Integrating Women and Environmental Issues into World Regional Geography

Abstract

Women throughout the world are demonstrating solidarity and activism on behalf of environmental issues. A World Regional Geography course is an appropriate setting for discussing some of the contributions women make to protect the environment. Using case studies that draw upon women's environmental activism in four world cultures, this article presents content information, instructional strategies and instructional resource lists. The four world cultures that provide the backdrop for this discussion are Anglo America, Russia and its neighbors, Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.     

Geographical Publications

Abstract

Project Marco Polo provided the opportunity for teachers and students to experience Egypt and the eastern Mediterranean firsthand through the lens of a geographer, archeologist, and oceanographer. The National Geographic Society and U.S. Navy collaborated to provide meaningful applied geography field experiences for teacher and student participants. In addition, participants developed a global perspective which enabled them to better understand the interrelationship of the region's diverse cultures and lands.     

Teaching and Researching the American South

Abstract

The American South is a region of endless paradoxes. While today the South's economic expansion is attracting in-migrants by the tens of thousands, many of its residents continue to live in grinding poverty. Though its history includes periods of substantial racial injustice and violence, today more African Americans are moving to the South than any other region of the United States. The region where “cotton was king” now includes many dynamic, prosperous, and rapidly expanding metropolitan areas (e.g., Atlanta, Charlotte, Dallas). But in the shadows of these cities reside rural populations who have experienced only limited improvement in the size of their paychecks, the quality of the education provided to their children, and the substance of their interaction with the rest of the nation and world.     

Population Change Trends in Large U.S. Metropolitan Areas, 1960-70: a Review

Abstract

Seven hypotheses relating to change in metropolitan areas in the decade 1960-70 are developed from literature pertaining to the preceding decade. Analysis indicates that most of the trends apparent in the 1950's have continued in the 1960's, including racial polarization, the effects of age and location of SMSA's, the uniqueness of the South, and rapid growth in the Southeast and West. Several hypotheses were rejected: (1) black suburban populations remained constant, (2) suburbs in the South are losing nonwhites, and (3) SMSA's in the South decentralize more slowly than elsewhere. The influences of annexation, migration, and natural population increase on metropolitan change are briefly discussed.     

The role of personal experiences in Norwegian perceptions of climate change

ABSTRACT

It is commonly assumed that personal experiences of a changing climate will influence people’s attitudes to the extent that they will be more likely to acknowledge anthropogenic climate change as a real threat and therefore be more willing to accept both mitigation and adaptation efforts. In the article, the authors examine how survey participants’ personal experiences of extreme events and climate-related changes in the natural environment influenced their perceptions of climate change. Using data from a nationally representative survey conducted in Norway in 2015 and the results of logistic regressions, the authors find that individual observations of changes in nature were linked to higher levels of concern with regard to climate change, as well as to attitudes that were more positive towards personal mitigation and adaption efforts. Somewhat counter-intuitively, they also find that participants who had personally experienced a natural hazard event were less concerned about climate change compared with participants without such experiences. The authors conclude that personal experience of the consequences of climate change may in some cases have a limited effect on enhancing people’s concerns about climate change.     

The Digital Versatile Disc as a Learning Support Medium in the Teaching and Learning of Map Work

Abstract

This article describes the results of a study where the digital versatile disc (DVD) was used as a variant of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in order to aid in the teaching and learning of map work in geography at secondary school level. A group of grade 10 learners of a previously disadvantaged school in South Africa comprised the target group for the project. A case study was conducted and data was gathered on the implementation of the DVD and the learners' perceptions thereof. Qualitative analysis techniques such as field notes, observation, interviews with the learners, and questionnaires were used to analyze the effectiveness of the implementation of the DVD as well as the learners' perceptions regarding the use of the DVD in geography education. The results of the study indicated that the geography learners demonstrated positive attitudes towards the implementation of the DVD as a learning support medium. To determine the contribution of the DVD project towards the achieved results of the learners in map work, both the experimental and control groups participated in a pre- and post-test at the beginning and conclusion of the project. Effect size was used to determine the significance of the differences between the two groups and indicates a strong practical significance regarding the contribution of the DVD project towards the achieved test results of the learners.     

Gendered Spaces of Informal Entrepreneurship in Soweto,South Africa

Abstract

The full diversity of economic activities in the informal economy is not well understood. The apartheid legacy of limiting informal entrepreneurship explains the most obvious geographical patterns in South Africa. After a decade and a half since the end of apartheid, however, knowledge about the places from which informal entrepreneurs operate is incomplete. Retailing is overemphasized and production firm entrepreneurs, both male and female, remain a neglected spatiality. This study reports on a survey of 100 firms in Soweto and in-depth interviews with 30 firm owners. The findings challenge the representations of isolated urban entrepreneurs dependent on inherited social capital and of women's exclusive engagement in retail. Entrepreneurs create their own social capital in work-related realms, but there are important gender differences. More finely tuned conceptualizations of entrepreneurs and of gendered working spaces need to be developed so that policy does not perpetuate unitary myths and incomplete spatial representations. [Key words: entrepreneurship, Soweto, informal economy, gender.]     

Geographic Information Technologies + Project-Based Science: A Contextualized Professional Development Approach

Abstract

This study investigated the effects of using a long-duration, project-based science professional development model on the acquisition of declarative knowledge and basic terminology associated with the use of geographic information technologies (GIT), teachers' self-assessed confidence in using GIT skills, and the implementation of GIT in participants' classrooms. Results suggest that a long-duration, project-based science model was effective in teaching GIT declarative knowledge and raising teachers' self-confidence in using GIT tools. The academy was funded through a grant from the US Department of Education with additional support from Environmental Science Resources Institute (ESRI), Inc., and members of the New Mexico Geographic Information Council.     

A Game of European Colonization in Africa

Abstract

This is a game involving role-playing designed to promote student understanding of an interest in the African colonial experience. It may be used as part of a high school or college regional geography course on Africa south of the Sahara, or in courses dealing with modern African or European history, or international relations.     

Paper-Based GIS: A Practical Answer to the Implementation of GIS Education into Resource-Poor Schools in South Africa

Abstract

Geographical information systems (GIS) were phased into the geography curriculum of South African schools from 2006–2008 as part of the National Curriculum Statement (NCS) for grades 10–12. Since its introduction, GIS education in schools across the country has been met with a number of challenges including the cost of purchasing the hardware and software required to elucidate the basic concepts of GIS to learners. This article examines the introduction of GIS education in schools in South Africa. The development and distribution of a paper-based GIS educational package for resource-poor schools in the country is also highlighted. Preliminary educator and learner evaluations of the paper-based GIS package are discussed and the broader learning opportunities and benefits associated with flexible teaching mechanisms are examined.     

Geographic Influences in the Development of St. Louis

Abstract

Ralph and Mollie Izzard. A Walk in the Mountains, A Family's Trip Through the High Lebanon.

Wesley Calef. Private Grazing and Public Lands, Studies of the Local Management of the Taylor Grazing Act.

S. H. Steinberg (editor). The Statesman's Yearbook, 1960-1961.

E. Joseph Dreany. Alaska.

John C. and Elsie F. Caldwell. Our Neighbors in Japan.

R. J. Harrison Church. West Africa: A Study of the Environment and of Man's Use of it.

Alex Somme, editor. A Geography of Norden.     

Sources of Literature for Commercial Geography

Abstract

The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation has resulted in declining classroom time dedicated to geography instruction, especially in grades K-8. To combat this problem, a National Geographic Society Grosvenor grant provided resources allowing 28 teacher-authors to generate a package of more than 80 lessons that combine the teaching of geography and mathematics skills tested on Arizona's state mandated testing. When taught in 113 piloting classrooms that mirror Arizona's student demographics, GeoMath lessons generated statistically significant increases in performance in math skills and improved understanding of geography standards. In addition, a fourth of the K-8 piloting teachers surveyed felt that teaching GeoMath lessons increased in their level of comfort in teaching mathematics. Given the success of this GeoMath strategy, and a prior GeoLiteracy program, we advocate here a national agenda of articulating geography curriculum to high-stakes tested subjects of reading and math.     

Kindergarten Geography: Teaching Diversity to Young People

Abstract

A Southern Poverty Law Center grant enabled purchasing dolls representing children of different races, ethnicity, and condition of disability. The teacher used these with other materials to sensitize kindergarten children to human differences. She directed them to cut pictures from National Geographic Magazine showing people who are “somehow different/' Responses from children were classified. Nine commented on adornment, three on household setting, two on occupation, and one on race. Little research exists on teaching geography to kindergarteners except on the ability to read maps. The authors contend that kindergarteners are quite ready to learn about regional differences among human populations.     

Land degradation and climate change in South Africa

This paper considers the potential impact of future climate change on the nature and extent of land degradation in South Africa. The basis of the assessment is the comprehensive review published by the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism (DEA&T) as a contribution to the South African effort in respect of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification. The DEA&T report is founded on information collated from 34 workshops, one in each of the agricultural regions of South Africa, involving some 453 participants consisting mainly of agricultural extension officers and soil conservation technicians. This analysis reveals that land degradation is underpinned by poverty and its structural roots in colonial and apartheid political planning. Nevertheless, future climate change represents a key challenge to the developing economies of countries like South Africa. Regionally downscaled models predicting the nature and degree of rainfall changes in the future are used to assess the possible impact of future change on the South African land degradation situation. It is concluded that the most severely degraded areas of the country, including large areas of the former 'homeland' states, are likely to become even more susceptible under predicted climate change scenarios.     

Provincializing urban appropriation: Agonistic transgression as a mode of actually existing appropriation in South African cities

Urban appropriation is a key dimension of both Lefebvre's widely hailed ‘Right to the City’ and Bayat's concept of ‘quiet encroachment’. For Lefebvre, appropriation is a (generally unrealized) claim by those who do not ‘have’ the city of a right to ‘take’ it. Bayat, in contrast, characterizes actually existing appropriation as motivated by everyday needs, not aimed at wider social change. While both theorizations may be useful, we argue that a third mode of appropriation is apparent in South African urban contexts. Actors often act in ways that could be characterized as appropriative, yet do not work to consolidate an abrogated appropriative right or durable permission. Nor are they adequately explained as apolitical or individualistic; the logic used to justify them similarly is based neither on rights nor needs. We label such appropriation ‘agonistically transgressive’. We argue that agonistically transgressive appropriations are particularly evident in post‐apartheid South Africa, in part because of changing urban conditions and consequent renegotiations of spatial regulation. Using examples of urban land appropriation for housing in South Africa, we briefly illustrate how thinking pluralistically about urban appropriation might help better understand its actually existing forms in—and beyond—the global South.     

Relational Hubs for Collaborative Landscape Stewardship

Abstract

Landscape stewardship is considered an important place-based approach to addressing sustainability challenges. Working at landscape-level requires collaboration between diverse landscape stakeholders. In this study, we partnered with local stewardship practitioners across six cases in South Africa to investigate how they facilitate collaboration towards social-ecological sustainability outcomes. We found that practitioners facilitate collaboration among stakeholders by operating as relational hubs in the landscape. Through these hubs, they build new inter-personal relationships among stakeholders, creating social networks which enable stewardship practice. The hubs deepen human-nature relationships by creating enabling conditions for stewards to put stewardship ethics into action. Drawing on insights from these cases, we call for a relational approach to landscape stewardship which focuses on human-to-human and human-to-nature relationships. Moreover, we argue that landscape stewardship initiatives need to re-focus stewardship on stewards, recognizing them as key agents of change in addressing the conflict between agriculture and conservation inherent in many landscapes.     

The basic characteristics and spatial patterns of global cultivated land change since the 1980s

In this paper, we analyzed the spatial patterns of cultivated land change between 1982 and 2011 using global vector-based land use/land cover data. (1) Our analysis showed that the total global cultivated land area increased by 528.768×10⁴ km² with a rate of 7.920×10⁴ km²/a, although this increasing trend was not significant. The global cultivated land increased fastest in the 1980s. Since the 1980s, the cultivated land area in North America, South America and Oceania increased by 170.854×10⁴ km², 107.890×10⁴ km², and 186.492×10⁴ km², respectively. In contrast, that in Asia, Europe and Africa decreased by 23.769×10⁴ km², 4.035×10⁴ km² and 86.76×10⁴ km², respectively. Furthermore, the cultivated land area in North America, South America and Oceania exhibited significant increasing trends of 7.236× 10⁴ km²/a, 2.780×10⁴ km²/a and 3.758×10⁴ km²/a, respectively. On the other hand, that of Asia, Europe and Africa exhibited decreasing trend rates of–5.641×10⁴ km²/a,–0.831×10⁴ km²/a and–0.595×10⁴ km²/a, respectively. Moreover, the decreasing trend in Asia was significant. (2) Since the 1980s, the increase in global cultivated lands was mainly due to converted grasslands and woodlands, which accounted for 53.536% and 26.148% of the total increase, respectively. The increase was found in southern and central Africa, eastern and northern Australia, southeastern South America, central US and Alaska, central Canada, western Russia, northern Finland and northern Mongolia. Among them, Botswana in southern Africa experienced an 80%–90% increase, making it the country with the highest increase worldwide. (3) Since the 1980s, the total area of cultivated lands converted to other types of land was 1071.946×10⁴ km². The reduction was mainly converted to grasslands and woodlands, which accounted for 57.482% and 36.000%, respectively. The reduction occurred mainly in southern Sudan in central Africa, southern and central US, southern Russia, and southern European countries including Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia and Hungary. The greatest reduction occurred in southern Africa with a 60% reduction. (4) The cultivated lands in all the continents analyzed exhibited a trend of expansion to high latitudes. Additionally, most countries displayed an expansion of newly increased cultivated lands and the reduction of the original cultivated lands.     

Climatic Factors in Railroad Construction and Operation

Abstract

J. Oliver Thomson. Everyman's Classical Atlas. E. P. Button &; Co., Inc., 300 Park Avenue South, New York 10, N.Y., 1961. 195 pages with figures, maps and photographs $5.00.

David Greenhood. Watch the Tides. Holiday House, 8 West 13th St., New York 11, N.Y., 1961. Unpaged (40), with illustrations. Ages 6.10.$2.75.

Datus C. Smith, Jr. The Land and People of Indonesia. J. B. Lippincott Company, East Washington Square, Philadelphia 5, Pa. 1961. 125 pages with photographs and index. $2.95.

Arthur C. Clarke. The Challenge of the Sea. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 383 Madison Ave., New York 17, N.Y., 1960. 167 pages, including illustrations by Alex Schomburg and an introduction by Wernher von Braun. $3.95.

William D. Allen. Africa. The Fideler Company, 31 Ottawa Avenue, N.W., Grand Rapids 2, Mich., 1961. 160 pages with 146 photographs

M. A. Barker-Benfield. The Lands and Peoples of East Africa. The Macmillan Company, 60 Fifth Avenue, New York 11, N.Y., 1960. 104 pages with 21 photographs, one map, table of contents, appendix and index. $1.75.

Loyal Durand, Jr. Economic Geography. Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 432 Park Avenue, South, New York 16, N.Y., 1961. 578 pages with table of contents, maps, illustrations, and index. $7.25.

Phillip O. Foss. Politics and Grass: The Administration of Grazing on the Public Domain. University of Washington Press, Seattle 5, Wash., 1960. 236 pages with notes, appendix, bibliography and index. $4.50.

Glenn T. Trewartha, Arthur H. Robinson, and Edwin H. Hammon. Fundamentals of Physical Geography. McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., 330 West 42nd Street, New York 36, N.Y., 1961. 409 pages with table of contents, illustrations and index plus nine map plates. $6.95.

Parley M. Pratt. Rice: Domestic Consumption in the United States. Bureau of Business Research, The University of Texas, Austin, Tex., 1960. xxii and 217 pages with table of contents, maps, tables, graphs, and bibliography. $4.00.

Pierre Gourou (translated by E. D. Laborde). The Tropical World: Its Social and Economic Conditions and Its Future Status (Third Edition). Longmans, Green and Co., 119 W. 40th Street, New York 18, N.Y., 1961. xii and 159

Adrian Cowell. The Heart of the Forest. Alfred A. Knopf, 501 Madison Avenue, New York 22, N.Y., 1961. 238 pages with 39 photographs and 3 maps. $5.00.

Henry B. Lent. Men at Work in the Mid-Atlantic States. G. P. Putnam's Sons, 200 Madison Avenue, New York 16, N.Y., 1961. 192 pages with table of contents area map, photographs and index. $3.50.

George W. Hoffman, editor. A Geography of Europe including Asiastic U.S.S.R., 2nd edition. The Ronald Press Co., 15 E. 26th St., New York 10, N.Y., 1961. 815 pages including illustrations, maps, appendices and index. $12.00.

Adriaan J. Barnouw. The Land and People of Holland. J. B. Lippincott Company, East Washington Square, Philadelphia 5, Pa., 1961. 129 pages with table of contents, 1 map, 8 pages of black and white photos and index. Ages 12-up. $2.95.

G. A. Garritt, R. E. McArdle, W. M. Compton, B. Z. Rhodes, and others. Proceedings of the Forest Land Use Conference of September, 1961. American Forest Products Industries, Inc., 1816 N St. N.W., Washington 6, D.C., 1961. 130 pages. Free.

E. H. G. Dobby. Monsoon Asia. Quadrangle Books, Inc., 119 West Lake Street, Chicago 1, Illinois, 1961. 381 pages with table of contents, illustrations, maps, book list and index. $5.95.

Raymond Wohlrabe and Werner E. Krusch. The Land and People of Denmark. J. B. Lippincott Company, East Washington Square, Philadelphia 5, Pa., 1961. 128 pages with, table of contents, one map, plates and index. Ages 12-up. $2.95.

John R. Ray, Jr. and Robert H. Fuson. Laboratory Exercises in Physical Geography. William C. Brown Company, Inc., Dubuque, Iowa, 1961. 160 pages. $2.75.

Washington Irving. The Adventures of Captain Bonneville, U.S.A., in the Rocky Mountains and the Far West. Edited by Edgeley W. Todd. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1961. iv and 424 pages with table of contents, illustrations, maps, appendices, editor's bibliography and index. $7.95.     

Recent Publications

Abstract

A. T. Grove. Africa South Of The Sahara. London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1967. 292 pages. $7.00.

D. A. M. Lea and P. G. Irwin. New Guinea—The Territory and Its People. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1967. 116 pages. $5.95.

Allen V. Kneese and Stephen C. Smith (editors). WATER RESEARCH. Baltimore: Published by the Johns Hopkins Press for Resources for the Future, Inc., 1966. 526 pages. $1 2.50.

THE WORLD BOOK ATLAS. Chicago: Field Enterprises Educational Corporation. 1968 edition. 392 pages. $30.45.     

The Changing Geography of U.S. Hispanics from 1990–2006: A Shift to the South and Midwest

Abstract

Between 1990 and 2000 the U.S. Hispanic population increased by 14 million, which is the largest decadal population rise in United States history. This increase was not spread evenly throughout the United States, nor was it isolated to locations that already had large Hispanic populations. On the contrary, areas that previously had a relatively small Hispanic population experienced large percentage increases. In this article the regional variability in Hispanic population growth is explored, along with an emphasis on the economic pull factors driving those demographic changes. This analysis illustrates how restructuring in the meatpacking industry, and the associated economic impacts, have created a dependence on a low wage, illegal labor force that has shaped the recent demographic trend in the South and Midwest.