Holland as other place and other time: alterity in projected tourist images of the Netherlands

Geographers show keen interest in projected images employed in tourism as these images both reflect the ideas of the image producers and influence tourists’ perceptions and (spatial) behaviour. This article focuses on intentional and unintentional projected images of the Netherlands. The former is especially selective: it relies on stereotypes and presents Holland. The unintentional projected image created in four travel guides is less stereotyped. While the focus is still on Holland, other areas of the country are presented as well. Both intentional and unintentional projected images rely on ’othering’ and ’alterity’ to make the Netherlands a unique destination and to offer the tourists a trip that is far from everyday life. However travel guides use ’alterity’ in different ways and at different levels of scale to create a regional geography of the Netherlands as well.

Logics of change for military-to-wildlife conversions in the United States

Since 1988, more than 20 US military bases have been redesignated as national wildlife refuges. In order to understand the processes of these military-to-wildlife (M2W) conversions and their implications, I examine three logics that help to produce these particular changes: Biodiversity, Brownfields, and Serendipity. These logics contribute to a broader discourse of ecological militarization that frames military practices as compatible with and contributing to environmental protection. I focus on the case of the Rocky Mountain Arsenal, Colorado, USA, to examine how these logics of conversion are mobilized into practice, and what such changes mean as they bring militarism and environmental conservation together in reconfigured spaces.

Memorial landscapes: analytic questions and metaphors

Over the past two decades, geographers have probed the intersection of collective memory and urban space. Their sustained interest in the subject reflects an understanding of the social condition of commemoration and the important role that space plays in the process and politics of collective memory. Along with other critical social scientists, geographers envision these public symbols as part of larger cultural landscapes that reflect and legitimate the normative social order. A review of the extant literature indicates that geographers scrutinize memorial landscapes through three conceptual lenses that may be understood via the metaphors of ‘text,’ ‘arena,’ and ‘performance.’ These metaphors are in turn mobilized through a series of analytic questions that serve to identify the interests served and denied by landscape ‘texts,’ the ‘arenas’ in which they are produced, and the ways in which they are enacted via ‘performance.’ This article’s synopsis of the subfield’s predominant metaphors and its attendant questions contributes to the ongoing cultural geographic project of articulating and implementing methods for interpreting landscapes as open-ended symbolic systems.

Government and urban management in the 20th century: policies,contradictions, and weaknesses of the New Right

Throughout the 20th century, government in the U.S. has gone through significant changes; initially responding to the disorder of early capitalism, and later, to the economic crisis of the 1970s. This article will explore the changes in the U.S. political landscape over the last century, as well as the recent rise of neo-liberalism. In addition, with the analysis of the model laissez-faire municipal government, the City of Houston, the article will illustrate how the basic weaknesses of neoliberalism at the national level are also evident at the local scale of government.

Militarism and the environment in Guatemala

This paper examines how civil war in Guatemala created and destroyed community cohesion, which, in turn, influences land use practices in the frontier region of Ixcán today. The impact of civil war on the environment and land use in this region takes many forms. Some communities took refuge in Mexico. Other communities refused to take refuge in Mexico and also refused to submit to military rule. These communities of “people in resistance” formed highly cohesive units in order to evade military detection. The lessons of cooperation and the high levels of cohesion they developed during their years in hiding have carried over to their successful management of natural resources in post-conflict Guatemala. Return refugees accumulated higher levels of cohesion while in refuge because they often participated in workshops organized and funded by outside relief agencies. Higher levels of community cohesion have allowed return refugee communities to better organize and use their land in more sustainable ways. Other communities did not flee and thus endured military rule. They were forced out of their dispersed land parcels into concentrated model villages. Concentration of community members forced intensive use of the environment in the zone immediately surrounding the new settlement. Often, distrust permeated these occupied communities and community cohesion dipped. Today, these low levels of community cohesion lead to a lack of consensus on how to use land and resources in the community. The overall goal of the paper is to point out the community level variation in the relationship between military actions, community cohesion, and the environment.

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.

Ethnic coexistence in a pluralistic campus environment

In Malaysia, ethnic segregation seems to have grown more and more pronounced at all levels of education, which may have in the main contributed to increasing occupational segregation by ethnicity when the graduates left to join the job market. Such trends may be disturbing given the effort the country has put in to promote interethnic understanding and reduce interethnic economic disparity since 1970. By critically investigating the dynamics of ethnic coexistence in the microcosm of the university campus environment, this paper provides statistical evidence to show how far the country has progressed in terms of ethnic relations since the watershed events of May 13, 1969; to what extent Malaysian multiethnic society is different now compared to the unmistakable racial “corporateness” and interethnic “separateness” that Furnivall observed in his classic study of 1948; and in what ways ethnic relations have been reshaped by three decades of affirmative action policies and the form of ethnic democracy adapted for this unique society.

Movement,memory, landscape: an excursion in non-representational thought

This paper is an excursion in non-representational thought. The primacy of movement charges this creative geography. Movement as sensation, thought, matter and memory crystallizes in ongoing assemblages (effects) we term selves and landscapes. This movement ontology is animated by a stream of thought running through Bergson, Deleuze, and Massumi, and by Ingold’s temporality of landscape. Memory is vital, as past (virtual) and present (actual) coexist, pushing forward in duration, the dynamic continuation of movement and sensation. David Lynch’s film, The Straight Story, offers dramatic illustration of the entanglement of movement, memory, and landscape. Landscape is emergent as relational lines of movement, an ongoing meshwork of practices and movement signatures. Alvin Straight’s paced journey through Iowa on a John Deere lawn mower during autumn harvest is a road to reminiscence and reconciliation, an American sublime. Lynch’s movement-images and soundscapes are sensorial undulations that illumine landscape as movement of incorporation, ‘dwelling’ in the moment to moment, geographies of care. The take-home message is that we are nothing more and nothing less than agents, next selves, ‘passing’ through. The collective trace of our ‘passings’ constitutes the making and remaking of place.

On the miscibility gap in monazite–xenotime systems

The regular solid solution model has been applied to solid solubility in the monazite–xenotime systems and is verified against the available experimental data for LaPO₄–YPO₄ and CePO₄–YPO₄ systems. The model is then used to predict the miscibility gaps in a number of other monazite–xenotime systems. The implications for prospective two-phase monazite–xenotime fiber coatings for applications in ceramic matrix composites (CMCs) are discussed.

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Alternative technologies for rural areas–what about the ‘alternative’ dimension of Wi-Fi?

Summary  The question of alternative technologies for high-speed Internet access lies at the heart of rural development problems. In this paper, we focus on one of those technologies, the system combining satellite technologies and Wi-Fi. Based on an empirical study carried out in three rural areas, we analyze the dynamics of the use and appropriation of that technology by the companies and organizations participating in the experiment. Considered both from a technical and social standpoint, the technology ‘in use’ appears here in its structuring dimensions.

Spatial and temporal knowledge representation

Knowledge Representation (KR) originated as a discipline within Artificial Intelligence, and is concerned with the representation of knowledge in symbolic form so that it can be stored and manipulated on a computer. This article surveys that part of KR that is concerned with the representation of space and time, with particular reference to the use of such representations in geographical information science.

China’s container-related dynamics, 1990–2005

This study seeks to gauge how far China’s container-related dynamics between 1990 and 2005 fit into the wider perspective about transport and development within developing countries. In particular, attention is focussed on the role of specific modes to determine the extent of the penetration of containers within China. Before addressing these key issues extant models relating to an understanding of port and transport evolution in less-developed countries are recalled, synthesized and used as a base upon which an appropriate review of China’s case can be conducted. Applying them to China’s northern, central and southern port ranges not only helps assess the efficacy of these models but also highlights the contribution of individual modes.

Beyond the Anglo-American hegemony in human geography: a European perspective

Over the past five years or so, Anglo-American hegemony in human geography has been widely debated. This debate has highlighted the obstacles put in the way of the building of a more international geographical discipline. In this paper, we reflect on the possibilities and also the limitations of Europe as a context for the experimentation with a more cross-national discipline. In doing so, we notice on the one hand the increasing attention towards the Europeanisation of human geography, particularly at an institutional level, but on the other hand we also notice the lack of some basic forms and tools of communication and exchange that might facilitate the mobilisation of scholars around the ‘European project’. The paper tries to offer a contribution to this issue by discussing the ways in which a European journal of human geography might be conceived and also concretely organised. In this respect the paper takes into account issues of language, access to scientific knowledge and recognition of cultural and academic diversities.

Towards domestic fair trade? Farm labor, food localism, and the ‘family scale’ farm

Over the past several decades, consumers in the global North have increasingly looked to fair or alternative trading systems as a means to promote ecologically and socially sustainable agricultural production. While fair trade has historically been limited to international commodity networks, US-based agro-food activists have recently turned their attentions towards building a domestic movement, to bring fair trade principles and standards ‘home.’ Through an exploration of this growing movement, we consider the potential for third party certification and labeling to incorporate social justice into US-based agricultural production, with a particular focus on the implications for farm workers. We view current efforts to bring the principles of fair trade to the domestic arena as a reflection of several interrelated developments: a growing need on the part of small and mid-sized farmers to garner price premiums due to the erosion of the organic price premium; a recognition of the failure of organic certification to advance a holistic vision of sustainability; and the strategic embrace of voluntary regulatory mechanisms as an alternative to public regulation and collective bargaining. Initial research suggests that this has led to particular framings of the domestic fair trade concept, which may undermine the movement’s ability to address the social relations of agro-food production. Specifically, prioritization of the ‘family-scale’ farm and an undercurrent of food localism may obscure farm workers’ role in valorizing the US agricultural landscape.

Airline data for global city network research: reviewing and refining existing approaches

Information on air passenger flows is potentially a prime data source for assessing spatial patterns in the global city network, but previous analyses have been hampered by inadequate and/or partial data. The ensuing analytical deficiencies have reduced the overall value of these analyses, and this paper examines how some of these deficiencies may be rectified. First, we review the rationale for using airline data to analyse the global city network. Second, we assess the data problems encountered in previous research. Third, we elaborate on the construction of datasets that may circumvent some of these problems. The proposed refinements include the omission of the hub function of major airports and ways to extract relevant business flows from the data.

Remote sensing and GIS based determination of groundwater dependent ecosystems in the Western Cape, South Africa

Finding the location of groundwater dependent ecosystems (GDEs) is important in determining the extent of restrictions that need to be placed upon the abstraction of groundwater. Remote sensing was combined with geographical information system (GIS) modelling to produce a GDE probability rating map for the Sandveld region, South Africa. Landsat TM imagery identified the areas indicating the probable presence of GDEs and GIS assisted in their delineation. Three GIS models were generated: a GIS model predicting landscape wetness potential (LWP model) based on terrain morphological features; the LWP model was modified to highlight groundwater generated landscape wetness potential (the resulting GglWP model); and a groundwater elevation model was interpolated, combining groundwater level measurements in boreholes in the region with digital elevation model data. Biomass indicators generated from Landsat were classified and combined with the GIS models, followed by field verification of riverine and wetland GDEs. The LWP model provided the most accurate results of the three models tested for GDEs in this region.

Visual methodologies through a feminist lens: South African soap operas and the post-apartheid nation

Using a discussion of South African soap operas, I will place the idea of visuality in a discourse analysis that incorporates a feminist epistemological lens, or an epistemology that integrates reflexivity and an acknowledgment of the dialogic nature of visual media. Through this discussion, I will examine the possibilities that dialogism provides for unpacking and exploring the politics of imperfect translation between the visual and the textual. These methodological interventions, I argue, will help enrich discussions of the visual’s role in the contested realm of geographic imaginations and move beyond the distanced position of the masculine gaze.

Mapping flood pressure points: assessing vulnerability of the UK Fire Service to flooding

A vulnerability index for the Fire Service in the UK has been designed to identify vulnerable locations during episodes of severe floods. Taking recent case studies with the UK Fire Service, the patterns of vulnerability, in terms of demand on time and resources, can be explained by investigating the environmental causes and their interaction with the adaptive capacity of the response agencies.

Is there a significant diffusive “salt-pump mechanism” for the transport of organic contaminants from the marine environment into fresh water aquifers? A discussion contribution

We analyse recent claims of an additional risk of diffusive intrusion by marine organic contamination (OC) into coastal aquifers, and discuss the activity-driven “salt-pump mechanism” which is claimed to accelerate this diffusion. The reported accelerations of transport of OC out of saltwater are far too large to be due to activity effects on simple diffusion. There probably is a small acceleration of diffusion out of saltwater, but there is no direct experimental evidence for this. Possible experimental artefacts are suggested. Larger effects on diffusion in the literature are shown to be not relevant to this problem. Diffusion of suspended OC, present in the experiments, is too slow to be significant; however, this suspended material is shown to have serious implications for the proposed interpretation of the results. Until these results are better understood, no conclusions about any possible environmental implications can be drawn from them.

Melt inclusion formation mechanisms and compositional effects in high-An feldspar and high-Fo olivine in anhydrous mafic silicate liquids

Important aspects of melt inclusion formation and potential compositions effects have been addressed through a series of experiments using anorthite/fosterite saturated anhydrous mafic liquids. Experimental charges were cooled from 1,300 to 1,230 and 1,210°C at rates of 1–10°/min followed by 0–24 h isothermal periods. Hopper and skeletal crystal morphologies with variable degrees of completeness developed during the cooling period. Planar overgrowth of these textures during isothermal periods led to the formation of inclusions, the majority of which formed after 6 h of isothermal run time. We suggest that the change in morphologies is related to a decrease in growth rates and changes in dominant growth mechanisms. In general, inclusion compositions were uniform and similar to the host glass, indicating that with the isothermal times required for most inclusions to form, a boundary layer was not entrapped that could be detected within the limits of our analyses.

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