The Geography

Editor's Note: The views and opinions expressed in the following paper have been written in the form of a letter or conversation between a dissertation advisor and an advanced graduate student in medical geography. It emphasizes the pervasive qualities of the health component of human behavior, and hopefully transmits aspects of human behavior that are taking hold in medical-ecological research. It attempts to suggest what at least one practicing medical geographer thinks a major facet of the field will be like as it matures. The holistic perspective that it envisages seems to be taking hold in neighboring disciplines—or perhaps “interdisciplines”as they might someday be called. The speculative quality of the presentation is intended to serve as a possible springboard for professional interaction.     

Childhood asthma: Regional and social inequalities in parents' perceptions of the diagnostic process in Norway

This paper focuses on the 'cultural turn' which has taken place in British and to a lesser extent North American and Australian human geography in the last decade. It begins by exploring what constitutes the cultural in what has been dubbed 'new cultural geography'. It then explores contemporary claims that cultural geography has eclipsed or marginalised social geography. The final section evaluates these claims about the demise of the social, arguing that the social has not been evacuated but rather has been redefined. While this paper tells a specific story about a particular tradition and geographical frame of reference, it nonetheless has wider relevance because it provides an example of the differential development of particular sub-disciplinary areas, of the way subdisciplinary knowledges shape each other, and of the way understandings of disciplinary trends are contested.     

Editorials

Abstract

Travelers' diaries are just one example of how primary documents can be used to experience geography in the classroom. Involving students in people's lives is an effective way to interest students in geography. Students will discover how these travelers migrated across the Missouri landscape, what modes of transportation they utilized, and the places they encountered along the way. This lesson focuses on people who traveled through Missouri in the mid-1800s. State historical societies and local archives are excellent sources of travel diaries and journals that can help your students experience geography and learn something about their own state in the process.     

Meteorological Observations in 1995 at the Arctic Station,Qeqertarsuaq (Godhavn), Central West Greenland/Concentrational Agriculture: Types,Functions, and Derivation/Den Danske Nationalkomité for Geografi

In October 1990 an automatic meteorological station was established at the Arctic Station (69°15'N, 53°31'W), Qeqertarsuaq (Godhavn), Central West Greenland, The station register parameters each 20 min, and the parameters have been described in an earlier paper in this journal by Nielsen et al. (1995). The present paper summarises main points of the climate during 1995.

Concentrational agriculture, defined as types of agriculture based on local concentration of plant nutrients, encompasses two main types: shifting cultivation and infield-outfield systems. They may ecologically be characterised by their mode of concentration: either by a vertical or a horisontal transfer (‘pumping’) of nutrients, respectively. The use of the general term ‘concentrational agriculture’ for the two forms is advocated by demonstrating that functional substitution of one by the other is possible, and by showing that the one type theoretically can be derived from the other. Historically, infield-outfield systems are supposed to be developed from some form of shifting cultivation.

Kort beretning om virksomheden i 1995

Justering af medlemskredsen. I forbindelse med valg af repræsentanter fandt en justering af repræsentationsområder sled (Århus Universilet har ikke længere fagområdet ‘kulturgeografi’). Videnskabernes Selskab har i samme forbindelse bifaldet, at fire observatører, repræsenterende undervisningstrinene i geografi deltager i møderne.     

The Use of Supplementary Beading

Abstract

Political geography has long been a major field of interest for geography teachers and students. One of the most interesting areas of political geography is the study of boundaries and boundary zones. In this context, the demilitarized zone (DMZ) as a political separating agent has been one of the most controversial issues in the twentieth century. The demilitarized zone of Vietnam, Korea, and Israel all constitute major zones of tension and friction. The major reason for the instability attending these frictions is that the DMZ's were created by military armistice agreements rather than more conventional political processes. Thus the DMZ's are the product of an unresolved conflict. This geopolitical analysis of the Israel-Syrian DMZ describes how the zone was created and how it functioned between 1949 and 1967.     

The geographical study of myths

In archaic societies, myths gave significance to collective life. Their building relied on the peculiarities of the means of communication in societies that ignored the written word: this absence was responsible for (1) a special form of duration, time immemorial, (2) the special role of the people who had an access to it, and (3) possibilities of decentring based on immanence. The purpose of the paper is to show that all societies produce narratives similar to myths in order to provide general interpretations of their social structures and dynamics, and collective or individual destiny. They rely on specific time categories and ways of decentring that give intellectual power to some social categories: the invention of writing allowed for revelation, which created a major break in history, gave a central role to prophets and introduced transcendence. In ancient Greece, the use of the written word for the construction of new forms of law was conducive to the rise of metaphysics, the emergence of philosophers, and the appearance of another form of transcendency. Modern societies refused to rely on revelation, but used short narratives on the origin of mankind and its organisation to structure time, either individual or collective, and build a new type of immanence; social scientists were, consciously or unconsciously, responsible for this change. Modern communication introduces new turning points in history (the transition from modernity to postmodernity for instance), is responsible for the appearance of middlemen the newsmen and provides a wide access to 'genuine' sources of scientific information and to 'alternative' interpretations of the world. These examples show that all systems of thought have to be explored in a geographic perspective.     

The application of remote sensing techniques to landscape level environmental research: A hybrid approach combining visual and digital interpretation

The development of new technology for use in environmental research provides us with numerous sophisticated tools such as remote sensing and Geographical Information Systems (GIS). However, throughout recent decades there have been debates regarding the appropriate use of these tools. The question still remains as to whether they can strengthen environmental research, or whether perhaps more conventional methods are better suited? This paper focuses on the use of remote sensing in environmental applications, such as strategic or regional environmental assessments. By providing a case study from Sri Lanka, it is shown how the benefits from a visual interpretation of satellite imagery can be combined with a digital supervised classification in a hybrid approach. The use of these techniques in environmental assessments is further discussed in the light of 'best practicable science' as proposed by the International Association of Impact Assessment (IAIA). The intention is not to discourage the use of digital techniques, but to discuss how they should be utilized to their fullest extent. The approach argued for here provides data of a more general and possibly integrative nature. It may therefore be well suited for the early screening and scoping stages of environmental assessments at a landscape level.     

Everyday Ecologies: Cities,Nature, and leaching Urban Ecology

Abstract

Conventional geographical approaches to the city tend to place the study of urban form and urban space squarely within the political-economic and cultural branches of geography. Geographic pedagogy has tended to assume, therefore, that nature is absent from the city or exists only as a backdrop or stage on which urban economic and cultural activities take place. In contrast, there has been a recent groundswell of interest—originating in places as diverse as environmental activism, environmental history, landscape architecture, and environmental education—in reinterpreting the city as a space intimately connected with nature. This article examines the possibilities for integrating this rethinking of the relationship between city and nature into undergraduate education. Specifically, it outlines the rationale, objectives, and design of a course on urban ecology and examines the benefits and challenges of doing urban ecology as part of geographic education.     

Programmed Learning: Its Relationship to Geographical Education

Abstract

In the past decade, scientists have become increasingly concerned with man's pollution of the atmosphere and his inadvertent ability to effect change in climate at macro scales. The nature of such change is not yet known, but in this article, the premise that continued atmospheric pollution will promote higher air temperatures and ultimately coastal flooding through melting of all solid water forms, is accepted as inevitable. The author speculates on the probability of such an event and cartographically analyzes the possible extent of change in continental shapes and sizes, as well as the impact of world inundation on population densities and distributions. Projecting to 2050 A.D. as the earliest possible date for the maximization of this occurrence, it is expected that the expanding oceans will have reduced continental surfaces by approximately 17%, and roughly 19% of the population of the mid-21st century will have been relocated.     

THE GEOGRAPHY PLACEMENT SEMINAR: A COURSE SYLLABUS

This article examines linkages between recent domestic out-migration from immigrant gateway metropolitan areas and nonmetropolitan migration gains, based on data of the 1990 census, 1996 Current Population Survey, and population estimates for the 1990–1996 period from the Bureau of Census. Our analysis of these data suggests that there is a mirror image of migration patterns between high immigration metropolitan area losses and nonmetropolitan area gains. This is especially evident in the West with the relationship between Los Angeles and San Francisco areas' losses on the one hand, and the region's nonmetropolitan gains on the other. While pre-elderly and elderly retirees have contributed to these nonmetropolitan gains, much of it is attributable to the destination choices of suburban-like populations—Whites with children, not college educated, and with lower incomes—that have been leaving high immigration metropolitan areas. This new, more dispersed form of “White flight” holds the potential for reinvigorating smaller, nonmetropolitan communities, but creating, as well, new demographic divisions across space.     

Exploring Obstacles toEducational Reform: Observations from Finding a Way

This paper examines teachers' expressions of concerns and resistance to the idea of making their classrooms gender equitable. The observations made here arose in the context of the National Science Foundation-funded National Council for Geographic Education Finding A Way project. During Finding A Way summer institutes, teachers were asked to look critically at themselves and reflect on their classroom practices. From their journal entries and personal narratives, it was found that teachers frequently experience powerful emotional responses and cognitive dissonance when asked to address issues of equity in their classrooms. Dissonance, ambivalence, and resistance surfaced most often over the “request” that they become proactive. We found that Finding A Way was most successful with those teachers who were willing to assume the role of “change agents” and who were personally invested in the outcome. Heretofore, professional development research in geography has been remarkably silent on the issue of teacher resistance to educational reform initiatives.     

Strategic Positivism∗

Many “sociological”factors can account for the initial acceptance and continued persistence of W. M. Davis's Geographical Cycle. Such factors include Davis's attractive and forceful presentation of the cycle and the role of the cycle as a unifier of the discipline of physical geography, to name two. An analysis of the scientific character of the cycle, in the light of Karl Popper's criteria for demarcating between science and non-science, suggests that persistence of the cycle can also be attributed to a “logical”factor, the irrefutability of the central concept, stage.     

TREASURER'S REPORT

The following arlicle prepared by a member of the School of tho Arts, The Pennsylvania State University presents an artist's analyst's of the character and function of Renaissance maps. The viewpoint of a non-geographer on this niatter may be of interest to the modem day cartographergeographer.     

The Unbearable Closeness of The East: Embodied Micro-Economies of Difference,Belonging, and Intersecting Marginalities in Post-Socialist Berlin

Abstract

This article examines the micro-politics of belonging in the post-socialist outskirts of Berlin, in Marzahn, one of many new urban immigrant settlement areas in Europe. More specifically, it focuses on what locals perceive as an acceptance-precluding conspicuous presence of nominally white immigrants of German ancestry from the former Soviet Union, the Aussiedler (resettlers). Long-term residents read and interpret these immigrants’ everyday embodiments by constructing what I call micro-economies of embodied difference in order to mark immigrants as non-belonging Eastern-European. In order to make sense of such practices and local antipathy towards the Aussiedler, I analyze the embeddedness of this suburban locality in the regional politics of belonging, showing how Marzahn and its long-time residents have themselves become post-wall Berlin's (and Germany's) internal Others, saturated with uncommodifiable traces of now-denigrated state-socialist Easternness. I suggest that in such a context these residents’ practice of ascribing the unwanted Easternness to recent immigrants works to deflect it in order to buttress their own claims to full membership citizenship in the unified Germany from which they have long been excluded. [Key words: belonging, immigrants, embodied difference, Othering, Easternness, Berlin.]     

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.     

Measuring erosion rates on exposed limestone residuum using erosion pins: a 10-year record

Abstract

Erosion rates in residual limestone soils in a humid climate were measured for 10 years at one site, and for 4 years at another site, using erosion pins. Erosion pins were placed in gully floors and on convex divides between adjacent gullies, on abandoned land where vegetation had been removed. We measured an average erosion rate of 20 mm yr^?1 over 10 years at one site and only 5 mm yr^?1 over 4 years at another site where chert gravel was common on the surface. The 10-year average erosion rate of divides (26 mm yr^?1) was significantly greater than the average erosion rate of gullies (14 mm yr^?1), suggesting control by different processes, some of which may be seasonal. In winter, it was observed that frost action produced a thin layer of loose soil on the surface of divides. In summer, a hardpan developed on divides, as the soil loosened by winter frosts was transported to gullies, likely by rainsplash or dry ravel. The diffusive processes of frost action, rainsplash, and dry ravel appear to shape the convex divides in this study. Down-cutting of gullies requires channelized flow produced by intense rainfall, which is more common in summer for this location.     

Meteorological observations 1998 at the arctic station,Qeqertarsuaq (69°15'N), Central West Greenland/Active layer monitoring in two Greenlandic permafrost areas: Zackenberg and Disko Island

An automatic meteorological station has been operating at the Arctic Station (69°15'N, 53°31'W) in West Greenland since 1990. This paper summarises meteorological parameters during 1998, including snow cover, ground temperatures and active layer development, and presents comments on the local permafrost thickness.

Abstract

Active layer monitoring in Greenland was started in 1996 and 1997, and forms part of the Circumpolar Active Layer Monitoring (CALM) Network of the International Permafrost Association (IPA). The results of the first years of this monitoring of thaw progression and maximum active layer thickness in two Greenlandic permafrost areas are presented. Two sites are in the continuous permafrost zone at Zackenberg in NE Greenland (74 °N), and one at Disko Island in W Greenland (69 °N), at the border between discontinuous and continuous permafrost.

The data collected at Zackenberg demonstrate interannual variation in the timing of thaw progression in the monitoring grid holding a seasonal snowpatch, while there is less variation in the horizontal grid without a snowpatch. The maximum active layer thickness for the two Zackenberg grids is more or less consistent for the first three years with averages from 58 to 66 cm in mid and late August. At Disko the active layer reached 71 cm in mid August 1998. Spatially the distribution of the maximum, annual active layer thickness within the grids is concordant.