Geographers in the U.S. Government in Washington,DC, during World War II

Geographers in Washington, DC, during World War II and the agencies in which they worked are recalled through the naming of geographers engaged in wartime work during this seminal period in the development of the geography profession in the United States. The five agencies then employing the largest number of geographers were the Research and Analysis Branch of the Office of Strategic Services, the Topographic Branch of the Military Intelligence Division of the War Department, the Board of Economic Warfare (later the Foreign Economic Administration), the Board on Geographic Names, and the Office of the Geographer, Department of State. The impacts of this period on individual geographers, the professional organization of geographers, cartography, higher education, and the government are suggested.     

Washington Women: Practicing Geography in the U.S. Government, 1915–1970s

Histories of geography, especially those dealing with the twentieth century, tend to focus on geographic thought or academia rather than on practice in other arenas such as government agencies. In the United States during that period, however, the latter included a higher proportional representation of women professionals than did research-oriented universities. This article examines the careers of selected women geographers who had long-term and senior positions in Washington, DC, in agencies such as the Library of Congress, Bureau of the Census, the Department of State, and the Office of Naval Research. Drawing on sources including directories, the archives and oral history collections of the Society of Woman Geographers, and interviews conducted in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I explore four main themes: how these women came to government work, aspects of the intersections of personal and professional lives, ways in which economic and political contexts shaped their opportunities and experiences, and the nature of their contributions.     

Geographers in Business,Government, and Nonprofit Organizations: Skills,Challenges, and Professional Identities

This study examines the experiences of geography graduates who work in business, government, and nonprofit organizations. We analyzed 352 logs from eighty-two professionals detailing professional activities, challenges, and opportunities during one work week each month, over a period of six months. Our analysis explores interpersonal relationships and working conditions affecting participants’ progress toward work goals, workplace climate, and professional identity. Geographic information systems and technology accounted for more than half of the geographic skills respondents reported using on the job, and administrative and leadership factors were the most commonly cited types of transferable skills. Professional geographers value collaborative workplaces as well as opportunities to work independently with the confidence of their supervisors, and their sense of a professional identity is enhanced when they feel valued and are recognized for their work. Professional development activities are important because they reinforce geographers’ sense of positively contributing to their organizations, enhance interpersonal interactions, facilitate work on specific projects, and expand individuals’ knowledge and skills. Moreover, our findings suggest that nearly half of the reported workplace difficulties could potentially be reduced or eliminated as a result of more and better professional development. Nonetheless, many employers do not consistently provide opportunities for professional development to their employees. Based on our analysis, we contend that professional development is a beneficial investment for lifelong learning, from undergraduate and graduate education throughout the entire course of a professional career.     

Some things do change: indigenous rights,geographers and geography in Australia

Using a recent editorial comment in this journal as a focus, this paper reviews the extent to which geography has been implicated in the ‘colonial project’ in Australia. It argues that recent work amongst geographers involved with indigenous Australians reflects a commitment to transcend this colonial past. The paper calls for geographers to work toward a wide‐reaching decolonisation of the discipline, and to develop a better understanding of the contemporary legacies of geography's colonial past.     

THE GEOGRAPHY OF POST-COLONIAL AFRICA: SPACE,PLACE AND DEVELOPMENT IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA (1960–93)1

This overview of human geographic studies of sub Saharan Africa begins with the contributions made by West European geographers to the colonial service, and the growing interest in post-war ‘development’ and to the anti-imperial movements in the late colonial period (1945–60). The paper provides an intellectual map of the contributions by European and African geographers to the broad array of development problems which emerged after 1960. North American geographers made significant contributions to the debate somewhat later, particularly in association with the growing involvement of U.S. development agencies in the 1970s. Particular emphasis is given to geographic studies in fields such as agrarian change, ecological degradation, industrialization, human mobility and patterns of urbanization and settlement.     

Distance Decay Values And Shopping Center Size

The question of what lies ahead is of particular concern for Latin Americanists. The last decade has witnessed a serious erosion of both the popularity of their specialty, and an equally troublesome reduction in employment opportunities. This paper uses Association of American Geographers (AAG) data bases to document the age-gender structure of contemporary Latin Americanist geographers, and projects likely compositional changes through the end of the century.     

TRENDS IN LATIN AMERICANIST GEOGRAPHY IN THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA

The question of what lies ahead is of particular concern for Latin Americanists. The last decade has witnessed a serious erosion of both the popularity of their specialty, and an equally troublesome reduction in employment opportunities. This paper uses Association of American Geographers (AAG) data bases to document the age-gender structure of contemporary Latin Americanist geographers, and projects likely compositional changes through the end of the century.     

STATE PARKS AND JIM CROW IN THE DECADE BEFORE BROWN v. BOARD OF EDUCATION

African Americans had access to only a small number of state parks in the Jim Crow South. Between the end of World War II and the U.S. Supreme Court's 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, however, state park officials oversaw a relative expansion in the construction of facilities available to southern blacks. Emphasizing developments leading up to that landmark court ruling, I note that this trend did not indicate waning support for segregation among whites. Rather, this relative expansion was part of a strategy to protect Jim Crow by demonstrating that the “separate‐but‐equal” principle was being successfully achieved by southern park agencies. This intensified construction was largely a reaction to increasingly successful legal action in federal courts by the naacp generally; and officials in the state agencies hoped—unsuccessfully—to avoid challenges to state park segregation. After the Brown decision, several border states integrated their park systems, but most agencies displayed the reactionary defiance that characterized most white Southerners as the civil rights movement grew.     

GEOGRAPHERS IN GOVERNMENT

Geographers are working in federal, state, and local government agencies in many diverse positions. Historically and presently, geographers have held key policy positions in government agencies. In recent years the employment base for geographers in government has been broadened. Geographers working in government generally must have a pragmattic outlook that enables them to do the tasks assigned regardless of how geographical those assignments may be.     

GEOGRAPHERS IN GOVERNMENT

Geographers are working in federal, state, and local government agencies in many diverse positions. Historically and presently, geographers have held key policy positions in government agencies. In recent years the employment base for geographers in government has been broadened. Geographers working in government generally must have a pragmattic outlook that enables them to do the tasks assigned regardless of how geographical those assignments may be.     

From salvage to recycling – new agendas or same old rubbish?

Recent years have seen increased attention paid by geographers to the phenomenon of household waste recycling. Much of this attention by geographers has focused on contemporary recycling, especially contemporary policy and behaviour. This article takes a wider temporal perspective and considers the antecedent 'National Salvage Campaign' of the Second World War. It considers the conceptual lessons from this recycling campaign, drawing out the importance of themes of scale, relatedness, civic duty and positive identity. The article explores the socially constructed boundaries that attempt to find an 'appropriate' place for waste and how such boundaries are constantly reconsidered and redefined.     

A new ‘New Guinea syndrome’ and the utility of geography: a review

Human geographers working in Papua New Guinea and elsewhere in Melanesia are tending to work in multidisciplinary teams. This reflects the utility of geography where the specialist‐synthesis and a fieldwork approach is wanted and needed by consultants, lending and aid agencies, and government departments. Work on the Less Developed Areas program and integrated rural development planning in Papua New Guinea are used as examples of the sort of work geographers are doing.     

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY OF THE AMERICAN TROPICS: A FORTY-YEAR REVIEW

For a decade or so after World War II, human geographers working in the American tropics found socio-political conditions and resultant research topics little changed from those before the war. This was in contrast to the Old World tropics where decolonization processes and the demands of economic development and new nation building produced divergent research currents, For the first half of the period under review, the American tropics continued to be the province largely of geographers with culturalhistorical questions grounded in natural historical bases. The legacy is Humboldt's; the practitioners most notably students of Carl Sauer or German counterparts such as Carl Troll. French and British regionalist approaches, strong in the region before World War II, survived less successfully. By the 1980s, however, broad pan-tropical currents of geographic discourse and debate had become established. New practices and theories were formulated and tested as North Atlantic geographers borrowed from antipodean innovators and others working in the Asian and African tropics. Since the 1980s, there have been greater efforts at dialogue and collaboration with host country colleagues. As might be expected in this era of ‘globalization’, national research styles and agendas have become less evident. This paper offers a highly selective map of research nodes within tropical Americanist geography since the early 1950s. The selection of examples includes qualitative criteria, but more importantly, research that signify stasis or intensification as well as turning points and departures in the overall development of this literature. The contours of this history suggest some highly evolved, even idiosyncratic enterprises, but in the main, it is an unfolding that suggests broad congruencies with human geographic work elsewhere in the tropics.     

The Economic Impact of War: the Case of the U.S. Civil War

Abstract

American geographers have tended to ignore the effects of war upon the economic development of the United States. Using the values of real and personal property given in the U.S. Censuses between 1850 and 1890, the impact of the Civil War and the duration of that impact can be measured relatively. The Civil War not only destroyed the capital resources of the South, but also appears to have led to the predominance of New York City in American economic life.     

Getting to the Bottom of It: Tools,Techniques, and Discoveries of Deep Ocean Geography

The initial impetus for developing a specialty in ocean geography resulted from the need to resolve applied problems in coastal resources, as opposed to development of oceanographic research methods and concepts. However, the development in the last 10 to 20 years of sophisticated technologies for ocean data collection and management holds tremendous potential for mapping and interpreting the ocean environment in unprecedented detail. With the understanding that ocean research is often very costly, yet deemed extremely important by large funding agencies, geographers now have the opportunity to perform coastal and marine studies that are more quantitative in nature, to formulate and test basic hypotheses about the marine environment, and to collaborate with geographers working in corollary subdisciplines (e.g., remote sensing, GIS, geomorphology, political geography as pertaining to the Law of the Sea, etc.), as well as with classically-trained oceanographers. This article reviews, for the non-specialist, the newest advances in mapping and management technologies for undersea geographic research (particularly on the ocean floor) and discusses the contributions that geographers stand to make to a greater understanding of the oceans.     

Book Reviews

Committee on Protection and Management of Pacific Northwest Anadromous Salmonids Upstream: Salmon and Society in the Pacific Northwest Cook, Ian G; Doel, Marcus A. and Li, Rex (eds.) Fragmented Asia: Regional Integration and National Disintegration in Pacific Asia Crush, Jonathan Power of Development de Blij, H. J., and Muller, Peter O. Physical Geography of the Global Environment Hayward, David J. International Trade and Regional Economies: The Impacts of European Integration on the United States Kennedy, Michael The Global Positioning System and GIS: An Introduction Lowe, Philip; Marsden, Terry and Whatmore, Sarah (eds) Regulating Agriculture Marsden, Terry; Lowe, Philip and Whatmore, Sarah (eds) Labour and Locality: Uneven Development and the Rural Labour Process Marsden, Terry; Lowe, Philip and Whatmore, Sarah (eds) Rural Restructuring: Global Processes and Their Responses Whatmore, Sarah; Marsden, Terry and Lowe, Philip (eds) Gender and Rurality Whatmore, Sarah; Marsden, Terry and Lowe, Philip (eds) Rural Enterprise: Shifting Perspectives on Small-Scale Production Martopo, Sugeng and Mitchell, Bruce (eds) Bali: Balancing Environment, Economy and Culture Ould-Mey, Mohameden Global Restructuring and Peripheral States: The Carrot and the Stick in Mauritania Redclift, Michael and Benton, Ted (eds) Social Theory and the Global Environment Thomas–Slayter, Barbara and Rocheleau, Dianne Gender, Environment, and Development in Kenya: A Grassroots Perspective Wallach, Bret Losing Asia: Modernization and the Culture of Development Wennberg, John E. Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care Wilson, David and Huff, James O. (eds) Marginalized Places and Populations: A Structurationist Agenda     

人文与经济地理学的传承与创新：青年学者的责任

2018年1月27-28日,人文与经济地理学青年论坛暨第二届中国科学院区域可持续发展分析与模拟重点实验室青年论坛在北京国家会议中心成功举办。青年论坛以“人文与经济地理学的传承与创新：青年学者的责任与行动”为主题。莅临会场的院士、前辈和主管部门领导纷纷表示鼓励、支持和关怀青年人才的更快更好的成长。在这样的背景下,以这次青年论坛主题为题,在新时代传承和创新人文与经济地理学,青年学者责无旁贷,追寻地理学家的精神,集中探讨青年学者的责任与行动,展示人文与经济地理青年学者的思考和风采。     

Book Reviews

Committee on Protection and Management of Pacific Northwest Anadromous Salmonids Upstream: Salmon and Society in the Pacific Northwest

Cook, Ian G; Doel, Marcus A. and Li, Rex (eds.) Fragmented Asia: Regional Integration and National Disintegration in Pacific Asia

Crush, Jonathan Power of Development

de Blij, H. J., and Muller, Peter O. Physical Geography of the Global Environment

Hayward, David J. International Trade and Regional Economies: The Impacts of European Integration on the United States

Kennedy, Michael The Global Positioning System and GIS: An Introduction

Lowe, Philip; Marsden, Terry and Whatmore, Sarah (eds) Regulating Agriculture

Marsden, Terry; Lowe, Philip and Whatmore, Sarah (eds) Labour and Locality: Uneven Development and the Rural Labour Process

Marsden, Terry; Lowe, Philip and Whatmore, Sarah (eds) Rural Restructuring: Global Processes and Their Responses

Whatmore, Sarah; Marsden, Terry and Lowe, Philip (eds) Gender and Rurality

Whatmore, Sarah; Marsden, Terry and Lowe, Philip (eds) Rural Enterprise: Shifting Perspectives on Small-Scale Production

Martopo, Sugeng and Mitchell, Bruce (eds) Bali: Balancing Environment, Economy and Culture

Ould-Mey, Mohameden Global Restructuring and Peripheral States: The Carrot and the Stick in Mauritania

Redclift, Michael and Benton, Ted (eds) Social Theory and the Global Environment

Thomas–Slayter, Barbara and Rocheleau, Dianne Gender, Environment, and Development in Kenya: A Grassroots Perspective

Wallach, Bret Losing Asia: Modernization and the Culture of Development

Wennberg, John E. Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care

Wilson, David and Huff, James O. (eds) Marginalized Places and Populations: A Structurationist Agenda     

Hydrological Research and the Status of Physical Geography Journals: Increasing the Impact of Physical Geography in the Academy

Physical geographers are often confronted with the decision of whether to publish in geography or nongeography journals. The present study seeks to quantify the number of articles with a significant hydrology content published in geography versus hydrology journals by physical geographers from 1997 to 2002 using the ISI Web of Knowledge electronic database. Of 690 articles published in the 10 selected geography and hydrology journals during the period of study, over four‐fifths were published in hydrology journals. Based on our interpretation of the data, the comparatively smaller audience in geography and the risk of acquiring fewer citations compels physical geographers to publish in hydrology journals for increased visibility. A critical mass of physical geographers should consider publishing some of their work in physical geography journals to elevate the status of geography in the academy.     

Geography's Profile in Public Debate “Inside the Beltway” and the National Academies*

Geographers continue to engage in public debate “inside the Beltway” by participation within and through federal agencies and through the National Research Council. Several examples illustrate the level and kind of this engagement, which has been concentrated on environmental and spatial data and analysis themes. Most professional geographers have the opportunity to engage in this form of public debate through participation in the activities of the National Research Council. The level of this participation has been surprisingly strong, given the small size of the community of professional geographers, and has helped to shape both U.S. and international research agendas relevant to geographic research. Participation, however, is concentrated in a few programs and individuals, raising questions about the sustainability of geography's voice in this public activity.