Co‐Producing (a Fearful) Anthropocene

The Anthropocene is not amenable to the senses but, like many modern concepts, must be made visible. We explore the ‘Great Acceleration’ imagery as an immutable mobile to explore how this human‐made geological epoch is constituted through the aggregation of disparate elements of extreme complexity. Our analysis explores how disparate issues such as ‘telephone use’ and ‘coastal zone biogeochemistry’ can be associated and enrolled into the same argument. We write as concerned observers, who are concerned with the way that recognition for phenomena is enrolled into a fear‐based narrative. This risks reproducing the governance structures at the heart of the Great Acceleration and, if so, we ask what this might mean. Using fear is a risky strategy that is as likely to lead to relatively poor behaviours as it is to some ‘awakening’. We make this case as a way of contributing to the Anthropocene debate, challenging those promoting the idea to consider the co‐productive relationship between the knowledge they are proposing and the governance that knowledge entails.     

Unconventional Gas in Australia: Towards a Legal Geography

Recent commentary on future research directions for legal geography highlights the need for studies that are historically grounded and focused on human–environment interactions in rural settings. As a current, controversial land use in Australia, unconventional gas (UG) development provides an ideal lens through which researchers can investigate these themes. Utilising emerging international literature and current Australian examples, this paper surveys major trends in the Australian literature relating to UG, before exploring some of the ways in which Australian legal geographers might contribute constructively to community debates around this resource. Seeking to encourage further analysis, this paper contributes to this developing literature by focusing on two key areas: the various legal actors involved in UG development in Australia (including their regulatory choices, spatial interpretations, expertise, and influence) and the implications for legal geography where attempts are made to establish ‘social licence’ through contractual arrangements between industry and individual landholders. This article also delves into the place of Indigenous Australians in relation to UG extraction and the questions this resource raises about land use conflicts in Australia more generally – offering suggestions for comparative international studies and further critique at the domestic level.     

Australasian Rural Geographies: At the Core,in the Antipodes?

This paper reviews ‘Antipodean’ rural geography research published over the period 2012–2014 inclusive. A broad, inclusive stance was adopted to what should be regarded as Antipodean rural geography. Key publication outlets were identified and scanned for what were deemed to be relevant paper titles and abstracts, then the institutional and disciplinary affiliations of authors, bearing in mind a general concern for ‘rural issues’. The review concentrates on the prominent themes of the recent mining boom and its externalities, new perspectives on agrarian and regional development, and population issues. Australasian rural geographers have not only become adept at ‘writing back’ to the centre but have played leading roles in the intellectual development of the sub‐discipline and cognate areas (e.g. rural sociology). Indeed, at least in the short period covered by this review and in the admittedly selective scope of that survey, Australian and New Zealand rural geographers have been at the forefront in advancing the sub‐discipline internationally. In doing so, they have not only placed the discussion of Australasian rural issues within a global context but have further refined the philosophical and conceptual approaches and tools used. In important respects, then, Australasian rural geographers are very much at the core of the international project of contemporary rural geography. Moreover, they have made – and continue to make – important contributions to the broader discipline of human geography.     

Illiberal peacebuilding in a hybrid regime. Authoritarian strategies for conflict containment in Myanmar

The post-Cold War period has seen the rise of international liberal peacebuilding, as an overarching framework for international interventions in intrastate conflicts. In contrast, the current period is marked by decline of liberal peacebuilding, and a simultaneous rise of domestic illiberal peacebuilding. This has created a gap between the predominant theoretical and policy framework and the actual form of peacebuilding in many conflict-ridden societies. The present article addresses this challenge through a contextual case study of illiberal peacebuilding in Myanmar. The case study shows how a dominant state actor – the military (Tatmadaw) – has used both coercion and co-optation to contain armed resistance against militarized and centralized statebuilding and thereby strengthen the state's territorial control and authority. While the SLORC/SPDC military junta (1988–2011) sought to contain ethnic armed organizations through military offensives, ceasefire agreements and illiberal peacebuilding, the military based USDP-government (2011–2015) institutionalized a hybrid regime as a framework for political transformation of EAOs, and tolerated a degree of dual territorial, administrative and resource control at the local scale. These clientelist measures failed to address the substantive issues behind Myanmar's multiple and protracted conflicts. They were also combined with military offensives against non-ceasefire groups and war by other means in ceasefire areas. Moreover, the case study demonstrates that the Tatmadaw used its tutelary power to obstructs substantive conflict resolution through negotiated state reforms. Myanmar's peace initiatives during the last three decades should thus be understood as illiberal strategies for containing ethnic armed organizations rather than attempts at substantive conflict resolution.     

商品链视角下K-pop偶像的生产—消费政治研究

本文引入 Sack 的道德地理相关理论,从商品链中生产与消费节点的地方—道德维度,考察 Kpop 偶像商品链中生产与消费节点间的互动机制。研究表明：①新自由主义理念构建下的地理要素促进了K-pop偶像产业的高效运转,但阻碍了 K-pop练习生的差异化与多元化发展,因此具有消极的内在地理特征。②媒介营造了 K-pop 偶像后现代性的消费场景,满足了消费者对于空间情境、寻求认同以及创造意义的需求,但其对生产地事实的掩盖使得消费空间丧失了地方真实性与复杂性,呈现单一、割裂的内在地理特征。③K-pop偶像的生产与消费景观作为积极的工具道德地理景观促进了商品链的高效运作与循环,但其生产与消费互动具有消极的内在地理特征,不利于人们对客观世界的感知。     

从《做杉木放牌要览》看清代徽商 在钱塘江流域的木业经营

佚名抄本《做杉木放牌要览》,与此前习见的新安江—钱塘江商编路程稍有不同,它除了沿途地名、距离里数的记录之外,还收录了木业经营运作的诸多规则,属于一种综合性的商业书。据此,可以探究徽商在钱塘江流域从事木业经营的事实。从中可知,该书系徽歙商人从事衢港木运销之商业秘籍,其中包括五段前后相续的沿途水程以及一条返归桑梓故里的陆路。由此可以勾勒出徽歙商人从事衢港木经营的路线,并较为深入地探讨与之相关的诸多商业规范。由此看来,传统时代徽商在各地的活跃,不仅仰赖其巨额的财富和较高的文化素质,而且还与他们输出的相关技术和商业规范密切相关。     

《海录》作者、版本、内容新论

《海录》是记述当时海外邻近国际航线的各国、各地区、各城市见闻的作。《海录》对南中国海岛屿、航线的记述,对研究19世纪初中国南海海疆具有重要价值。《海录》是清代记述世界各大洲、各国、各地状况最多最全的作之一,是清代最早记述西方工业明的作之一,对近代以林则徐、魏源为代表的思想家产生过重要影响。     

Popular geographies and scholarly geographies in provincial France: the Société Normande de Géographie, 1879–1937

Geographical societies were established in many provincial cities of France during the final quarter of the nineteenth century. Through lectures and publications, these organizations promoted popular geographies at a time when academic geography was in its infancy. The Geographical Society of Normandy was founded at Rouen in 1879 and survived for six decades. Unlike some of its counterparts, it did not provide commercial information after its early years nor did it receive funding from the local chamber of commerce. Its annual Bulletins presented aspects of popular geography at the time and elucidated views held by explorers, colonial administrators and other contributors. Tales of expeditions to distant lands were reported enthusiastically, but assessments of opportunities for European settlement were not always optimistic. European affairs rose to prominence in the life of the Society in the years surrounding World War I. Its popular geographies conveyed in public lectures continued to enjoy success but contacts with academic geographers were intermittent. Largely forgotten geographical societies, such as that in Normandy, played a significant role in raising knowledge of the world before geography became firmly established as a university discipline.     

‘Rearranging the ground’:1 public and private space in Belfast,Northern Ireland

This article examines imaginings and uses of place in the city of Belfast which challenge the conventionally gendered and sectarian place discourses dominating politics and society in Northern Ireland. These alternative imaginings are articulated in two artworks, ‘Home’, by Mary McIntyre, and ‘Street Signs’, by Aisling O'Beirn. I present readings of these pieces with reference to concepts of public and private which signify through socio-political, geographical and psychological orderings of space. Focusing on the construction of public and private space allows me to approach the issue of sectarian territorialisation in Belfast obliquely, while recognising its physical and psychological potency and the complexity of its operations; further, it facilitates the exploration of how gender and memory are made to matter spatially, in general and specifically in Belfast. This analytical perspective clarifies certain exclusions and oppressions inherent in the framing of space, but also offers understandings of how these may be destabilised, allowing unorthodox or marginal identities and practices to emerge as co-constituents of space.     

‘The races and conditions of men’: women in nineteenth-century geography school texts in the United States

Geography schoolbooks published in the United States were important opinion makers in the nineteenth century, often joining the Bible as the main source of information about the world outside North America. The texts examined here are noteworthy for their static and pejorative treatment of non-American cultures and may be seen as playing a key role in forming isolationist and chauvinist American public opinion. They also played a role in reinforcing ideas about the proper niche for women in American society, even though it may seem at first that these books could not have had much influence on ideas about American women because they barely mentioned women, almost always relegating them to illustrations and captions. The few women depicted were usually characterized as ‘poor souls’ in distant lands worthy of pity. We discuss the national political context in which these writers (many of whom were women) were producing geography school texts, the social roles they were fulfilling by reinforcing such limited images of ‘foreign’ women, and the sources they may have used in their research. Furthermore, we demonstrate that much more could have been drawn ethnographically from the illustrations of women. The images of women in these geography schoolbooks reinforced the marginalization of women, particularly non-white and non-western women.