More than `Anglo-American', it is `Western': hegemony in geography from a Hungarian perspective

The paper assesses the inequalities of the production of geographical knowledge mainly against the backdrop of the East-West relations, which still dominate Hungarian practice. However, it also offers examples of Anglo-American hegemony making itself felt more acutely; or of Hungarian geographers, at the receiving end of these dimensions of hegemony, producing hegemony in a different system of relations. Investigating the political economic power relations underlying this hegemony and the social agents involved in `hegemony-producing' helps establish potential strategies of putting an end to the inequalities of academic knowledge production. Some possibilities of these strategies are outlined.     

Haute cuisine versus healthy nutrition: cultural gradients in Europe and the geography of baby food

The article deals with the problem, how the geography of baby food in Europe may be explained by cultural patterns, differences in healthcare systems and standards of living. A survey, conducted in 12 European countries, revealed differences and similarities in gastronomic preferences and healthcare attitudes. National food markets and dietary targets reflect the pressure of internationalization on cultural traditions. Special attention is paid to the adaptation strategies of multinationals, operating in different cultural environments. The requirements to the qualities of baby food (the emphasis on being healthy or rather tasty, the choice of producers, etc.) reflect the whole variety of lifestyles in European countries, their economic opportunities, stability of cultural traditions, innovative potential.     

The political geography of religion: historical state-church relations in Europe and recent challenges

Historical processes of state formation and nation building are crucial for an understanding of the geography of religions and churches in Europe. Each country has developed its own model of state-church relations, giving rise to a ‘bewildering variety’ as Grace Davie aptly remarks. The aim of this paper is to bring some order to this variety by developing a framework for the comparative study of church-state relations based on Stein Rokkan’s famous conceptual map and recent extensions of it to Central and Eastern Europe by John Madeley. According to that framework Europe has been divided into three mono-confessional (Roman Catholic, Lutheran, and Eastern Orthodox) blocs and two multi-confessional culture belts from Northwest to Southeast, and from Northeast to Southeast. This historical pattern has been challenged by secularisation, which started with the Enlightenment and the French Revolution (Western Europe) and the Russian Revolution (Eastern Europe until the velvet revolutions of 1989/1991) and then became widespread after the ‘cultural revolutions’ of the 1960s. A second challenge has to do with globalisation and its consequences, such as massive immigration and the rise of immigrant religions, and in general deterritorialisation, which means the disembeddedness of religion from its national territory. A third challenge concerns reterritorialisation at other (supranational, regional, transnational, and local) scales, of which the new territorial order of the European Union seems to be the most important. Finally, this paper serves as an introduction to the case studies on church-state relations in this special issue.     

Proximity,subjectivity, and space: Rethinking distance in human geography

This paper critically reviews the current status of the concept of distance in human geography in order to argue that recent experimentally-driven work in construal-level theory offers ample opportunities for recasting distance as a key geographical trope. After analysing the four entangled dimensions of distance revealed by construal-level theory (spatial distance; temporal distance; social distance; and hypothetical distance), the paper articulates this research program from experimental psychology with geographical work on non-representational theory, geographical imaginations/imaginative geographies, learning as a geographical process, TimeSpace theorising, and ontogenetic understandings of space. It is argued that the subjective understanding of distance afforded by construal-level theory can rescue distance from its entrenched association with positivistic geography and spatial analysis.     

Contemporary fiddling in human geography while Rome burns: has quantitative analysis been largely abandoned--and should it be?

Chris Hamnett [Geoforum 34 (2003) 1] has certainly been provocative in his claim that the nature of much contemporary human geography means that the discipline ‘will cease to be taken seriously in the world beyond the narrow confines of academe’ (p. 1). Much of his critique focuses on what he terms ‘post-modernism, new cultural geography and the interpretative turn’ (p. 2) practiced by those he identifies as ‘the new intellectual dilettanti’ (p. 3). In responding, however, our concern is not with that aspect of his critique, but rather with Hamnett’s misrepresentation of one section of contemporary human geography.     

Geography’s changing lexicon: measuring disciplinary change in Anglophone human geography through journal content analysis

Much writing on changing trends in geographical practices is based on subjective interpretations of the discipline’s scholarly output. This paper introduces a data source which provides quantitative information on the discipline’s lexicon through full-text searching of the contents of five of the discipline’s major Anglophone journals. Analysis of the large data set identifies two main trends in geography’s language and practices during the period 1950-1998: one group of terms associated with quantitative work became prominent in the 1970s but declined in relative importance thereafter - though by no means disappearing from the lexicon; the other, comprising a range of terms generally associated with cultural and social geography, increased in prominence from the 1980s on.     

Beyond nationalism: Three visions of the European Union and their implications for the linguistic regime of its institutions

The linguistic diversity in the European Union is generally viewed as an essential component of the European identity, but the linguistic regime of the EU institutions (with eleven official and working languages) is not undisputed. In addition, the upcoming enlargements will complicate greatly the continuation of the present practices as new Member States bring new official languages. As a result, the debate about possible reforms is likely to be boosted by the necessity to prepare EU institutions for further enlargment. The present regime of institutional multilingualism is criticised from different angles, resulting in three options for the future. In this paper the linguistic regime of EU institutions is discussed in relation to general ideas about the nature of this supranational political system. Supranationalism is treated here as a program to supersede nationalism. Three variants are distinguished: pacified nationalism, neo-nationalism and post-nationalism. The paper examines how these different visions of Europe shed different lights on the issue of multilingualism (in terms of communication, identity and power) and its institutionalisation in the linguistic regime of the core instituions of the European Union. Although the three models are compatible with several arrangements, they support or oppose them for different reasons. Besides, they differ regarding the significance of the linguistic regime of the EU institutions for the whole polity and their ability to steer linguistic practices.     

German research in transport geography: Life in the space between objective analysis and political advice1

Transportation has been a bone of public contention for decades, the discussion ranging from traffic-calming measures in individual streets to the continual growth of global transport movements. In the last 20 years transport topics have also received increased attention within the discipline of geography, be it academic, professional or in schools, but the topics addressed by today's transport geography have almost nothing in common with the roots of the field. This means that transport geography is a handed-down, hyphenated sub-branch of geography in name only. In fact, the name refers to a field of geography that is experiencing not only all the birthing pains and uncertainties of a discipline in the process of defining a new direction for itself, but also the sense of excitement and thrill of the new. This paper sets out to show both the role transport geography plays as part of human geography with its concepts and paradigms, and also the role it plays within the political debate on transport. An appeal is made to geographers to become more involved in this branch of our science.     

A century and counting: Geographical research on Guatemala in historical perspective

In his recent book Putting Science in its Place: Geographies of Scientific Knowledge (2004), David Livingstone challenges historians of geography to locate that history in space and places, as well as time. Using the national/cultural space that is Guatemala, this paper plots some of the co-ordinates, contours, and questions that such a geographic history might entail. Particular emphasis is placed on providing a first approximation of the contours the history of geographic research in, and on, Guatemala. The main focus is on the work of self-identified geographers, though many scholars in cognate fields, especially historians, archaeologists, and anthropologists have made important contributions to this history. Clear phases in this history are evident, starting in the late 19th century with the work of the German geographer Karl Sapper. North American geographers came to dominate the record in the post-WWII period. The current phase promises not only a new generation of researchers, but also new directions as well as some continuities with topics and questions with a century-old time-depth. This paper seeks to contribute to the largely inchoate project of producing histories of geography at the regional, national, and continental scales for Latin America.     

Internal colonisation, hegemony and coercion: Investigating migration to Southern Lazio, Italy, in the 1930s

This paper investigates the Italian fascist regime’s use of internal colonisation as part of a wider ruralisation policy aimed at promoting population growth, curbing rural-urban migration, staunching emigration, and halting the spread of industrial urbanisation. By focusing on the case study of the Pontine Marshes, the paper demonstrates how, through targeted selection procedures aimed at displacing defined social and political undesirables, migrants were chosen and effectively coerced into migrating to the “fascist” landscape of the marshes. The area, reclaimed and developed in the 1930s, was celebrated as a sign of the regime’s engineering and social success. The paper utilises Antonio Gramsci’s thought on hegemony, and argues that the overt use of coercion hints at the fact that fascism, although ideologically totalitarian and hegemonic, was contested. Although statisticians, demographers and state bureaucrats were organised and institutionalised in the construction of hegemony based on consent, fascism based itself more in coercion than in passive consent in the case of internal colonisation.     

European conquest, Indian subjection and the conflicts of colonization: Brazil in the early modern era

This paper discusses the questions that emerged from the contact established by Europeans and Indians during the early modern era in what is today Brazil. It aims at demonstrating that dual structuralist models, which overemphasize material arguments of economic expansion and place conquerors and conquered in opposite ends, fail to grasp the rich cultural history embedded in the encounters that took place in that period. Colonization was a multifarious process that involved dealing with incompatible world views and often resulted in a complex history of temporary alliances, of conflict and strife, of negotiation and dialogue. The conquest and appropriation of the Brazilian territory, and the questions that they provoked, did not always put Europeans and Indians one against the other: not rarely, colonization demanded that the Europeans allied themselves to the natives against other Europeans, and that the natives allied themselves to Europeans against other natives. Even the control of the colony by the mother country should not be understood as a top-down movement, for metropolitan policies did not always have the expected answer from the colony or had differentiated social and spatial impacts there. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

湘东南某市地形地貌对地质灾害发育规律的控制作用分析

地形地貌是崩塌、滑坡、泥石流等地质灾害活动的基础,它在很大程度上决定了崩塌、滑坡、泥石流等地质灾害能否形成及其类型、数量、密度和规模大小。本文基于湘东南详细地质灾害调查成果,对该市不同地貌类型、坡形、坡度以及高程的差异对地质灾害发育规律的控制作用进行了总结分析。     

At the heart of the cultural approach in geography: Thinking space

The way that space is thought of is at the heart of the cultural approach in geography. The passing down of all the components of a culture depends upon the way data is aquired and processed, the results memorized or broadcast. Communication shapes the experience and the knowledge of space and time. It gives to everyone the idea that the real world is doubled by a beyond which plays a central role in social life, since it is upon such a beyond that normative thinking relies and that a significance is given to individual and social life. The spheres of lived-in and known space and time, as well as that of the beyond, vary according to available technologies. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

The competitive advantage of clusters: Cluster organisations and greenfield FDI in the European life sciences industry

This paper examines the effect of cluster organisations on the international competitive advantages of clusters in the European life sciences industry. Data on coordinated cluster organisations are used to assess whether cluster development policies enhance the attractiveness of clusters to multinational corporations (MNCs). We estimate mixed logit models using a sample of 481 greenfield investments by life sciences MNCs in West-European regions during the period 2010–2013. Contrary to the beliefs of policymakers, our results indicate that both the presence of cluster organisations and higher-order activities of cluster organisations have only a small effect in attracting greenfield investments. In addition, cluster organisations help attract economic activities with less specific location requirements, such as production plants and sales and marketing offices. This finding provides valuable insights for policymakers, as investing public funds in cluster organisations is not found to attract high value-added business activities, such as those that occur in headquarters and R&D facilities, which are often the target of such investments.     

The discrepancy in PAMINA between the European image of a cross-border region and cross-border behaviour

Subsidizing cross-border regions is a method to close the gap between citizens and the European Union. This analysis of PAMINA, a cross-border region in the Rhine Valley near Karlsruhe, discusses some of the difficulties of this policy. There are structural mismatches between the scales of different cross-border relations. These vertical mismatches are linked to the differences in the horizontal logics of economic and administrative cross-border relations. Especially cross-border commuting, made possible by European economic integration, has improved the daily life of many inhabitants of this region. Paradoxically this regional success of European economic integration is disconnected from the EU funded cross-border region. They not only relate to different scales, but the same spatial asymmetry generating this cross-border behaviour hinders administrative cross-border cooperation in PAMINA.

Shortage in the midst of plenty: Labour strategies in four Central and Eastern European cities

Labour shortage was an integral feature of the communist system of economic management and one that seemed most unlikely to persist in the face of systemic transformation. A casual examination of the unemployment rates that have emerged throughout most of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) during the course of the past decade might suggest that this early assumption was correct. However, within the region the aggregate rate of joblessness, as well as the behaviour of national output, mask the fact that certain, major urban centres appear to have weathered well the storms caused by exposure to western markets and stringent fiscal and monetary policies. In these centres transformation has meant, to a greater or lesser degree, industrial modernisation and this begs the question of whether the human capital portfolios of the inherited labour force match up to the requirements of the new environment. This paper examines the meaning of the concept of labour shortage and presents the findings from a survey of employers in four leading cities of three major CEE economies designed to elicit if, and how, manpower requirements are being met in the present climate. The results indicate that, somewhat paradoxically, labour shortage persists in the more flexible markets of the post-communist era and that firms do not expect the situation to change radically in the near future. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

The Böllstein Odenwald: evidence for pre- to early Variscan plate convergence in the Central European variscides

New chemical, petrological and structural data characterize the pre- to Early Variscan evolution of the Eastern or Böllstein Odenwald, which forms a part of the Mid-German Crystalline Rise. This part of the Odenwald Crystalline Complex is different to the Western or Bergsträsser Odenwald with respect to the age of the magmatic events, the structures, chemistry and metamorphism. The complex is formed by a large anticline composed of an older metamorphosed volcano-sedimentary unit and a younger metagranitoid core. The volcano-sedimentary sequence represents a relic of a pre-Variscan accretionary prism with relics of older island-arc volcanics, formed in front of a continental margin. During the Silurian to Lower Devonian the prism was intruded by S-type granitoids. The acidic intrusions were followed by a series of basic intrusives with an island-arc signature. After the magmatic phases the complex was metamorphosed under probably pre-Variscan medium pressure and high temperature conditions. During Variscan times the rocks underwent multiple penetrative deformations under pressure-temperature conditions or partial melting. The main deformation produced isoclinal folds and had a sense of movement of top to the west. During subsequent deformation the anticlinal structure and the Otzberg fault zone were formed and later overprinted by two generations of open folds with vertical and horizontal axes.The rocks of the Böllstein Odenwald document multiple plate convergences of pre- to Early Variscan to Upper Visean age. Correspondence to: U. Altenberger     

Amino acid diagenesis in the marine bivalve Arctica islandica Linné from northwest European sites: Only time and temperature?

Collections of the molluscan species Arctica islandica from seven sites in Norway, Scotland and the North Sea, ranging in age from recent to Early Pleistocene, have been sampled for amino acid analyses. The shells were sampled in profiles through the valves at different distances from the umbo. In the fossil material a general trend of increasing degree of isoleucine (lle) epimerisation and decreasing amino acid concentrations were found going from the inner part of the valve to the outer. Although less pronounced, there is a similar trend from the central part of the valve to the margin. As the concentration of alloisoleucine (alle) remains nearly constant, the observed changes in alle/lle ratios are a result of variations in the amount of isoleucine. The amino acid composition is fairly uniform in recent shells and the observed gradients are established in mid-Holocene samples. Therefore, it is suggested that the gradients are established during rapid early degradation of the protein, possibly due to microbiological activity. Differences in alle/lle ratios observed in molluscs from sites of the same age and same thermal history could be explained by differences in the exposure to amino-acid-consuming microorganisms during the very early stage of diagenesis.     

平和长远、散中见聚:欧华文学的历史进程和现状

欧华文学分布于欧洲19个国家,有着一种文化中和的历史特质,既全身心融入世界文化海洋,又较自然地沟通于民族文化传统,表现出平和长远的文化建设的姿态。对异质文化的互补观照,对中西"第三元"文化的自觉探寻,对"灵魂的语言"和"工具的语言"的沟通,都使得欧华文学达到了很高的文学境界。