Troubling Positionality: Politics of “Studying Up” in Transnational Contexts

Drawing on research conducted in India's software industry in Bangalore, this article explores the multiple positionalities of differently situated people in the project—state officials, software firm managers and owners, software professionals, and researcher as critic. Challenging conventional notions of positionality centered on individual scholars' negotiations of their own identities, I trace the institutional, geopolitical, and social relations within which all participants are embedded. I argue that moments of tension and uncertainty are not just symbolic of multiple positionalities of both researcher and researched but also indicate the fraught nature of information technology–led development in neoliberal India. This article thus provides a particular opportunity to trouble notions of power, positionality, reflexivity, and feminist commitment to untangling the politics of knowledge production while “studying up” in transnational contexts.     

Cities within cities: intra-urban comparison of infrastructure in Mumbai,Delhi and Cape Town

Comparison is now taken as vital to the constitution of knowledge about cities and urbanism. However, debate on comparative urbanism has been far more attentive to the merits of comparisons between cities than it has been to the potential and challenges of comparisons within cities—to what we call “Intra-Urban Comparison” (IUC). We argue that a focus on the diverse forms of urbanism located within cities may generate critical knowledge for both intra- and inter-urban comparative projects. IUCs highlight the diversity inherent in the category “city,” revealing dimensions of the urban that are central to how cities work and are experienced. We mobilise fieldwork within three cities: Mumbai, Delhi and Cape Town, and consider both how these cities have been historically understood as different urban worlds within a city, and discuss key findings from IUCs we have conducted on infrastructures. We find that IUCs can enhance comparative work both within and between cities: reconceptualising urban politics; attending to the varied and contradictory trajectories of urban life; and bringing visibility to the diverse routes through which progressive change can occur.     

A Research Synthesis and Theoretical Model of Relationships Between Factors Influencing Outdoor Domestic Water Consumption

Outdoor domestic water use is often targeted by demand management strategies. However, despite a rich empirical evidence base coming from primary studies, it is still unclear how factors that influence this type of demand interact and which are the most suitable to be addressed by water conservation programs. Based on 423 scientific contributions, we develop a research synthesis combining a variety of techniques to create a theoretical model of the relationships among factors most consistently observed in the literature. The findings uncover a great degree of complexity in terms of interactions between spatial-structural, social-structural, and cultural and psychological factors at different scales. For researchers, the methodology and the outcomes can be useful to better frame existing and future research within the literature on the topic. In practice, the adaptation of the theoretical model to local specificities can facilitate the design of more efficient and integrated demand management strategies.     

Formal representation of qualitative direction

This paper reviews formal approaches to representing spatial knowledge about qualitative direction. Unlike geometric direction information, qualitative information does not employ numerical values but relies on comparison. The qualitative approach is often regarded as suitable for capturing commonsense concepts and thus is relevant to human-centered interfaces for spatial information systems. To establish a context for the work on qualitative direction, we preset a brief history of the development of qualitative temporal and spatial representations from different scientific perspectives. We identify main focal areas of these representations of spatial direction and propose a taxonomy. In the light of more than three decades of fruitful research, we obtain a map of formal representations that reveal interrelationships between different research strands in the field.     

Book Reviews

Books reviewed in this issue: Donahue, John M. and Johnston, Barbara Rose (eds.), Water, Culture, and Power: Local Struggles in a Global Context Kim, Joochul and Choe, Sang-Chuel, Seoul: The Making of a Metropolis Merrett, Stephen, Introduction to the Economics of Water Resources: An International Perspective Perry, Richard J., From Time Immemorial: Indigenous Peoples and State Systems Wilson, Edward O., Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge     

公众天气预报传播过程的数学模型

仿照流行病传播模型的思路,给出了公众天气预报传播过程最简单的数学模型     

斜坡稳定：方法论

据斜坡及滑这科领域国内外研究现状及工程实践,总结归纳了斜坡稳定研究了应遵循的若干原则,其中包括了工程地质建模,动态系统,稳定性评价的相对性和绝对性,以及模型的精确性与可行性等问题。     

CTD资料质量控制浅析

物理海洋学调查自上世纪70年代开始以来,至今已有100余年的历史.调查方法和观测仪器也已有了根本性的变化.就海水温盐度测量而言,由当时的颠倒温度表、南森采水器和BT(深度温度仪)等机械式观测仪器发展到XBT(抛弃式温深计)、AXBT(机载抛弃式深度温度计)和CTD(温盐深仪)等电子仪器设备.     

三维体目标间拓扑关系与方向关系的混合推理

重点研究了三维空间中拓扑关系和方向关系间的混合空间关系推理。用Allen区间关系对描述基于投影的空间划分方法得到的方向区域和用九交矩阵描述的拓扑关系,用定义法研究混合空间关系推理,推理结果用组合推理表表示。     

地理信息科学方法论的理论体系研究

地理信息科学是地理学的一个分支,其方法论研究受到科学哲学和地理学方法论的指导,同时也从大量的该学科研究成果、工程项目和软硬件产品中提炼的案例中总结和归纳而来。本文在本学科的时代需求和国家前瞻布局的背景下开展研究。首先阐述了地理信息科学方法论的哲学观和实用观,提出了研究中应该处理好的六个关系;其次,建立了方法论的结构体系,由地理信息本体论、六个科学方法和七个技术方法组成;再次,分析和论证了地理信息的本体特征及其与方法论的关系,最后讨论了地理信息科学方法论的创新机制和策略。