Colonial transformations: Nature, progress and science in the Christchurch Botanic Gardens

Abstract:   The Christchurch Botanic Gardens are popularly portrayed, both positively and negatively, as an icon of colonial heritage. This paper explores the cultural, social and scientific functions of the Gardens in the 19th century, and argues that they did not simply support colonization. Rather, the Gardens were a site of negotiation, conflict and contradictory meaning. The aim is to show the colonial project, embodied in the space of the Botanic Gardens, as fraught and vulnerable, rather than as the extension of panoptic European power.     

Experiential Learning,Spatial Practice,and Critical Urban Geographies

Abstract

Experiential learning pedagogies are being adopted across undergraduate education and touted as an effective strategy for enhancing student learning. This paper develops an explanation for how and why such pedagogies can foster students' critical thinking and learning. Drawing on data collected from first-year students in “field based” urban geography courses at an urban university, I show how students' existing knowledge of urban spaces and specific parts of the city is constructed from a variety of sources and experiences, and can be incorporated in experiential learning activities in ways that foster critical learning. Such an approach is crucial to creating learning environments in higher education that include a greater diversity of student identities and life experiences.     

The Partisan Geographies of Sincere Crossover Voting Behavior: Evidence from North Carolina

A great deal of interdisciplinary literature suggests that although the general motivation to vote is complex, it can be partially explained by a multitude of psychological and contextual factors, including local geographic patterns. I extend this observation to one particular type of voting behavior: sincere crossover voting, or voting for a candidate outside of one's own political affiliation, in a general election. Using a replicable methodological approach that incorporates partisan spatial segregation and exposure as predictors into statistical models of crossover voting behavior for a selected U.S. election, I produce evidence to suggest that the spatial arrangement of partisans influences crossover behavior in the study area, although not uniformly for members of the two major American political parties.     

Geographies of knowledge, practices of globalization: learning from the oil exploration and production industry

In this paper we initiate a dialogue between work on the geographies of globalization and knowledge economies, areas of inquiry that have tended to develop in isolation. We argue for a critical harnessing of these two bodies of work to (1) understand how and where different types of knowledge are acquired, produced and mobilized by firms as they seek to 'go global', (2) map the multi-scalar geographies of knowledge that enable practices of globalization and (3) examine the ways in which networks of knowledge structure emerging geographies of production. We demonstrate the potential of this move using oil exploration and production as an example.     

The Steamer Parish: The Rise and Fall of Missionary Medicine on an African Frontier

In the past decade, the women's employment rate has increased in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states as a result of improved female educational attainment and the expansion of the local market economy. A significant gender gap in labor force participation (LFP) rates has emerged, however, compared to other countries in the Middle East and North Africa. The main aim of this article is to model the spatial variations of female LFP rates across the northeastern part of Oman. A geographically weighted regression (GWR) technique, within the geographic information system platform, is used to address how the relationships between Omani female LFP rates and a set of explanatory variables vary across Omani subnational boundaries. GWR is a powerful approach that can facilitate the identification of areas with lower or higher female LFP rates and help in better understanding the predictors that are associated with women's employment in specific locations. In so doing, this work attempts to fill the gap in the geographic literature regarding the modeling of local spatial patterns of female employment in developing countries. The results show that the female LFP rate is significantly associated with different spatial measures and particularly the geographic distribution of female education. Interestingly, the percentage of female jobs in the public sector is found to have a substantial negative effect on female LFP rates, especially in urban areas. This can be attributed to the propensity of Omani women to work in governmental jobs and reduce their participation in private and other business sectors. The findings of this research analysis not only offer a more nuanced examination of female LFP rate patterns but also provide empirical evidence in support of locally tailored policies pertaining to the female labor force, which might help in increasing women's participation trends in the local economy across local communities.     

Geography, law and the centralizing state: wages arrestment in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Scotland

This paper analyses reform of the law of wages arrestment in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Scotland to examine the spatial nature of the 'regulatory dilemmas' faced by the state in legal interventions in a spatially heterogeneous context. Though this reform was an example of how the nineteenth-century British state sought to regulate the spaces of everyday life, the analysis shows that law-making processes are the outcome of complex tensions between and within the state and legal systems. In these processes, local legal cultures, tensions between systems of common and statute law and the complex geographies of social life play important roles in shaping the conjunction of space, place and law.     

西方教育地理学研究评述与本土反思

近20 a来,西方教育地理学受马克思主义地理学以及社会文化地理学思想的影响,重新审视教育空间与社会结构的关联,从多维度进一步认识教育空间建构过程中的政治经济与社会文化机制。对西方教育地理学的产生和发展演变进行分析,并尝试从政治经济和社会文化两大视角,总结和归纳当前西方教育地理学研究的主要成果和内容。教育地理学是一门新兴而又发展迅猛的人文地理学分支,但该学科的理论和实证发展尚处于以西方为主导的阶段,强势的西方话语体系还未充分涉及和理解非西方国家背景下的教育现象。当前是非西方国家建构自身教育地理学理论特色,并与西方教育地理学研究展开理论和实践对话的重要机遇和窗口。中国拥有世界规模最大的教育群体,当前社会经济发展的转型和人口结构的改变也进一步塑造了教育空间的多样性和特殊性。总之,加深教育与空间关系的研究,增强教育地理学研究的中西对话,构建中国化的教育地理学研究体系,使教育空间成为考察中国社会经济转型的重要视角,是中国教育地理学研究未来应努力的方向。     

The Power of Naming: The Toponymic Geographies of Commemorated African-Americans

The importance of commemorative place-naming has been the focus of numerous studies that explore the relationship between memory and political representation. Few studies, however, have systematically examined regional geographical patterns of racial minorities in the United States. Using a variety of Internet-based mapping tools, I have collected a data set on the regional variation of the commemoration of thirty famous African-Americans (fifteen men and fifteen women). The research presented here explores how there are regional characteristics associated with where African-Americans are commemorated, particularly pertaining to cities. I also explore the geographic dispersal of these commemorations and whether there is a gender bias in the process of commemoration. Additionally, I focus on the duality of commemorations as an index of both African-American and the dominant white power structures.     

Lusotropicalism: Tropical geography under dictatorship, 1926–1974

This article locates Portuguese tropical geography within wider academic debates on ‘tropicality’, contributing to discussion on not only the ‘tropicality of geography’ but also the ‘geography of tropicality’. It traces the role of Portuguese tropical geography in the colonial project and in the production of geographical knowledge, discourses and imaginaries, in particular the emergence of lusotropicality. While noting the underestimated connections with developments in German and British geography, we argue that the genealogy of Portuguese tropical geography lies mostly within contemporaneous French developments. By focusing on the central role of the Lisbon school (i.e. the Centre for Geographical Studies established in 1943), and in particular the tropical research initiated by Orlando Ribeiro (1911–1997), the paper seeks to engage with the ways in which geographical knowledge was produced within the academic discipline in Portugal under military dictatorship associated with the Estado Novo (1926–1974). By decentring the exploration of some of the ways in which the ‘tropics’ have been constructed and revising forms of producing geographical knowledge, the paper hopes to further understandings of the geographical imaginary of the tropics, unravelling the history and the role of geography in colonialism.     

Changing Geographies and the Geography of Change: Some Reflections

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography and the 75th anniversary of the teaching of geography in the Department of Geography, National University of Singapore, the home of the Journal, this article, based on personal reflections and "objective" academic materials, provides an overview of developments in geography in the Department and Journal. The paper argues that the department's and Journal's"identities", since the post-World War II period, have been shaped by Singapore's changing domestic politics, the changing university academic environment, the personalities and academic interests of heads of the department and the Journa's editors, the state of the changing regional and global political economic environment, and the individual research interests of faculty in the department, and reflects a complex mix of colonial/post-colonial, modern/post-modern, North-South and East-West discourses. While a defined Singapore school of geography has yet to emerge, the article shows that both the department and the Journal have made major strides in meeting the challenges of globalisation and, in the process, have gained international visibility and academic legitimacy. In particular, the Journal has consolidated its position as a major voice for academics in lesser developed countries, its platform for "tropical world" discourse and maintaining its edge in the colonial/post-colonial and modern/post-modern discourses of states within the tropics.     

Mawson and Mirnyy Stations: the spatiality of the Australian Antarctic Territory, 1954–61

This article focuses on the spatiality of the Australian Antarctic Territory in the important 1954–61 period. Attending particularly to three key components of polar spatiality—geopolitics, international territorial law, and the built environment—the article analyses the development of the Territory as a unique Australian space. The 1954–61 period is particularly significant: during this period, the International Geophysical Year brought an unprecedented number of people to Antarctica; the continent's first permanent colonies were constructed; and, despite Cold War tensions, the 1961 Antarctic Treaty established the spatial configurations and rules which continue to govern the continent today. The article focuses particularly on two key stations in the Territory constructed during this period: Australia's Mawson Station and the Soviet Mirnyy Station. Mawson is a legal colony, designed to cement Australia's claim to 42 per cent of the Antarctic continent; Mirnyy, in contrast, is an anti-colony, designed to reject Australia's claim. How the individual spatialities of these two stations articulate to the broader politics of Antarctic territoriality—and particularly Australia's claim to the Australian Antarctic Territory—is the focus of this article.     

西方厨房研究及其对中国文化地理家庭空间研究之启示

文章通过文献分析法,在回顾西方家庭厨房研究的背景和内容的基础上,总结得出：西方文化地理学在全球化、现代化、城市化、后殖民化和后工业化的背景下,主要从物质文化、性别文化和跨地方文化3方面探讨了现代厨房作为社会文化空间的建构,它们认为厨房作为一个家庭空间,具有强烈的社会性,并强调厨房在构建人类日常生活和社会环境之间关系的过程中起主导性作用,而并非仅仅是家庭烹饪活动的承载空间。基于此,根据当代中国城市家庭的特点,文章对中国文化地理学的家庭研究现状进行了展望,指出今后中国文化地理的家庭研究需将家庭视为一个社会文化空间,分析家庭如何成为连结不同尺度空间的重要节点以及如何承载复杂的社会关系和社会分工,以期对中国文化地理学的家庭研究以及有关微观空间研究的进一步发展作出理论方面的贡献。     

Jenniferann.com,regional development,and realising the aspirations of mana whenua in Pōkeno

During the 1990s, the township of Pōkeno was held up as an example of a declining rural Aotearoa/New Zealand. By‐passed from the national state highway, it lost its status as a service hub and drastic measures were introduced to revitalise the town, including renaming the town “ Jenniferann.com .” Pōkeno has since undergone an unlikely transformation, with foreign investment and its location within an extended Auckland commuter zone meaning that the township has grown exponentially. This article describes the transformation of Pōkeno and uncovers what has been missing from discussions about Pōkeno's reinvention, namely, the place of mana whenua.     

Employing SWOT Analysis in Coursework on the Geographies of Regional Economic Development and Trade

Abstract

The use of SWOT analysis is a means through which geography students can investigate key concepts in economic geography and essential topics in regional economic development. This article discusses the results of a course project where economic geography students employed SWOT analysis to explore medium-sized metropolitan areas across the southern United States and their suitability for export-led development. The results suggest that students were able to critically evaluate these urban regions and their potential for integration into the global economy. This case also intimates that the SWOT concept could be applied to other situations and regions in geography coursework.     

Hacked Landscapes: Tensions,Borders, and Positionality in Spatial Literacy

By focusing on critical geographies, landscape, and spatial literacy, this article evaluates a semester-long spatial justice project conducted in a preservice teacher education program. The analysis recognizes the limitations of reading the products literally as a means of comprehending spatial representation. It expands the analysis by hacking the products and producing new landscapes to read against or up against the products as sociospatial texts. It considers the deployment of landscape concepts—borders, the representation of tension, and the gaze and subjectivity of the reader-authors—as central elements of spatial literacy that is of consequence.