Showing papers in "Annals of The Association of American Geographers in 2008"
TL;DR: The Environmental Vulnerability Index (EVI) as mentioned in this paper was developed by the South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission (SOPAC) to measure vulnerability to environmental change, and has been widely used in the literature.
Abstract: Since the early 1990s a number of projects have developed indexes to measure vulnerability to environmental change. This article investigates the key conceptual and methodological problems associated with such indexes. It examines in detail an index that explicitly addresses environmental change as an issue of vulnerability, the Environmental Vulnerability Index (EVI) developed by the South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission (SOPAC). This examination offers some broader lessons for indicator-based projects, all of which require a simple model of complex and uncertain social-ecological systems, and entail difficult choices about the selection, standardization, weighting, and aggregation of indicators selected to represent important aspects of those systems. We conclude that indexes of vulnerability to environmental change cannot hope to be meaningful when applied to large-scale systems, and so should focus on smaller scales of analysis. We argue that they should not be used as the basis for disbursing f...
324 citations
TL;DR: Geography has much to offer a world in which environmental change is widespread and where new actors, scales, and metrics are transforming environmental decisions as discussed by the authors, with a disciplinary core that emb...
Abstract: Geography has much to offer a world in which environmental change is widespread and where new actors, scales, and metrics are transforming environmental decisions. With a disciplinary core that emb...
276 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, historical land use maps were built using an ecosystem map of 1998 and a preclearing ecosystem map, by constraining the spatial change of transformed areas using data on accessibility to rivers and roads, elevation, slope, moisture availability and settlement areas.
Abstract: The extent and the spatial patterns of landscape transformation we observe today are the result of the historic human settlement process, often dating back hundreds or thousands of years. Analyzing and reconstructing those historical patterns helps to advance the understanding of the dynamics and persistence of present-day ecosystems. This article explores this reconstruction by identifying and analyzing historic drivers of landscape change for seven periods between 1500 and 2000, and presents historical land use maps showing major trends and impacts on natural ecosystems. Historic land use maps were built using an ecosystem map of 1998 and a “preclearing” ecosystem map, by constraining the spatial change of transformed areas using data on accessibility to rivers and roads, elevation, slope, moisture availability, and settlement areas. We estimate the transformed area rose from approximately 15 Mha in 1500 to 42 Mha in 2000, and land use changed from cropping in 1500 to predominantly grazing in 2000. Demo...
265 citations
TL;DR: The authors argue that globalization renders some workers so vulnerable that their disposability is scripted, told, and retold in the form of a myth, and every laborer in a market economy is disposable.
Abstract: Every laborer in a market economy is disposable. This book argues that globalization renders some workers so vulnerable that their disposability is scripted, told, and retold in the form of a myth ...
264 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present an alternative conceptual framework engaging with resource-related spaces of vulnerability, risk, and risk, focusing on conflict diamonds and drawing on recent international relations works and geographical research on the political ecology of violence, commodity chains, and consumption.
Abstract: In the late 1990s, natural resources such as oil, diamonds, and timber came under increased scrutiny by conflict analysts and media outlets for their purported role in many contemporary wars. This article discusses some of the limitations of conventional arguments linking wars and resources. Dominated by econometric approaches and rational choice theory interpretations, arguments pertaining to “resource wars” often oversimplify or overlook the geographical dimensions of resource-related conflicts. By defining spatiality primarily in terms of the location of resource reserves and flows generating revenues for belligerents, these approaches overlook other geographical aspects of resources crucial to conflicts. Focusing on “conflict diamonds” and drawing on recent international relations works and geographical research on the political ecology of violence, commodity chains, and consumption, the article presents an alternative conceptual framework engaging with resource-related spaces of vulnerability, risk, ...
239 citations
TL;DR: The concept of carrying capacity has been widely used in a wide range of disciplines and debates, and it has been forcefully critiqued within numerous fields as discussed by the authors. Yet its historical origins remain obscure.
Abstract: The concept of carrying capacity is employed in a remarkably wide range of disciplines and debates, and it has been forcefully critiqued within numerous fields. Yet its historical origins remain obscure. I identify four major types of uses of carrying capacity: (1) as a mechanical or engineered attribute of manufactured objects or systems, beginning around 1840 in the context of international shipping; (2) as an attribute of living organisms and natural systems, beginning in the 1870s and most fully developed in range and game management early in the twentieth century; (3) as K, the intrinsic limit of population increase in organisms, used by population biologists since the mid-twentieth century; and (4) as the number of humans the earth can support, employed by neo-Malthusians, also since midcentury. All four uses persist to the present, although the first has been largely supplanted by other terms such as payload. In all cases, carrying capacity has been conceived as ideal, static, and numerical—charact...
210 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explore how individual buildings and their architects preconfigure, limit, and engender particular affects to accomplish very particular goals, such as teaching, playing, and relaxing.
Abstract: Architectural design operates beyond symbolic and representational interpretation. Drawing on recent “nonrepresentational” geographies, we demonstrate how architectural space can be rethought through the concept of affect. We explore how individual buildings and their architects preconfigure, limit, and engender particular affects to accomplish very particular goals. Our analysis is based on two buildings in the United Kingdom: an ecological school and an airport. We demonstrate how affects both enable and constrain practices such as teaching, playing, and relaxing that render different buildings as uniquely meaningful places. The affects designated to and by these buildings are indispensable to the specification of particular styles of inhabitation, in ways not previously considered by architectural geographers.
208 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors discuss the contemporary constitution of neoliberal subjects via the devolution of select immigration powers to state and local governments by the federal government of the United States, through an exploration of relevant legislation and court cases.
Abstract: Through an exploration of relevant legislation and court cases, this article discusses the contemporary constitution of neoliberal subjects via the devolution of select immigration powers to state and local governments by the federal government of the United States. Since the latter decades of the nineteenth century, the federal government has had plenary power over immigration, which has enabled it to treat “people as immigrants” (or as “nonpersons” falling outside of many Constitutional protections), simultaneously requiring that states and cities treat “immigrants as people” (or as persons protected by the Constitution). Beginning in the mid-1990s, however, the devolution of welfare policy and immigration policing powers has challenged the scalar constitution of personhood, as state and local governments have newfound powers to discriminate on the basis of alienage, or noncitizen status. In devolving responsibility for certain immigration-related policies to state and local governments, the federal gov...
201 citations
TL;DR: Geography as a discipline has evolved into a field of enormous breadth in the last century as mentioned in this paper, while distinctive theoretical perspectives have emerged in different periods, the ebbs and flows of new a...
Abstract: Geography as a discipline has evolved into a field of enormous breadth in the last century. While distinctive theoretical perspectives have emerged in different periods, the ebbs and flows of new a...
182 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors review the recent resurgence of scientific interest in tropical folk pharmacopoeias, focusing on the subsistence transition from hunting and gathering to small-scale cultivation, and propose that disturbance pharmacopeias are the logical outcome of changing subsistence strategies, ecological processes, and disease pat...
Abstract: The much-publicized quest for miracle drug plants in tropical rainforests has provided compelling support for the preservationist agenda. This article questions the assumptions that underpin this claim, particularly the myth that pristine forest represents the primary repository of nature's medicinal providence. After tracing colonial European efforts at medicinal plant discovery, intellectual property exploitation, and plant transference and acclimation, I review the recent resurgence of scientific interest in tropical folk pharmacopoeias. In spite of the image marketed by environmental entrepreneurs, the medicinal foraging preference of rural tropical groups is largely successional mosaics of their own creation—trails, kitchen gardens, swiddens, and forest fallows. Focusing on the subsistence transition from hunting and gathering to small-scale cultivation, I propose that disturbance pharmacopoeias are the logical outcome of changing subsistence strategies, ecological processes, and disease pat...
181 citations
TL;DR: In recent years, water governance has emerged as a conflictive political issue in Bolivia, leading to major protests and the rise of influential social movements as discussed by the authors, which has been an important if underexamined contributor to processes by which water governance is being reinstitutionalized in Bolivia.
Abstract: In recent years, water governance has emerged as a conflictive political issue in Bolivia, leading to major protests and the rise of influential social movements. Although conflicts over urban water services have received more attention, rural water issues have been an important if underexamined contributor to processes by which water governance is being reinstitutionalized in Bolivia. Rural water conflicts have given rise to a well-organized and influential peasant irrigators' movement, rooted in the department of Cochabamba but with national membership. The irrigators' movement has successfully promoted a vision of water governance based on traditional customary practices of water management, or usos y costumbres. In addition to being material practices associated with agricultural production, usos y costumbres are symbolic of livelihood strategies specific to Quechua- and Aymara-speaking peoples in the Bolivian Andes. This article examines the material and symbolic importance of these usos y costumbres...
TL;DR: This paper argued that neoliberal governance in the United States and beyond has become a powerful and haunting presence and controversy about it abound: As many people and places feel the crunch of its punitive re...
Abstract: Today, neoliberal governance in the United States and beyond has become a powerful and haunting presence. Controversies about it abound: As many people and places feel the crunch of its punitive re...
TL;DR: AOC implementation, now with almost seven decades of experience in France, serves as the model to understand how the application of terroir to place has focused on land-use practice, wine definition, vinicultural tradition, and landscape preservation.
Abstract: Many French wines, and now other kinds of agricultural products, manifest the process of “patrimonialization” as a counterforce to the homogenizing trends in the globalization of world food systems. The appellation controlee (AOC) concept, which dates from 1935, is the oldest expression of that patrimonial process. In it, the characteristics of a place—the terroir—are used to gloss its legally protected, territorial definition on which hinge claims to a place-based product authenticity and, by extension, quality. AOC implementation, now with almost seven decades of experience in France, serves as the model to understand how the application of terroir to place has focused on land-use practice, wine definition, vinicultural tradition, and landscape preservation. A complementary process at work is product salience that establishes its individuality in an interactive expectation between producer and consumer. Fieldwork in the commune of Cassis (Department of Bouches-du-Rhone) in the South of France s...
TL;DR: In this paper, a map of sites of historical significance in Seattle, Washington, with the Northwest Lesbian and Gay History Museum Project (NLGHSM Project) is presented, along with a discussion of how GIS technologies, in tension with one another, made the map successful, albeit imperfect, via colliding epistemologies, attempts to represent the unrepresentable, productive pragmatics, the contingencies of facts and truths, and power relations.
Abstract: Drawing on and speaking to literatures in geographic information systems (GIS), queer geography, and queer urban history, we chronicle ethnographically our experience as queer geographers using GIS in an action-research project. We made a map of sites of historical significance in Seattle, Washington, with the Northwest Lesbian and Gay History Museum Project. We detail how queer theory/activism and GIS technologies, in tension with one another, made the map successful, albeit imperfect, via five themes: colliding epistemologies, attempts to represent the unrepresentable, productive pragmatics, the contingencies of facts and truths, and power relations. This article thus answers recent calls in the discipline for joining GIS with social-theoretical geographies, as well as bringing a spatial epistemology to queer urban history, and a cartographic one to queer geography.
TL;DR: The map has evolved over the past few centuries as humanity's primary method for storing and communicating knowledge of the Earth's surface as discussed by the authors, and the map has been used to represent the general form of the surface.
Abstract: The map has evolved over the past few centuries as humanity's primary method for storing and communicating knowledge of the Earth's surface. Topographic maps portray the general form of the surface...
TL;DR: In Worlds of Food as mentioned in this paper, the authors present a collection of recent contributions to our knowledge of the rapidly changing and contested food systems that are being discussed in the media and the academic literature.
Abstract: In Worlds of Food, Kevin Morgan, Terry Marsden, and Jonathan Murdoch present a compelling compilation of recent contributions to our knowledge of the rapidly changing and contested food systems tha...
TL;DR: In this article, the authors investigated the role of density in innovation and found a positive relationship between the density of creative workers and metropolitan patenting activity, suggesting that density is a key component of innovation.
Abstract: Geographers and social scientists have probed the effects of agglomeration and spatial clustering on innovation and economic growth. Economists and others have identified the role of knowledge spillovers in driving the innovation process. Although innovation is thus assumed to be a function of proximity, there has been little systematic research on the role of density in innovation. This research investigates density, and more specifically the density of creative workers, as a key factor influencing regional innovation. It uses principal components analysis to create and implement a composite measure of density and presents a model of innovation as a function of creative density. Statistical analyses including multivariate regression find that density and creativity separately and jointly affect innovation in metropolitan areas. The regression analysis finds a positive relationship between the density of creative workers and metropolitan patenting activity, suggesting that density is a key component of kn...
TL;DR: The hydrologic cycle is treated in this article as an invention that represents and helps structure a particular understanding of water, and it has been discussed for millennia, and quantitative proof of the basic water balance (between evaporation, precipitation, and streamflow) was established by the nineteenth century.
Abstract: The hydrologic cycle is treated in this article as an invention that represents and helps structure a particular understanding of water. Ideas about the circulation of water in what is now called the hydrosphere have been discussed for millennia, and quantitative proof of the basic water balance (between evaporation, precipitation, and streamflow) was established by the nineteenth century. However, “the hydrologic cycle” as a distinct entity and the diagrammatic form by which it is typically represented are much more recent products of hydrological discourse. This article describes the gestation of this entity in the English-speaking hydrological tradition and explains how and why it attained a specific form in the United States in the 1930s. This modern hydrologic cycle, it is argued, internalizes the historical and geographical circumstances in which it was formed; namely a northern temperate society in the throes of modern, state-led industrial development. These circumstances, however, no longer perta...
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors identified two diverging structures, identified on the basis of a unique district-structured database: an emerging archipelago of commercial farming, and the so-called black holes, the likely loci of soon-to-be-abandoned land.
Abstract: The continuous zone of settlement long considered a defining feature of Europe, is undergoing spatial framentation along its eastern periphery. Massive areas of rural depopulation have emerged in many regions of European Russia, including its heartland. As a result of farmland abandonment, no fewer than 20 million hectares of arable land are already deserted in European Russia, and more will be left behind in the foreseeable future. The ongoing spatial fragmentation results in two diverging structures, identified on the basis of a unique district-structured database: an emerging archipelago of commercial farming, and the so-called black holes, the likely loci of soon-to-be-abandoned land. While land abandonment is by no means a uniquely Russian phenomenon, one of its preconditions in Russia is that farmland was extended beyond environmentally reasonable limits. The rural depopulation naturally leads to the contraction of farmland. Because land that is likely to be retained under cultivation is a ...
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examined the dramatic effects of the transition in general and the land reform in particular on Albania's rural landscapes using satellite image interpretation and geographic information systems to develop statistical models of two key landcover changes of interest: the abandonment of cropland and forest-cover loss.
Abstract: Postsocialist transitions in eastern Europe have focused on the establishment of private property rights, often to the exclusion of other aspects of rural land-use systems. After the demise of socialism in 1991, Albania privatized virtually all agricultural land by redistributing formerly collective land on an equal per capita basis. This article examines the dramatic effects of the transition in general and the land reform in particular on Albania's rural landscapes. A village-level survey was conducted to analyze household resources and constraints. The survey was integrated with data derived from satellite image interpretation and geographic information systems to develop statistical models of two key land-cover changes of interest: the abandonment of cropland and forest-cover loss. Statistical corrections were implemented to control for cross-scale interactions and geocomputation was employed to assess the goodness of fit of the models and the robustness of the results. Findings indicate that most cro...
TL;DR: In their evaluation of properties for historical significance, state and federal historic preservation officers operationalize place in ways that echo geographers' conceptualization of place as meaningful, material, and practiced.
Abstract: In their evaluation of properties for historical significance, state and federal historic preservation officers operationalize place in ways that echo geographers' conceptualization of place as meaningful, material, and practiced. An analysis of designation criteria and accreditation guidelines are used alongside interviews and correspondence with advocates to trace the fortunes of the U.S. Immigration Station at Angel Island, San Francisco, and Maxwell Street Market, Chicago, as they are nominated to the National Register of Historic Places and proceed through the rigors of assessment. Although arguments for the essentially lived nature of place are made by advocates, it is the material structure of place that is often the key factor in determining whether or not a property is listed on the Register and protected from development or demolition. To fulfill the requirements of integrity that accompany evaluations of significance, awkward resolutions between the experiential fluidity and material obduracy o...
TL;DR: This article found that educated Muslims and Dalit young men have reacted to their exclusion from secure white-collar occupations by embracing education as a form of embodied cultural distinction rather than seeking out "traditional,” “indigenous, or “village-based” identities.
Abstract: Drawing on fourteen months' ethnographic field research in western Uttar Pradesh among educated Dalit (ex-untouchable) and Muslim young men, this article uncovers a crisis in educated people's access to salaried employment in rural north India. Against the grain of other studies of youth underemployment in postcolonial settings, we argue that educated Muslim and Dalit young men have reacted to their exclusion from secure white-collar occupations by embracing education as a form of embodied cultural distinction rather than seeking out “traditional,”“indigenous,” or “village-based” identities. Young men elaborate on education's value with reference to a system of differences between moral, civilized, developed “educated” people and immoral, savage, underdeveloped “illiterates.” Education has become a type of discursive “scaffold” upon which people display their ideas about morality, development, and respect. These narratives are compromised and contested and highlight differences in the ability of ...
TL;DR: In this article, an examination of young people's lichen collection in the Indian Himalayas shows how youth in the global South can imbue their work with meaning, manage their work practices, and sometimes transgress established norms in specific work settings.
Abstract: An examination of young people's lichen collection in the Indian Himalayas shows how youth in the global South can imbue their work with meaning, manage their work practices, and sometimes transgress established norms in specific work settings. Building on fifteen months' intensive field research in the high Himalayas, this article describes how young men and women have used the opportunity provided by lichen collection to contest or reaffirm gendered subjectivities and acquire a sense of dignity, even in the face of extraordinary hardship. As a counterpoint to Western accounts of children's geographies, this research illustrates how gender and caste inequalities shape children's lives, highlighting the role of local space in mediating children's agency, and stressing the importance of examining young people's subjectivities. The nature of development in a location marginalized by global and regional circuits of capital is deeply contradictory.
TL;DR: In this paper, a modified scale-space clustering method (MSSC) is proposed to account for both attribute homogeneity and spatial contiguity, and implemented in a GIS program for wide distribution.
Abstract: Scale-space clustering methods have a variety of applications in image processing, spatial imagery data mining, classification of land uses, identification of seismic belts, pattern recognition, and more. The full potential of these methods, particularly in a socioeconomic context, has not been realized due to its cumbersome mathematical formulations and lack of implementation in a ready-to-use module for wide distribution. The objectives of this article are threefold: to develop a modified scale-space clustering method (MSSC) that accounts for both attribute homogeneity and spatial contiguity, to implement the method in a geographic information system (GIS) program for wide distribution, and to demonstrate its values in a case study. This is coherent with the intent of developing frame-independent and scale-invariant methods, and has important implications in several spatial analysis issues. For instance, it can be used (1) to construct geographic areas with sufficiently large base population to mitigate...
TL;DR: The authors found that teaching is the primary source of anxiety among new professors, many of whom begin their first academic positions with little or no preparation in learning theory, course design, or pedagogy.
Abstract: Professional experiences during graduate school through the first few years of an academic appointment shape patterns of work and social behavior that prefigure the long-term success of new faculty members, including prospects for tenure and promotion. We explore these experiences through interviews and surveys with a sample of early-career faculty in postsecondary American geography. Our analysis reveals that teaching is the primary source of anxiety among new professors, many of whom begin their first academic positions with little or no preparation in learning theory, course design, or pedagogy. Many new faculty members struggle to maintain healthy personal and family lives, while adjusting to unfamiliar norms of their new institutions. New professors benefit from support offered by their department chairpersons and from working in collegial environments. Among women, we found a greater sense of self-doubt about their scholarly abilities and futures despite having records comparable in accompl...
TL;DR: A formal, conceptual framework is developed to unify the design and implementation of EAs for many geographical optimization problems by developing a graph representation that defines the spatial structure of a broad range of geographical problems.
Abstract: During the last two decades, evolutionary algorithms (EAs) have been applied to a wide range of optimization and decision-making problems. Work on EAs for geographical analysis, however, has been conducted in a problem-specific manner, which prevents an EA designed for one type of problem from being used on others. In this article, a formal, conceptual framework is developed to unify the design and implementation of EAs for many geographical optimization problems. The key element in this framework is a graph representation that defines the spatial structure of a broad range of geographical problems. Based on this representation, four types of geographical optimization problems are discussed and a set of algorithms is developed for problems in each type. These algorithms can be used to support the design and implementation of EAs for geographical optimization. Knowledge specific to geographical optimization problems can also be incorporated into the framework. An example of solving political redistricting ...
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that an understanding of the role that the production of space plays in conservation conflicts can help to inform the ongoing development of new spatial strategies for conservation in inhabited landscapes.
Abstract: This article argues for the reconceptualization of park–people conflict, not as a process whereby state space erases or destroys local space, but as a moment of spatial reorganization resulting from the continual process of state and local spatial production. Such an approach allows for an examination both of the social and ecological outcomes of ongoing spatial reorganization associated with protected area establishment, and of moments of spatial complementarity and convergence, as well as conflict, between state and local spatialities. The utility of such an approach is demonstrated through an examination of two communities in Mae Tho National Park in northern Thailand. The article argues that an understanding of the role that the production of space plays in conservation conflicts can help to inform the ongoing development of new spatial strategies for conservation in inhabited landscapes.
TL;DR: Karl Zimmerer and the twelve other contributors to this edited collection have taken a critical step in a larger collective journey toward a new international conservation geography as discussed by the authors, and the case studi...
Abstract: Karl Zimmerer and the twelve other contributors to this edited collection have taken a critical step in a larger collective journey toward a new international conservation geography. The case studi...
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors used geographic information systems to analyze spatial autocorrelation and hot spots of industries in the ten most populous metropolitan statistical areas across several service sectors (professional, management, media, finance, art and culture, engineering and high technology).
Abstract: Much emphasis has been placed on the importance of agglomeration economies as a backbone to urban and regional growth. Case study research points out that particular cities and regions have a competitive advantage in industrial activity over others, yet we have little by way of a satisfactory means of formally studying the geography of these industrial patterns to demonstrate how the specific case studies fit into a larger pattern of agglomeration that can be applied to more than one place. Is the agglomeration itself in fact exhibiting statistically robust and significant patterns? What do the patterns look like and how do they differ by region? Using geographic information systems to analyze spatial autocorrelation and “hot spots” of industries, we compare the ten most populous metropolitan statistical areas across several “advanced” service sectors (professional, management, media, finance, art and culture, engineering and high technology). We find that much of the qualitative evidence on industrial cl...
TL;DR: Preliminary evidence is offered, based on work with local third-grade and sixth-grade students, that a hierarchy of concepts can be developed based on complexity, and there are results from pilot experiments to illustrate the feasibility of the hypothetical framework.
Abstract: In this article we investigate whether a geospatial task-based framework can be conceptualized and developed to assist in structuring (in a grade-related context) a conceptual framework that could help build a vocabulary and scope and sequence structure for the geospatial thinking that makes the world and its activities legible to us. Our argument is presented in conceptual terms, but we offer preliminary evidence, based on work with local third-grade and sixth-grade students, that a hierarchy of concepts can be developed based on complexity, and we give results from pilot experiments to illustrate the feasibility of the hypothetical framework. The pilot studies show a clear differentiation of vocabulary and concept use between the two sampled grades and provide some substantiation of the potential use of the conceptual framework.