Traditional Geography Research Articles

Reflections on the IPCC and global change science: Time for a more (physical) geographical tradition

Key Messages Single factor climate change metrics, such as global mean temperature increase or global sea level rise, have little meaning for the explanation of landscape scale change. Global scale analyses struggle to incorporate landscape settings; the role of climatic variability alongside secular change; intrinsic systems feedbacks which modulate external forcing; and spatial and temporal cascades of energy and matter. The ultimate goal of global change research should be the study of the implications of climate change for human lives and livelihoods and here the geographical tradition can make a significant contribution.

Mapping teacher status and career-long professional learning: the Place Model

ABSTRACTThis paper engages with key contemporary debates about teaching and teacher education through proposing an innovative, interdisciplinary model, the Place Model, which uses two senses of ‘place’ to provide comparative lenses for a timely, a-priori examination of the place of the teacher: place in the humanistic geography tradition as a process – a cumulative, career-long professional learning journey – and, also, place in the sociological sense of teacher status. This article considers a range of international literature before speculatively ‘populating’ the model with a range of examples in a way which raises important questions about conceptions of teachers across the globe, and provides an alternative and original vision of the profession.

Supporter ownership as a method of football governance: the concept of a Supporters’ Trust and its operation within England and the Republic of Ireland

This paper seeks to analyse and evaluate the subject of supporter ownership as a form of football governance. The historical evolution of football has seen the game transform into a contemporary global product that transcends geographical boundaries, culture and tradition. The formation of Supporters Direct in 2000 represents the formalization of supporter activism as supporters sought to promote democratic practices within the game in search of a sustainable sport. The emergence of Supporters’ Trusts across the UK and Ireland symbolizes a significant shift in the governance of football. The embracement of community as a concept and an awareness of group ideology, has enabled the Supporters’ Trust model to prosper at a lower level of the game. This paper seeks to trace the conditions which contributed to the emergence of supporter ownership; explore how the concept has been formalized; and examine the role of active supporters in the League of Ireland.

Uncovering discordance between taxonomy and evolutionary history in Florida raccoons

Due to perceived isolation of near shore islands, there are currently five subspecies of raccoons (Procyon lotor) recognized in Florida, USA. In this study, we elucidated molecular genetic differences between subspecies using 173 samples from eight localities collected throughout Florida. We sequenced two mitochondrial genes and genotyped eight nuclear microsatellite loci to test two hypotheses: (1) the five morphologically and geographically defined subspecies of raccoons in Florida represent genetically distinct populations and (2) due to differing habitat availability between island and mainland subspecies, island populations would exhibit reduced levels of genetic diversity compared with mainland populations. Our mitochondrial results identified 37 unique haplotypes, many of which are shared between described subspecies. However, our analyses of genetic differentiation suggest a recent restriction of gene flow among three clusters of raccoons, which do not correlate to traditional geographies for subspecies identification. Finally, we provide evidence of reduced genetic diversity in island populations compared with their mainland counterparts using both mitochondrial and microsatellite data, which demonstrate that haplotype diversity, allelic richness, and heterozygosity are significantly reduced in island sites. These data stress the importance of using multiple lines of evidence when naming taxa to ensure concordance between evolutionary history and taxonomy.

Integrated studies of physical geography in China: Review and prospects

Modern physical geography in China grew from Chinese traditional geography and has been profoundly influenced by the geographical disciplines of Euro-America and Russia. Since the 1950s, integrated studies of physical geography in China have made remarkable progress in the fields of comprehensive physical geographical regionalization, land studies, landscape ecology, and land surface geographical processes. During the past few decades, under the background of global change and rapid socio-economic transformation, a series of environmental and resources problems have boomed in China. To solve these problems and promote the development of integrated studies of physical geography, the following issues were proposed as research priorities: (1) coupling of land surface patterns and processes; (2) integrated research on regional responses and adaptation to global change; (3) analysis of human dimensions of the earth system; (4) ecosystem service research from a geographical perspective; (5) integration of multi-source data and model development; (6) integrated studies on unique geographical units; and (7) important global issues and relevant international programs.

Advancing Climate Change Adaptation: Borrowing from the Natural Hazard Research (NHR) Tradition in Geography

Extreme events have widespread impact on human and natural systems, and the response to such extreme events is examined by several academic and practicing communities. For decades, the Natural Hazard Research (NHR) tradition in geography, led by White and expanded by scholars like Mitchell, have looked at possibilities of blending and applying technological fixes and societal adjustments to reduce the risk of losses from extreme events. While knowledge about potential impacts of climate change related to extreme events has grown substantially, the consolidation of knowledge to plan for and respond to extreme climate events in the short and long terms has only begun in the past few years. These scholars have emphasized the importance of context, understanding and including the broader range of options, and systematic study of past experiences to elicit knowledge pertaining to effective societal responses to extreme events. Such lessons from the NHR tradition and the works of Mitchell are key to finding the way forward with climate change adaptation.

Filosofía y Ciencia en la Geografía, siglos XVI-XXI

Some general aspects of the research program that began in the 1970s on the theory and history of geography, and its further development are presented in this paper. It addresses, first, the problem of the relationship between geography, science and philosophy from the Renaissance to the late Eighteenth century. Second, it refers to the evolution of geography in the Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries, and justifies the theoretical framework adopted for its analysis. Finally it alludes briefly to the new ways that open today from the developments of new information and communications technologies.Geography can contribute its handling of spatial concepts, which were widely incorporated and reformulated from the 1950s, and which allow theorizing about the location, distribution of phenomena and their associations in the earth's surface. This is especially important today, when the amount of data available is vast and is continually growing. In this situation it is critical to reaffirm the importance of quantitative and positivist tradition in geography. Without losing the critical contributions that the discipline had in the last half century, and the ones that they have been made in various branches of human geography, from the historical to cultural geography.

Fusang: The Enlightenment Story of the Chinese Discovery of America.

In 1761 the French scholar and Sinologue Joseph de Guignes announced that "Chinese vessels made the voyage to America many centuries before Christopher Columbus." From the Chinese books in the Bibliotheque du Roi and new missionary reports from Beijing, he concluded that the mythical land of Fusang described by a medieval Buddhist monk could be nowhere other than the west coast of North America, only recently charted by European navigators. Philippe Buache, premier géographe du roi, agreed. At the height of the French Enlightenment, the indigenous geographical tradition of China could be used to further the progress of universal science, providing evidence about issues from the mapping of the Pacific Rim to the organization of the continents. Furthermore, the story of Fusang explained the origins of American peoples, showing that the inhabitants of the New World had arrived there from the Old and contributing to a diffusionist account of the development of civilization in space and time.

Reimagining Muslim Women Through the Prism of Minor Diasporic and National Literatures

This essay explores the representation of Muslim women by reclaiming the concept of diaspora as disrupting both orientalist imaginations and the increasing tyranny of a homogenized Muslim ‘Ummah’ regulating their bodies. In British Bangladeshi author Monica Ali's Brick Lane (2003), Mauritian writer Carl de Souza's La Maison qui Marchait vers le Large (2001) and South African novelist Rayda Jacobs’ Confessions of a Gambler (2003), traditional boundaries of Muslim female identities can be redrawn through the inscription of the South Asian diaspora as a significant site for the exploration of Muslim femininities. The indentured system was based on an exploitative system of contracted labour. Bangladeshi factory workers today, like Indian indentured female labourers of much earlier times, can also be evoked in terms of Spivak's concept of the ‘gendered subaltern subject’. The story lines of Brick Lane and La Maison qui Marchait vers le Large also contain elements of Bollywood cinema narratives, a key matrix for the construction of South Asian diasporic identities, which unlocks potentially different readings of Muslim female characters. Confessions of a Gambler and La Maison qui Marchait vers le Large plot Muslim identities beyond traditional cultural geographies and imaginaries in terms of creolized practices.

Trends in the Location of Phase 3 Clinical Trials Between 2008 and 2012: A Retrospective Review Utilizing ClinicalTrials.gov

Some industry observers and medical professionals, and even the popular media, assert that pharmaceutical companies are conducting an increasing number of clinical trials in countries outside the more established geographies of North America and Western Europe as a way to minimize costs, speed clinical trial completion and reduce regulatory oversight. This raises a number of medical and ethical issues. We sought to establish the degree to which pharmaceutical companies, between 2008 and 2012, have moved phase 3 clinical trials from the traditional research geographies of North America and Europe to less economically developed geographies. We present descriptive summaries of our findings from ClinicalTrials.gov. To test the significance of our findings, we designed a mixed logistic regression analysis with the outcome variable designated as whether or not the site was a site within a traditional clinical trial market. The results demonstrate that there has been very little overall change between 2008 and 2012 where phase 3 studies are conducted. There is virtually no shift in the distribution of studies conducted in the traditional clinical trial areas of North America and Western Europe. Across the five-year window, the percentage of North American sites was 39 % while the percent of sites in Western Europe barely changed from 26 to 25 %. There was little change in the geographic distribution of phase 3 sites during the period covered by the analysis.

Adolescents, new urban spaces and understanding spatial isolation: can geography educators lead educational reforms?

Imagining futures is challenging planners, policy-makers and educators alike. For young people growing up in our increasingly urbanised landscapes, new imaginaries are needed. Some of the complexities emerging in urban ecology are considered through an overview of geographical traditions and research findings reporting perspectives of young people past, recent and projected. Recent research relates to experiences of young people living in the Australian city of Melbourne. Educational challenges ahead for schooling in new urban spaces provide opportunities for geography education to provide curriculum leadership in the change processes needed.

A Russian geographical tradition? The contested canon of Russian and Soviet geography, 1884–1953

The paper defines a ‘geographical canon’ as those texts and authors which have been regarded as authoritative by geographers active at particular points in time. The focus is on the development of a geographical canon in Russia and the Soviet Union between the establishment of the first university geography departments in the 1880s and Stalin's death in 1953. A key 1949 meeting of the Academy of Sciences, held at a crisis point in Soviet history, is initially highlighted. The meeting's purpose was to define a canon or list of ‘founding fathers’ for each of the Soviet sciences, including geography, accenting the Russian provenance of each science. In geography's case, the ‘founding father’ selected was the eminent soil scientist, V. V. Dokuchaev (1846–1903). The paper discusses Dokuchaev's scientific achievements and questions why he was considered such an important figure by the geographers of the late Stalin era. It then analyzes some of the key works of a number of prominent geographers of the pre-revolutionary and Stalinist periods to discover how far Dokuchaev's work was emphasized. The main finding is that, although Dokuchaev and his school did have an indirect influence on geographical work from early on, only from about 1930 was his importance emphasized whilst that of the Germans was largely erased by Stalinism. The conclusion is that the geographical canon defined in 1949 was less a genuine attempt to describe the history of the discipline than a response to the priorities of the late Stalin era.

Enlightening choices: a century of Anglophone canons of the geographical tradition

This paper attends to the politics and pedagogy of canon formation by looking at the ways in which a century of Anglo-American historiography since the formal consolidation of the discipline in the 1870s has constructed images of geography's history during the ‘long’ eighteenth century (c.1660–1832). It is contended that different images of geography in that era have been constructed to suit various imaginings of the nature of geography from Keltie's imperialist image at the start of the twentieth century through to David Livingstone's reworking of geography as an Enlightened science. As such, whilst a stable ‘canon’ of geographers such as Cook, Kant and Humboldt has been built, how the individuals who constitute it and their achievements are framed has mutated over time. The essay concludes by reflecting on what we can learn from this survey about how geography builds canons, the strengths and weaknesses of the discipline's canon formation and its role in promoting humane inquiry.

The Contested Post-Socialist Rehabilitation of the Past: Dual Narratives in the Republishing of Tibor Mendöl’s "Introduction to Geography"

This paper aims to unravel the contextual layers of the postsocialist republishing of a prominent Hungarian geographer’s textbook originally written in the 1950s, which is considered here as a vehicle of the contested narrativity in the “big historical gap” of postsocialist Hungarian geography. Tibor Mendöl’s Introduction to Geography [Bevezetés a földrajzba] was a hybrid text written in a dual narrative: first in a traditional “age of discoveries” narrative of the previous conservative-nationalist regime, and second in the obligatory Marxist-Leninist language of the later Sovietized regime. In 1999, the two rehabilitators of the text were driven by different motivations (such as the return to a formerly glorious geographical tradition, or the selective confining of a discredited socialist past), but in both cases through a symbolic contestation of the author. This ultimately led to the arbitrarily reediting of the text.

Sille Settlement in the Context of Sustainable Historical Fabric and Façade Analysis of Its Traditional Houses

Sille is located 8 km northwest of Konya city center in the Central Anatolia region. It is one of the most important and historically rooted residential units in Anatolia. Although it is located in close proximity to Konya, Sille draws attention as a unique site with its geographical structure, cultural life, beliefs and tradition. In this study, firstly, Sille’s historical significance, cultural and social characteristics are addressed with a particular focus on its distinct structure pertaining to its culture, belief, tradition and geography. Then, a typology study is carried out by explaining the city settlement constituting Sille’s historical fabric, façade characteristics and elements of Sille traditional houses. In this context, 16 traditional house façades are chosen in line with the infrastructures formed through the literature review on the subject. These house façades are examined and analyzed through the help of visual data. In the light of the data obtained from the results of this analysis, evaluations and suggestions on the preservation of Sille’s historical fabric are made.

Theoretical Analysis on Modern Park Landscape Design and Evaluation

Based on the unique geographical environment, local manners, architectural styles, historical and cultural traditions, aesthetic taste and landscape, the writer involves landscape ecological studies into the utterance of natural elements and landscape characteristics in design of park landscape, which may achieves the self-development of environment by maintaining diversity of ecology to a certain extent. The landscape planning focus on diversity of landscape based on sustainable development, and forms up the evaluation standards and design principals on park landscape design.

A Political Ecology of Sovereignty in Practice and on the Map: The Technicalities of Law, Participatory Mapping, and Environmental Governance

AbstractThis article examines the relationships between representations and operations of sovereignty in natural resource governance. We advance a ‘political ecology of sovereignty’, examining the participation of non-state actors in resource governance processes. We particularly argue that processes of integrating subaltern populations through mapping local ecological knowledge can modify effective governance practices while nonetheless reproducing the legibility of state sovereign authority and its territorial boundaries. Exploring the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline in Canada, we suggest that state jurisdictional authority is secured through incorporating indigenous interests as a delimited geography of tradition. Examining the Hatgyi hydroelectric development along the Thai–Burmese border, we argue that the territorial boundaries of those nation-states are rearticulated through the governance of this transboundary development. Through these cases, we demonstrate how the insertion of local knowledge works not only to reconfigure effective governance processes but also to reinforce the effect of state sovereignty in new ways.

The lightness of existence and the origami of “French” anthropology

Latour turns to Wittgensteinian or Lyotardian language games, and Silversteinian deixis and metapragmatics, as formal means of distinquishing modern European discursive categories and institutions, each defined by three criteria: the right pre-position, discontinuity from other language games, and felicity conditions. Double-click and the snake of knowledge are metaphorical reminders to not efface the labor of invention and maintenance. In lectures on Gaia, Latour turns toward a Durkheimian politics of the Anthropocene. Descola charts Siberian and North American groups on a north–south historical gradient from animism to analogism, and Amazonian cultural groups as animist transformational sets, reviving a human geography tradition, connecting to Latour’s project through wide-mesh networking of human–nonhuman cosmo-logical modes and relations, and contesting Viveiros de Castro’s uniform Amazonian predation cosmology and multinaturalism–uniculturalism, supporting the earlier work on contrastive Amazonian linguistics. We need not celebrate “humanity as technological detour,” but focus on the “peopling of technologies.”

Special issue: managing and adapting to global change in tourism places

The focus of the articles in this special issue of Tourism Geographies is global change. Global change incorporates social and economic globalization, which is arguably the most important process to have shaped the development of modern tourism since the nineteenth century, and climate change, which is likely to be the most significant factor influencing human behavior and livelihood in the coming decades. The organization of these articles reflects a traditional geography approach, emphasizing the physical geography foundation of the human condition, especially through the issue of climate change. This is broadened by a series of insightful comparative studies of how communities relate to their changing natural and social environments through tourism.

Deviant Geographies: Black Spaces of Cultural Expression in Early 20th-Century Rio de Janeiro

This article extends the notion of black territories in early 20th-century Rio de Janeiro by discussing the production of more enduring physical sites alongside forms of territoriality that were sometimes created in the moment and were often more short-lived. I argue that we should consider these more ephemeral, but often repeated and ritualized spatial practices as small conquests that extended the notion and the extent of black territorializing at a time when the Republican government (1889–1930) sought to violently eradicate a black presence from the city center. Following Katherine McKittrick’s lead, I also wish to highlight how black geographies can operate alongside and across traditional geographies that are white, patriarchal, and Eurocentric. I do this by reading some moments in Rio de Janeiro’s cultural history, drawn from accounts in contemporary chronicles and newspaper reports, which offer a glimpse into how Afro-descendants’ interventions into space can destabilize geographies of domination.