To understand and be understood: facilitating interdisciplinary learning through the promotion of communicative competence

Whilst interdisciplinarity has become a central concern of research and learning in geography, few from the discipline have considered the practical facilitation of interdisciplinarity in the classroom. Module convenors, I argue, must pay greater attention to how learners engage and negotiate with peers and perspectives from other disciplines. In this paper, I focus on my own efforts in designing and teaching a second year undergraduate course on health, biomedicine, and society, to illuminate the opportunities and challenges facing teaching staff who seek to provide opportunities for interdisciplinary learning in the classroom. Drawing upon theories of communication, I demonstrate the significance of developing “communicative competence” as a pathway to successful interdisciplinary learning. Unless learners from one discipline can understand, and be understood by, peers from other disciplines, the accomplishment of interdisciplinary learning is undermined. Interdisciplinary modules should include learning outcomes that facilitate student development in this area. Approaching interdisciplinary learning through the lens of communicative competence casts critical attention upon the central abilities and cultural sensitivities that are the hallmarks of interdisciplinary collaboration – from negotiating meaning to critical disciplinary awareness – and highlights the lessons that interdisciplinarity poses for disciplines, such as geography, tasked with preparing students for interdisciplinary learning.     

从壁画砖看南京西善桥宫山墓的年代

从南京西善桥宫山南朝"竹林七贤与荣启期"大型拼镶砖印壁画墓出土壁画砖的砖面标记文字、砖的拼装方法以及砖的尺寸规格等方面来看,该墓的年代应该在丹阳金家村墓和吴家村墓之前。一向被认为是陈朝墓的西善桥罐子山墓也应该与此墓年代相仿。     

边疆地理名称与晚清川藏边务——以“川边”、“西康”概念为考察中心

晚清是近代中国边疆政治地理发生巨大变动的转折时期。随着边疆危机日趋深重,晚清时人逐步意识到慎重命名地理名称的重要性。川藏交界区域地理名称的生成、运用,经历了"炉边"、"川疆"、"川边"等名称混用,以"川边"为过渡性名称,到弃用"川边"、强调"西康"名称的过程。地理名称的变更与晚清川藏边务密切相关,特别是对"边"、"藏"界域之争的有力回应。探讨边疆地理名称多歧性、竞争性,则是本文将历史地理学研究与概念史方法相结合的一种尝试。     

北大藏秦水陆里程简“阳”县考辨

北京大学入藏的秦代水陆里程简册中记载秦代有"阳"县存在,关于这一新出现的秦县,前辈学者认为可能是位于今河南省方城县的秦汉"阳城"。然而,从简册中记载的"阳"县下属各乡到其他地区的距离来看,"阳县"不太可能在今方城附近,而更有可能是位于先秦"唐"国故地的"唐"县。其他出土材料所见的"唐"县一般写作"阳",清华简《系年》中还有楚国曾灭"唐(阳)"置县的明确记载。秦代的阳县应该就是继承了楚灭唐国之后所设的阳县。     

‘IT'S ALL A QUESTION OF BUSINESS’: INVESTMENT IDENTITIES,NETWORKS AND DECISION‐MAKING IN THE CLEANTECH ECONOMY

Cleantech has emerged in the last decade as a major new investment sector at the forefront of the green economy. It responds to the need for innovative technologies to combat the impact of global environmental, climate and resource trends. Focusing on the cleantech sector, this article explores the central importance of relationality within the financial domain of the green economy. The central aim of this article is to deepen understandings of the operation of cleantech investment by examining the decision‐making processes of cleantech actors, how these are influenced by (and influence) cleantech investment networks, and the relationships between these factors and the macro‐level drivers and discourses focused on the cleantech sector. A relational economic geography approach is used in conjunction with other frameworks (spanning the cultural, structural and actor‐network dimensions of cleantech investment) to investigate: how cleantech investors define the sector; the macro‐ and micro‐level drivers of cleantech investment; and how cleantech networks form and operate to create and disseminate cleantech discourses and to generate the mutual trust and information sharing needed to secure cleantech investments. In so doing, the article seeks to shed greater light on the micro‐level processes contributing to the creation and growth of cleantech investment markets as an essential catalyst and component of the green economy.     

The Economic Degeneration of Masculinity in Rafael Chirbes's En la orilla

Rafael Chirbes's En la orilla has been proclaimed as “la novela de la crisis,” and it has garnered an impressive amount of distinction in the short length of time since its publication in May 2013. It was voted the 2013 novel of the year by readers of El País, and in January 2014 it won the Premio Francisco Umbral, as well as reaching its fifth edition. Unsparingly critical, En la orilla forms an integral part of the cultural requestioning of social values in the wake of the Spanish crisis, “la literatura de la crisis,” which stresses the human and material consequences of the suspension of human values stemming from the social endorsement of market imperialism. En la orilla thematizes the corrosion of moral character during Spain's economic boom, in its multiple forms, such as selfishness, disregard for the elderly, and arrant mercenariness, while also fictionalizing neoliberal Spain's exclusion of immigrants and the poor. Integral to Chiribes's historically contextualized critique of the recession, and the object of my study, is a perceptive vision of the historical degeneration of masculinity from the Second Republic, 1931–1936, to the present day. This article will first provide a brief overview of “la literatura de la crisis,” while the second part illumines the economic and ideological distortion of the father–son relationship in this novel.     

Jaume Cabré's Viatge d’hivern and the Short Story Cycle

Critics have been uncertain as to the genre of Catalan writer Jaume Cabré's 2000 book, Viatge d’hivern. The confusion, I argue, is due to the fact that the volume is a short story cycle, a literary form situated midway between the novel and the short story collection. Forrest Ingram differentiates among composed, arranged, and completed cycles, and Cabré's comments in his Epilogue to Viatge d’hivern indicate that the book is an example of the third category. While he composed its fourteen narratives over a period of years, when he revised them for inclusion in a single volume he discovered that various threads, some secret and others more obvious, connected the stories. In this essay I examine ways in which theme, structure, and motifs, as well as recurrent imagery and wording, form a web of associations among the individual units of Viatge d’hivern.     

The place of children among the Guji of southern Ethiopia: school,work and play

This article explores everyday life among Guji children in southern Ethiopia and the place of children in an intergenerational social order. Based on data generated through ethnographic fieldwork among the Guji, we show that work, school and play are significant and intertwined social practices. Local knowledge and skills of importance for sustainable livelihood are acquired through children's participation in these different social practices. Oral tradition represents a key element of local knowledge and social practices in everyday life. However, political and social changes, such as settlement policies and the introduction of schools, affect the dynamic interconnectedness of these practices, as well as relations between different generations. These changes also have implications for local knowledge and local livelihoods.     

Smoking bans for private vehicles: children's rights and children's voices

Smoking bans have recently expanded to private vehicles in which children are present. This study considers the place of children's rights and children's voices in this policy initiative, with respect to the Canadian context, where vehicular smoking bans have been widely adopted. First, we examine print media reports, finding children's right to health was acknowledged less frequently than an array of competing adult rights. Children's voices were largely absent from the record. Second, we report on focus groups involving 23 young people in Edmonton, Alberta, highlighting participants' strong support for bans, based on their knowledge of health harms, aversion to smoke, and awareness that children have limited ability to contest adult authority in vehicles. We conclude that vehicular smoking bans may address the situation whereby children are forced to share an unhealthy environment, in breach of their rights.