Historical space as narrative medium: on the configuration of spatial narratives of time at historical sites

This paper examines how narratives of history are organized spatially at historical sites and memorial spaces, especially in urban settings and in places invested with a sense of collective memory. Much recent research has focused on landscape, memory, and place and how relationships of political and social power influence the representation of historical events in public spaces. Although the meaning of such sites may be hotly contested for long periods of time, we focus here on narrative theory and the related, but unexplored, issue of how such historical stories are configured on the ground at actual historical sites. We identify a number of narrative strategies which are frequently used to configure historical stories in space. Declamatory strategies using markers presenting a snapshot of an event are common, but sequential and non-sequential linear strategies are also used, as are thematic strategies that cross-cut space and time to present complex historical stories at various spatial scales. Examples are drawn from a range of historical sites in North America, Europe and Israel.     

Imagining ‘home’: Diasporic landscapes of the Greek-German second generation

This article presents research on second-generation Greek-Germans, both those living in diaspora, and those who have ‘returned’ to Greece. The research is multi-sited, with fieldwork in Berlin, Athens, central and northern Greece. After defining and problematising the notions of ‘second generation’ and ‘return’ - especially complex in this context - we focus on the second generation’s diasporic imaginings of ‘home’, particularly their experiences and narrative framings of landscape, space and place. In their narratives, participants ‘remember’ their parents’ narratives about the homeland, and narrate their own experiences of returning to the diasporic hearth. Contrasts are drawn across diverse diasporic landscape imaginings and experiences: between received diasporic memories and ‘pragmatic’ experiences; holiday visits and long-term return; urban, rural and other spaces; and different sites in the diaspora, such as the place of upbringing and the ancestral home.     

Urban space, ethnic community, and national belonging: the political landscape of memory in Little Tokyo

The “Little Tokyo” neighborhood of Los Angeles was the center of pre-internment community life for Japanese immigrants and their children and is still considered the symbolic home of later generations of Japanese Americans in Southern California. Drawing on three years of ethnographic research in Little Tokyo, I explore in this article how contemporary Japanese Americans have used and transformed this ancestral landscape in order to express, contest, and formalize collective memories of the Japanese American experience, particularly with regard to their place in the national body politic. Historical narratives inscribed at many places in Little Tokyo, both informal and institutional, project a narrative of sacrifice, suffering, and redemption in the context of internment and military service, articulating neatly with mainstream American tropes of overcoming hardship as a process of ‘earning’ citizenship and its benefits. However, such narratives are also contested by alternative interpretations and representations of these spaces that describe a special role for Japanese Americans in making demands of their government, rather than just sacrifices to it. The resulting debates, disagreements, and even occasional consensus around constructions of nation, identity, community, and belonging are rooted in the ‘sacred ground’ of Little Tokyo, gathering meaning and persuasive power through their connection to a symbolically dense site of shared memory. The multiple memory projects of this landscape reveal how Japanese Americans have envisioned their relationship to the concept of America, to each other, and to other communities with shared experiences in a diverse metropolis.

Geology and rural landscapes in central Spain (Guadalajara, Castilla—La Mancha)

Methods commonly used in regional geological analysis were employed to study the visual landscapes of the Sigüenza–Molina de Aragón area (Spain). Landscape data were compiled to produce a landscape map and a photograph catalogue. Lithological composition, tectonic structure and recent erosive processes are the main factors controlling the visual landscapes. Territorial properties, such as colours and agricultural capacities, are controlled by these geological characteristics. The landscape map and the photographic catalogue is the main contribution of this paper. The first level of landscape classification distinguishes zones with dominance of either flat, concave or convex areas. Other parts of the territory are, however, composed of concave and convex combinations that originate hybrid orographic structures. In a second level of classification, several subdivisions for each of these types are established.     

Materializing post-colonial geographies: examining the textural landscapes of migration in the South Asian home

This paper considers the role of visual cultures in understanding the value of landscape to post-colonial migrants living in Britain. The paper also considers these visual cultures as prismatic devices which refract lived landscapes of South Asia and East Africa into British domestic scene. The visual cultures are investigated using a materialist lens. They are positioned as materials that allow embodied connections to landscapes experienced pre-migration, including sensory connections with past homes, natures and family life. These then become artefacts symbolising relationships with past landscapes, made meaningful in their presence in Britain homes. Using this materialist lens, visual cultures in the British Asian home, such as photographs, pictures, and paintings, are given meaning and value beyond their textual content. This paper is an exercise in reading visual cultures in the everyday through a materialist lens which allows for an examination of their place in the process of ‘making home' for South Asian women in Britain. In particular, objects presence the migratory experience of the South Asian community, importing ‘other' landscapes (previously shaped by colonial governance) into Britain, and help to shape environmental values, landscape imaginaries and South Asian landscapes of belonging in the post-colonial period.     

Afforestation of European landscapes: How do different farmer types respond to EU agri-environmental schemes?

This paper investigates how different types of farmers manage the landscape with primary emphasis on farmland afforestation, planned landscape changes, and the extent to which EU agri-environmental schemes take farm type specific characteristics into account in information strategies. The empirical data concern landscape practices of more than 2,000 landowners in 16 European areas in eight countries who were surveyed using quantitative questionnaires. Supplementary in-depth interviews were conducted for two case areas in Denmark to further investigate the role of the policy information environment. The analysis is based on a categorization of the farmers into hobby, part-time, full-time and retired farmers. This study shows that hobby farmers constitute a high proportion of landowners and manage a large part of the rural landscape. At the same time, hobby farmers are relatively more interested in landscape changes and differ from other landowners by considering farmland afforestation more often than full-time landowners, for example. Yet, 40% of the hobby farmers who are considering farmland afforestation are not familiar with the agri-environmental scheme for farmland afforestation. One reason may be their low membership rate in traditional information networks such as farmers’ or foresters’ associations, as revealed by the in-depth analysis of the cases in Denmark. Thus, it is proposed that policy impact may be improved if farmer type specific differences are explicitly taken into account in the scheme logistics for EU agri-environmental schemes.     

Glacial and periglacial buzzsaws: fitting mechanisms to metaphors

The buzzsaw hypothesis refers to the potential for glacial and periglacial processes to rapidly denude mountains at and above glacier Equilibrium Line Altitudes (ELAs), irrespective of uplift rates, rock type or pre-existing topography. Here the appropriateness of the buzzsaw metaphor is examined alongside questions of the links between glacial erosion and ELAs, and whether the glacial system can produce low-relief surfaces or limit summit heights. Plateau fragments in mountains on both active orogens and passive margins that have been cited as products of glacial and periglacial buzzsaw erosion instead generally represent dissected remnants of largely inherited, pre-glacial relief. Summit heights may correlate with ELAs but no causal link need be implied as summit erosion rates are low, cirque headwalls may not directly abut summits and, on passive margins, cirques are cut into pre-existing mountain topography. Any simple links between ELAs and glacial erosion break down on passive margins due to topographic forcing of ice-sheet growth, and to the km-scale vertical swaths through which ELAs have shifted through the Quaternary. Glaciers destroy rather than create low-relief rock surfaces through the innate tendency for ice flow to be faster, thicker and warmer along valleys. The glacial buzzsaw cuts down.     

The silent articulation of private land rights in Soviet Estonia: A geographical perspective

With an explicit focus on the spatial articulation of landownership, this paper explores various ways in which pre-Soviet land rights were expressed in rural Estonia during the Soviet period (1940-1941, 1944-1991). Drawing on cartographical analyses and interviews made in the rural district of Muhu, the paper demonstrates that people who owned land before the Soviet occupation kept track of the officially annulled pre-Soviet land rights, by relating to inertial landscape elements as memory-aids. To local inhabitants the landscape, in which past and present structures always merge, provided substantial evidence in support of the idea of legal continuity of pre-Soviet land rights. Hence, the post-Soviet land restitution reform often implied a re-discovery or re-expression of property rights that had been silenced, but not lost.     

蛇绿岩中铬铁矿研究的问题与思考

蛇绿岩中的铬铁矿广泛分布在全球不同时代和地区的造山带中,是工业铬矿的重要来源。金属铬的物理化学性质决定了其耐高温、耐腐蚀和抗氧化等许多特性,是生产不锈钢等特种钢、用于军工、航天等领域的重要战略资源。尽管研究历史悠久,但许多关键的科学问题并没有解决,是地球科学研究的前沿和热点。本文简述了铬铁矿的性质,综述了全球铬铁矿资源的分布与需求现状;通过大数据分析,回顾了铬铁矿的研究历史和进展;概述了蛇绿岩铬铁矿的主要产出特征和地质背景;探讨了研究中存在的关键科学问题,包括蛇绿岩豆荚状铬铁矿成矿母岩浆性质,成矿物质来源和聚集成矿作用以及成矿动力学背景;讨论了铬铁矿成因的不同模式以及相关的高温高压实验岩石学的研究进展;综述了蛇绿岩铬铁矿中新发现的一系列新矿物及其地质意义,提出蛇绿岩铬铁矿是研究俯冲物质深地幔循环和地球深部动力学的重要窗口等新认识。     

Deformation of natural gypsum rock: Mechanisms and questions

The deformation mechanisms of a natural gypsum rock were investigated in instantaneous and long-term laboratory tests. The mechanical behaviour of this rock is strongly influenced by the relative humidity, but this influence seems to be more important on the long-term behaviour. Apart from classical plastic mechanisms, we identify a damage-like mechanism assisted by the variation in relative humidity. Even though this mechanism contributes to the increase of creep strain rate, laboratory evidence shows that it is unrelated to oriented cracking, as usually is the case with stress-induced damage. This mechanism is thought to be due to the migration of water molecules from their sites in the crystalline structure of gypsum (CaSO₄·2H₂O) while under stress. By entering the capillary space, these molecules contribute to the formation of adsorbed water layers and the increased thickness of these layers, thus reducing the interaction between neighbouring faces of gypsum crystals. So, more than effective stress, a complex mechanism reducing the creep activation energy, assisted by relative humidity and stress, is considered as the principal mechanism controlling the long-term behaviour of natural gypsum rock. Such a mechanism would also explain the traces of dissolution observed in pillars of underground gypsum quarries, where, because of the absence of water table, a dissolution-precipitation creep seems improbable.     

Landscape Reconstruction and Recreation of Damaged Land in Opencast Coal Mine: A Review

Land resources in opencast coal mine are excavated and occupied during the process of mining. Severe soil compaction resulted from heavy machinery lead to a series of consequences: vegetation cannot grow normally, loss of soil and water take place constantly, and landscape is damaged. Therefore, for the future development of reclamation and ecological restoration in opencast coal mine, it has become one major task to carry out the reconstruction of damaged landscape. According to the damage characteristics of land landscape in mining area, this paper summarized the data acquisition methods of damaged land landscape in this field, including remote sensing, GPS RTK, UAV, 3D laser scanning. Fractal and landscape index methods reflecting landscape were also reviewed. Besides, landscape remodeling and reconstruction theories were concluded, which include landscape ecology, microtopography and imitated-nature landform. Base on the above mentioned, it was found out that the UAV, 3D laser scanning technologies and fractal characterization method were rarely applied. In order to provide theoretical guidance and scientific basis for improving the effect of damaged landscape reconstruction and recreation in opencast coal mine, future research should be targeted on strengthening technology, deepening the fractal theory, creating landscape planning and technology system of damaged land.     

The vernacular and the monumental: memory and landscape in post-war Berlin

Recent geographical literature has given extensive consideration to monumental landscapes and collective memory. Vernacular landscapes have been given limited attention, though they too bear testimony to collective memory. The vernacular and monumental are intertwined in urban space, and ambiguity and fluidity mark their border, yet their distinction remains significant. The monumental sustains collective memory, linking the past, present and future. The vernacular provides spatial forms for the routines of everyday life. Yet, professionals and critics often interpret and present the vernacular as a symbol of collective memory, or a monument, rather than recognizing that collective memory in the vernacular is critical when centered on the complex relation between space and lived experience. The case study of Berlin during post-WWII reconstruction as well as the reconstruction following reunification demonstrates consistency in problems arising from treating the vernacular as the monumental.     

Models of natural and human dynamics in forest landscapes: Cross-site and cross-cultural synthesis

We synthesize the study of coupled natural and human systems across sites and cultures through a process of simplification and abstraction based on multiple dimensions of human-nature connectedness: satisfaction of basic needs, psycho-cultural connectedness and regulation of use of natural resources. We thus provide both a place-based and general understanding of value-driven anthropogenic environmental change and response. Two questions guide this research: what are the crucial stakeholder values that drive land use decisions and thus land cover change? And how can knowledge of these values be used to make decisions and policies that sustain both the human and natural systems in a place? To explore these questions we build simulation models of four study sites, two in the State of Texas, United States, and two in Venezuela. All include protected areas, though they differ in the specifics of vegetation and land use. In the Texas sites, relatively affluent individuals are legally converting forests to residential, commercial, and industrial uses, while in Venezuela landless settlers are extra-legally converting forests for purposes of subsistence agriculture. Contemporary modeling techniques now facilitate simulations of stakeholder and ecosystem dynamics revealing emergent patterns. Such coupled human and natural systems are currently recognized as a form of biocomplexity. Our modeling framework is flexible enough to allow adaptation to each of the study sites, capturing the essential features of the respective natural and anthropogenic land use changes and stakeholder reactions. The interactions between human stakeholders are simulated using multi-agent models that act on forest landscape models, and receive feedback of the effects of these actions on ecological habitats and hydrological response. The multi-agent models employ a formal logic-based method for the Venezuelan sites and a decision analysis approach using multi-attribute utility functions for the Texas sites, differing more in style and emphasis than in substance. Our natural-systems models are generic and can be tailored according to site-specific conditions. Similar models of tree growth and patch transitions are used for all the study sites and the differing responses to environmental variables are specified for each local species and terrain conditions.     

Ramadan and Bussorah Street: the spirit of place

The presence of ‘seasonal spaces’ such as the Ramadan-related activities associated with Bussorah Street, Singapore, during the holy Muslim month of Ramadan surfaces significant issues on the convergence and management of identity, heritage, space and conservation important to all Singaporeans. Conservation projects to ‘prettify’ or commodify the historic district of Kampong Glam, which contains Bussorah Street had to be revised to include the local tradition of the Ramadan food bazaar but at the adjoining Kandahar Street. Undoubtedly, what is being underlined by this seasonal space is the affirmation of identity, the reclamation of space and the possibility for improved management and economic viability of the Kampong Glam district. However, as stressed in the paper, that while the spirit of Bussorah Street can be construed as forms of spatial or cultural resilience, the new Malay Heritage Centre (Taman Warisan Melayu) located in the district acts as a strong reminder that, ultimately, ‘seasonal spaces’ are still subjected to the calculated considerations of the Singapore urban planners or the governing elite with significant implications for those with strong ethnic and religious connections with the area and its Islamic heritage.

大陆动力学数值模拟:问题、进展与展望

大陆动力学是地球动力学的基本组成部分,是板块构造理论的重要拓展,是固体地球科学的核心命题之一。在系统的地质、地球物理和地球化学观测的基础上,数值模拟是探讨大陆动力学过程和机制的有效手段。本文主要基于大陆动力学数值模拟,围绕大陆形成和演化过程的四个关键科学问题进行总结和探讨。(1)大陆起源与早期地球动力学演化。现今观测到的最早的大陆地壳岩石来自冥古宙,说明地球早期就已经开始大陆地壳的形成;关于当时的构造体制,存在多种不同的模式及其过渡和转换(岩浆洋、热管、滞盖等),该问题的约束甚少,是一个地球动力学的前沿科学问题。(2)大陆岩石圈的稳定性与破坏。大陆岩石圈形成之后经历几十亿年尺度的长时间演化,有些克拉通可以保持大致的稳定性直至现今,而有的克拉通却在显生宙期间经历显著的改造和破坏,无论其稳定存在还是改造破坏,都是值得深入探讨的科学问题。(3)大陆深俯冲与极限折返。超高压岩石折返代表了地球表层物质由浅入深而又由深及浅的物质循环,系统的观测和模拟对该过程和机制已有比较清晰的理解;而近年来观测到的200～350 km的超深折返岩石又提出新的挑战,其模式和机制有待进一步探索。(4)大陆碰撞造山差异...     

The Anti-Atlas Pan-African Belt (Morocco): Overview and pending questions

Between the High Atlas and the Saharan platform, the Anti-Atlas of Morocco offers large exposures of Precambrian rocks beneath the moderately folded Paleozoic series. These inliers allow reconstructing a segment of the Pan-African Belt and of its foreland at the northern outskirts of the West African Craton (WAC). From ∼ 885 Ma to ∼ 540 Ma, three periods are recognized in the Pan-African cycle. The Tonian–Cryogenian period ends with the obduction of supra-subduction ophiolite and oceanic arc material at ∼ 640 Ma. The Early Ediacaran period is marked by the development and subsequent closure of a wide marginal basin next to a likely Andean-type arc. The Late Ediacaran period is recorded by subaerial molasse deposits associated with post-collisional high-K calc-alkaline to shoshonitic magmatism. Although a wide consensus has been reached based on the number of new robust datings, several questions still remain pending, which we address taking into account relevant African and European correlations.     

Translocal assemblages: Space, power and social movements

In this paper, I deploy an analytic of ‘translocal assemblage’ as a means for conceptualising space and power in social movements. I offer a relational topology that is open to how actors within movements construct different spatial imaginaries and practices in their work. In using the prefix ‘translocal’, I am signifying three orientations. First, translocal assemblages are composites of place-based social movements which exchange ideas, knowledge, practices, materials and resources across sites. Second, assemblage is an attempt to emphasise that translocal social movements are more than just the connections between sites. Sites in translocal assemblages have more depth than the notion of ‘node’ or ‘point’ suggests – as connoted by network – in terms of their histories, the labour required to produce them, and their inevitable capacity to exceed the connections between other groups or places in the movement. Third, they are not simply a spatial category, output, or resultant formation, but signify doing, performance and events. I examine the potential of assemblage to offer an alternative account to that of the ‘network’, the predominant and often de facto concept used in discussions of the spatiality of social movements. I draw on examples from one particular translocal assemblage based in and beyond Mumbai which campaigns on housing within informal settlements: Slum/Shack Dwellers International.     

Late Quaternary landscapes in Central Australia: sedimentary history and palaeoecology of Puritjarra rock shelter

Puritjarra rock shelter provides a long record of late Quaternary vegetation in the Australian arid zone. Analysis of the sedimentary history of this rock shelter is combined with reanalysis of charcoal and phytolith records to provide a first‐order picture of changing landscapes in western Central Australia. These show a landscape responding to increasing aridity from 45 ka with deflation of clay‐rich red palaeosols (<45 ka) and sharp declines in grassland and other vegetation at 40–36 ka, and at the beginning of the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) (24 ka). Vegetation in the catchment of the rock shelter recovered after 15 ka with expansion of both acacia woodland and spinifex grasslands, registering stronger summer rainfall in the interior of the continent. By 8.3 ka re‐vegetation of local palaeosols and dunes had choked off sediment supply to the rock shelter and the character of the sediments changed abruptly. Poaceae values peaked at 5.8 ka, suggesting the early–mid Holocene climatic optimum in Central Australia is bracketed between 8.3 and 5.8 ka. Local vegetation was disrupted in the late Holocene with a sharp decline in Poaceae at 3.8 ka, coinciding with an abrupt intensification of ENSO. Local grasslands recovered over the next two millennia and by 1.5 ka the modern vegetation appears to have become established. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Violent morphologies: Landscape, border and scale in Ahmedabad conflict

Conflicts produce violence through death, confinement, torture, and control of spaces of everyday life. This paper investigates how spatial morphologies, like landscapes, borders and scales, are re-ordered and re-imagined to materialize violence. A Hindu–Muslim conflict in the globalizing city of Ahmedabad, India in 2002 is used as a case study. The conflict unfolded in a dying industrial city, now being re-envisioned through neoliberal urban entrepreneurialism into a ‘global city’. During and after the riots, the majority Hindu community, and the local Hindu fundamentalist government, annihilated the life spaces of the minority Muslim community. Through a combination of Hindu rioting and urban renewal, landscapes were destroyed, new spaces produced, borders re-imagined, and new ones imprinted on the landscape, to segregate previously co-existing communities. Local government and Hindu ideologues creatively juxtaposed neoliberal economic polices, global discourses of Islamophobia, local ethnocentrism to alter the spatial morphologies of Ahmedabad. Justice entails the democratization of space by altering the violent morphologies of Ahmedabad.     

Bushfire and everyday life: Examining the awareness-action ‘gap’ in changing rural landscapes

In this paper we use the notion of ‘everyday life’ to critically examine an apparent ‘gap’ between bushfire risk awareness and preparedness amongst diverse landholders in rural landscapes affected by amenity-led in-migration in southeast Australia. Landholders were found to bring their own agency to bushfire preparedness in the relationships between everyday procedures, dilemmas, and tradeoffs. Consequently, regardless of landholders’ awareness levels, attitudes towards bushfire and natural resource management influence if, how, and to what extent landowners prepare for bushfires. We argue that not only is the ‘gap’ complex but also paradoxical in that it is both evident in, and constituted by, landholder attitudes and action and simultaneously dissolved in their practices and decision-making in everyday life. Three dilemmas of everyday life in particular were found to underpin these attitudes: costs (in terms of monetary and time values), gender roles, and priorities. Using a mixed-methods research approach, this simultaneous cultural construction and material nature of bushfire in everyday life is mapped out through landholders’ narratives and actions that embody living with fire on the land. The place of bushfire in landholders’ everyday life has direct relevance to recent international discussions of the vulnerability of the growing number of people living in bushfire-prone rural-urban interface areas.