John Dewey’s metaphysical ground-map and its implications for geographical inquiry

John Dewey was the most significant and influential thinker associated with the American philosophy commonly known as pragmatism. Drawing on Dewey’s writings as well as the work of Deweyan scholars, I endeavor to explain Dewey’s unique contribution to philosophical discourse and how his overlooked scholarship can inform geographical inquiry. After an introduction, I provide a background understanding of Dewey and his context as well as the use of his philosophy in geography and sociology. I then turn to an exposition of Dewey’s metaphysics which are the heart of his philosophy. My discussion breaks his metaphysics into four parts: nature and continuity, contingency and change, situated sociality, and transaction. The subsequent section argues for Dewey’s distinction and value by arguing a particular implication of Dewey’s work for geography—a reconceptualization of place—and more general propositions about what a Dewey-informed geography would, at minimum, entail. A brief conclusion summarizes the Deweyan vision in the context of geographical inquiry.     

War,by Conservation

In this paper I argue that there has been a critical shift towards war by conservation in which conservation, security and counter insurgency (COIN) are becoming more closely integrated. In this new phase concerns about global security constitute important underlying drivers, while biodiversity conservation is of secondary importance. This is a significant break from earlier phases of fortress conservation and war for biodiversity. In order to develop a better understanding of these shifts, this paper analyzes the existing conceptual approaches, notably environmental security which seeks to understand how resources cause or shape conflict, and political ecology approaches that focus on the struggles over access to and control over resources. However, this paper indicates the limitations of these existing debates for understanding recent shifts, which require a fresh approach. I chart the rise of the narrative I call poachers-as-terrorists, which relies on the invocation of the idea that ivory is the white gold of Jihad, a phrase which is closely associated with an Elephant Action League (EAL) report in 2012 which claimed Al Shabaab used ivory to fund its operations. This narrative is being extended and deepened by a powerful alliance of states, conservation NGOs, Private Military Companies and international organizations, such that it is shaping policies, especially in areas of US geo-strategic interest in Sub-Saharan Africa. As a result conservation is becoming a core element of a global security project, with significant implications for conceptual debates and for conservation practice on the ground.     

Isotopic order, biogeochemical processes, and earth history: Goldschmidt lecture, Davos, Switzerland, August 2002

The impetus to interpret carbon isotopic signals comes from an understanding of isotopic fractionations imposed by living organisms. That understanding rests in turn on studies of enzymatic isotope effects, on fruitful concepts of isotopic order, and on studies of the distribution of ¹³C both between and within biosynthetic products. In sum, these studies have shown that the isotopic compositions of biological products are governed by reaction kinetics and by pathways of carbon flow.Isotopic compositions of individual compounds can indicate specific processes or environments. Examples include biomarkers which record the isotopic compositions of primary products in aquatic communities, which indicate that certain bacteria have used methane as a carbon source, and which show that some portions of marine photic zones have been anaerobic. In such studies, the combination of structural and isotopic lines of evidence reveals relationships between compounds and leads to process-related thinking. These are large steps. Reconstruction of the sources and histories of molecular fossils redeems much of the early promise of organic geochemistry by resolving and clarifying paleoenviron-mental signals. In turn, contemplation of this new information is driving geochemists to study microbial ecology and evolution, oceanography, and sedimentology.     

“Twenty years is yesterday”: Science, multinational mining, and the political ecology of trust in New Caledonia

To date, the scholarly literature has insufficiently investigated the micropolitical ecology of trust, the ways that different interests and expectations within a community can differentially mediate trust relationships between members of that community and an exogenous institution. This study explores the complexities of, and intra-community disagreements about, Kanak villagers’ decisions about whether to trust information provided by, or seemingly in support of, a multinational mining project in southern New Caledonia (South Pacific). An indigenous protest group challenged the company’s claims that the construction and operation of a refinery would have no harmful effects on local ecosystems. The company construed this opposition as stemming from fear based in ignorance, to which the solution lay in the provision of technical information. However, villagers disagreed as to whether this information was reliable. Meanwhile, many project employees joined the protest group. I argue that this seeming irony may be explained by examining the role of affiliation - defined here as a sense of solidarity with a group, and the desire to maintain that relationship - in establishing trust. Culturally-informed expectations of long-term social relationships and the reciprocal power these entailed, and concerns about long-term economic security, played a large role in determining which affiliations people chose to privilege, which in turn influenced which “scientific” information they chose to trust. Ultimately, I argue for the usefulness of a deeper understanding of relationships between trust, affiliation, and expectations of long-term social and economic relations in analyzing lay persons’ evaluations of science.     

Campus sustainability at the edges: Emotions,relations, and bio-cultural connections

The university campus is often considered a key site for the development of environmental sustainability initiatives. At the same time, the concept and practice of sustainability has been critiqued for its lack of conceptual clarity and its proneness to co-optation by neoliberal institutions and organizations. Using a just sustainabilities framework, this article strives to respond to this tension by exploring the possibility of a campus sustainability at the edges, one that is interested in engaging the broader socio-spatial context of a university as well as in tapping into the emotional and relational realms of fostering more sustainable socio-ecological assemblages. Through a case study analysis of the Philadelphia Urban Creators (PUC), a youth-led organization operating within the Temple University-North Philadelphia interface, I find that grassroots sustainability actors possess important knowledge for understanding how sustainability can be a tool for restoring emotional affinity with the environment as well as for enacting transformative socio-ecological change in the urban university context and beyond. Through these explorations, my purpose is twofold: (1) to envision a more diverse, inclusive, and meaningful campus sustainability model that seeks to confront urban crises such as gentrification, racialized poverty, and mass incarceration, and (2) to incorporate emotion and affect geographies into the just sustainabilities research agenda.     

On the role of Geography in Earth System Science

Geography is fundamentally a non-reductionist and holistic discipline. While we tend to focus on particular areas (Physical, Human, etc.), or we focus on specific successes (Quaternary studies for example) this paper argues that selling Geography though emphasizing these specific areas or strengths misses a major potential contribution our discipline can make. While most sciences have become reductionist over the last two centuries, they have recently discovered that the Earth is a “complex system” with “emergent” properties that cannot be explained through understanding the components parts individually. Many of these sciences are now contributing to a major effort called Earth System Science, an integrative super-discipline that accepts that biophysical sciences and social sciences are equally important in any attempts to understand the state, and future of the Earth System. This paper argues that the development of Earth System Sciences is a risk for Geography since it is, in effect, Geography with few Geographers. While representing a threat, the development of Earth System Science is also an opportunity. I argue that Geography could be a lead discipline among the other biophysical and social sciences that are now building Earth System Science to address key problems within the Earth System. While I am optimistic about the potential of Geography to take this leadership role, I am pessimistic about the likelihood that we will. I provide suggestions on how we might take on the leadership of Earth System Science including individual engagement and a refinement of tertiary training of some Geography students.     

地幔交代作用：研究进展、问题及对策

有关地幔交代作用的研究始于７０年代早期。近２０年来研究工作的贡献是使人们对与地幔演化和不均一性有关的地幔交代作用特征和交代作用机制有了更多的了解，地幔交作用很复杂，它取决于交代作用发生的时间、构造环境、交代介质的种类以及与不同深度地幔内各种地质事件有关的流体的组成。进一步深入开发有关交代作用成因、机制及其与各种地质事件关系的研究，对于深入认识岩石圈地幔的演化和不均一特征具有十分重要的意义。对不同构     

Natures of risk: Capital,rule, and production of difference

This purpose of this paper is to propose starting points for a critically informed understanding of the role of risk in contemporary environmental practice, and to flesh out some preliminary implications of the work risk does as a logic though which environment is managed. Taking cues from scholarship interrogating the production of capitalist natures (e.g., Smith, 1984/2008; Braun, 2000, Heynan et al., 2007). I ask what it means in environmental terms to put risk at the intersection of capital and rule--to conceive of it as something that to paraphrase Dillon (2008, p. 319) makes the combination of capital and rule possible, and to interpret risk as something which (as Martin (2007b, p. 67) has suggested) undertakes to create the very conditions that make new wealth possible. I argue that in order to understand the intersection of capital and rule in environmental terms, risk must be understood as an epistemic framework and political ontology consistent with the advent of capitalist political economy--not as an occasion of danger or geographical condition of insecurity. Using difference as a starting point to attempt to think through connections between risk and accumulation I suggest that risk is a knowledge practice instrumental to accumulation and the politics of rule that secure it, which obscures the functioning of difference and processes of differentiation.     

Another Source of Atmospheric Methane

The atmospheric concentration of methane is steadily increasin.Lacking of precise estimates of source and sink strengths for the atmospheric methane severely limits the current understanding of the global methane cycle.Agood budget of atmospheric methane can enhance our understanding of the global carbon cycle and global climate change,The known estimates of the main source and sink strengths are gresented in this paper,In terms of carbon isotopic studies,it is evidenced that the earth‘s primodial methane,which was trapped in the earth during its formation,may be another source of methane,with extensive,earth‘s degassing which is calleld the “breathing“ process of the earth and played an important role in the formation of the promitive atmosphere,large amounts of methane were carried from the deep interior to the surface and then found its way into the atmosphere.     

Research dissonance

While academics increasingly recognize the complexity of phenomena that do not easily conform to our reductive understandings, it sometimes remains difficult to reconcile this with a need for clear and conclusive arguments. In this article I share the contradictory forces and unresolved discrepancies in my own work as a means to better understanding the process of coming to terms with empirical and theoretical messiness. In particular, I draw on the Theory of Cognitive Dissonance to better understand the psychological influence this concept has in pushing us to make sense of the world in a way that downplays contradictions, counter-trends, complexity, gaps and unresolved loose ends. Having identified this largely subconscious dynamic, the pursuit for an agentic suspension of the need for cognitive harmony can be a productive means for thinking through the results of our research. Using my own work understanding the impact of the U.S.–Mexico border on the Tohono O’odham, an indigenous group based in Arizona and Sonora, I share how the perspectives of the groups with which I work has helped me think through contradiction in writing up the results of my research. For a more complete understanding I must embrace the counter-currents at play and alternative understandings of these events and places-even if I cannot fully explain away such incongruent forces.     

Political transformation,urban policy and the state in London's Docklands

The contemporary restructuring of urban space in the United Kingdom can be understood in terms of much broader social, political, and economic changes. This paper provides an analysis of this experience in London's Docklands, as a way of highlighting the connections between these social relations. We can best understand these changes by drawing upon regulation theory, which posits a firm, but dynamic, link between economic and political processes. Through an analysis of urban policy changes, political struggles, and economic shifts in London's Docklands, I argue for a more central role for the state and social movements in the understanding of social regulation and urban change. Finally, the paper considers the establishment of an Urban Development Corporation in the area in 1981, which represents an attempt by the central government to establish a new regime of economic and political life in the area. This has produced important conflicts at a local level, which typify the conflictual nature of attempts to restructure the economic and political relations of urban locales.     

流体包裹体面的研究背景、现状及发展前景

在地质流体研究领域，流体包裹体面（Fluid Inclusion Plane-FIP)作为能将地质流体的活动与特定构造和岩浆作用相联系的一种手段，正在发挥越来越重要的作用，并成为流体包裹体研究领域的一个热点。本文对流体包裹体面的研究背景及现状进行了详细的阐述，指出它在地质流体及相关研究领域具有十分广阔的应用前景。     

Are livestock a troublesome commodity?

Rather than making a uniform case for understanding the neoliberalization of ranching and pastoralism, the articles in this volume show how everyday practices are made through historically and geographically specific struggles over the characteristics of production, exchange and rule, in which livestock play a particularly important role. Collectively, I believe the articles in this volume highlight the significant relationship between cattle and capitalism, and make a compelling argument that to understand the material implications of neoliberalism we need to pay more attention to livestock as an important and rapidly changing medium of livelihood production and accumulation strategy around the world.     

Risk and vulnerability analysis in practice: evaluation of analyses conducted in Swedish municipalities

Risk and vulnerability analysis (RVA) can benefit the process of preventing and preparing for disasters, both by generating a basis for making decisions and by enhancing risk awareness, safety culture and response capacity through the RVA process itself. In studying and understanding the practices related to RVA, insights can be gained regarding ways in which the RVA can be improved in society, as well as into how methods for RVA can be designed to suit the particular context. However, studies of this sort are rare. This paper presents an evaluation of RVA performed by Swedish municipalities, which are important actors in the Swedish emergency management system. This is done by employing a systematic, design science approach outlined in the paper. Document studies and interviews were used to collect data on the analyses performed by the municipalities, and the evaluation shows that there is room for improvement. The results can be especially relevant for municipalities developing their RVA practices, as well as for other actors performing similar types of analyses.     

The effects of stress on reactions in the Earth: Sometimes rather mean,usually normal,always important

Stress affects chemical processes on all scales in the Earth but the magnitude of its effect is debated. Here, I give a new synthesis of the theory that describes the effects of stress on chemistry, elaborating upon work in Materials Science which is built from fundamental thermodynamic laws, and show its significance in Earth Science. There are separate but compatible relationships describing what happens (1) at interfaces and (2) within grains. (1) The main chemical effects of stress in the Earth are due to variations in normal stress along grain interfaces and between interfaces with different orientations. For reactions involving diffusion these variations give effects on mineral stability broadly equivalent to pressure changes of (molar volume)/(molar volume change during reaction) × (stress variation). The volume ratio is generally large and so the effects of normal stress variations are always important since all stressed rocks have interfaces supporting different normal stresses. There is no global chemical equilibrium in a stressed system, so reaction kinetics contribute to ongoing evolution until stresses relax: this evolution can include deformation by diffusion creep and pressure solution, possibly with new mineral growth. These effects are relevant for predicting the conditions for reactions involving fluids, such as serpentinite formation and breakdown (relevant for the Earth's volatile cycles) and for other reactions such as ringwoodite breakdown (relevant for understanding the 660 km mantle discontinuity). (2) Within stressed solid solution grains it is not possible to define chemical potentials of all chemical components since one has to be specified as “immobile.” The chemical potential of a “mobile” component such as an exchange vector can be defined. It depends on the “partial molar strain,” a second rank tensor defining the variation in unit cell geometry with composition. In cubic crystals the partial molar strain is isotropic and the chemical potential of a mobile component depends on mean stress. In other crystal systems the partial molar strain is anisotropic and the chemical potential depends on a “weighted” mean stress; orientation as well as magnitude of stress has an influence. I propose “chemical palaeopiezometry”—the possibility of measuring past stress levels via chemistry. Examples show that stress variations in hundreds of MPa to GPa are required to produce 2% variations in composition but high stresses and/or precise chemical analyses will allow this proposal to be tested. High stresses around inclusions and dislocations could be targeted. So, the weighted mean stress inside grains has an effect which is relatively minor although potentially valuable in explaining chemical variations; the normal stress at interfaces plays the main role in chemical processes and its effects are of significant magnitude.     

Legitimization through patronage? Strategies for political control beyond ethno-regional claims in Darjeeling,India

This paper asks how contending political leaders legitimize their authority in a competitive authoritarian regime. It contends that ‘legitimization through patronage’ is an important means of convincing the public of the rightfulness of a leader’s authority when ‘ideology-based normative legitimacy’ is declining and the formal electoral route is not available. Drawing on an understanding of legitimacy that accounts for leaders’ strategies and public receptions, the paper seeks to explore the moral norms and values on the basis of which followers evaluate leaders’ performance. Drawing on anthropological studies of patronage in South Asia not only helps to transcend an exclusively instrumental understanding of patronage by stressing its moral dimension but also complements comparative politics’ focus on the national level by studying the everyday processes through which political leaders’ legitimacy is locally constructed and contested in patronage relations. Evidence from Darjeeling in northern West Bengal/India (where the State’s preferential treatment of a regional party claiming leadership of a movement for regional autonomy has contributed to the establishment of a dominant party regime) highlights patronage’s potential as a legitimating strategy – but it also reveals its practical limits. While the establishment of resource monopolies over developmental funding helped leaders of the ruling party to “feed” their support networks and foster reputations as selfless “social workers”, differing bases for the evaluation of leaders, the growing expectations of followers, and dependence on external patronage resources limited the long-term success of patronage as a legitimating strategy. This, in turn, enabled the State to curtail demands for autonomy by controlling regional elite construction.     

江南钨矿带桂林郑钼钨矿床钼的赋存状态、时空分布及其研究意义

安徽桂林郑钼钨矿床位于江南钨矿带北部,是目前区内唯一钼储量达到大型的钼钨矿床。本文在对该矿床地质特征和已有成果总结基础上,详细观察了各代表性矿化蚀变样品的岩相学特征,提出该矿床具镁质矽卡岩矿床特征,是桂林郑花岗斑岩熔体与奥陶系白云质灰岩地层交代的产物。矿石类型可分为靠近岩体(100m)浸染状矿石和远离岩体( 100m)的条带状矿石,分别赋存在接触交代矽卡岩和层控矽卡岩中。桂林郑矿床的矿石矿物为富钼白钨矿(钼钙矿-白钨矿系列),可分为三个世代,分别形成于无水矽卡岩阶段(Sch-Ⅰ)和含水矽卡岩-氧化物阶段(Sch-Ⅱ和Sch-Ⅲ),辉钼矿仅在浸染状矿石富钼白钨矿(Sch-Ⅲ)边部少量发育。不同矿石类型、不同世代富钼白钨矿的电子探针成分分析显示,富钼白钨矿的钼含量(MoO_3%)在5.75%～71.02%之间,均值为46.00%(n=224),总体具有超常富钼的特点;从无水矽卡岩阶段到含水矽卡岩-氧化物阶段(早→晚)、从浅部的条带状矿石到深部的浸染状矿石(浅→深),富钼白钨矿MoO_3含量有降低趋势。桂林郑钼钨矿床是首个以富钼白钨矿为主要矿石矿物的钼-多金属矿床,这一特殊钼钨矿床的发现深化了矽卡岩钼钨矿床的成因认识,同时对江南钨矿带内区域成矿规律与找矿勘探工作的推进提供了依据。     

Virtualizing Los Angeles: Pierre Levy, <Emphasis Type="Italic">The Shield</Emphasis>, and http://theshieldrap.proboards45.com/

I explore how Pierre Levy’s virtualization works between actual places, television, and the Internet by referencing the real landscapes of Los Angeles, the visualized landscapes of the FX network television show The Shield, and the cyberscapes of . Unlike current Deleuzean-based theories of visualization that privilege the passage from the virtual to the actual, Levy focuses instead on how virtualization moves back from the real/actual toward the virtual. I argue that this philosophical reversal illustrates the way in which the virtual constitutes the viewer/consumer and thus functions to resituate the virtual within the body through the use of digital landscapes. I further argue, using The Shield as the modality, that the virtual is necessarily an element of the very body which it serves to constitute because the virtual is indeed an essential part of the determination of the geographies of every concrete biocultural body. My example of The Shield becomes the means by which we can bring the force of the virtual, in the form of web-based landscapes, to bear on our experience. I use the show and its Internet counterpart as the catalyst for an expansion of the margin of indetermination constitutive of our technically-facilitated embodiment. By further relating the TV show to our seemingly playful interactions with the digital landscape, I explore how this interaction crosses multiple scales and multiple viewing modalities and further blurs the borders of experiential reality and the visualization of fantasized landscapes. The Shield’s representations of the Los Angeles landscape become embodied experiences for viewers of the show and by virtualizing the real landscapes of Los Angeles and their televisual counterparts, allows consumers to know the spaces of the city through their virtual experience of place as imagined by the website and its members. Thus, I show how Levy’s virtualization theories can be used to specify the virtual dimension constitutive of human experience.     

Enacting things through numbers: Taking nature into account/ing

In this article I make use of a combination of actor-network-theory, governmentality studies and feminist studies of science to show how nature is done or enacted within politics and administration. In particular I show how it relates to the theories and practices of economics and accounting. I explore the process by which the ‘critical limits’ of nature under the impact of acidification was created as a part of the politics and negotiations about acid rain. I demonstrate that even though the outcome was not ‘Nature’ as such, understood as a form of moral high-ground, the effect of this process was to produce ‘a nature as a whole’, in a process of unification. This I argue can only be understood relationally: ‘Nature’ is taken into account by way of accounting. In doing this I engage with Latour’s work on the politics of Nature and argue that nature is not necessarily such a deadly tool to politics as is sometimes taken for granted. Before we throw Nature out with our empirical studies of sciences, natures and politics, in the plural, we need to look first at how Nature-wholes emerge, are enacted, and take part in politics.