China's Energy Future: A Framing Comment

A noted Hong Kong-based specialist on China's energy industries presents a comment on three papers comprising a symposium on that country's rapidly expanding oil, natural gas, and nuclear power sectors. He frames his observations around five overarching themes that have shaped China's energy sector development over recent decades and will continue to do so in the future. These include observations to the effect that: (a) China's energy policy seeks broadly similar objectives to those of other countries; (b) the country's energy resource endowment is not particularly rich when viewed in relation to the size of its population; (c) its energy mix continues to be dominated by coal, with important implications for the environment and domestic freight transportation; (d) the country's economy is confronting a pronounced spatial mismatch between the location of energy resources and the markets where they are consumed; and (e) strategies for energy developments in China are closely tied to overriding political and economic concerns at any given point in time.     

从灾害经济学角度对“三年自然灾害”时期的考察

1959～1961年我国经历了“三年经济困难”时期。关于其主要成因,1978年前一直错误地完全归咎于三年自然灾害。但近年来国内外又发表了一系列文章,认为这三年“风调雨顺”,根本没有自然灾害,“人祸”即决策错误是唯一的原因。本文根据对灾情、受灾面积等资料图表的分析,证实这三年发生了持续的严重自然灾害;同时分析了各种决策错误带来的不同影响,重点把粮食作为决定国家经济兴衰的生命线和因果关系链的比较指数,用计量方法分析当时农村因灾减产、因决策错误减产、因高征购而减少粮食存量之间的比例状况。本文的结论是:从农业粮食减产因素看,自然灾害略大于决策错误;从农村一个时期的集中缺粮情况因素看,决策错误影响远大于自然灾害,可以说是“三分天灾,七分人祸”。     

Jumping Fish: Engendering Contestation and Development on the Waterways of the Aramia River in Papua New Guinea

ABSTRACT Set in the Aramia River basin, this article explores the intimate and interactive relationship between communities in Western Province, Papua New Guinea, and the water that dominates the environment in which they live. Located amongst tidal rivers, creeks and lagoons, Gogodala villages sit high on ‘islands’ of land. In this environment, water is the site of seasonal change and the space of movement. The Aramia River is synonymous with an ancestral figure called Sawiya who travelled in her canoe, naming, creating and populating the water and land of the area. As the ‘mother of all fish’, Sawiya controls the movement and abundance of fish and other aquatic resources. Water is embodied in Sawiya, whose capacities to both nourish and punish are the basis of seasonal variations in fish, and in the colour and clarity of water in the local lagoons and rivers. Set against the backdrop of the Ok Tedi Mine and recent logging operations on the Aramia, the article explores some of the ways in which water and its resources are defined and experienced in this rural community and the impact this may have on the exploitation and development of natural resources in PNG.     

英语教学史百年回顾——改革运动前后语法翻译法与自然法的变迁

改革运动(Reform Movement)是指1882～1904期间主要在欧洲掀起的外语教学改革。回顾改革运动前后语法翻译法与自然法的变迁,时间跨度在一百年以上,为现在语言教育研究人员提供一些外语教育研究的理论基础,希望语言教学和研究者可以从中找出更多的教学发现从而提高现代语言教学质量。     

Cultural Capital and Place: Coles Bay and the Freycinet Peninsula,Tasmania

This paper poses the question: what is the role of cultural capital at the interface of environment, economy and society, and what other factors affect this role? A review of Pierre Bourdieu's concept of cultural capital and later developments of this concept by ecological economists serves to establish the values that comprise cultural capital, and its relationship to natural capital and economic capital. These relationships are investigated through a case study of a small coastal community, Coles Bay and the Freycinet Peninsula, in Tasmania. Three study groups are identified which comprise the communities associated with this place; long‐term residents, repeat visitors and tourists making a single visit. The complexity of the relationships of people with place are revealed through an examination of the different forms of capital (social, cultural and economic) relating to the different study groups. The dynamics of the social, economic and environmental realities of Coles Bay and the Freycinet Peninsula are seen to be complex and interlinked, with the potential to provide a model for action in communities of similar character and location.     

Implications of gendered environmental knowledge in water allocation processes in central Australia

The existence of gendered knowledge has been identified as a significant feature of Indigenous Australian culture, and the importance of considering the implications of gendered environmental knowledge in collaborative cross-cultural natural resource management has been highlighted. There is a lack of case studies that demonstrate how Indigenous women's knowledge and laws can be provided for in resource management contexts. From collaborative research with Anmatyerr women in central Australia, we discuss the implications of gender bias in relation to gendered knowledge in natural and cultural resource management, with a specific focus on Anmatyerr women's involvement in providing inputs about the cultural values of water within water allocation planning processes. This research highlights Anmatyerr women's own perspectives of their roles in contemporary contexts and identifies the existence of cultural change and continuity in relation to rights and responsibilities around water.     

Underwater archaeological parks: a new perspective and a challenge for conservation—the Italian panorama

The conservation in situ of underwater archaeological heritage is a highly stimulating subject for both archaeologist and conservator as it permits planning and experimentation of new treatment methods opening up new possibilities for conservation, protection and scientific research. This paper offers some remarks on this subject and shows the experience of some Italian underwater archaeological parks.     

The field, the museum and the lecture hall: the spaces of natural history in Victorian Cornwall

This paper contributes to our understandings of the geographies of science through an analysis of nineteenth–century natural history and, in particular, of the provincial natural history society. Focusing on nineteenth–century Cornwall and one of the main natural history societies operating in the county at that time – the Penzance Natural History and Antiquarian Society – it is argued that a set of key spaces were integral to the operations and outputs of such societies. The paper details the significance of the Penzance Society's museum, field sites and lecture hall as sites for communal work of local natural historians. They were also important, it is argued, in their construction of West Cornwall as a site of national natural scientific importance. Lastly, these spaces defined an agenda for regional scientific study. In particular, they promoted a taxonomic method that would transform local people into rigorous scientists and the local region into a 'book of nature'.     

Of Navies and Navels: Britain as A Mental Island

In this paper, the conception of .Great Britain. — a wholly unsatisfactory nomenclature — as an island nation is examined. In this case, a relatively small land mass acted as an originary point of departure for outward‐bound Great Power projections across the open spaces of seas. This paper further explores the varied implications for nationalism within Britain of the diverse island ‘roots’ of the British navel and the ‘routes’ of British navalism. Three themes recur in the popular mobilization of British maritime island nationalism: the besieged island, the island as universal exemplar of civilization, and the navy as national protector. Some consideration is given to the significance of island symbols such as Britannia as a marker of the fate of great island nationalism.     

Russia’s Natural Resources in the World Economy: history,review and reassessment

Abstract

Russia’s role in the global economic system today, and the Soviet Union’s in the past, is dominated by the export of natural resources, particularly oil and gas. The rents earned from these exports are both a source of strength and weakness, as they link the fortunes of Russia’s domestic economy to the volatility of global resource markets. This paper returns to a major research project conducted through the offices of the Association of American Geographers that resulted in Soviet Natural Resources in the World Economy, published in 1983. The project was first conceived in the aftermath of the resource crisis in the 1970s and concluded in the early 1980s as the Soviet Union sought to increase resource exports to support a failing domestic economy. This paper examines the origins, evolution, and management of this seminal work and presents a re-reading of the book in a contemporary context. We develop some of the key themes of the original project and conclude that it has contemporary relevance, as a reliance upon the resource sector remains a defining characteristic of Russia’s political economy and continues to shape Russia’s role in the global economy. We find that the regional dimension that was so important in the original project remains critical as Russia seeks to extend the resource frontier into new regions in the Arctic and the East and, at the same time, reduce its reliance on European markets – that are both stagnant and hostile – by developing new markets in Asia.