The use of the useless

The Human population suffers from a serious and paradoxical misunderstanding of its own place and importance within Nature: Unable or unwilling to control its own growth, being faced by overcrowding with resulting loss of productive land, and lack of food both in quantity and quality, alternative ways of feeding Mankind and his domestic stock have to be found. In the present paper examples and suggestions are given to illustrate how weeds—the generally considered “useless” elements of the Plant Kingdom—could become accepted as alternative food-providers. Thirty spokes share the wheel's hub; It is the center hole that makes it useful. Shape clay into a vessel; It is the space within that makes it useful. Cut doors and windows for a room; It is the holes which make it useful. Therefore profit comes from what is there; Usefulness from what it not there. LAO TSU, in Tao te Ching     

Primitivism and the other. History of art and cultural geography

The article advocates an articulation of cultural geography and art history, and in this perspective focuses on the analysis of the primitivist movement and particularly on Gauguin's work and personal itinerary. Primitivism introduced artefacts of ‘primitive’ people into the history of Western art and signalled a change in the relationship between the West and the ‘Other’ and ‘Elsewhere’. This reversal of values has a major geographical dimension. Primitivism manifests the contradiction-rife colonial ideology, but can also challenge colonization. Tourism, which is, in the case of Tahiti, directly linked to Gauguin and to his myth, inherited a lot from primitivism, in terms of hopes and ambiguities. Conversely, primitivism casts light on geographical features of these places, instituted as ‘Elsewheres‘ by the West, and visited, even transformed by painters, colonizers and tourists. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Dodging alligators,rattlesnakes, and backyard docks: a political ecology of sweetgrass basket-making and conservation in the South Carolina Lowcountry,USA

There is growing recognition among political ecologists of the need to examine shifting natural resource regimes and their effects on livelihoods in “First World” places. This emerging literature has variously examined the “Third World within,” the persistence of “subsistence activities” in the “First World,” and the “reterritorialization” of land tenure and access. However, much of this work has tended to focus on traditional extractive industries in the American West, indigenous claims to lands and resources in the U.S. and Canada, and non-timber resources on public lands. In contrast, we use a case study of African-American sweetgrass basket-makers, associated with the Gullah culture, in South Carolina’s lowcountry to examine the ways in which ongoing amenity-driven residential development is fundamentally reshaping resource access on private lands. Historically, basket-makers harvested the materials (primarily sweetgrass or Mulenbergia filipes) needed for their culturally important art form from accessible, rural, and privately held tracts of land in close proximity to their communities, but development pressures and changes in resident interpretation of property rights has decreased access to basket-making resources. The case is particularly illuminating, as it examines the emergence of ‘conservation subdivisions’ in the region and raises important questions about what “rural uses” and users are being conserved through responses to exurban, suburban, and urban development in formerly rural areas.     

Erratum: Geochronology of Late Cenozoic volcanism in the area of Lake Van,Turkey: An example of developmental dynamics for magmatic processes [Doklady earth sciences, 433(2), pp. 1031–1037]

An isotope-geochronological study has been performed to examine the products of Late Cenozoic collision volcanism on the northern coast of Lake Van, Turkey. We obtained 45 new K—Ar dates, based on which the principal time characteristics of volcanic activity in the region have been determined. Volcanic activity in the northern coast of Lake Van has lasted ∼15 myr; it has had an expressed discrete nature, when periods of intense volcanic activity alternated with long-lasting pose periods. Four stages of Neogene—Quaternary volcanism have been identified: Middle Miocene (15.0—13.5 Ma), Late Miocene (10—9 Ma), Pliocene (5.8—3.7 Ma), and Quaternary (1.0—0.4 Ma). The average duration of the stages was 1—2 myr; the stages were separated from each other with periods of inactivity of approximately equal lengths (∼3 myr). For each of the Pliocene and Quaternary stages, three additional phases of volcanism have been identified, which were separated from each other with short time intervals (a few hundred thousand years). The last burst of volcanic activity in the study area occurred ∼400 ka; similar to Quaternary volcanism in general, it was not characterized by a high intensity. An important result of the studies performed was to confirm the existence of a separate Middle Miocene stage of collision volcanism for the Caucasian—Anatolian Segment of the Alpine Fold Belt. New geochronological data generated presented in this paper indicate that Neogene—Quaternary volcanism in this portion of the belt started much earlier (∼15 Ma) than assumed by the majority of the previous researchers.     

Competing discourses of nature in exurbia

This paper explores different ways that the category of nature is used in addressing landscape changes associated with exurbia and exurbanization. Nature is an important category in the practices and representations that residents and planners use to construct and maintain exurban landscapes. However, common ways of mobilizing nature in exurban planning discourses often obstruct better discussion, rather than facilitate it. Invoking nature can make planning processes more difficult by providing a means for naturalizing planning decisions and also by exacerbating struggles over whose nature will be managed in what ways. More explicitly framing what is meant by nature in exurban planning may improve discussion of landscape problems associated with sprawl. The goal of this paper is to contribute to creating a framework for more actively contextualizing how “nature” is used in discourses relating to exurbanization. I suggest that such a framework would need to consider—and make explicit—themes such as the four that I discuss in this paper: (1) the centrality of the production of nature to exurban landscapes; (2) multiple meanings of nature that are often confused; (3) ways that normative statements about nature tend to be unquestioned in exurban planning; and (4) the simultaneous difficulty and usefulness of critiquing and “denaturalizing” both material and discursive nature. Explicit conversations about the role and representation of nature within residents’ and managers’ land-use practices and ideologies could create opportunities for dialogue between residents, planners, and academics about the valuation of and preferences for constructing particular landscapes, especially in addressing problematic aspects of the phenomena of “amenity migration” and “sprawl.”     

Producing/consuming memoryscapes: the genesis/politics of Second World War commemoration in Singapore

Despite the salience of the Second World War in paving the way for Singapore to attain formal independent status in 1965, it was not until the 1990s that war events were inserted into the state’s narratives, and ‘mapped’ onto its spaces as visible national fodder to bind citizens together. Since then, memoryscapes in many forms have proliferated over the state’s cityscape. After tracing the genesis of official war commemorative gestures within Singapore, the paper examines the ways in which Singaporeans have responded to them. Specifically, the paper argues that, while Singaporeans recognize the importance of remembering the war as nationally significant, this has not translated into any physical attempt or desire—beyond the discursive—to participate in the state’s commemorative endeavours. In analyzing factors that may have hindered the actual bodily practice of war remembrance in Singapore, nationalized war memoryscapes are also seen as embodying numerous politics due to tensions arising from a collision between what the state and its people perceive to be ideal means of remembering and representing the war within national discourses in the context of the present.     

Penrose Conference — 2011 on Deformation Localization in Rocks: New Advances — Manish A. Mamtani (IIT,Kharagpur; Email: mamtani@gg.iitkgp.ernet.in)

News and Notes

Penrose Conference — 2011 on Deformation Localization in Rocks: New Advances — Manish A. Mamtani (IIT, Kharagpur; Email: mamtani@gg.iitkgp.ernet.in)     

Green Crab Larval Retention in Willapa Bay,Washington: An Intensive Lagrangian Modeling Approach

The European green crab (Carcinus maenas) is invasive on the U.S. West Coast. This study uses a high-resolution circulation model to determine the likelihood that green crab larvae spawned in Willapa Bay, Washington could be retained by circulation and behavior long enough to reach maturity and resettle within the bay. A particle-tracking method (the “diffusive Lagrangian return map”) is presented that makes it possible to track the dispersion of hundreds of thousands of model larvae—each subject to three-dimensional advection, vertical turbulent diffusion, and imposed vertical migration behavior—over their full 30–50 days development time with modest computational resources. Larvae spawned in summer show significant retention (5–40%) in the southern and western portions of the bay, including the Stackpole shoals near the mouth, the area most likely to be colonized by late-stage megalopae arriving from the coastal ocean. Larvae spawned in spring show much less retention throughout the bay because of (1) increased flushing caused by increased river input relative to summer conditions and (2) longer development times caused by lower water temperatures. The role of larval swimming behavior is secondary to hydrodynamics in setting these spatial and seasonal patterns of retention.     

Grassroots “flexible specialisation” in Brisbane’s West End: towards a politics of economic possibility

The focus on ‘flexible specialisation’ in the 1980s and 1990s marked an important turning point in framings of economic agency and diversity within economic geography. This article deconstructs the ways in which subjects were framed as ‘flexible’ in both the flexible specialisation literature and later work on the Diverse Economy (Gibson-Graham 1996, 2002, 2006), seeking out particular examples of the ways in which different projects of subjection appear to frame different views of economic possibility. Drawing richly on a case study of residents in an inner-city neighbourhood of West End, Brisbane (Australia), this paper uses resident’s articulations of their everyday practices to reinvigorate some of the ideas of the flexible specialisation literature and challenge, defamiliarise and rework existing ideas of economic life in “First World”, urban contexts.     

Popular geographies and geographical imaginations: contemporary English-language geographical magazines

English-language geographical magazines present very different geographical imaginations to their readers than those portrayed by academic geographers, with whom the editors and publishers of those magazines have very little contact. There is a mutual lack of appreciation—which could have substantial consequences for the academic discipline. To increase academic geographers’ appreciation of the popular geographies being portrayed, the contents of recent volumes of three magazines—National Geographic, Geographical, and New Zealand Geographic—are distilled, with their major themes identified. One clear conclusion is that there is virtually no contact between the two imaginations: popular geographical magazines almost entirely ignore the work of academic geographers.     

Miocene Placers and Ceramic Clays of the Central Russian Upland

Geology of Ore Deposits - Abstract—Miocene rocks within the eastern slope of the Central Russian Upland are represented by the rocks of the Berekskaya (Oligocene–Miocene),...     

Key barriers to community cohesion: views from residents of 20 London deprived neighbourhoods

The notion of community has been central to the political project of renewal of New Labour in the UK. The paper explores how the discourses of community are framed within New Labour and discusses these in the light of the results from research which focuses on how people within urban deprived areas construct their community. It draws upon the results of one part of a larger research project (the ‘Well London’ programme) which aimed to capture the views of residents from 20 disadvantaged neighbourhoods throughout London using an innovative qualitative method known as the ‘World Café’. Our results show the centrality of young people to the development of cohesive communities, the importance of building informal relationships between residents alongside encouraging greater participation to policy making, and the need to see these places as fragile and temporary locations but with considerable social strengths. Government policies are only partially addressing these issues. They pay greater attention to formally encouraging citizens to become more involved in policy making, largely ignore the contribution young people could make to the community cohesion agenda, and weakly define the shared norms and values that are crucial in building cohesive communities. Thus, the conclusion is that whilst an emphasis of the government on ‘community’ is to be welcome, more needs to be done in terms of considering the ‘voices’ of the community as well as enabling communities to determine and act upon their priorities.     

Paleoproterozoic age of the protoliths of metaterrigenous rocks in the east of the Irkut Granulite-Gneiss block (Sharyzhalgai salient,Siberian Craton)

The Early Precambrian granulite-gneiss complex of the Irkut Block (Sharyzhalgai salient of the Siberian Craton basement) with the protoliths represented by a wide range of magmatic and sedimentary rocks, has a long-term history including several magmatic and metamorphic stages. To estimate the age of sedimentation and metamorphism of the terrigenous deposits, the composition of the garnet-biotite, hyper-sthene-biotite, and cordierite-bearing gneisses has been studied; their isotopic Sm-Nd values have been revealed; and the U-Pb zircon dating has been performed using the SHRIMP II ion microprobe. The protoliths of the terrigenous sediments metamorphosed under conditions of the granulite facies correspond to a rock series from siltstones and graywackes to pelites. The Nd model ages of paragneisses range from 2.4 to 3.1 Ga. Zircons of the cordierite-bearing and hypersthene—biotite gneisses show the presence of cores and rims. The clastic, smoothed, and irregular shape of the cores indicates their detrital character and relicts of oscillatory zoning suggest the magmatic origin of zircon. The rim’s metamorphic genesis is indicated by the lack of zoning and by the lower Th/U ratio compared to that of the cores. The age of the detrital cores (≥2.7, ~2.3, and 1.95—2.0 Ga) and metamorphic rims (1.85–1.86 Ga) defines the time of sedimentation at 1.85–1.95 Ga ago. Potential sources for the Archean detrital zircons were metamagmatic rocks of the granulite—gneiss complexes in the southwestern margin of the Siberian Craton. The age of the dominant detrital cores at 1.95–2.0 Ga ago, together with the minimal T_Nd(DM) values, indicates the contribution of the juvenile Paleoproterozoic crust to the formation of sediments. The juvenile Paleoproterozoic crust was likely represented by magmatic complexes similar to the volcanic and granitoid associations of the Aldan shield, which were formed 1.99–2.0 Ga ago and showthe model age of 2.0—2.4 Ga. The isotopic Sm-Nd data show that the Late Paleoproterozoic metasedimentary rocks occur not only in the Sharyzhalgai salient but in the Aldan and Anabar shields of the Siberian Craton as well.     

Sophistication at a country pace: community sustainability and amenity-based development

There is a lot at stake in the control of landscapes; not only rights and access to resources, but also the symbolic construction of community identities. Having one’s identity represented in the landscape is critical to understanding one’s position within that community—either as an insider or outsider. This paper examines Great Barrington, Massachusetts as a case study of the links between discourses of landscape and community and their relations to processes of social exclusion during amenity-based development. Building upon conceptions of community as a process of creating boundaries between insiders and outsiders, this paper argues that the sustainability of a town cannot be assessed merely from inside a particular community identity but must situate that town within complex multi-scalar processes to determine if it is merely externalizing its unsustainable aspects, people and practices. I extend this argument by examining the ways to concept of multifunctionality has been used both in Great Barrington and in international discourses to promote sustainability through processes of exclusion. The research for this paper was done in collaboration with the Alliance for a Healthier Great Barrington.     

<Emphasis Type="Italic">Conjunto</Emphasis> culture: celebration and racialization in the German-Texan “Borderlands”

Sustained migration of Hispanics and Anglos into Texas’s historical “German belt” has contributed to a significant decline in the proportion of Central Texans claiming German ancestry. Under these circumstances, ethnic festivals are playing an increasingly important role in maintaining the German-American identity of many of the region’s people and places. Organizers and participants frequently tout the events’ inclusiveness, claiming that anyone can temporarily cross ethnic boundaries to become “German for a day” within the festival context. However, participant observation and surveys of festival participants in three historically German-American communities (Brenham, Fredericksburg, and New Braunfels) suggest that ethnic-themed events mirror processes of racialization that have persisted in the region for more than 150 years. In this paper, I argue that, in helping to construct “German” identities for the region’s people and places, German-themed events in Central Texas are implicitly involved in the construction of “non-German” and, by extension “non-white,” ethnic identities. Further, event participation patterns reflect a long-standing black-white racial dichotomy in the region. Within this ethnoracial hierarchy, Hispanics have long occupied a liminal status that is reflected by their involvement in the production and consumption of German-themed events. I contend that Hispanics’ participation in German heritage festivals reflects not only a historical process of “whitening” their racial status but their increasing presence and power within the region.     

Paleomagnetic,petromagnetic, and terrigenous—Mineralogical studies of Upper Bathonian—Lower Callovian sediments in the Prosek section,Nizhni Novgorod region

The Bathonian—Callovian boundary section located near the Prosek Settlement (Nizhni Novgorod region) is described with the characteristic of its grain-size composition and terrigenous—mineralogical, petromagnetic, and paleomagnetic properties. Based on lithological—mineralogical and petromagnetic data, the section is subdivided into four members corresponding to the most significant sedimentation rhythms. No sharp changes in the composition of sediments are noted through the section, which indicates its relative continuity. Despite the significant re magnetization of these sediments during the Quaternary, the characteristic component (ChRM) is definable by the method of the intersection of large circles. The similarity between coordinates of the calculated virtual geomagnetic pole (VGMP) and the positions of standard virtual geomagnetic poles in the stable European continent during corresponding periods serves as an important argument in favor of the primary nature of the ChRM. The compiled magnetostratigraphic section is well consistent with the paleomagnetic zonation, established in the coeval sediments of “West Europe. As compared with the Bathonian—Callovian boundary section in the Albstadt—Pfeffingen of Germany, which claims to the GSSP role, the Prosek section represents a more favorable object for paleomagnetic studies. Combined with the lack of large-scale gaps in the sedimentary record and, with other conditions being equal, this makes this section a more preferable candidate for the Callovian GSSP standard.     

Earth resources,time, and man — A geoscience perspective

The earth with all its inhabitants, including man, has had a long history as a slowly evolving complex system which normally exists in a state of stable dynamic equilibrium. Explosive growth in the human population, in the per capita use of nonrenewable resources, and in the degree of human disruption of established ecosystems — the hallmark of man's recent and rapid emergence as the dominant species on the face of the earth — represents a major departure from this state of equilibrium and an ecological crisis of global dimensions. This growth, and the rapid changes that arise from it, have had such a pervasive influence on the collective experience of man that they have come to be regarded as the normal course of events on a stable earth. This has fostered the notion that growth will always be essential for further improvements in the quality of human life. The emergence of a global technological civilization results from man's ingenuity in devising ways of using an ever increasing proportion of energy available at the earth's surface. Rapid growth began only two hundred years ago when the developing technology of the industrial revolution made possible the large-scale exploitation of the earth's fossil-fuel resources and the creation of positive feedback between growth in technology and growth in fossil-fuel production. Annual growth rates in world production of fossil fuels and ores of representative industrial metals, when compared with the nature and finite magnitude of the earth's resources, lead to the inescapable conclusion that the present episode of exponential growth can only be a transitory epoch of a few centuries duration within the totality of human history. Solar radiation offers the prospect of large supplies of energy with minimal environmental impact. However, constraints on growth due to the finite nature of food and mineral resources and the effects of environmental degradation can only be loosened in this way, not removed. Mankind faces an inevitable transition from a brief interlude of exponential growth to a stable condition characterized by rates of growth so slow as to be regarded essentially as a state of no growth. Failure to respond rationally and promptly to this situation could be disastrous.     

The evolving narrative of the Darfur conflict as represented in <Emphasis Type="Italic">The New York Times</Emphasis> and <Emphasis Type="Italic">The Washington Post</Emphasis>, 2003–2009

News media influence local to global interactions between people, societies, and governments by producing place images. Representations of Africa in Western news media are heavily imbued with colonialist notions of cultural geography. In particular, Western news media have represented conflicts in Africa as ‘tribal’, a trope that erases geographic and historical context, and discourages actions that could prevent or reduce violent conflict. To determine if ‘tribalism’ remains important in coverage of African conflict, we use framing analysis to evaluate news on Sudan’s Darfur region in The New York Times and The Washington Post during 2003–2009. We find that these newspapers predictably relied on stereotypes related to tribalism to simplify Darfur’s geography and make the conflict meaningful to intended readers. Tribal portrayal of African war is inherently political, and, problematically, neither newspaper recognized that their use of the tribal narrative was parallel to the views of both the Sudanese government and external observers that challenged the actions of the Sudanese government. However, we also found that stereotypical representations became less prominent over time, apparently because reporters found that the initial, simplistic framing of the conflict did not match their encounters with geographic reality. We emphasize the decline in stereotypical tropes, because this suggests behind-the-scenes negotiation about representations in these news organizations. Recognizing voices that challenge stereotypical portrayals is necessary to developing place images that are geographically more accurate.     

Who speaks? And who listens? The relationship between planners and women’s participation in local planning in a multi-cultural urban environment

In recent decades, the dominant planning discourse has undergone a great change from a previous top-down approach towards collaborative and communicative planning. Instead of merely planning for the people in a technocratic and positivist approach, planners are increasingly expected to pay attention to the voices of the citizens. However, within this new participatory approach there is a growing post-colonial and feminist critique pointing out that not all voices are being heard. This critique sheds light on inherent power relations within the collaborative and communicative planning discourse. In particular, the voices of women in marginalised neighbourhoods are often neglected (Sandercock Towards cosmopolis. Planning for multicultural cities. New York: Wiley, 1998; Cornwall World Development, 31(8), 1325–1342, 2003; Peleman Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, 94(2), 151–163, 2003; Cameron and Grant-Smith Urban Policy and Research, 23(1), 21–36, 2005). Participatory planning in marginalised housing areas demands both a great sensibility to citizens’ everyday life worlds, and a more reflexive planner role. However, the complexities of the planner’s praxis and uncertainties in the planner’s roles become an obstacle to develop a more inclusive participatory approach. Difficulties of reaching out to the whole community is often recognised, but seldom fully dealt with, neither in theory, nor in practice.

A grain-size record from Beijing region in Northern China: Late Quaternary paleoclimate oscillation in response to global change

Numerous samples taken from one core at the Beijing plain were utilized to characterize the paleoclimatic configuration of the study area and its possible relation to global control since the last interglaciation. We presented here a detailed grain-size record for the full length of Late Pleistocene, along with the optical simulated luminescence (OSL) dating. Our findings revealed that Late Pleistocene of the study area started approximately at 110 ka B.P. represented by the thick sediments of 31 m in Changping depression. Four sedimentary cycles were outlined in the core during Late Pleistocene, corresponding to marine isotope stage (MIS) 5 to 2. Controlled by regional geology and global climatic setting, eight paleoclimatic periods were identified simultaneously in the study area on the time scale of 10⁴ year, with the warm and moist climate being found at 110 — 96, 92 — 76, 67 — 56, and 28 — 18 ka B.P.. The climatic instabilities on a millennial scale in Late Pleistocene were characterized largely by the occurrence of 6 strong Heinrich events shown by comparatively coarse groups. These variations correlate well with those documented in the GRIP Greenland and in the Northern Atlantic Ocean, though more complex features may exist on the long time scale.