Volume 3 of Gulf of Mexico Origin, Waters, and Biota; a series edited by John W. Tunnell Jr., Darryl L. Felder, and Sylvia A. Earle     A continuation of the landmark scientific reference series from the Harte Research Institute for Gulf Of Mexico Studies, this volume provides the most up-to-date systematic, cohesive, and comprehensive description of the geology of the Gulf of Mexico basin. The book’s six sections address the Gulf’s origin (including petroleum resources), processes (including climate change), and coral reefs.   Knowledge about the foundation of the ocean environment remains vital to the understanding of the mineral and marine resources of the Gulf as well as the increasing effects of sedimentation and global warming. With this volume, much of the information necessary for a full view of the geology of the Gulf in the U.S., Mexico, and Cuba that was previously sequestered in the files of industry or government has been made more readily available for scientists, researchers, and students. It provides valuable synthesis and interpretation, representing nearly everything known about the geology of the Gulf of Mexico in the early twenty-first century.   Four years in the making, this monumental compilation is both a lasting record of the current state of knowledge and the starting point for a new millennium of study.

Most people would not consider north central Kansas’ Waconda Lake to be extraordinary. The lake, completed in 1969 by the federal Bureau of Reclamation for flood control, irrigation, and water supply purposes, sits amid a region known—when it is thought of at all—for agriculture and, perhaps to a few, as the home of "The World’s Largest Ball of Twine" (in nearby Cawker City). Yet, to the native people living in this region in the centuries before Anglo incursion, this was a place of great spiritual power and mystic significance. Waconda Spring, now beneath the waters of the lake, was held as sacred, a place where connection with the spirit world was possible. Nearby, a giant snake symbol carved into the earth by native peoples—likely the ancestors of today’s Wichitas—signified a similar place of reverence and totemic power. All that began to change on July 6, 1870, when Charles DeRudio, an officer in the 7th U.S. Cavalry who had served with George Armstrong Custer, purchased a tract on the north bank of the Solomon River—a tract that included Waconda Spring. DeRudio had little regard for the sacred properties of his acreage; instead, he viewed the mineral spring as a way to make money. In Holy Ground, Healing Water: Cultural Landscapes at Waconda Springs, Kansas, anthropologist Donald J. Blakeslee traces the usage and attendant meanings of this area, beginning with prehistoric sites dating between AD 1000 and 1250 and continuing to the present day. Addressing all the sites at Waconda Lake, regardless of age or cultural affiliation, Blakeslee tells a dramatic story that looks back from the humdrum present through the romantic haze of the nineteenth century to an older landscape, one that is more wonderful by far than what the modern imagination can conceive.

This book explores the customary, social, economic political and rights issues surrounding access, ownership and control over land from a gender perspective. It combines theory and practice from researchers, lawyers and judges, each with track records of working on women and rights concerns. The nexus between the reluctance to recognize and materialize womenís right to land, and the increasing feminization of poverty is undeniable. The problem assumes special acuity in an essentially agrarian context like Cameroon, where the problem is not so much the law as its manner of application. That this book delves into investigating the principal sources and reasons for this prevalent injustice is particularly welcome. As some of the analyses reveal, denying women their right to land acquisition or inheritance is sometimes contrary to established judicial precedents and even in total dissonance with the countryís constitution. Traditional and cultural shibboleths associated with land acquisition and ownership that tend to stymie womenís development and fulfilment, must be quickly shirked, for such retrograde excuses can no longer find comfort in the law, morality nor in ìmodernî traditional thinking. The trend, albeit timid, of appointing women to Land Consultative Boards and even as traditional authorities, can only be salutary. These are some positive practical steps that can translate the notion of equal rights into ìequal powerî over land for both sexes; otherwise ìequalityî in this context will remain an unattractive slogan.

The Conference of Latin-Americanist Geographers (CLAG) is a specialized group of the geographers founded on 1970 and at present has more than 280 members around the world. CLAG was organized to develop geographic investigation in and on Latin America. In order to fulfill this objective, CLAG organizes national and international conferences that include diverse subjects that reflect the different interests of its members. As well as the Journal of Latin American Geography it also publishes in a Bulletin and maintains an active listserv. It invites social scientists of all disciplines related to CLAG subjects to participate in its conferences, held every 18 months in the US and Latin America, and in its publications. The Journal of Latin American Geography will continue and expand the tradition of the annual CLAG Yearbook which has published a selection of peer-reviewed papers by distinguished geographers and other scholars for more than 20 years. The editor will work with an international editorial board to promote the publication of original, high quality, and refereed manuscripts that represent the broad spectrum of geographic perspectives on and from the region.

Ce livre passe en revue les enjeux et les bouleversements qui traversent l’« espace-monde » contemporain. L’analyse thématique et régionale proposée montre que l’espace-monde est tout sauf homogène, ce qui met en relief l’importance d’une approche géographique attentive aux lieux et aux spécificités territoriales.Science du territoire, la géographie aborde le rapport de la société à l’espace, rapport à l’origine de l’ancrage territorial des collectivités humaines. Mondialisation aidant, cet ancrage territorial change. De nouveaux équilibres entre les collectivités et leur espace géographique cohabitent avec de profonds déséquilibres sociaux et écologiques, lesquels mettent au défi la capacité des décideurs et des citoyens, à tous les niveaux, du local au mondial, de prendre les décisions appropriées pour construire un monde équitable et viable.

À la fois existentielle et identitaire, notre condition territoriale nous oblige à nous intéresser aux diverses lectures que nous faisons de notre territoire puisque ce sont elles qui dictent nos comportements à son égard. Or le regard que nous portons sur notre territorialité est fort complexe. Si nous la percevons par nos sens, nous l’appréhendons aussi à partir de nos schèmes cognitifs et de nos valeurs. Regarder un paysage, par exemple, ne consiste pas à en dégager une image neutre, mais plutôt à en reproduire une image déjà pleinement codifiée et signifiée. Pareille lecture agit donc d’elle-même, partie prenante d’un imaginaire géographique qui structure le regard comme l’usage que nous faisons du territoire. Et c’est cette idée selon laquelle l’imaginaire géographique serait la matrice de notre présence au, de et par ce monde, que les scientifiques de divers horizons réunis dans ce livre souhaitent explorer en le posant comme un, sinon le principe fondateur de notre condition territoriale.

In November 1993, the largest public housing project in the Puerto Rican city of Ponce—the second largest public housing authority in the U.S. federal system—became a gated community. Once the exclusive privilege of the city's affluent residents, gates now not only locked "undesirables" out but also shut them in. Ubiquitous and inescapable, gates continue to dominate present-day Ponce, delineating space within government and commercial buildings, schools, prisons, housing developments, parks, and churches. In Locked In, Locked Out, Zaire Zenit Dinzey-Flores shows how such gates operate as physical and symbolic ways to distribute power, reroute movement, sustain social inequalities, and cement boundary lines of class and race across the city.

In its exploration of four communities in Ponce—two private subdivisions and two public housing projects—Locked In, Locked Out offers one of the first ethnographic accounts of gated communities devised by and for the poor. Dinzey-Flores traces the proliferation of gates on the island from Spanish colonial fortresses to the New Deal reform movement of the 1940s and 1950s, demonstrating how urban planning practices have historically contributed to the current trend of community divisions, shrinking public city spaces, and privatizing gardens. Through interviews and participant observation, she argues that gates have transformed the twenty-first-century city by fostering isolation and promoting segregation, ultimately shaping the life chances of people from all economic backgrounds. Relevant and engaging, Locked In, Locked Out reveals how built environments can create a cartography of disadvantage—affecting those on both sides of the wall.