Negotiated space: Tourists, pilgrims, and the Bahá’í terraced gardens in Haifa

This paper explores the inherent contradiction and conceptual conflict that arises when sacred sites are marketed as secular for the purpose of promoting tourism. The question of conflict is further frustrated within the context of Israel’s contested religious landscape and Israeli policy. Using a Lefebvrian framework, the historical development of the Bahai Gardens in Haifa, Israel, the tourism board’s promotion of the site as Haifa’s primary tourist designation, and the distinct spatial practices that have been used by both constituencies are investigated. Further, the authors posit that the Bahai Gardens are multi-dimensional spaces characterized by two different socio-spatial processes and practices that co-exist—the tourist’s and the pilgrim’s. These practices transform the holy site into a secular shared community asset. The paper concludes with a discussion of the socio-spatial implications of the case and its broader implications concerning the globalization of tourism and the efficacy of developing “layered” Lefebvrian triad to try and avoid conflict.     

International tourism and its impact on the Slovenian society and landscape

By all the usual measurements, Slovenia should present a particularly attractive destination for tourists. First, it has a diversity of natural phenomena; second, the cultural landscape has imprints of many peoples and times. But oddly enough only several resorts, based on attractions of nature, like Rogaka Slatina (mineral wells), Portoro-Portorose (Mediterranean littoral) and Bled (alpine lake) are comparable to similar places in Europe. On above named examples the effects of the tourist industry are elaborated. This paper suggests that the phenomenon tourism impacts the culture, economy and looks of a diversity of Slovenian regions. Due to a basic ignorance during most of the socialist era, in Slovenia as a whole tourism gives bread only to 3% of the resident population. Opportunities for the development of this branch of economy are diverse.     

Working borders and shifting identities in the Russian Far North

State-imposed borders inform socio-spatial identities, often encouraging divergent identities for those living of different sides of the border. However, these identities may be discursively appropriated by the groups affected by the borders, in order to manage their relations with the state. We describe how one group of aboriginal people in the Russian Far North forged a common identity based on evasion of state institutions in the 1930–1950s. This group, once articulated with state institutions and divided by the enforcement of a provincial/republican border, developed two socio-spatial identities––and employed these identities as counterhegemonic tactics to state pressures over their lifeways. As types of pressures change, the affordances that the borders provide also change, as evident in the shifting discourses of difference and similitude.     

Urban development in East Germany — specific features of urban transformation processes

The aim of this paper is to analyse the main characteristics of post-socialist urban development in East Germany, especially the differences compared to urban development in other East and Central European countries. In spite of the many similar problems and processes in urban development, specific features of East Germany are characterised by the rapid growth of suburbia, especially in the first phase of transition, by the proceeding activities of urban renewal and revitalisation, and by a lower level of social polarisation and socio-spatial segregation as compared to other post-socialist countries. Important conditions for urban development in East Germany exist in special support programmes, high subsidies and other financial transfers as well as in engaged planning conceptions of the local authorities. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Cosmogenic <Superscript>10</Superscript>Be-derived denudation rates of the Eastern and Southern European Alps

Denudation rates from cosmogenic ¹⁰Be measured in quartz from recent river sediment have previously been used in the Central Alps to argue that rock uplift occurs through isostatic response to erosion in the absence of ongoing convergence. We present new basin-averaged denudation rates from large rivers in the Eastern and Southern European Alps together with a detailed topographic analysis in order to infer the forces driving erosion. Denudation rates in the Eastern and Southern Alps of 170–1,400 mm ky⁻¹ are within a similar range to those in the Central Alps for similar lithologies. However, these denudation rates vary considerably with lithology, and their variability generally increases with steeper landscapes, where correlations with topographic metrics also become poorer. Tertiary igneous rocks are associated with steep hillslopes and channels and low denudation rates, whereas pre-Alpine gneisses usually exhibit steep hillslopes and higher denudation rates. Molasse, flysch, and schists display lower mean basin slopes and channel gradients, and, despite their high erodibility, low erosion rates. Exceptionally low denudation rates are also measured in Permian rhyolite, which has high mean basin slopes. We invoke geomorphic inheritance as a major factor controlling erosion, such that large erosive glaciers in the late Quaternary cold periods were more effective in priming landscapes in the Central Alps for erosion than in the interior Eastern Alps. However, the difference in tectonic evolution of the Eastern and Central Alps potentially adds to differences in their geomorphic response; their deep structures differ significantly and, unlike the Central Alps, the Eastern Alps are affected by ongoing tectonic influx due to the slow motion and rotation of Adria. The result is a complex pattern of high mountain erosion in the Eastern Alps, which has evolved from one confined to the narrow belt of the Tauern Window in late Tertiary time to one affecting the entire underthrust basement, orogenic lid, and parts of the Southern Alps today.     

Quo vadis neoliberalism? The remaking of global capitalist governance after the Washington Consensus

The Washington Consensus, through which neoliberal global capitalist governance gained hegemony over the third world, entered a crisis in the late 1990s. Triggered by the 1997 Asian financial crisis, and by contestations of neoliberal governance from global civil society, two remakings of global capitalist governance can be identified: A ‘post-Washington consensus’ whose relation to neoliberalism is complex; and a ‘new development economics’ that advocates Keynesian principles. Irrespective of the trajectory of this emergent phase of re-regulation, particularly after the 2008 global finance crisis, these remakings can be conceptualized as supplements reinforcing an imaginary of capitalism as the solution to, rather than progenitor of, uneven development. Through discourses of capitalist development as a sequential trajectory to be followed by all countries, as flattening the world to enable catch-up by backward countries, and as incorporating socio-spatial difference via its commodification, this socio-spatial imaginary functions to legitimate expertise located in the first world, and global capitalist governance, irrespective of serial policy failures.     

The regional differentiation of the Hungarian economy in transition

After 1989, the East Central European countries had to face three major challenges: stabilization and modernization of their economies and the transition to a market economy. Hungary, partly because of the early liberalization of the command economic regime enjoyed a significant competitive edge in the region in all three areas. The stabilization, modernization and restructuring of the economy was followed by the strengthening of processes of regional differentiation, the fast gaining on, and loosing of importance by certain areas and settlements. The capital city and the agglomeration area around it became the centre of the Hungarian as well as East Central European economic changes in all respects, the Western Transdanubian area is speedily integrating with the North Italian, Austrian, Southern German economic region, while the Southern parts of the country are presently in a state of transition and a prolonged crisis can be forecasted for the Eastern regions of the country.     

A cross-border regional earthquake early warning system: PRESTo@CE3RN

Since 2002 the Istituto Nazionale di Oceanografia e di Geofisica Sperimentale (OGS) in Udine (Italy), the Agencija Republike Slovenije za Okolje (ARSO) in Ljubljana (Slovenia) and the Zentralanstalt für Meteorologie und Geodynamik (ZAMG) in Vienna (Austria), are collecting, analyzing, archiving and exchanging seismic data in real time, initially in the framework of the EU Interreg IIIa Italia-Austria project “Trans-national seismological networks in the South-Eastern Alps”. As outcome of the successful cooperation, in the 2013 OGS, ARSO and ZAMG decided to officially merge their seismic monitoring efforts into the “Central and Eastern European Earthquake Research Network—CE³RN”. This work reports the results of a nine-month real-time test of the earthquake early warning (EEW) algorithm probabilistic and evolutionary early warning system carried out at the CE³RN. The study allowed identifying the actions to be implemented in order to let the CE³RN become in the next future an efficient cross-border EEW system.

     

A cross-border regional earthquake early warning system: PRESTo@CE<Superscript>3</Superscript>RN

Since 2002 the Istituto Nazionale di Oceanografia e di Geofisica Sperimentale (OGS) in Udine (Italy), the Agencija Republike Slovenije za Okolje (ARSO) in Ljubljana (Slovenia) and the Zentralanstalt für Meteorologie und Geodynamik (ZAMG) in Vienna (Austria), are collecting, analyzing, archiving and exchanging seismic data in real time, initially in the framework of the EU Interreg IIIa Italia-Austria project “Trans-national seismological networks in the South-Eastern Alps”. As outcome of the successful cooperation, in the 2013 OGS, ARSO and ZAMG decided to officially merge their seismic monitoring efforts into the “Central and Eastern European Earthquake Research Network—CE³RN”. This work reports the results of a nine-month real-time test of the earthquake early warning (EEW) algorithm probabilistic and evolutionary early warning system carried out at the CE³RN. The study allowed identifying the actions to be implemented in order to let the CE³RN become in the next future an efficient cross-border EEW system.     

City-renaming and its effects in China

Since the 1980s, toponymy studies in Western societies has shifted away from traditional to critical paradigm, which is focused on political and cultural conflicts involved in place-(re)naming. But Chinese toponymist has paid little attention to this turning. City-renaming for tourism promotion or place marketing and stakeholders’ resulting responses in the context of China’s special ideology and tourism flourish will be good materials for critical toponymy studies. By field observation and interpretation on online texts, this article outlined the space–time process of city-renaming practices and their effects both positive and negative on touristic matters such as destination and resources, outside tourists and local habitants as well as neighbourhood relationship, dissected the renaming process of two typical tourist cities and summarized the traits of tourism placename field (TPF) by focusing on stakeholders’ responses to city-renaming practices referring to Bourdieu’s Field Theory. It found that, appropriate renaming can improve cities’ popularity at low-cost and high-efficiency, inappropriate one may do harm to destination, resource, tourists, locals and neighbourhood relationship. There existed variant responses to official renaming-decisions owing to stakeholders’ various habitus and capital conditions . TPF in China was dominated by governmental hegemony and economic priorities, which is the determinant that other sorts of capital in toponyms should yield to economic capital. However, a head-on boycott launched by other stakeholders will occur if renaming causes their direct economic loss rather than be passive victims.     

华北陆块早元古代基性岩墙群及其构造意义

华北陆块中部带的晋冀蒙地区早元古代未变形变质基性岩脉形成于1781~1765 Ma。东部陆块鲁西地区早元古代类似的基性岩脉形成时间约为1841 Ma。中部带基性岩脉依据其FeOt含量、(Nb/La)N和(Th/Nb)N值的差异能划分为组1、组2和组3三类。它们的元素-同位素组成变化表明,组1样品起源于再循环大陆玄武质组分参与的交代岩石圈地幔,组2样品源于交代富铁岩石圈地幔与MORB组分的混杂源区,组3样品则是受辉长质组分混染的、经俯冲改造而成的岩石圈地幔产物。相反,鲁西地区基性岩脉亏损HFSE,具MORB型钕同位素组成。上述地球化学特征支持华北陆块中部带约1780 Ma的基性岩脉与早期俯冲碰撞作用的关系密切,而东部陆块约1840 Ma基性岩脉类似于弧后盆地构造背景产物。     

Intellectuals and geopolitics: The ‘cultural politicians’ of Central Europe

This paper investigates the role of intellectuals in the production of geopolitical discourses. It analyzes how the cultural capital of humanist credentials and artistic aura functions to authenticate and legitimate geopolitical claims. Drawing empirically from Central Europe and especially Estonia, I argue that intellectuals are central to the production of a particular ‘cultural’ concept of geopolitics - the notion that foreign policy expresses the state’s and the nation’s identity. As cultural capital gives intellectuals a special license to speak about culture, it constitutes an essential component in geopolitical discourses in Central Europe.The paper contributes to Europeanist geography by clarifying the mechanisms through which Central Europe is cast externally and internally as a place particularly imbued with culture and identity - a place whose integration with the EU and NATO represents its cultural ‘return’ to Europe. It takes us beyond the romanticized notion of intellectuals - especially the formerly dissident ones - as ‘speaking truth to power’, and offers a more subtle account of their role as producers of power discourses.Beyond Central Europe, the paper underscores the political and cultural milieu of geopolitical claims and the specific structures of legitimacy through which these claims are justified and normalized. A nuanced understanding of the role of ‘culture’ in geopolitical discourses requires that we closely examine the cultural and moral capital of intellectuals. This would also enable us to better delineate human agency in the production of geopolitics.     

Environmental activities of academic teachers from selected Central and Eastern European countries

Natural Hazards - The aim of this article is to analyze and compare the declared pro-environmental activities of academic teachers from selected Central and Eastern European countries. The data on...     

International tourism today: A geographic approach

This paper presents a global overview of international tourism, concentrating on three major themes: generating regions, destination zones and the creation of resorts and regions. The world's major markets for international tourism are to be found in Europe and North America, regions which also constitute the world's major destination zones. Distinct groupings can be identified in each with changes in both markets and destinations being slow and limited. The development of international tourism has also created new resorts and tourist regions, the relative importance of international and domestic tourism being a key distinguishing feature.Translated by Douglas Pearce     

Croatia — “a small country for a great vacation”

Croatia is a country of tourism, and this is primarily due to its position by the warm Adriatic Sea, its varying and picturesque landscapes, its diverse and generally favorable climate for tourism, its rich Mediterranean and Central European cultural heritage and its proximity to the leading European consumer countries.In the international tourism market, Croatia presents itself with the slogan A Small Country for a Great Vacation, because its 4.8 million inhabitants and surface area of 56,538 km² place Croatia in the ranks of the world's smaller countries. Its significance is increased by an additional 33,200 km² of territorial waters, of which a large part is considered internal waters because of its location within the limits of a series of islands.The tourism offering of Croatia is very diverse, but its basis is formed by three differing and mutually complimentary regions, through their natural characteristics and cultural heritage: coastal, montane and Pannonian and peri-Pannonian Croatia. The total tourism offering of Croatia includes 900,000 beds, of which over one-fifth are in hotels or similar places, two-fifths are in private rooms and one-third in camps.The tradition of tourism in Croatia is over one hundred years old, and according to the number of foreign tourists it is ranked as the fifth country for tourism in southern Europe.     

Croatia and Central Europe — the geopolitical relationship

The position of Croatia on the border of larger geographic wholes (Central Europe, the Mediterranean, the Balkans) makes it a transitional region for these larger areas. However, the Pannonian region of Croatia, as the largest part of its national territory, places it in the ranks of the Central European states. The long historical ties of the Croatian lands with the Austrian and Hungarian centers of Central European power also confirm Croatia's affiliation with Central Europe. The cultural, civilization, religious and other characteristics, which today ease Croatia's communications with Central European countries, are unavoidable. With state independence, Croatia acquired the political sovereignty vital for its Central European orientation and was liberated from the problems of the Balkans, although it is still struggling for its territorial integrity. Croatian statehood was realized soon after the reunification of Germany, which in fact renewed the concept and content of Central Europe. This fact opened many questions tied to the rivalry and political balance of the European powers, which is also connected to the geopolitical position of Croatia.     

Reviewing pre-TRANSALP DSS models

The interpretation of DSS (deep seismic soundings) profiles in Central and Eastern Alps is recalled in the paper and the models of the lower crust and Moho proposed several years ago are compared to the results of the TRANSALP seismic reflection profile. This evaluation highlights a good agreement as far as the geometry of the deep crustal structure is concerned. Therefore, the reliability of the interpretative models, previously exclusively based on DSS profiles, becomes improved. The deep structure beneath the whole Alpine range is examined reconsidering the map of the Moho boundary and the structural model already proposed for the central-eastern sector. Five main interpretative transects are put side by side, starting from the Western Alps and moving eastwards to the Swiss–Lombardian Central Alps (“European Geotraverse”), to the cross section from southern Bavaria to the Euganei Hills, to the TRANSALP profile, and finally to the easternmost profile available so far (southern Bavaria–Trieste). The comparison outlines lateral variations of the deep crustal structure as well as a sharp contrast between the Adria and the European lower crust and Moho. The transition from the Adria plate to the Dinaric domain remains, up to now, undefined.     

Industrialization of Slovenia

A new European state, the Republic of Slovenia, was constituted in 1991. It used to be considered the most industrialized and economically developed federal unit of the former Yugoslavia. There were (in 1990) 362,732 workers employed in manufactur industry, which meant 46% of all employees in Slovenia. The industrialization occurred in two waves: the first one before the Great War, and the second one, imposed and conducted by the communist regime, in the 1960's and 1970's. The latter promoted the establishing of factories all over Slovenia, particularly in the less developed regions. This process was prolonged, and the result of universal industrialization of Slovenia was that 464 Slovenian settlements had one or more industrial plants. The willful industrialization caused the substantial transformation of society, and left its traces in geographic features of Slovenia as well. The intended incorporation of Slovenia into the international market will cause considerable dilemmas and a crisis in this type of industrialization.     

Similarity and regional differences in Quaternary arvicolid evolution in Central and Eastern Europe

Because of their rapid evolution and abundant fossil record, arvicolid molars are commonly employed in Quaternary biostratigraphy. In addition, with their extensive geographical ranges these fossils often permit interregional faunal correlations. However, as a pre-condition for such correlations it has to be established that the occurrences are really time parallel in the different regions. This paper deals with the particular comparison of arvicolid records from Central and Eastern Europe. In most of the earliest and latest records of the species investigated similarities in the spectrum of accompanying species can be observed. In some cases endemism (Ungaromys, Ellobius, Eolagurus, Villanyia, several Pliomys species) or different taxonomic interpretations do not provide a sufficient base for comparison. Only for a few taxa can clear biostratigraphical differences of ranges be recognised (mainly Mimomys savini-Arvicola and various lineages within the genus Microtus). In some cases, differences in the chronostratigraphical ranges are possibly caused by the lack of a geological and palaeomagnetic framework for most of the Central European localities.     

Ultrahigh-pressure metamorphism and exhumation of garnet peridotite in Pohorje, Eastern Alps

New evidence for ultrahigh‐pressure metamorphism (UHPM) in the Eastern Alps is reported from garnet‐bearing ultramafic rocks from the Pohorje Mountains in Slovenia. The garnet peridotites are closely associated with UHP kyanite eclogites. These rocks belong to the Lower Central Austroalpine basement unit of the Eastern Alps, exposed in the proximity of the Periadriatic fault. Ultramafic rocks have experienced a complex metamorphic history. On the basis of petrochemical data, garnet peridotites could have been derived from depleted mantle rocks that were subsequently metasomatized by melts and/or fluids either in the plagioclase‐peridotite or the spinel‐peridotite field. At least four stages of recrystallization have been identified in the garnet peridotites based on an analysis of reaction textures and mineral compositions. Stage I was most probably a spinel peridotite stage, as inferred from the presence of chromian spinel and aluminous pyroxenes. Stage II is a UHPM stage defined by the assemblage garnet + olivine + low‐Al orthopyroxene + clinopyroxene + Cr‐spinel. Garnet formed as exsolutions from clinopyroxene, coronas around Cr‐spinel, and porphyroblasts. Stage III is a decompression stage, manifested by the formation of kelyphitic rims of high‐Al orthopyroxene, aluminous spinel, diopside and pargasitic hornblende replacing garnet. Stage IV is represented by the formation of tremolitic amphibole, chlorite, serpentine and talc. Geothermobarometric calculations using (i) garnet‐olivine and garnet‐orthopyroxene Fe‐Mg exchange thermometers and (ii) the Al‐in‐orthopyroxene barometer indicate that the peak of metamorphism (stage II) occurred at conditions of around 900 °C and 4 GPa. These results suggest that garnet peridotites in the Pohorje Mountains experienced UHPM during the Cretaceous orogeny. We propose that UHPM resulted from deep subduction of continental crust, which incorporated mantle peridotites from the upper plate, in an intracontinental subduction zone. Sinking of the overlying mantle and lower crustal wedge into the asthenosphere (slab extraction) caused the main stage of unroofing of the UHP rocks during the Upper Cretaceous. Final exhumation was achieved by Miocene extensional core complex formation.