Should Women Count? A Context for the Debate*

Much recent feminist geographical scholarship emphasizes the utility of qualitative research methods; yet, a significant proportion of feminist research in geography is quantitative. Geographers' engagement with the ideas of feminist theorists has shed new light on the relationship between epistemology, methodology, and objectivity, which in turn has facilitated a reexamination of feminist uses of quantification. In providing a context for the debate over quantitative and qualitative methods, we argue that each has a place in feminist geographical research.     

Place Matters: Comparative International Perspectives on Feminist Geography*

Feminist geography is now widely practiced internationally, but its development is usually reviewed from a temporal rather than a spatial perspective. This article assesses the varying extent and nature of feminist geography across countries, attempting to interpret differences in terms of cultural contexts and disciplinary trends. It is intended to stimulate reflection and does not claim to offer definitive interpretations.     

Mawson and Mirnyy Stations: the spatiality of the Australian Antarctic Territory, 1954–61

This article focuses on the spatiality of the Australian Antarctic Territory in the important 1954–61 period. Attending particularly to three key components of polar spatiality—geopolitics, international territorial law, and the built environment—the article analyses the development of the Territory as a unique Australian space. The 1954–61 period is particularly significant: during this period, the International Geophysical Year brought an unprecedented number of people to Antarctica; the continent's first permanent colonies were constructed; and, despite Cold War tensions, the 1961 Antarctic Treaty established the spatial configurations and rules which continue to govern the continent today. The article focuses particularly on two key stations in the Territory constructed during this period: Australia's Mawson Station and the Soviet Mirnyy Station. Mawson is a legal colony, designed to cement Australia's claim to 42 per cent of the Antarctic continent; Mirnyy, in contrast, is an anti-colony, designed to reject Australia's claim. How the individual spatialities of these two stations articulate to the broader politics of Antarctic territoriality—and particularly Australia's claim to the Australian Antarctic Territory—is the focus of this article.     

ISLAND SOJOURNS

ABSTRACT. Islands have long held a central place in Western cultures' mythical geographies. They have been associated for centuries with heroic journeys and holy quests, imagined realms of magical transformations. Islands have also been sites of significant rites of passage, and they continue to perform this function in the modern secular world. Today, popular islomania is expressed in the frequency of seasonal sojourning on European and American archipelagos. No longer destinations of permanent residence, islands now provide access to a sense of temporal and spatial rootedness that is no longer available on mainlands. They loom large on the mental maps even of those who rarely, if ever, visit them.     

A Spatial Variant of the Basic Reproduction Number for the New Orleans Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1878

A spatial variant of the basic reproduction number (R₀), here defined as the number of subsequent deaths attributed to an initial mortality, can be used to identify geographic variation within an epidemic. A spatial R₀ was calculated at the neighborhood level, here defined by a 50‐m buffer surrounding an index case, for mortality data from the 1878 yellow fever epidemic of New Orleans. The highest number of secondary mortalities linked to a neighborhood index case was twelve, with a further eighty‐seven extrapolated morbidity cases. Results also highlight the importance of multideath residences and cultural contacts in neighborhood‐level disease spread.     

物流地理学研究评述

基于前人的研究,试图从物流地理学的学科属性、研究对象、学科体系、具体研究内容以及研究手段等方面进行探讨。物流地理学是一门综合性的边缘学科,其研究对象为物流活动区位、空间组织及其与地理环境的关系;内部分支包括理论物流地理学、部门物流地理学、区域物流地理学、城市物流地理学及企业物流地理学;具体研究内容应宏观与微观相结合,主要包括物流地理学的理论与研究方法,物流活动的空间组织形式及区域差异,行业物流活动的发生、发展及分布规律,城市（乡村）物流系统规划,企业物流活动的组织与空间分布规律等。     

Awkward geographies: Spatializing academic responsibility, encountering Sri Lanka

This paper responds to recent postcolonial geographical scholarship that sets forth transformative agendas in order to create more cosmopolitan theoretical projects within the discipline. For many geographers the challenges they face are located within not only their own disciplinary parameters, but also those of other specific research communities within which their work situates them. By bringing geography and area studies into productive conversation, this paper explores the tensions between negotiating one's academic voice, position and responsibility within geography as well as within a specific area studies community. More specifically, as a UK-based geographer I reflect on some of my own fairly unremarkable, yet extremely awkward, encounters during the course of scholarly praxis in Sri Lanka in order to raise questions over the spatialities of responsibility and political engagement in such academic praxis. I seek to theorize the chasms that open in such awkward encounters between notionally situated 'local' and 'foreign' scholars respectively and, in particular, develop ways of engaging and reorienting those chasms in ways that might enable the production of theoretically rich, yet richly contextualized postcolonial knowledges committed to the site of one's scholarly praxis – not just to the advancement of a more cosmopolitan theoretical project within geography.     

Collaborating in the field, working for change: Reflecting on partnerships between academics, development organizations and rural communities in Africa

Academics and development organizations approach fieldwork with somewhat different motivations, constraints and challenges. In many instances, fieldwork might be improved if greater collaboration occurred between these two parties. Rural communities are also important yet frequently taken for granted partners in the research process that deserve greater respect. This paper explores and describes the real and imagined impediments to greater collaboration between academics, development organizations and rural communities. The findings are based on 18 years of working with rural communities in Africa, both as a development practitioner and academic researcher. This reflection makes three contributions to the broader literature on fieldwork. First, it explicitly links two ongoing discussions, one on relationships with institutional partners, the other on interactions with rural communities. Second, it articulates the concerns of development organizations in their partnerships with academic researchers, a perspective rarely heard in a literature dominated by academic voices. Third, while feminist scholarship on fieldwork methods often wrestles with issues of positionality and engagement at the scale of the individual researcher, this reflection is aimed at the broader scale of the professional (academic and practitioner) communities involved in development praxis and scholarship.