Geographical Questions Research Articles

HIV diffusion patterns and mobility: Gender differences among drug users

Researchers have recently expanded the scope of study of transmission patterns of AIDS to incorporate spatial and geographical questions. United States diffusion patterns of this disease appear to indicate that it may emanate from urban area epicenters to areas of low and moderate prevalence. The travel patterns of injecting drug users (IDUs) and the extent to which they engage in high risk drug and sexual activities was examined as an explanation of diffusion of the HIV virus from one community to another. The study population of 49,621 was comprised of subjects recruited from approximately 60 sites nationwide from 1988–1991. While the data are limited in some ways, they partially support a diffusion explanation of HIV transmission for males and females. The analysis demonstrates that low prevalence cities were significantly more likely to have been the destinations of both men and women who engaged in high risk drug and sexual activities. In addition, HIV seropositive drug users who engaged in high risk drug and sexual behaviors in destination cities were more likely than seronegatives to travel to high or low seroprevalence areas than to moderate prevalence areas. The findings suggest a need for effective HIV prevention educational messages about the risks of traveling and participating in high risk activities.

SPATIAL IMPLICATIONS OF STRUCTURAL ADJUSTMENT PROGRAMMES IN GHANA

ABSTRACTSeveral studies have examined the macro‐economic impact and social costs of Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) currently being implemented by many developing countries. Conspicuously lacking from the existing body of literature are reviews that explicitly ask and examine some pertinent geographical questions. The primary objective of this article is to assess the spatial implications of Ghana's economic recovery programmes that have been pursued since 1983 under the directions and dictates of the IMF and the World Bank. It argues that, in spite of the moderate successes recorded at the macro‐economic level, a significant flaw of structural adjustment programmes is the neglect of the spatial dimensions of economic development.

Natural Hazards within the West Indies

Abstract Earthquakes, volcanoes, and hurricanes, together with high population densities and poverty, make the West Indies one of the most vulnerable areas to natural hazards in the world. This paper summarizes the effects and consequences of historic natural disasters within the region and reviews the causes and distribution of these three natural hazards. Suggestions are provided for teachers wishing to utilize information about Columbus or Caribbean geography to introduce their students to a wide array of geographic concepts and questions in physical, environmental, historical, and social geography.

Other Figures in Other Places: On Feminism, Postmodernism and Geography

In a recent paper entitled “Travels in the postmodern”, Elspeth Probyn uses the metaphors of local, locale, and location to open up a political dialogue between feminism and postmodernism, providing a particularly explicit example of a more general use of spatial figures in contemporary theoretical debate. These spatial references are not entirely figurative, but allude to our positioning within particular contexts, which both frame and are constructed by our texts. Thus, Probyn's dialogue inevitably raises geographical questions. Moreover, geography is not merely a passive, unnamed party through which Probyn's dialogue is conducted; it is not immune from or in any way ‘outside’ the situatedness its terminology is employed to articulate. In this context, the metaphorical maps Probyn uses to find her way between the differing terrains of feminism and postmodernism are far from neutral, truthful, transparent representations. In this paper an extension of Probyn's travels at the boundaries between feminism and postmodernism is sought by introducing a more active, self-critical geographical voice. The often hidden tensions underlying the linkages between geography, postmodernism, and feminism are explored, and key issues at the interface between critical human geography and feminist deconstruction are brought to the fore.

Geography Education: Key to Understanding and Saving the Environment: An Editorial

With the national celebration of Earth Day 1990 and the recent profusion of save-the-earth books, T-shirts, and bumper stickers, it would seem that environmental awareness in the United States is at an all-time high. This may be the case, and I find the trend encouraging. But for several years, I have become increasingly troubled about how little we Americans, particularly our young people, actually know about the world around us, as concerned as we are about its future. Recent surveys have confirmed my worst suspicions. A study released this year by the National Assessment of Educational Progress--the nation's report card-has revealed disturbing gaps in the geographic knowledge of American high school seniors. In that study, large numbers of students could not locate major countries, cities, and landmarks on a map-a skill we all associate with geography. But what is worse, many also lacked a more important, and less recognized, geographic skill: understanding how human activity and the environment affect each other. For example, only 47 percent of the students tested could identify even one cause of the greenhouse effect, and 59 percent could not recognize a single effect of thermonuclear war on the environment. These are geographic questions, and the next generation is unprepared to deal with them, as well as a host of other environmental issues that are incomprehensible without geography. But our students are not alone in their ignorance. A 1988-1989 international Gallup survey of adults commissioned by the National Geographic Society revealed that one in seven Americans cannot even find the United States on an unmarked world map. I believe that if we are to reverse the serious trends that now endanger the global environment, we simply cannot afford this level of geographic illiteracy. As the popular T-shirt says, Good planets are hard to find. It is difficult to believe that, as I write this, in certain areas of South America people must drive with their lights on in the middle of the day because the sky is darkened by the burning of tropical forests. It is hard to comprehend that right now, people are slaughtering elephants with machine guns, then beheading them

Geographical Questions Answered

Geographical Questions Answered

Geographical Questions Answered

Geographical Questions Answered

Geographical questions in gerontology: needed directions for research

Geographical questions in gerontology: needed directions for research

Women and environments:a useful resource for teaching

Summary Women and Environments is an excellent resource for geography teachers seeking to integrate women's perspectives and issues into their courses or for those who are attempting to create innovative courses which examine geographic questions from a gendered perspective. The short feature articles, most of them no more than four pages in length, are useful pedagogical tools for generating classroom discussions or for introducing uninitiated undergraduate students to the very real implications of the social construction of gender across a variety of geographic contexts. Because the pieces are concise and straightforward they provide an easy egress into a larger feminist literature that may be daunting to students. More advanced students may use the articles as a foundation for pursuing more elaborate and extensive articles on the women and environment issues. For geography teachers looking to restructure their courses to include women and environment themes, the journal occasionally includes syllabuses...

Jura Separatism in Switzerland

This case study of nationalism in the Jura region of Switzerland raises issues specific to the area as well as broader geographic and political questions. The author examines nationalist feeling and activity throughout the region in the context of the environmental, religious, and socio-economic background. Special emphasis is given to analyzing 20th-century developments and ways in which separatist tendencies--which are an issue in other societies such as Northern Ireland and Quebec--can be resolved through consensual methods.

France: A Geographical, Social and Economic Survey

This book makes available to the English-speaking world the most authoritative single survey of the geography of France yet published. A translation from the fully-revised two-volume French edition of 1981, Professor Pinchemel's work embraces every aspect of the relationship between the social and the spatial in contemporary France, and provides the reader with a vast quantity of detailed information on specific geographical questions. The work is divided into eight parts, and within that overall structure each section is further sub-divided for ease of reference. The author's concern for clarity of exposition is reflected in the numerous tables, charts and diagrams that supplement the text. A new bibliography has been specially compiled for English readers.

Geographic analysis of disease and care.

The importance to health of customs of diet, dress, types of settlement and housing and of physical environmental factors such as climate, vegetation, altitude, and topography have been widely recognized since the time of Hippo­ crates' Airs, Waters, and Places. Geographical variation has been studied as geographic pathology, medical ecology, medical topography, geographical epidemiology, geomedicine, and other rubrics, but only in the past 30 years has the discipline of geography itself applied its perspective and methodology to the study of health, disease, and care. After presenting an introduction to the field, I address some of the major geographic questions as they apply to medical geography and offer an explanation and critique of the methodology and theory currently being used to answer them.

The Unity of Geography: A Comment

This paper offers a comment on the four papers published above as well as on the conference discussion of them. The question of geography's unity is an important one but debate often founders on the failure to specify precisely what is at issue. The purpose of the comment is to suggest a broader framework for debate by distinguishing between different kinds of unity.

Corporate Philanthropy: Implications for Urban Research and Public Policy

Corporate philanthropy has become increasingly important to organizations providing voluntary services, particularly in light of recent reductions in government funding for service delivery. This paper is a critical review of the existing literature on corporate philanthropy. It is found that social science research on the patterns of corporate giving and on the reasons for corporate largesse has focused on national level observations and analysis, leaving many unanswered questions about geographic variations in corporate contributions behavior, and about the role of corporate giving in local politics and policymaking. An agenda for additional research on corporate philanthropy is outlined, focusing on urban and regional geographic questions that need to be addressed if governmental decentralization and social expenditure curtailment policies are to be adequately evaluated on equity and efficiency grounds.

Reply to Robert Sack

I would like to make a few comments in reply to Robert Sack's response to my review of his book (Sack, 1980; Sayer, 1982a). These kinds of interchange can easily become rather private and exclusive affairs, not to say unduly sensitive, and they can quickly lose contact with geographical questions. In order to avoid this I shall therefore follow up the more philosophical points with some suggestions as to their wider significance for geography. First a concession: in retrospect I realize my title was unfair for it was not so much Sack's conception of space that I questioned--on the contrary, I commended it--but his conceptions of social thought. Secondly, some points of agreement: (i) of course no philosophy is complete and consistent; (ii) of course not all the doctrines of 'realism', however defined, are unique to it (p. 504); (iii) of course 'not everything is a matter of philosophy' (p. 509); (iv) of course we should use philosophy to focus on substantive matters such as geographical questions (p. 504); (v) of course 'science' is not merely 'subjective' (p. 506). Thirdly, the philosophical ideas to which I am committed are clear from the arguments and references in my review but if these are not sufficient, I have discussed them elsewhere (e.g. Sayer, 1981, 1982). Fourthly, I think some difficulties may have arisen from the ambiguity of the word 'generalization'. On the one hand there are statements about classes of objects which attempt to convey their common properties or what is believed to be true of them 'on the whole', as an approximation. Such statements (hereafter 'generalizations') include implicit or explicit assessments of quantities: e.g. 'most free-standing towns have grown'; '80 per cent of the population is urban'; 'people usually overestimate distances to unfamiliar places'. On the other hand, there are statements which have a wider and vaguer sense of 'hypotheses', which need not include references to quantities and can be about individual objects rather than classes of them (hereafter generalization2). I use the term only in the first sense, and would argue that distinctively realist theoretical claims concern necessity rather than generality or regularity, and hence are not generalizations'. To take an example from my review: 'To exist as a nation state, certain social relations must be established on the basis of some degree of understanding (not necessarily a clear or very correct one) of the meaning of its concept'. If this were to be recast as a generalization' it would read: 'In all (or most) nation states, certain social relations are established on the basis of some degree of understanding. . .' etc.). What was, in the realist version, a claim about a necessary relation has become diluted, as a generalization', to a statement which could equally refer to a state of affairs which is neither necessary nor impossible, even if it happens to have occurred in all cases. In the former, the claim is much stronger--as Popper would say, it 'sticks its neck out more' and consequently its falsification would have to be taken seriously. In the case of the generalization', falsification would be of little significance as the statement did not say things had to be that way. (This is not to argue, of course, that one should treat contingent matters as necessary merely to derive

Comment on “Undocumented Migration from Mexico: Some Geographical Questions”

(1982). Comment on “Undocumented Migration from Mexico: Some Geographical Questions”. Annals of the Association of American Geographers: Vol. 72, No. 4, pp. 559-560.

Reply to Robert Austin's “Comment on ‘Undocumented Migration from Mexico: Some Geographical Questions’”

Reply to Robert Austin's “Comment on ‘Undocumented Migration from Mexico: Some Geographical Questions’”

Undocumented Migration from Mexico: Some Geographical Questions

Although undocumented Mexican immigrants in the United States are highly concentrated in California and Texas their locations have become increasingly dispersed in recent years. The most rapid growth in apprehensions by U.S. authorities is now occurring outside the Southwest. Furthermore the already-dispersed patterns of migrant origins in Mexico are becoming more so over time. Thus the phenomenon of undocumented flows is spreading spatially in both the U.S. and Mexico. Historic factors promoting migrant channelization are being supplanted by factors promoting dispersion: increased migrant job awareness and capability a liberalization of U.S. immigration enforcement and generally worsening conditions in rural Mexico. (EXCERPT)

Geography Questions

Geography Questions

The crimean question, the Black Bulgarians, and the Russo-Byzantine Treaty of 944

In the treaty of 944 between the Russians and the Greeks, the clauses which can be referred to as political and military have created some important problems both in interpretation and implication. The most difficult questions have emerged because the treaty has seemed to imply extensions of Kievan sovereignty into the Crimea which it appears unlikely that the Byzantines would have permitted at any time. In addition, the questions of geography and ethnography, connected with the treaty, have proven difficult to reconcile with our existing knowledge of the steppe. In all of its activities related to the steppe in the tenth century, the Empire demonstrated an overwhelming concern for the safety of Kherson and the Climata in the Crimea which were important as bases for Byzantine diplomacy on the steppe. The political and military clauses of the treaty reflect the determination of the Byzantines to protect their Crimean possessions against any real or potential threat from the Kievan Rus', much as the instructions of Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus in the De administrando imperio document a similar effort with the steppe tribes. This concern for the Crimea as well as the fact that the terms of the treaty made the Rus' into allies (symmachoi) of the Empire serves as the essential background for a possible solution to the somewhat tangential but historiographically important question of the identification of the homeland of the Black Bulgarians whom the Rus' were to prevent from raiding Kherson and the Climata. The Black Bulgarians were one of those remnants of an earlier steppe migration who survived on the steppe between the Dnieper and Don rivers from where they raiced the Crimea. The apparent intention of the Byzantines, as reflected in the treaty, was that the Rus' were to stop the Black Bulgarians at the Crimean isthmus from which location the Rus' themselves would not become an important threat to the Imperial possessions.