Context in Human Geography: A Multilevel Approach to Study Human–Environment Interactions∗

One of the shortcomings of quantitative methods in human geography is an overreliance on models that can only account for the average outcomes of spatial events. Although methodological advancements in the form of multilevel models now allow human geographers to account for average outcomes as well as deviations about average outcomes of spatial events, it is not without question that such models can fully account for the cultural, political, and social contexts that affect human behavior. In this article I argue for the adoption of a multilevel approach to the study of human behavior to address some of the criticisms of quantitative methods in human geography. Using a transportation geography research agenda as an example, I discuss how a multilevel approach can complement qualitative methods. Such mixed research methods offer human geographers the opportunity to identify the appropriate role for quantitative methods and explore how context affects behavior.     

Challenging emotions

This paper contributes to work on emotional geographies by engaging with Liz Bondi's focus on relationality and the challenge to geographers to explore how their emotion might connect with the feelings of their subjects. Through the lens of a focus group meeting that created confusing feelings, it shows the hurdles that geographers face when they engage with practices developed in a psychotherapeutic setting. The paper is not so much a critique, more a desire to continue the conversation regarding how to approach and adopt psychotherapy's theory of practice in a research context .     

国外人文地理学男性气质研究回顾与启示

国外关于男性气质(Masculinity)的研究由来已久,地理学关于男性气质的探讨最早出现于女性主义的研究中,地理学者通过对其他学科相关理论的引用以及女性主义研究方法的借鉴,采用文本分析、个案研究等方法,对男性气质,特别是支配性男性气质(Hegemonic Masculinity)、乡村与城市男性气质等内容进行了深入的分析与探讨,并将男性气质的理论发展到了城市地理学、经济地理学、人口地理学、后殖民主义地理学等分支学科中。地理学者采用建构理论,综合社会、文化、性别和女性主义地理等多元视角,不仅分析了男性身份政治的形成过程,而且探索了不同男性身份政治形成的空间与环境,并尝试建构男性气质地理学。本文试图通过对国外人文地理学关于男性气质研究的回顾和梳理,为国内人文地理学中男性气质的研究提供指导与借鉴。     

Doing groups: Situating knowledge and creating stories

This paper presents group research as a potentially powerful research tool for cultural geographers interested in the ways knowledge is produced at the interpersonal level. I argue that groups can create unique research spaces that incorporate 'sociality', the everyday social norms, logics and languages that guide ordinary conversations, into the research agenda. By concentrating on these discursive norms, insights can be obtained into the ways that knowledge is negotiated, produced and constrained in different places. To demonstrate the value of group research, a case study involving Australian environmentalists is analysed, to show how forests are constructed, contested and naturalised within this particular subculture. The article concludes by emphasising the importance of group research to critical geographers interested in social empowerment and change.     

Green infrastructure,green space,and sustainable urbanism: geography’s important role

ABSTRACT

This paper is a broad review of green infrastructure theory and practice relative to urban sustainability and the space for geographers in these discussions. We use examples from various urban sustainability plans to highlight ways in which green infrastructure is being conceptualized and implemented. We explore how geography contributes research on green infrastructure as well as the emerging practices as seen within sustainability plans. We identify four areas in which geographers can influence both green infrastructure theory and practice: 1) scale; 2) mapping distribution; 3) sensitivity to place and locale; and 4) equity and access. We conclude that in these areas geographers have tremendous opportunity contribute more deliberately to sustainable urbanism.     

中国地缘政治学25年研究进展（英文）

The world is currently undergoing profound changes, with a shift in global power centers and reordering of international power spaces, assigning new theoretical tasks as well as providing new opportunities for geopolitics research in China. Despite the peripheral nature of geopolitics research within their discipline, geographers have played a fundamental role in its origins and revival, from classical geopolitics(i.e., the German school of geopolitics and the Anglo-American school of geo-strategy), to internal geopolitics(i.e., electoral geography and administrative geography), to the new geopolitics(i.e., formal geopolitics), and to recent critical geopolitics(i.e., popular geopolitics). Although only few of these researchers were from China, great strides have been made in geopolitics and political geography research in China, with useful results being obtained. After demonstrating the importance of geopolitics research for the rising China, this review provides an overview of geopolitics papers led by China's geographers in the past few decades, describing their achievements, the problems they have faced, and the directions they have taken. Twenty-five years of geopolitics have produced a range of accomplishments, with a growth in the quality and size of research groups and institutions, an expanding literature, and some geo-strategic breakthroughs. Obviously, geographers have successfully reclaimed geopolitics, but some crucial topics are still absent or weak in the geopolitical research agenda, and need to be pursued vigorously. Most of the attention, from a positivistic perspective, has been paid to reflecting Western geopolitical thoughts, describing patterns of international power relations, and offering foreign policy advice(in a problem-focused orientation), rather than determining mechanisms and performing theoretical analyses(in a theoretical orientation), resulting in a lack of independent value judgments and of a theoretical basis for the subject. Moreover, in comparison with other disciplines, in terms of its academic community, research output, and status as a discipline, geopolitics research is very different from how it was three or four decades ago, when it was mainly the property of geographers, rather than political scientists and diplomats. For now, whether to support national geo-strategies or to enhance the diversity of the discipline, the involvement of geographers in geopolitics needs to become both more intensive and more extensive. The top priority is to strengthen theoretical, methodological, and problem- oriented research, including studies of geopolitical philosophy and methodology, the theoretical framework of the subject, global geopolitical evolution and shifts in power space, the roles of major powers and their geo-strategies, as well as China's surrounding geopolitical environment.     

Twenty-five years of progress in geopolitics research: Efforts from China’s geographers

The world is currently undergoing profound changes, with a shift in global power centers and reordering of international power spaces, assigning new theoretical tasks as well as providing new opportunities for geopolitics research in China. Despite the peripheral nature of geopolitics research within their discipline, geographers have played a fundamental role in its origins and revival, from classical geopolitics (i.e., the German school of geopolitics and the Anglo-American school of geo-strategy), to internal geopolitics (i.e., electoral geography and administrative geography), to the new geopolitics (i.e., formal geopolitics), and to recent critical geopolitics (i.e., popular geopolitics). Although only few of these researchers were from China, great strides have been made in geopolitics and political geography research in China, with useful results being obtained. After demonstrating the importance of geopolitics research for the rising China, this review provides an overview of geopolitics papers led by China’s geographers in the past few decades, describing their achievements, the problems they have faced, and the directions they have taken. Twenty-five years of geopolitics have produced a range of accomplishments, with a growth in the quality and size of research groups and institutions, an expanding literature, and some geo-strategic break-throughs. Obviously, geographers have successfully reclaimed geopolitics, but some crucial topics are still absent or weak in the geopolitical research agenda, and need to be pursued vigorously. Most of the attention, from a positivistic perspective, has been paid to reflecting Western geopolitical thoughts, describing patterns of international power relations, and offering foreign policy advice (in a problem-focused orientation), rather than determining mechanisms and performing theoretical analyses (in a theoretical orientation), resulting in a lack of independent value judgments and of a theoretical basis for the subject. Moreover, in comparison with other disciplines, in terms of its academic community, research output, and status as a discipline, geopolitics research is very different from how it was three or four decades ago, when it was mainly the property of geographers, rather than political scientists and diplomats. For now, whether to support national geo-strategies or to enhance the diversity of the discipline, the involvement of geographers in geopolitics needs to become both more intensive and more extensive. The top priority is to strengthen theoretical, methodological, and problem- oriented research, including studies of geopolitical philosophy and methodology, the theoretical framework of the subject, global geopolitical evolution and shifts in power space, the roles of major powers and their geo-strategies, as well as China’s surrounding geopolitical environment.     

Social Network Analysis of the Academic GIScience Community

There is mounting interest among scientists regarding the use of scientometric social network analysis, or quantitative analysis of the evolution of science as defined by individual researchers and the networks they form. Given that geographers have seldom used this approach compared to researchers in other fields, its implications for research and policy need to be assessed. We applied scientometric social network analysis to geographic information science (GIScience) to understand how the field has evolved over the last sixteen years and to assess the applicability of the standard logistic model of the growth of scientific disciplines. In particular, we examined collaboration in the field at multiple scales, namely, the evolution of the entire research network structure, the nature of subnetworks in defining geographic information science, and the roles individuals play within the community. By delineating how collaborations and research networks have evolved in GIScience, the study addresses the potential of scientometric social network analysis for geography.     

Sentinels of geography: legacy,public policy and contemporary relevance

Many geographers, past and present, have addressed public policy issues facing nations and peoples and in the process offered solutions to highly complex problems. Three ‘sentinels’ of the discipline, Halford Mackinder, Carl Sauer and Thomas Griffith Taylor, served as protectors of geography speaking up for the science in a way often confronting public officials, politicians and others. They contributed significantly to the development of geography in Britain, the USA, Australia and Canada, while engaging in public policy debates on topics such as geopolitics, geographical constraints on land use and natural resource management. All three were advocates for the unity of geography, stressing how an understanding of the interconnectedness of natural and human phenomena can assist in decision making. They were often frustrated by what they saw as ill-informed policies which did not respect geographic realities. Given their varied contributions, it is difficult to fully assess their impact both during their long and productive lifetimes, and subsequently, especially given the interdisciplinary and contested nature of their research. Today, academic geographers are faced with having to increasingly ‘prove the impact’ of their research, something beyond the comprehension of previous generations. Lessons from an analysis of the work of these ‘sentinels’, as well as my own experience, show how difficult a task this will be.     

Withered Geography

This commentary is a response to an article by Jay R. Harman in the November 2003 issue of The Professional Geographer. I argue that Harman's claim that scholarly disciplines offer social “returns” in a competitive “market” obscures the fundamentally political nature of how social resources are allocated and how social needs are defined. Harman would have us subordinate scholarly research to agendas set elsewhere, by politicians and other powerful interests, but I argue that such a vision would turn geographers into mere technicians. A healthier role for the discipline is for geographers to seek ways of asserting intellectual leadership and of shaping social agendas along more humane and socially just lines.     

Placing the “Analyst” in Discourse Analysis: Iteration,Emergence and Dialogicality as Situated Process

Discourse analysis is a powerful and versatile methodological tool, informing a diverse body of critical geographic scholarship. Too often, however, discourse analysis remains unexplored, operating as a “black box,” underelaborated and hence undertheorized as to just what it offers. In this article, we articulate discourse analysis as inherently processual, by which we mean both that it should be understood as a process and that it can play an integral role throughout the research process. This article is derived from a meta-analysis of an exercise that invited early-career geographers to conduct discourse analysis on commentary centered on the 2013 U.S. federal government shutdown. The reflexive research process highlights the iterative, emergent, and dialogic properties of a processual engagement with a text. We suggest that recognizing these qualities enriches the role of both the analysis and the analyst(s) and expands the valence of discourse analysis as a productive and versatile component of critical human geography.     

洋能否为中用?西方政治地理与地缘政治发展的借鉴与反思

以西方为主的国外政治地理和地缘政治学说为中国政治地理和地缘政治的发展提供了很好的参照和基础。因此,如何理性对待西方的政治地理学和地缘政治学的研究、如何正确处理中国政治地理学和地缘政治学中的本土化与国际化关系是关乎中国政治地理学和地缘政治学学科方向的重要议题。然而,目前中国政治地理学和地缘政治学的发展在这一问题上存在困惑乃至两难。一方面,过度依赖西方研究框架和理论为中国政治地理学和地缘政治学的学科建设带来了一定风险;另一方面,在对西方研究保持谨慎态度的同时不能走向封闭乃至仇外的极端,破除“唯西方论”的同时不能走进“中国特殊论”的陷阱。为此,国内高校和科研院所从事政治地理和地缘政治研究的青年学者自发于2019年举办了一次“政治地理与地缘政治理论前沿”青年论坛,集中探讨了对西方政治地理与地缘政治发展的借鉴与反思,取得了初步的共识。具体而言,西方政治地理学和地缘政治学研究议题的多尺度性、研究方法的多样性、研究氛围的批判精神、研究视野的国际化和研究规范的严谨性等方面值得中国借鉴;而历史视角缺失、知识生产不平衡、地图空间表达不足、话语分析过多、解决现实问题不足等方面存在局限,中国政治地理学和地缘政治学未来发展过程中应加以避免。希望本次讨论抛砖引玉,吸引更多学者共同推动中国政治地理学和地缘政治学的学科发展。     

A Long Way to Go: Collective Paths to Racial Justice in Geography

Despite decades of recognition and worry about diversity, our discipline remains persistently white. That is, it is dominated by white bodies and it continues to conform to norms, practices, and ideologies of whiteness. This is a loss. At best, it limits the possibilities and impact of our work as geographers. At worst, it perpetuates harmful exclusions in our discipline: its working environments, its institutions, and its knowledge production. This remains deeply concerning for many geographers, and there has been important research, commentary, and institutional activity over the years. Yet, research shows us that little meaningful progress has been made. We know that mentoring is one vital part of the journey toward change. As such, we reflect here on our experience developing a research collective built on a transformative mentoring practice. We outline the key challenges, strategies, and tentative successes of the collective in supporting women of color undergraduate, graduate, and faculty geographers, arguing that such feminist formations are a vital part of the path to intellectual racial justice in our field. Key Words: diversity, feminist geography, higher education, mentoring, race.     

GIS与地理分析

GIS与地理学的结合 ,有助于地理学家分析区域性或全球性一系列的地理问题 ,研究大气圈、水圈、岩石圈、生物圈等圈层内部的结构特征、分布规律、演化过程以及彼此之间物质流、能量流、信息流的传递方式及动力学机制。     

Geography matters? Whiteness and contemporary geography

Summary The critique of whiteness furthers important critiques of static notions of ethnicity and identity. Interesting work on 'white-blind' geographers working on race and ethnicity has recently been initiated, yet a more systematic and wide ranging critique of the norms and assumptions of contemporary geographical research has yet to be fully established. After reviewing the recent White Studies literature, this paper examines an influential piece of contemporary geographical writing and suggests that if geography really is to matter, geographers need to consider more self-consciously how they themselves might be (unwittingly) complicit in such constructions.     

Introduction to Focus Section: Feminist Research and Knowledge Production in Geography

Over the past two decades, feminist geographers have contributed in critical ways to thinking on the conduct, complications, and consequences of feminist research. The robust existing body of work is testament to the foundational import of these contributions, but the articles in this Focus Section suggest that there are still important things to argue, talk about, and reflect on with regard to the epistemological aspects of doing feminist geography. These six articles bring together real-life examples of complex issues that feminist researchers in geography face today, with the overarching aim of sparking discussions about the relationship between feminist research and knowledge production. Specifically, the articles expand key concepts facilitating reflexive processes and offer new tools for feminist researchers. This Introduction reviews the existing literature pertaining to both of these goals, and summarizes and situates the articles that follow.     

Periscoping as a Feminist Methodological Approach for Researching the Seemingly Hidden

This article proposes the metaphor of the periscope to guide an innovative approach to researching topics obstructed from view or out of range of more traditional approaches. Periscoping, it suggests, combines a feminist focus on the everyday with the recognition that no space, even those intentionally obscured, can be fully contained. Drawing on research on U.S. immigration enforcement policies, the article explores how feminist geographers can think creatively about how to arrange the “prisms” and “mirrors” at their disposal to obtain an image of what was previously thought to be unknowable. It then explores potential problems inherent to a periscopic strategy alongside tools it offers to researchers.     

Research relevance, 'knowledge transfer' and the geographies of CASE studentship collaboration

The Co-operative Awards in Science and Engineering (CASE) studentship programme of the UK Research Councils provide one example of wider efforts internationally to encourage so-called 'knowledge transfer' and thereby harness publicly supported university research more closely to the goals of national competitiveness, regional economic development and local regeneration. In this paper we describe the implications of how the various UK research councils have interpreted the objectives and beneficiaries of 'knowledge transfer', both for the relative opportunities available to human and physical geographers for collaboration through CASE and for the sorts of values that their research must serve. Then, we draw on unpublished data from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) to explore the geographies of CASE studentship allocation and participation. The broad regional and institutional patterns of participation we describe have important implications for ongoing debates in the UK about research selectivity and the role of the university as an engine of local development, while the striking disciplinary patterns of CASE participation, and in particular the overwhelming success of geographers in this competitive programme, provide an opportunity to reassess claims about whether and for whom geographical research is relevant.     

1912—1949年中国地理学者的发展特征分析

本文基于多种资料,梳理了1912—1949年中国地理学者姓名、生卒年、籍贯、领域、教育与工作经历等数据,从来源、增长、结构3个层面讨论当时中国地理学者发展进程。研究发现1912—1949年间：① 地理学者在来源层面可分舆地学者、外聘地理学者、现代学制培养地理学者（含有交集关系的国内培养学者、留学培养学者、跨学科学者）3种类型,不同类型群体对地理学者发展的影响差异明显;② 地理学者数量发展可分1912—1927年波动增长,1928—1939年持续增长,1940—1941年急速增长和1942—1949年放缓增长4个时期;③ 中国地理学者学科结构、领域结构、学缘结构、地域结构、年龄结构、性别结构等方面均表现为失衡但失衡程度趋于降低的态势;④ 地理学者发展与地理教学、研究机构发展关系密切,特别是高等地理教学机构对地理学者发展有多重影响。1912—1949年中国地理学者的发展为中国科学地理学的持续进步奠定了人才基础,其过程同时是中国近现代地理学转型的一个侧面。     

Memory in place

Geographers and psychologists both seek to understand people's behaviour and their cognitive and emotional lives so it is somewhat surprising that there has not been more theoretical cross‐fertilisation of the two disciplines. ‘On time, place and happiness’ is a rare but welcome exception, showing how research in social‐cognitive psychology might usefully clarify thinking about temporality, place and well‐being. This commentary examines several additional human memory phenomena that geographers might like to consider in their theorising about these matters.