How Does Castells's The Rise of the Network Society Contribute to Research in Human Geography? A Citation Content and Context Analysis

Manuel Castells seminal work The Rise of the Network Society (RNS) is one of the top ten most frequently cited publications in human geography. RNS comprehensively investigates the theory of network society, which is of great significance to human geography. Citation count, however, cannot reflect the specific contribution of RNS to human geography. By jointly using citation content and context analysis on 898 journal articles on human geography, this study examines the citations of RNS to clarify the contribution. Results show that (1) “space of flows” is most frequently cited and (2) citations of RNS serve nine citation functions in human geography studies. Eight of them reveal three types of knowledge development contribution, namely, knowledge dissemination, knowledge inheritance, and knowledge innovation. Among the nine citation functions, the critique function is most thought-provoking, revealing the deficiencies of RNS: (1) spatial dualism is abstract and impersonal, (2) “space of places” is as important as “space of flows” in the network society, and (3) the lack of abundant data limits the development of empirical research on the space of flows and network of city. These critical citations provide implications for the development of network society theory in human geography. Key Words: bibliometric analysis, citation context analysis, content analysis, knowledge development, network society.     

卡斯特“网络社会理论”对于人文地理学的知识贡献

以引用曼纽尔·卡斯特《网络社会的崛起》的898篇英文文献和363篇中文文献为数据基础,综合运用引文内容分析和引文情境分析方法,基于中外引文的分析与对比,研究了“网络社会理论”对于人文地理学的知识贡献。研究发现：“流动空间”是国内外文献引用最多的理论观点,且国内研究的引用比例明显高于国外研究;国内外研究对于“网络社会理论”的关注点存在差异,国内研究主要聚焦于网络社会的外在空间形态及其的转型,而国外研究则更加关注网络社会的内在空间动力;引文内容承担着9种引用功能以及3类知识贡献,体现了“网络社会理论”对于人文地理学不同程度的影响。其中,批判性引用揭示了“网络社会理论”的不足之处,指出了“空间二元论”的抽象性、地方空间的重要性以及研究数据、方法和时代背景的局限性,为未来“网络社会理论”在人文地理学领域的应用与创新提供了新的启示。     

Authorship,Collaboration, and Gender: Fifteen Years of Publication Productivity in Selected Geography Journals

In academia, publication productivity, defined as the number of peer-reviewed articles published and the frequency of citations, is a primary factor in the assessment of tenure and promotion. One of the most cited gender differences in academia is the “productivity puzzle,” which suggests that women publish less than men, thereby affecting every aspect of a woman's academic career. Peer-reviewed articles published in the Annals of the Association of American Geographers (Annals) and The Professional Geographer (PG) between 1995 and 2006, and in four subdisciplinary journals between 2005 and 2009, as well as citation reports, were used to explore whether gender differences are present in publication productivity. Gender differences were evident in the proportion of women authors, the frequency of collaboration, and the number of citations across a broad range of prestigious geographic journals. For all journals studied, women were underrepresented, especially in the authorship positions that equate to notions of respect and merit. Although the number of collaborative articles increased during the study period, single-authored papers are the dominant mode of publication for both men and women for most geographic journals. The authorship patterns for frequently cited articles generally mirror those for all articles. Because the frequency of collaborative publication was high for women, the dual trends of a general increase in publication collaboration and increasing participation of women in academic geography bodes well for increased female productivity as it relates to publishing. Nevertheless, it is important to note that, currently, males as lead or single authors represent the predominant voice of geography within the journals examined in this study.     

An Approach to leaching Applied GIS: Implementation for Local Organizations

Abstract

Geographic information systems (GIS) is a fairly new and evolving curriculum area within geography and other disciplines at colleges and universities in the United States. The challenge of teaching underlying concepts of GIS functionality, the details of computer operation and software interfaces, as well as the contexts of various applications can be a difficult one. At Indiana University of Pennsylvania, a teaching strategy—Client-Life Cycle GIS Project Learning—has been introduced in which students in an upper level GIS course work with local organizations, faculty from other university departments, and governmental entities. This allows students with some GIS background to work with real clients; utilize and operationalize the concepts of the GIS Project Life Cycle; make the connection between data development, analysis, and applications development; provide expertise and needed data to local organizations; and see the utility and impact of their work. A group pilot project from the spring semester of 1998 is discussed to illustrate how students responded to this method of teaching GIS.     

Renaming and Rebranding within U.S. and Canadian Geography Departments, 1990–2014

Between 2000 and 2014, more than thirty geography departments adopted revised or new names, with some entirely dropping geography. Although renaming and rebranding efforts are not new to higher education, the rapid pace at which geography department names have changed raises questions about the discipline's identity and health. We examine the renaming trend within geography programs together with intended and unexpected factors as perceived by faculty. Specifically, we look at the renaming and rebranding trend within the context of four pillars offered by Pattison (1964 Pattison, W. D. 1964. The four traditions of geography. Journal of Geography 63 (5): 211–16.[Taylor &; Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) to define geography's principal academic domains—earth-science, man–land, area/regional studies, and spatial traditions.     

Future Teachers of Geography: Whose Opportunity?

Abstract

Although geography is being revived in the K-12 curriculum, preservice teachers—candidates for the teaching profession—now in our universities are not universally reaping the benefits of cooperative efforts of geography and college of education faculty. Reform is appropriate in both camps. Colleges of education, influenced by many agents, including Certificate/licensing regulations, accrediting agencies, professional organizations, and a stream of reform movements, are bringing education to the level of a true profession. The dimensions of the reform underway and several key players offer great opportunities for geography education and for improving the general climate for teaching excellence in institutions of higher learning. Candidates for the new teaching profession and their education faculty are teaching and learning collaboratively, and conducting research in diverse school districts. Geographers have new reasons and new opportunities to participate in the education of the geography teachers of tomorrow.     

Measuring Research Data Uncertainty in the 2010 NRC Assessment of Geography Graduate Education

Abstract

This article characterizes and measures errors in the 2010 National Research Council (NRC) assessment of research-doctorate programs in geography. This article provides a conceptual model for data-based sources of uncertainty and reports on a quantitative assessment of NRC research data uncertainty for a particular geography doctoral program. Findings indicate that important variables, including faculty totals and allocations and publication counts, are substantially undercounted, with important and negative impacts on program research activity measures. Further, these research measures are highly sensitive to small changes in counts and are particularly problematic for interdisciplinary fields such as geography. We caution against using the 2010 NRC data or metrics for any assessment-oriented study of research productivity.     

Productivity Profiles of PhD-Granting Geography Departments in the Unites States: 1980–1994

In our study, 48 U.S. departments that grant geography PhDs are compared along four measures of academic productivity. Using 1980–1994 as the base period, research productivity of faculty was assessed by counting book titles, as well as authorships in 77 journals. Teaching productivity was determined by placement of PhDs in graduate programs of geography in North America, and by a weighted index of teaching outcomes. Data were summed for departments, but are reported primarily as productivity per person (per FTE count). The results point to a wide variety of departmental profiles, from those departments that appear to emphasize teaching outcomes to those that are more productive in book publishing and journal authorship, with several exhibiting a balance between teaching and research.     

Positionality and Active Learning: Confronting Privilege in Field-Exercise Design

Abstract

University instructors are increasingly drawing on active learning exercises to engender critical thinking skills among students. In this article, we introduce the design and implementation of an active learning exercise about mobility and transportation that we assigned in an introductory human geography class at the University of Georgia. The students' responses and the survey instrument we used to assess the effectiveness of the exercise revealed disappointing results and caused us to think carefully about the role of positionality in designing active learning exercises. In this article, we argue that we need to understand privilege—particularly class privilege—in order to design effective assignments.     

A Q-Method Analysis of Environmental Governance Discourses in Brazil's Northeastern Soy Frontier

This article describes and analyzes discourses regarding environmental governance held among key actors in a region of expanding high-input, high-output agriculture. Q-method, an intensive (small n) and quantitative technique in which n tests are measured by m individuals, was used to determine four empirically significant social perspectives: critical environmentalism, agri-environmentalism, private environmentalism, and statist environmentalism. The article highlights major differences and agreements among social perspectives, in addition to the arguments used to justify claims. These findings help fill a knowledge gap in the literature on governance debates between farmers and environmentalists; moreover, the findings contribute to a concern in the literature regarding the role of discourses in producing policy solutions to environmental governance problems. The article also supports continued use of Q-method in human geography, suggesting the value of Q as a research ends and means, particularly when research subjects include landed elites.     

The market(able) place of school geography scholarship, 2007–2016

This report analyses a decade of geography scholarship student entry and achievement data (n = 10,205) to reveal patterns and trends of high‐achieving school students. The study is an exploratory analysis, the aim of which is to describe where the greatest scholarship success has occurred, as well as attendant demographic characteristics of New Zealand's most capable geography students and their schools. Emerging from the regions is a localised story of students from an extremely narrow number of schools achieving disproportionate scholarship success. This raises questions in the wider geography teaching community about the possibility of a broader constituency achieving scholarship awards.     

Incorporating Geography,Contingently: Geographic Pedagogies in a University Without a Geography Department

This article investigates efforts by a small regional university without a geography department to incorporate geography into its general education curriculum as part of a “quality enhancement” process mandated by its accreditor. Drawing on interviews and surveys of students and faculty, we highlight lessons learned that may be useful for institutions considering similar changes—including the importance of valuing disciplinary expertise, addressing faculty contingency, and engaging with existing research on geographic education and pedagogy. The initiative, while limited in significant ways, also suggests opportunities for advocates of geography to engage with agendas around general education reform and accreditation.     

THE STATUS OF WOMEN IN GEOGRAPHY: THINGS CHANGE,THINGS REMAIN THE SAME

Numbers of women in permanent academic ranks in US geography departments have increased since the 1970s but still constitute only eight percent of geography faculty. Women comprise a quarter of the new doctorates and low-ranking professors, but only 10% of the associate and three percent of full professors, both in large and small departments. One female faculty member in five holds a temporary line. Causes of and solutions to this imbalance are addressed.     

Locating the Melody of the Drives

Psychoanalysis has profoundly influenced those social theories that inform qualitative methodology in human geography. Yet many geographers are skeptical about the value and viability of psychoanalytic methodology because of its alleged reductionist causal explanations and relativistic interpretations of data. Drawing on the work of Slavoj ?i?ek, which affirms Jacques Lacan's undermining of the dualism of causality versus sense, this article illustrates the potential value of Lacanian psychoanalysis as a qualitative methodology in geography. Using a methodological case study from my research on Jamaican tourism, I illustrate how we can locate a Lacanian understanding of the drives in the interactions between tourists and hotel workers. In so doing, the article provides new insights into the enduring allures of tourism's commodity-form by focusing on how the object petit a—a chimerical object that incites desire and an unattainable object that the drives encircle—takes place in customer service and entertainment activities.     

THE RECENT INTELLECTUAL STRUCTURE OF GEOGRAPHY*

ABSTRACT. An active learning project in an introductory graduate course used multidimensional scaling of the name index in Geography in America at the Dawn of the 21st Century, by Gary Gaile and Cort Willmott, to reveal some features of the discipline's recent intellectual structure relevant to the relationship between human and physical geography. Previous analyses, dating to the 1980s, used citation indices or Association of American Geographers specialty‐group rosters to conclude that either the regional or the methods and environmental subdisciplines bridge human and physical geography. The name index has advantages over those databases, and its analysis reveals that the minimal connectivity that occurs between human and physical geography has recently operated more through environmental than through either methods or regional subdisciplines.     

Oil and Gas Production in the Russian Sector of the Caspian Sea: Public Opinion on Development Paths and Consequences

This article considers public opinion in the republic of Dagestan on the expansion of hydrocarbon production in the Russian sector of the Caspian Sea. The article reports the findings of a survey (N = 956) conducted in 2010 in fourteen rural locations in the republic. Overall, respondents uniformly oppose the proposed expansion of offshore oil and gas production in the Russian sector of the Caspian Sea, seeing little economic benefit from this development and expressing concern about the environmental consequences. These findings resonate with work in geography on resource peripheries and development alternatives available in these locations.     

Writing in Undergraduate Geography Classes: Faculty Challenges and Rewards

Abstract

Numerous studies have shown both anecdotal and formal evidence of the benefits students obtain from doing writing activities in classes. Little formal discussion exists about how student writing in geography classes professionally affects faculty. In this article, focus shifts from student-derived benefits of writing in classes to faculty challenges and rewards for implementing writing in their classes. Based on the experience of participating in a Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) Fellows program, the authors discuss how faculty overcame challenges and reaped the benefits of student writing in their teaching and scholarly pursuits.     

Differential Adoption of Internet-based Teaching Practices in College Geography

Abstract

Innovation diffusion research has shown that users of innovations have identifiable characteristics that can be used to differentiate them from nonusers. This research classifies practitioners of Internet-based teaching in college geography and relates adoption patterns to faculty members' research specialty, place of employment, teaching experience, and academic rank. All variables except academic rank were related to faculty members' adoption of and approach to Internet-based teaching. The results of the study provide insight into how the Internet is being used to teach geography in higher education.     

Census 2000 and Geography Education

Abstract

By using stream restoration as a seminar theme, geography faculty can create a topical course that helps provide a shared intellectual agenda for both physical and human geography students, while highlighting the holistic strengths of our discipline. Although it is not necessary that faculty have prior knowledge about the topic, a willingness to work collaboratively is essential to creating an effective course about this complex endeavor. The course can simultaneously meets the needs of students continuing on to graduate studies as well as those preparing for teaching careers. Guidance on how a stream restoration class could be used to teach the eighteen geography standards is also provided.     

Commentaries on “Automated Geography”. Automated Geography and the DIDS (Decision Information Display System) Experiment

Age profiles of geographers having varying topical and areal subfields are compiled using the Guide to Graduate Departments of Geography in the United States and Canada, 1983–1984 and the 1982 AAG Directory. Major retirement trends for the next 10 to 20 years suggest that replacement of faculty may raise key appointment issues and priorities that may significantly change the nature of academic geography.