Earth Science Education in Morocco

The earth sciences are taught in twelve universities in Morocco and in three other institutions. In addition there are three more earth science research institutions. Earth science teaching has been taking place since 1957. The degree system is a four-year degree, split into two two-year blocks and geology is taught within the geology-biology programme for the first part of the degree. ‘Classical’ geology is taught in most universities, although applied geology degrees are also on offer in some universities. Recently-formed technical universities offer a more innovative approach to Earth Science Education. Teaching is in French, although school education is in Arabic. There is a need for a reform of the curriculum, although a lead is being taken by the technical universities. A new geological mapping programme promises new geological and mining discoveries in the country and prospects of employment for geology graduates.     

Distribution of world science

Policymakers in science are often handicapped by a lack of uniform non-economic data on their field. In this continuation of a previous paper, the distribution of the number of scientists throughout the world is considered. To take some account of distances and proximity effects, a ‘potential’ method is used with the data. The results of the calculations show very large concentrations of scientists in North America and Europe. To take account of population concentrations, the scientific potentials were divided by the population potentials. The region of highest ratio in Western Europe is reduced by this method. Implications of the results are briefly discussed.     

Ecological restoration, cultural preferences and the negotiation of ‘nativeness’ in Australia

The paper addresses cultural assumptions about ‘nativeness’ and ‘belonging’ to place as they are implicated in notions of ‘ecological restoration’. Given the centrality of complex notions of ‘indigeneity’ to the issue of what ecological ‘restoration’ means in Australia, this is a rich area for cultural and historical analysis. Case materials illustrate the negotiated and ambiguous nature of Australian ideas about what ‘belongs’ ecologically and culturally across the broad continent of this relatively young post-Settler nation. We seek to foreground these issues through consideration of what ‘restoring’ nature might mean in the context of debates about native plants, the re-introduction of an iconic species of ground dwelling bird, the removal of cane toads that are demonised as highly ‘alien’, and the multiple ways in which the dingo is regarded ambiguously as both native and a ‘pest’ that needs to be controlled and culled. By showing how ‘restoration’ can be understood and mobilised in a variety of ways – in terms of the ‘re-naturing’, ‘re-valuing’ and/or ‘repatriating’ of indigenous species, as well as impassioned rejection of ‘exotics’ – we emphasise the importance of social science for building a well-grounded sense of how environmental management priorities and approaches are informed by a wider set of cultural assumptions.     

Of tidy gardens and clean houses: housing officers as agents of social control

This paper seeks to contribute to the theme of institutional geographies by exploring how the prevailing socio-spatial order is recreated and legitimated in the ways in which public rented housing is managed and delivered by housing associations and local authorities in the UK. The public rented sector has been increasingly catering for the most vulnerable sections of the population who are dependent on state benefits and cannot afford any other form of housing. As a result, housing staffs have found themselves having to take on a welfare role which entails controlling and policing social tenants who are seen to be causing disorder in society. This paper shows how a dominant housing management discourse reproduced by policies and staff at both front-line and management levels is that of an emerging ‘underclass’ promoted by right wing politicians and the media since the 1980s. According to dominant housing management discourse the members of this underclass are disrupting traditional patriarchal and capitalist institutions and values. Tenants’ houses and gardens not conforming to culturally and socially acceptable standards of cleanliness and tidiness symbolises tenants’ lack of conformity to the prevailing institutional order. Drawing on in-depth interviews with housing officers and managers, and observations of interviews between staff and tenants in six housing organisations, this paper analyses the ways in which housing organisations seek to control social tenants through the imposition of certain norms of cleanliness over their houses and gardens.     

Learning to trade ethically: Knowledgeable capitalism, retailers and contested commodity chains

This paper explores what happens when corporations engage explicitly in practices of organisational learning not only to become better capitalists by generating ever more innovative ways of maintaining profitability, improving competitiveness and maximising shareholder value, but also to become more responsible corporate citizens in their business practices. In particular, I evaluate the ways in which UK food and clothing retailers are learning to develop their ethical trading programmes in response to political calls for more responsible trading. Thrift’s [Thrift, N., 2005. Knowing Capitalism. Sage, London] notion of ‘knowledgeable, or soft, capitalism’ is adopted to understand the creative and experimental ways in which retailers and their mentors (ethical consultancies, social auditors and multi-stakeholder organisations) are learning to trade ethically. Two specific examples of formal learning spaces experienced by UK food and clothing retailers are examined: (i) training courses on social auditing and (ii) corporate awareness-raising courses on ethical trade. These courses are shown to encompass various participative and affective practices of learning. And while particular limits to the success of these courses are argued to exist, ethical learning practices discussed in this paper are nonetheless suggested to play a role in the making of new, albeit moderate, forms of responsible capitalism.     

Distribution of Canadian science

The distribution of quantities with respect to each other has concerned many geographers. Here we consider the number of scientists in Canada, and their geographical relationship to each other. The distribution is evaluated by a ‘potential’ model. Generally speaking, the region of high scientific potential corresponds roughly with the Windsor-Quebec City industrial corridor. When the effect of population is subtracted from the results, however, the West Coast has the highest values of potentials. The effect of United States science on Canada is considered by a simple model. Implications of these results are considered from the point of view of science policy.     

Towards a critical political geography of African development

In this paper we aim to rethink the political geography of African development at the beginning of the 21st century. Central to our thesis are two intertwining legacies, paralleling Edward Said’s Orientalism. The first is the construction of Africa in the western imagination and the second is an enduring trusteeship towards the continent. The core movement we seek to critique and move beyond is the complicity between racialised knowledges about Africa and a series of political interventions that seek to ‘help’ Africans to develop. The paper begins by examining the legacy of colonialism in the policies towards and representations of Africa. Although selective and schematic we argue that what unites these power–knowledge constructions is a sense of trusteeship towards the continent. The next step is to look at ways of decolonising our knowledges as a means to effect more appropriate political engagement with Africa. For this we touch on a range of theoretical positions, but look most closely at the corpus of post-colonial theory for ways of doing this. While not uncritical of post-colonialism we find it potentially useful for destabilising western authority and in addressing questions of popular agency and cultural constructions of exclusion. From here we attempt a reformulation which addresses the role of the state, the politics of place and space, and the ways in which ‘we’––professional geographers––might go about our work.     

Monumental space and the uncanny

This paper takes up the attempt to theorize the relation between the subjectivity of the political actor and the ideological aura of the monumental site. It does this with reference to the spatial history of Strijdom Square in Pretoria, South Africa, a cultural precinct and monumental space which was the site of a series of brutal racist killings committed by the Square’s unrelated namesake, militant right-winger Barend Strydom. This troubling intersection of subjectivity, space and ideology represents something of an explanatory limit for spatio-discursive approaches, certainly in as much as they are ill-equipped to conceptualize the powerfully affective, bodily and fantasmatic qualities of monumental spaces. In contrast to such approaches I offer a psychoanalytically informed account which grapples with the individualized and imaginative identities of space, with space as itself a form of subjectivity. I do this so as understand the ideological aura of monuments as importantly linked to the ‘intersubjectivity’ of subject and personified space. I then turn to Freud’s notion of the uncanny as a theory able to explain a series of disturbing affects of monuments, such as those of ‘embodied absence’ and ‘disembodied presence’. These and similar affects of ‘ontological dissonance’ (such as unexplained instances of doubling or repetition) may function in an ideological manner, both so as to impose a ‘supernaturalism of power’, and to effect an uncanny form of interpellation.     

矿业跨越式发展中的几个问题

进入21世纪，在矿业跨越式发展中，地学发展与地矿工作本身、地勘工作与环保工作、21世纪地矿人才的培养以及在建设循环型经济社会中促进资源有效利用等方面都为地学哲学工作者提出了新的课题.而以自律强化他律则是解决众多问题的关键。     

Earth Science Education in Zambia

Mining in Zambia has been practised for centuries, and in the last 70 years Zambia has risen to become one of the world's leading Cu producers as a result of the exploitation of the Zambian Copperbelt orebodies. In contrast to this long history of mining, Zambia has a relatively short history of Earth Science Education. For the past 24 years, the earth sciences have been taught within the School of Mines in University of Zambia. The School started operation on 1st June, 1973, with the purpose of training professional geologists, extractive metallurgical/mineral processing engineers and mining engineers to service the needs of the mining industry in Zambia.The School consists of three departments — Geology, Metallurgy and Mineral Processing, and Mining Engineering — which deliver a five-year undergraduate programme. Students are admitted to the School after completing a one-year programme in the School of Natural Sciences of the University of Zambia. Students with an average of C+ or better in Biology, Chemistry, Mathematics and Physics are admitted into the School of Mines.The School of Mines has a total of 36 teaching positions — 12 for each Department. To successfully complete their course, students must pass 40 courses over a period of five years. During this time, industrial training is mandatory in the vacation periods after the third and fourth years of study. This training is mainly within the mining industry who in most cases sponsor the students for their studies in the School.The School admits 50 students on average per year, of whom five students take up Geology as a career. So far only two female students have studied in the School of Mines, both of them in Geology. The student to staff ratio in the Geology Department is 3 to 1. The low enrolment in Geology is thought to be because of a lack of knowledge of geology as a possible career by prospective students and a perceived lack of progression, once employed in industry. This has lead to a ‘Geoscience in Schools’ project with the main aim of making secondary school students aware of geology as a career.The Geology Department enjoys close co-operation with geology departments in a number of universities around the world, with industry, government ministries and regional bodies. It is hoped that the current increase in employment prospects for Geology graduates in Zambia will attract more students to geology as a career.     

Tight Reassembly of Gondwana Exposes Phanerozoic Shears in Africa as Global Tectonic Players

Aeromagnetic surveys help reveal the geometry of Precambrian terranes through extending the mapping of structures and lithologies from well-exposed areas into areas of younger cover. Continent-wide aeromagnetic compilations therefore help extend geological mapping beyond the scale of a single country and, in turn, help link regional geology with processes of global tectonics. In Africa, India and related smaller fragments of Gondwana, the margins of Precambrian crustal blocks that have escaped (or successfully resisted) fracture or extension in Phanerozoic time can often be identified from their aeromagnetic expression. We differentiate between these rigid pieces of Precambrian crust and the intervening lithosphere that has been subjected to deformation (usually a combination of extension and strike-slip) in one or more of three rifting episodes affecting Africa during the Phanerozoic: Karoo, Early Cretaceous and (post-) Miocene. Modest relative movements between adjacent fragments in the African mosaic, commensurate with the observed rifting and transcurrent faulting, lead to small adjustments in the position of sub-Saharan Africa with respect to North Africa and Arabia. The tight reassembly of Precambrian sub-Saharan Africa with Madagascar, India, Sri Lanka and Antarctica (see animation in http://kartoweb.itc.nl/gondwana) can then be extended north between NW India and Somalia once the Early Cretaceous movements in North Africa have been undone. The Seychelles and smaller continental fragments that stayed with India may be accommodated north of Madagascar. The reassembly includes an attempt to undo strike-slip on the Southern Trans-Africa Shear System. This cryptic tectonic transcontinental corridor, which first formed as a Pan-African shear belt 700–500 Ma, also displays demonstrable dextral and sinistral movement between 300 and 200 Ma, not only evident in the alignment of the unsuccessful Karoo rifts now mapped from Tanzania to Namibia but also having an effect on many of the eventually successful rifts between Africa-Arabia and East Gondwana. We postulate its continuation into the Tethys Ocean as a major transform or megashear, allowing minor independence of movements between West Gondwana (partnered across the Tethys Ocean with Europe) and East Gondwana (partnered with Asia), Europe and Asia being independent before the 250 Ma consolidation of the Urals suture. The relative importance of primary driving forces, such as subduction ‘pull’, and ‘jostling’ forces experienced between adjacent rigid fragments could be related to plate size, the larger plates being relatively closely-coupled to the convecting mantle in the global scheme while the smaller ones may experience a preponderance of ‘jostling’ forces from their rigid neighbours.     

Climate change and journalistic norms: A case-study of US mass-media coverage

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – comprised of top climate scientists from around the globe – has reached consensus that human activities have contributed significantly to global climate change. However, over time, the United States has refused to join concerted international efforts – such as the Kyoto Protocol – to curb human activities contributing to climate change. US newspaper and television media constitute key influences among a set of complex dynamics shaping information dissemination in this politicized environment. Mass-media coverage of climate change is not simply a random amalgam of newspaper articles and television segments; rather, it is a social relationship between scientists, policy actors and the public that is mediated by such news packages. This paper demonstrates that consistent adherence to interacting journalistic norms has contributed to impediments in the coverage of anthropogenic climate change science. Through analysis of US newspaper and television coverage of human contributions to climate change from 1988 through 2004, this paper finds that adherence to first-order journalistic norms – personalization, dramatization, and novelty – significantly influence the employment of second-order norms – authority-order and balance – and that this has led to informationally deficient mass-media coverage of this crucial issue. By critically scrutinizing US print and television media as a ‘public arena,’ we improve understanding of how journalistic activities have shaped interactions at the interface with climate science, policy and the public.     

Earth Science Education in Sudan

This paper describes Earth Science Education in Sudan, with particular emphasis on the University of Khartoum. The first geological department in Sudan was founded in 1958 in the University of Khartoum. In the 1980s, six more geological departments have been added in the newer universities. The types of courses offered include Diploma, B.Sc. (General), B.Sc. (Honours), M.Sc. and Ph.D. The Geology programmes are strongly supported by field work training and mapping. Final-year students follow specialised training in one of the following topics: hydrogeology, geophysics, economic geology, sedimentology and engineering geology. A graduation report, written in the final year, represents 30–40% of the total marks. The final assessment and grading are decided with the help of internal and external examiners.Entry into the Geology programmes is based on merit and performance. The number of students who graduate with Honours and become geologists is between 20% to 40% of the initial intake at the beginning of the second year. Employment opportunities are limited and are found mainly in the Government's geological offices, the universities and research centres, and private companies. The Department of Geology at the University of Khartoum has long-standing internal and external links with outside partners. This has been manifested in the training of staff members, the donation of teaching materials and laboratory facilities. The chief problems currently facing Earth Science Education in Sudan are underfunding, poor equipment, laboratory facilities and logistics. Other problems include a shortage of staff, absence of research, lack of supervision and emigration of staff members.Urgent measures are needed to assess and evaluate the status of Earth Science Education in terms of objectives, needs and difficulties encountered. Earth Science Education is expected to contribute significantly to the exploitation of mineral resources and socio-economic development in the Sudan.     

Isotope provinces, mechanisms of generation and sources of the continental crust in the Central Asian mobile belt: geological and isotopic evidence

The available geological, geochronological and isotopic data on the felsic magmatic and related rocks from South Siberia, Transbaikalia and Mongolia are summarized to improve our understanding of the mechanisms and processes of the Phanerozoic crustal growth in the Central Asian mobile belt (CAMB). The following isotope provinces have been recognised: ‘Precambrian’ (T_DM=3.3–2.9 and 2.5–0.9 Ga) at the microcontinental blocks, ‘Caledonian’ (T_DM=1.1–0.55 Ga), ‘Hercynian’ (T_DM=0.8–0.5 Ma) and ‘Indosinian’ (T_DM=0.3 Ga) that coincide with coeval tectonic zones and formed at 570–475, 420–320 and 310–220 Ma. Continental crust of the microcontinents is underlain by, or intermixed with, ‘juvenile’ crust as evidenced by its isotopic heterogeneity. The continental crust of the Caledonian, Hercynian and Indosinian provinces is isotopically homogeneous and was produced from respective juvenile sources with addition of old crustal material in the island arcs or active continental margin environments. The crustal growth in the CAMB had episodic character and important crust-forming events took place in the Phanerozoic. Formation of the CAMB was connected with break up of the Rodinia supercontinent in consequence of creation of the South-Pacific hot superplume. Intraplate magmatism preceding and accompanying permanently other magmatic activity in the CAMB was caused by influence of the long-term South-Pacific plume or the Asian plume damping since the Devonian.     

Plate tectonics and the undation model: A comparison

The modern geodynamic model known as ‘New Global Tectonics’ or ‘Plate Tectonics’, elaborated in the past twenty years, is the synthetic result of the great post-war advances achieved in marine geophysical methods, deep-sea drilling technology, worldwide monitoring of earthquakes and paleomagnetics. It represents a ‘mobilistic’ view of the earth based on continental drift and sea-floor spreading (as outward manifestation) and convection currents in the mantle (as interior driving motor). The predictions of this model appear to correspond fairly well with observations about the kinematic evolution of the lithosphere during its younger (or Phanerozoic) phase. Extrapolations to Precambrian times run into conflict, however, with our knowledge of the earlier global evolution and some major revisions of the model appear to be imperative, especially in the field of geochemistry.In comparison, the model of the ‘undation theory’, conceived since 1931, has grown into a synthesis between the (sometimes extreme) mobilistic and fixistic positions. Its driving force is supposed to be primarily provided by the liberation of free energy in the earth's core and its stepwise rise to the surface in an irreversibly outward transport. This general form of energy flow occurs through rheological and geochemical processes, which lead to accumulation of potential energy and its release expressed primarily by vertical deformations of the surface — called ‘undations’ —, of various dimensions.By means of the prognosis—diagnosis method of scientific verification, this view has been repeatedly checked in test-cases of global tectonics.A notable item of this paper is the checking of both models by a comparison of global tectonic features and the major anomalies of the earth's gravity field (as ascertained from the deviations observed in the orbits of man-made satellites).A plausible rheological interpretation of these geoidal anomalies through their correlation with the major tectonic features of the earth can be produced by the undation model, whereas (so far) the model of the new global tectonics has remained silent on this allimportant geodynamic issue.     

Boosted bodies: Genetic techniques, domestic livestock bodies and complex representations of life

This paper focuses on the burgeoning application of genetic techniques in livestock agriculture, examining how these are changing livestock breeding knowledge-practices and the representation of animal life. Conventional livestock breeding relies on visual appraisal of animals and maintaining performance records, whereas genetic and genomic techniques offer the potential to assess particular aspects of animals’ genotypes. Advertising and promotional material produced by organisations involved in developing genetic techniques, and reportage and discussion of such techniques in the agricultural media, are used to examine the ways in which the production and value of living bodies in the future is being mapped out in emerging knowledge-practice networks which centre around particular visions and representations of what livestock bodies are and should do or be. The paper argues that bodies should be understood in part in terms of the wider spatial relationships in which they are entangled. A process of’circulating reference’ [Latour, B., 1999. Pandora’s Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA] is identified in which rounds of simplification occur in relation to the representation of the genetic qualities of livestock animals. However, these attempts to simplify produce new complexities when livestock breeders attempt to make use of genetic knowledge-practices. Identifying different modes of complexity, the paper discusses their spatiality in terms of differences between genetic abstractions from animal bodies and breeders ‘multi-layered ‘lay’ knowledges of their livestock animals.     

Whither stratigraphy?

There have been three revolutions in sedimentary geology. The first two began in the 1960s, consisting of the development of process-response sedimentary models and the application of plate-tectonic concepts to large-scale aspects of basin analysis. The third revolution, that of sequence stratigraphy, began in the late 1970s and helped to draw together the main results of the first two: the knowledge of autogenic processes learned through facies analysis, and the understanding of tectonism implicit in the unravelling of regional plate kinematics. Developments in the use of seismic-reflection data and the evaluation of a hypothesis of global eustasy provided considerable stimulation for stratigraphic research.Current developments in the field of sequence stratigraphy are focusing on three areas. (1) Elaboration of the sequence-architecture models for various configurations of depositional environment and sea-level history. (2) Exploration of various mechanisms for sequence generation, especially tectonism and orbital forcing. (3) Attempts to improve the level of precision in stratigraphic correlation and to refine the geological time scale, as a means to test the model of global eustasy.The growth in the power of computers and our knowledge of physical and chemical processes has led to the evolution of an entirely new way of evaluating earth history, termed quantitative dynamic stratigraphy. Mathematical modelling and numerical simulation of complex earth processes are now possible, and require the collection and integration of a wide array of quantitative and qualitative data sets. Applications include the study of the geodynamic evolution of sedimentary basins, modelling of stratigraphic sequences and global climates, studies of Milankovitch cycles (cyclostratigraphy) and simulation of fluid flow through porous media. The Global Sedimentary Geology Program has brought many of these areas of study together in multidisciplinary, global-scale studies of the sedimentary history of the earth. The results of these studies have wide application to many problems of importance to the human condition, including the past history of global climate change and other environmental concerns. The study of stratigraphy is at the centre of the new view of the earth, termed earth-systems science, which views earth as an ‘organic’ interaction between the lithosphere, biosphere, hydrosphere, and atmosphere.     

Naming the land: San countermapping in Namibia’s West Caprivi

Both ‘indigenous rights’ and environmental discourses brought a NGO-led natural resource mapping project to the West Caprivi Game Park in northern Namibia in the late 1990s. San countermapping elsewhere in southern Africa demonstrates how mapping has been used as a tool for ‘indigenous’ identity-building and asserting authority over land. At the same time, mapping and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) have increasingly been used by conservationists in Namibian Community Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM), demonstrating the potential therein for state and NGO surveillance and intervention regarding both natural resources and their users in conservancies and national parks. Mapping in West Caprivi thus embodied a tension between ‘visibility’ and ‘legibility’. This paper explores how mapping activities reflected, and became part of, institutional and ethnic struggles over identity, authority and natural resources. It argues that members of a San group called Khwe used mapping to construct particular histories, promote a unified, exclusive ethnic identity, and bolster their authority in the area. This in turn presented particular challenges for NGO relationships with the state. The mapping project also showed that, in their bid to counteract their own exclusion, Khwe not only opened up the landscape to new forms of NGO and state legibility, but sought to exclude ethnic others. Like other CBNRM projects, mapping often served socio-political, rather than environmental, functions.     

‘I’m not in it for the money’: Constructing and mediating ethical reconnections in UK social banking

Over the last decade a range of social banks and Community Development Finance Initiatives (CDFIs) have developed a social investment sector in the UK. Some of these organisations emphasise their belief in partnership, association, reconnecting and re-humanising the relationship between investors with borrowers in order to reap social returns. ‘Ethical’ investors are encouraged to take sub-market returns on their investments in order for surpluses to be distributed to the organisations’ beneficiaries. Some key theoretical and political questions include: how are investors enrolled in these initiatives? What discourses of ethics are constructed and how do investors relate to them? How do these discourses relate to debates in geography revolving around ‘caring at a distance’? Drawing on work on the Charity Bank and the Industrial Common Ownership Fund (ICOF), this paper analyses how these discourses are constructed and mediates the relationship between investors and borrowers. It explores stakeholders both investors’ and borrowers’ perceptions of these activities as well as the way investors construct their own reasons for investing.     

Temnospondyls from the Beaufort Group (Karoo Basin) of South Africa and Their Biostratigraphy

The Permo-Triassic Beaufort Group (Karoo Basin) of South Africa is biostratigraphically subdivided into eight, temporally successive assemblage zones based on therapsids (‘mammal-like reptiles’). The Temnospondyli, fossil tetrapods usually regarded as extinct amphibians, are second only to therapsids in terms of diversity and abundance in these strata, with nine higher-level taxa (‘families’) known. Temnospondyls are also playing an increasingly important role in biostratigraphy and correlation of the Beaufort strata. The lower Beaufort Group (Late Permian) contains six of the eight biozones, but only one temnospondyl ‘family’, the Rhinesuchidae, whose record in the Karoo is the richest in the world. However, rhinesuchid taxonomy remains in flux and the group is thus of limited biostratigraphic utility. The Early Triassic Lystrosaurus Assemblage Zone (middle Beaufort Group) contains the Rhinesuchidae, Amphibamidae, Lydekkerinidae, Tupilakosauridae, Rhytidosteidae, Mastodonsauridae and Trematosauridae, although the biostratigraphy of temnospondyls within this biozone is poorly constrained. The uppermost reaches of the Lystrosaurus biozone contain a paucity of fossils but includes ‘Kestrosaurus’ (Mastodonsauridae) and ?Trematosuchus (Trematosauridae), taxa previously thought to pertain to the lower part of the overlying Cynognathus biozone. The late Early to Middle Triassic Cynognathus Assemblage Zone (upper Beaufort Group) hosts the Mastodonsauridae, Trematosauridae, Brachyopidae, Laidleriidae and, possibly, the Rhytidosteidae. Based largely on the spatial and temporal distribution of mastodonsaurids, this biozone has been biostratigraphically subdivided into a lower A, middle B and upper C subzones, characterised by differing ages and faunas.