“TROPICALISM” IN FRENCH GEOGRAPHY: REALITY,ILLUSION OR IDEAL?

In important respects, the disciplinary field of “tropical geography” is a uniquely French field of study, and Pierre Gourou is conventionally seen as its founder and doyen. Yet Gourou did not see himself as the creator of a new paradigm or research school, and geographers were generally more influenced by his writings than by his teaching or any personal connection. With particular reference to French geographical research in and on tropical Africa during the second half of the twentieth century, it is suggested that the development of tropical geography as a subfield ‐ and tropicalism as a research orientation ‐ can be put down to a variety of factors and circumstances. Geographical research on Africa was pivotal, as was the rise to prominence in French research institutes of some of Gourou's disciples. But African academics also played a part, as did criticism of tropical geography for its marginalisation of issues of development and geopolitics. The paper examines this postwar intellectual history and attempts to draw from it a positive and forward looking legacy ‐ a reinvigorated and interdisciplinary “tropicalism”, the main axis of which would be the analysis of the specific characteristics of tropical ecology, and its use and transformation by the societies that live from it. Such a project may help us to confront the contemporary world ecological crisis, and forge critical research projects on globalisation (altermondialisme) that can discern and deal with the complex local‐global, and rural‐urban, articulations of this phenomenon.     

国际地理学发展趋向述要

地理学作为一种理论思维是历史的产物,它的中心研究课题是随着时代的进展而不断变化的。因此要从发展观点来认识地理学。再则各国由于国情不同,地理学的发展也具有地域差异性。本文从古代、近代和现代三个发展阶段和西方及苏联两大中心的主要地理思潮加以分析,说明了以上论点。     

论现代历史地理学的时间特性

历史地理学的发展经历了漫长的时间历程,现代历史地理学的研究具有动态的,整个人类发展过程有以及“过去”、“现在”和“未来”统一的历史时间观念。现代历史地理学的时间系统包括精确时间与模糊时间,动态时间和静态时间,自然时间与社会的时间等。     

西方"马克思主义"地理学--人文地理学的一个重要流派

本文全面地概述了西方“马克思主义”地理学的形成过程、理论脉络和研究方法以及新的进展,并着重介绍了西方“马克思主义”地理学的三个核心内容,即政治经济学分析、空间理论和社会－自然关系理论,最后对西方“马克思主义”地理学进行了简要的评论。     

THOMAS JEFFERSON,AMERICAN GEOGRAPHERS,AND THE USES OF GEOGRAPHY*

ABSTRACT. Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) had a lifelong interest in geography. Except for his role in the Lewis and Clark Expedition and a few references to his Notes on the State of Virginia, however, geographers have taken a relatively slight interest in this aspect of his thought, despite his having sometimes been referred to as “one of the greatest American geographers.” This essay suggests that we need to reexamine Jefferson as a geographical thinker. Reviewing some of the more important literature thus far, it suggests where such topics may profitably be extended and points to some aspects of his geographical interests not yet incorporated into the geographical literature.     

“THE FARTHER REACHES OF HUMAN TIME”: RETROSPECT ON CARL SAUER AS PREHISTORIAN*

ABSTRACT. Carl Ortwin Sauer (1889–1975) is widely regarded as one of the most influential geographers of the twentieth century, admired particularly for his studies in cultural and historical geography. His contribution to the study of prehistory is less widely acknowledged, but, between 1944 and 1962, he published a series of speculative yet scholarly papers that contain many prescient insights into humanity's remote past and the relationships of our ancestors to the environments they occupied—and modified. In this essay, based on the Carl O. Sauer Memorial Lecture given at the University of California, Berkeley, in October 2001, I reflect on Sauer's contribution to the science of prehistory by examining, in the light of recent advances in knowledge, two major themes of Sauer's work: the early dispersal of Homo sapiens in the Old World, and the origins and prehistoric spread of agriculture.     

THE LEGENDARY “REDISCOVERY” OF GEORGE PERKINS MARSH

The conventional narrative regarding the American reception of George Perkins Marsh, author of Man and Nature (1864), is that his work and ideas were “lost,”“forgotten,” or “neglected” until Lewis Mumford “rediscovered” him and introduced him to geographers at the University of California‐Berkeley through The Brown Decades (Mumford [1931] 1955) and until Carl Sauer made him known to the profession at large beginning in 1938. This article upends the conventional narrative by looking at earlier references to Marsh's later versions of Man and Nature, which were published as The Earth as Modified by Human Action from 1874 to 1907. Analysis reveals that a number of geographers and historians cited these editions between 1875 and the early 1950s. Examining the legend of loss and rediscovery suggests the value of methods utilized in reception studies for research on the history of geography.     

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT'S IMAGE AND INFLUENCE IN NORTH AMERICAN GEOGRAPHY, 1804–2004

ABSTRACT. Alexander von Humboldt is universally identified as a key figure in laying the foundations for modern geography. His main sites of research and scholarly production were centered on Europe, Latin America, and Russia. He drew on global sources of geographical data and knowledge in constructing and producing his voluminous works. Although he only briefly knew North America firsthand—at the outset of his career, in the late spring of 1804—he maintained a lifelong interest in the realm, especially in the United States. In turn, many North American scholars were admirers and followers of his perspectives, practices, and publications. Although geography did not emerge as an institutionally based discipline in the United States until the late nineteenth century, Humboldt's influence and impact on its antecedents were considerable. Contrary to conventional wisdom, his authority and influence in geography persisted well beyond Humboldt's death in 1859. His vision of demonstrating nature's unity in diversity and his enlightened views on social issues have continued to appeal to select sectors and actors in North American geography, especially Latin Americanists, historians of the discipline, and, more recently, proponents of an engaged, critical geography.     

我国近代(1840—1949年)人文地理学的发展概况

本文简述了中国近代经济地理、社会地理、政治地理和军事地理、历史地理的发展概况;並初步分析了当时中国社会的政治、经济情况,及其对中国人地思想发展的影响。     

时间地理学的起源,主要概念及其应用

时间地理学是瑞典地理学家哈格斯特朗及其领导的隆德大学研究小组提出的,最初应用于城市规划中的居民日常活动与设施规划的计算机模拟模型中。７０年代末以前的时间地理学应用研究是沿哈格斯特朗的基本观点进行的,主要表现在对区域规划、人地关系及社会史的研究中。进入８０年代以后的应用研究则在个人生活与社会结构关系、女性地理学、福利地理学及城市地域研究、城市交通规划等方面有创造性的展开。     

Geographical categories: an ontological investigation

This paper reports the results of a series of experiments designed to establish how non-expert subjects conceptualize geospatial phenomena. Subjects were asked to give examples of geographical categories in response to a series of differently phrased elicitations. The results yield an ontology of geographical categories-a catalogue of the prime geospatial concepts and categories shared in common by human subjects independently of their exposure to scientific geography. When combined with nouns such as feature and object, the adjective geographic elicited almost exclusively elements of the physical environment of geographical scale or size, such as mountain, lake, and river. The phrase things that could be portrayed on a map, on the other hand, produced many geographical scale artefacts (roads, cities, etc.) and fiat objects (states, countries, etc.), as well as some physical feature types. These data reveal considerable mismatch as between the meanings assigned to the terms 'geography' and 'geographic' by scientific geographers and by ordinary subjects, so that scientific geographers are not in fact studying geographical phenomena as such phenomena are conceptualized by na ve subjects. The data suggest, rather, a special role in determining the subject-matter of scientific geography for the concept of what can be portrayed on a map. This work has implications for work on usability and interoperability in geographical information science, and it throws light also on subtle and hitherto unexplored ways in which ontological terms such as 'object', 'entity', and 'feature' interact with geographical concepts.     

SQUINTING BACK AT STRABO*

ABSTRACT. Strabo of Amasia (ca. 64 B.c.‐ca. A.D. 23) wrote the first comprehensive geography of the world known to the Greeks and Romans. Interest in Strabo and his Geography, which survives nearly intact in seventeen books, has fluctuated over the centuries among both classicists and historians of geography. After some historical background on Strabo and his reception, this essay considers the contribution of two significant recent English‐language treatments, as well as Strabo's Geography itself, and suggests ways in which the Strabonic model may have renewed relevance to the geographer's task of interpreting the oikoumene in the contemporary world.     

HYPHENATED GEOGRAPHIES: THE DEINDUSTRIALIZATION OF NATURE‐SOCIETY GEOGRAPHY*

As visions of ecological crisis mark the daily headlines, industrial spaces of intensive energy and material consumption become a more intense object of political and social concern. In this article, I attempt to situate geography's relative neglect of the ecological underpinnings of industrial capitalism within the context of the history of geographical thought. I argue that the ways in which geographers read the hyphen in the phrase “nature‐society” reveals epistemological limits to their object of study. I then offer three dramatically different readings of the hyphen and discuss how they have affected the lineages and trajectories of geographical research—Barrows's human ecology, Sauer's cultural landscape, and critical theories of social nature. I conclude by suggesting that geography needs to let go of its empirical and conceptual fixation on “nature”.     

中国古代政治地理思想探究

中国古代具有丰富的政治地理思想和实践,对当前中国政治地理学的建设具有重要意义。本文对中国从先秦至晚清的相关文献中涉及政治地理的内容进行梳理,归纳为地利(定都、设镇)、地政(治地、安民)、地缘(安边、攘夷)三大主题,对各主题的要点进行了整理,进而探讨了这些思想与西方政治地理学相关概念的关联,并期望未来中国政治地理学对于本国的传统思想给予更多关注。     

Economy,culture and environment: perspectives on the Australian food industry

Intersections between economy, culture and environment pose exciting future challenges for human geography. Part of Griffith Taylor's pioneering role as a geographer was to investigate relationships between these three aspects of human life, although his agenda was that of environmental determinism. This paper considers these intersections as they relate to contemporary geographical studies of restructuring, in particular the emergence of a genuinely global economic system since about 1980. Recent developments in cultural geography argue that geographical analysis of restructuring has been dominated by an economic determinism which has buried other stories which could be told about industrial change. The paper sketches lines of possible dialogue between economic geography and cultural studies, illustrating the argument with examples from restructuring in the Australian food industry. In opening such a dialogue, economic geography would be better placed to return to interactions between economy, culture and environment. In his day, Taylor was not afraid to upset the conventional wisdom about these relationships and this may be one of his most enduring legacies.     

Mapping Human Terrain in the Joint Army–Navy Intelligence Study of Korea (1945)

The concept of human terrain has become a prominent element of U.S. military strategy. It is a means to capture the cultural–geographical qualities of an enemy or target population. An early effort to map human terrain is found in the Joint Army–Navy Intelligence Study (JANIS) of Korea (1945). We argue that the JANIS report on Korea was paradigmatic for the U.S. military's contemporary geographical work and offers insights into the cultural politics of human terrain mapping. This explains why the JANIS text is cited by the National Geospatial-Intelligence College (NGC) today as an historical model. This article not only offers a window into the history of geography counterinsurgent but also shows that geography has been entwined with empire.     

Simion Mehedinţi's Contribution to Modern Romanian Geography

Armed with a scholarship to find an answer to the question “What is geography?” Simion Mehedin?i's studies took him to continental Europe's three main centers of geographic thought: Paris, Berlin, and Leipzig. We explore how his innovative ideas flourished, especially in Leipzig under Ratzel. The first Romanian geographer, Mehedin?i, must be credited with having defined geography as a science of mutual relationships between geospheres. This thinking reached its pinnacle in two complex books, Terra and Ethnos, the contents of which we synthetically explore. We also trace the unfavorable historical and geopolitical conditions that led to this pioneering work being little recognized worldwide.