U.S. Census Bureau Area Measurements for Sub-County Areas and Clarence Batschelet’s U.S. Population Density Map of 1942

ABSTRACT

During the Second World War, the U.S. Bureau of the Census published a novel population density map for the U.S. that used minor civil divisions as its areal basis. Prior to that time, the national-level area measurements required to calculate densities for such sub-county units were unavailable. The data that enabled the production of the map published in 1942 were collected by clerical workers who were employed as part of a joint project between the Census Bureau and the Works Progress Administration. The area measurements, made using planimeters, were used with 1940 Census of Population data to compute densities that are represented on the map using a choropleth technique.     

Monitoring the media: student production and use of newspaper resource files in economic geography

Abstract

This article discusses the use of newspaper resource files in economic geography, in particular focusing on a simple method of production involving student participation. It connects two related issues: first, the question of topicality in course content; and second, the problems associated with the collection and collation of up‐to‐date material at a time when there are both teaching pressures and an unrelentingly wide array of information and sources available to economic geographers. Against this background, the paper discusses the rationale for such a student‐based media monitoring activity, the simple procedures that might be used, and the advantages and disadvantages involved. It concludes that media monitoring is useful for students in maintaining up‐to‐date ideas and information in their course activity and that it may also trigger a series of valuable debating points, adding to the richness of the educational experience in economic geography.     

School geography: some key issues for higher education

Abstract

Recent changes in the character and organisation of the school curriculum in England and Wales are making a direct impact on geography. Despite its place in the National Curriculum for 5–14‐year‐olds and its current popularity in public examinations at 16 + and 18 +, there are growing indications that geography may not be guaranteed security, status or quality in the long term. In particular, geography's position may be threatened in the 14–19 curriculum by its failure to be included in the statutory core, by increasing competition from vocational courses and by the possibility of further changes now proposed for the 16–19 qualification structure. There is also evidence of a growing discontinuity in content and approach between geography at school and in higher education. Threats to geography in schools are likely to have a direct impact on the supply of students to higher education and on the continuity of educational experiences. It is suggested that there needs to be a greater dialogue and joint school/higher education activity not only to ensure continuity and progression in the existing situation, but also to influence the next round of school curriculum change. Some areas for potential action are identified and these may have wider relevance to geography educators in other countries.     

Responses to classroom needs: the US Census Bureau's college curriculum support project

Abstract

An approach to improving teaching is described which consists of simply offering teachers a wide range of alternative classroom techniques. Extracts from two collections of teaching techniques, on lecturing and on seminars and tutorials, are presented and commented on to illustrate the approach. Doubts concerning the advisability of offering ‘tips’ to teachers are discussed.     

Cultural Economy: Achievements,Divergences, Future Prospects

This paper reflects on two decades' scholarship in geography on cultural economy, assessing strides made against some of the expectations of early proponents. Cultural economy continues to be a polysemic term. In some quarters, it refers to a type of economic geography into which matters of ‘culture’ are absorbed. This work frequently focuses on the empirics of the so‐called ‘cultural and creative industries’. Others see cultural economic research as an opportunity to move beyond the epistemological constraints of ‘culture’ and ‘economy’, questioning their status as foundational categories. This latter approach has been used in a broader set of empirical projects encompassing technology, knowledge, and society. Contrasting threads of cultural economic research have helpfully moved geographical scholarship beyond paradigmatic limitations, but jostle somewhat uncomfortably within existing (and increasingly specialised) disciplinary and subdisciplinary fields. The risk is that by questioning the categorical underpinnings of much specialised research, cultural economy struggles to ‘belong’ in the increasingly coded and compartmentalised university setting. I conclude with a discussion of future prospects. Some measure of vitality could be achieved through incorporation of a cultural economy perspective into the pressing issues of climate change, human sustenance, and urban infrastructure planning. These are issues for which the polysemy of cultural economy could prove constructive, transcending technocentric market ‘fixes’ and bland assumptions about how best to ‘green’ our cities – promoting instead ethnographic interrogations of how humans access, use, exchange, and value financial and material resources as moral and social beings.     

Feeling insecure: a personal account in a psychoanalytic voice

The concept of ontological security has been taken up in human geography primarily through Giddens' (1990 Giddens, A. (1990) The Consequences of Modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press. [Google Scholar], 1991 Giddens, A. (1991) Modernity and Self-Identity. Cambridge: Polity Press. [Google Scholar]) formulation, but the idea has its origins in the writings of the existential psychoanalyst R.D. Laing. Returning to the psychoanalytic underpinnings of the concept, I use autobiographical vignettes to evoke and explore what it means to feel insecure. Using psychoanalytically informed illustrations of melancholia, ordinary acute anxiety and unconscious splitting, I develop a personal, subjective emotional geography of insecurity, and I caution against confusing certainty with ontological security.     

中国古代地理学的目录学考察(一)——《汉书·艺文志》的个案分析

本文通过对《汉书·艺文志》类例和叙文的分析,并结合相关出土文献,认为《汉书·艺文志》中著录的独立地理书大致可以分为两类:(1)《地典》和《堪舆金匮》为一类。这一类著作以一定的理论学说对已有的经验地理知识加以统驭,注重的是学说或理论的演绎,是朴素的理论地理知识体系。(2)《山海经》、《国朝》、《宫宅地形》为一类。其基本的出发点是通过对各种地物和地理现象的经验性测量或记录,寻求其内部可能存在的规律性,即“自然之数”。它在某种程度上代表了以观测为基础的经验地理知识体系,注重的是实证性。     

东北新石器文化格局及其与周边文化的关系

本文依据典型遗址层位关系、器物形态比较、碳14测定数据等材料,将东北11个文化区的新石器时代文化自早至晚区分为三个阶段七个时期,确定了各种文化所处的时空位置。分别从遗址分布、房址、墓葬、生产工具、生活用具、原始艺术品、经济类型等7个方面,概括了东北地区新石器时代考古学文化的基本特征。通过文化比较,讨论了东北文化区与中原地区、山东半岛地区、俄罗斯贝加尔湖地区、俄罗斯远东南部地区、朝鲜半岛地区史前文化的交流与影响。     

The production of tyrannical space

Bullying is an internationally pervasive problem that impacts significantly on the behaviour, health and wellbeing of children. Drawing on ideas developed in both the abundant psychology literature, and the landmark study by Percy-Smith and Matthews Tyrannical Spaces (2001) Percy-Smith, B. and Matthews, H. 2001. Tyrannical spaces: Young people, bullying and urban neighbourhoods. Local Environment, 6(1): 49–63. [Taylor & Francis Online] [Google Scholar], this paper examines the psychosocial dynamics of bullying as they interrelate with various environments. The key groups involved in bullying are considered particularly with respect to their spatial rituals, actions and interactions. In the absence of sustained geographical research in this field, some broad directions for future geographies of bullying are suggested as the basis for future inquiry. Some initial indications are provided as to how these might involve, and connect to, existing disciplinary interests in geographies of exclusion, moral and emotional geographies.