Storyline-metoden,geografi og klassekameratene til 'Lille Marius'

During the last few years storyline as a teaching method has created considerable interest in many Norwegian primary schools. In storyline the teacher supplies some key concepts and the framework, and the pupils make the storyline. In this article I use a passage from Alexander Kielland's novel Gift to show how storyline can be a useful approach in geography teaching.     

THE FAILURE OF FEDERALISM IN CENTRAL AFRICA: A POLITICO-GEOGRAPHICAL POSTMORTEM

Basic concepts of cultural historical geography have been applied to a variety of community issues in St. Paul, MN. Through the process a sense of place has been developed at several scales. This inclusive sense of place has provided a link among various factions and made possible several compromises in land use and economic development issues. Most of the work was done through undergraduate field seminars.     

Concept Learning through Writing for Learning: Using Journals in an Introductory Geography Course

Abstract

To effectively use journals and other writing for learning tasks as critical thinking and learning tools, geographic educators need to draw from the education literature on concept learning. Using the literature on concept learning and critical thinking, geographic educators can construct different kinds of journal assignments that give students opportunities to personalize and understand concepts. I demonstrate that students, regardless of their sex, level of education, or previous coursework in geography, found journal assignments helpful in understanding human geographic concepts.     

Changing Perceptions of Space and Place as Measures of Hmong Acculturation

Immigrant and refugee acculturation has both behavioral and spatial manifestations. The purpose of this study is to examine the spatial acculturation process of Hmong refugees in California's San Joaquin Valley in order to understand changing perceptions of the concepts and uses of space and place. Through in-depth interviews and participant observation among 120 Hmong university students and their families, the process of change in settlement and use of space is traced from traditional cultural practices in Laos through the refugee camp experience to the first and 1.5 generation enclaves. Each generation has recreated and adapted the immediately preceding socialization experience such that settlement patterns and the use of space by the 1.5 generation only minimally resemble traditional culture, yet maintain its underlying cultural values.     

Geographic Concepts: A Need to be Explicit

Abstract

In our teaching of Geography we have implied concepts, leaving the student to structure them for himself. The article focuses upon an experiment in a class designed specifically to teach geographic concepts. Attention is placed on the degree certain concepts can be learned and some factors which affect the degree of learning.     

The Council at Work

Abstract

This paper attempts to illustrate certain important concepts in the field of cultural geography through the study of a very popular phenomenon—Rock and Roll music. The roles that the White and Black rural South and various American cities played as culture hearths and centers of culture contact are discussed along with the effects of mass migrations and mass media on American musical tastes and styles. Rock and Roll is looked at from a diffusionist point of view in that throughout its evolution, various places played important parts as “way stations” as certain American musical styles gradually spread from rural southern shacks to New York recording studios.     

Teaching Controversial Topics: Iconography and the Confederate Battle Flag in the South

Abstract

This article examines various strategies for teaching controversial topics. As a case study, I present examples from my experience teaching about the cultural/political geographic concept of iconography in southern classrooms using as an example recent debates over whether governments in the region should sanction the flying of the Confederate battle flag. First, I discuss the recent literature on the teaching of controversial issues. Second, I examine the concept of iconography and the debates over flying the flag. Third, I present different strategies that can be used to approach this controversial icon in a classroom setting. I conclude by arguing that there is no perfect solution to the teaching of controversial topics that will succeed for every topic, irrespective of time and place.     

Beyond heteronormativity? Gay cruising,closeted experiences and self-disciplining subject in People’s Park,Guangzhou

ABSTRACT

In this paper, I examine relationships between public space, gay people’s cruising and construction of gay subjectivity in People’s Park, Guangzhou, China. In particular, I interrogate the complex dynamics between the performance of homosexual identity and the dominant heteronormative ideologies in China’s cultural–political sphere. I articulate how public cruising can be mobilized as a space of alternative socio-spatial ordering and simultaneously a closeted space to experience and reassert hegemonic divides of public/private, normal/abnormal. This paper employs an analysis of self-disciplining and the production of docile bodies to examine how gay cruisers construct gayness as deviant identity and thus attempt to reconcile gay subjects with dominant norms and values. The production of self-disciplining subjects is centered on the discursive formulation that gay men in public need to act in self-regulated and “low-profile” ways. This paper intends to enrich our understanding of the intrinsically dialectical relationships between public space and sexual subjectivity in concrete time spaces.     

The empty shell of the planetary: re-rooting the urban in the experience of the urbanites

ABSTRACT

This paper offers reflections on a body of work that has been produced under the label of “planetary urbanization”. This term has its roots in speculative work by French writer Henri Lefebvre in the late 1960s and early 1970s and has recently been popularized by a new generation of critical urban theorists. In this commentary, I propose that Lefebvre’s idea of planetary urbanization (and the aligned concepts “complete urbanization” and “urban society”) offer a way to think productively about post-capitalist possibilities. Making reference to early writings by Marx and Engels about communism and the end of human pre-history, I argue that planetary urbanization presents a terrain for liberation from the constraints of capitalist histories. Given that this terrain is currently defined by the domains of neoliberalism and climate change a new politics is necessary to unlock the possibilities of urban society.     

Modelling accessibility using space-time prism concepts within geographical information systems

Abstract

The space-time Of time geographical framework is a powerful perspective from which to analyse human behaviour. One of the central concepts in this framework is the space-time prism, which models individual accessibility to an environment. In this paper, the derivation and manipulation of space-time prism concepts within a geographical information system (GIS) are discussed. The required system inputs and desired outputs are identified and a generic GIS based procedure is presented Given these basic requirements, issues are discussed which can determine the feasibility of current GIS technology to handle the derivation of space-time prism concepts.     

Toward a Geography of the Negro in the City

Abstract

The geography of Black America represents a legitimate and a distinctive sub-field of the discipline. While research time and attention is being focused increasingly on Black America much remains to be done to incorporate its study into introductory courses at both the secondary and college levels. Since many existing geography courses are inadequately structured to accommodate a meaningful analysis of Black America, it will be necessary to restructure them so that they become relevant not only to Black America but to emerging world-wide cultural patterns as well. The most logical and efficacious framework for such courses is one focused on the geography of cities. Courses dealing with urban topics can be devised so that major concepts of city structure can be presented as concomitants to topics dealing with the role and the contribution of the Negro in the city.     

Degraded forest,degraded land and the development of industrial tree plantations in Laos

The concepts of degraded forest (pa mai xout xom) and degraded land (din seuam xom) have been variously applied in official Lao government policy narratives and law over the last couple of decades. In this article I focus on the concepts of degraded forest and land, and the relationship with industrial tree plantations, using two examples from southern Laos. I argue that the concepts have been significant in both facilitating and obstructing the development of large‐scale industrial tree plantations in different times and spaces, thus significantly influencing access and exclusion, as well as the spatialization of tree plantations. I provide a tentative genealogy regarding the emergence of these concepts in land and forestry policy in Laos, and briefly explain the links between degradation and ‘the land rush’ presently affecting Laos.     

Measuring Human Extensibility in a Shrinking World

Abstract

The concepts of time-space convergence and human extensibility provide important insights relating the impacts of transportation and communications advances with the human organization of space. This paper explains these concepts and suggests how they may be used for structuring classroom projects.     

Convention candids

Abstract

Djerba, a small island off the southeast Tunisian coast, is in many ways a unique fragment of North African cultural geography. In terms of linguistic character, religious qualities, and ethnic makeup Djerba constitutes a veritable laboratory for the study of the effects of spatial isolation. Now, however, Djerba's long-term isolation is coming to an end as tourism is gaining momentum and modernization alters the cultural landscape.     

PERSONAL ICONS AND AMULETS: REFLECTIONS OF CULTURE-VALUES AND HUMAN/LAND RELATIONSHIPS

Abstract

The chauffeuring of children to/from school and childcare providers has received limited attention in previous research, although it structures parents' everyday activities in important ways. Combining analytical and cultural perspectives on juggling employment and caregiving, I explore the impact of such factors as household structure, employment and commute characteristics, residential location, and culturally defined norms about parenthood on chauffeuring arrangements for dual-earner households in Utrecht, the Netherlands. Fathers conduct a considerable share of chauffeuring trips, but arrangements are often informed by traditional gender norms. The spatial variability in the gendering of chauffeuring is limited.     

A Field-Based Technique for Teaching about Habitat Fragmentation and Edge Effects

Abstract

This article presents a field technique that exposes students to the indirect effects of habitat fragmentation on plant distributions through studying edge effects. This assignment, suited for students in an introductory biogeography or resource geography class, increases students' knowledge of basic biogeographic concepts such as environmental gradients and disturbance in addition to formulating research questions and design. In this exercise, fieldwork can be implemented with simple tools that are easily obtainable and found in most physical geography labs. In this example, student response to the exercise was positive; they indicated that the exercise was a fun and interactive way to learn fundamental biogeographic concepts.     

SEAFARERS' “MARITIME CULTURE” AND THE “I‐KIRIBATI WAY OF LIFE”: THE FORMATION OF FLEXIBLE IDENTITIES?

This paper aims to examine how seafarers from the Pacific Republic of Kiribati cope with the experience of working with crews of different nationalities, and, further, how the exposure to different cultures during their journeys through international waters influences both their own identity as well as their perceptions of I‐Kiribati culture. Based on examples from open and semi‐structured interviews with seafarers working on German merchant ships and Japanese fishing vessels, the paper questions the application of concepts of “hybridity” in the case of these I‐Kiribati men in favour of the idea of “cultural flexibility”. It further considers to what degree seafarers strongly rooted in the clearly confined cultural values of Kiribati have adapted the values received through their training and employment by German or Japanese and Korean companies and officers. The paper adds to the framework of transnationalism by advancing the notion of emporion, in which the circular and transversal journeys of seafarers are viewed as a connecting space between land‐based areas; a space which provides a basis for an extended knowledge and understanding of different cultural outlooks as well as relations between nations.     

Escalation: A Simulation of Contemporary Geo-Politics

Abstract

ESCALATION is a one-hour simulation game that treats international power politics from a geographic perspective. It has been pilot-tested in several high schools and two universities. ESCALATION is deemed appropriate for high school geography and social studies classes, and for introductory college geography courses. Three important geographic principles are dramatically demonstrated by the activity. First, students discover that traditional ways of viewing maps can create misleading geographic stereotypes. Second, students learn the importance of cultural conditioning in viewing international relations. Third, students learn that numerous interacting factors influence nations in their selection of allies. The activity elaborated in the article provides geography teachers with a practical, ready-made teaching activity that is powerful in concepts and dramatic in presentation. The classroom teacher simply needs to transform the map (Figure 1) into a transparency and briefly review the simulation procedures. The teacher then presents the four sequential stages in the ESCALATION game and conducts a post-simulation discussion of what happened and why. The activity, in short, provides geography and social studies teachers with a simulation activity that combines role playing, decision-making, and surprise to generate several important geographic concepts and principles. The surprise climax invariably produces considerable discussion.     

Anglo Intrusion on the Old Sangre de Cristo Land Grant

Positioned on the northern edge of the Hispano homeland, the southern portion of the old Sangre de Cristo Land Grant (present-day Costilla County, Colorado) provides an interesting empirical study of cultural change. After economically displacing Spanish-American residents from villages throughout the homeland's core, incoming Anglos have adopted the region's rich Spanish culture as their own. On the homeland's periphery, however, the cultural traditions of Hispanos and Anglos have been, for the most part, at odds. Most resident Hispanos desire to maintain ties to their traditional past, while the younger generations embrace Anglo cultural norms. Considering the vital role it plays in the maintenance of culture, religion provides a window to the study area's modified cultural environment. In 1900 the population in this region was predominantly Catholic Hispano; by 1990 Protestant-dominated Anglos comprised a sizeable proportion of the population. Comparisons are made between traditional Hispano and Anglo-influenced religious landscapes. Changes in church affiliation, the distribution of active Penitente moradas, and the characteristics of community cemeteries demonstrate ongoing cultural change. Geographically isolated communities, where Anglo intrusion is limited, retain their strong Hispano cultural integrity.     

Leimavo Revisited: Agrarian Land-Use Change in the Highlands of Madagascar

Describing and explaining land-use change is of critical concern in Madagascar, where land transformations such as deforestation and resulting environmental degradation currently capture widespread attention. While the eastern rain forest recedes in the face of swidden cultivators, the highlands demonstrate more constructive transformations. In this paper I present a case study of land-use change in Leimavo, a small village near Ambositra studied in the 1960s by Jean-Pierre Raison. Here, the twentieth century has seen a gradual reduction in irrigated rice cultivation and cattle husbandry, and a boom in market-oriented orange, vegetable, and grain production. In the long term, a historical landscape of grassy hills has been transformed into a productive cultural landscape with woodlots, anti-erosion benching, rice terraces, fruit groves, and diverse crops. Critical factors determining the trajectory of land-use change include regional population pressure, state policies, market incentives, climate variations, and access to land and water resources. These critical factors, or explanations, are linked in the discussion by the use of a simple heuristic device—the range of choice—as a theoretical framework.