6. SPACE: A USELESS CATEGORY FOR HISTORICAL ANALYSIS?

Much fuss has been made of the “spatial turn” in recent years, across a range of disciplines. It is hard to know if the attention has been warranted. A confusion of terms has been used—such as space, place, spatiality, location—and each has signified a cluster of often contradictory and confusing meanings. This phenomenon is common to a range of disciplines in the humanities. This means, first, that it is not always easy to recognize what (if anything) is being discussed under the rubric of space, and second, that over‐extended uses of the cultural turn have stymied meaningful engagement with (or even a language of) materiality in discussions of space. This article shows how materiality has been marginalized both by a casual vocabulary and a vigorous a priori epistemological holism on the part of scholars, and how the spatial turn has been too closely linked to the cultural turn to allow it to develop its fullest explanatory potential. It demonstrates how historians might profitably theorize the significance of place and space in their work (borrowing techniques from geographers and anthropologists, and referring to the phenomenological tradition), and sets out some challenges for using space more effectively in explanatory systems. Inspired by environmental history, sociology, and science and technology studies, I propose a way of establishing space as different from conventional historical handling of materiality, and end by identifying some methodological problems that need to be solved if we are to proceed on a surer footing.     

Neoliberalising the Fordist University: A Tale of Two Campuses in Frankfurt a. M., Germany

Abstract: In 2009, the central building of the new IG Farben Campus of Johann Wolfgang Goethe University (JWGU), Frankfurt, Germany was occupied by students protesting against the neoliberalisation of higher education. While similar occupations at the old Bockenheim Campus were usually tolerated, if not welcomed, by the university management, this time 176 students and members of staff were forcefully evicted after only 3 days, when the university's presidential board called in the police. To better understand this way of ending such protest, a level of oppression almost unheard of at a German university in the last 20 years, we reconstruct the way in which JWGU, as part of the state apparatus university, has produced the two campuses as particular places that are bound up in and expressions of the national and local condensations of forces of Fordism and neoliberalism respectively.     

Snow Fences: Then and Now

Snow fences are an increasingly widespread cultural feature in the great east-west “snow belt” of the northern hemisphere. They are there not only to protect railroads, highways and buildings from the hazards of blowing snow, but also whole towns subject to the ravages of avalanches. Although their origin is unknown, their construction and use have been advanced and improved greatly by many experimenters of more than a dozen nationalities since the middle of the 19th century.

A modern example of snow fence use is analyzed for a locally named section of Interstate 80 between Laramie and Rawlins in southern Wyoming known as the “Sno Chi Minh Trail.” Here big systems of mostly 12 feet high snow fences line more than half of the western side of the highway for 50 miles. They have reduced accidents and plowing costs by significantly improving visibility in “ground blizzards” of fast-blowing snow.     

Intensive Agricultural Landscapes of Oceania

Pacific Islanders have adapted over time to a wide range of social and environmental conditions. Subsistence regimes include broad-based fishing and gathering along with horticulture, particularly the cultivation of staple tubers. Agricultural ecosystems on many islands manifest elaborate expressions of greater inputs of labor or the necessity to overcome agronomic constraints to production. Landscapes of intensive agriculture once found throughout Oceania include yam mounds, raised fields, and irrigated terracing. Most of these systems are either abandoned or greatly diminished in scale. Findings from research in the Fiji Islands exemplify some of the forms and functions of these landscapes. Field study at an active system of irrigated terraces for growing taro (Colocasia esculenta) on the remote southern island of Kadavu elucidates the dynamic operations of a gardening strategy that was once much more prevalent throughout the archipelago. Changing political economies across the region may have radically altered humanenvironment relations, but intensive agricultural landscapes endure, providing visible evidence and imparting valuable lessons for traditional cultural ecology in Oceania.     

Home away from home: meanings of the American truck stop

This paper explores the place attachments of long-haul truck drivers to the truck stop. The feelings and ideas truckers have about truck stops are based upon the function these businesses play in the truckers' mobile lifestyle and the social interactions that are performed within those spaces. Drivers' relationships to these stops also illustrate that modernity and the prevalence of homogenized places do not result in placelessness because feelings and perceptions about these places are based upon the role these businesses play in the everyday tasks of long-haul drivers.     

Testing Methods of Record Linkage on Swedish Censuses

Abstract.

Research benefits a great deal when different kinds of registers can be combined. Record linkage is an important tool for connecting sources to create longitudinal databases of individual data. In this article, researchers test and evaluate different methods of record linkage used when linking two censuses. By comparing the results of the census linkage with other continuous Swedish parish registers, they find that applying constructed name variables and household links considerably increases the success rate without the risk of introducing bias. Missing links are mainly related to name problems, and appear most frequently among children and when the family structure has changed between the censuses. Faulty links are very few and must be regarded as only a marginal problem for analysis. The study underlines the importance of adapting the linkage process to the special characteristics of the sources.     

Permian corals of Timor (Rugosa and Tabulate): history of collection and study

The modern history of collection and study of corals in the Permian strata of Timor began in 1911,with a German expedition (J.Wanner, leader) and a Dutch expedition (H. Molengraaff, leader) to collect Permian and Triassic fossils in the colony of Netherlands Timor, and with a survey by the Swiss geologist F. Weber the same year in Portuguese Timor, the eastern portion of the island. Later expeditions led by Jonker (1916) and Brouwer (1937), both of the Netherlands, greatly increased already huge collections of fossils and additionally, understanding of the island's geology. Monographic studies of these coral collections by Gerth (1921), Koker (1924), Schindewolf (1942), Hehenwarter (1951) and Schouppé & Stacul (1955, 1959) have much enhanced the systematic value of these fossil corals, both Rugosa and Tabulata. Locality information and maps containing collecting localities are somewhat scattered (Wanner 1931, Burck 1923, Marez Oyens 1940, Van Bemmelen 1949), but are summarized here. A list of all valid species names(109 Rugosa, 25 Tabulata) is appended to this paper, with type localities and horizon. Serious problems of nomenclature are avoided in this paper by accepting genus names used in Hill (1981), modified by later systematic studies, such as that of Fedorowski (1986), but some unknown number of names in the list of species are to be synonymized, especially since 31 of them are based on a single specimen (e.g. Niermann 1975). The biostratigraphy of these faunas is uncertain, in great part due to the greatest number of corals having been collected from a tectonic mélange sequence in the Baun to Basleo structural region, and additionally because of the purchase of huge numbers of fossils from the indigenous people of Timor, with accompanying uncertainties regarding locality and horizon data. The coral fauna of Permian age from Timor needs serious restudy to insure its stratigraphic and palaeontologic value, but future study will require new field collection of specimens from the relatively complete stratigraphic sequences in the northern ‘Fatu’ belt of outcrops. The huge numbers of individuals of some coral species provide great opportunities for understanding population structure in these faunas.     

塑造河名 构建水权——以清代“石羊河”名为中心的考察

河西地区主要水系之一石羊河及其支流,在历史上曾使用"谷水"、"马城河"、"五涧谷(水)"、"三岔河"等名称,沿用至今的"石羊河"一名迟至清代前中期方才出现。"石羊河"之名,首先出现在流域下游镇番县的地方志中,命名的初衷则是为处于上游武威县境内的河流定名,其指代对象存在逐步明确的过程。上游武威县对"石羊河"名及其指向,经历了从不在意到接受、并有所延展的演变历程。"石羊河"名的出现,与下游镇番县河源水权观念的兴起存在密切关联。塑造河名是上、下游水资源权利关系生成中,下游构建自身水权的策略之一。     

Suburban Identity in Paul Maitland's Paintings of Cheyne Walk

The aim of this article is to consider the extent to which Paul Maitland's paintings of Cheyne Walk addressed the problem of establishing suburban identity at the end of the nineteenth century. The emergence of the modern suburb during this period presented a particular problem with regard to how this form of urban living might be defined, understood and experienced. As part of a group of artists that could loosely by described as British Impressionists, Maitland was among the first to engage in a close study of this subject. This article situates Maitland's visual project within its wider cultural context, comparing his work with that of associated artists also interested in the suburban subject and in Cheyne Walk in particular and with a range of contemporary texts that addressed the complex problem of Chelsea's place identity, including guidebooks, letters, novels and the work of local historians. Drawing on the methodology of cultural and historical geography, this article highlights the extent to which place identity changes through time and how its formulation is based upon the economic and social structures of those who ‘live’ the place. Adopting and elaborating a range of visual signifiers associated with the modern suburb, including both its rural and working aspect, Maitland's paintings of Cheyne Walk provide a valuable and subtle insight into how this new urban space was being conceptualized at the end of the nineteenth century.     

基于旅游行为的旅游目的地空间层次与管理

关于旅游目的地的空间研究比较丰富,视点主要在于经济与地理空间。但是,旅游业是市场导向非常明显的行业,从旅游行为角度研究旅游目的地的空间层次更具有现实意义,对指导旅游目的地的开发和管理更具有操作性。本论文从旅游行为导向、管理方便性角度,融入社区理念,提出了新的旅游目的地解读,将其划分为三个空间层次,即游览服务区、社区服务区和社会服务区,并分析了它的空间层次结构关系和主要要素。论文最后从规范管理角度提出管理层次与关系。