Flowers in the bathtub: boundary crossings at the public-private divide

Legal spaces are said to be a crucial materialization of law, serving to communicate legal meaning and, in so doing, helping to produce a liberal-legal consciousness. Given its centrality to legal ordering and liberal ideology, the spatial manifestation of the public-private divide, especially when related to property, would appear to be particularly important in this regard. Public and private are assumed to be both mutually exclusive and exhaustive. Drawing upon empirical research conducted in a neighbourhood in Vancouver, Canada, I argue that spatial and legal categories such as public and private may be more fluid than one might suppose. While the public/private divide is clearly powerful, and informs much policy and governmental action, it is not necessarily the case that it has the purchase on everyday life that some scholars have suggested. People may live in more complicated and overlapping worlds when it comes to supposedly determinate categories such as property.     

Boundaries and transborder relations,or the hole in the prison wall: On the necessity of superfluous limits and boundaries

Boundaries can be seen as barriers or as places of contact. It has been suggested that we are “prisoners of borders”, of all kinds of borders (political, religious, social, cultural, linguistic etc.). While this statement appears to be somewhat exaggerated, it holds some truth. Boundaries are elements in spatial organization, and they influence daily life in many ways (not only for people living right along them). The paper addresses the question if we must call ourselves “prisoners” or if we simply have to live with all kinds of borders. Departing from theoretical observations, the paper discusses the various aspects boundaries assume in the European context before looking at a few concrete Swiss examples. They reveal that even regions at a certain distance of the state border will feel its effects (the case of Zurich airport), but the most important benefit can been drawn by people living in the border area itself (through price differences between the two countries, as exemplified by the Swiss-Italian border). There may be asymmetry on state borders, but this asymmetry can also swing around: the advantages often lie on both sides. The paper concludes by pointing to the persistence of the boundary concept. They are a necessity for the organization of space and society, but they are not absolute. There are always holes in these prison walls, and the examples where boundaries were impermeable are probably rare.     

Crisis? What crisis? Displacing the spatial imaginary of the fiscal state

This paper argues that there is an immanent and evolving relationship between the prevailing form of taxation and the economic geographies of the state. Despite this, the geographic significance of taxation has been obscured by the language in which its historic transformation tends to be couched. Prevailing fiscal systems tend to be presented as essentially static – institutionally and spatially fixed and routinely inscribed within the fixed boundaries and territories of the ‘sovereign’ fiscal state. Any threat to, or change in the nature or geography of the fiscal state tends to be couched in terms of ‘crisis’ – of negative and discontinuous change. This paper contends that these related and essentially conservative discourses of fiscal geography mask the degree to which fiscal spaces are both multiple and continuously evolving. More importantly, it argues, this fluidity and multiplicity does not threaten the stability and viability of state form, but it is an essential process in its maintenance and reproduction. Running counter to the prevailing discourse of the ‘national economy’, the practice of fiscal geography is an under-analysed but key aspect of the historical evolution and transformation of the imagined geographies of economies.     

Scaling struggles over land and law: Autonomy,investment, and interlegality in Myanmar’s borderlands

This article explores the relevance of spatial global legal pluralism—an emerging field at the interstices of geography, anthropology, and socio-legal studies—for research on the global land rush, and the study of land law and investment in particular. I argue that a focus on the spatial dimensions of law—coupled with attention to the interlegality, scalar politics, and spatio-temporalities of semi-autonomous law—offers important insights into the dynamic forces, actors, and stakes in the global land rush. In Myanmar, the prospects for peace—however tenuous—have led to an acceleration of land law development including the creation of ‘semi-autonomous land law’ by ethnic armed groups and activists in its borderlands. I discuss the ways in which such policies not only anticipate peace but seek to shape its political-economy over multiple spatio-temporalities. By recognizing both international human rights law and customary law, such ‘non-state’ laws bring these two scales into an intermediary legal jurisdiction, contributing to the sedimentation of Kawthoolei and Kachinland as political scales in their own right.     

Geography and the pragmatic tradition: The threefold engagement

Geography has had only limited interchange with the American philosophical tradition of pragmatism. This paper claims that a closer engagement with pragmatism has much to offer to geography, not least in providing an arena within which very different types of geographical inquiry - qualitative and quantitative, human and physical - may find some common ground for useful conversation and debate. However, this will only be fully achieved if geography embarks on a threefold engagement with pragmatism: (1) studies that develop and deploy specific pragmatist ideas and concepts within particular geographical research; (2) studies that attempt to relate geographical research to the wider arena of the pragmatic tradition; (3) historical examination of early links between pragmatism, social science and geography. The history and contemporary revival of pragmatism is described, together with its impacts on social theory and social science. The existing literature on geographical engagement with pragmatism is then examined, and it is argued that there is a much broader relevance within both human and physical geography, not linked to particular styles of research. The question of the history of earlier influences of pragmatism on American geography is then raised, and some linkages charted. The philosopher Hilary Putnam has used the term ‘pragmatist enlightenment’ to describe what he sees as the promise of pragmatism, and the paper concludes by suggesting that this also promises an exciting and fruitful engagement for geography.     

中国大陆周边地区主要成矿带成矿规律对比及潜力评价研究进展

概述中国大陆周边地区主要成矿带成矿规律对比及潜力评价研究进展,分析中国周边国家和相关地区的矿产资源潜力与成矿地质条件。在中国周边跨境成矿带境内外成矿作用、成矿地质背景与成矿规律对比研究的基础上,编制了跨境基础地质和成矿规律系列图件,深化了对跨境成矿带地质特征和成矿规律的认识及重点区域的资源潜力分析,并圈定了找矿的战略远景区,为中国与周边国家跨境重要成矿带矿产资源勘查提供基础地质和区域成矿理论指导。     

Historical paths to current unrest: Extending the temporal lens in analysing geographies of agrarian change and conflict

The proliferation of soybean monoculture and its expansion into previously marginal territories in Argentina have resulted in land conflicts and attacks on peasant communities that possess land without having secured tenure. However, the rapid and intensive modernisation and industrialisation of agriculture production has had differentiated effect on different territories in Argentina. This article posit that understanding these differences requires an extended temporal analysis. While social research tends to focus on the present or recent past, this paper joins calls for greater attention to historical context and processes when examining current social dynamics and geographies. Focusing on the province of Santiago del Estero in Northwest Argentina, this paper provides a particular temporal-thematic approach for conducting such a historical path analysis, which here focuses on the province’s changing agrarian structures and political shifts that resulted in a complex, irregular and subsequently unstable land tenure system.     

Ocean geography for ocean science

The expanding needs for ocean resources, together with the design and diffusion of new kinds of deep-ocean and coastal management patterns, have changed profoundly in the transition from modern to post-modern society. As a result, the scientific approach to the ocean has also undergone profound changes, which have marked the epistemology of disciplines, their logical backgrounds and methods. This process has been driven by oceanography, which was born in the 19th century and has benefited, first, from the monitoring techniques from surface ships, then from the exploration of the water column and seabed, and finally from the satellite monitoring systems. While that process was evolving, geography has been involved in investigations of marine and coastal uses and the interaction between human communities and the ocean. Since the mid-1980s, and especially because of the inputs of Agenda 21 (United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, UNCED, 1992), oceanography has been required to deal also with deep-ocean and coastal management issues. To respond to this need, interaction of oceanography with other disciplines is essential. In this prospect geography has an important role because, on the basis of its heritage, it could contribute to (i) the epistemological discussion of the building up of ocean science, (ii) the analysis of the human communities/ocean ecosystems interaction, and (iii) the design of sustainable development-consistent management patterns. The conceptual background and external epistemology needed by ocean geography to optimise this role are presented and discussed. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

人类世生态地质学研究方法及应用研究

地质学家和社会学家广泛关注“人类世”这一新概念,但是,对于“人类世”的时间跨度仍然存在很大争议。在结合前人研究结果的基础上,对人类世提出了新的划分方法:认为人类世是一个以人类活动为主导因素的地质时期,要探讨人类世的生态与环境演化过程,就需要寻找一种有时间序列、分辨率高、分布范围广并且与生物活动紧密相关的沉积层。选取粪土层作为过去生态环境信息记录的新载体,运用多学科交叉的方法探索南极生态、气候和环境变化的问题,是南极无冰区生态地质学的理论基础。南极无冰区生态地质学是人类世生态地质学的组成部分,是沉积学与地球化学、考古学、生态学多学科交叉的结果,它的理论和方法已被成功地运用到北极和中国的南海地区,它应该放在全球的沉积学大平台上,开拓新的领域。并详细讨论了人类世生态地质学的研究方法及应用实例,对于了解人类世以来气候、环境和生态的变化及其与人类活动的关系具有重要意义。     

Labouring geography: Negotiating scales, strategies and future directions

In our editorial introduction to this themed issue on labour geography, we outline some important on-going debates in the relatively young field of labour geography and suggest future directions for research. First, there is the key question of labour as an active agent in the production of economic landscapes. The agency of labour will likely remain a defining feature of labour geography, but perhaps it is not as important to construct theoretical analytical boundaries as it is to define labour geography as a political project. Second, debates continue surrounding the production of scale and the multiscalarity of organized labour. Third, labour geographers have yet to engage in any sustained fashion with unpacking the complex identities of workers and the way in which those identities simultaneously are shaped by and shape the economic and cultural landscape. Fourth, there is some debate on the costs and benefits of a ‘normative’ labour geography which emphasizes what workers and their organizations ‘could’ or even ‘should’ do. Lastly, we challenge the assumption that labour geographers have not yet asserted themselves as activists in their own right. We conclude the editorial by introducing the articles included in the issue. While these articles may not address every gap in the literature, they do contribute in significant ways to move the labour geography project forward.     

Assessing multifaceted vulnerability and resilience in order to design risk-mitigation strategies

Vulnerability studies have evolved significantly in recent decades. Although not overly theoretical compared with some other fields of science, some important conceptual progress has been made. At the practical level, vulnerability indicators have been used either at a generic level or for particular hazard contexts. However, these indicators are often predictably too narrow in their coverage of aspects of vulnerability. An important need remains to produce more conceptually informed vulnerability indicators or parameters and more satisfactory operational tools to assess weaknesses and resilience in coping with natural risks. In this paper, we present the methodology developed in the context of a recently concluded EU funded project, ENSURE (Enhancing resilience of communities and territories facing natural and na-tech hazards). The resulting vulnerability and resilience assessment framework tool adopts a systemic approach embedding and integrating as much as possible the multifaceted and articulated nature of concepts such as vulnerability and resilience. The tool guides evaluators towards a comprehensive and context-related understanding of strengths and fragilities of a given territory and community with respect to natural extremes. In this paper, both the framework tool and its application to Sondrio in Italy, which is exposed to flash floods, are presented and discussed. The merits and demerits of the new tool are discussed, and the results of the application to Sondrio indicate where data are currently missing, suggesting the kind of data, which will need to be gathered in future to achieve more complete assessments. The results also suggest vulnerability reduction policies and actions and further ways of revising the existing framework tool in the future.     

基于改进灰狼算法的岩石声发射定位研究

针对岩石力学试验中传统的声发射定位算法存在局限性,将灰狼算法(GWO)引入声发射定位研究中,该算法模仿了狼群的领导阶层与狩猎机制,用α、β、δ和ω 4种灰狼来模拟头狼领导,通过搜寻猎物、包围猎物和攻击猎物3个步骤实现目标的发现到捕获的全过程。在原始灰狼算法的基础上,针对其局部搜索能力欠佳的缺陷,修改收敛因子递减方式和淘汰最劣个体,提出基于种群记忆淘汰制的改进灰狼算法(BGWO)。基于预制裂隙岩石试件单轴压缩声发射试验结果,对比分析BGWO、GWO、引力搜索法(GSA)、Geiger算法、最小二乘法(LS)算法等5种定位算法的性能,发现改进后的BGWO算法在声发射定位搜索效率、搜索精度、稳定性和试验结果模拟方面效果优于其他算法。     

Better than text? Critical reflections on the practices of visceral methodologies in human geography

This co-authored intervention discusses themes on the thinking and doing of visceral research. 'Visceral' is taken here as that relating to, and emerging from, bodily, emotional and affective interactions with the material and discursive environment. There has recently been a distinct and necessary turn within the social sciences, particularly in human geography, towards the need for more viscerally-aware research practices. Building on such work, this collective intervention by leading visceral scholars offers two key contributions: first, it critically examines visceral geography approaches by considering their methodological contributions, and suggests improvements and future research pathways; and second, the authors extend recent visceral geography debates by examining how to conduct this type of research, providing reflections from their own experiences on the practicalities and challenges of implementing visceral methods. These observations are taken from a diverse range of research contexts - for example, from gender violence and community spaces, to the politics of 'good eating' in schools and social movements (e.g. Slow Food) - and involve a similarly diverse set of methods, including body-map storytelling, cooking and sharing meals, and using music to 'attune' researchers' bodies to nonhuman objects. In short, this collective intervention makes important and original contributions to the recent visceral turn in human geography, and offers critical insights for researchers across disciplines who are interested in conceptually and/or practically engaging with visceral methods.     

It's a long way to the other geographers and geographic knowledges

Geographic knowledge is usually understood as the knowledge produced by geographers. Yet, it is also produced by people outside of the academia. But as Western science claimed for its exclusive self the status of ‘knowledge’, others have long been denied the production and possession of a true knowledge, and recognised merely the mastering of practical skills. The binary opposition between scientific and other forms of knowledge has been central to the construction of academic geography until the late 1980s, when postmodern thought cast some doubt on the universality of scientific knowledge. This led to critical analyses of academic geography, revealing its situatedness, as well as to a new interest for the geographies of the ‘Others’. Examining how geographers have dealt with other knowledge sets so far, and how they have labelled them, this paper argues that other geographies should be given more attention. This means focusing on the knowledges themselves, and considering implementing a true dialogue between these and academic geography. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

The Influences of Geological History,Climatic Variations and the Environment Changes on the Terrestrial Biodiversity of Sunda Region

Sunda region, located in the tropical region of Southeast Asia, is one of the three main regions of the tropical rainforests with the highest biodiversity in the world, and also the most endangered ranges of species extinction. The high biodiversity in the region was due to several reasons: ①the lucky geographical location in the warm and moist tropics, ②joint zone between the two large tectonic plates Eurasia and India-Australia, ③with abundant of islands separated with different distances. ④In the cycles of glacial-interglacial during the geological history, the variations of the temperature and the fluctuations of the sea level created opportunities for the species interactions and gene mixture, therefore resulting in the formation of new species and contributing more species to the region. In particular, during Quaternary period, the continental shelves exposed repeatedly during the glacial times, and the many islands were often merged into one or a few continuous and large territories, making the gene flows within species easier. During the interglacials, the sea-level rose and the continental shelved were submerged, and the scattered and isolated territories might make the speciation and extinction occurred more frequently. Biological refugia might be important for many species’ survival. Today, with the rapid global warming and intensive human disturbance, the refugia may be more crucial for many species to survive. However, the extinction of many species may be inevitable.     

The fisherly imagination: The promise of geographical approaches to marine management

The management of the sea has increased exponentially in the last half-century, and different academic disciplines have been vital in shaping this management. Human geography, despite its explicit focus on the human–environment nexus, has so far had little impact on human relations with the sea. Based on empirical research conducted in England and Scotland, we argue that human geography is uniquely placed to offer effective solutions to marine resource management problems, and that geographers have the potential to offer key insights into how human populations can best interact with the living seas. Three of the most important current scholarly ‘imaginations’ of the sea, and the policies they inform (economics and market-based management, conservation biology and area based protection, and anthropology and community management), are outlined. A potential ‘geographical imagination’ of the sea, drawing on key themes in contemporary scholarship is then presented, and grounded in empirical research. It is argued that human–ocean relations should be a key feature of geographical research agendas.     

An understanding of geography: The perspectives of English primary trainee teachers

There have been few studies of trainee teachers' conceptions of the term ‘geography’. Building on these, this study identifies a number of conceptions of geography held by primary school trainee teachers in England. Their ideas are compared with their understanding of the reasons for teaching geography to young children. Similar outcomes emerge. While a small number of primary trainee teachers see geography education as concerned with the study of places, a slightly larger group view teaching geography as developing children's sense of responsibility for the earth and its people. However, by far the largest groups of students perceive geography's role to be to develop younger children's awareness and knowledge of the environment. Additionally, a sizeable group of trainees see geography as providing knowledge about the features and countries of the world. The implications of these findings are considered for the brief geography study units which primary teacher trainees take as part of their initial teacher training programme in English higher education. The conclusion is that it is important to widen primary trainee teachers' perspectives during even the briefest of units, not least to enable them to teach the national curriculum requirements for geography in primary schools. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Genetic geographies. A historical comparison of agrarian modernization and eugenic thought in Germany, the Soviet Union, and the United States

The article deals with the role of genetics in the state-led agricultural modernization efforts that took place in different industrialized countries during the course of the 1920s and 1930s. A comparison between Germany, the Soviet Union and the United States shows substantial similarities in their attempts to increase the productivity of agriculture on different geographical scales. Following advances in scientific knowledge about the geography of cultivated plants, these countries sent out numerous expeditions to collect plant breeding material from all over the world. At the same time, states tightened their grip on farmers’ and breeders’ activities inside the country by establishing legal rules for the use of plant varieties and seed. But this was only one side of a larger “genetic modernization” project. In all three countries, concepts of agricultural modernization were substantially linked to social-darwinist thought which embraced programs of eugenics and “racial hygiene”. These links are outlined for each of the cases, highlighting the widely differing intermingling of scientific concepts and terminologies with political ideologies. It is then discussed what role geography and in particular geopolitical thinking of the time were to play in the development of “genetic modernization”, and more specifically, with regard to the nexus between agriculture and eugenics. While the discipline’s involvement in both fields remained comparably marginal in practical terms, clearly there were conceptual contributions toward the development of the broader field. Going back to Ratzel’s and Kjellén’s work, it is argued that geography had an important role in the establishment of a political field in which ideas of managing human reproduction were fused with concepts of economic development and environmental determinism.     

Keeping the stress off the sheep? Agricultural intensification, neoliberalism, and ‘good’ farming in New Zealand

Under neoliberal schemes like audit systems, consumer demands born of concerns about food safety, the environment and animal welfare are theoretically poised to influence agricultural production systems (Campbell and Le Heron, 2007). Whether such influences might reverse or redirect the trend toward environmentally-damaging rampant productivism of the 20th century hinges in part on the subjective positions of farmers and the ways in which they inform how farmers respond to policy and market signals.In this paper we argue the need for a genuine engagement with both the complexities of farmer subjectivity and the interactions amongst farmer subjectivity and agro-ecologies, and animal bodies in particular. This paper presents a case study of sheep farmers on the South Island that reveals contestation and transitions in traditional markers of “good farming”, particularly animal health. We observe how such transitions arise from reconfigurations of the relationships between agro-ecological, political and social histories. In this paper’s formulation, neither state subsidies nor neoliberalism in agriculture is primary cause or ultimate effect of the transformation of agricultural practice. Rather, changes in the political economy expose contradictions in farmer subjectivities, the resolution of which may block or reinforce trends suggested by the political economy. We suggest that contested ideas about animal health within the social field of pastoral farming in New Zealand makes it possible that New Zealand’s sheep growers may take the high road of best environmental practice via highly audited environmental standards of production demanded by elite consumer markets, or that they may remain in the intensifying trajectory of continuing to drive the sheep’s body to its maximum possible intensity of production. The mixed legacy of neoliberal reform is that it has simultaneously enabled both of these contradictory trajectories in New Zealand pastoralism.     

German research in transport geography: Life in the space between objective analysis and political advice1

Transportation has been a bone of public contention for decades, the discussion ranging from traffic-calming measures in individual streets to the continual growth of global transport movements. In the last 20 years transport topics have also received increased attention within the discipline of geography, be it academic, professional or in schools, but the topics addressed by today's transport geography have almost nothing in common with the roots of the field. This means that transport geography is a handed-down, hyphenated sub-branch of geography in name only. In fact, the name refers to a field of geography that is experiencing not only all the birthing pains and uncertainties of a discipline in the process of defining a new direction for itself, but also the sense of excitement and thrill of the new. This paper sets out to show both the role transport geography plays as part of human geography with its concepts and paradigms, and also the role it plays within the political debate on transport. An appeal is made to geographers to become more involved in this branch of our science.