SQUINTING BACK AT STRABO*

ABSTRACT. Strabo of Amasia (ca. 64 B.c.‐ca. A.D. 23) wrote the first comprehensive geography of the world known to the Greeks and Romans. Interest in Strabo and his Geography, which survives nearly intact in seventeen books, has fluctuated over the centuries among both classicists and historians of geography. After some historical background on Strabo and his reception, this essay considers the contribution of two significant recent English‐language treatments, as well as Strabo's Geography itself, and suggests ways in which the Strabonic model may have renewed relevance to the geographer's task of interpreting the oikoumene in the contemporary world.     

Research relevance, 'knowledge transfer' and the geographies of CASE studentship collaboration

The Co-operative Awards in Science and Engineering (CASE) studentship programme of the UK Research Councils provide one example of wider efforts internationally to encourage so-called 'knowledge transfer' and thereby harness publicly supported university research more closely to the goals of national competitiveness, regional economic development and local regeneration. In this paper we describe the implications of how the various UK research councils have interpreted the objectives and beneficiaries of 'knowledge transfer', both for the relative opportunities available to human and physical geographers for collaboration through CASE and for the sorts of values that their research must serve. Then, we draw on unpublished data from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) to explore the geographies of CASE studentship allocation and participation. The broad regional and institutional patterns of participation we describe have important implications for ongoing debates in the UK about research selectivity and the role of the university as an engine of local development, while the striking disciplinary patterns of CASE participation, and in particular the overwhelming success of geographers in this competitive programme, provide an opportunity to reassess claims about whether and for whom geographical research is relevant.     

Traces of the secondary Geography curriculum

Abstract: Expressions of dissatisfaction about the post‐compulsory Geography curriculum in the early 1970s were unusually concerted, leading to the creation of a National Geography Curriculum Committee. This essay reviews this history and the resulting Syllabus for Schools: Geography Forms 5–7 as a prelude to a discussion of contemporary curriculum development. The essay argues that curriculum development from 1975 and the ‘education reforms’ of the late 1980s failed to produce conditions in which satisfactory outcomes for a Geography curriculum can be assured in 2005, and that a new and concerted period of participation in curriculum discussion is required. Some goals for this process are outlined in the final section of the paper.     

Looking for the critical geographer, or why bodies and geographies matter to the emergence of critical geographies of Latin America

This paper argues that critical geographies of Latin America begin with an analysis of how and why the bodies and geographies of geographers themselves matter. To focus on the geographer as a producer of knowledge is not to advocate the kind of navel gazing so abhorrent to many scholars. Rather, it is an effort to call attention to and critically assess how the geographer's embodied social position and geographic location inform the production of knowledge about and representations of Latin American people and nature. To illustrate how and why bodies and geographies matter, I draw from feminist and post-colonial theory and include examples from my own experiences and those of other researchers doing fieldwork in Latin American countries. I conclude by exploring the notion of situated knowledge as a tactic that writes bodies and geographies into academic texts. Ultimately, situating knowledge represents a political intervention and contribution to the broader goals of emancipatory politics shared by critical human geographers.     

Flowers in the bathtub: boundary crossings at the public-private divide

Legal spaces are said to be a crucial materialization of law, serving to communicate legal meaning and, in so doing, helping to produce a liberal-legal consciousness. Given its centrality to legal ordering and liberal ideology, the spatial manifestation of the public-private divide, especially when related to property, would appear to be particularly important in this regard. Public and private are assumed to be both mutually exclusive and exhaustive. Drawing upon empirical research conducted in a neighbourhood in Vancouver, Canada, I argue that spatial and legal categories such as public and private may be more fluid than one might suppose. While the public/private divide is clearly powerful, and informs much policy and governmental action, it is not necessarily the case that it has the purchase on everyday life that some scholars have suggested. People may live in more complicated and overlapping worlds when it comes to supposedly determinate categories such as property.     

空间分析与自然地理综合研究

通过对空间分析技术和自然地理综合研究发展历程与趋势的分析，得出两个结论：1)现代地理学的快速发展越来越离不开空间分析的支撑，即空间分析技术在地理学中的应用空间愈来愈广，在自然地理综合研究中尤为如此，其主要原因就是空间分析在综合研究中的优势愈来愈明显；2)空间分析技术随其理论与实践的迅速发展及逐步拓展，愈来愈成为自然地理学发展的巨大推动力，也越来越离不开自然地理综合研究这个促使其发展壮大的空间和能发挥其主导作用的领域。空间分析技术和自然地理综合研究的结合已经成为现代自然地理学以及地球空间信息学研究的主要发展趋势之一。     

地理国情各要素之间套合关系检查要点分析

将地理国情普查工作中地表覆盖和地理国情要素两个重要成果之间的套合关系进行梳理,依据各项规定和生产实践经验,对重点问题进行整理和分析,明确了两者相互关系并提供一些有益的建议,为提高地理国情普查成果质量提供帮助。     

Historical paths to current unrest: Extending the temporal lens in analysing geographies of agrarian change and conflict

The proliferation of soybean monoculture and its expansion into previously marginal territories in Argentina have resulted in land conflicts and attacks on peasant communities that possess land without having secured tenure. However, the rapid and intensive modernisation and industrialisation of agriculture production has had differentiated effect on different territories in Argentina. This article posit that understanding these differences requires an extended temporal analysis. While social research tends to focus on the present or recent past, this paper joins calls for greater attention to historical context and processes when examining current social dynamics and geographies. Focusing on the province of Santiago del Estero in Northwest Argentina, this paper provides a particular temporal-thematic approach for conducting such a historical path analysis, which here focuses on the province’s changing agrarian structures and political shifts that resulted in a complex, irregular and subsequently unstable land tenure system.