Geography Of Britain Research Articles

William Wordsworth's Guide to the Lakes and the geographical tradition

Summary Wordsworth's Guide to the Lakes has not been considered in the context of the development of geography in Britain during the early nineteenth century. This paper examines its distinctive approach to the description and analysis of landscape and locates it within the literature of geography, arguing that it was one of the first systematic geographical studies of a region within the British Isles.

Observing Pupils’ Mental Strategies: Signposts for Scaffolding

Assessment of pupil attainment in National Curriculum Geography in England and Wales is frequently in the form of summative tests and exercises. This paper explores the potential of ‘mysteries’ for diagnostic and formative purposes. Slips of paper containing the information needed to resolve the mystery are manipulated by groups of pupils. Observation of the arrangements and analysis of the relationships within them reflect the pupils’ cognitive processes as understanding of the mystery grows. Stages in this process which represent increasingly complex thinking are identified and their relationship to the SOLO taxonomy is discussed. The paper concludes with consideration of the potential of mysteries for supporting pupils’ learning and for teachers to scaffold their cognitive development.

A Peculiar but Uninteresting Nation: China and the Discourse of Commerce in Eighteenth-Century England

Representations of the foreign inevitably reveal as much about the historical circumstances of those doing the observing as about those being observed. The debates over trade issues and human rights that have largely shaped Western perceptions of China over the past decade, for example, have foregrounded a series of distinctive tropes with a consistency suggestive of a well-worn cultural habit. China's economic miracle, we are given to understand, is predicated upon an increasingly free circulation of goods and capital entailed by the reversal of long-standing policies of state interference in the marketplace. The unremitting suppression of political dissent in the wake of the Tiananmen Square massacre, meanwhile, offends democratic sensibilities as a systematic obstruction of the free flow of ideas posited by the liberal ideal.1 I will argue in this paper that the centrally constitutive role of these familiar tropes of circulation and constraint in modern Western conceptions of China have identifiable roots in the eighteenth-century history of this encounter and reflect, in particular, the distinctively commercialist orientation of British visitors to China during that period. These visitors approached the Far East with an unshakable and universalizing conviction that trade was the lifeblood of a prosperous society, and that, in turn, the free circulation of goods and capital was the lifeblood of trade. The Chinese refusal to accept this doctrine, their contemptuous hostility toward Western traders, and the barriers they erected to the free flow of international commerce contributed to a widespread perception among British observers that an unnatural tendency toward blockage and obstructionism was an integral, defining feature of Chinese society as a whole. If the geography of England is increasingly defined in this period by writers

Geography in England 1988-98: Costs and Benefits of National Curriculum Change

Geography in England 1988-98: Costs and Benefits of National Curriculum Change

Book Review: People, environment, disease and death: a medical geography of Britain throughout the ages

Book Review: People, environment, disease and death: a medical geography of Britain throughout the ages

Socialist Geography in England: J. F. Horrabin and a Workers' Economic and Political Geography

This paper examines the life and geographical writings of the English socialist J.F.(“Frank”) Horrabin (1884–1962) and his attempts to construct a socialist geography. Horrabin was an active socialist in the Labour Party, Fabian Society, and other leftwing groups and very involved in working‐class education through the Plebs League and National Council of Labour Colleges. He was also a journalist, cartoonist, and gifted cartographer. His 1923 text An Outline of Economic Geography, which sold in large numbers and was translated into nine other languages, attempted to provide workers with an account of economic (and political and historical) geography that used bourgeois “pure geography” but put it within a socialist and historical–materialist framework. Unlike Germany and some other countries, England did not have a strong Marxist theoretical tradition, and Horrabin's approach does not develop theory (though it did attract the admiration of the German Marxist Karl Wittfogel). Rather, it sets out to be engaged in practical political education. Horrabin's work was developed within a particular context, but his geographical writings (and pioneering political cartography) exemplify one way of linking geography with political practice, and this paper examines these relationships. Many of Horrabin's concerns find echoes in current radical geography, and his work deserves belated recognition and a place in the history of geography.

G Melvyn Howe, People, environment, disease and death: a medical geography of Britain throughout the ages, Cardiff, University of Wales Press, 1997, pp. xx, 328, £50.00 (0-7083-1373-6).

G Melvyn Howe, People, environment, disease and death: a medical geography of Britain throughout the ages, Cardiff, University of Wales Press, 1997, pp. xx, 328, £50.00 (0-7083-1373-6).

The character of English geographyc. 1660–1800: a textual approach

This article re-evaluates the character of geography in England in the 150 years after the Restoration. Most historians have focused either on exceptional geography books or on texts of geographical knowledge, rather than on geography booksper se. Drawing on cultural–historical approaches to the book, this article looks at the character of geography as a textual tradition. This requires an analysis of geography books from three points of view: the texts themselves and the definition of their function and audience; the readership and their sites of reading; and authorship and the milieu of book production. This analysis shows that geography was consistently related to two social and intellectual traditions: a commercial and practical tradition, and a humanistic and scholarly tradition. Such a position allies geography as a textual tradition with recent characterizations of the English Enlightenment.

Gender, science and physical geography in nineteenth‐century Britain

Summary This paper considers the gendered construction of science and scientific geography in Britain during the nineteenth century. It explores the general exclusion of women from public, institutionalized science and their location in amateur, domestic pursuits, whilst simultaneously problematizing this binary construction. Finally, the paper speculates on the legacy of the past on the gendering of contemporary physical geography.

People, environment, disease and death: a medical geography of Britain throughout the ages

People, environment, disease and death: a medical geography of Britain throughout the ages

Civil Service Reorganisation and Urban and Regional Development in Britain

This article examines the geographical impact of the rationalisation and reorganisation of the British civil service. The central government civil service plays an important role in the economic geography of Britain. The widespread distribution of the civil service has traditionally acted as a geographical counterweight to the spatial concentration of the private sector in the South and East of the country. The contraction of the civil service during the last two decades has been concentrated in a small number of urban centres. The division of the civil service into agencies, the extension of contracting out and private sector involvement is fragmenting the service. This means the civil service acts as less of a counter-balance to the spatial concentration of private sector activities in the South and East of the country.

The British longitudinal birth cohort studies: their utility for the study of health and place

Very little use has been made in geography of Britain's three longitudinal birth cohort studies. These studies are currently charting the lives of three cohorts born, respectively, in 1946, 1958 and 1970, collecting information at intervals about major aspects of the cohort members' existence. Funding permitting, these studies aim to continue throughout the lives of their cohorts. This paper seeks to provide a brief introduction to the studies, to show what they contain, and to consider their advantages and disadvantages for secondary data analysis, particularly with regard to the study of health and place.

Income and wealth

Uneven distribution of life is a dominant feature of the city. Major social, economic and spatial divisions are apparent in terms of income and wealth, health, crime, housing, and employment. This text offers an introduction to current processes of urban restructuring, geographies of division and contemporary conditions within the city. The geography of Britain's cities is the outcome of interaction between a host of public and private economic, social and political forces operating at a variety of spatial scales from the global to the local. A deeper understanding of the nature of urban division and of the problems of and prospects for local people and places in urban Britain must be grounded in an appreciation of the structural forces, processes and contextual factors which condition local urban geographies. This book combines structural and local level perspectives to illuminate the complex geography of socio-spatial division within urban Britain. It combines conceptual and empirical analyses from researchers in the field.

Britain 1740-1950: An Historical Geography

Preface: the economic and social transformation of Britain. Part 1 Britain from the 1740s to the 1830s the political, economic and social context demographic change the countryside industry and industrialization urbanization and urban life. Part 2 Britain from the 1830s to the 1890s: the political, economic and social context demographic change the countryside industry and industrialization urbanization and urban life. Part 3 Britain from the 1890s to the 1940s: the political, economic and social context demographic change the countryside industry and industrialization urbanization and urban life. Conclusion: continuity and change in the regional geography of Britain.

Peter J. Larkham and Andrew N. Jones, A Glosssary of Urban Form. Historical Geography Research Series Number 26. Cheltenham: 1991. 98pp. 33 figures. £7.95. - Brian Short, The Geography of England and Wales in 1910. An Evaluation of Lloyd George's ‘Domesday’ of Landownership. Historical Geography Research Series Number 22. Cheltenham: 1989. 104pp. 41 tables. 8 figures. 2 appendices. £7.95.

Peter J. Larkham and Andrew N. Jones, A Glosssary of Urban Form. Historical Geography Research Series Number 26. Cheltenham: 1991. 98pp. 33 figures. £7.95. - Brian Short, The Geography of England and Wales in 1910. An Evaluation of Lloyd George's ‘Domesday’ of Landownership. Historical Geography Research Series Number 22. Cheltenham: 1989. 104pp. 41 tables. 8 figures. 2 appendices. £7.95.

Book reviews : Dodgshon, R.A. and Butlin, R.A., editors, 1990: An historical geography of England and Wales, second edition. London: Academic Press. xxiv+598 pp. £21.95 paper. ISBN: 0 12 219254 0

Book reviews : Dodgshon, R.A. and Butlin, R.A., editors, 1990: An historical geography of England and Wales, second edition. London: Academic Press. xxiv+598 pp. £21.95 paper. ISBN: 0 12 219254 0

Book reviews: Carter, H. and Lewis, C.R. 1990: An urban geog raphy of England and Wales in the nineteenth century. London: Edward Arnold. vi + 226 pp. £12.95 paper. ISBN: 0 713 16549 9

Book reviews: Carter, H. and Lewis, C.R. 1990: An urban geog raphy of England and Wales in the nineteenth century. London: Edward Arnold. vi + 226 pp. £12.95 paper. ISBN: 0 713 16549 9

Harold Carter and C. Roy Lewis, An Urban Geography of England and Wales in the Nineteenth Century. London: Edward Arnold, 1990. 226pp. £12.95.

Harold Carter and C. Roy Lewis, An Urban Geography of England and Wales in the Nineteenth Century. London: Edward Arnold, 1990. 226pp. £12.95.

An Urban Geography of England and Wales in the Nineteenth Century

Part 1 The data: sources for the investigation of cities in the nineteenth century the growth of the urban population the changing structure of the city system. Part 2 Intra-urban changes: the processes of restructuring. Part 3 The demands on urban space: industry commerce and government public utilities residential areas the supply of the urban fabric controls and contstraints on supply. Part 4 Nineteenth century cities: a model of structure and change.

Natural Landscapes of Britain from the Air

Using the aerial camera to reveal the natural forces that have moulded the landscape around us, this book launches a three part geography of Britain from the air. Companion volumes on the man-made landscape and on environmental pressures in modern Britain are in preparation.