THE CORPORATE INTERVIEW AS A RESEARCH METHOD IN ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY*

The open-ended corporate interview as a qualitative research method is proposed as a valuable component of an evidentiary strategy in economic geography. It is argued to be more sensitive than other survey methods to historical, institutional, and strategic complexity. The corporate interview method is particularly appropriate in periods of economic and social change that challenge traditional analytical categories and theoretical principles. Some problems inherent to the method, and strategies for minimizing their impact on the research project, are described.     

Internal colonisation, hegemony and coercion: Investigating migration to Southern Lazio, Italy, in the 1930s

This paper investigates the Italian fascist regime’s use of internal colonisation as part of a wider ruralisation policy aimed at promoting population growth, curbing rural-urban migration, staunching emigration, and halting the spread of industrial urbanisation. By focusing on the case study of the Pontine Marshes, the paper demonstrates how, through targeted selection procedures aimed at displacing defined social and political undesirables, migrants were chosen and effectively coerced into migrating to the “fascist” landscape of the marshes. The area, reclaimed and developed in the 1930s, was celebrated as a sign of the regime’s engineering and social success. The paper utilises Antonio Gramsci’s thought on hegemony, and argues that the overt use of coercion hints at the fact that fascism, although ideologically totalitarian and hegemonic, was contested. Although statisticians, demographers and state bureaucrats were organised and institutionalised in the construction of hegemony based on consent, fascism based itself more in coercion than in passive consent in the case of internal colonisation.     

Incorporating Māori values into land management decision tools

ABSTRACT

Environmental sustainability and the long-term wellbeing of Māori (the indigenous people of New Zealand) are interdependent and degradation of landscapes risks the progressive degradation of Māori wellbeing. The present study developed an analysis framework based on Ki Uta Ki Tai (holistic-mountains to the sea- management philosophy advocated by Ngāi Tahu) for exploring relationships between landcover and Māori values to enable predictions of cultural values through space and time. We used this framework to predict how two Māori values (Overall Health and Cultural Land Use) have been altered as a result of landcover change between 2001–2012 in three Canterbury catchments. The area of native vegetation declined while exotic pasture increased between 2001–2012, and there were corresponding declines in both cultural health scores. These results suggest that the change in landcover has reduced the ability of the landscape to support Māori values. This framework for assessing changes in Māori values with respect to changing environmental conditions may identify opportunities for Māori to better engage in land use management decisions.     

GIS新引擎——“真图”数据解决方案

提出了一种基于移动测量系统技术的"真图"数据解决方案。一方面极大地丰富了GIS数据源,另一方面通过相应的真图影像数据管理软件及开发包扩展GIS功能,为各行业应用提供了地理信息数据解决方案。     

清代地理学家魏源及其《海国图志》──纪念魏源诞生200周年

本文阐述我国清代中期思想家、地理学家魏源的思想及共《海国图志》的特点及历史意义。     

《干旱区地理》的引文统计分析

本文使用文献计量学中的引文分析方法,以《干旱区地理》为调查样本进行了统计分析。《干旱地理》１９８５－１９９４年共版４３期,刊登论文５５８篇,其中附有引文的论文４３６篇,引文２７６６条。     

War and the commons: Assessing the changing politics of violence, access and entitlements in Sri Lanka

There are two antagonistic, but equally influential traditions in the study of the nexus between resource use and violent conflict. One works through a Malthusian frame linking resource scarcity with violence, the other school of thought establishes a nexus between resource abundance and the incentives to use violence for rent monopolisation in a political economy of war or markets of violence. The tacit essentialism inherent in both schools of thought has increasingly come under critical scrutiny by geographers and anthropologists. To escape such essentialism requires a more detailed study of the dynamism of the political economy of (civil) war and its spatial dynamics, the political geographies of violence. In this paper, we study endowments and entitlements of people depending on common-pool or open-access resources in war-affected areas of Sri Lanka. Rural spaces in the war-affected areas became both a strategic retreat for fighters and an important common-pool resource on which a large part of the rural populace depended for their survival. Our research illustrates how the political geographies of war affect access regimes and entitlements to common-pool resources and thereby confine the livelihood opportunities of resource users. These dynamics of the political economy of war cross different scales and go beyond simple place-based struggles, for they are rooted in broader spatial dynamics of warfare creating place-space tensions in the sense that spatial dynamics of military control impinge changing access regimes upon specific places.     

Slope instability of San Miniato hill (Florence, Italy): possible deformation patterns

The hill of San Miniato (Florence, Italy) has been repeatedly identified in the past as the site of a slow moving, intermittent landslide. Possible hypotheses regarding the mechanisms responsible for past movements and for cracks and fissures present today are formulated based on the comparison of historical information and processed monitoring data. Although it is not possible to completely exclude a large inactive landslide that involves the entire northern slope, it seems more probable that the slide, if it does exist, is no longer active and that present-day damage is due to separate shallow movements concentrated in man-made deposits. This hypothesis can only be verified with a temporal extension of the monitoring activities, necessary in any case for planning possible safeguarding measures for the cultural heritage in the area.