COLONIAL EXPERIENCE AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF TROPICAL GEOGRAPHY IN FRANCE

This article broadly positions the successful establishment of the field of French tropical geography in the immediate postwar period against developments stemming from a longer history of French colonial engagement in Africa, Asia and South America, and clarifies the seemingly late timing of, and paradoxes involved in, the creation of a body of French scientific knowledge about the tropics. Colonial scientific research did not develop in France until the end of the nineteenth century. However, the colonial geography appearing at this time did not rely on fieldwork but, rather, catered to the demands of the business class for overseas expansion and to public curiosity. Even while the medical geography of tropical areas and knowledge of tropical soils and ecology progressed greatly between 1900 and 1940, there were still only a few French geographers working in the tropics. With the advent of the Second World War, when “big science” appeared in France and its colonial empire, the number of French geographers involved in tropical research grew rapidly. The field of tropical geography built up by Pierre Gourou was a synthesis of approaches developed in South America, Africa and Indochina. Although it soon came under strong criticism for its pessimistic view of prospects for industrialisation and urbanisation in the tropics, it seduced French geographers because it matched the contemporary interest in zonality and relied on a genre de vie analysis of, typically, rural areas. Thus, the postwar blossoming of tropical geography shaped by Gourou was more a response to various internal dynamics within French geography than an exercise in imperialism. Its demise was not due to the eclipse of French colonialism but, rather, its inability to deal with the modernisation of tropical societies.     

Political Ecologies of Dynamic Wetlands: Hydrosocial Waterscapes in the Okavango Delta

Research within geography and related disciplines has directed much attention to the coupled interactions between social and ecological systems. These studies have usefully analyzed the multifaceted, temporal, and scalar dimensions of human–environment interactions and how future environmental change will continue to challenge human resource needs. Political ecology research has also made contributions in this regard, particularly by emphasizing livelihood systems, impacts of conservation and development, agricultural production, and environmental governance. Yet although political ecology research has contributed to socioecological systems scholarship, much of this work has been situated within dryland environments or marine ecosystems that have particular biophysical features. Comparatively, wetland environments that experience dynamic flooding regimes warrant further attention from political ecology. This article engages with the findings from an ongoing research project that is evaluating the impacts of flooding variability for rural livelihoods in the Okavango Delta of Botswana. We outline some of the main findings from this work by concentrating on two themes central to political ecology: access and governance. We conclude by arguing that the Okavango Delta should be understood as a hydrosocial waterscape that encompasses a variety of socioecological relationships within the region, as well as the power relations operating at a variety of scales that both produce and govern them.     

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT'S IMAGE AND INFLUENCE IN NORTH AMERICAN GEOGRAPHY, 1804–2004

ABSTRACT. Alexander von Humboldt is universally identified as a key figure in laying the foundations for modern geography. His main sites of research and scholarly production were centered on Europe, Latin America, and Russia. He drew on global sources of geographical data and knowledge in constructing and producing his voluminous works. Although he only briefly knew North America firsthand—at the outset of his career, in the late spring of 1804—he maintained a lifelong interest in the realm, especially in the United States. In turn, many North American scholars were admirers and followers of his perspectives, practices, and publications. Although geography did not emerge as an institutionally based discipline in the United States until the late nineteenth century, Humboldt's influence and impact on its antecedents were considerable. Contrary to conventional wisdom, his authority and influence in geography persisted well beyond Humboldt's death in 1859. His vision of demonstrating nature's unity in diversity and his enlightened views on social issues have continued to appeal to select sectors and actors in North American geography, especially Latin Americanists, historians of the discipline, and, more recently, proponents of an engaged, critical geography.     

THE RECENT INTELLECTUAL STRUCTURE OF GEOGRAPHY*

ABSTRACT. An active learning project in an introductory graduate course used multidimensional scaling of the name index in Geography in America at the Dawn of the 21st Century, by Gary Gaile and Cort Willmott, to reveal some features of the discipline's recent intellectual structure relevant to the relationship between human and physical geography. Previous analyses, dating to the 1980s, used citation indices or Association of American Geographers specialty‐group rosters to conclude that either the regional or the methods and environmental subdisciplines bridge human and physical geography. The name index has advantages over those databases, and its analysis reveals that the minimal connectivity that occurs between human and physical geography has recently operated more through environmental than through either methods or regional subdisciplines.     

基于GIS与SOFM网络的中国综合自然区划

综合自然区划一直是中国地理学界的研究核心和热点之一,已有大量的区划方案应用于指导社会生产实践或教学活动中。已有的区划工作主要是基于传统地域划分研究范式,大多采用专家经验集成方法和技术。专家经验与知识的主观性和个体差异性会对区划方案的科学性和客观性产生影响。为了弥补传统区划范式的不足,丰富区划的方法与途径,本文探讨了自组...     

MOUNTAIN GEOGRAPHY

ABSTRACT. Although mountains have been studied for centuries, they are the subject of only a slender body of formal literature. Instead, those who study high places in specific regions construct working definitions and continually recraft bibliographies. Studies of mountains often focus on comparatively limited themes: physical processes, ecology, or sacred spaces, for example. As scholars become interested in environmental degradation and the development of mountains, there is all the more need to develop a mountain geography literature that expands the study of mountains to include the political, economic, cultural, and social dimensions of their environments and peoples. Three areas‐cultural geography, political ecology, and conservation theory‐are suggested for additional research.     

HOBBY RANCHING AND CHILE'S LAND‐REFORM LEGACY*

ABSTRACT. Twentieth‐century land reform in Chile reflects familiar themes. The state subdivided large land monopolies, ostensibly for social justice reasons: to provide opportunities for campesinos to earn a living from agriculture. In southern Chile's Tierra del Fuego a combination of social justice, nationalism, and geopolitical concerns stimulated land reform between 1924 and 1978. The effort succeeded in creating a new material landscape oriented around smaller ranches but failed to meet its socioeconomic goals. In a scenario that resonates with reforms elsewhere in Latin America, an elitist cultural landscape dominated by large‐holding corporations was replaced with another elitist landscape, though in a different form. Politically well‐connected and essentially absentee landholders acquired subdivided land and began to practice “hobby ranching.” The history of land reform in Tierra del Fuego demonstrates how new socioeconomic conditions created over the course of many decades have left their imprint on land use and the biophysical landscape. It also contributes to larger regional debates about the role of land degradation in stocking‐rate decline.     

A PLACE UNBECOMING: THE COFFEE FARM OF NORTHERN LATIN AMERICA*

ABSTRACT. This article examines recent transformations of the coffee landscape of northern Latin America through the optic of “place as process.” As coffee became the most important regional export crop, its “place” evolved. Coffee lands in northern Latin America now embrace 3.1 million hectares, often contiguous across international borders. Like many agricultural systems, coffee has succumbed to intensification, a process termed “technification” in the Latin American setting. The result is a landscape mosaic in which a traditional agro-forest coffee system coexists with coffee lands transformed by modernization. The institutional forces behind this process, as well as some of its social and ecological consequences, are discussed.     

FORTY YEARS OF PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY IN THE JOURNAL

Up to June 1993, 207 articles on physical geography have been published in the Malayan Journal of Tropical Geography (MJTG) (1953–57), Journal of Tropical Geography (JTG) (1958–79) and the Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography (SJTG) (1980–93). These articles are examined initially in terms of their sub-fields (Biogeography, Climatology, Geomorphology, Hydrology, and Soils), area of focus (the tropics, Africa, America, East Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia excluding Malaysia and Singapore, Malaysia, Singapore, and Southwest Pacific) and the area of origin of the authors. The more significant papers in the sub-fields are indicated. Various factors influencing the contributions to the Journal and some insights on the contributions of local staff (Singapore and Malaysia) are also given. The significance of the Journal as an avenue for local and foreign authors and for papers on physical geography in the tropics is briefly evaluated.     

FROM A CENTRED TO A DECENTRED TROPICALITY: FRANCOPHONE COLONIAL AND POSTCOLONIAL GEOGRAPHY IN MONSOON ASIA

This paper discusses four key phases in the study of the tropical milieu of monsoon Asia by French geographers and colonial actors over the last 150 years. First, it sees how the natural milieu initially occupied a central and determining place in French colonial and scientific assessments of Indochina, and how the notion of monsoon Asia appeared within the framework of an academic geography (and formatively in the two regional theses produced by Charles Robequain and Pierre Gourou). It then shows how, after the Second World War, francophone geographers developed a “tropicalist” approach to monsoon Asia, one that was inextricably linked with the culturalist approach that was pioneered by Gourou, which later evolved into new, model‐building and interdisciplinary approaches to the study of tropical systems. It argues that these successive phases have marked a shift from a centred tropicality ‐ a system of knowledge anchored in French colonialism and centring on debate about the determinist influence of the natural milieu ‐ to a decentred tropicality that rejects environmental determinism, questions the ethnocentric character of tropical geography and integrates the study of tropical geography into the wider social sciences. The paper concludes with the suggestion that tropicality has had an epistemologically stronger and more institutionalised relationship with francophone geography than was the case in anglophone geography.     

Identifying Optimum Locations for Tropical Testing of United States Army Materiel and Systems

This paper is an example of applied military geography focusing on a particular problem arising from the Panama Canal Treaty of 1977. One of the provisions of the treaty required the United States (US) military to completely withdraw from and relinquish its military and government facilities to the Republic of Panama prior to midnight on 31 December 1999. In so doing, the US army turned over to the Panama government all of its military bases, some of which had been used since World War I to test materiel, equipment and systems within a tropical environment. Given its global mission and responsibilities, the US army has a well‐established practice of testing its materiel, equipment and systems throughout the entire range of potential operating environments. The US experience in the Pacific in World War II and in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War clearly demonstrated the need to test the performance of new equipment under the harsh conditions found in tropical jungles. Furthermore, since 1960, nearly 75 per cent of all international and internal armed conflicts have been in countries that are totally or partially in the tropics. This paper presents the findings of a scientific panel that was organised to propose a new location for testing US army materiel and systems within a tropical environment. Rather than simply choosing a location analogous to Panama, the panel sought to develop a methodology that could be employed for site selection based on any set of environmental criteria. This study is a classical locational analysis and reconfirms the integrative nature of geography and its utility for solving complex problems that cut across disciplinary boundaries.     

关于地理学的区域性和地域分异研究*

地理学素以综合性和区域性为其特色。区域研究是地理学悠久而重要的传统,并已形成区域学派。根据综合地理学或统一地理学的观点,区域研究是体现自然和人文相结合的重要层次和有效途径。探讨区域单元的形成发展、分异组合、划分合并和相互联系,是地理学对过程和类型综合研究的概括和总结。从地理学角度看,可以认为抓住典型区域研究,深化对地域分异规律的认识,是与国际接轨、连接全球的桥梁。可持续发展的概念应当包含地理学的区域性,其研究与实施也有不同的空间尺度。可以相信,在理论深化和方法创新的基础上,区域研究仍将是地理学的核心领域,也有着开展相关专题综合研究工作的广阔前景。     

A REVIEW OF PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY IN SOUTH ASIA

The development of physical geography in South Asia has generally followed the British and European trends. Diverse themes from denudational chronology to palaeoflood geomorphology have attracted the attention of geomorphologists, particularly in the last 25 years. In addition, geographers’ interest in climatology and biogeography became pronounced during the 1980s. Major methodological shifts in the late 1960s in the west have affected geographical studies in South Asia. These shifts include the use of methods of quantification, remote sensing data, and the increased importance of field and laboratory studies. The second notable aspect in recent times is the accelerating interest amongst physical geographers in environmental studies and the applied aspects of the discipline as well as an increased interaction with scientists in cognate fields. An attempt is also made to identify the key research themes that will interest physical geographers in the near future.     

Integrating GIS and spatial data analysis: problems and possibilities

Abstract

This article is an agreed summary of a workshop held in Sheffield between 18-20 March 1991. The focus here is on three of the themes of the workshop: the mutual benefits of closer links between geographical information systems (GIS) and the methods of spatial data analysis (SDA); the specific areas of SDA that should be linked with GIS; how the linkage should be made in practice. Directions for future research are also reviewed. The emphasis throughout is on statistical SDA and principally from the perspective of human rather than physical geography.     

关于综合地理区划若干问题的探讨

以地域单元作为重要层次,从区域角度研究可持续发展是地理学深入探讨人地关系地域系统、协调人和自然关系的必要途径。综合地理区划以可持续发展为目标,涉及自然因素和人文因素,其划分原则有：自然和人文地域分异规律相结合,综合分析和主导因素相结合,发生统一性原则,宏观区域框架与地域类型相结合等。综合地理区划的指标体系应涵盖环境、资源、经济、社会与人口等方面,须选择有代表性的指标,要求简洁实用,避免繁杂。所选指     

Where Have All the Beaches Gone? Coastal Erosion In The Tropics

From a physical geography perspective, tropical coasts are characterised by coral reefs, mangroves and carbonate beaches on atolls and low reef islands. They face threats not only from sea level rise, but also from human activities that destroy mangroves, degrade coral reefs and accelerate beach erosion. Physical conditions in the tropics are suitable for the ideal tourist beach. Conceptually, the tourist coast can be considered as the integration of a physical system (the coast) and a human system (tourism). Studies have been carried out on various types of tourist coasts in Southeast Asia. For many atoll island states, sea level rise is more than just a threat to their tourism; it also determines their survival. In recent years, assessments of their vulnerability and adaptation have favoured a more integrative approach of physical and human sciences. Hopefully, this should result in a better analytical tropical geography that could play an important role in reducing coastal erosion and assist the small island states.     

Time to talk knowledge

As part of the secondary school qualification repackaging, the Ministry of Education has requested the geography education community define what constitutes their “critical body of knowledge.” In this article, I discuss three knowledge‐oriented themes focused on: (a) recent assessment trends in geography; (b) the predictive value of NCEA Level 3 geography with 100‐level success and (c) the nature of knowledge as expressed by the New Zealand Curriculum and assessment. Taken together, these themes suggest a need for a serious conversation about knowledge in school geography, as a pre‐cursor to the re‐design of the geography standards matrix.     

BIOGEOGRAPHY: RESEARCH OPPORTUNITIES FOR GEOGRAPHERS

The authors of this paper suggest several themes in biogeography worthy of increased research attention by geographers: human impacts on biota, disturbance ecology, and certain aspects of biota-environment interactions. Researchers must gain a firmer command of biological as well as geographical concepts and approaches if biogeography is to join geomorphology and climatology in developing a true geography of environments.