Discipline Of Geography Research Articles

Reorienting GIScience for a data-intensive society

In this commentary, I explore the potential future for GIScience to broaden its focus from technological advancements to examining the dynamic interactions between geographic information system (GIS) technology, its users, and the places where it is being utilized. Drawing on the postphenomenological perspectives of Don Ihde and his followers, this commentary re-imagines GIScience by emphasizing its ability to shape and be shaped by human experiences and various creative forces across bodies and places. This reorientation decenters GIScience beyond the human body by also encompassing non-human entities such as animals, bots, and algorithms. In the face of a rapidly growing data-intensive society, this commentary underlines the importance of adopting a caring stance when it comes to the use and development of GIS. This perspective of care can enhance our understanding and empathy toward ourselves, the planet, and all other beings. This reorientation of GIScience plays a significant role in shaping future trajectories of GIScience and the discipline of geography, enabling us to effectively tackle the theoretical and practical challenges posed by a rapidly evolving data-intensive society.

Decentring whiteness in engaging Muslim geographies

In this commentary, I read Sidaway's ‘Beyond the Decolonial: Critical Muslim Geographies’ as an invitation to engage in alternative cartographies and lateral engagements with what Islam (broadly and complexly conceived) might say to the discipline. In doing so, I build upon Sidaway's invitation to suggest a deeper engagement with the complexity of already existing Islamic geographical traditions and scholarship on Muslim spatialities by pulling out two themes that echo some of those raised in the main article: (1) Islamic traditions of mapping and cartography, and (2) scholarship on Islam and the city. The central aim of my response, however, is to push for different entry points when considering the decolonial possibilities of Muslim geographies rather than an entry point of dismissal from disciplinary geography. Only by decentring the whiteness of the discipline as the starting point, can Islamic traditions of geography be engaged on their own terms, as complex, evolving, contextual, and at times perhaps problematic.

A Bridge between Two Worlds: Why Advanced Placement Human Geography Is Good for the Discipline of Geography

Amidst ongoing debates regarding the pros and cons of Advanced Placement Human Geography (APHG) for the field of geography, this article asks whether it has been good for the discipline in the United States. The authors argue that APHG has strengthened U.S. geography because it has been remarkably effective at building bridges between high school and college geography educators, providing professional development opportunities for K–12 teachers, supporting the pipeline of new geographers entering college classrooms, offering a rigorous and comprehensive course, and increasing the number of K–12 students who have been exposed to geography. Rather than focusing on narrower questions about test performance, this article contributes to the literature by assessing the broad question of whether APHG is good for the discipline and by shedding light on the connections APHG has fostered between the often separate worlds of university professors and high school teachers. These insights are based on empirical evidence as well as several decades of combined author experiences at APHG readings.

The regional survey movement and popular autoethnography in early 20th-century Britain

This article’s subject is the theory and practice of ‘regional survey’, the method of social and environmental study associated with Scottish thinker Patrick Geddes (1854–1932). Despite being overlooked or dismissed in most accounts of early 20th-century social science, regional survey had a wide influence on the development of the nascent disciplines of anthropology, sociology, and human geography. Emerging from late 19th-century field biology, the regional survey came to typify a methodological moment in the natural and social sciences that favoured the holistic analysis of geographically delimited areas. By the interwar period, the kinds of projects that went under its name can clearly be seen as forerunners of the post-Second World War tradition of community studies. Additionally, in its self-presentation as a civic, participatory exercise, the regional survey can be read as a form of popular autoethnography that contrasts with other, more familiar social-scientific ventures in the first half of the 20th century, and defies the dichotomy between ‘gentlemanly’ and ‘technical’ modes of social science. As a result, this article argues, the regional survey provides an alternative point of departure for thinking about the origins and development of the modern social sciences in Britain.

Mechanisms for Improving the Teaching of Economic and Social Geography

"Improvement of mechanisms for providing students with quality knowledge is one of the priority areas in our time. The research aims to analyse the effectiveness of the use of methods of teaching the subject “economic and social geography” and their improvement. The research aims to provide recommendations to eliminate errors in the functioning of this mechanism and to disclose the problems of development of teaching economic and social geography. Among the used methods analytical method, functional method, method of system analysis, method of deduction, method of comparison, and method of synthesis were applied. In the process of conducting the study, the features of pedagogy in the process of teaching the subject of economic and social geography, as well as their comparison with other generally accepted methodologies were pointed out. Ineffective mechanisms that need improvement for use in modern teaching practices were found. Assessment of economic and social geography teaching tools was also considered. It was determined that in the system of higher education geographical disciplines, as well as other subjects, need to improve quality, by changing the existing methodological system, as well as modernization of processes and optimization of methods and technologies of the educational process organization. The practical value lies in the use of the identified results, solving the problems associated with improving the effectiveness of training for the teaching of the subject, to bring this process to a new level."

Reckoning with the digital turn in electoral geography

The sub-discipline of electoral geography contains research threads that draw on different theoretical, philosophical, and methodological traditions. I link these threads to the ‘digital turn’ that is occurring in the electoral landscape and in the discipline of geography itself. The use of digital technology is increasingly shaping electioneering and data regimes, providing new conceptual challenges concerning the spatial mediation and subsequent knowledge politics of voting and campaigning. Responding to these challenges requires not only building on the subfield’s tradition of interdisciplinarity but also on strengthening intra-disciplinary dialogue, in particular working across the quantitative–qualitative divide.

Towards a Global Urban Geopolitics: Inhabiting Violence

ABSTRACT This introduction to the special section explores geopolitical dimensions of conflict and violence in cities, pointing at the need to continue learning from marginal urban settings. It broadens the scope across differentiated approaches, such as the francophone and anglophone urban geopolitical traditions. By opening up a wider perspective, the emphasis is not on cities as part of a matrix of global hierarchies of geographical power but on the multiscalar relational significance of urban geopolitical inquiry. The introduction positions the special section articles within a wider review of urban geopolitical provocations outlining a new political vocabulary of urban conflict and violence. It concludes with a general call for a methodological and empirical broadening of the field of urban geopolitics as part of a broader de-colonial social and spatial science research agenda bridging the disciplines of political geography, urban studies, architecture and planning.

Let Geography Die: The Rise, Fall, and “Unfinished Business” of Geography at Harvard

This article documents the rise and fall of geography at Harvard University, from the earliest instruction in the seventeenth century to its demise in the mid-twentieth century. Analysis of recently released data from university archives enables deeper understandings than previously written in existing literature, including a focus on the roles of key figures central to the decision to end geography and the prolonged struggle to sustain geography at the college. The article refutes unfounded claims made by key figures to end geography and aims to tell a more nuanced, empirically detailed, queer account of this history. Of central importance to this account is the work of Harvard geography professor Derwent Whittlesey. By providing this more nuanced account, we endeavor to address what a 1951 report at the college identified as the “unfinished business” of geography at Harvard. We discuss an erasure that has long haunted both the discipline of geography and the campus by arguing that the feminization of geographical knowledge and the homophobic feminization of queer geographers at Harvard proved central to the suppression of geographical education and closure of the geography program.

The stakes of abyssal geography. Response to commentaries on David Chandler and Jonathan Pugh's ‘Abyssal geography’.

The stakes of abyssal geography. Response to commentaries on David Chandler and Jonathan Pugh's ‘Abyssal geography’.

Road trip field course

ABSTRACT Field study and field courses are integral to the discipline of geography. While there are many forms that a field course might take, in this paper we draw on two university-level field courses in the U.S. Southwest to propose a road trip pedagogy for field study. We reflect on the particular resonance of the road trip in the American West and how Western road trip mythology, combined with our own road trip experiences, helped shape the design of two road trip field courses. The educational value of both planned and un-planned encounters is a key strength of a road trip field course. We conclude by briefly reflecting on two future considerations for road trip pedagogy: possibilities for aligning anti-racist pedagogy with road trip pedagogy and the potential transferability of our American West road trip to other locations.

USING GOOGLE JAMBOARD IN TEACHING SOCIO-GEOGRAPHIC DISCIPLINES TO FUTURE GEOGRAPHY TEACHERS

The article highlights the problems of using the Google Jamboard board in the educational process of higher education students on the example of social and geographical disciplines of OPP Secondary education (Geography. Biology and human health). It is noted that globalization, the transition to scientific and information technologies, the formation of a “knowledge society” significantly affect the nature of education, in particular, the perception of its quality. Information technologies in training make it possible to achieve the main goals of the modernization of education: to improve the quality of education and training, to ensure the formation of a harmoniously developed personality, ideally positioned in the information space. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Russian-Ukrainian war, when online learning is a challenge of our time, informatization of education is especially relevant. The results of a questionnaire survey applicants for higher education. The attraction to the use of Jamboard in the process of teaching social and geographical disciplines has been determined. It is noted that thanks to the use of Google Jamboard in teaching social and geographical disciplines of future geography teachers, several important tasks are solved at once. Applicants for education form a steady interest in the process of acquiring knowledge, ability to search, process and analyze information from a variety of sources, to work confidently and critically using information society technologies and communication, the ability to work in a team, to communicate on professional issues.
 Keywords: innovation; informatization of education; information technology of training; interactive whiteboard; Google Jamboard; information society; computerized learning; technical means of training.

We just gotta do meta! Notes on disciplinary anxieties in Geography in India

AbstractA hundred years since its inception in college curriculum in India, geography as a discipline appears to be marked by a lack of self confidence. The persistently unenthusiastic response of Indian departments of geography to the present global health crisis over the past three years suggests that this is not a momentary loss of heart. We suggest that this is rather the result of the discipline's intertwining with post independence development policy in addition to the failure to integrate the sub disciplines of geography well with each other. As a way forward, we argue that the greatest promise in fact lies not in the universities but in networks across departments and independent research centres where geography can truly claim its place in the sun as a discipline that offers the relational approach that few other disciplines offer.

THE MEDIUM TRAVEL GUIDE: SOME ASPECTS OF IT’S STRATEGIES AND GOALS

There is no extensive secondary literature on travel guides, despite their popularity among readers and their status as one of the best-selling genres in bookstores. The medium was more thoroughly researched in the disciplines of geography, tourism and folklore, especially in the late 1980s and 1990s, although different aspects and points were deepened depending on the discipline and thus a “compact field of reliable knowledge and theories” could not be developed. (Wicke 2011: 22). Buhl (2020: 39) concludes that travel guide research is primarily concerned with the historical change in the genre from its emergence to the 20th century or attempts to create a typology of this broad, diverse genre. However, for the purpose of this research, of particular interest are the publications that refer to the ways in which the target countries are presented from an intercultural perspective; still, the number of these studies has remained insignificant to this day. The most recent and very comprehensive study comes from Gesa Wicke (2011), who fills the research gap with her study of the staging of foreignness in tourist guides to Sicily. The subject of analysis based on available research for the medium travel guide will be the travel guide form Philine von Oppeln “Nordmazedonien. Mit Skopje, Ohridsee und allen Nationalparks” (2020).

Climate, cartography, and the life and death of the ‘natural region’ in British geography

During the first fifteen years of the twentieth century, Oxford-based Scottish geographer Andrew Herbertson constructed a framework for comprehending and categorising climate and its interrelations: natural regions. Along with a large circle of students and collaborators, Herbertson promoted natural regions as the conceptual keystone for geographical teaching and research. This article shows how natural regions theory conceived of climate as an object that was differently defined in different academic disciplines. Geography’s climate, according to Herbertson and his supporters, was defined by its relations with other spatially distributed phenomena rather than being the quantifiable and isolable entity of modern climatology. Building on recent work in the history of cartography foregrounding map use and reception, the article also argues that natural regions were products of particular modes of map reading, comparison, and synthesis. Although maps were arguably the most influential medium for communicating natural regions, they also proved limited as bearers of the multiscalar version of climate that Herbertson and his successors sought to convey. Finally, the article explains how natural regions and associated conceptions of climate came to be sidelined in the mid-twentieth century as geographers foregrounded human agency in region formation and adopted climatology’s definitions and analytical tools. Revisiting the life and death of theories of natural regions illuminates the contested significance of climate in the discipline of geography, and contributes to ongoing efforts to pluralise the history of climate sciences.

Ecosystem services research: From golden era to next crossing

Ecosystem services has been widely explored in various theoretical or practical studies since its emergence more than 20 years ago. The two big issues in the past golden era of ecosystem services research were: ecosystem services valuing and ecosystem services trade-offs. We analyzed advantages of ecosystem services in promoting the attention that government and the public pay to the natural capital and the management of ecosystem services, together with summarizing the shortcomings. It was found that ecosystem services valuing made the public aware of the importance of natural capital from an economic perspective, while ecosystem services trade-offs highlighted the relationship between various ecosystem services from an ecological perspective, which could be better applied to ecosystem services-based ecosystem management. With an increasing number of papers focusing on ecosystem services flows, it is believed that ecosystem services flows integrating ecology, economy, sociology and geography disciplines will become a new key direction after ecosystem services valuing and trade-offs. To further promote the study of ecosystem services flows that link human and nature within geographical context, we need to focus on the value of ecosystem services flows with payment and benefit accounting, the relationship of ecosystem services flows by trade-off and synergy analysis, and the direction of ecosystem services flows by spatial and temporal assessment. In addition, a more efficient and widely recognized method is also essential for the development of quantifying ecosystem services flow. This study contributes to understanding the development stage of ecosystem services research and highlights the importance of ecosystem services flow research.

Reading (in) a Quadriform Cosmos: Gospel Books in the Early Christian Bibliographic Imagination

Early Christian thinkers developed the widespread linguistic cosmology of the Roman Mediterranean in a novel way in order to advance a specific bibliographic project: aligning the emergent fourfold Gospel with the structure of the physical cosmos. Employing interlocking concepts from the disciplines of meteorology, geography, music, mathematics, and astronomy, a number of figures—including Irenaeus, Origen, Ephrem, Eusebius, Fortunatianus, Augustine, and Maximus—imagined a Gospel corpus consisting of precisely four texts. Number provided a way to articulate the coherence of the fourfold Gospel—both with itself and with the rest of the world. By situating both familiar and neglected evidence in the context of ancient cosmology, I argue that early Christians theorized a divinely ordained correspondence between fourfold Gospel and quadriform cosmos.

CLASSIFICATION OF ANTHROPOGENOUS RELIEF FORMS WITHIN COASTAL ZONE OF UNTIDAL SEAS IN EUROPE

Problems Statement and Purpose. The article defines the intensification of the development of anthropogenic geomorphology as one of the important areas of geographical science in Ukraine. Until now, there is practically no geomorphological classification of anthropogenic relief forms in the coastal zone of the seas and on the coasts in fundamental works. This significantly inhibits the further development of this scientific direction and adversely affects practical factors. Review and analysis of the history of research on the development of anthropogenic geomorphology showed the beginning of the occurrence of anthropogenic relief many centuries ago. But this was addressed by only a few geographers and representatives of the authorities. Only with the advent of machine production and the progress of modern coastal development, geomorphologists recognized a separate morpholithogenesis. Even today, foreign authors generally pay little attention to geomorphological issues of the study of anthropogenic relief on oceanic and sea coasts. Data and Methods. Mainly own experience of geomorphological studies in different European countries was used. Additional material is borrowed from publications of domestic and foreign authors supplemented with illustrations. Synthesis, classification, comparative and geographic as well as cartographic methods are used. Actual illustrative and graphic materials are included. Results. The first attempt to classify the anthropogenic relief on the sea coasts of the non-tidal seas of Europe (Mediterranean, Black, Azov) in several groups is outlined according to purposes: a) port; b) navigational; c) coast guard; d) recreational; e) extractive; f) residential. We also allow the presence of coastal and marine anthropogenic relief forms of other purposes in different regions of the sea coast. Separate geomorphological taxa are distinguished within elementary forms. It was found that within individual groups and types, they are divided into longitudinal and transverse, active and passive, large and small, vertical and horizontal, surface, underwater and complex, purposeful and accompanying, according to the material from which they are built, with natural relief and without him, ancient and modern. Some few taxa and elementary forms can be included in two or three complex forms and assignment groups, which leads to violations of the logical principles of classification construction. But such are the features of not only coastal and marine but also other classifications of anthropogenic relief. The given classification has a generally important theoretical and practical significance in geomorphology: it will contribute to further development of the general theory of anthropogenic geomorphology; will provide a characteristic of various anthropogenic forms necessary during the design and economic development of coasts; will be included in the educational program for the geographic disciplines “Geomorphology” and “Coastal science”, which will relieve geographer students of a false understanding of anthropogenic relief in the system of the coastal and marine environment.

ACTIVE METHODOLOGIES IN GEOGRAPHY TEACHING: POSSIBLITIES IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS IN RURAL AREAS, PIAUÍ/PI

Public schools in rural areas belong to a reality far removed from the others, and when looking for new ways to teach the discipline of Geography, the teacher encounters difficulties. Thinking about this issue, the main objective of this work is to use simple and low-cost resources that may contribute to the teaching-learning process of Geography in these schools. Having as justification the need to think about the use of cheap recreational resources or without any expense in the teaching-learning process, given the difficulty of having access to expensive materials or those that require advanced technology. This work was carried out in stages from an approach through action research, a bibliographical survey was carried out; studies with the textbook, realization of didactic sequences, elaboration of instruments and systematization of data on active methodologies. The main results demonstrated the various possibilities for the use of active
 methodologies in teaching geography in schools in the rural area of any municipality, mainly with the use of didactic resources existing in the school reality itself, that is, teachers and students. It is concluded that schools in rural areas lack infrastructure, but this is not an obstacle for the Geography teacher to be able to study Active Methodologies with his/her students; on the contrary, in any school environment it is possible for the student to be able to learn using various resources, what really has to be done is the adaptation to reality, so that there is no difficulty in its application, that is, despite real problems it is possible to use accessible teaching resources, what really needs to be done is the adaptation to the reality in which the institution and students belong.

A sexuality pivot: Thinking through solidarity, geographies of sexuality, and a world in transition

While work on solidarities forms a core element within geographical scholarship, especially as related to forms of shared connection to address forms of inequality, few studies from the geographies of sexualities literature have directly engaged with the concept. This article argues that there are two complementary logics as to why scholars working on sexuality may want to consider more forcibly the concept of solidarity. One of these logics suggests that a focus on solidarities can further pre-existing key interests within the geographies of sexualities literature, especially in parts of the world that have historically received relatively limited research attention. A second logic suggests that a focus on sexuality-based solidarities can help enable sexualities scholars to further critical engagement regarding broader discourses, and offer alternative framings, regarding a world in transition. This article presents a series of examples, drawn from across sub-Saharan Africa, related to both logics together with a series of potential future directions for research. Taken collectively, this article, by drawing on earlier work on solidarity from within the discipline of geography, contends that there are a number of key benefits for sexualities scholars to undertake a ‘pivot’ or choice to explore solidarity more directly in the current moment.

Geosoziologie, Geoanthropologie, Erdsystemwissenschaft und die Bedeutung des Faches Geographie im „Anthropozän“

In view of the rapidly increasing environmental problems in the Anthropocene, there are actually many new approaches in the field of sciences and humanities to strengthen the analysis of interactions between natural dynamics and human activities in the form of inter- and transdisciplinary cooperation. Because this cooperation has a strong tradition in the discipline of geography (a part belongs to sciences, another part to humanities) this article asks, if and in which manner the experiences in geography are nowadays present in the new interdisciplinary approaches. The result is negative, and this creates problems for the new approaches, because there is the danger to repeat the errors and wrong ways which have been made in the past. Therefore, it would be desirable to strengthen this geographical tradition.