transition from doctrinaire communism to "socialism with Chinese characteristics." While not denying the need for geographical research focused on deficiencies in social and environmental justice, he is not in favor of excessive activism that may overlook advances in economic development and related accomplishments of China's governing regime. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: P30. 24 references.