George J. Miller award for Distinguished Service

Abstract

With this paper, I elaborate the use of the movies American History X and Mi Familia in classroom settings to highlight issues of ethnicity and the social construction of identity through families and communities. Taken together, these movies draw attention to racial geographies of Los Angeles but in very different ways. I contrast the ways they involve familial reactions to geographies of exclusion and betrayal, and how racial space is structured through larger community and institutional relations. I speak to how these issues are broached in a large introductory, interdisciplinary class.     

Colorado’s Millennial Generation: Youth Perceptions and Experiences of Nature

Abstract

This study uses survey and focus group methods to explore attitudes toward and experiences of nature among millennial-aged students in northern Colorado. First, results confirm that young people possess a strong interest in the outdoors yet time, transportation, and new technologies hamper their ability to visit public lands and outdoor spaces. Second, respondents experience nature in ways more mediated by new technologies such as cell phones and nature DVDs. Third, citizen science and active learning show promise as techniques for returning young people to the outdoors. The challenge lies in teaching young people to reimagine the outdoors not as elsewhere or out there but as a backyard geographic space.     

城市情感地理与空间治理：广州市区宣传类户外广告案例

受人文地理“情感转向”思潮的影响,城市公共空间研究开始关注情感对空间的构建作用,情感空间的营造与城市空间的治理存在一定的耦合关联。本文以广州市区的宣传类户外广告为例,援引情感地理与空间治理的相关理论,采用访谈、文本分析等方法,探讨宣传类户外广告在营造情感氛围过程中与城市空间的内在关联,进而讨论情感氛围与城市空间治理的联系。研究发现,户外广告尤其是宣传类户外广告通过视觉表征生产情感空间,由身体-街区-城市三个尺度构成情感化的公共空间,置身城市公共空间的个体在宣传类户外广告的话语作用下重构对城市空间的想象,产生“归属感”“认同感”和“安全感”等情感,并通过视觉、情感等非表征形式使居民在自我审视中加深群体文化认同,使空间治理内化。研究将情感地理的研究放置在城市这一中观尺度,通过广州市区宣传类户外广告的讨论丰富了情感地理的实证研究,同时对拓展情感地理研究的尺度与视角进行了有益探索。     

The progress of human geography in China under the support of the National Natural Science Foundation of China

This paper analyzes the role of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) in advancing human geography in China by focusing on five key research areas: land use, urban systems and urban agglomeration, economic globalization, climate change and social and cultural geographies. All NSFC-funded human geography programs related to these five topics from 1986 to 2017 comprise the sample for analysis, and the research topics, content, teams, and peer-reviewed journal publications supported by these programs are investigated. Specifically, this paper analyzes the NSFC’s promotion of the expansion of research topics in response to national developmental needs and the shifting frontiers of human geography research internationally, its enhancement of interdisciplinary research, and its contributions to the assembly of specialized research teams. The paper also reports important progress in Chinese human geography over the past 30 years through the institutional lens of the NSFC, revealing major characteristics and trends in the discipline. The paper concludes by calling for further collaboration between the research community and the NSFC for the development of a locally suitable and globally influential Chinese human geography.     

宗教世俗化及其理论在西方地理学的研究进展和方向

现代宗教已经越来越多地与世俗社会产生不同形式的联系,然而各种宗教世俗化现象及相关理论却一直未得到国内外宗教地理学者的重视,甚至对其存在极大误解或片面解读。文章梳理了庞杂的西方宗教世俗化概念和理论,指出现代性和宗教的关系不能简单理解为后者被动迎合前者的破坏或压制,事实上两者可能是相互促进、能动地协商的关系;认为应避免混用中文语境下的世俗化概念与西方世俗化概念,以免产生错误解读。世俗化理论对宗教地理学研究有益,能为分析和解释现代宗教提供一个有力的理论框架。但该理论框架却还未被充分利用来揭示当代世界宗教变迁的多元性和复杂性。因为,现有研究1）存在地方偏见;2）存在文化偏见;3）主要基于定量分析和大尺度统计数据,缺乏深度的定性分析;4）实证基础薄弱,缺乏具体、系统地对特定地理环境（特别是非西方）下宗教变迁原因和过程的探讨。故此认为未来宗教变迁研究的注意力应该更多放在非西方社会及其宗教,利用定性研究方法深度剖析中观和微观尺度上的宗教变迁过程和机制,而这正是地理学者能发挥其优势的地方。     

Reaching critical mass? Theory, politics, and the culture of debate in children's geographies

A small but growing number of voices have begun to raise questions about the current direction of children's geographies as a subfield and its status within the wider discipline. This article intervenes in these emerging discussions to examine the status of debate itself within children's geographies. I argue that children's geographies over the past decade has operated primarily in a consensus-based mode, with a number of potential tensions and differences between practitioners masked as a result. I develop the example of notions of children's competent social agency, a core theoretical assumption that is rarely interrogated in much depth. In closing, I pose questions regarding several contemporary political issues concerning children's agency about which geographers have had surprisingly little to say. I suggest that explicitly addressing some of these vexing issues would contribute to a richer state of debate within children's geographies.     

A Queer Country? A case study of the politics of gay/lesbian belonging in an Australian country town

The present paper examines the complex politics of gay/lesbian belonging through a case study of Daylesford, Victoria, an Australian country town. It contributes to two research bodies: gay/lesbian rural geographies and the politics of belonging. Daylesford hosts ChillOut, Australia's largest rural gay/lesbian festival, which provides a telling context for investigating gay/lesbian belonging in rural Australia. We use qualitative data from the 2006 ChillOut Festival, including interviews with local residents, newspaper commentaries, and visitors’ surveys, to explore how Daylesford has been constructed, imagined, and experienced as a ‘unique’ site of gay/lesbian belonging in rural Australia. We find that ChillOut crucially contributes to its wider reputation as a gay-friendly country town, but also, we argue, to the contested nature of gay/lesbian belonging. This was most powerfully demonstrated by the local council's refusal to fly the gay-identified rainbow flag on the Town Hall during the 2006 Festival and its subsequent banning of the display of all festival flags from that key public building. Because ChillOut was the catalyst for this protocol, the resolution was viewed as homophobic. Indeed, the homophobic and heterosexist rhetoric that ensued in the Letters to the Editor section of the local newspaper revealed some residents’ underlying antagonism towards ChillOut and the local gay/lesbian community. Moreover, appealing to a shared ‘Australian identity’ and associated normative ‘family values’, these letter writers deployed a multi-scalar politics of belonging, where a sense of gay/lesbian belonging to Daylesford at the local scale was contested by the assertion of a ‘more meaningful’ national scale of allegiance fashioned by heteronormativity.     

Healthier Geographies: Mediating the Gaps between the Needs of People Living with HIV and AIDS and Health Care in Chiang Mai,Thailand

In this article, I contribute to our understanding of the plurality of approaches that construct the geographies of health care through an examination of the distribution of health care services for people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) in Chiang Mai Province, Thailand. In particular, I focus on the development of a network of support groups for PLWHA in order to examine the differences in the sociospatial organization of these groups, the practices of social actors participating in the groups' activities, and how these activities are mediated through place-based social relations. The first section of the article analyzes the spatial distribution of PLWHA support groups in relation to the distribution of AIDS cases over two time periods, 1994 and 1997. The second section goes below the surface of the spatial distribution, examining similarities and differences in PLWHA support groups through an analysis of survey data collected on thirty-five groups in 1997. The final section deepens this examination through an analysis of ethnographic data collected on the outreach efforts of one nongovernmental organization (NGO) and one PLWHA support group with which it worked. Each section offers opportunities for the extension of our understanding of the development of PLWHA support groups, their distribution in relation to the spread of AIDS cases, and their place-based meanings.     

“Doing” Critical Geographies with Numbers

Criticisms of quantitative geography have a long history in our discipline. Since the emergence of early Marxist geography, the advent of new theoretical traditions has been accompanied by sustained and sometimes vigorous critiques of spatial analysis. In this introductory article to the second focus section on critical quantitative geographies, we discuss the accuracy of some of the criticisms about the use(s) to which spatial analysis is put and about the philosophical presumptions underpinning quantitative geographies. We argue that spatial analysis and critical geographies should not be considered mutually exclusive of one another—although this does not mean that numbers and critical geographies are entirely comfortable with one another. We suggest that critical geographies cannot dispense with numbers and visualizations based on numerical information. We hope that the articles collected here will inspire geographers to engage with numbers and statistics to challenge inequality and imagine alternative futures.     

Undocumented Students’ Narratives of Liminal Citizenship: High Aspirations,Exclusion, and “In-Between” Identities

This study illustrates how national immigration policy relegates undocumented immigrant children to spaces of liminal citizenship, which shape their aspirations for higher education. Recognizing the power of migrant narratives, and the importance of privileging youths’ voices through children's geographies, we present the narratives of undocumented high school students from several rural North Carolina communities. Despite various barriers facing undocumented students, most have high academic aspirations. Students construct new forms of citizenship, legitimating their claims to higher education access through their achievement. Their liminal status, however, contributes to the formation of conflicted, “in-between” identities.