Withered Geography

This commentary is a response to an article by Jay R. Harman in the November 2003 issue of The Professional Geographer. I argue that Harman's claim that scholarly disciplines offer social “returns” in a competitive “market” obscures the fundamentally political nature of how social resources are allocated and how social needs are defined. Harman would have us subordinate scholarly research to agendas set elsewhere, by politicians and other powerful interests, but I argue that such a vision would turn geographers into mere technicians. A healthier role for the discipline is for geographers to seek ways of asserting intellectual leadership and of shaping social agendas along more humane and socially just lines.     

简评关于新产业区的国际学术讨论

２０世纪７０年代末和８０年代初，当发达国家的绝大部分地区陷入衰退与停滞时，少数几个地区的经济却呈复苏甚至增长的势头，这些地区在经济运作模式上的相似性，引起了研究者的兴趣。由于它们和历史上马歇尔所描述过的产业区有惊人的相似之处，学者们将他们归为一类，称之为新产业区。本文对正在向纵深发展的关于新产业区的国际学术讨论作了简要的评述，并探讨了新产业区理论在我国的研究背景与进展。     

Academic publishing as 'creative' industry, and recent discourses of 'creative economies': some critical reflections

This paper continues recent discussions on the (geo)politics of the production of academic knowledges, in relation to the recent rise of narratives of 'the creative economy'. Creativity and the 'creative industries' are increasingly common components of urban economic development discourse, especially following the release of a set of key books – most notably Charles Landry's The Creative City (2000), and Richard Florida's The Rise of the Creative Class (2002) – that have become popular among economic development planners and cultural policy makers. This paper focuses on the traffic of these books, and their authors, beyond the Anglo-American core. It also briefly discusses policy discourses interpreted from these texts. It is principally, though, a critique of the ways in which academic knowledges circulate, stemming from theorization of academics as creative producers, and of knowledge production as part of the creative economy. The article seeks to critique the means by which particular northern economic knowledges become normative, framed as universal and 'global', and are distributed and absorbed via intellectual 'scenes' and an academic 'celebrity' circuit.     

Why Edit a Journal? Academic Irony and Paradox

Although journal editing is central to scholarly enterprise, helping to maintain academic standards and shape disciplines, it is frequently discouraged within the academic assemblages that depend on it. Following recent contributions by geographers to discussions on academic service such as book editing and reviewing, this article explores some ironies and paradoxes of journal editing. It first discusses the challenges of journal editing as well as its problematic place in “academic capitalism.” It then examines professional and personal rewards of journal editing. Despite strong disincentives, journal editing offers valuable opportunities for self-development and deepening professional networks, as well as for refining the discipline.     

褚亚平先生的学术思想与主要贡献

褚亚平先生是中国著名的地理教育学家和地名学家.他长期从事地理教育研究与实践,完善了中学地理教学法学科体系,创造性的提出地理教材"三系统"理论,提出以学生为本,促进学生全面发展与深入教学研究,培养高质量师资队伍并行的地理教育理论,他对地理教育的研究成果推动了中国地理教育学的发展.他重视地名研究与管理人才培养,撰写专著力图构建地名学的基础理论,并对新时期地名管理,地名规划,地名商品化等问题提出自己的看法.     

Engaging in the boycott,divestment, and sanctions (bds) debate

The goal of this forum is to garner attention to the issues surrounding the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel, to help a broad audience better understand the complexity of BDS, and to engage geographers in the BDS debate. Including the editorial introduction, seven different experts on the issues of Palestine/ Israel have written six essays on BDS for this forum. The six essays represent a wide range of opinions while also echoing some similar themes.     

从第34届国际水文地质大会看水文地质学发展趋势(代序)

第34届国际水文地质大会于2006年10月9-13日在北京召开,来自56个国家和地区的567名代表参加了会议.这次会议的大会学术报告和九个分专题会场交流集中反映出当前国际水文地质学科发展的若干热点领域和重要发展方向,与会各国专家对地下水水质安全与污染修复、地下水补给机制和生态功能、地下水勘察评价的技术发展等领域给与了更多关注,反映这些领域是当前地下水研究的热点,说明水文地质学科的发展明显转向解决社会广泛关注的现实的应用性问题,包括维持生态系统、维护水质安全、防止地质灾害等方面,特别是这些问题与城市发展、农村脱贫、矿业基地、重大工程建设的结合.同位素、数值模拟和其他地下水勘察、评价、开发技术的快速发展,为更好地认识、利用和管理含水层系统,服务于上述应用性目标提供了保障.IAH将今后工作的重点放在亚洲地区,对跨边界含水层管理等问题十分关注.媒体的集中报道反映出水文地质工作与社会的结合已经相当紧密.     

基于我国农村经济改革与农民收入变化的新农村建设实质分析

本文通过探讨我国1949 年以来三次重要农村经济改革及其对我国农民收入变化的影 响, 明晰我国农村经济改革与农民收入三起三落的相互关系以及农村经济发展过程中存在的相 关问题: (1)每次改革都发生在农村经济发展停滞不前, 甚至影响到全国经济发展之时; (2)每次农 村经济改革都带来了农村经济的快速发展, 但持续时间不长, 且随之而来的是农民负担过重, 农 村经济陷入困境; (3)农民收入增长的幅度略有下降。本文认为新农村建设是我国1949 年以来三 次农村经济改革的延续, 基于已有三次改革以及新农村建设提出背景的分析, 指出: (1)农村经济 发展现状再一次提出了对农村经济改革的需求; (2)土地改革、家庭联产承包责任制属开源之策; 税费改革属节流之需; 新农村建设应该是在市场经济背景下, 从根本上实现广开财源之举。基于 以上分析并借鉴国外农村建设的经验, 阐释新农村建设的实质, 从而就我国新农村建设提出相关 建议。     

基于博士生培养视角看中国人文地理学的未来——以中山大学为例

以中山大学人文地理学博士点为例，通过对博士生培养过程中存在的学术贡献有限、研究空洞、缺乏一手数据、重复型明显等相关问题的分析，从学术贡献的角度探讨了中国人文地理学的未来发展。     

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.