Domain Of Geography Research Articles

戦後のわが国におけるアイヌに関する地理学的研究の展開

The purpose of this study is to clarify the history of geographical studies on Ainus in post W. W. II Japan, and to clarify the thesis of the possibilities of geographical studies on Ainus hereafter.Studies on Ainus have not been a main area of geography. Because the consumption of Ainu traditional mode of life and decline in population of Ainu cultural heirs, it is very difficult to study about Ainus based on fieldworks. In addition, cultural geography was minor domain of geography, while economical geography had been the most popular method of geography in post W. W. II Japan.The author classifies the studies into two categories: studies on traditional mode of life or current mode of life.The method of historical geography has been adopted to study on Ainu traditional mode of life. The distribution and location of Ainu settlements (kotan) were popular domains at first, however, some studies focuses on the mobility and renaming of the traditional mode of life. Japanese geographers were not interested in Ainu place names. However, we see possibilities for studies in Ainu place names based on physical geography.On the other hand, there are little geographical studies on Ainu current mode of life. In geographical education, teachers usually teach about Ainu traditional mode of life while they pay no mention to Ainu current mode of life.Geographical studies on Ainu traditional mode of life will develop by analyzing existent historical material. Especially, it is very important to study on subjective environment of Ainus in geographical area as environmental science.Geographers need to focus more on Ainu current mode of life. We see possibilities for studies in Ainu current mode of life based on life histories and behavioral geography. The author expects that geographical education will administer to the understanding of Ainus.

Geography and Transoceanic Travel Writing

JEMCS 3.1 (Spring/Summer 2003) Review Essay: Geography and Transoceanic Travel Writing Roxanne Kent-Drury Chloe Chard, Pleasure and Guilt on the Grand Tour: Travel Writing and Imaginative Geography 1600-1830. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999. 288 pp. $ 29.95 p/b. Rod Edmond, Representing the South Pacific: Colonial Discourse from Cook to Gaugin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. 319 pp. $90. David N. Livingstone and Charles W. J. Withers, eds. Geography and Enlightenment. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999. 455 pp. $25 p/b. Kate Ferguson Marsters, ed. Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa by Mungo Park. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000. 415 pp. $21.95. The eighteen studies (books and essays) discussed in this essay collectively traverse roughly four hundred years of European travel and exploration. Geographically, they span oceans and continents, providing intersecting perspectives on what travelers saw and reported, both literally and figurative ly. True to the nature of travel itself, these studies form a multivalent web of correspondences that has temporal and spatial dimensions. At the same time, whether undertaken for scientific research, exploration, or leisure, the travel these studies analyze is intensely focused upon the local and par ticular. Moreover, regardless of discipline, all of the scholars these works represent are deeply concerned with both the his torical and rhetorical contingency of travel, space, and place. The fourteen essays in Geography and Enlightenment, edited by David N. Livingstone and Charles W. J. Withers, had their origin in a July 1996 conference at the University 148 The Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies of Edinburgh. Collectively, the authors explore the Enlightenment origins and manifestations of geography through the lens of postmodern humain geography; individ ually, the essays suggest new avenues for research in the deployment of Enlightenment spatial ideas and their impli cations to western European encounters with new people and places. Viewing "enlightenment geography" as a com plex of social constructs preoccupied with national and local conceptions of place and space, this important collection begins with an excellent survey of the literature document ing the Enlightenment conditions that gave rise to modern geography. The editors conclude that there was not one, but rather many enlightenments, and that in terms of geogra phy, Enlightenment should be understood and studied not only in its global, local, and border-crossing manifestations but also as its modifications are read back into European enlightenment cultures. Livingstone and Withers describe geography as both a "material and metaphorical enterprise" (14), and the authors of this collection are keenly aware of the "wider interest in the study of science as a sociad construction and a more recent 'recovery of geographical discourse' within the humanities and social sciences" (16). While geography has long been seen as a practical science that represented the unknown in realistic, systematic, scientific, and (conse quently) transparent and understandable terms, the cultur al assumptions underlying geographic disciplinary practice are among the most recent to be scrutinized by scholars such as those whose essays appear in this volume. Among the essays that provide important theoretical for mulations is David Livingstone's essay "Geographical Inquiry, Rational Religion, and Moral Philosophy: Enlightenment Discourses on the Human Condition." By exploring the implications of monogenetic and polygenetic theories about "human origins and racial variation" (93), Livingstone examines "how geographical motifs were pressed into the service of radically differing intellectual and political projects" (111). Livingstone shows that "the issue of human diversity, its cause, and consequence were part and parcel of geography's domain" during the Enlightenment, as evi denced by the discipline's location with the "Moral and Kent-Drury 149 Political Sciences" in the French National Institute from 1795 and 1803 (95). An example of polygenetic theorizing is Isaac de la Peyr?re's Relation du Groenland (1663), described as "a sustained effort to deploy arguments from geography, encompassing physical, demographic, linguistic, and cultur al evidence, to sustain his own suspicions about the inade quacy of th? traditional monogenetic story of the human race in favor of a polygenetic account* (99). By "polygenetic," the authors mean the idea that "human beings existed before Adam" (100), which suggests multiple origins for present day populations; by extension, polygenetic theories were used to...

The Internet and the Rise of the New Network Cities, 1969–1999

The recent rapid growth of the Internet has avoided scrutiny from urban planners as little information is available from which to assess its impacts on cities and regions. As a result, explanations of the relationship between telecommunications and urban growth are overly simplistic, forecasting either the centralization of decision-making in so-called ‘global’ cities or wholesale urban dissolution. Based on two measurements of Internet geography—domain name registrations and backbone networks—this study finds that access to advanced communications technologies have broadly diffused across a wide group of medium-sized and large-sized metropolitan areas. Finally, the implications of these findings suggest a need to rethink global cities and a practical need to address the growing divide between network cities and the rest of the urban world.

Four barriers to the development of effective exploratory visualisation tools for the geosciences

This paper outlines four specific problems that appear to represent considerable obstacles to the development of visualisation strategies for use within the domain of geography and the Earth sciences. These are: (1) the speed of graphical rendering, (2) the management of perceptual anomalies due to visual combination effects, (3) the vast range of potential approaches and mappings (the complexity of the visual assignment process), and (4) the orientation of the user into an artificial or virtual reality. Each problem is discussed in terms of the visualisation of geographical data for the purpose of exploratory visual analysis. The specific underlying research issues and questions are described, with particular emphasis to how these relate to the geographical domain. Where possible, some potential solutions are suggested. Specific examples of geographical data visualisation are given to substantiate the arguments presented. The discussion highlights the need for further research in a number of key areas, and stresses the weaknesses of current visualisation theory and technology when applied to non-trivial geographical datasets.

To the “Infinite Spaces of Creation”: The Interior Landscape of a Schizophrenic Artist

Abstract Of the personal worlds that fall within the domain of geography, the the world of the schizophrenic is perhaps the most distinctive. Schizophrenics possess a subjective world imagery that reflects their past experience, family background, delusions, hallucinations, cognitive processes, and quests for order. These imageries are, on rare occasions, expressed in art. The art of Adolf Wolfli offers a glimpse of schizophrenic images and perceptions and enables us to enter a world otherwise enshrouded in mystery. Our revelations on the world view of an incarcerated schizophrenic enable scholars to add a profoundly subjective geography to their repertoire and to their understandings of the most personal of worlds.

Emmanuel de Martonne et la géographie roumaine

Abstract. The Romanian geographic historiography records a great personality, that of prof. E. de Martonne, who, for thirty-five years of beneficial scholarly research, has dedicated himself to the Romanian land and who has written more than seventy scholarly works, among which are two doctoral theses entitled « La Valachie » and « L'évolution morphologique des Alpes de Transylvanie ». Four main aspects define the coordinates of his activity, which coexist intrinsically. Predominant is, however, the scholarly research which comprises almost all the Romanian provinces, rendering the basis of regional study in examining the Romanian provinces. The sphere of scholarly interest includes almost all the domains of geography, beginning with geomorphology and ending with human geography. The second aspect of prof. De Martonne' s activity is closely connected with the organizing, together with prof. G. Vâlsan, of modern geographical higher education in Cluj. Thus, his name enters the gallery of the greatest professors the Transylvanean University has ever had. De Martonne was a steady fighter for a close mutual relationship between France and Romania, thus making Romania's hopes and aspirations known to the Western world. We cannot neglect, then, his contribution to the tracing of the borders of our country in 1918, at the Peace Conference from Paris, which meant, in fact, Romania's come-back « ... to its natural and legitimate destinies ». He has been awarded Doctor Honoris Causa of the University of Cluj, Honorary Citizen of the Transylvanean capital, and as an apotheosis of his activity he has been awarded « The Order of Romania's Star » as « The Great Cross ». De Martonne's name, which was given to one of the streets close to the University of Cluj, will for ever be linked with the development of geography in our country.