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.     

Looking for the critical geographer, or why bodies and geographies matter to the emergence of critical geographies of Latin America

This paper argues that critical geographies of Latin America begin with an analysis of how and why the bodies and geographies of geographers themselves matter. To focus on the geographer as a producer of knowledge is not to advocate the kind of navel gazing so abhorrent to many scholars. Rather, it is an effort to call attention to and critically assess how the geographer's embodied social position and geographic location inform the production of knowledge about and representations of Latin American people and nature. To illustrate how and why bodies and geographies matter, I draw from feminist and post-colonial theory and include examples from my own experiences and those of other researchers doing fieldwork in Latin American countries. I conclude by exploring the notion of situated knowledge as a tactic that writes bodies and geographies into academic texts. Ultimately, situating knowledge represents a political intervention and contribution to the broader goals of emancipatory politics shared by critical human geographers.     

Geographic media literacy: an introduction

In a media saturated world of globalization, information flow and knowledge economies, an interesting paradox exists: geographic literacy appears to be on the decline while geographic information is on the rise. In this introduction to a collection of essays on geographies of the media, we explore this paradox and use Baudrillard’s (1994) work on Simulacra and Simulation to argue that increased mediated information does not produce more meaning, but rather leads to a catastrophe of meaning and the medium. Drawing from McLuhan’s axiom, “the medium is the message,” we posit that with more mediated information there is less meaningful information and as such we need to address geographic media literacy as a primary mode through which to address geographic literacy.

Volunteered Geographic Information constructions in a contested terrain: A case of OpenStreetMap in China

The recent explosive growth of user-generated geographic information has drawn significant attention from GIS scholars and human geographers. Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) here refers to a key component of such a phenomenon, comprising both a range of practices of geographic information production and dissemination by volunteers as well as new forms of geospatial data produced and curated through various interactive online platforms and mobile devices such as OpenStreetMap (OSM) and Google Maps. VGI constructions have raised questions on spatial knowledge, power, and context. Through a study that examines social constructions of OSM in China, this paper makes two contributions to the existing literature: providing a political economic account of VGI constructions in China and exploring legalities in VGI research. Informed by research in critical GIS, this paper traces political economic transitions in relation to OSM constructions and examines OSM contributors' experiences and how these experiences constitute OSM development and usage. Drawing upon law and society research, this paper investigates how OSM mappers encounter the state's regulatory scheme of online mapping. This legality perspective of spatial data production and usage is a topic rarely explored in VGI studies. With interview data and document analysis, this paper unravels processes of powerful state institutional arrangements to control and invest in VGI simultaneously, entrepreneurs' interest in developing location-based services using VGI data, and experiences from a tech-savvy group in exploring and making VGI. While individual experiences vary, they show efforts of questioning embedded power relations shaping spatial data production in these continuously evolving, contested technoscientific and social landscapes.     

Response to Thrift's “The future of geography”

Reviews and observations about the status of the discipline of geography, no matter how positive, invariably raise programmatic concerns. These concerns have a long history that arise from geography's struggles to find an identity that embraces its many parts and yet are consistent with the logic by which the academy partitions knowledge. Pedagogy and research historically claimed by geography is currently being reinvented and relabeled under such headings as “integrated environmental science” and “spatial science”, and these developments have the potential to change the breadth of the “geographic imagination”. Several observations about dominant explanatory perspectives and substantive domains of geographic enquiry are also provided.     

Politics of critique: Understanding gender in contemporary Middle East

This paper explores the implications of spatial production of academic knowledge on the Middle East, through the critiques of Orientalist discourses on the “Muslim woman.” It begins with an examination of the success of postcolonial studies and scholarship on democratization in challenging racist perceptions and politics in the West. Then it reflects on the ways in which this knowledge production travels and is reconfigured in places where power inequalities are different. This requires a consideration of the regional consequences of either an over-emphasis on differences in agencies of “Muslim women” or a relative silence on issues of gender inequality. The paper’s suggestion is to shift the focus from representation and discourse to the structural circumstances in which ordinary men and women’s agencies play out; various political mechanisms which participate in the production of acceptable cultural practices; and patterns of resistance, which may defy arguments about culturally specific definitions of agency. This is a quest for making the “exotic” familiar, without exoticizing the familiar.     

Cloning colonialism: Residential development,transnational aspiration,and the complexities of postcolonial India

Within this article, we discuss/unpack a speculative international property development born out of a license agreement between the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) and real estate investment company, Anglo Indian. The proposed building of twelve cloned, MCC branded, cricket communities in India–targeted to the consumption-based lifestyles of India’s new middle class–is addressed within the context relational to the political, economic, and cultural rationalities of postcolonial India, shifting power dynamics within the international cricket formation, and the associated re-colonisation of cricket-related spaces/bodies. Anglo Indian’s proposed communities are understood as part of a complex assemblage of national and global forces and relations (including, but certainly not restricted to): transnational gentrification; urban (re)development; and, revised understandings of historical and geographic connections between places, governance, and the politics of be(long)ing in branded spaces. This analysis explicates how Anglo Indian’s idealized community development offers a literal and figurative space for embodied performance of “glocal competence” for consumption-based identity projects of the new Indian middle-class (Brosius, 2010, p. 13) through the somewhat ironic mobilization of colonial spatial logics and cultural aesthetics.     

Place-based learning and knowing: critical pedagogies grounded in Indigeneity

For Indigenous peoples, knowledge and science are written onto the landscapes our languages ??talk into being?? through the ??individual and collective consciousness of our communities (Cajete 2000, 284).?? Our landscapes are the storied histories, cosmogonies, philosophies and sciences of those Indigenous knowledges which are increasingly being pushed aside by the ??gray uniformity?? of globalization and its progenitor, European colonization. It is within storied places that we can still glimpse alternatives to this gray uniformity of globalization which brings with it a rhetoric of capitalism, modernism, abstract space and Western science. It is this rhetoric produced through globalization which erases the storied landscapes, destroying the libraries embedded within Indigenous toponyms, creating a terra nullius: an empty land awaiting a colonial/neo-colonial history and economy. As Paulo Freire has challenged us to see, critical consciousness requires us to ??read our world,?? decoding the images of our own concrete, situated experiences with the world (Freire and Macedo 1987, 35). A critical pedagogy of place recognizes the concrete experiences of communities grounded in shared histories, stories and challenges based within a politics of place. A critical pedagogy of place seeks to decolonize and reinhabit the storied landscape through ??reading?? the ways in which Indigenous peoples?? places and environment have been injured and exploited. This paper seeks to discuss how through reading the places in the world as ??political texts,?? one may engage in reflection and praxis in order to understand, and where necessary, to change the world.     

A framework for a critical physical geography of ‘sacrifice zones’: Physical landscapes and discursive spaces of frac sand mining in western Wisconsin

The term sacrifice zone has been applied within activism, journalism, and scholarship to a wide range of polluted and degraded areas, including places playing host to relatively new extractive activities. This article proposes a conceptual framework for analyzing the phenomenon of the sacrifice zone within the emerging research paradigm of critical physical geography, using the illustrative case of frac sand mining in western Wisconsin, USA. In this case, we find that the meanings of sacrifice and the sacrifice zone vary along two major dimensions—the object of sacrifice and the initiator of sacrifice—and we propose that future research should attend to relationships between these dimensions and the efficacy of the framing for influencing future landscape change. We also argue that analyses in critical physical geography require investigating how in controversial situations some physical geographic (and human geographic) explanations and accounts stabilize as “matters of fact” and others emerge as disputed “matters of concern.” The latter, we contend, generate the conditions that lend themselves to the “sacrifice zone” frame. We suggest that this distinction both complicates and enriches efforts to integrate social and biophysical explanations.     

Mobile policies and policy streams: The case of smart metering policy in Australia

Geographers have become increasingly engaged with the notion of policy mobility. It is argued that in a globalised world policies have become more internationally mobile: we now live in an era of ‘fast policy’. Drawing on core concepts of mobility, neoliberalisation, and globalisation - and with a background primarily in geography and urban studies - policy mobility scholars have developed new ideas about how policies circulate internationally. In the process, however, theories of policy change developed within political science have been rather overlooked. In this paper it is shown how a political science theory with a shared interest in flows – the Multiple Streams Approach (MSA) – is complementary to policy mobilities scholarship. Two issues in particular are illuminated by the MSA: first, what constitutes policy, and, second, the role of the nation state in structuring the possibilities for, and timing of, policy change. In turn, policy mobilities scholarship highlights the different geographies of the multitude of objects, ideas, problems, processes, organisations, and regulations that constitute policy. It also raises questions about the validity of analytically separating politics from policy proposals, as advocated by the MSA. These issues are considered using the empirical case of smart electricity metering policy in Australia, in the period 2000–2015.     

遥感尺度问题研究进展

尺度是与空间现象有关的术语，在地学研究中更是一个重要的概念，忽视遥感观测的尺度效应，使得对地观测难以获得精确的地表参数，这一问题已经引起国际遥感界的重视，遥感物理建模和遥感数据应用都有尺度问题，像元尺度上地表参数的定量描述是建立遥感尺度转换模型和信息转换模型的基础，试图从尺度的定义，遥感尺度问题所涉及的内容和遥感尺度效应研究常用的技术方法等三个方面论述遥感尺度问题的研究进展，像元尺度上地表参数的定量描述是遥感信息尺度转换的基础。     

Two new species of Mesozoic tree ferns (Osmundaceae: Osmundacaulis) in Eurasia as evidence of long-term geographic isolation

The fossil trunks and rhizomes of Osmundaceae provide important information about its evolutionary history. Due to limited records of the Mesozoic trunks and rhizomes in the Eurasia of the Northern Hemisphere, our understanding on the fossil diversity of the Osmundaceae is hindered. Two new species of the Osmundaceae trunks, Osmundacaulis asiatica sp. nov. and Osmundacaulis sinica sp. nov. representing the first discovery of the Mesozoic tree fern genus Osmundacaulis in Eurasia, are described from Wudalianchi and Qiqihar, Heilongjiang Province, Northeast China, which enriches the plant diversity of the Osmundaceae in the Eurasia, and provides vital evidence for studying the distribution, radiation and evolution of the genus during the Cretaceous. The fossil records suggest that Osmundacaulis species may have evolved from a common ancestor, which first appeared in the Australian portion of Pangaea, and then spread to ancient northern North America and ancient East Asia. Since then, they developed into different species through their own evolutionary lines. The Chinese species have a special local feature that the outer cortex is thicker than the inner cortex, in contrast with reported Osmundacaulis species having thinner outer cortex and thicker inner cortex. Long-term geographic isolation may have led to the radiation of diverse Osmundacaulis species and the appearance of region-specific features, such as the thick outer cortex and the thin inner cortex of the Chinese species. Among all reported Osmundacaulis species, the two new species found in China, O. nerii from the Jurassic of Australia and the O. lemonii from the Jurassic of the USA, have special groups of mucilage-sacs inside sclerenchyma ring of petiole base. Mucilage sacs probably originated independently among taxonomic groups, representing convergent adaptations to similar habitats, rather than indicating genetic inheritance from a common ancestor.     

Earthlearningidea—ideas for the International Year of Planet Earth

'Earthlearningidea' will be putting up a new idea for learning about the Earth every week during 2008—the International Year of Planet Earth. The ideas are aimed at teacher trainers in science and geography who will be training teachers in the teaching of Earth science—but we hope they will be widely used by classroom teachers who have access to the internet too. A blog runs alongside them aiming to build up a worldwide discussion network of Earth science educators. Help us circulate Earthlearningideas around the globe!     

Why Delhi cannot plan its ‘new towns’: The case of solid waste management in Noida

Indian metropolises have witnessed the growth of ‘new towns’ on their peripheries over the past two decades, which have attracted investment as well as affluent residents. Most research on new towns examines the contentious politics of land acquisition and development, but less is known about urban governance and everyday life. This article focuses on solid waste management in Noida, a new town on the periphery of Delhi that has been unable to develop a large-scale waste management system, and we have two main foci. First, we show that the municipal government has sought to regulate waste collection, while waste processing and disposal have remained unregulated and this has discouraged the entry of medium and large-scale private enterprises. Second, we explore the contentious politics surrounding actually existing waste management practices that have emerged in the absence of significant public or private investment. Most waste is managed by small- and medium-sized enterprises in the informal sector, so associations that represent the so-called ‘new’ middle class must interact with informal-sector waste workers. These interactions result in moderately high levels of waste collection but waste disposal remains haphazard and this exposes the limits of the new middle class’ control over urban space. Ultimately, we show how municipal governance and the actually existing politics and practices of waste management contribute to the production of Noida’s socio-spatial landscape.     

Landscape governance: The “politics of scale” and the “natural” conditions of places

Governance has become an iridescent concept in recent years. The term is widely used in almost all social-science disciplines as well as in the political process. The intention of this paper is not so much to clarify these sometimes vague meanings but to highlight some characteristics of environmental governance connected with the restructuring of the spatial dimensions of politics. It starts from the assumption that the quest for multi-level decision making is particularly pressing for environmental governance. However, multi-level governance raises concern about the constitution of various spatial levels and their relationships with each other, as discussed under the term of “politics of scale”. Moreover, it is argued that for environmental governance the spatial reference is strongly connected with another challenge, which concerns the question of how to deal with the biophysical conditions of particular places. The term landscape governance is introduced to tackle this question without referring to an ontologically given space. Thus, landscape governance deals with the interconnections between socially constructed spaces (the politics of scale) and “natural” conditions of places. For this task, the concept of societal relationships with nature is introduced and applied to the term “landscape” as a bridging concept between social and natural sciences. The paper illustrates the approach of landscape governance with examples of problem-oriented interdisciplinary research at the UFZ-Centre for Environmental research in Leipzig, Germany.     

Territorial embeddedness of natural resource management: A perspective through the implementation of Industrial Ecology

We address the territorial embeddedness of resource management: the way in which resource management is shaped by the territorial context in which it occurs, as well as the way in which resource management contributes to shape new territories. We demonstrate that Industrial Ecology (IE), as a specific resource management approach, can be used to gain new perspectives on territorial patterns emerging with resource optimization. First, we lay down a theoretical framework that should underlie the use of territory as a concept, building bridges between geography and IE. Then, drawing upon this theoretical framework, we develop a methodological structure that can lead to and manifest the process of territorial construction at work in IE. We test the knowledge production capacity of this theoretical and methodological approach to territory in IE by applying it to a specific case study in the Aix-Marseille Provence metropolitan area (France). This paper thus enhances knowledge about the territorialization process at work in IE, by identifying different IE territories within the same geographic area and positioning local stakeholders, understood as local inhabitants, with respect to territorial interfaces. Finally, we discuss how IE, as a specific resource management approach, questions the different aspects of the connection between people and geographical places in a natural management context.     

Mineral-organic-microbe interactions: Environmental impacts from molecular to macroscopic scales

The role of microbes in geological processes is discussed with particular reference to the geochemical cycle involving iron. Microbial oxidation of Fe(II) minerals can occur via at least three mechanisms, the most important involving acidophilic prokaryotes which promote oxidation of iron sulphides. Accelerated breakdown of arsenopyrite is a good example, where multi-step electrochemical reactions are facilitated by the presence of organisms such as Leptospirillum ferrooxidans. Other organisms actively promote the reduction of Fe(III) to more soluble Fe(II). Reduction rates are highly variable, depending on mineral substrate, with oxyhydroxides being most reactive. Proper understanding of such redox processes requires knowledge of interactions at the molecular scale. Advances are being made through genetic studies of relevant organisms, and of mineral surfaces as exemplified by our experimental and computational studies of iron oxides such as magnetite, the reaction of which with simple organic molecules shows diverse behaviour. Mineral-organic interactions precede formation of bacterial biofilms, which can create local geochemical environments causing mineral precipitation. Biofilms and precipitate phases can have a major influence on fluid flow through fractures or porous media as we demonstrate using experiments from micro- to macro-scales.     

A feasible methodology for landslide susceptibility assessment in developing countries: A case-study of NW Nicaragua after Hurricane Mitch

In October 1998, Hurricane Mitch triggered a large number of landslides (mainly debris flows) in Honduras and Nicaragua, resulting in a high death toll and in considerable damage to property. In recent years, a number of risk assessment methodologies have been devised to mitigate natural disasters. However, due to scarcity of funds and lack of specialised personnel few of these methodologies are accessible to developing countries. To explore the potential application of relatively simple and affordable landslide susceptibility methodologies in such countries, we focused on a region in NW Nicaragua which was among the most severely hit during the Mitch event. Our study included (1) detailed field work to produce a high-resolution inventory landslide map at 1 : 10,000 scale, and (2) a selection of the relevant instability factors from a Terrain Units Map which had previously been generated in a project for rural development. Based on the combination of these two datasets and using GIS tools we developed a comparative analysis of failure-zones and terrain factors in an attempt to classify the land into zones according to the propensity to landslides triggered by heavy rainfalls. The resulting susceptibility map was validated by using a training and a test zone, providing results comparable to those reached in studies based in more sophisticated methodologies. Thus, we provide an example of a methodology which is simple enough to be fully comprehended by non-specialised technicians and which could be of help in landslide risk mitigation through implementation of non-structural measures, such as land planning or emergency measures.     

‘Seeing red’ in national parks: How visitors’ values affect perceptions and park experiences

People’s reasons for visiting national parks have been well researched. So too have their park activities and how diverse activities potentially affect visitors’ park experiences (e.g. perceptions of overcrowding). Far less research has examined how park users’ environmental values might affect their perceptions of other users and the appropriateness of different activities – a potential source of conflict. Relationships between personal environmental values and environmental and social perceptions are complex and interactive in the context of park visitation. Visitors’ encounters with other users can powerfully affect their experience and enjoyment of parks, in turn reflecting such factors as values-related expectations and judgments in the context of national parks. Personal and social values may also play an important role in influencing whether different activities are perceived as ‘out of place’ in the context of national park place meaning, yet the conceptualization of values within geographic literature on parks remains comparatively weak.This paper utilizes a definition of values, derived from a concise review of the geography and social psychology literatures, to explain the results of survey research we undertook within national parks in Queensland, Australia. We use a ‘values-behavior hierarchy’ conceptual framework to consider how the personal environmental values of a sample of park visitors (n = 404) potentially affected patterns of park visitation, user activities, and user conflicts. Findings suggest that visitors’ environmental values shaped how they perceived other park users and the appropriateness of their activities. This has international implications for geographic research and other disciplines and professions involved in national park visitation, park use, and human impacts, on and of these powerful places.     

Citizens as sensors: the world of volunteered geography

In recent months there has been an explosion of interest in using the Web to create, assemble, and disseminate geographic information provided voluntarily by individuals. Sites such as Wikimapia and OpenStreetMap are empowering citizens to create a global patchwork of geographic information, while Google Earth and other virtual globes are encouraging volunteers to develop interesting applications using their own data. I review this phenomenon, and examine associated issues: what drives people to do this, how accurate are the results, will they threaten individual privacy, and how can they augment more conventional sources? I compare this new phenomenon to more traditional citizen science and the role of the amateur in geographic observation.