Towards a critical political geography of African development

In this paper we aim to rethink the political geography of African development at the beginning of the 21st century. Central to our thesis are two intertwining legacies, paralleling Edward Said’s Orientalism. The first is the construction of Africa in the western imagination and the second is an enduring trusteeship towards the continent. The core movement we seek to critique and move beyond is the complicity between racialised knowledges about Africa and a series of political interventions that seek to ‘help’ Africans to develop. The paper begins by examining the legacy of colonialism in the policies towards and representations of Africa. Although selective and schematic we argue that what unites these power–knowledge constructions is a sense of trusteeship towards the continent. The next step is to look at ways of decolonising our knowledges as a means to effect more appropriate political engagement with Africa. For this we touch on a range of theoretical positions, but look most closely at the corpus of post-colonial theory for ways of doing this. While not uncritical of post-colonialism we find it potentially useful for destabilising western authority and in addressing questions of popular agency and cultural constructions of exclusion. From here we attempt a reformulation which addresses the role of the state, the politics of place and space, and the ways in which ‘we’––professional geographers––might go about our work.     

Towards a materialist conception of geography

Geography has been traditionally concerned with “Nature”, “Place” and “Space”, and yet has failed to make profound contributions to their study and analysis because the discipline lacks a consistent theory of society and its relationships with “Nature”. This paper examines some of the reasons for this deficiency and proposes that Historical Materialism provides the best framework for resolving this problem.     

The geography of federal allocations in the United States preliminary tests of some hypotheses for political geography

Governments are among the largest spenders in most countries, and their spatial allocation policies have considerable impact on variation in levels of well-being. In a preliminary attempt to develop a theory to account for the geography of government spending, this note uses electoral variables to estimate interstate variations in federal allocations to states within the U.S.A., based on a model of the politician as a vote-plurality maximizer. Results of the preliminary tests are encouraging and suggest lines for further investigation.     

New Europe; a political geography of fragmented unity

The Europe of the European Union has an ever more important set of policy arenas at the European level, still strong states, and a series of strong regions that put their demands on the table. The EU is deeply involved in its immediate surroundings and it acts in conjunction with member states in global policy forums. Europe is an unprecedented example of multi-level, multi-sector governance. Europe has been politically re-ordered on a number of occasions and this is one of them. In the current debate abundant use is made of historical examples. The new Europe is in need of institutional re-structuring. Following the traditions of European cooperation this is very slow in coming. Geographers should particularly be concerned with the consequences of terrioriality at several scales simultaneously.     

Reconstituting nature conservation: Towards a careful political ecology

This paper is about the relationship between nature conservation in theory and nature conservation in practice. I argue that in theory nature conservation is concerned with revealing presence and rendering the present eternal. In practice, the spaces and times of conservation are less clear. Conservationists work with matters of concern that are neither self-evident nor unproblematically co-present. Presence has to be made and re-made. These matters of concern, like rare species, do not always announce themselves to political ecology and they do not always perform to type. Such difficulties are analysed through discussion of practical work conducted in a UK city with field ecologists and nonhuman inhabitants. It is argued that a careful political ecology is one that is intent on making spaces for others that are not simply about presence, inclusion or accumulation. It also involves uncertainties, precautionary measures and looser forms of assemblage.     

Epilogue: Towards a future for political ecology that works

Political Ecology (PE) has been retrospectively created from a history of wide ranging work of different disciplines, cultural settings and epistemological foundations. Its conceptualization was and remains expansive, eclectic and inclusive which has brought both innovative thinking and charges of incoherence. A review of these paradoxical views on the quality of knowledge and its effectiveness in promoting justice and other aspects of political progress concludes that PE can fulfil these criteria in spite of challenges involved in understanding an exceptionally wide range of different disciplines in the natural and social sciences, technical detail and cultural settings. Also, the production of PE both shapes and is shaped by the structures of the academy and daily practice of teaching and research in a reflexive way. There are particular rewards and penalties in academic production which make it difficult to undertake long term PE research, to write overall integrative PE work other than edited and multi-author works, and to engage with wider audiences outside the academy. There is also an enduring stand-off between PE and policy matters. The growth of PE courses in anglophone universities is encouraging more comparison, coherence and communication between political ecologists and promises increasing stabilization and legitimacy of the field.     

The changing iconography of Japanese political geography

Our world is very fluid, very complex, constantly moving, made up of a great number of interdependent components. Therefore, the locus and the orbit of a particular area play an important role in geography and in politics. The purpose of this study is to examine the iconography of orbit and freedom of movement through an analysis of the transformation of the international politico-economic structure and its impact on Japan and to make clear the footsteps of Jean Gottmann on political geography. Due to its locus being on the crossroad of international power struggles, Japan had accepted different iconographies of orbits every time she faced great mutation in her history. This, in turn, accelerated the synchronism, synergism and synthesis of different iconographies that came to converge at the crossroad. The integration of imported cultures with the Japanese traditional culture promoted the transformation of Japanese society and community to emphasize the freedom of movements. The flexibility of Japanese society and the unifying iconography of Japanese community have enabled Japan to adapt and readapt to changing politico-economic phases. Interested in the relationship between freedom of movement and iconography, Jean Gottmann spent a considerable portion of his academic life inquiring into the changing dynamics of Japanese iconography on the global scene. After a quarter-century pursuit, he contributed to the establishment of political geography in Japan.     

The political geography of Australian Federal-State relations

It is difficult, if not impossible, to completely separate political from economic relationships in any political system at any scale; this is no less true for Australia than it is for other countries. Changes in Australian Federal-State political relationships must be viewed in the context of changes in the overall system of international trade, the increasing economic power of the Pacific States and the economic restructuring of the Australian economy. However, explanations of political relationships cannot merely focus on the economic issues; the legal, historical and geographical contexts are also relevant. This paper explores Federal-State relations within the overall framework of a centre-periphery model within which jurisdictional conflicts revolve around Federal Government attempts to maintain power at the centre at the expense of the periphery. It takes the viewpoint that any meaningful discussion of political relationships must encompass aspects of human conflict which take place in particular political-geographical and legal contexts.     

The changing iconography of Japanese political geography

Our world is very fluid, very complex, constantly moving, made up of a great number of interdependent components. Therefore, the locus and the orbit of a particular area play an important role in geography and in politics. The purpose of this study is to examine the iconography of orbit and freedom of movement through an analysis of the transformation of the international politico-economic structure and its impact on Japan and to make clear the footsteps of Jean Gottmann on political geography. Due to its locus being on the crossroad of international power struggles, Japan had accepted different iconographies of orbits every time she faced great mutation in her history. This, in turn, accelerated the synchronism, synergism and synthesis of different iconographies that came to converge at the crossroad. The integration of imported cultures with the Japanese traditional culture promoted the transformation of Japanese society and community to emphasize the freedom of movements. The flexibility of Japanese society and the unifying iconography of Japanese community have enabled Japan to adapt and readapt to changing politico-economic phases. Interested in the relationship between freedom of movement and iconography, Jean Gottmann spent a considerable portion of his academic life inquiring into the changing dynamics of Japanese iconography on the global scene. After a quarter-century pursuit, he contributed to the establishment of political geography in Japan.     

Elusive security: The military and political geography of South Lebanon

Israel's quest for security on its northern border with Lebanon has a history dating back to the foundation of the Palestine mandate. In the early period from the First World War to the end of the 1960s the quest was dominated with attaining economic and environmental security by seeking to acquire rights to the waters of South Lebanon. Recent decades in contrast have witnessed the rise in importance of border security and strategic security requirements in the face of military threats to northern Israel. Israel's interventionist policy in South Lebanon has been formalised to include a permanent presence on Lebanese territory in the form of the security zone. It is argued that despite the positive events that have occurred in the region in the early 1990s, it remains unlikely that Israel will easily relinquish its security shield in South Lebanon thus ultimately undermining the possibility of moving away from elusive to permanent security.     

In bed with the state: political geography and sexual politics

Part of the task of reconfiguring Political Geography must be to consider forms of political activism and participation other than those which have traditionally been the mainstay of the discipline. The rise of new democratic struggles and new social movements, including those around sexual politics, must be integrated into the agenda of a reformulated Political Geography. This paper considers some of the most pressing concerns of contemporary sexual politics—queer politics, sexual citizenship, and AIDS activism—as a way of opening up Political Geography to ‘sex’.     

The Quebec question and the political geography of Canada

The Quebec-Canada problem arises some ambigious and contradictory issues with Quebec itself being the source of the current facets of the crisis. Political geography is able to contribute to a greater understanding of the crisis by clearly demonstrating some of the classig concepts drawn from the discipline: geography of federalism, political viability and centrifugal forces, ethnic separatism, territorial integrity and linguistic territoriality, nationalism, and regionalism, territorial ideology, international frontiers... Evermore, Quebec appears to be the unique case of a national state. The gravitation of Canada's population towards the West has a direct impact upon the Quebec situation, with the eventual independence of the Province bringing about ipso facto a Pakistanisation of the country as a whole. Currently, one may observe an ever-widening lack of communication between Quebec and the rest of Canada. In order that Europeans (and many others) may fully understand the Quebec situation, a sort of mental debriefing must take place.     

The political geography of religion: historical state-church relations in Europe and recent challenges

Historical processes of state formation and nation building are crucial for an understanding of the geography of religions and churches in Europe. Each country has developed its own model of state-church relations, giving rise to a ‘bewildering variety’ as Grace Davie aptly remarks. The aim of this paper is to bring some order to this variety by developing a framework for the comparative study of church-state relations based on Stein Rokkan’s famous conceptual map and recent extensions of it to Central and Eastern Europe by John Madeley. According to that framework Europe has been divided into three mono-confessional (Roman Catholic, Lutheran, and Eastern Orthodox) blocs and two multi-confessional culture belts from Northwest to Southeast, and from Northeast to Southeast. This historical pattern has been challenged by secularisation, which started with the Enlightenment and the French Revolution (Western Europe) and the Russian Revolution (Eastern Europe until the velvet revolutions of 1989/1991) and then became widespread after the ‘cultural revolutions’ of the 1960s. A second challenge has to do with globalisation and its consequences, such as massive immigration and the rise of immigrant religions, and in general deterritorialisation, which means the disembeddedness of religion from its national territory. A third challenge concerns reterritorialisation at other (supranational, regional, transnational, and local) scales, of which the new territorial order of the European Union seems to be the most important. Finally, this paper serves as an introduction to the case studies on church-state relations in this special issue.     

Quantifying macerals: Some statistical and practical considerations

Precision, accuracy and practical aspects of quantifying macerals have been investigated based on a series of round-robin analyses by the Canadian Coal Petrography Group (CCPG) using fabricated coal samples. The precision of point-count analysis progressively increases with points counted, however, the accuracy of most operators shows little or no improvement after relatively few points (200–300) and the difference in accuracy between analysis is very large. The stepping distance used during routine point-count analyses is important; the stepping distance must exceed the maximum particle size of the coal, otherwise a greater random variation and possible systematic error is introduced. Visual estimates of the relative abundance of macerals are highly variable and there is little correlation between the analysis' experience and their accuracy. Visual estimates of some operators are more accurate than the point-count results of others.Image analyses and autocounting (specimen plane scanning) with construction and dissection of reflectograms yields mixed results. One image analyzer/operator obtained good results comparable to point-counting by the best analysis whereas a second image analyzer/operator obtained results poorer than average. An autocounting system using 5 μm stepping distance obtained poor results whereas using a 50 μm stepping distance the results were comparable to point-counting by the average analyst. The poorer results with small stepping distances is a product of the loss of independency between successive points (i.e., a particle may be counted more than once). Both the image analysis systems and the autocounter are plagued with problems of mineral matter and reflections below the polished surface which may lead to a systematic error (Holmes effect) and problems in differentiating binder from liptinite or very low reflecting vitrinite.The published standards for maceral analyses currently followed by most organic petrographers are not satisfactory. Recommended point-counting stepping distances do not exceed the maximum particle size, recommended sample preparation procedures yield particles too coarse for an adequate sample on the average-sized polished section and the number of points recommended are greatly in excess of those needed for reasonable accuracy. The number of points required for a reasonable accuracy is study-dependent and is best determined by replicate analyses in conjunction with a plot of variation in relative proportion of the macerals with number of points counted. Even when analyzing a single pellet replicate analyses should be performed by dividing the sample into separate sets.     

对造山带古地理学在盆地构造——古地理重建中的若干思考

造山带古地理学在盆地构造--古地理重建中的若干思考的核心，是以活动论的构造观指导盆地分析。本文强调以发展的、动态演化的思路来研究盆地。现存的一个盆地，可能只是地史期间大盆地的残余（或残留）部分；或是原来彼此分开和独立的几个盆地内的沉积记录组成的沉积物拼盘。一个盆地内现存的次级构造单元可能由年轻的造山运动形成；另一种可能性则是原来的次级单元已被后来的构造-热事件模糊或遮蔽了。在盆地的建造过程中，隆起（包括次级隆起）的时起时伏十分常见；相应地，盆地间的时分时合也十分常见。在泛大陆旋回与大盆地发育间有着内在联系，即：大盆地发育受邻侧的洋盆演化和造山过程制约，故“盆”“山”间的耦合分析是正确认识盆地动态演化的钥匙。体现在构造--古地理重建中，造山带古地理学倡导原地的古地理重建与非原地的古地理重建相结合且以后者为主。非原地的古地理重建可通过定量的（如基于古地磁资料的重建）和定性的两条途径实现。文章讨论了定性重建中的5个要点：1）时间上，要结合“反序”的研究，2）空间上，要结合“反转构造”的研究，3）强调构造复位在古地理重建中的意义，4）盆地建造阶段中的改造事件所起的承前启后作用，和5）盆地动力学与造山动力学的结合研究。     

The role of the United Nations in Water Resources Development

The United Nations system of organization undertakes a wide range of water-related activities in the developing countries. The range includes hydrological surveys, community water supply schemes, water legislation, institutional and planning needs, ground and surface water managment and development, disease control, flood-loss prevention and environmental protection. Emphasis is given in this paper to the changing needs of the developing countries, and to the future role of the organization of the UN system in responding to these needs.The responsibilities and some activities of the Water Resources Branch in the UN Secretariat are indicated to illustrate the nature of the work programme of one of the eighteen organizations of the UN system involved in water resources development.Contribution of the United Nations Centre for Natural Resources, Energy and Transport, United Nations, New York 10017, USA