Determining the anthropogenic contribution of heavy metal accumulations around a typical industrial town: Xushe,China

Industrial emissions are the major sources of heavy metal pollutions. This study investigates the anthropogenic contribution of heavy metal accumulation surrounding an industrial town in China, using the component partition method. Results show that Cu, Ni, Pb, and As have higher concentrations compared with their background levels and the industrial town has a significant impact on heavy metal accumulations in its surrounding agricultural soil. Prevailing wind direction may explain the difference of heavy metal concentration in different directions. Anthropogenic components of Cu, Ni, Pb and As, which decrease with distance following exponential functions, account for 11.4%, 6.2%, 18.5% and 7.9% of their total concentrations, respectively. The natural components are modeled as the functions of physico-chemical variables through multiple regressions. The accumulating processes of heavy metals affected by industrial activities could be explained by anthropogenic and natural components, and thus, it could provide basic information for further simulation of heavy metal accumulations.     

Dalit identity in urban Pokhara,Nepal

Urban migration by Nepalese Dalits has not only provided them with social, economic and educational opportunities, but also the possibility of escaping traditional caste-based discrimination. However, despite making the most of opportunities provided by the city, Dalits have not been able to pursue their political agenda to the extent of other ethnic communities. This study in the city of Pokhara, Nepal, explored Dalit identity using two rounds of focus group discussions involving a total of 23 individuals drawn from a range of Dalit caste groups with a variety of livelihoods. The results describe the caste-based discrimination experienced by the participants and the different strategies they employ to either reinvent themselves by changing names; or embracing their caste-heritage and taking advantage of affirmative action programmes. Whilst urban migration can provide some relief from discrimination, the study reveals that caste still remains prominent in the lives of Dalits in Pokhara. The paper argues that Dalit unity and elimination of intra-Dalit caste-based discrimination are needed in order to institutionalise their citizenship rights in post conflict Nepal.     

Constructing quality: The multinational histories of chocolate

Geographic research on food quality, while considering many of the ways in which quality is socially constructed, has largely focused on the place-based aspects of the raw materials of food production. Here, we use French convention theory to look at a highly processed food in order to show how place associations in the social construction of food quality extend to manufacturing. For chocolate, quality is based on material characteristics whose relative importance in determining quality depends on the country in which different stages of economic innovation took place. Struggles over the definition of quality chocolate, as exemplified by the “European Chocolate War,” show how quality issues are connected to geographies of manufacturing and innovation.     

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.     

湘东南某市地形地貌对地质灾害发育规律的控制作用分析

地形地貌是崩塌、滑坡、泥石流等地质灾害活动的基础,它在很大程度上决定了崩塌、滑坡、泥石流等地质灾害能否形成及其类型、数量、密度和规模大小。本文基于湘东南详细地质灾害调查成果,对该市不同地貌类型、坡形、坡度以及高程的差异对地质灾害发育规律的控制作用进行了总结分析。     

Boundaries and transborder relations,or the hole in the prison wall: On the necessity of superfluous limits and boundaries

Boundaries can be seen as barriers or as places of contact. It has been suggested that we are “prisoners of borders”, of all kinds of borders (political, religious, social, cultural, linguistic etc.). While this statement appears to be somewhat exaggerated, it holds some truth. Boundaries are elements in spatial organization, and they influence daily life in many ways (not only for people living right along them). The paper addresses the question if we must call ourselves “prisoners” or if we simply have to live with all kinds of borders. Departing from theoretical observations, the paper discusses the various aspects boundaries assume in the European context before looking at a few concrete Swiss examples. They reveal that even regions at a certain distance of the state border will feel its effects (the case of Zurich airport), but the most important benefit can been drawn by people living in the border area itself (through price differences between the two countries, as exemplified by the Swiss-Italian border). There may be asymmetry on state borders, but this asymmetry can also swing around: the advantages often lie on both sides. The paper concludes by pointing to the persistence of the boundary concept. They are a necessity for the organization of space and society, but they are not absolute. There are always holes in these prison walls, and the examples where boundaries were impermeable are probably rare.     

关于建立信息地理学的讨论

从信息地理学产生的时代背景入手，先后讨论了信息地理学的基本概念和特点，信息地理学的研究内容及方法，信息地理学的基础理论问题等，最后展望了信息地理学的发展前景及潜力。     

Population geography with GIS in Japan

Japanese geography studies are now being greatly affected by the rapid development of geographical information systems (GIS). Unfortunately, there has been little response from Japanese population geographers to this movement. Is GIS a welcome or an unwelcome guest? After discussing the significance of employing GIS, this article introduces some recent papers that used GIS in the field of population geography on such issues as mortality mapping, migration analysis, and household studies. Then, the two promising population-related topics of married one-person households and fertility are discussed. The ability of GIS to greatly facilitate analysis, which previously needed much time and energy, can be an encouraging stimulus of innovation in studies of current population geography. Therefore, GIS is clearly a welcome guest, although it is too wishful to think that its use would lead directly to a revitalization of contemporary population geography studies.     

试论与地勘经济增长模式相适应的人才战略

地勘单位产业结构调整对其经营人员的素质提出了新的挑战，人才作为最重要的人力资源，必须适应产业结构调整的需要。地勘单位应实施与地勘经济增长模式相适应的人才战略，进行人才结构和职位的科学设计，通过吸收和培养人才，做到合理有效地使用人才。     

Crisis? What crisis? Displacing the spatial imaginary of the fiscal state

This paper argues that there is an immanent and evolving relationship between the prevailing form of taxation and the economic geographies of the state. Despite this, the geographic significance of taxation has been obscured by the language in which its historic transformation tends to be couched. Prevailing fiscal systems tend to be presented as essentially static – institutionally and spatially fixed and routinely inscribed within the fixed boundaries and territories of the ‘sovereign’ fiscal state. Any threat to, or change in the nature or geography of the fiscal state tends to be couched in terms of ‘crisis’ – of negative and discontinuous change. This paper contends that these related and essentially conservative discourses of fiscal geography mask the degree to which fiscal spaces are both multiple and continuously evolving. More importantly, it argues, this fluidity and multiplicity does not threaten the stability and viability of state form, but it is an essential process in its maintenance and reproduction. Running counter to the prevailing discourse of the ‘national economy’, the practice of fiscal geography is an under-analysed but key aspect of the historical evolution and transformation of the imagined geographies of economies.