Soviet physical and biological geography

Soviet physical and biological geography was built initially on solid Russian traditions. Its development since the Revolution, however, has been strongly influenced by planning needs for information and data about physical environment and natural resources and more recently by rising concern for the quality of environment. New methods of data collection, monitoring and analysis have been introduced to enrich and to complement traditional approaches.     

The Influence of American geography on Korean geography

Korean modern geography emerged from the dark age of unfortunate Japanese colonial rule after liberation in 1945, and has grown rapidly since the 1960s. Modern geographical theories and methodologies were introduced to Korea by the Korean geographers who received PhD degrees in the United States and returned home to teach at universities in Korea, especially in the 1970s and early 1980s. American geography has influenced the progress of the modern geography in Korea in various ways — education systems, curricula for college students, training graduate students — and research methodologies in Korean geography during the last half-century have been directly and indirectly influenced by American geography. The influence has had, however, both positive and negative effects in the development of Korean geography. There is a tendency in recent years to reinterpret Western theories and concepts in the Korean context, considering distinctive regional and cultural characteristics.     

Sakmarian geography

The known palaeontological and stratigraphical evidence is used as a basis for the construction of maps of the continents showing the extent of their inundation by the sea in Sakmarian time in the Upper Palaeozoic. In the northern hemisphere apart from India the evidence is sufficiently reliable to give reasonable maps, and the great extent of the inundations suggests that the climate would be considerably modified from that of today; no undoubted Sakmarian glacials occur there. In Southern continents and India, the Gondwana biogeographical province has made correlation with the northern continents controversial, but reasons are given for assuming that Gondwana glacial deposits were at least in part Sakmarian; the resultant maps show that the Gondwana land surfaces were but little reduced in area, and that the main glacials (except for India) lie within a belt between 40 S and 20 S. Present lack of knowledge of Sakmarian conditions in Antarctica makes reconstructions of climatic belts too hazardous for possible use in enunciating or checking hypotheses of continental drift and polar wandering.     

Transpolitical geography

As political geography searches in desperation for new (theoretical) directions to follow, this paper argues that the category of the ‘political’ has already curved back on itself, attaining the status of the ‘transpolitical’. Hereinafter, politics will never finish replaying its own disappearance as effect. This curvature is itself associated with profound shifts in the experience of history and time, of geography and space, and of the very ideas of theory, politics and events—shifts which continue to fascinate, haunt and transfix political geography in the enigmatic hereafter of the transpolitical. Adopting the motifs of s(ed)uction, transpearing, superficial abysses, and hypertelia (the ‘end of the end’), the paper assesses: the transpolitical figures of anomaly, ecstasy, obesity and obscenity; the irruption of the hyperreal (the more real than the real); the mutation of the political scene of representation into the transpolitical ob-scene of pornogeography; the fatal strategies pursued by the masses in relation to the spectre of the (trans)political; and the challenge of a transfinite universe for conjuring theoretical practice at the end(s) of political geography. Beginning with the transition from the political era—dominated by the transgressive figure of anomie and the emancipatory promise of revolutionary subl(im)ation—to the transpolitical simulacrum—characterized by the errant figure of anomaly and the superficial abyss of potentialization—the paper attempts to animate a transpolitical geography which affirms the s(ed)uction of superficial abysses and instantiates an ethics of the transpearing event.     

Space in geography

The concept of space is one of the most fundamental of geographical concepts. There is no work in geography that does not certain it. Nevertheless, geography has not as yet formulated an explicit and unambiguous definition of geographical space. This fact has had negative consequences for geographical theory, methodology and application. In the effort of contributing to its elimination we will try to outline the basic connotations of the concept.The concept of geographical space is a relational one. It acquires meaning and sense only when related to other concepts. The concept of space may be conceived as a supplement to things, i.e. substantively conceived objects. Space conceived in this way is the synonym of emptiness. The concept of space may be also conceived in relation ti individual landscape elements as their environments. Space conceived in this way has the character of a field of force. And, finally, space may be conceived also with respect to the totality of landscape elements, i.e. the system expressed by the term synergic. It is only this third variant of space which should be understood as the geographical space in the full menaing of the term. It is only this conception of geographical space as the space filled with qualities in relations and proportions that is considered as one of the basic prerequisites for the formulation of the theory of geography as science capable of prediction and thus also of practical utilization.     

Analysis in geography

Instructions concerning factor analysis, complex analysis, system analysis, trend analysis and sensitive analysis are given. Their validity for geographical investigations and research work with integrated spatial approach is discussed. Objective are calculations and abstract results; the demarcation of areas based on homogeneous data remain subjective because of the continuum of spatial elements. Nevertheless, the fundamental finding maintains, the space-time continuum on Earth's surface can be investigated—as has been demonstrated—by several analysing methods.     

Doing community geography

Community Geography offers researchers, community groups, and students opportunities to engage in action oriented applied geographical research. Creating and sustaining these research programs can be challenging, programs can involve many partners from both academic and the community, have different goals and purposes, and utilize a variety of methods to perform research. In this paper we offer a framework of three primary overarching principles for implementing CG projects; (1) Who, (2) Why, and (3) How. (1) “Who” describes who is involved in CG, including researchers, community partners, academic institutions, (2) “Why” describes the justifications and benefits of taking this approach. (3) “How” explains how CG borrows methodologies from many disciplines within geography and beyond. Our examples are not exhaustive; rather, they serve as starting points to inspire researchers interested in CG.

     

Post-positivist social geography

Although positivist methodology has been used so extensively in social geography, it is non widely recognized that it is inadequate for describing and understanding social processes as a whole because it eschews cultural values. The behavioural reaction recognized this but still used positivist methodology. Methods may reflect scale, a macro-approach demanding a positivist approach, a micro analysis being more qualitative. Applying both to problems of assimilation in an American ethnic group revealed different processes, both necessary for a full understanding.Aggregate methods and generalized models of man go part of the way only. The quantitative/macro approach must be supplemented by the qualitative/micro. A further departure has been a recognition that social geographers must look at society's needs. Involvement in social processes and policy making is accepted by most. Whether the answer is interpreted by a liberal/concensus approach, or by a radical/revolutionary, is for the individual to decide.Finally, as geographers, social geographers cannot ignore the significance of place and region, whose specificity is sometimes critical in our perception of problems and answers.