Geographical Exploration Research Articles

Western Disorientations: The Vanishing East of South America and Eastern Europe

In this paper I utilise Edward Said’s framework of Orientalism in order to investigate how the regions that the European explorers have mistakenly or negligently identified in their imaginaries as “the East” are brought into the colonial order through an a priori assumption of their inferiority to the West. I turn to South America and Eastern Europe as the two frontiers which make these operations visible. Through the analysis of primary sources such as travel journals and letters from Spanish explorers and conquistadors during the age of encounters, as well as the writings the English and French travellers made during their visits to Eastern Europe during the Enlightenment, I demonstrate how the Western European Orientalist imaginaries remain persistent through the ages despite the geographical explorations and geopolitical changes, and instead of disappearing, migrate to create the new orients as the realms of European otherness.

ARGENTINE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE 1812-1850

Argentina is located in the continent of South America and it is considered the eighth largest country in the world in terms of an area of 2780,400 square kilometers. The city of Buenos Aires is the official capital of the country. The first European explorers reached it in 1516 were the Spanish who occupied most of South America. In opposition to them, Simon Bolivar and Jose San de Martín appeared, who imagined that the homeland would one day be born, free of Spanish intervention. The personality of Jose San Martin represented the pillar of independence in Latin America because he led the independence movement for three countries: Argentina, Peru, and Chile, in which he proved that he had the greatest role in the independence of these countries. The research dealt with three sections. The first topic included the naming of Argentina and its indigenous people, geographical explorations and the Spanish colonization of Argentina. The second topic focused on the personality of Jose San Martin because of its paramount importance in supporting the liberation movements in Argentina, his birth and his military upbringing. As for the progress of liberation movements and the emergence of the Argentine Republic was Among the third topic. The researcher concluded that the country of Argentina, which was called in Latin the country of silver, is inhabited by many ancient civilizations, including the Indians, the Mayan peoples and the people of Diaguita.San Martín benefited from his military and leadership experience, which he had accumulated in the leadership of the Andean Army to liberate Chile and then Peru. San Martín's victory in Chile was not to push him to invade, but he ceded to his friend Ohanes to lead Chile and harnessed all his energy to complete the liberation of Peru, the last stronghold of the Spaniards. San Martín cooperated with his friend Simon Bolivar to complete the liberation of Peru and offered him to be a soldier under his command. Martín's liberation of all the lands occupied by the Spaniards. After the liberation of Peru, San Martín did not cling to power, although he described himself as the protector of Peru, so after he sensed that there was opposition among the patriots to him, he quickly resigned, and left for Argentina, then to Chile, and after the death of his wife in 1823, he took his only daughter to France to spend the rest of his life In, He died in August 17, 1850. Key words: Argentina, War of Independence.

Virtual Reality and the Cartographic Imagination

Virtual Reality and the Cartographic Imagination Alison Griffiths (bio) The eye carries men to different parts of the world. —Leonardo da Vinci1 While virtual reality (VR) scholars have not been blind to its aesthetic and spectatorial affinities across large-scale painting, panoramas, dioramas, stereoscopy, globes, cinema, IMAX, and 3D video, less attention has been paid to the influence of cartographic techniques from the medieval and early modern era of geographic exploration.2 Without denying the obvious phenomenological differences between VR and cartography, cartographic techniques may be considered part of the long dureé of recombinant media that bring the world into visibility, practices of imaginary projection and reconciliation that serve as containers for civilizing and humanitarian discourses. Through the deployment of high-definition 3D cameras to record the world and optical technologies and data systems to reassemble it for users, VR draws meaning and is haunted by much earlier cartographic practices that interpellate users into subject positions that resonate in uncanny ways with medieval cartography. As liminal, multilayered, and disjunctive artifacts of the real and the imagination, medieval maps and humanitarian VR are discursive allies, trafficking in forms of embodied seeing, virtuality, and presence that [End Page 167] allow access to reified worlds from a safe distance. This essay probes some of these correspondences, arguing that while technologies of virtual projection are effective in generating wonder and curiosity about the human condition, this comes at the cost of a deeper intellectual engagement. Medieval maps were resplendently visual and included vignettes of Indigenous peoples, wildlife, cities, and religious figures; as cartographic scholar John Block Friedman explains, a map was more a "visual work of art and expression of contemporary cosmology and theology than it was an object of utility"—which is to say, a way of imagining the world through a particular mode of humanist and Christological thought.3 Both medieval maps and VR invite viewers to picture themselves moving through the world, along visual pathways that could be traced with a finger or eye, projecting their bodies into virtual spaces that draw authority as much if not more from the imagination as from cartography or geography. No world map did this better than the mappa mundi, a world map that functioned as a metaphoric storage device for all manner of cosmological, religious, and geographical knowledge. Mappae mundi represented Latin Christianity as forging inexorably westward from Paradise in the east, to the Apocalypse in the west, a journey through time itself. Densely packed with encyclopedic knowledge and hearsay about what lay at the edges of the world, mappae mundi regularized vision, triggering a measure of interactivity through an invitation to touch or—depending on the method of display—walk around or over the map. Medieval map makers exploited the idea of maps as sensual objects for imaginative projection and immersion centuries before VR pioneers envisioned them as a navigable geospatial technology.4 Similar tropes of reification are deployed in each form: people transformed into pictograms or emblematic images that viewers cannot help but stare at and that invite bodily identification in relation to movement, travel, space, and difference.5 Portolan charts, mariners' guides identifying coastal ports that also contained information about what lay inland—such as topographic features, tribal leaders, Indigenous people, and wildlife (both real and imagined)—also leveraged meaning from art as well as science. Geographic reality coexisted [End Page 168] with the imagination in mappae mundi and portolans; both they and VR invite bodily intervention, whether that be walking around a medieval portolan chart spread out on a ship's map table—in order to read the toponyms and see the world the right side up—or reaching out for a phantom object in the space of VR; and in both we detect a tension between seeing as a source of knowledge and power versus seeing as a locus of disquiet or discombobulation. In VR, for example, the user's ability to absorb geographical information from a unitary subject position is threatened by an anxiety about being swallowed up by the world, while in the case of medieval maps, the user has a sense of dread about what lies at the edge of the map where human oddities...

The 1968 Antarctic Italian CAI-CNR mission: a story map to rediscover an almost unknown geographical exploration

The 1968 Antarctic Italian CAI-CNR mission: a story map to rediscover an almost unknown geographical exploration

The Upper Sepik–Central New Guinea Project

ABSTRACT The Upper Sepik–Central New Guinea Project assembled images and data for 10,000 objects from that region to explore the relationship between material culture on the one hand and language, geographical distance, environment, and subsistence systems on the other. Among a series of papers published on the project website, several concern the geographical explorations of Richard Thurnwald and Charles Karius, which are relevant to the history of exploration in New Guinea.

Od legendy do faktu — od faktu do legendy. Wczesne romanse podróżnicze H. Ridera Haggarda

The late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are the time of great geographical explorations and discoveries which also constituted a source of inspiration for the fin-de-siecle writers. Between 1880 and 1920 there emerged a variant of adventure fiction, usually defined as the “quest romance” or “imperial romance”. The article discusses three such texts by H. Rider Haggard: King Solomon’s Mines (1885), Allan Quatermain (1887) and She (1887). It concentrates mainly on the interrelation between fact and legend (the process of one turning into the other) and on the function of the peritext — the title page, the introduction, the footnotes or the quoted texts from the fictional reality — in establishing that relation as well as blurring the barrier between the fictitious world and the world of the actual readers.

‘Coi libri o col mondo?’

‘With books or with the world?’
 Alienation effects without disorientation in Viaggio e maravigliose avventure d’un veneziano by Francesco Contarini
 This paper investigates the forms and effects of displacement in Viaggio e maravigliose avventure d’un veneziano ch’esce per la prima volta dalle lagune e si reca a Padova e a Milano, published anonymously in Milan in 1818. According to Luigi Catucci, the author is Francesco Contarini, who translated many travel books for the editor Sonzogno between 1816 and 1817: this would explain the noticeable intertextual dialogue between the Viaggio and other travel writings, both fictional and non-fictional. Some allusions to Vasco de Gama’s and James Cook’s geographical explorations reveal the author’s interest in travel as an anthropological experience, while quotations from Swift and De Maistre suggest a familiarity with the literary conventions and the most recent renewal of the European novel. 
 From a theoretical point of view, the essay examines the interaction between travel literature, (anti-)novel, récit excentrique, and parody, in order to show that literary contamination works as an estrangement device. At the same time, this theoretical interpretation is evaluated (from an analytical and interpretative point of view) in relation to the narrative techniques through which Contarini expresses the alienation-effect of the first-person dramatized narrator, prompting a strong sense of disorientation in the reader (but not in the main character).

“I viaggi e la modernità. Dalle grandi esplorazioni geografiche ai mondi extraterrestri” a cura di Annalisa D’Ascenzo

“Travel and modernity. From the great geographical explorations to the extraterrestrial worlds” by Annalisa D’Ascenzo

Post-Enlightenment Exploration and the Aesthetic of Information: Curious with a Purpose

Exploration accounts written during the post-Enlightenment era of European expansion relied upon the agency of a romanticized narrator who could inspire a dedicated readership since he strategically projected the ‘performance’ of exploration as necessarily hazardous and hence, awe-inspiring. The concomitant element of romance was further emphasized in such texts since the precarious and vulnerable position of the explorer-narrator functioned as a much-needed foil to the sort of objectivist-detached discourse of functional intelligence that exploration narratives were increasingly expected to generate. The elaborate, methodical, organized and professional performance of overseas exploration needs to be understood as a targeted activity that utilized specific narratorial devices with an aim to make use of the widespread curiosity about the New World. This essay seeks to address the post-Enlightenment emergence of an ‘aesthetic of information’ along with its discursive trappings and epistemological frameworks which were ‘realized’ within a subculture of geographical exploration. ‘Knowledge’ aspired to be defined by empirical rigour, but the process of accessing and documenting it could scarcely avoid subjective variables.

Afrikai citerák

A general historical survey of African zither types cannot fail to highlight the disproportionalities brought about in the study of Africa by the essentialistic ideology of Afrocentrism. Thus the widely known videoclip of the 1987 hit Yé-ké-yé-ké by the late Mory Kante (d. 22nd May 2020), musician and composer of Guinean Mandinka origin has allowed millions to experience the kora harp lute with which he accompanied his song and popularized this instrument as well as the musical tradition of the West African griots, while the obviously related mvet harp zither is scarcely known today. This despite the fact that both the latter instrument type and its specialists, the mbomo mvet master singers, played a very similar role in the cultures of the Central African chiefdoms, as did the nanga bards playing the enanga trough zither in the East African kingdoms. Another important and interesting historical insight provided by a careful morphological and etymological analysis of African zither types and their terminology that takes comparative account of South and Southeast Asian data and ethnographic parallels concerns the possibility of borrowings. Thus stick and raft zither types may well have reached the eastern half of West Africa and the northeastern part of Central Africa – several centuries prior to the era of European geographical explorations – owing to population movements over the Red Sea. It seems therefore probable that the African stick bridges harp zithers (in fact a sui generis instrument type rather than a subtype of zithers) developed from South Asian stick zither types. On the other hand, tube zithers and box zithers – fretted-enhanced versions of the stick zither – certainly reached Africa because of the migration of Austronesian-speaking groups over the Indian Ocean, since their recent ethnographic analogies have survived in Southeast Asia as well. By contrast types of trough zither, confined to East Africa, must have developed in Africa from box zither types, which are based on similar techniques of making the strings tense. The hypothesis of African zither types having originated from beyond the Indian Ocean is further strengthened by the absence of these instruments in such regions of Sub-Saharan Africa as the Atlantic coast of West Africa as well as in Northeast, Southwest and South Africa. Thus the historical overview of African zither types also helps refute the erroneous idea that prior to the arrival of European explorers and colonizers the continent was isolated from the rest of the world. In fact seafaring peoples such as the Austronesians, Chinese, Indians, Arabs and Persians did continually reach it, bringing with them cultural artifacts, production techniques and agricultural products among other things, which would then spread over large distances along the trade routes over Africa.

The Fairy Tale World ed. by Andrew Teverson

Reviewed by: The Fairy Tale World ed. by Andrew Teverson Mary Sellers (bio) The Fairy Tale World. Edited by Andrew Teverson, Routledge, 2019, 484 pp. Drawing on the work of established and emerging scholars, this collection of essays—as the title suggests—negotiates fairy tales around the world but also the world of the fairy tale itself. It begins with a definition of the term and a discussion of Andrew Lang’s work, but it quickly gets to the first of many conflicts in the field. The titular term “fairy tale” is fraught with “Eurocentric and Western associations that threaten to obscure the specificity, variety, and function of oral storytelling genres” (Lewis Seifert 159). In an effort to overcome this limiting terminology “that entail[s] homogenizing the world’s wonder tales according to a Euro-American model” (12), Andrew Teverson set out to reclaim the term and “extend and elaborate the emerging critique of the Euro-American focus of fairy-tale studies” (10). This aim is achieved through exposing the international influence of familiar texts, exploring how Märchen evolved differently across the world, expanding the canon to include marginalized works and analyses, and examining how contemporary writers and artists blend older forms and modern interpretations to create a novel pastiche. [End Page 388] The book is divided into five sections with seven or eight chapters in each. The sections—“The Formation of the Canon,” “Africa and the Caribbean,” “The Americas, Asia and Australia,” and “Europe”—provide an excellent overview of both the specific topic and current scholarship in the area. However, there are threads that weave through all the chapters—particularly the ideas of colonialism, imperialism, and fairy-tale origins—that create a global tapestry of ideas. Other cross-chapter motifs are art, contemporary literature, and a definition of fairy tale. However, for those who wish to focus on a specific geographical area, the book offers a sample of approaches to scholarship to highlight the trends in research. Additionally, the geographical focus enables a study of a wider region, as stories travel heedless of political borders. It also allows cross-cultural comparison. For example, how do contemporary retellings in Australia differ from those in Japan or America? Yet, each section can be used as a stand-alone unit for a class or to delve into a geographical exploration of fairy tales in that region. The first section, “The Formation of the Canon,” opens by posing the question “Where do fairy tales belong?” Donald Haase answers the query and “confirms the resistance of folktales and fairy tales to the constraint of a one-dimensional belonging” (30). These tales exist in their own realm, and those who hear them often do not grapple with paratextual meanings and do not place the tales in their specific geographical and cultural setting. This enables fairy tales to be read through multiple lenses. Questions of interpretation and origin continue in the rest of the section through discussions of the origin of the fairy tale in the Middle East, Italy, France, Germany, and the problems inherent in translation. Nancy L. Canepa discusses the works of Giovan Francesco Straparola and Giambattista Basile in her chapter, “The Formation of the Literary Fairy Tale in Early Modern Italy 1550–1636,” commenting on the “murky moral world of the tales” where “violence and deception may or may not prove to be winning strategies” (65). This chapter contrasts well with the “stylish atmosphere of the court” (68) found in the French tales Christine A. Jones uses as her texts in “Social Change and the Development of the Fairy Tale in France 1690–1799.” Overall, this first section lays the groundwork for continuing themes in the rest of the volume. Although the remaining sections are geographically focused, many of the entries grapple with the same sort of question that Ruth Finnegan posed, “Are there fairy tales in Africa?” (105), which introduces her chapter, “Fairy Tale in Africa: A Contrast of Centuries.” Discussions of wonder tales or tales of magic occur in almost every section, expanding the fixed notion of a “fairy tale” to encompass a wider range of narratives. Emily Zoebel Marshall’s study of Anansi tales in “This Is Not a...

A la conquista espiritual de la “Tierra Magallánica”. Los jesuitas del Paraguay y la Ciudad de los Césares en el siglo XVIII

En este artículo analizamos las exploraciones geográficas y la producción textual de la Provincia Jesuítica del Paraguay relacionadas con la Ciudad de los Césares durante el siglo XVIII. Estudiamos la ambivalencia de la creencia jesuítica en esta ciudad a mediados del siglo XVIII, algunos textos pragmáticos destinados a manipular a las autoridades y la relación entre la Ciudad de los Césares y el proyecto para la “conquista espiritual” de la población indígena de la Patagonia meridional. Finalmente, exploramos los cambios en la escritura jesuítica relativa a esta ciudad durante las décadas finales del siglo.

Philosophical geography: establishment, development, formation of scientific foundations

Science, at all stages of its development has always been in close connection with philosophical thought. Such synthesis is characteristic for any branch of science, including geography. This is related to the spatial content of geographical science, since the category of space itself is philosophical. At the boundary of geography and philosophy there are different scientific disciplines, each of which has its own specificity (geosophy, geophilosophy, etc.). This article deals with philosophical geography in general as the most neutral interpretation of the sphere of knowledge and thought about the deep essence of the terrestrialspace and its landscapes.The purpose of the article is to substantiate the stage of development of philosophical ideas in geography. The works of ancient and medieval authors on natural philosophy, geographical and cosmographic works demonstrate attempts to comprehend the essence of the terrestrial space, to find its rational justification, either in the context of generalization and systematization of known factual material (e.g., Eratosthenes’ sphragides), or for the purpose of filling in knowedge gaps, Crates globe), or when trying to explore the sacral space, which was favoured over Earth, which was treated as a secondary object (e.g., cosmographic study by AlKhwarizmi).The 17th - 19th centuries include the New European stage in the evolution of philosophical ideas in geography. It was then that Oecumene spread to almost all the land of the Earth. By this time, the classical geographic works by B.Varenius, A. von Humboldt and C. Ritter were appearing, whose philosophical content is related either to the conceptual and terminological aspect (as in A. von Humboldt concerning the concept of “landscape”), or with the reliance on a philosophical system (in particular, dialectical idealism) on the basis of geographical research (as by C.Ritter). The concept of geographical determinism of Charles Louis de Montesquieu was also philosophical as was the Genetic Approach in Ethnography by Johann Gottfried Herder. An important prerequisite for the further development of philosophical geography was the emergence of methodological trends of geographical studies in the second half of the 19th century, such as anthropogeography of C. Ritter, F. Ratzel, E. Reclus and chorogeography, perfected by A. Hettner on the basis of the philosophical ideas of I. Kant. Anthropogeographic search indicated the possibility for combining the natural and human in one research object, and the holographic concept acquired the character of a paradigm because of its coverage of the entire set ofobjects on the Earth’s surface which are amenable to spatial analysis. In the second half of the 19th century, geography experienced a methodological crisis related to the differentiation of science and, as a consequence, the threat of its loss of research object. Along with anthropogeography, a synthetic trend arose, which in the first half of the 20th century enabled this methodological crisis to be overcome, the emergence of V. Dokuchaev’s doctrines about the nature zones, L. Berg - about the landscape, A. Grigoriev - about the “physical and geographical” shell, P. Teilhard de Chardin, and V. Vernadsky - about the noosphere.The main feature of the modern stage of the development of philosophical geography is the most harmonious combination of concrete scientific and philosophical foundations, which objectively reflects the dialectical nature of the relation between science and philosophy. Organic continuation of philosophical and geographical exploration is exemplified by modern research in geo-psychohistory, geography of culture, geosophy and a number of other scientific disciplines.

Comprehensive Engineering Geological Analysis on Large-Scale Anti-dip Slopes: A Case Study of Changshanhao Opencast Gold Mine in China

Flexural toppling failure of large-scale anti-dip slopes constitutes a significantly rare phenomenon. With regard to the large-scale anti-dip slope instability at the southwest stope of Changshanhao Opencast Gold mine, in this work, a field engineering geological survey on the Changshanhao open stope was conducted, to investigate the structural plane features of the corresponding slope rock mass. Moreover, an equatorial horizon projection and strike rose diagram were utilized to determine the preferred structural plane of the joint fissures; the exposed rock mass integrity zoning of slope and the rock sample property testing on the main lithological compositions in the stope were also established. Based on the results of previous field investigations and indoor rock mechanics experiments, along with the occurrence conditions of stratigraphic structures unmasked by existing engineering geology borehole data, geographical explorations and mining engineering, the failure mode of southwest stope slopes were also determined. Finally, several suggestions were provided on the reinforcement and treatment of dangerous slopes within the ultimate mining boundary, consequently laying a foundation for sustainable safe mining.

Fallujah in the Writings of Foreign Travelers in the Ottoman Era

Writings of foreign travelers have a prominent place in the modern history record of Fallujah, their views cannot be found in other sources. These writings recorded by foreign travelers have tackled economic, social, cultural and archaeological themes. However, one must be cautious in dealing with the information derived from such writings. This research paper investigates the writings of travelers to Fallujah from the second half of the16th century to the beginning of the 20th century. The journeys of these travelers were motivated by factors relating to geographic exploration, economic interests, scientific field studies, and intelligence activities. In search of a trade route to the east of Asia and India, Western colonial governments started exploring routes through the Cape of Good Hope and the Euphrates. Fallujah was the final destination along the Euphrates route, and many travelers journeyed there, and their writings contain descriptions of important stopping places along the river, the charming nature along the landscape, as well as the risks and difficulties of navigation. Travelers also recorded their views and observations of Fallujah’s houses, local economy, and the role of its port as a final travel destination en route Baghdad. The study offers new insights concerning some of the most prominent travelers who passed through Fallujah, including Cesar Frederick, Leonhardt Rauwolff, and Ralph Fitch. The information provided by these travelers can serve as a basis for a hypothesis suggesting that Fallujah was not established in the late 19th century, as some modern scholars argue but was actually-discovered during this period, having already thrived for several centuries.
 Keywords: Foreign Travelers; Iraq; Ottoman Era; Euphrates; Fallujah.

A geographical exploration of environmental and land use characteristics of suicide in the greater Toronto area

In developed countries, suicide has become one of the leading causes of mortality. With approximately 3500 cases taking place in Canada annually, it is currently the seventh-most common cause of death. A clearer spatial understanding of the suicide landscape in rapidly changing urban environments would especially help mitigate this problem. This study examines suicide rates in Toronto between 2004 and 2011 as to understand the spatial distribution of suicide by means of the importance of metropolitan places. The study uses geocomputation and statistical methods, enabling spatial analysis as tools to further assess the prevalent gender disparities of self-harm, advancing the current findings in the suicide literature. The findings clearly expose that the dichotomy of gender (male and female) produce different spatial patterns of self-harm, and are impacted by landscape characteristics differently. Specifically, the configuration of different land cover types have a much great impact on the female population than male. This spatial-exploratory understanding of not only the geographical distribution of rates, but also an assessment of landscape influence can help to mitigate suicide depending on demographic and spatial-explicit characteristics found through advanced geostatistical and spatial analytical modeling.

Gender, power and identity in women’s long-distance football supporter performance: finding football homes

Baker, Tegan. 2018. “Coming home through football: A geographic exploration of long-distance fandom.” PhD diss., The University of Waikato.From home stadium, the home crowd, to home fans, football ...

Children's Literature and Imaginative Geography ed. by Aïda Hudson

Reviewed by: Children's Literature and Imaginative Geography ed. by Aïda Hudson Laurel Krapivkin (bio) Children's Literature and Imaginative Geography. Edited by Aïda Hudson. Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2019. Aïda Hudson situates her edited collection at the intersection of three concentric ideas surrounding place: Edward Said's imaginative geographies, Lawrence Buell's place attachment, and the idea of mythical spaces. The volume's seventeen essays are divided into four sections with two [End Page 87] interludes and a postlude. Some of the authors in the collection engage with Said's imaginative geographies, while others use postcolonial and ecocritical theories in conjunction with Buell's place-attachment theory. Still others explore particular spaces, or topoi, and their relationship to power structures and binaries (14). Part 1 contains six essays divided into two sections. The first three are grounded in the Old World, while essays four through six "reflect viewpoints that are 'landed' in the New World" (15). In chapter 1, "Pullman and Imperialism: Navigating the Geographic Imagination in The Golden Compass," scholar Cory Sampson traces imperialist themes in His Dark Materials by positing that Lyra's universe is reminiscent of Victorian Britain. While Sampson doesn't necessarily argue that The Golden Compass is "'unconcealedly'" imperialist, his work investigates the series' imperialist themes of geographical exploration, child adventurers, and the ethnic "othering" of non-Europeans (43). In "Nineteenth-Century British Children's Literature and the North," Colleen M. Franklin does similar work in mapping imperialist themes and tropes. Margot Hillel also traces imperialism in "Envisioning Ireland: Landscape and Longing in Children's Literature," focusing on nineteenth-century Ireland and the unique migration of Irish citizens away from "our land" to the New World. Hillel's piece transitions the section nicely to essays focused on North America. In "From Vanity to World's Fair: The Landscape of John Bunyan's Allegory in Frances Hodgson Burnett's Two Little Pilgrims' Progress," Shannon Murray maps a third imaginary landscape that orphan protagonists Meg and Robin create when they find a copy of Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress and leave their farm home to set out for Chicago's World Exposition. Their imagined geography is a rejection of both the rural life that they have left as well as the industrial city that they travel to. Both Linda Knowles and Petra Fachinger conclude part 1 with essays that illustrate a restorative connection back to indigenous spaces—in particular, the harsh Canadian wilderness—which they argue creates fertile ground for imaginative geographies in fiction written for children. In the first interlude, Hudson offers her audience a change of genre in the interview "History, Hills, and Lowlands: In Conversation with Janet Lunn." Lunn, a prolific writer of Canadian historical fiction for young adults, talks about the connection between Canadian geography and mythology in several of her novels. The interview functions well as a transitional piece from themes of imperialism and migration to a series of essays in part 2 on particular topoi, or "places like gardens, a riverbank, and a rural countryside," and their particular connection to a child's geographical imagination (17). In chapter 8, "How Does Your Garden Grow? The Eco-Imaginative Space of the Garden in Contemporary Children's Picture Books," Melissa Li Sheung Ying focuses on the importance of the garden as an educational space for children, arguing that it invites them into a greater environmental consciousness and, [End Page 88] hopefully, activism. Ying's analysis of the interplay of text and image is particularly effective, calling attention to the parallel of text with visual elements such as color transitions and the use of panels. While Ying's essay focuses on both image and text, Alan West's "Into the (Not So) Wild: Nature Without and Within in Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows" focuses primarily on the textual representations of Grahame's idyllic landscape. West discusses the lack of "wild" in the work, in which the main characters wear clothing and are civilized—except for the othered stouts and weasels, whose wildness threatens Toad Hall in the climax of the story. West's analysis fits appropriately within the conversation of the Saidian dualism of "ours/theirs" or...

Smoke and mirrors in Arnhem Land: What expeditions tell us about the materiality of crosscultural encounters

ABSTRACT By paying attention to the familiar, but under-scrutinized, socio-cultural formation that is an expedition, it is possible to understand better the materiality of anthropological research and of intercultural encounters more generally. A close reading of the 1948 American-Australian Scientific Expedition to Arnhem Land, in northern Australia, is contextualized by a set of broader observations concerning the history of expeditions and their significance to science, anthropology, and geographical exploration. The essay addresses the role of expeditions in distributing trade goods, paying special attention to the distribution of tobacco and its implications. The supply of drugs such as tobacco provides insight into the bio-chemical engagement with the human body that underlay the project of bringing science to an inhabited terrain.

GeoLifecycle

As Location-Based Social Networks (LBSNs) have become widely used by users, understanding user engagement and predicting user churn are essential to the maintainability of the services. In this work, we conduct a quantitative analysis to understand user engagement patterns exhibited both offline and online in LBSNs. We employ two large-scale datasets which consist of 1.3 million and 62 million users with 5.3 million reviews and 19 million tips in Yelp and Foursquare, respectively. We discover that users keep traveling to diverse locations where they have not reviewed before, which is in contrast to "human life" analogy in real life, an initial exploration followed by exploitation of existing preferences. Interestingly, we find users who eventually leave the community show distinct engagement patterns even with their first ten reviews in various facets, e.g., geographical, venue-specific, linguistic, and social aspects. Based on these observations, we construct predictive models to detect potential churners. We then demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed features in the churn prediction. Our findings of geographical exploration and online interactions of users enhance our understanding of human mobility based on reviews, and provide important implications for venue recommendations and churn prediction.