Cross‐Disciplinarity in Australian Geography Presidential Address to the Institute of Australian Geographers’ Conference,Melbourne, July 20071

The disciplinary space that geographers conceive to be theirs has all been previously possessed, or latterly colonised, by other disciplines. Geographers defend their existence on the basis of their oft‐asserted, but never tested, cross‐disciplinarity. The journals in which refereed papers were published by members of the Institute of Australian Geographers (IAG) and the papers in Australian Geographical Studies were analysed for the period 1998–2002 to test the hypothesis of cross‐disciplinarity in both subject and method. IAG members do strongly tend to publish in more than one disciplinary area, and a large proportion of papers in Australian Geographical Studies are integrative across subdisciplines in geography, with many using more than one methodological approach. However, transgression of the physical geography/human geography divide was sufficiently uncommon to create a statistical break between sets of subdisciplines. Based on the data used in the present paper, Australian geographers can make a case for being members of a vital, integrative discipline, likely to make substantial advances in the hybrid spaces.     

The Limits of Mastery: Slaveholders,Slaves, and Baptist Church Discipline

Existing scholarship describes early southern evangelical churches as racially radical institutions that, as the eighteenth century surrendered to the nineteenth, capitulated to slavery, implementing accommodations intended to make them more attractive to respectable, slaveholding churchgoers. This essay argues that that transition was never as complete as suggested. Based on a set of 65 Baptist church minutes from congregations located in 4 different southern states, it shows how evangelical churches continued to exercise a degree of authority over slave-owning members and their treatment of bondpeople from the late eighteenth century through the end of slavery itself.     

从学术史看华侨华人研究的学科发展

本文试图从学术史角度探讨华侨华人研究的学科建设。从国内外研究华侨华人的历史看 ,涉及的学科包括历史学、政治学、经济学、法学、社会学、人类学等诸多方面 ,尤其是西方对于华侨华人的学术研究 ,从一开始就不是历史学或经济学、政治学之类的单一学科的研究 ,而是综合性、全方位的研究 ,其覆盖面甚广。其特点在于研究对象的单一性 ,而不是学科或研究方法的单一性。因此 ,欲建立华侨华人学 ,必须包括诸学科的研究 ,即历史、经济、文化、政治、社会等各方面。尤其重要的是 ,这些多学科研究并非单指研究对象的改变 ,而是指研究的方法和手段 ,特别是研究的理论架构方面必须有所变化 ,以建立综合性的华侨华人学。     

我国旅游学研究现状与学科体系建构研究

在不同的语境下,“旅游”的含义是不同的,内涵复杂多义。“旅游学”一词一般只存在于《旅游学概论》类的教科书中,但从目前坊间收集到的国内《旅游学概论》类的教材的比较分析可以看出,对于旅游学的内涵和外延,旅游学的学科性质、分类和归属等,各家看法都还很不一致,国外!学者对于此也无明确的一致意见。本文认为,旅游学的学科发展和体系建设应该从旅游的最基础、最核心和最本质的概念出发来研究和构建。     

旅游管理教育与学科建设的国际经验与我国问题及发展设想--以上海财经大学发展目标与特色为例

旅游业已发展成为世界最大产业,发达国家的旅游管理教育与学科发展也有100多年历史。本文以世界著名高等学校旅游管理教育与学科建设的国际经验为参照,以我国旅游业发展对旅游管理教育与学科建设的需要为导向,依据上海财经大学将努力创建成具有“现代化、国际化、信息化”特色的一流大学的目标,提出了上海财经大学旅游管理教育与学科发展的设想。由于上海财经大学是上海市第一个设立旅游管理博士点的院校,因此,这一设想对我国旅游高等教育的发展具有一定的借鉴意义。     

Editorial: Anatomy of a publication. the Journal of Archaeological Science, the first nine years

The structure of this journal during the first 9 years of its publication is examined. Sub-disciplinary composition indicates a predominance of zoological, botanical and materials papers. Scientific approach is difficult to evaluate but is predominantly inductive. Contributions from the U.K. exceed those from other countries, though articles from elsewhere, especially the U.S.A., have increased through time. The location of research sites shows a similar distribution. Multiple authorship is shown to be high in comparison with some sciences. Articles have become longer and fewer during the life of the journal. Discussion is directed towards the requirements of the journal readership.     

List of figures and acknowledgements

Historians have mainly taken notice of Lombard pawnbrokers who, being omnipresent in legal sources, became the late medieval usurers par excellence. An account of a royal commission against usury lists 520 fines levied between 1400 and 1404 against 491 usurers in northern France; they include Lombards and other public pawnbrokers, as well as secret or casual French creditors. On examining the lists of names and of fines, one finds that native, secret moneylenders occupied important positions in the commercial centres and in the surrounding countryside. Some French usurers, of high standing, made use of their position to challenge the Lombard companies, even though the need for secrecy made them work alone and avoid more formal organisation. In addition, there existed a mass of modest usurers without special social standing, who were attracted by the prospect of easy profit. Partly because of a lessening in persecution and partly through assimilation, the casual French usurer began to occupy the position once held by the Lombards, whose services were rendered less vital by new financial methods.     

Towards an ‘optics of power’: technologies of surveillance and discipline and case-loading midwifery practice in New Zealand

Midwives in New Zealand achieved professional autonomy in 1990 with an amendment to the Nurses Act 1977. Predicated on a natural approach to childbirth it was envisaged that midwifery would counter the trend of increasing medicalisation of childbirth. Some 20 years later, we continue to be concerned by increasing rates of intervention in childbirth including caesarean section operations. Midwifery practice is no longer supervised in a hierarchical arrangement with the obstetrician at its peak, however, we suggest that new and more subtle disciplinary mechanisms have come to the fore post-1990. Drawing on Foucault's concepts of the ‘medical gaze’ and the ‘panopticon’ we describe the ways in which midwifery practice (and through them the bodies of childbearing women) continues to be disciplined to conform to obstetric norms.     

Self and space,resistance and discipline: a Foucauldian reading of George Orwell's 1984

The novel 1984, George Orwell's nightmarish vision of totalitarianism published after the Second World War, remains relevant in the twenty‐first century. Orwell's concerns regarding the abuse of power, the denial of self, and the eradication of both past and future continue to resonate in contemporary discussions of politics and society. Geographers, however, have directed minimal attention to the spatiality embedded within 1984. Accordingly, in this paper I examine the theoretical implications of space, resistance and discipline as manifest in the novel. Drawing on the theoretical insights of Michel Foucault, I detail how the spatial and temporal control of everyday activities serves to discipline spaces within a totalitarian society. Moreover, I suggest that 1984 illustrates how the production of knowledge through the act of writing may forge spaces of resistance within disciplined spaces. This paper contributes, therefore, in two areas, these being resistance geographies and fictive geographies.     

French cosmographers and navigators in England and Scotland, 1542–1547

The term “social geography” was used by French sociologists of the Le Play School by 1884 and, perhaps independently, by the geographer Elisee Reclus in 1895. Neither Le Play's sociology nor Reclus’ geography was very influential in university circles, but they were adopted and modified by Patrick Geddes in Great Britain. The term “social geography” has had some popularity in Britain since 1930, but Americans did not readily adopt it, perhaps because their “cultural geography” had similar content. In the postwar period, the term has gained currency in Europe and North America, and the present‐day social geographers often espouse views that are reminiscent of; Reclus and the Le Playists even though the latter are little read today. This paper is an historical sketch of French and English usage, and it does not seek to define social geography or to suggest guidelines for future work.