BOOK REVIEWS

Book Reviewed in this article: Development and Environment in Peninsular Malaysia . S. Robert Aiken, Colin H. Leigh, Thomas R. Leinbach, Michael R. Moss. The Rural-Urban Fringe: Canadian Perspectives . Ken B. Beesley and Lorne H. Russwurm, eds. Women and Development . Lourdes Benería, ed. The Border that Joins: Mexican Migrants and U.S. Responsibility . Peter G. Brown and Henry Shue, eds. Cities of the World: World Regional Urban Development . Stanley D. Brunn and Jack L. Williams, eds. Time Resources, Society, and Ecology: On the Capacity for Human Interaction in Space and Time (Vol. I, Preindustrial Societies). Tommy Carlstein. Urban Geography . David Clark. Spanish City Planning in North America . Dora P. Crouch, Daniel J. Garr, and Axel I. Mundigo. Not On Our Street: Community Attitudes to Mental Health Care . M. J. Dear and S. M. Taylor Unequal growth: Urban and Regional Employment Change in the U.K. Stephen Fothergill and Graham Gudgin. Agricultural Land in an Urban Society . Owen J. Furuseth and John T. Pierce. The Petroleum Industry in Oil-Importing Developing Countries . Fariborz Ghadar. Historical Understanding in Geography, An Idealist Approach . Leonard Guelke. Regional Planning in Europe . R. Hudson and J. R. Lewis, eds. Remote Sensing for Resource Management . Chris J. Johannsen and James L. Sanders, eds. Geography and The State . R. J. Johnston. Texas Graveyards: a Cultural Legacy . Tlrry G. Jordan. The Politics of Location: An Introduction . Andrew Kirby. A Social Geography of the City . David Ley. Energy and the Future . Douglas MacLean and Peter Brown, eds. The Natural Environment of Newfoundland Past and Present . A. G. Macpherson and J. B. Macpherson, eds. Tourism: Economic, Physical and Social Impacts . Alister Mathieson and Geoffrey Wall. Railroads and Land Grant Policy: A Study in Government Intervention . Lloyd J. Mercer. Progress in Rural Geography . Michael Pacione, ed. Progress in Urban Geography . Michael Pacione, ed. Models of Spatial Inequality: Settlement Patterns in Historical Archaeology . Robert Paynter. Natural Hazard Risk Assessment and Public Policy, Anticipating the Unexpected . William J. Petak and Arthur A. Atkisson. The Nature of Geomorphology . Alistair F. Pitty. Regional Conflict and National Policy . Kent A. Price Women and Spatial Change: Learning Resources for Social Science Courses . Arlene C. Rengert and Janice J. Monk, eds. Urban and Regional Analysis for Development Planning . Richard Rhoda. Rivers: Form and Process in Alluvial Channels . Keith Richards. This Remarkable Continent: An Atlas of United States and Canadian Society and Culture . John F. Rooney, Jr., Wilbur Zelinsky, and Dean R. Louder, gen. eds. The Origins of Open-Field Agriculture . Trevor Rowley, ed. Residential Location Determinants of the Older Population . Gundars Rudzitis. Borderland Sourcebook: A Guide to the Literature on Northern Mexico and the American Southwest . Ellwyn R. Stoddard, Richard L. Nostrand, and Jonathan P. West, eds. Arctic and Antarctic . David Sugden. Tall Timbers Ecology and Management Conference, February 22–24, 1979, Proceedings No. 16 . Graphic Communication and Design in Contemporary Cartography (Progress in Contemporary Cartography , Vol. II). D. R. Fraser Taylor, ed. Living with Energy Shortfall: A Future for American Towns and Cities . Jon Van Til. The United States: Habitation of Hope . J. Wreford Watson. Air Photo Interpretation for Archaeologists . D. R. Wilson. Urban and Rural Change in West Germany . Trevor Wild, ed. Population and Resources . Harry Robinson.     

Canadian Inuit subsistence and ecological instability— if the climate changes, must the Inuit?

Considerable attention has been devoted to the possible effects of global climate change on the environment of the circumpolar world. With regard to the Inuit, the aboriginal culture of Arctic Canada, research interest has focused principally on the vulnerability of the hunting and harvesting component of the traditional food system, otherwise frequently referred to as the subsistence system, if wild terrestrial and marine resources become less available. Although also concerned with the traditional Inuit food economy, this paper concentrates on the customary institutional mechanisms by which the Inuit distribute and share the products obtained from hunting. After analysing this social economy, a review of the data on recent climate-related range changes of a number of Arctic animal populations is carried out, in terms of how projected environmental changes may affect this other aspect of Inuit subsistence. After tentatively concluding that some species substitution and/or replacement will occur, the final aspect of the paper considers the potential for the possible exclusion of these "replacements" as a result of the political aspect of climate change.     

Community clusters in wildlife and environmental management: using TEK and community involvement to improve co-management in an era of rapid environmental change

Environmental change has stressed wildlife co-management systems in the Arctic because parameters are changing more rapidly than traditional scientific monitoring can accommodate. Co-management systems have also been criticized for not fully integrating harvesters into the local management of resources. These two problems can be approached through the use of spatially-defined human social units termed community clusters, which are based on the demographic or ecological units being managed. An examination of polar bear management in Nunavut Territory, Canada, shows that community clusters provide a forum to collect and analyse traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) over a geographic area that mirrors the management unit, providing detailed information of local conditions. This case study also provides examples of how instituting community clusters at a governance level provides harvesters with social space in which to develop their roles as managers, along the continuum from being powerless spectators to active, adaptive co-managers. Five steps for enhancing co-management systems through the inclusion of community clusters and their knowledge are: (1) the acceptance of TEK, science, the precautionary principle and the right of harvesters not to be constrained by overly-conservative management decisions; (2) data collection involving TEK and science, and a collaboration between the two; (3) institutionalization of community clusters for data collection; (4) institutionalization of community clusters in the management process; and (5) grass-roots initiatives to take advantage of the social space provided by the community cluster approach, in order to adapt the management to local conditions, and to effect policy changes at higher levels, so as to better meet local objectives.     

Community collaboration and climate change research in the Canadian Arctic

Research on climate change impacts, vulnerability and adaptation, particularly projects aiming to contribute to practical adaptation initiatives, requires active involvement and collaboration with community members and local, regional and national organizations that use this research for policy-making. Arctic communities are already experiencing and adapting to environmental and socio-cultural changes, and researchers have a practical and ethical responsibility to engage with communities that are the focus of the research. This paper draws on the experiences of researchers working with communities across the Canadian Arctic, together with the expertise of Inuit organizations, Northern research institutes and community partners, to outline key considerations for effectively engaging Arctic communities in collaborative research. These considerations include: initiating early and ongoing communication with communities, and regional and national contacts; involving communities in research design and development; facilitating opportunities for local employment; and disseminating research findings. Examples of each consideration are drawn from climate change research conducted with communities in the Canadian Arctic.     

论北极原住民的人口结构与社会问题——以加拿大为例

本文探讨近十几年来加拿大北极北极原住民人口的快速增长以及人口结构年轻化现象．由此而来的一系列社会问题的产生,尤其是年轻男性高的自杀率更应引起全世界人民的关注．这给原住民社会的发展造成了极大的障碍。我们在关注北极丰富的自然资源、环境问题以及军事安全问题,不应该忽视祖祖辈辈生活中这土地上的原住民当下所面临的各种社会问题。     

Climate change in the Arctic: current and future vulnerability in two Inuit communities in Canada

Climate change is already occurring in the Arctic and the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment recently concluded that future climate change could be devastating for Inuit. This paper characterises vulnerability to climate change in two Inuit communities in the Canadian territory of Nunavut, focusing on the resource harvesting sector. In both communities, Inuit have demonstrated significant adaptability in the face of current changes in climatic conditions. This adaptability is facilitated by traditional Inuit knowledge, strong social networks, flexibility in resource use, and institutional support. Changing Inuit livelihoods, however, have undermined certain aspects of adaptive capacity and have resulted in emerging vulnerabilities. Global and regional climate projections indicate that climatic conditions which currently pose risks are expected to be negatively affected by future climate change. These projections are not without precedent and analysis of current vulnerability and identification of adaptation constraints by Inuit in the two communities indicate the continued importance of traditional coping mechanisms. The ability to draw on these coping mechanisms in light of future climate change, however, will be unequal and the research indicates that young Inuit and those without access to economic resources, in particular, are vulnerable.     

What happened to climate change? CITES and the reconfiguration of polar bear conservation discourse

In the past decade, polar bears have become the poster species of climate change. But in March 2013, a joint proposal by the governments of the United States and the Russian Federation to up-list polar bears to Appendix I of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) diverted public attention from climate change towards the hunting of polar bears. Prior to a vote on the proposal, non-governmental organisations spear-headed a media campaign to support the up-listing. In the United Kingdom the campaign received support from celebrities and was widely reported in English language news media. Narratives of commercial legal and illegal polar bear hunting and the imminent extinction of polar bears were aggressively promoted, rhetorically supported by the manipulation of trade and scientific data. By rendering discourses of commercial hunting and a lucrative global trade in polar bear parts highly visible, sustainable hunting and climate change-induced habitat loss were rendered invisible. Media reports of commercial hunting de-coupled polar bear conservation from climate change mitigation, and disassociated polar bear hunting from regulated indigenous subsistence practices. A review of current polar bear conservation measures and an analysis of media coverage leading up to the CITES decision reveal these conflicting discourses, and suggest that more nuanced media coverage of polar bear conservation is necessary if appropriate multilateral conservation policies are to be enacted and publicly supported.     

Canadian Inuit,digital Qanuqtuurunnarniq,and emerging geographic imaginations

Using the Canadian Arctic as a case study this paper explores how Internet-based research can be used to advance area studies in an era of rapid global change. Regions of the world are rapidly changing due to social, technological, and environmental processes, and traditionally marginalized groups are increasingly using digital tools to help shape new geographical imaginations of these regions. Digital research is uniquely capable of analyzing these political uses of digital technologies, to produce a better understanding of how many different stakeholders are shaping emerging geographical imaginations. The Canadian Arctic offers a particularly powerful case study to understand these processes both because it represents a geographic region that is complex, multi-scalar, and rapidly evolving, and also because it is a region in which traditionally marginalized indigenous groups are using the Internet to increase the visibility of their perspectives. This paper develops an innovative methodology, combining computational analysis of ‘big data’ along with traditional forms of qualitative analysis, to analyze representations of the Arctic across the websites of five different organizations. These organizational websites were chosen because each of the organizations has a different relationship to the Arctic, operates at a different geographic scale, has some relevance to areas of the Canadian Arctic in which Inuit live, and has a large website. The analysis successfully reveals how these different organizations use the web to shape different types of geographic imaginations of the Arctic, as well as the types of discursive politics being used by the organizations to push forward their own political goals. The result is a powerful form of area studies capable of highlighting the geographic imaginations and re-imaginations of a complex set of actors operating at many different scales.