Construction Of Geographic Knowledge Research Articles

Russia's spatial anxiety and the construction of geographical knowledge

AbstractThis commentary addresses the dimensions of Russia's ‘spatial anxiety’—its inability to come to terms with the territorial delimitations of neighbouring states and, consequently, the preoccupation of mainstream political geography with the study of Russia‐centric territorial representations. Although geographical inquiry contributed substantially to understanding Russian territorial politics, most studies are often reduced to an analysis of the official Russian geographical canon. The purpose of this commentary is to unpack these disciplinary approaches by drawing attention to the local, indigenous and peasant geographies that the statist perspectives have unearthed and utilised, while at the same time accentuating the two assumptions that this project might imply—on the re‐territorialisation of the federation and the decolonisation of Russian area studies.

O Ensino de conteúdos geográficos a partir do hip hop

O Hip Hop é um movimento cultural praticado majoritariamente pela população negra e, assim como o racismo, se manifesta no espaço geográfico e consequentemente pode ser estudado pela Geografia, possibilitando trabalhar inúmeros conteúdos. Desta forma, o presente artigo tem por objetivo investigar e compreender como o Hip Hop, por meio do pilar rap, pode ser abordado no ensino de Geografia, auxiliando na construção dos conhecimentos geográficos. O referencial teórico traz a questão racial presente no Brasil, para então conceituar o movimento Hip Hop, bem como apresentar suas características e contribuições no ensino de Geografia. Há ainda um relato acerca de uma oficina pedagógica realizada no Colégio Estadual Marcelino Champagnat em Londrina (PR) com educandos do 2º ano matutino, em que foi abordado o Hip Hop e ocorreu a construção de raps por parte dos educandos. Por fim, os raps elaborados são analisados por meio da Análise de Conteúdo de Bardin (1977), buscando identificar os conteúdos da ciência geográfica presentes nestes e a importância do rap na construção e compreensão dos conteúdos no ensino de Geografia, entre eles: os problemas sociais, a economia e a luta por uma educação de qualidade.

ERROS DIDÁTICOS E ERROS CONCEITUAIS NO ENSINO DA GEOGRAFIA: RETIFICAÇÕES E MEDIAÇÕES À CONSTRUÇÃO DO CONHECIMENTO

Uma das grandes tarefas postas atualmente é lidar com o Ensino de Geografia, assim como de outras disciplinas. Tal fato implica processos epistemológicos tanto em relação à formação do professor quanto à do aluno. O presente artigo analisa o processo de construção do conhecimento no Ensino de Geografia, focando a presença de erros didáticos e erros conceituais no ensino desta disciplina. Ao analisar sobre os erros, argumentaremos a importância da retificação dos mesmos como dimensão importante à mediação didática e à construção de um conhecimento geográfico no âmbito escolar. Os fundamentos para nossas análises focam na filosofia de Gaston Bachelard, centralmente em relação ao lugar do erro nos processos epistêmicos. Se há erros, há de ter retificação dos mesmos para então superar obstáculos epistemológicos e ascender a um novo conhecimento.Palavras-Chave: ensino de geografia, erros didáticos e conceituais, retificação e mediação.

Scientific Exploration and the construction of Geographical knowledge: hints to travellers

The business of scientific exploration during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries involved more than simply the routine collection of geographical facts; it required the mobilisation of a wide range of cultural resources, in both its conduct and its representation. It could also be profoundly unsettling, as much for the explorers as the explored. How to explore, how to observe in the field, and indeed the very status of the explorer’s knowledge, were matters of contention. As Dorinda Outram has argued, the practice of exploration raised troubling questions about the relationship between movement, seeing and knowing, not only questions of authority (how can the explorer be trusted?) but also questions of identity (will exploration change us?). The Royal Geographical Society, established in 1830, sought to acquire the status of a scientific society and also to provide a public forum for the celebration of a new age of exploration. These two roles were not easily reconciled. In this paper, I consider the history of Hints to Travellers, the Society’s celebrated guide for prospective explorers, in the context of a wider European discourse of instructions to travellers on how and what to observe. On my understanding, this particular text appears less as a coherent assertion of a geographical way of seeing than as an unstable attempt to resolve some fundamental dilemmas: how was observation to become reliable? What were the limits of ‘geographical’ knowledge? And, above all, what attitude should the scientific establishment have towards the untrained traveller? Hints to Travellers was an attempt to exert authority on a field that was already too large and diverse to be mastered. The history of the Society’s faltering attempts to discipline the growing public interest in aspects of exploration demonstrates, I argue, a fundamental ambivalence over the relationship between popular and specialist forms of geographical knowledge.

Paisagem Mutante como Elemento de Análise

In Mozambique, the local curriculum permits to discover the reality of the student. The training of teachers of Geography now includes a concern for understanding the influence of local phenomena and external change in the landscape around the student. In Pedagogical University, the training of teachers of geography had become decoupled from reality, and the teaching dull and too theoretical. The location of the delegation of Gaza in an area of a constantly changing landscape brought another dynamic in teacher education, turning the landscape a subject of analysis, allowing the future teacher perceives that it is necessary to break with the geography of the classroom. The student learns that landscapes are constructed by social dynamics, and there is not a society out of nature and that the phenomena are temporally and geographically located in the place where they occur, having and receiving influences from other places and other periods. Direct contact with the landscape allows the use of cartographic language as important methodology for the construction of geographic knowledge. This work shows how the changing of landscape is used in teaching and learning process in the Course of Geography, Pedagogical University, Delegation of Gaza.

The correspondence between Élisée Reclus and Pëtr Kropotkin as a source for the history of geography

The State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF) contains a corpus of around one hundred letters sent by Élisée Reclus to Pëtr Kropotkin between 1882 and 1905. The correspondence is mainly concerned with their geographical works, notably the collaboration of Kropotkin with the Nouvelle Géographie Universelle (1876–1894) and the Brussels edition of Kropotkin’s Orographie de la Sibérie (1904), edited by Reclus. In this paper, we deal first with the importance of this source: it is an example of the material work of a network of geographers who were at the same time the founders of the international anarchist movement. We suggest the correspondence falls into two parts: the first period (1882–1886) when Reclus was in exile in Switzerland after the Paris Commune of 1871, and Kropotkin was in prison in France; and the second period (1888–1905) when the two anarchist geographers discuss the role of geographical education, historical geography in Europe and its part in the globalisation of their era. The archive also contains significant evidence of their relationships with British geography: Kropotkin lived in London and joined the Royal Geographical Society and was on familiar terms with leading Fellows, such as John Scott Keltie and Halford Mackinder. The paper addresses the significance of the correspondence for understanding the relationships between geography, politics and public education, and the role of these heterodox geographers in the construction of geographical knowledge. The paper is accompanied by the publication, for the first time, of an edited selection of the letters.

A imagem de satélite: do técnico ao político na construção do conhecimento geográfico

A idéia central do artigo é estabelecer uma articulação entre técnica, política e epistemologia particular da Geografia, a partir de uma discussão sobre a imagem de satélite, em suas dimensões sensorial, sintáxica e semântica. Nosso propósito é contribuir para o esclarecimento do papel que a imagem de satélite desempenha não apenas como instrumento da ação informada, mas também na construção do conhecimento geográfico.

From Afghanistan to Iraq in Media Maps: Journalistic Construction of Geographic Knowledge

The last two decades have seen a marked rise in the number of maps in the popular media, yet academic interest in journalistic cartography remains low, though the bulk of the public relies on the media for its geographic knowledge. Because they invoke a sense of belonging, identity, and allegiance, the number of media maps, like flags and other patriotic icons, increases during conflict. From the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan until the proclamation of victory in Iraq almost two years later, three major American news magazines published nearly 200 related maps. Early maps of Afghanistan affirmed U.S. military prowess and promised quick retribution, but with the failure of this promise, pointed to obstacles from terrain to climate. As interest in Afghanistan cooled and rhetoric over Iraq heated up, cartographic attention shifted accordingly. Initial maps of Iraq were provocative, focusing especially on the state’s supposed possession of weapons of mass destruction. Maps again depicted American military might, and as the invasion progressed seemingly unimpeded, Baghdad came into cartographic focus. In these compositions the melding of artwork, remotely sensed images, and photography lends even greater veracity to the maps themselves, which not only convey but also construct both political and geographic knowledge.

MASCULINISM, THE USE OF DUALISTIC EPISTEMOLOGIES AND THIRD SPACES*

ABSTRACTSFirst, this paper establishes a ground from which to question not only the relationship between power and knowledge in the construction of geographical knowledge, but also the gendering of this relationship. From this starting position, second, it is argued that dualisms permit the gendering of particular binary opposites. The argument is not that certain dualistic categories ‐ such as Reason and Emotion or Time and Space ‐ are inherently wrong or to deny that western societies are organized through them, at least in part. Instead, dualisms are shown ‐ at particular times and in particular places ‐ to mark and help police supposedly fixed, natural divisions between the powerful and the disempowered (as in the masculine versus the feminine). In assuming away dualistic economies of meaning, the danger is that this helps to maintain the reproduction of the power‐ridden values which dualisms help to sustain. Indeed, it is because dualist architectures are not as fixed, stable or natural as they are meant to be (i.e., precisely because they need to be policed) that it is possible to refuse them. Finally, this paper describes one alternative episte‐mology which draws on the notion of a third space. The idea of third spaces uses a spatial metaphor to suggest an alternative radical geography which mobilizes place, politics and hybrid identities. One such third space is illustrated by an empirical example.