Interest In Geography Research Articles

Visual Overlay on OpenStreetMap Data to Support Spatial Exploration of Urban Environments

Increasing volumes of spatial data about urban areas are captured and made available via volunteered geographic information (VGI) sources, such as OpenStreetMap (OSM). Hence, new opportunities arise for regional exploration that can lead to improvements in the lives of citizens through spatial decision support. We believe that the VGI data of the urban environment could be used to present a constructive overview of the regional infrastructure with the advent of web technologies. Current location-based services provide general map-based information for the end users with conventional local search functionality, and hence, the presentation of the rich urban information is limited. In this work, we analyze the OSM data to classify the geo entities into consequential categories with facilities, landscape and land use distribution. We employ a visual overlay of heat map and interactive visualizations to present the regional characterization on OSM data classification. In the proposed interface, users are allowed to express a variety of spatial queries to exemplify their geographic interests. They can compare the characterization of urban areas with respect to multiple spatial dimensions of interest and can search for the most suitable region. The search experience is further enhanced via efficient optimization and interaction methods to support the decision making of end users. We report the end user acceptability and efficiency of the proposed system via usability studies and performance analysis comparison.

Enseñanzas climáticas en la obra de Kant

Kant has happened to history of the universal thought as the great philosopher of reason and transcendental idealism, but as a university lecturer he taught geography lessons during forty years. The study and understanding of is one of the axes of the Kantian philosophy, because the philosopher of Konigsberg considers space as one of the basic areas of human knowledge, hence it is not strange to understand Kant's interest in geography. His lessons of Physical Geography are a compendium of geographical knowledge in enlightened age. In this work are several sections dedicated to the understanding of atmospheric phenomena, that are truly innovative for climate science. The explanation of the trade winds, the monsoons, the phenomenon of breezes and, generally, about wind movement repreent an advande in the evolution of climatology.

Healthy living in late Renaissance Italy

The books reconstructs in great detail the efforts made by men and women in late Renaissance Italy to stay healthy and prolong their lives. Drawing on a wide variety of sources—ranging from cheap healthy living guides in the vernacular to personal letters, conduct literature, household inventories, and surviving images and objects—it demonstrates that a sophisticated culture of prevention developed in sixteenth-century Italian cities. Based on humoral theory it sought to regulate the factors influencing health. It centred particularly around the home and increasingly informed domestic routines such as sleep patterns, food and drink consumption, forms of exercise, hygiene, control of emotions, and monitoring the air quality to which the body was exposed. Concerns about healthy living also had a substantial impact on the design of homes and the dissemination of a range of household objects. The study thus reveals the forgotten role of medical concerns in shaping everyday life and domestic material culture. But medicine was not the sole factor responsible for these changes. The surge of interest in preventive medicine received new impetus from the development of the print industry. Moreover, it was fuelled by classical notions of well-being reproposed by humanist culture and by the new interest in geography and climates. Broader social and religious trends also played a key role. The most significant element was represented by the nexus between attention to one’s health and spiritual and moral worth promoted both by new ideas of what constituted nobility and by the Counter-Reformation.

Geography in philately

The authors present 225 samples of stamps from 92 countries as interesting cartosemiothic examples. Their texts, numeracy and other modules including maps, atlases, and satellite images of our Earth, are an area of common interest of geographers and philatelists.

Twentysomethings and twentagers: subjectivities, spaces and young men at home

This article examines young men's (aged 18–25 years) meanings of home and practices of homemaking, comprising material and social relations. The discussion contributes to three areas of geographical interest: home, masculinities and youth. Both geographies of home and masculinities have begun to consider men's experiences and meanings of home, but young men's domestic practices remain largely unexamined. Geographical work on youth has examined housing transitions, but the gendered experiences of young men need further interrogation. To provide insight into young men's homemaking, this article presents qualitative case studies drawn from fieldwork that investigated relations between masculinities and domesticities in Sydney, Australia. Young men are arguably out-of-place at home in conventional discourses of gender and space, but homes are nevertheless crucial sites for shaping masculine subjectivities. Masculinities and homes are co-constituted through domestic practices, generating diverse intersectional subjectivities and spaces. In this article, three subjectivity-space, or masculine-domestic, relations are discussed, which also counter the centring of heterosexual couple family homes in domestic imaginaries: young men in parental homes, share-housing and ‘alternative’ family homes. I examine similarities and differences across and within these masculine domesticities. This multiplicity of ‘youthful masculine domesticities’ offers a set of qualitative examples for use in public rhetoric that seeks to redress uneven gender dynamics in contemporary domestic life.

On Breathing and Geography: Explorations of Data Sonifications of Timespace Processes with Illustrating Examples from a Tidally Dynamic Landscape (Severn Estuary, UK)

This paper consists of a discussion of data sonification—a procedure in which information gathered from systems such as bodies or environmental processes is analyzed and reprocessed into audio models, so aspects of the process generating the data (for example, emotional or tidal ebb and flow) can be apprehended by human senses. This serves various purposes relevant to geography. Firstly, it sets out the principles of sonification as a method, defining its basic principles and relating it to both qualitative and quantitative data. Secondly, it offers potential to geographic interests in process, times, rhythm, landscape, place, and more besides— ‘representing’ various aspects of processes that are beyond normal human apprehension, perhaps through register, duration, pitch, and so on. Thirdly, in the illustrating examples, which comprise sonifications of tides and other processes in the Severn Estuary, UK, it highlights possibilities of engaging local communities and stakeholders with the dynamics of landscapes such as tidal processes, which have significant implications for culture, economy, and ecology, as do other tidal and other process geographies elsewhere.

Know Your Market: Use of Online Query Tools to Quantify Trends in Patient Information-seeking Behavior for Varicose Vein Treatment

PurposeTo analyze Internet search data to characterize the temporal and geographic interest of Internet users in the United States in varicose vein treatment. Materials and MethodsFrom January 1, 2004, to September 1, 2012, the Google Trends tool was used to analyze query data for “varicose vein treatment” to identify individuals seeking treatment information for varicose veins. The term “varicose vein treatment” returned a search volume index (SVI), representing the search frequency relative to the total search volume during a specific time interval and region. Linear regression analysis and Kruskal-Wallis one-way analysis of variance were employed to characterize search results. ResultsSearch traffic for varicose vein treatment increased by 520% over the 104-month study period. There was an annual mean increase of 28% (range, −18%–100%; standard deviation [SD], 35%), with a statistically significant linear increase in average yearly SVI over time (R2 = 0.94, P < .0001). All years showed positive growth in mean SVI except for 2008 (18% decrease). There were statistically significant differences in SVI by month (Kruskal-Wallis, P < .0001) with significantly higher mean SVI compared with other months in May (190% increase; range, 26%–670%; SD, 15%) and June (209% increase; range, 35%–700%; SD, 20%). The southern United States showed significantly higher search traffic than all other regions (Tukey-Kramer, P < .00001). ConclusionsThere have been significant increases in Internet search traffic related to varicose vein treatment in the past 8 years. Reflected in this trend is an annual peak in search traffic in the late spring months with an overall geographic bias toward southern states. Rigorous analysis of Internet search queries for medical procedures may prove useful to guide the efficient use of limited resources and marketing dollars.

Book review: Work, Locality and the Rhythms of Capital: The Labour Process Reconsidered, by Jamie Gough

Jamie Gough Work, Locality and the Rhythms of Capital: The Labour Process Reconsidered, Continuum: New York, 2003; 326 pp: 0826462847, $178.95 (hbk) Economic geography's engagement with Marxism has been a chequered one. Despite a promising beginning in the late-1970s and the important theoretical contributions of David Harvey in reading Marx geographically, since the mid-1980s there has been a steady decline in economic geography's interest in Marxism. This reflects both seemingly unresolved problems in Marxian analysis and the rise of more institutional and post-structural perspectives. For many economic geographers, the utility of Marxism to explain more micro or local-scale variegation is in doubt, and these include Storper (2001:158), who dismisses Marxism for 'never [having] been able to go beyond large-scale descriptions to cause-and-effect analyses of the detailed internal dynamics of capitalism'. It is refreshing, then, to find that Jamie Gough's Work, Locality and the Rhythms of Capital: The Labour Process Reconsidered represents a robust defense of Marx and Marxist research which will be of great interest both within geography and the social sciences. Most notably, Gough deploys labour process theory to examine the restructuring of London manufacturing between 1976 and 1982. Using a longitudinal survey of London manufacturing firms, he examines the critical period in which the post-war crisis of British manufacturing reached its climax. One of Gough's goals is to illustrate the dynamics of this restructuring in terms of in situ change and firm relocation. Gough uses his analysis to explore the insights of Marxist theory, especially regarding the labour process. Recent debates on restructuring and social change have largely by-passed the labour process which was the object of intense theorising in the 1970s and 1980s. However, Gough reinvigorates this concept not by revisiting the narrow and often fruitless discussions of whether labour control and deskilling are the principal features of the capitalist labour process, but as a critical lens to account for both the fragmented and collective nature of the working class under capitalism. While post-structural and other non-Marxian frameworks have emphasised difference, they rely on non-work identities and have either not viewed the labour process as significant in the creation of difference, and/ or have not seen its possibilities in overcoming this between workers. One of the strengths of Gough's analysis is that he does this by locating individual labour processes and their role in the construction of working-class difference and commonality as part of a nested hierarchy of capitalist accumulation. Gough divides his study into three main parts. In Part I, he develops a theory of local economies and their relationship with global and firm scale processes. This section is abstract, and reviews debates on the dynamics of workplace change in the context of the accumulation of capital. Gough adds some new insights into value theory while differentiating Marxian political economy from other approaches. Thus he argues that innovation and increased product quality by firms represents a value productivity strategy as opposed to volume productivity, which focuses on intensifying labour output, and that these strategies, while strongly related, can come into conflict with each other. This emphasis on the dialectical nature of capitalist development contrasts with institutionalist and other approaches, since the latter have a more narrow focus on use-value, rather than on the necessary contradictions between use and exchange-value. Similarly, he points out that while institutionalist geographers have valuable insights into the role of the often regionally based socialisation of labour and firms, they underestimate the vulnerability of regions to disruption by the under- and over-accumulation of capital. Part II focuses on the experience of London manufacturing firms. …

Looking Back

Looking Back

Introduction: Perspectives on Cold War Science in Small European States

With this introduction we aim to illuminate Western Europe's place on the map of Cold War science and, specifically, to draw attention to the differences in and the diversity of Western European Cold War science in comparison to the United States. By discussing narratives of Cold War science in small states and asking how they fit into the European condition, we suggest that the fact of being a small state affects the conditions for and the scope of Cold War science. As a whole, this special issue also emphasizes the importance of the spatial dimension; that is, the significant dependence of Cold War science on geographical relations and geopolitical interests.

Yellowstone River Cultural Inventory — 2006

The Yellowstone River Cultural Inventory — 2006 documents the variety and intensity of different perspectives and values held by people who share the Yellowstone River. Between May and November of 2006, a total of 313 individuals participated in the study. They represented agricultural, civic, recreational, or residential interest groups. Also, individuals from the Crow and the Northern Cheyenne tribes were included.There are three particular goals associated with the investigation. The first goal is to document how the people of the Yellowstone River describe the physical character of the river and how they think the physical processes, such as floods and erosion, should be managed. Within this goal, efforts have been made to document participants’ views regarding the many different bank stabilization techniques employed by landowners. The second goal is to document the degree to which the riparian zone associated with the river is recognized and valued by the participants. The third goal is to document concerns regarding the management of the river’s resources. Special attention is given to the ways in which residents from diverse geographical settings and diverse interest groups view river management and uses. The results illustrate the commonalities of thought and the complexities of concerns expressed by those who share the resources of the Yellowstone River.

Humanities-based geography in a pragmatic age

When I was an undergraduate, I attended a liberal arts college. This was my father's choice, not mine, and made he wanted a broader education for me than he had received at the Kansas City College of Pharmacy. The adjustment from small-town life in Missouri to the elite faculty and student body at Dartmouth College proved traumatic at times, but ultimately beneficial. Looking back on the experience while in graduate school, I saw how it had bolstered my self-confidence. Some years later I realized that subconscious comparisons between New England and the Midwest had first awakened my interest in geography. Only recently, however, have I acknowledged a third collegiate influence on my professional life: the research emphasis I give to history, values, and perceptions. The humanities issue surfaced for me when a graduate student rejected my suggestion that he write a historical, interview-rich dissertation about coal mining in his home area of West Virginia and proposed instead the application of actor-network theory to the literature of a government-sponsored coal heritage trail. The reason, he said, was because I want to get a job when I finish. This particular student solved his problem by switching advisors, but I continue to fret. Humanities-based geography is definitely an endangered specialty. Everybody in the academic community has been aware for some time that our departments of art history, English, the foreign languages, history, and philosophy are facing declining enrollments and loss of staff. Business has become the nation's most popular major while the total percentage of graduates in the humanities has dropped in one generation from 30 to 16 (Chace 2009). People seeking explanation for this trend point to the relative decline of private colleges, the traditional bastions of humanities study. They also note how rapid increases in tuition costs and student debt have forced young people to think more about the potential earnings power of various majors. Although many geographers feel sadness about the plight of our colleagues in English and philosophy, this mood has been countered by hopes that our discipline might benefit from a reallocation of faculty slots. At the University of Kansas, for example, we definitely have seen such expansion, moving the faculty count from 16 to 24. Deans were receptive when we told them how new GIS hires would help meet job demands and how atmospheric science people could attract millions of dollars in external funding for research on climatic change. Even my side of the discipline was seen to have possibilities as theorists championed the cultural turn in human geography (Barnett 1998). Almost effortless growth for geography departments in Kansas and elsewhere should not blind us to losses, however. Even as we gain in numbers, and even as we probe into previously neglected realms of gender, class and social justice, we are losing ground in other arenas of study. The key declines, predictably, involve the humanities again. In fact, geography is a microcosm of the university in this regard, transforming itself from a tripartite core (science, social science, and humanities) with a few professional units attached (remote sensing labs for geography, engineering schools for the university) into a new, much more businesslike arrangement where the professional units replace humanities in the triad and the arts fade to obscurity. Not surprisingly, the changes within geography have received much less attention than those of universities as a whole. Still, they are important. When the immense potential scope of our discipline--literally writing about the world--is coupled with our always small number of practitioners, we typically have reacted by shrinking the limits of our inquiries (Sauer 1956). Perhaps some of this narrowing is natural, a way to avoid being overwhelmed, but it also has been driven historically by fad and fear. …

Politics and practices of resilience

This issue addresses a concept that has been receiving growing interest in geography over the last few years: resilience. The concept is not new strictly speaking, and has been in use in a number of disciplines: ecology (Holling has been using it since 1973 to describe evolutive systems that absorb shocks, as opposed to stable systems), physics (where it refers to the elasticity and plasticity of a material that is subjected to shocks), or psychology (the field that popularized the term in Fr...

On the Causes of the Greatness and Magnificence of Cities by Giovanni Botero (review)

Reviewed by: On the Causes of the Greatness and Magnificence of Cities by Giovanni Botero Adam Woodhouse Mowl Giovanni Botero, On the Causes of the Greatness and Magnificence of Cities, trans. and intro. Geoffrey Symcox (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 2012) xxxvii + 95 pp. Niccolò Machiavelli continues to cast a long shadow over the intellectual history of early modern Europe. Whilst Machiavelli is studied as a canonical author in the history of western political thought from, say, Plato to Marx, the name of his compatriot Giovanni Botero (1544–1617) remains very much embedded in the peculiar historical context of Counter-Reformation Europe. Indeed, Botero’s most celebrated work, The Reason of State (Della ragion di Stato), has since its publication in 1589 been appreciated primarily as a Christian defense against Machiavelli’s perceived secularization of political life. As such, Botero, a Jesuit theologian and political theorist, is generally read today as a spokesman for the Counter-Reformation Catholic Church’s response to the works of Machiavelli and the “Machiavellianism” of his supposed followers. This is not surprising, as Botero served as a consultore on the Congregation of the Index of Prohibited Books, a body that expended considerable effort chasing Machiavelli and his ghosts around early modern print culture. However, in [End Page 234] publishing this new English translation of one of his lesser-known treatises, Geoffrey Symcox makes a case for engaging with Botero on his own terms. As Symcox explains in his introduction to the text, On the Causes of the Greatness and Magnificence of Cities (Delle cause della grandezza e magnificenza della città) has long been a victim of the success of The Reason of State. On the Causes was published in a stand-alone edition by Botero in 1588, the year before the editio princeps of The Reason of State, but in virtually its entire subsequent publishing history this slim text has been attached as an appendix to Botero’s magnum opus. Symcox argues convincingly that “this ancillary placement of On the Causes as a companion piece to The Reason of State has meant that scholars have not paid it the attention it merits” (xi). It is his intention to introduce a new generation of English readers to Botero’s treatise on cities. So why should non-specialists be interested in On the Causes? Symcox begins by stressing the “precocious originality” of Botero’s text. As he points out, On the Causes cannot be said to belong to a utopian tradition of Renaissance political thought, represented chiefly by Thomas More and Tommaso Campanella, nor can it be absorbed into the genre of practical architectural treatises, re-established in the middle of the fifteenth century by Leon Battista Alberti with his revised Vitruvianism (xii–xiii). On the Causes, Symcox proposes, represents a new approach to studying the city: “Botero shifts the focus of enquiry from the forma urbis … to economics, demography, and the political factors that foster urban development, causing some cities to rise and prosper while others do not” (xiii). Symcox notes that these highly innovative features have led Botero’s treatise to be hailed by some scholars as the first socio-economic analysis of cities (xii). On the Causes should thus be of interest not only to historians, but also to historically-minded sociologists, economists and political theorists. Yet it is not just its author’s status as a student of urban socio-economics avant la lettre that makes On the Causes an important text for studying the intellectual history of Europe; Botero is also the first European author to treat seriously a range of non-European evidence when discussing the city. As Symcox observes, this procedure allows him to view the development of cities from a “global perspective” (xiii). An insight into why Botero chose to embark on a work of comparative history can be gleaned from Symcox’s helpful summary of his life and career. After travelling the length of the Italian peninsula from his native Piedmont to Sicily, Botero spent time teaching in Jesuit colleges in France. Symcox suggests that “[his] exposure to a very different society and culture stimulated the interest in geography and the comparative study of political systems that would...

‘Darkened Surfaces’: Camouflage and the Nocturnal Observation of Britain, 1941–45

Positioned in relation to an emerging geographical interest into the effects of different atmospheric and observational conditions in shaping sensory engagements with the Earth's surfaces, this paper considers how a critical examination of the practices of camouflage can open up new dialogues into how the Earth's surfaces become known, are interacted with, and transformed in the conditions of darkness. With an empirical focus on the cultural and historical geographies of nocturnal camouflage practised during the Second World War, the paper examines the systematic attempts of civil camoufleurs to understand how natural and artificial landforms were visibly ‘present’ in the nocturnal landscape, despite darkness often being conceived as producing an environment of ‘visual absence’ through diminished sensory engagement. Furthermore, the paper highlights how the tensions between visual presence/absence that shape both the nocturnal experience and the ‘knowing’ of landscape can often be exploited for social, cultural, and political ends, in this case, to enable protection against aerial attack.

FROM PRESENCE TO ACTION: POLITICAL REPRESENTATION AND DEMOCRACY IN IRAQI KURDISTAN

The article examines two dimensions of political representation in Iraqi Kurdistan: representation as presence and substantive representation. It is argued that the high proportionality of the electoral system enables representation as presence, of women, minorities and diverse geographical, linguistic and socio-economic interests and groups. However, the electoral system challenges representation in both dimensions, insofar as it hampers the development of effective opposition. The opposition is vital to confront clientelism and corruption that undermine democracy in the region.

Financial Regulations, Structure of Financial Systems and Capital Structure

Financial regulations distort normal functioning of a financial system through various channels. When these systems are reformed/deregulated on the lines of liberal markets, there will be structural adjustments and these adjustments will in turn cause various market/economic forces to behave on the lines that are expected in a liberal free market system. The focus of this study is to show how financial regulations impact structural elements of a financial system. In this study we analyze the impact of financial reforms that took place in India beginning in 1991on the structural aspects such as size, competitiveness, efficiency, geographical spread interest rates etc.) of the financial system. In the last part of our paper we show how structural changes in the financial market changed corporate structuring behavior of corporate firms. As reforms effected major changes, firms had to adjust their capital structure in response to the changes occurring in the financial system.

Towards geographies of ‘alternative’ education: a case study of UK home schooling families

In this paper, I argue for the development of geographies of ‘alternative’ education. In light of growing geographical interest in education, I argue for a focus on sites that explicitly offer non‐mainstream, non‐state‐sanctioned forms of learning in contexts where it is assumed that children will go to school. I exemplify my discussion through interviews with 30 UK‐based homeschooling families. In seeking to advance geographical research on education, I make three key contributions. First, I exemplify how focusing on learning itself – and not just spatial contexts for learning – uncovers how spatial experiences and discourses are key to the constitution of alternative educational practices like homeschooling. Second, I consider the multiple and contradictory ways in which homeschooling constituted an ‘alternative’ educational space, discuss whether and how geographers should seek to affirm (all) such spaces and attend to some of the potential political/moral dilemmas that are provoked by the place of emotion in homeschoolers’ accounts. Third, I outline briefly some implications of this paper for further research on geographies of education, and family/inter‐generational relations.

“MY FEET SEE BETTER THAN MY EYES”: SPATIAL MASTERY AND THE GAME OF MASCULINITY INARDEN OF FAVERSHAM'S AMPHITHEATRE

Although the long-awaited murder of Arden in the anonymousArden of Faversham(ca. 1592) takes place during a game of tables, or what we call backgammon,1critics have been quick to overlook the choice of game in this climactic scene, underestimating its importance to the play's central concerns and even mistakenly calling it a game of dice or cards.2These games do share some common features—backgammon, for instance, involves the use of dice—but the distinctions among them are significant, especially for the play's often-observed interests in geography and place. In attending to the intersection between games and theatre, I participate in a long tradition of performance studies scholarship. But in contrast to much of this scholarship, I emphasize the formal qualities of particular games—which vary widely from one game to another—arguing that different games call for unique competencies in players and in spectators of games.3Arden of Favershamreflects on spatial relations in the early modern theatre by staging and enacting the ludic competencies peculiar to backgammon.

Globalising Economic Spaces, Uneven Development and Regional Challenges: Introduction to the Special Issue

The phenomenon of spatially uneven development has always captured the interest of economic geographers, forming one of the foundation stones of the discipline and a major research focus in analyses of both advanced or emerging economies (Hayter and Patchell, 2011; Sheppard et al., 2009). The economic exploitation of localized resources to improve the quality of people’s lives inevitably leads to widening of interregional economic disparities, engendering dynamics, which, over time, change little and are rarely reversed. Interregional disparities simply transform, assume different guises and, at times, shift between places. They never really vanish. And convergence is rare, as investigations of interregional disparities in Europe have shown (Badingera et al., 2004; Martin, 2001) and the USA (Caselli and Coleman, 2001). However, measuring the dynamics of interregional divergence and convergence is both demanding and problematic (Puga, 1999; Rey and Janikas, 2005). Consequently, the dynamics of spatially uneven development remain a major research question with significant and enduring policy relevance.