Spatial imaginary and geography: A plea for the geography of representations

After twenty years of work on the geography of representations, how is it still possible to define geography as “the science of space”, ie as direct knowledge of material reality? This conception of the discipline — based on Cartesian precepts of evidence (eg the observer's independent certainty), reductionism (ie a disaggregation into sets of simple elements), causality (ie the presupposition of a linear linkage between cause and effect) and exhaustiveness (ie the certainty that nothing essential has been omitted) — has been thrown into question by the geography of representations' holistic approach. How can our scientific practices be separated from our interior existence with its affective and emotional aspects? Is not scientific action an extension of being? Mustn't the geographer, above and beyond the observation of concrete phenomena, also understand the subtle and complex — at times random and hidden — links which unite human beings and their life-space, be it from the viewpoint of the poet, or of all those who take alternative approaches to geography? What I would like to demonstrate is (1) how in an historically and socially given environment, the individual constructs his own reality in linking together the structural, functional and symbolic; (2) how the representation of the landscape is related to our existential experience; and (3) how the imaginary and the real are connected in each place.     

Bringing geography to the community: community-based learning and the geography classroom

Community-based learning is a pedagogical technique designed to bring students out of the classroom and into their communities. Students typically pair with local nonprofit organizations to complete work which ties into their scholarship. Faculty, students, and community members can all benefit from these partnerships, and university-community relations are strengthened by them. These connections deepen the educational experience and improve student success and retention, and build civic engagement skills that benefit the university community and the student’s home community (Strait, Turk, and Nordyke in: JR Strait, K Nordyke (eds), Pedagogy Of Civic Engagement, High-Impact Practices, and e-Service- L Earning, Stylus Publishing, Virginian, 2015; Bednarz in Journal of Geography in Higher Education 32:87–100, 2008; Mohan in Journal of Geography in Higher Education 19:129–142, 1995). Spatial citizenship, while vital to such engagement and to effective community participation, is seldom taught in traditional pedagogy (Kanwischer, Schulze, and Gryl in: Thomas Jekel, Adrijana Car, Josef Strobl, and Gerald Griesebner (eds), Spatial citizenship—dimensions of a curriculum, Wichmann Verlag, Berlin, 2012). Connecting place to pedagogy with spatially-enabled learning helps students investigate complex global concepts at a manageable local scale. Geography is an intrinsic part of scholarship, to varying degrees, and spatial thinking can bring added dimension and value to the educational process (Vogler in: Thomas Jekel, Adrijana Car, Josef Strobl, and Gerald Griesebner (eds), Wichmann Verlag, Berlin, 2012). The intersectionalities which exist within the community, when examined with a spatial lens, are the core of community geography, a praxis-focused method of engaged scholarship (Shannon in Progress in Human Geography, 10.1177/0309132520961468, 2020). Community-based learning is not clearly defined, yet some established models exist. Place-based learning communities move cohorts of students through a curriculum that is centered on local community issues, with the community as both laboratory and lens, and building place attachment (Schweizer, Davis, and Thompson in Environmental Communication 7:42–62, 2013). Service learning, while less clearly defined, typically involves direct work with community organizations, identifying, investigating, and contributing to solutions for local issues (Strait, Turk, and Nordyke in: JR Strait, K Nordyke (eds), Pedagogy Of Civic Engagement, High-Impact Practices, and e-Service- L Earning, Stylus Publishing, Virginian, 2015; Cal Corps Public Service in Designing Community-Based Courses, 1–45, 2015). Built around the concept of place, the added dimension of improved spatial citizenship benefits both community and students. This paper will review community-based learning as practiced through upper-division service learning courses in geography at two universities, and the development of a new course, as methods of engagement with local communities through a spatial lens.

     

City senses: On the radical possibilities of pragmatism in geography

This paper explores the radical possibilities of pragmatism for geography using the illustration of arguments concerning a renewed (urban) public realm through the exchange of validity claims in communication. Pressing further the pragmatist possibilities of Habermas’s idea of communicative action it draws on John Dewey’s work, and a range of contemporary pragmatist philosophers, to consider human communicability in its widest sense. This is then explored using an example of the spatiality and performativity of body-minds in a range of communicative spaces of the city. Then the paper moves on to consider the radical implications of pragmatism for geography in general in terms of body-mind/environment relations; a transactional view of space; experience, rationality and radical democracy.     

On the role of evidence in physical and human geography

While physical geographers are united in a commitment to the scientific method with its emphasis on quantitative evidence, human geographers face a dilemma in deciding whether to adopt a scientific or humanistic approach in their research. The scientific approach offers a more secure, objective knowledge, but limits the scholar to a relatively narrow range of topics. The humanistic approach allows the scholar to explore a wide range of human experiences, but it lacks rigorous procedures of objective verification. The difficulty of the application of theoretical ideas to human societies can, to some extent, be avoided by adopting an historical approach, with an emphasis on the empirical investigation of human activity as a reflection of ideas. As long as human geographers have a commitment to basing their interpretations of geographical phenomena on objective evidence the possibility of a profitable co-operation exists among proponents of different philosophical approaches. A unified human geography embracing scholars of diverse views depends for its success on the identification of geographical problems that transcend philosophical and theoretical points of view.     

Beyond geography: The geography of the beyond in ancient Japan

This paper is a review of the literature on the world-view of the ancient cosmography of Japan. It explores the structure of cosmographical space as it was conceived, through archaeological evidence, historical written records and comparative study of primitive religion. It then goes on to examine in some detail the landscape of that world-view, which reflected the actual physiography of Japan, only in mirror-image. It is argued that several aspects of the ancient world-view continue to influence not only some Japanese customs, but also play an underestimated role in determining some important aspects of land use in modern Japan, particularly that associated with mountains and Shint shrines.     

Scale and the other: Levinas and geography

This paper seeks to contribute to Geography's recent conversation of identity, landscape, scale and difference. It brings into dialogue previously divergent discussions about space, place and difference and proposes an approach that treats time, space, place and scale as co-equal conceptual and/or analytical elements of cultural landscapes. It argues that many philosophical debates about embodiment, emplacement and difference abstract a universalized notion of `place', `body' and `self' which confounds and conflates scale issues and consequently confuses the dialectical interplay of `time', `space', `being' and `culture' across scales. The paper takes the work of Emmanuel Levinas (1906-1995) and the discursive communities around it as a philosophical entry point into these debates.     

IP法找矿的几个实例

IP法可以直接发现富含金属硫化物的各类矿体,而被广泛应用于矿产普查、详查及勘探等各个找矿阶段.本文介绍了该方法探查机理及野外工作方法,总结了IP法在几个金属矿区的找矿成果.认为充分分析矿区地质物性条件,合理布置野外工作是取得找矿突破的重要前提.     

边坡稳定验算中全面搜索的一种新方法

提出圆弧滑动法中一种新的搜索方法———三向搜索法。圆弧滑动法可以利用其共性而不局限于一些经验假设,在坡顶线及其下部各道坡线间都存在一个安全系数最小的圆弧,针对这些圆弧的寻找,给出了具体办法,并给出几个计算实例。     

Methodological frameworks for the geography of organizations

In this paper, we present three methodological frameworks for the geographic study of organizations. These are situated within three meta-theoretical perspectives in human geography: spatial science, critical realism, and post-structuralism. Each framework offers a different theorization of organizations, and each prompts different research questions that can be used to guide their geographic study. The research questions we offer are general, and are pertinent to all types of organizations. To supplement the methodological contributions of this paper, we suggest how each of these frameworks might inform empirical investigations of Appalshop, a media arts organization located in Whitesburg, Kentucky.     

基于三方向搜索的DEM中洼地处理方法

数字高程模型(DEM)是流域参数提取的基础,然而DEM中普遍存在的洼地和平地影响了流域水系的自动提取,因此洼地去除方法成为研究的热点。针对现有洼地去处方法存在的问题,提出了一种基于"三方向搜索"的洼地处理方法。该方法通过对洼地及其周围网格高程值增减来达到去除洼地的目的,避免了传统填洼方法大规模的对DEM进行增高处理。实验结果表明,该算法简单易行,能有效的去除洼地,消除DEM提取的河网中的伪河道及"平行线"现象;且对DEM中高程值的改动较小,从而较大限度的保留了原始地形信息。     

A heuristic search method for optimal zonation of well logs

Optimal zonation of well-log data, that is, determining an optimal number of major segments such as waveforms in a log, may be achieved by employing a criterion of minimum variance (within a segment) and a heuristic search of potential boundary (link) points of digitized log data. This new method is based on an algorithm originally devised by D. M. Hawkins and D. F. Merriam in 1973. Their method can be improved by introducing a heuristic search procedure, thereby decreasing computer time by 7- to 50-fold, depending on the number of data points and configuration of the logs. Time saving is proportional to the size of the data set. Three examples—one hypothetical and two real—are used to illustrate the modification of the Hawkins and Merriam algorithm.Presented at the Geological Society of America Annual Meeting, Orlando, Florida, 1985.     

试论碎屑岩地区的找水方法

本文根据实际工作经验,总结性地论述了碎屑岩的水文地质特征,并阐述了不同地区碎屑岩的找水方法,具有一定的指导意义。     

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.     

Social geography: its place and formation

The Soviet geographical literature of the last decade has adopted four principal, alternative premises about the place of social geography within the overall system of geography. These are that social geography: (1) does not exist as a separate branch of the subject; (2) belongs to a lower hierarchical order of geography, usually as a sub-division of population geography; (3) belongs to a medium level within the hierarchy of geography, broadly equivalent in status to economic geography; or (4) belongs to the highest hierarchical level of the subject, being synonymous with the geography of human society (sodetal geography). The author stresses the difference between the wider definition of social geography, which takes it to be the geography of society, studying the arrangement of sodetal objects in their geographical interrelations, and the narrow view, which defines ‘social’ as sociological. In this case, social geography is synonymous with sociological geography; it studies sociological objects in their geographical setting. The paper also discusses the process of the sociologization of geography.     

当代纪念性建筑外环境设计探讨

建筑外环境是人与自然交流的中介,纪念性建筑外环境更是人与历史、现在、未来、自然的相互交流。对于纪念性建筑而言,设计师应该因地制宜,根据每个场地地形的特点、面积的大小,创造性地使用景观元素,用物质形式表达某种空间情感应当考虑人们的观赏情绪,让设计的一切景观都能引起观赏者的共鸣,从而引发他们对历史的审视与思考。