Student experiences of multidisciplinarity in the undergraduate geography curriculum

This paper explores the student experience of multidisciplinarity within the undergraduate Geography curriculum. It considers the drivers that have underpinned this development before considering the findings of research into student experiences in two universities in the south of England. The results suggest that most students view this development positively and recognize a number of advantages that it brings, citing expanded opportunities for learning, working with people from other disciplines, expansion of perspectives and perceived benefits to employability. However, for a minority this development is more problematic. The research points here to issues with specialist knowledge and disciplinary pedagogies, social issues within the classroom and class organization and some reservations regarding groupwork. The paper concludes with a series of recommendations.     

Guerra civile: experience,memory and contrasting histories of the Resistance in Italy

This article examines the disagreement between two partisans turned historians, Nuto Revelli and Claudio Pavone, on the legitimacy of the term ‘civil war’ to describe the Italian Resistance of 1943–1945. ‘Civil war’ is a controversial term in Italian and European discussions of World War II. Accordingly, ‘civil war’ provokes a study of the intersection of ideology and ethics, experiential memory and history in postwar Europe. But why should Revelli and Pavone, two men who had been on the same side during the Resistance, see things so differently? This article demonstrates that each historian’s experience before and during World War II shaped their participation in the Resistance and their subsequent representation of it. Consequently, their divergent experiences offer an explanation as to why Pavone argues that the Resistance was a civil war and Revelli argues that it was not, without relativizing in political and ethical analysis.     

旅游人力资源发展——21世纪的一项艰巨任务

重视旅游人力资源的规划,发展旅游业生力军,将是我国旅游业迈入新世纪的一项,艮巨任务。本就此分析了旅游人力资源发展的动因并提出对策。     

我对区域经济地理学的认识与几点实践体会

本文介绍了作者近半个世纪从事经济地理,尤其是区域经济地理学习、教学和科学研究实践的历程,对区域经济地理学科理论与实践的探索,是作者一生的主要学术活动领域。文中介绍了作者在区域经济地理研究中五个方面的贡献,总结了在教学与科学研究实践中的四点切身体会。科学的事业是万古长青的,建设具有中国特色的区域经济地理学科理论体系和方法论体系,还任重而道远,还须有志者进行长期艰苦的努力。作者的学习、教学与科学实践经历对青年学者或许有一定的借鉴作用。     

论我国文化地理学研究的前沿走向

基于研究历史及主要学科成绩的回顾,文章考察了我国文化地理学研究现状中学科性质定位、研究内容拓展以及研究手段、方法的变革等问题。认为我国文化地理学今后应该在科学的文化哲学的指导下加强学科理论的研究,充分吸收相关学科的研究成果,在加强渗透研究的同时突出地理科学的特色与优势;为了学科的良性循环和对地理学的发展做出自身贡献,还必须紧跟时代的步伐,强化学科在文化宣传与舆论导向的理性化、科学化,特别是在区域开发、旅游与城市规划、国家(地区)管理、民族政策制定等方面的应用功效。     

The Honours Year—A Reflection on the Experience from Four Former Students

An honours year is an introduction to new relationships with supervisors, fellow students, research participants and, importantly, yourself. This paper is based upon the experiences of four former Australian honours students who felt there was a distinct lack of guidance for first-time researchers in the available academic literature. In this paper, we explore the research experiences, processes and relationships that characterize the honours year including, working with theoretical frameworks and the student–supervisor relationship, providing examples from our own experience. We conclude by considering the ethical implications of the research and the power and ethical obligations of the researcher.     

Ova collection in Japan – making visible women's experience in male spaces

The role of women is essential in embryo creation and donation, as they undergo in vitro fertilisation (IVF) treatment for ova collection. Yet, it has often been pointed out that in the process of embryo donation women's role is largely neglected, as if embryos come from nowhere. The procedure of embryo donation in Japan is a case in point. During field research in Japan, we found that women were of the view that the procedures of embryo donation are inhuman, cold and harsh, while specialists said that no value is attached to embryos in Japan and that women have no scruples about donating them. This article explores the cause of the gap in the perception of experiences of ova collection between women and IVF specialists. Our primary source of data was interview narratives with women undergoing IVF, IVF specialists, nurses, counsellors and policy makers. Field research was conducted in 2006–2008. We analysed the process and the ways in which women's experiences of ova collection become invisible in Japanese socio-cultural contexts, including marriage, households and motherhood values in Japan. Our analysis critically draws on Marxist feminist theories, which enabled us to discuss the link among the production of embryos and ova, reproduction, ownership and gender. This theoretical framework also enabled us to view the case of Japan, paying particular attention to historical perspectives and specific cultural forms.     

The Retirement Village as a Residential Environment for the Third Age – The Example of Firhall,Scotland

Abstract

Retirement villages represent a recent addition to the range of residential options for older people in the UK. Research has focused on the development and nature of retirement housing in the public and voluntary sectors in England. Limited attention has been directed to the private retirement communities and, in particular, to the lived experience of residents in private sector retirement villages. This research, which is the first study of a private retirement village in Scotland, overcomes this information deficit by identifying the nature and growth of private retirement villages in the UK and exploring the lived experience of residents of the private retirement village of Firhall. The discussion is organised into four main parts. Part I examines the concept of the retirement village. Part II explains the growth and geography of retirement villages in the UK. Part III comprises the empirical analysis of the case study retirement village. The research identifies the social, economic and demographic characteristics of the village population and provides insight into lived experience of the residents in the study village. Finally, in part IV, the discussion identifies a number of key issues for further research, and the potential contribution of retirement villages for meeting the needs and preferences of the growing third age population of the UK.     

EXPERIENTIALITY AND “NARRATIVE REFERENCE,” WITH THANKS TO THUCYDIDES1

Lately, the concept of experience, which postmodernist theoreticians declared dead, has seen a renaissance. The immediacy of experience seems to offer the possibility of reaching beyond linguistic discourses. In their attempt to overcome the “linguistic turn,” scholars such as Ankersmit, Gumbrecht, and Runia pit experience against narrative. This paper takes up the recent interest in experience, but argues against the opposition to narrative into which experience tends to be cast. The relation between experience and narrative is more complex than is widely assumed. Besides representing and giving shape to experience, narratives are received in the form of a (reception) experience. Through their temporal structure, narratives are crucial to letting us re‐experience the past as well as to representing the experiences of historical agents. This potential of narrative is nicely illustrated by Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War in which “side‐shadowing” devices restore history's experientiality. Through “side‐shadowing,” narrative can challenge the tendency toward teleologies inherent in merely retrospective histories and can re‐create the openness intrinsic to the past when it still was a present. However, the “side‐shadowing” devices used by Thucydides are fictional. To conceptualize the price and gain of “side‐shadowing” in historiography, the paper advances the concept of a “narrative reference” (a concept analogous to Ricoeur's “metaphorical reference”). Introspection, speeches, and other “side‐shadowing” devices sacrifice truth in a positivist sense, but permit a second‐level reference, namely to history's experientiality. In a final step, the paper turns toward modern historians—most of whom are reluctant to use the means of fiction—to briefly survey their attempts at restoring the openness of the past.     

青海省开展“平安寺院”建设的成功经验与启示

“平安寺院”建设作为构建和谐青海、“平安青海”的一项重要工作,领导重视、宗教界积极响应,成效十分显著。本文通过实地调查,在对青海省开展这一工作的主要做法与成功经验进行概括、总结的基础上,提出了青海省开展建设“平安寺院”活动的几点建议。