Gottmann's Geographic Glossa

At a time when human geography–in its search for general and systemic laws–was often seduced by different kinds of determinism, Jean Gottmann developed his theoretical model in order to explain the political partitioning of geographical space. This model, shaped by the study of the classics in political philosophy, makes explicit reference to human psychology, and is based on a few fundamental concepts: cloisonnement (partitioning), circulation (movement), carrefour (crossroad) and iconographie (iconography). This paper presents the above mentioned concepts through a chronological analysis of their formulation in different chapters of Gottmann's bibliography, in order to reconstruct the genesis and evolution of his model. In the conclusions a few questions are presented, that suggest how Gottmann's model could still be usefully applied to contemporary human and political geography.     

Spatial contestation? – The theological foundations of Carl Schmitt’s spatial thought

Carl Schmitt’s work on the political is extensively used as an intellectual point of departure in contemporary academic debates about political contestation. More precisely, Carl Schmitt’s friend versus enemy-distinction is invoked as an essential figuration of political contestation. At the same time, the past few years have seen the attention paid to the spatial thought of Carl Schmitt increase. However, references to the work of Carl Schmitt fail to take the embeddedness of his theories in a complex theological–political–spatial triangle into account. This article aims at joining these readings of Schmitt with regard to the current debate about contestation and space by analyzing the idiosyncratic connection between Carl Schmitt’s Catholic faith, especially in the figure of the katechon, his theory of the political and his conceptualization(s) of space. The underlying logic of his worldview becomes explicit by reviewing his concepts of (a) the nomos, (b) land and sea, (c) the Großraumordnung, as well as (d) the Partisan, which form the benchmarks of his work between the 1930s and the 1960s. Against this background we analyze the value of Schmitt’s work for the ongoing debate about contestation and space. Our core argument is that his understanding of the spatial–political nexus and his metaphysical worldview stand in contrast to contemporary conceptualizations of spatial–political relationships.     

Offspring of Watsuji's theory of milieu (F^udo)

Watsuji Tetsurô (1889–1960), a Japanese philosopher, published in 1935 Fûdo: ningengakuteki kôsatsu, an essay on the relationship between the character of human societies and the natural conditions of their environment, mainly climate. This book has generally been understood as an illustration of geographical determinism, to which belong indeed some of the main supporters of Watsuji's theory. Yet Watsuji himself stated explicitly that his book was not about the influence of the natural environment on human life, but about ‘the structural moment of human existence’, in which the matter is milieu (fûdo) and mediance (fûdosei), not environment (kankyô), and which has much in common with Heidegger's Dasein, although Watsuji contests the Heideggerian precedence of temporality on spatiality. In this respect, Fûdo is the forerunner of a promising trend in cultural geography: studies on the geographical constitution of Being, opening the way to a recosmization of the human.     

Dictionaries, disciplines and the future of geography

This essay contributes to the discussions initiated by Setten [Setten, 2008. Encyclopaedic vision: speculating on The Dictionary of Human Geography. Geoforum 39 (3), 1097–1104], about The Dictionary ofHuman Geography. Rather than focusing on the identity and relative exclusiveness of the contributors, I emphasize how successive editions of the Dictionary have helped reshape the discipline in two ways. First, the proliferation of texts, like the Dictionary, aimed squarely at a student market has gone hand in hand with a variety of changes to the political economy of publishing in geography. Second, human geography has increasingly come to be defined in terms of its concepts and theories. The paper ends by considering the implications of these changes for disciplinary unity and the future of geography given the increasing prominence of both of integrated environmental science and of GIS.     

Reflections on Nigel Thrift's optimism: political strategies to implement his vision

This response to Nigel Thrift's recent paper (2002, Geoforum 33, 291–298) develops two of his points: the need for geography to remain buoyant within school curricula and a potential split of physical from human geography within the universities. I argue that political strategies are necessary for both if geography is to remain the large, intellectually vibrant discipline that Thrift identifies.     

Conflict studies and critical geopolitics — theoretical concepts and recent research in political geography

The political and economic upheavals during the past two decades have led to a new social and political organization of space on all levels of scale. To deal with the obvious changes, political geography had to rethink and to extend its traditional concepts. Transcending its long taken-for-granted radical approaches, the Anglo-American geography developed two conceptional paths, both of which are still relevant for political geography today:— a new awareness of regional differences in political action and culture— a new, constructionist awareness of the instrumentalization of geographical discourses for geopolitical purposes.With these theoretical concepts, political geography is examining a number of both traditional and new fields of research. Their heterogeneity is once again evidence of postmodern diversity and difference. They are characterized by both a new awareness of differentiation and a widening of the traditional viewpoint in three closely related respects transcending the traditional topics of political activity, the traditional political actors and the established levels of scale of politics. Based on the current literature it is possible to outline some major themes and perspectives of current political geography that are closely linked together, like knots in thematic networks:1. ecological politics and resource conflicts 2. territorial conflicts and boundaries 3. geopolitics and the politics of identity 4. globalization and new international relations 5. the symbolic representation of political power 6. regional conflicts and new social movements.     

Genetic geographies. A historical comparison of agrarian modernization and eugenic thought in Germany, the Soviet Union, and the United States

The article deals with the role of genetics in the state-led agricultural modernization efforts that took place in different industrialized countries during the course of the 1920s and 1930s. A comparison between Germany, the Soviet Union and the United States shows substantial similarities in their attempts to increase the productivity of agriculture on different geographical scales. Following advances in scientific knowledge about the geography of cultivated plants, these countries sent out numerous expeditions to collect plant breeding material from all over the world. At the same time, states tightened their grip on farmers’ and breeders’ activities inside the country by establishing legal rules for the use of plant varieties and seed. But this was only one side of a larger “genetic modernization” project. In all three countries, concepts of agricultural modernization were substantially linked to social-darwinist thought which embraced programs of eugenics and “racial hygiene”. These links are outlined for each of the cases, highlighting the widely differing intermingling of scientific concepts and terminologies with political ideologies. It is then discussed what role geography and in particular geopolitical thinking of the time were to play in the development of “genetic modernization”, and more specifically, with regard to the nexus between agriculture and eugenics. While the discipline’s involvement in both fields remained comparably marginal in practical terms, clearly there were conceptual contributions toward the development of the broader field. Going back to Ratzel’s and Kjellén’s work, it is argued that geography had an important role in the establishment of a political field in which ideas of managing human reproduction were fused with concepts of economic development and environmental determinism.     

Social theory and prospects in social geography

There is little doubt that a phenomenological approach in the Husserlian mould is valuable in curbing the excessive positivism and naivety that have characterised much of the social geography undertaken in Britain during the past twenty years. However, the operational value of phenomenology in social geography is more controversial. Ley's formulation of a phenomenologically based social geography focussing on the concept of place suffers from certain methodological and theoretical problems that stem, in part, from his adoption of Schutz's conceptualisation of the social world. A phenomenologically inspired but modified approach, involving the concepts of structuration and power and drawing heavily on the work of Giddens, is suggested as superior. This conceptualisation, which connects human action with structural explanation, permits a valuable reformulation of the geography of mental illness and may have similarly worthwhile applications in other areas of interest to social geographers.     

Influences of activated sludge surface properties on adsorption of aqueous fullerene C<Subscript>60</Subscript> nanoparticles

Rapid increases in the amounts of fullerene C₆₀ nanoparticles (nC₆₀) being produced and used will inevitably lead to increases in the amounts released into the aquatic environment. This will have implications for human and ecosystem health. Wastewater treatment plants are key barriers to nC₆₀ being released into aquatic systems, but little information is available on how adsorption processes in wastewater treatment plants affect the fates of nC₆₀. We investigated the effects of the surface properties of activated sludge on the adsorption of nC₆₀ and related mechanisms by modeling the adsorption kinetics and equilibrium process and performing correlation analyses. The adsorption of nC₆₀ closely followed the pseudo-second-order kinetic model (R > 0.983), the Freundlich isotherm model (R > 0.990), and the linear partitioning isotherm model (R > 0.966). Different adsorption coefficients, 1.070–4.623 for the Freundlich partitioning model and 1.788–6.148 for the linear partitioning model, were found for different types of activated sludge. The adsorption coefficients significantly positively correlated with the zeta (ζ) potential (R = 0.877) and hydrophobicity (R = 0.661) and negatively correlated with particle size (R = ?0.750). The results show that nC₆₀ adsorption is strongly affected by the surface properties of activated sludge because changes in surface properties cause changes in the electrostatic and hydrophobic interactions that occur.     

Signs of power: Fascist urban iconographies in Ethiopia (1930s–1940s)

The aim of the present paper is to compare two different patterns of urban iconographies in Ethiopia during 1930s: the one of the Amhara – the traditionally Ethiopian dominant ethnic group – and the one of the Italian fascism. The paper gives an historical account of the structure of the Amhara settlements, focusing on the ways the power of their politico-military chiefs, being they the Negus or the Ras, shaped the spatial order of these settlements. When the Italians conquered military Ethiopia in 1936, they started re-shaping this spatial order, erasing the signs of the previous power and imposing their new iconographic apparatus. This was mainly done through urban planning which was devised to `write' the Fascist concepts of progress, order, hierarchy, and racial segregation on the territory. Owing to the short duration of the occupation, the poor material conditions of the colony and the lack of financial resources, such town-planning projects turned out to be just a political rhetoric exercise.     

Experimental study of octanol–water partition coefficients for2,4,6-trichlorophenol and pentachlorophenol: Derivation of an empirical model of chlorophenol partitioning behaviour

The octanol–water partition coefficients (log K_ow) of 2,4,6-trichlorophenol and pentachlorophenol were determined as functions of pH, ionic strength and aqueous metal content. For both chlorophenols, the log K_ow exhibits pH dependence in the range pK_a−1<pH<pK_a+3. At lower and higher pH values, the behaviour of the chlorophenols is independent of pH. The present data, in conjunction with that of pre-existing data, indicate that a linear relationship exists between log K_ow and log ionic strength of the aqueous solution for pentachlorophenol, and the data also suggest that aqueous metal–chlorophenolate complexation can significantly alter the partitioning behaviour. The data reported here was used to obtain an empirical model of the partitioning behaviour based on speciation of the aqueous chlorophenol. The model requires knowledge of the low pH partitioning behaviour, as well as the acidity constant for the particular chlorophenol of interest. Although K_ow values have been measured as a function of pH and/or ionic strength for only pentachlorophenol, the input parameters for our empirical model are readily accessible in the literature for many chlorophenols. The model greatly expands our ability to quantify the hydrophobicity of chlorophenols, enabling accurate estimations of the pH and ionic strength dependencies of the partitioning behaviour over a wide range of pH and ionic strength values of environmental interest.     

Fast-decaying inductive IP in frozen ground

Effects of induced polarization (IP) often appear in TEM data collected in Yakutia and elsewhere in permafrost areas. Inversion of transient responses using the Cole–Cole model of frequency-dependent conductivity shows fast decaying induced polarization in the shallow subsurface (within 100 m). Frozen ground within these depths has the chargeability (m) in the range from 0.2 to 0.85 (mostly 0.2–0.5); the relaxation time constant (τ) varies from 35 to 250 μs being 50–100 μs on average, and the exponent c is little variable, unlike m and τ (from 0.8 to 1).The latter fact (c ≈ 1) is indicative of a narrow range of relaxation times fitting the Debye relaxation model. Conversion of the complex conductivity into relative low-frequency dielectric permittivity results in values of the order of tens of thousands or a few hundred thousand. These exceptionally high permittivities have no other plausible explanations than electrochemical polarization of unfrozen water that remains bound on the surface of mineral grains at subzero temperatures. The effects of electrochemical polarization are described and interpreted in terms of frequency-dependent surface conductivity, which is controlled by surface-to-volume ratio.     

Thermodynamic controls on element partitioning between titanomagnetite and andesitic–dacitic silicate melts

Titanomagnetite–melt partitioning of Mg, Mn, Al, Ti, Sc, V, Co, Ni, Cu, Zn, Ga, Zr, Nb, Mo, Hf and Ta was investigated experimentally as a function of oxygen fugacity (fO₂) and temperature (T) in an andesitic–dacitic bulk-chemical compositional range. In these bulk systems, at constant T, there are strong increases in the titanomagnetite–melt partitioning of the divalent cations (Mg²⁺, Mn²⁺, Co²⁺, Ni²⁺, Zn²⁺) and Cu²⁺/Cu⁺ with increasing fO₂ between 0.2 and 3.7 log units above the fayalite–magnetite–quartz buffer. This is attributed to a coupling between magnetite crystallisation and melt composition. Although melt structure has been invoked to explain the patterns of mineral–melt partitioning of divalent cations, a more rigorous justification of magnetite–melt partitioning can be derived from thermodynamic principles, which accounts for much of the supposed influence ascribed to melt structure. The presence of magnetite-rich spinel in equilibrium with melt over a range of fO₂ implies a reciprocal relationship between a(Fe²⁺O) and a(Fe³⁺O_1.5) in the melt. We show that this relationship accounts for the observed dependence of titanomagnetite–melt partitioning of divalent cations with fO₂ in magnetite-rich spinel. As a result of this, titanomagnetite–melt partitioning of divalent cations is indirectly sensitive to changes in fO₂ in silicic, but less so in mafic bulk systems.     

The legal meaning of Lefebvre’s the right to the city: addressing the gap between global campaign and scholarly debate

There is a growing consideration globally of a right to the city in urban policies, strategies and legislation. The mention of this concept in the UN’s New Urban Agenda vision statement, in relation to human rights, both acknowledges and encourages this trend. It is also a result of lobbying and contestation. In the Anglo-American scholarly literature, there has been caution as to whether Henri Lefebvre intended a legal and institutionalized meaning for his ‘right to the city’. This paper reviews these debates and from that perspective examines Lefebvre’s positions on law, rights and the right to the city. It locates this within his wider political strategy and in particular the three-pronged strategy he put forward in The Urban Revolution to address the urban question—political foregrounding of the urban, promotion of self-management, and introduction of the right to the city into a transformed contractual system. By contextualizing and reviewing Everyday Life in the Modern World (published immediately before Right to the City), the paper examines Lefebvre’s thinking on rights formation, within ‘opening’, or the process of inducing change. The paper engages with meanings Lefebvre provides for rights in his concept of the right to the city, including his later conception of a contract of citizenship. The paper suggests that engagement with a fluid role of law and rights, in combination with Lefebvre’s other strategies, is important in opening the pathway he charts for the realization of this right, whether through local or global initiatives.     

Clinopyroxene-orthopyroxene major and rare earth elements partitioning in spinel peridotite xenoliths from Assab (Ethiopia)

Major element and rare earth element (REE) partitioning among coexisting clinopyroxene-orthopyroxene pairs from mantle xenoliths of the Assab Range (Ethiopia) are discussed in terms of crystal-chemistry.Major element partitioning indicates relatively uniform conditions of subsolidus equilibration over a narrow range of temperatures (mean value about 1100 C) in the spinel peridotite stability field. Major element distributions and correlations, moreover, seem to indicate that the mantle material studied underwent slightly different depletions prior to the metamorphic equilibration.In spite of the rather homogeneous major element compositions for both cpx and opx, clinopyroxenes show chondrite-normalized REE patterns which are widely variable both in shape and absolute values, whereas orthopyroxenes exhibit more restricted ranges and concordant profiles.REE activity ratios have been investigated by applying Iiyama's (Bull. Soc. fr. Minéral. Christallogr.97, 143–151) thermodynamic model: the estimated activity patterns exhibit a good coherence for the different pyroxene pairs, in spite of the contrasting features of their REE concentration ratios. The wide ranges in the measured partition values for the same rare earth element in different pyroxene pairs have been related to coupled substitutions involving A1 in the Z site and REE in the M₂ site of clinopyroxene.     

On relevance in geography: Thünen's isolated state in relation to agriculture and political economy

Thünen's Isolated State as a whole is suggested here as a methodological model for a socially relevant geographical theory. In contrast to the usual approach in economic geography, of deriving a spatial model from a general economic theory, Thünen's methodology is to begin with a specific reality, to derive from it the specialized model of the Isolated State and to use it as an instrument for the construction of a general economic theory. This general economic theory, in turn, is designed to act upon society as a whole. Thünen's work is an example of how geography can be a specialized scientific activity within a holistic-integrative reality.     

Infrared spectroscopic investigation of hydroxyl in β-(Mg,Fe)2SiO4 and coexisting olivine: Implications for mantle evolution and dynamics

Wadsleyite (β-(Mg,Fe)₂SiO₄) is a major constituent of the Earth's transition zone and is known to accommodate OH. The portion of the transition zone between 400–550 km could be an important source or sink for hydroxyl in plumes and slabs intersecting this region. Micro-infrared spectroscopy has been carried out on the β-phase and coexisting metastable olivine synthesized in a multianvil apparatus at 14 GPa and 1550–1650 K under hydrous conditions. Single-crystal and polycrystal specimens of both phases were analyzed in the 1800–8500 cm^?1 frequency region to determine the speciation, abundances, and partitioning behavior of the hydrous components in coexisting β-phase and olivine. β-phase spectra consistently show three distinct OH bands at 3329, 3580, and 3615 cm^?1. OH concentrations range from 10000–65000 H/10⁶ Si. A strong positive correlation of grain size and extent of transformation with OH concentration in the β-phase indicates that grain-growth and transformation rates are enhanced in a hydrous environment. Olivine spectra are variable, but consistently show a prominent broad-band absorbance representing molecular H₂O, consistent with the infrared signature of the starting material. OH concentrations in olivine range from <300–1400 H/10⁶ Si. The highest OH concentrations measured for olivine and the β-phase may represent solubility limits, in which case the OH solubility ratio between these two phases is approximately 1∶40. Where both phases coexist and are undersaturated with OH, the partitioning ratio of OH between them is about 1∶100. The large solubility contrast between olivine and the β-phase suggests a mechanism for hydrating the transition zone via olivine carried down in subducting slabs. Plumes impinging on an OH-rich upper transition region could cause H₂ or H₂O to be released upon transformation of the β-phase to olivine, resulting in initiation of secondary upwellings. If dissolution of OH weakens the β-phase, and if OH is present in the mantle, the region between 400–550 km could be a zone of low viscosity.     

The new state flags as the iconographic symbols of the post-Soviet space

State flags may be appreciated as iconographic symbols according to Jean Gottmann's definition. Especially interesting is to analyze the state flags in the moment of their creation – as for example on the territory of the former Soviet Union where almost all the new independent states have to create or restore their state symbols. On many of these flags we can see the historical elements, the political and geographical situation of a new state or even religious beliefs of most of the inhabitants. On the state flags we can also observe the state ideology, but its interpretation may be ambiguous, e.g., the green color on the state flag means either that the state is proud of its rich nature or that Islam is a state religion. Ambitions are expressed on the flags of the entities, which are fighting for their independence.