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Three Billion Years Of Change
Iowa's rock record is the product of more than three billion years of geological processes. The state endured multiple episodes of continental glaciation during the Pleistocene Ice Age, and the last glacier retreated from Iowa a mere (geologically speaking) twelve thousand years ago. Prior to that, dozens of seas came and went, leaving behind limestone beds with rich fossil records. Lush coal swamps, salty lagoons, briny basins, enormous alluvial plains, ancient rifts, and rugged Precambrian mountain belts all left their mark. In Iowa's Geological Past, Wayne Anderson gives us an up-to-date and well-informed account of the state's vast geological history from the Precambrian through the end of the Great Ice Age.
Anderson takes us on a journey backward into time to explore Iowa's rock-and-sediment record. In the distant past, prehistoric Iowa was covered with shallow seas; coniferous forests flourished in areas beyond the continental glaciers; and a wide variety of animals existed, including mastodon, mammoth, musk ox, giant beaver, camel, and giant sloth.
The presence of humans can be traced back to the Paleo-Indian interval, 9,500 to 7,500 years ago. Iowa in Paleozoic time experienced numerous coastal plain and shallow marine environments. Early in the Precambrian, Iowa was part of ancient mountain belts in which granite and other rocks were formed well below the earth's surface.
The hills and valleys of the Hawkeye State are not everlasting when viewed from the perspective of geologic time. Overall, Iowa's geologic column records an extraordinary transformation over more than three billion years. Wayne Anderson's profusely illustrated volume provides a comprehensive and accessible survey of the state's remarkable geological past.
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.
Vol. 1 (2002) through current issue
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.
Nature and Culture in New England
Kent Ryden does not deny that the natural landscape of New England is shaped by many centuries of human manipulation, but he also takes the view that nature is everywhere, close to home as well as in more remote wilderness, in the city and in the countryside. In Landscape with Figures he dissolves the border between culture and nature to merge ideas about nature, experiences in nature, and material alterations of nature.
Ryden takes his readers from the printed page directly to the field and back again-. He often bypasses books and goes to the trees from which they are made and the landscapes they evoke, then returns with a renewed appreciation for just what an interdisciplinary, historically informed approach can bring to our understanding of the natural world. By exploring McPhee's The Pine Barrens and Ehrlich's The Solace of Open Spaces, the coastal fiction of New England, surveying and Thoreau's The Maine Woods, Maine's abandoned Cumberland and Oxford Canal, and the natural bases for New England's historical identity, Ryden demonstrates again and again that nature and history are kaleidoscopically linked.
Une approche géographique
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.
Perspectives, pratiques et devenirs
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.
Rural Landscapes, Urban Development, and White Privilege
A Historic View of the Esthetics of Nature
Departing from the traditional study of land use as a history of technology, this book explores the emergence of modern attitudes in literature, art, and architecture--their evolutionary past and their taproot in European and Mediterranean cultures. With humor and wit, Shepard considers the influence of Christianity on ideas of nature, the absence of an ethic of nature in modern philosophy, and the obsessive themes of dominance and control as elements of the modern mind. In his discussions of the exploration of the American West, the establishment of the first national parks, and the reactions of pioneers to their totally new habitat, he identifies the transport of traditional imagery into new places as a sort of cultural baggage.
Folklore, Writing, and the Sense of Place
Any landscape has an unseen component: a subjective component of experience, memory, and narrative which people familiar with the place understand to be an integral part of its geography but which outsiders may not suspect the existence of—unless they listen and read carefully. This invisible landscape is make visible though stories, and these stories are the focus of this engrossing book.
Traveling across the invisible landscape in which we imaginatively dwell, Kent Ryden—himself a most careful listener and reader—asks the following questions. What categories of meaning do we read into our surroundings? What forms of expression serve as the most reliable maps to understanding those meanings? Our sense of any place, he argues, consists of a deeply ingrained experiential knowledge of its physical makeup; an awareness of its communal and personal history; a sense of our identity as being inextricably bound up with its events and ways of life; and an emotional reaction, positive or negative, to its meanings and memories.
Ryden demonstrates that both folk and literary narratives about place bear a striking thematic and stylistic resemblance. Accordingly, Mapping the Invisible Landscape examines both kinds of narratives. For his oral materials, Ryden provides an in-depth analysis of narratives collected in the Coeur d'Alene mining district in the Idaho panhandle; for his consideration of written works, he explores the “essay of place,” the personal essay which takes as its subject a particular place and a writer's relationship to that place.
Drawing on methods and materials from geography, folklore, and literature, Mapping the Invisible Landscape offers a broadly interdisciplinary analysis of the way we situate ourselves imaginatively in the landscape, the way we inscribe its surface with stories. Written in an extremely engaging style, this book will lead its readers to an awareness of the vital role that a sense of place plays in the formation of local cultures, to an understanding of the many-layered ways in which place interacts with individual lives, and to renewed appreciation of the places in their own lives and landscapes.
Géopolitique des conflits de voisinage
Dans la littérature européenne, la marche est perçue comme un préalable à la frontière linéaire, une étape historique du processus de construction nationale-territoriale qui aboutit in fine à l’émergence de l’État-nation. Les territoires concernés sont affectés d’un statut et de fonctions propres à leur position géographique, tout à côté d’un voisin perçu au minimum comme hostile. Généralisée par l’empire carolingien, la marche fut largement utilisée par la couronne anglaise, d’abord dans les îles britanniques puis sur les terres conquises au cours de son expansion territoriale. Les États actuels d’Asie du Sud ont hérité de ces dispositifs et entrepris de les intégrer à leur territoire national. Mais la disparition des marches a suscité depuis la décolonisation des tensions, voire dans certains cas des conflits de frontière, qui sont toujours actifs après plus de soixante ans d’indépendance. C’est le cas entre l’Inde et la Chine, mais c’est aussi valable, quoique à des degrés moindres, pour l’ensemble des frontières traversant les Himalayas. Mettant en scène les dissymétries de la marche himalayenne dans ses contextes géographique et historique, et dans sa dynamique actuelle, l’auteur s’attache à définir les constituantes physiques et humaines de cette barrière montagneuse. Il s’interroge sur la légitimité des revendications territoriales ou frontalières et esquisse une typologie des marches observables dans les Himalayas.
