Geography Of Society Research Articles

Geographies of production III: Global production in/through nature

This report draws upon political ecology and nature–society geography to examine the production network–nature nexus. Indebted to these approaches, a growing number of production network and value chain studies are expanding well beyond the field’s traditional remit of environmental governance. This work centers the institutional arrangements of firms, laboratories, workers, and regulations that organize and combine extensive and intensive strategies to appropriate nature’s value. ‘Nature’ is neither input nor output here; rather, it is metabolized in and through the functional coordination of these spatially distributed activities. I explore these themes in recent studies of resource extraction and frontier-making, chemical geographies of biocides, and the material-cum-geographical claims of ethical supply chains. Expanding and deepening the dialogue between conjunctural analyses of states, labor, and supply chains, on the one hand, and how socionatures condition these arrangements, on the other, is both analytically and politically necessary. I offer this, my final report, as a modest contribution to this endeavor.

Adaptability of Human Geography Study Program Alumni Competencies in the Job Market

research alumni preparedness for the job market. The aim of the study was to analyze alumni competences of the Master`s study program in Human Geography and compare them to job market demands. The analysis of theoretical performance appraisal by competencies indicated the importance of employee competencies. Graduates must be competent in professional erudition, functional flexibility, innovation and knowledge management, human resource mobilization, international orientation etc. The Master study program of Human Geography at KU has been successfully operating since 1998, and the Ministry of Education, Science and Sport included it in the list of the unique study programs in the Republic of Lithuania. In order to ensure that the competencies of the students could correspond to the labor market, the developers and renewers of the study program must regularly listen to the feedback of the graduates, who completed this program. A qualitative focus group study was conducted in order to reveal a reflection of graduates and their appraisal for better matching of the program to labor market needs. Empirical data were collected during the alumni round table discussion. The study involved 10 alumni and qualitative content analysis was performed to analyze the empirical data. After analyzing the data of the interview-discussion research, the following 7 categories were distinguished: Project preparation competence – one of the most important competencies of the master’s study program; GIS program management competence formation and application in work activities; International orientation, foreign language skills open more opportunities; Information, literature search and competences of literature analysis; Tendencies of adaptability of students competencies in practical and work activities; Unawareness of the profession of human geography in society; Suggestions for better compliance of alumni competencies with the labor market. The interview-discussion statements of the research participants were concentrated in the following main subcategories: Academic worldview formation (s); Strong alumni foreign language competence; Application of competencies shows wide multifunctionality of the study program; Importance of application of competencies is unquestionable; Project preparation competence is successfully applied or has a strong potential for application in work activities in the short and long term; Literature analysis; Information, literature search, etc. The content of all categories and subcategories is localized at a positive level of matching labor market to graduates’ competencies. Keywords: alumni, job market, human geography, master’s study program, content analysis.

Geographical fragmentation of the global network of Twitter communications.

Understanding the geography of society represents a challenge for social and economic sciences. The recent availability of data from social media enables the observation of societies at a global scale. In this paper, we study the geographical structure of the Twitter communication network at the global scale. We find a complex structure where self-organized patches with clear cultural, historical, and administrative boundaries are manifested and first-world economies centralize information flows. These patches unveil world regions that are socially closer to each other with direct implications for processes of collective learning and identity creation.

Geographical space as a mediator between population and economy

The article covers a wide range of relations between the population and the economy through space (their spatial relations). The dynamics of quantitative proportions between the number of inhabitants, the volume of gross product and the size of the territory of the countries of the world and Russian regions are analyzed. Changes in the composition of the economy and population, production and consumption under globalization and post-industrial development, and their geographical effects, are revealed, including those in Russia. It is recognized, in particular, that the geography of society is today less dependent on fixed capital and more on the human capital. A distinction is made between types of activities by their demand for space with its resources and between types of places according to their supply. The role of space as an integrator or disintegrator of social phenomena, in terms of its accessibility is investigated. A review of some issues related to the growth of spatial mobility of people and property, flows and territorial shifts is carried out. The social value of mobility and its role in overcoming spatial barriers is shown.

Plugging the Pipeline: Realizing the Value of Natural Gas in the 1930s United States

Questions of value lie at the heart of current debates over capital–nature relations in nature–society geography. The moments of valorization and realization of value occur within the broader circulation process of capital, yet in nature–society geography we tend to focus on the nature–capital relations at the stage of productive capital when labor valorizes commodities. The stage of commodity capital, when consumers realize value through the transformation of commodities into money, can also be a major driver for capital–nature relations. In the case of natural gas in the 1930s United States, the circulation of capital was blocked for independent producers, leading them to vent methane (a potent greenhouse gas) directly into the atmosphere. Four vertically integrated firms—the Power Trust—used their power over interstate gas pipelines to block competitors' commodities from reaching markets. The Power Trust was ensuring that the value of its commodity capital was successfully realized, by blocking its competitors' gas from exchange and value realization. Its competitors—the independents—found themselves with no ability to realize the value of their gas and opted instead to dump it into the atmosphere through the process of gasoline stripping. The importance of realization within the wider capital circulation process is not only a historical–geographical problem. Modern utilities and energy companies are compelled to realize the value crystallized in fossil fuels, despite the availability and superiority of renewable energy.

Value in capitalist natures

This article draws heavily upon a discussion among 11 leading scholars in nature–society geography to explore the current and historical relationships between value, nature, and capitalism. Prompted by a provocation from Robertson and Wainwright (2013) that political ecologists can no longer afford to avoid engaging with the tricky topic of Marxian value theory, we address the importance of the concept of value for contemporary work within geography on the political economy of the environment, broadly defined. We argue that scholars in nature–society geography should not only tackle the tricky questions of value head-on but that value could and should come to serve as a unifying analytical framework for the subfield.

Valuing nature within and beyond capitalism

This paper is a response to commentaries on our article entitled ‘Value in capitalist natures: an emerging framework’ (Kay and Kenney-Lazar, 2017). We argue that the responses to our initial paper served to broaden our proposed framework and to underscore the need for a unified, but diverse, approach to nature–society studies with value at its center. Extending the argument from the initial article, we continue to see potential for value to act as a bridge that can bring together diverse scholarship in nature–society geography and political ecology. After briefly addressing both the tensions and possibilities for value as a bridging concept, we focus our response primarily around three major threads that emerged across the commentaries. First, we address points raised by the respondents concerning the bounding of capitalism and its permeation into socionatures. Second, we engage with value’s inverse and its absence, captured through the concepts of ‘devaluation’ (Collard and Dempsey) and ‘disvalues’ (Sullivan). Finally, we close by engaging the possibility of a ‘liberatory valuing of nature’—one which recognizes a multiplicity of social and ecological values as a means of working toward more just and emancipatory nature–society relations beyond capitalism.

ВИРОБНИЧА ТИПОЛОГІЯ СІЛЬСЬКОГО ГОСПОДАРСТВА ХАРКІВСЬКОЇ ОБЛАСТІ: ТРИДЦЯТЬ РОКІВ ПОТОМУ

Attention on the large value of agriculture geography is accented in forming of subject field of society geography. With the use of author method elementary GIS typology of agricultural enterprises of the Kharkov area is executed. At comparing of modern production types to those, that formed 30 years ago the main geographical conformities are setting.

Producing Contaminated Citizens: Toward a Nature–Society Geography of Health and Well-Being

A nature–society geography approach to health and well-being demonstrates that socioecological parameters, in addition to economic and political factors, are critical to explaining outcomes of health crises. In expounding on this multifaceted understanding of health and well-being in the context of development, I draw on research on chronic arsenic poisoning and water contamination in rural Bangladesh. A public health crisis has arisen from naturally-occurring arsenic poisoning millions of people who drink, cook, and irrigate with arsenic-laced groundwater pumped up by tubewells, where the very sources that were promoted to bring health are now bringing illness, hardship, and death. In examining the interlinked ways that arsenic and water come to influence well-being and illness, I pay particular attention to social stigma and the production of contaminated citizens. By engaging the insights from nature–society geographies of health and feminist geographies of well-being in contributing to scholarship in geographies of health, the article highlights that the experiences of health and well-being are complex and evolving in instances where slow poisoning is simultaneously an outcome of development endeavors and environmental factors.

The Study of Psychology Method Applied to the Historical Geography Teaching Research

After half a century of development, historical geography of contemporary China has made great achievements. With the development of modern science and technology, historical geography must pay attention to absorbing and referring to relevant subject research methods and research means. This paper firstly describes the importance of historical geography research methods and the significance of psychology applied to historical geography. And then start with two branch of historical geography, the historical national geography and historical society geography, a detailed analysis of the historical geography in psychological research methods learn how to research methods of psychology that we study the historical geography can be an effective means.

Hódmezővásárhely és környékének feltérképezője és leírója

Bodnar, Bela name only on Hodmezovasarhely for living persons known, little figure in an encyclopedia his name, the city's inhabitants commemorate him with respect however. Two of his works appeared, in which collected the expressions attaching to the city's geography, names, natural form ations in an alphabetical order. He started discovering surroundings at his age of 12 and gathered diligently geographical names attaching to the city, lost surface ones outside and inner-city area from aged people. Unfortunately his works is publishing in many manuscripts was left over, altogether only a book appeared in his form after his death. His research results mean a starting point to a number area of science in our days, let it be nature or society geography, ethnography, religion geography, history, linguistics.

Retrospective on Nature–Society Geography: Tracing Trajectories (1911–2010) and Reflecting on Translations

This study uses an intellectual history approach to construct a retrospective on Annals nature–society geography during the past century (1911–2010). It begins by identifying six areas of topics and approaches that have emerged as primary clusters in the 1990s and 2000s: (1) environmental governance and political ecology; (2) environmental hazards, risk, and vulnerability science; (3) land use and cover change science; (4) human–environment interactions; (5) environmental landscape history and ideas; and (6) scientific concepts and environmental management. A combination of continuity and change involving the core areas of human–environmental scholarship is found to distinguish Annals publications during recent decades (1990–2010) vis-à-vis preceding periods (1911–1969, 1970–1989). The current plurality and partial intersection of core topics and approaches is mostly a contrast to previous predominance and distinctness of the Sauerian Berkeley School and the Chicago School of hazards research. Reflection on this intellectual history sheds light on issues of the timely role of nature–society within the geographic discipline and in relation to environmental interdisciplinarity and policy. Using the concept of translating across knowledge domains, Annals writings demonstrate the expanded, multistranded intellectual spaces of nature–society geography.

Thematic networks as toolboxes: The case of the HERODOT Network for Geography in Europe

In some countries, Geography is struggling to survive as a subject as other disciplines develop and absorb geographical thoughts and methods into them. The survival of Geography in schools and higher education institutions is critical to the understanding of world phenomena, particularly in view of the problems with climate change, global warming and globalisation among others. There is very little understanding of the importance and role of geography in modern societies. This paper looks at the role of the HERODOT thematic network as a toolbox for the promotion of geography. By analysing the current state of geography promotion across higher education institutions, the Network aims to provide a toolbox of materials to support teachers and academics, but also parents, students and the general public to understand the role of geography in society. This is achieved through a number of initiatives, particularly the development of the GEOCUBE. This paper concludes by arguing the importance of such Networks in providing tools for the promotion and awareness of geography.

Analyzing the effect of website information flow on realistic human flow using intelligent decision models

Website information flow has become a dominant flow pattern in regional interaction. To explain the effect of website information flow on human flow is one of the focuses of informational society geography. This paper first reviews related research results in this area and their practical significance for a comprehensive explanation of various effect functions based on utility theory. It then uses the data on Internet development in China and related intelligent decision models to calculate the effect function. Based on the findings, this paper explains the features of the effect of website information flow on realistic human flow from various aspects. Research results show that the effect of website information flow can be divided into substitution and enhancement, so that the relationship of the website information flow in guiding the human flow changes from one dimension to multi-dimensional morphology. The paper also indicates that, on one hand, website information flow is lagged to some extent, but is enhanced gradually and grows faster than realistic human flow; on the other hand, by comparing the evolution trend of the intensity of the two functions, it can be seen that the enhancement function occurs later than the substitution, but develops faster and has greater force. Following comparison between the simulation value and the actual value, it is proved that the effect of website information flow is basically in line with the relationship of realistic human flow. These results can support government and business in making decisions on web information publication.

Community and participation in water resources management: gendering and naturing development debates from Bangladesh

Community and participation have become popular in development discourse and practice, particularly in the global South and in relation to water resources management. Greater involvement of people in decisionmaking, implementation and evaluation of water management practices is expected to increase efficiency and equity in water projects. However, scholars have pointed out that such discourses are often problematically used and idealised, leading to the exacerbation of gender, class and other social differentiations. Drawing from a case study of drinking water contamination by arsenic in Bangladesh, this article examines the mobilisation and outcomes of participation and community in water provision and arsenic mitigation. Water hardship, conflicts and marginalisations are found to be products of social processes (that are gendered, classed and spatialised) as well as natural processes (local geohydrology, depth of arsenic sediments), in addition to the very ways that community and participation are conceptualised and practised. Nature/water comes to play a critical role in the ways that development interventions play out, thereby complicating the general debates around community and participation. This article seeks to problematise the ways that considerations of both the roles of nature and gender power relations can be more critically and productively engaged in development geography. As such, the article brings together debates in nature–society geography and development geography to argue that scholars studying community and participation need to pay greater attention not only to gender and spatial power relations, but also to the importance of geographical locations and the agency of heterogeneous nature in the ways water management and development interventions fail and succeed, and are thereby critiqued. More adaptive, reflexive and inclusive development realities that are simultaneously embedded in society and nature may then be envisioned, and more nuanced understandings of nature‐in‐development enabled.

Confronted by Insurmountable Opportunities: Geography in Society at the AAG's Centennial*

Geographers at the AAG's centennial are challenged with exceptional opportunities to create a more central place for geography in society and in the university. Realizing these opportunities requires identifying and leveraging key emerging trends in the formation and uses of geographic knowledge. Better integration of geography's profound technological innovations with its core traditions also is necessary to strengthen the discipline's research capacity, and to more effectively engage with and contribute to the needs of society. Trends toward multidisciplinary research and integrative science, and the heightened need for geographic understanding in today's world, hold further promise for advancing the discipline while sustaining its historic strengths and diversity.

La géographie de la société de l’information : entre abimes et sommets

"Geography of The Information Society : Between extremes". This article is devoted to an analysis of the scientific areas confronted with the eruption of a "separating object" or, in other terms, an object that is relatively ambiguous to the properties discussed : “ Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs)”. Are we being witness to the emergence of Information Society Geography ? Is the Information Society an object to be apprehended by geographers and, if so, under what conditions ? These are the main questions that the author poses through a look at the long, complex assimilation of these objects into a specific scientific body, that of human geography.

Geography Education in Rural Tennessee Counties: Upper Cumberland Geography Teacher Survey

Information assessing the Preparation, current trends, teaching techniques and existing problems of teaching geography in rural counties was solicited from 146 middle and high school teachers in the Upper Cumberland Region of Tennessee, USA. A total of 61 teachers from 51 schools answered 40 questions in ten different categories. The counties with the lowest Percentage of the populace with four-year college degrees were found to hare the lowest return rate. Results of the survey indicate that the qualifications in geography of the responding teachers were generally comparable with those of the rest of the state. Most have degrees and appropriate course work to certify them as geography teachers. Most have taught geography for several years and have travel experiences Within the United States and foreign countries that contribute to their ability to teach geography. It is likely, however, that some of them ure out-of-field teachers with inadequate backgrounds in geography. Those who are teaching out-of-field or received their training many years ago need to have available workshops that focus on current and recent developments. Geography teachers in this rural area are faced with several problems. There is a lack of resources in most counties, textbooks are generally out-of-date and otherwise inadequate, there is a shortage of geography teachers in their schools, and they face a lack of understanding by students and parents of the importance of geography in society. When hiring new teachers, some schools take more account of a teacher’s ability to coach athletic teams, than their academic backgrounds. A positive aspect suggested by the survey is that a large percentage of the schools have computers, and a significant number of the geography teachers employ them in their classes. Some teachers are aware of Geographical Information Systems, but the survey demonstrates a need for additional training of teachers in this area.

Africa's ‘Last Wilderness’: Reordering Space for Political and Economic Control in Colonial Tanzania

ABSTRACTFocusing on south-eastern Tanzania, this article explores the colonial state's spatial strategies for economic and political control of its citizenry and their concurrence with strategies to control and conserve nature. Analysing British colonial archival documents, it demonstrates that Africa's most famous wilderness, the Selous Game Reserve, is a product of colonisers' economic and political control schemes, not a vestigial pre-modern landscape. The analysis reveals that the control of nature was inseparable from the state's efforts to control African subjects (mostly Ngindo peasants) and ultimately to create a new kind of person: ‘civilised’, productive and surveillable. Control schemes had significant ecological consequences, specifically increasing elephant(Loxondata africana)populations and the creation of vast tracts of tsetse fly-infested bush. The result, sometimes unintended, but more often orchestrated, was the displacement of African land use and settlement and a new geography of society and nature. The article concludes that colonial efforts to reorder south-eastern Tanzania were fundamental to the process of modern nation-state building, a process that was propelled by a particular way of thinking about social order in visual terms.

Africa's 'Last Wilderness': Reordering Space for Political and Economic Control in Colonial Tanzania

Focusing on south-eastern Tanzania, this article explores the colonial state's spatial strategies for economic and political control of its citizenry and their concurrence with strategies to control and conserve nature. Analysing British colonial archival documents, it demonstrates that Africa's most famous wilderness, the Selous Game Reserve, is a product of colonisers' economic and political control schemes, not a vestigial pre-modern landscape. The analysis reveals that the control of nature was inseparable from the state's efforts to control African subjects (mostly Ngindo peasants) and ultimately to create a new kind of person: ‘civilised’, productive and surveillable. Control schemes had significant ecological consequences, specifically increasing elephant (Loxondata africana) populations and the creation of vast tracts of tsetse fly-infested bush. The result, sometimes unintended, but more often orchestrated, was the displacement of African land use and settlement and a new geography of society and nature. The article concludes that colonial efforts to reorder south-eastern Tanzania were fundamental to the process of modern nation-state building, a process that was propelled by a particular way of thinking about social order in visual terms.