The difference that space makes. A way to describe the construction of local and regional gender contracts

The role that space and place play in the construction of gender relations on different geographical scales is examined in this article. It is easy to identify national variations in the relation between sexes, and such comparisons are common. In many cases, the nation-state constitutes the level of analysis in gender-oriented studies. Comparative studies within nations are not so numerous. Nevertheless, geographical research has the potential to develop an analytical model capable of identifying the spatial dimension in gender constructions. A place-based approach visualises how local places shape gender relations and contribute to gender identities and understanding of men and women. This article shows how geographical analysis can be used to describe how physical and human geography interplay with economy, politics, religion, culture, etc., in the construction of gender contracts at a local level. Gender contracts are unwritten rules that regulate relations between sexes, and re-create and reform relations as everyday actions within the framework of these local structures. Together these various local contracts construct a regional structure.     

Gender vs. Sex Differences: Factors Affecting Performance in Geographic Education

Abstract

Much has been written about sex differences in learning, but less attention has been paid to the impacts of gender—which is socially constructed—on learning geography. This article investigates whether differences in gender influence performance on a standardized test of geography knowledge. Undergraduate students in two large clases completed a standardized inventory of gender differences and then completed a standardized test of geography knowledge. The results of our analysis of the correlation between gender traits and geographic learning resulted in somewhat unexpected results, as well as a set of complex questions for further research on learning styles in geographic education.     

Diffusion of geographic information innovations

Abstract

Appropriate diffusion of geographic information technologies is hampered by lack of systematic research on factors and processes affecting diffusion, utilization and impact assessment of the technologies and by a variety of conceptual and methodological problems. Diffusion of innovation principles developed in other fields, in combination with methods developed within the field of management information systems, provide an important beginning for improved understanding. This paper focuses on gaps in knowledge which might be addressed within the geographic information field by analysis techniques and research methodologies used in the diffusion of innovations.     

Gender Differences in Environmental Concern and Perception

Abstract

The end of the twentieth century was characterized by a surge of interest in the impact of gender on environmental politics. Many people assert that women have a special relationship with the environment, leading to a link being assumed between women and environmental issuses in development planning. This article analyzes this assertion cross-culturally and, using field data from both North America and the global South as illustration, engages with a long-standing set of debates concerning the relationship between agency, structure, knowledge, and power and the ways in which these relationships have been opera-tionalized and conceptualized.     

The Course in Geography in the State Normal School at Salem,Mass.

Abstract

During academic year 1999–2000, the Geography Department at Michigan State University (MSU) launched a program of online geography courses. Since then, four undergraduate online geography courses have been collectively developed and delivered to over 4,500 domestic and international students in association with MSU's Virtual University Design and Technology (vuDAT). The creation of each virtual course has taught valuable lessons concerning course development and administration; interactions with students have shed insight on course structure, content, and instruction. This article addresses development, management, and pedagogic concerns pertinent to the operation of online geography courses and offers suggestions to others who wish to develop online courses. Preliminary evidence on the effectiveness of these courses is also presented.     

Wireless Mapping,GIS, and Learning about the Digital Divide: A Classroom Experience

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to describe a capstone course in undergraduate student geographical research in which GIS and other geospatial tools were used to teach undergraduate students basic geographical principles. The course uses the “cooperative learning” pedagogical approach to address one of a number of client-supplied research projects, chosen on the basis of logistical difficulty, time, student ability, and project importance. In the connection of primary data with existing data, students confronted a number of important research issues such as mapping ethics, database design and management, time management, group dynamics, and research limitations.     

SOIL SURVEYS AND TOPOGRAPHIC MAPS TO BE USED WITH SAMPLE AREAS DEPICTED IN THE LOOK OF OUR LAND—AN AIRPHOTO ATLAS OF THE RURAL UNITED STATES

Considering the influence of German geography on the historic development of the discipline in North America, surprisingly little communication takes place between German-speaking and English-speaking geographers today. This report is intended to provide readers of THE PROFESSIONAL GEOGRAPHER with a review of recent events in the German-speaking countries of Europe, giving special attention to ways in which ideological differences have influenced geographic research in the two parts of divided Germany. It also traces the emergence of theoretical-quantitative geography in German research, the rise of applied research, and recent trends in regional geography.     

Time,Territory and Man: A Geographic,Instructional Approach to Growth and Change in China

Abstract

China, despite its failure to modernize in step with Europe's industrial revolution, has a long and rich history of commerical and economic growth, development, and integration. Economic growth and environmental change are presented here, and two dimensions—space and time—are invoked to describe the process as it took place in mainland China. The objectives are to present generalized abstractions of the Chinese earth space and environment within a chronological framework of growth and change in China. Three salient phases of progression are noted:

1) A traditional transition

2) A Western and Japanese influenced Commercial/Industrial transformation

3) A Socialist planned development

At each stage of the sequence, significant landscape and environmental changes have been imposed, and these are explored in order to determine key themes and alterations at a local, regional and national scale. Such a sequential model should permit the accurate simplification and increased cross-national understanding of complex phenomena and facilitate presentation of these phenomena in classroom situations.     

Volunteered geographic information research in the first decade: a narrative review of selected journal articles in GIScience

ABSTRACT

More than 10 years have passed since the coining of the term volunteered geographic information (VGI) in 2007. This article presents the results of a review of the literature concerning VGI. A total of 346 articles published in 24 international refereed journals in GIScience between 2007 and 2017 have been reviewed. The review has uncovered varying levels of popularity of VGI research over space and time, and varying interests in various sources of VGI (e.g. OpenStreetMap) and VGI-related terms (e.g. user-generated content) that point to the multi-perspective nature of VGI. Content-wise, using latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA), this study has extracted 50 specific research topics pertinent to VGI. The 50 topics have been subsequently clustered into 13 intermediate topics and three overarching themes to allow a hierarchical topic review. The overarching VGI research themes include (1) VGI contributions and contributors, (2) main fields applying VGI, and (3) conceptions and envisions. The review of the articles under the three themes has revealed the progress and the points that demand attention regarding the individual topics. This article also discusses the areas that the existing research has not yet adequately explored and proposes an agenda for potential future research endeavors.     

中国乡村生态环境污染现状及重构策略

城乡发展转型进程中的乡村生态环境问题日益突出,已经影响到乡村的生产发展和居民的日常生活。本文梳理了乡村生态环境污染的来源和特点,并从资源、生产和生活方面提出了乡村生态环境的重构策略。主要结论为：①资源利用不当、生产活动加强和生活方式改变造成的污染是乡村土地污损化、水体污染化和空气污浊化的主要原因;②乡村生态环境污染具有来源分散多样、排放随机不均和治理局部低效的特点;③通过资源利用的高效化、生产过程的清洁化和生活方式的集聚化进行乡村生态环境的重构,最终实现乡村地区生产发展、生活富裕和生态良好的目标。     

Telegraph Messenger Boys: Crossing the Borders between History of Technology and Human Geography

Abstract

Historians of telegraphy have traditionally focused on the system-builders who invented wire communications technologies and incorporated them into profit-making enterprises. Geographers of communications have traditionally traced the changes that the telegraph network wrought on the rank-size of cities and the speed of business. Both have ignored the history of the telegraph messenger boys and the “lived geography” of the telegraph network. This article summarizes a study of telegraph messengers as both active components of technological systems and laboring agents within produced urban spaces, bringing together the fields of both history of technology and human geography.

     

UNITED STATES RAILWAY TRAFFIC: AN UPDATE

Recent decades have seen changes in the pattern of rail traffic in the United States. This article describes the development of a United States railroad map depicting current levels of traffic on all rail lines handling over five million gross tons per year. This traffic pattern is compared with the 1929 traffic levels appearing on a similiar map developed by Edward Ullman. Revenue ton-miles have nearly doubled since 1929, with most of the increases concentrated on western and southern lines. Traffic on eastern lines has increased only slightly above 1929 levels.     

Gendered spaces - socio-spatial relations of self-employed women in craft production,Orissa, India

The present article concerns female self-employment in craft production in Orissa, India. Although industrial policies in India have attempted to address some of the socio-economic problems in local craft production through cooperative societies and subsidies, issues of the division of labour, factors of production and the processes of constructing individual gender identity are embedded in the gender structure and remain invisible to the new social order. Socio-spatial relations of gendered spaces are also deeply embedded in the traditional Brahmanical social order. The analysis is based on the individual story of one female businesswoman. The significance of the individual narrative is discussed with reference to feminist geographies and the self-reflexivity of the researchers. The story of Mami is about her struggle to become a successful businesswoman, and highlights the interrelationship between her actions, her perceptions of work and the socio-economic spaces that she has to relate to. Her story reveals that self-employed women can act as role models for other women and contribute to increasing their power in local and place-bound situations.     

The Dynamic Pathways of Agrarian Transformation in the Northeastern Thai–Lao Borderlands

ABSTRACT

Rural livelihoods in the northeastern Thai borderlands have moved away from being predominantly agrarian, yet farming remains a desirable alternative for many people. The empirical findings from fieldwork in a village in the northeastern Thai–Lao borderlands indicate how dependence on agriculture is determined by family contexts, such as land ownership, education level of household members, their gender and age. Cheap Lao labour and government price-support policies have enabled farmers to remain in production and diversify. Some educated rural people have successfully found employment opportunities outside the village as migratory wage labour, and are able to attain higher social status back in the village. Successful migrants have invested their earnings on cash-crop production and become rural entrepreneurs. Conversely, less educated migrants were unsuccessful in finding good jobs in the city and viewed agriculture as a more favourable alternative and valuable security. Geographical, cultural and economic specificities conditioned rural transformation and contributed to increasingly diverse and geographically extended livelihoods.     

Guidelines for demonstrating geographical information systems based on participatory development

Abstract

The transfer of GIS technology has not met with uniform success in lesser-developed countries. It has been argued that this may be due to many efforts being technology-driven rather than demand-driven. In agricultural development, technology is transferred through a demand-driven participatory approach which incorporates the ultimate recipients of the technology in the design, implementation and evaluation of projects. A project to demonstrate the use of GIS technology for wasteland development in India involving seven Indian research institutes was undertaken by the U.S. Agency for International Development. In the Indian GIS demonstration, technical approaches proposed by each institute were largely technology-driven. To counter this tendency, a set of evaluation criteria or guidelines based on the participatory approach was developed to refine proposals.     

The production of meaning in outdoor recreation: A study of Norwegian practice

Outdoor recreation policy and management have largely been occupied by questions related to use patterns: who participates in which activities, where and when? However, it is commonly held that ideas and practices mutually influence each other. In outdoor recreation, it could be expected that the observable use patterns are influenced by the meaning recreationists ascribe to their activities. In this study 14 narratives of outdoor recreation practices are analyzed, in order to broaden the traditional understanding of the meaning of outdoor recreation.     

Design of a spatial data structure using the relational normal forms

Abstract

In previous work, a relational data structure aimed at the exchange of spatial data between systems was developed. As this data structure was relational it was of first normal form, but compliance with the higher normal forms was not investigated. Recently, a new procedural method for composing fully normalized data structures from the basic data fields has been developed by H. C. Smith, as an alternative to the process of non-loss decomposition which is difficult to understand. Smith's method has been applied to data fields required to store points, lines and polygons in a chain-node spatial data model. When geographic domain, coverage layer and map are also considered, the procedure naturally leads to a catalogue model, needed for the exchange of spatial data. Although the method produces a fully normalized data structure, it is not as easy to identify which normal forms are responsible for the ultimate arrangement of the data fields into relations, but the benefits of these criteria for data base development also apply to spatial data structures and related ancillary data.     

Measuring Research Data Uncertainty in the 2010 NRC Assessment of Geography Graduate Education

Abstract

This article characterizes and measures errors in the 2010 National Research Council (NRC) assessment of research-doctorate programs in geography. This article provides a conceptual model for data-based sources of uncertainty and reports on a quantitative assessment of NRC research data uncertainty for a particular geography doctoral program. Findings indicate that important variables, including faculty totals and allocations and publication counts, are substantially undercounted, with important and negative impacts on program research activity measures. Further, these research measures are highly sensitive to small changes in counts and are particularly problematic for interdisciplinary fields such as geography. We caution against using the 2010 NRC data or metrics for any assessment-oriented study of research productivity.     

BACKGROUND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR GRADUATE STUDY IN GEOGRAPHY

Research on the diffusion of innovation has been dominated for many years by an approach to scientific reasoning developed most thoroughly and influentially by Hägerstrand. Recently there has been a shift away from this approach. However, this shift has not been previously noted in the literature. After presenting the characteristics of the two perspectives in terms of the instrumentalist and realist conceptions of science, this article provides some evidence for the shift and identifies several key issues for future research.     

Modelling population retention in Australia’s Northern Territory – how do current forms of migration contribute to population turnover and retention?

ABSTRACT

In the past, population growth in Australia's Northern Territory, as in other peripheral parts of high-income countries, has been driven by internal labour migration and migration from outside of Australia. These have been contributing to the high population turnover experienced in peripheral areas. Since 2010, the Northern Territory has experienced low (and even negative) population growth, and public policy is currently focused on migration as a lever to reverse this trend. However, the extent to which the characteristics of migrants influence the potential for longer-term population growth is poorly understood. This paper uses a new method to analyse the contributions of various types of migrants to both population turnover and retention. Two major sets of findings emerge: First, the significance of separating newer in-migrants from longer-term residents when analysing migration patterns; and secondly, the contribution of age, gender, Indigenous status, international origin, wages and industry of employment to the Northern Territory's population turnover. The research suggests that current forms of migration favour people who are likely to stay for only short periods, and have high wage demands. The main policy inference is that long-term population growth will likely not eventuate unless new forms of migration can be stimulated.