Digital Commons Network^™

Accumulation, Excess, Childhood: Toward A Countertopography Of Risk And Waste, Cindi Katz

Publications and Research

This piece grows out of my on-going project, ‘Childhood as Spectacle’, and my enduring concern with social reproduction and what it does for and to Marxist and other critical political-economic analyses. After more than 30 years of Marxist-feminist interventions around these issues, symptomatic silences around social reproduction remain all too common in analyses of capitalism. Working through these issues and their occlusion, I offer what I hope is a useful and vibrant theoretical framework for examining geographies of children, youth, and families. Building this framework calls into play three overlapping issues; neoliberal capitalism in crisis and David Harvey’s notion of …

Introduction: Culture, Economy, Policy: Trends And Developments, Lily Kong

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The important nexus between culture and economy is by no means a recent development nor a novel inclusion on the social science agenda. As Harvey pointed out in his foreword to Zukin's (1988)Loft Living, the artist, as one `representative' of the cultural class, has always shared a position in the market system, whether as artisans or as “cultural producers working to the command of hegemonic class interest”. In the last two to three decades, in the US and more lately, in western Europe, cultural activities have become increasingly significant in the economic regeneration strategies in many cities. Geographers, however, have …

Hidden In Plain View: Legal Geography From A Visual Perspective, Irus Braverman

Journal Articles

Law, with a capital “L” at least, is not particularly fond of hiding itself. In order to be effective, law must be asserted in the world; it must be acknowledged; and, most importantly, it must be visually seen. Why, then, would law hide itself in space? And, perhaps more importantly, how would it do so? And why would such hidden places of law be of importance to us? This paper explores the dual project of seeing and concealing within the context of legal geography. It examines how law sees the physical landscape and how it is seen from a spatial …

Money, Power And Landscapes Of Consumption, Ana Miscolta-Cameron

Geography Capstone Projects

This paper explores the phenomenon of national parks and reserves in Tanzania as a product of early colonial ideology and the evolution of that ideology into a post-independence capitalist enterprise. Serengeti National Park, Selous Game Reserve and the Ngorongoro Conservation Area are examined as historically contested sites in which indigenous people have been denied customary use rights by successive regimes of power keen on profiting through resource exploitation and tourism. Though this paper’s focus is Tanzania, it attempts to reveal a pattern of colonial and neo-colonial environmentalism widespread throughout the developing world.

Norumbega News, No.15 (Fall 2010), Osher Library Associates

Friends of OML, Occasional Publications

Issue No.15, Fall 2010

Osher Map Library and the Smith Center for Cartographic Education

Portland, Maine

The Tibetan Jewish Youth Exchange: The Importance Of Youth In Exile And Diaspora Communities, Jade Sank

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

How is the identity of a people living in diaspora maintained? The people of Tibet have been living in exile since the Chinese occupation began in 1959. As a result the Tibetan people have been working to find ways to maintain their identity, religion and culture. In Many ways the current Tibetan plight can be compared to the experiences of the Jewish people in exile and diaspora.

Culture, a religion, a people and an identity in exile and diaspora is both maintained and changed. The youth are the future and bonds that hold everything together, they are the carriers of …

La ‘Paradoxe Marocaine’ Moroccan-Dutch Citizens In Transnational Social Space, Deva-Dee Siliee

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Human mobility has existed in countless forms for many centuries. Yet in our modern world of sovereign territorially defined nation-states, both policy makers and national publics increasingly see human mobility across national boundaries as alarming. The rising movement of people, culture and capital across borders is suggested to pose a direct challenge to the nation-state as the organizing unit around which many areas of human activity revolve. In the age of globalization, academics and politicans are investigating how to understand the question of individuals and entire communities, intent on maintaining strong economic, cultural and social ties across state borders. This …

Frontier: The Making Of The Northern And Eastern Border In Ladakh From 1834 To The Present, Jonathan M. Deng

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Ladakh, despite popular myths of an isolated Himalayan kingdom, has been a land built on trade and regional connections with India to the south, Tibet to the east, and Central Asia to the north. By participating in these social, political, and economic networks, Ladakh was able to amass a rich collection of cultural influences from many far-flung locales. Historically many of these regional interactions have been defined by the physical terrain, which mountain ranges divided Ladakh from other areas, which passes where open and when they were traversable. Even the political boundaries before the partition of India were loosely defined …

Demographic, Economic And Social Transformations In Bronx Community District 4: High Bridge, Concourse And Mount Eden, 1990 - 2008, Astrid S. Rodríguez

Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies

Introduction: This report analyzes demographic and socioeconomic characteristics among the five largest Latino nationality groups during 1990-2008 in the NYC Community District 4 of the borough of the Bronx, which comprises the neighborhoods of High Bridge, Concourse and Mount Eden.

Methods: Data on Latinos and other racial/ethnic groups were obtained from the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey, reorganized for public use by the Minnesota Population Center, University of Minnesota, IPUMSusa. Cases in the dataset were weighted and analyzed to produce population estimates.

Results: Dominicans are the largest Latino subgroup in the Bronx’s Community District 4, accounting for over 30% …

Rich Internet Geoweb For Spatial Data Infrastructure, Tin Seong Kam

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In this information age, more and more public statistical data such as population census, household living, local economy and business establishment are distributed over the internet within the framework of spatial data infrastructure. By and large, these data are organized geographically such as region, province as well as district. Usually, they are published in the form of digital maps over the internet as simple points, lines and polygons markers limited or no analytical function available to transform these data into useful information. To meet the analytical needs of casual public data users, we contribute RIGVAT, a rich internet geospatial visual …

Use Of An Integrated System Dynamics Model For Analyzing Behaviour Of The Social-Economic-Climatic System In Policy Development, Christopher J. Popovich, Slobodan P. Simonovic, Gordon A. Mcbean

Water Resources Research Report

Climate change remains one of the most critical issues that humans and the natural world face today. Yet while a strong body of scientific research has identified the risks if mitigation and adaptation measures are not taken, there still remains a policy lag. This leads researchers to pose several questions: is there an identified need by the policy domain for more or different science? Is the science that is conducted made policyrelevant? If not, are there tools to better link science to policy? This report will explain the process of science-policy communication related to the development of an integrated system …

The Impact Of Racial Metric Variation In The Os Coxae On The Morphological Assessment Of Sex, Ginesse A. Listi

Faculty Publications

This study examines whether sex determination based on morphological traits in the os coxae is impacted by racial quantitative variation. Nineteen traits were evaluated independently by two observers in 876 os coxae. Chi-square test was used on a random sample of 400 individuals to assess whether the distribution of correct sex assessment varied for white and black individuals based on each trait individually and all 19 traits collectively, as well as on inter-observer agreement in correct sex assessment. Results indicate that accuracy of sex assessment varied between white and black individuals in certain individual traits; however, accuracy was not impacted …

Places For Races: The White Supremacist Movement Imagines U.S. Geography, Barbara Perry, Randy Blazak

Sociology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Increasingly, scholars are acknowledging that racial and other forms of animus assume a spatial dimension. Not only does intercultural hostility take different forms depending on location, but so, too, does the concomitant bias-motivated violence imply “places for races.” The very intent and motive of hate crimes are grounded in the perceived need of perpetrators to defend carefully crafted boundaries. While these boundaries are largely cultural, they may also take on a real, physical form, at least from the perpetrator’s perspective. Nowhere is this more evident than in the geographical imagination of the White Supremacist movement. This paper will trace the …

Introduction: Contested Landscapes, Asian Cities, Lily Kong, Lisa Law

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

A decade and a half after Cosgrove and Jackson (1987) wrote their seminal piece on ‘new’ cultural geography, the discipline of geography has experienced a ‘cultural’ turn. Economic geography, for instance, has been infleected through perspectives that take on board cultural retheorisations (see Thrift and Olds, 1996; Thrift, 2000). Within urban studies, the acknowledgement of culture’s powers is not new (see, for example, Agnew et al., 1984). Yet, geographers scrutinising urban landscapes have moved the field, using some of the retheorised perspectives that Cosgrove and Jackson (1987) encapsulated. Of most pertinence to this volume is the retheorised notion of culture …

China And Geography In The 21st Century: A Cultural (Geographical) Revolution?, Lily Kong

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

A noted Singapore-based cultural geographer and specialist on Asia reviews the recent emergence of cultural geographic research on and within China and the implications of China's rise for the study of 21st century cultural geography more broadly. She identifies six major issues modern China is confronting that, when addressed from a cultural geographical perspective, may both enhance an understanding of the country and reshape the practice of cultural geography as a subdiscipline: agricultural reform, economic reform, urban change, rural-urban migration and related social inequalities, the changing family structure, and environmental change. The author argues that if China's cultural geography is …

Climate Change: Helping Nature Survive The Human Response, Will R. Turner, Bethany A. Bradley, Lyndon D. Estes, David G. Hole, Michael Oppenheimer, David S. Wilcove

Geography

Climate change poses profound, direct, and well-documented threats to biodiversity. A significant fraction of Earth's species is at risk of extinction due to changing precipitation and temperature regimes, rising and acidifying oceans, and other factors. There is also growing awareness of the diversity and magnitude of responses, both proactive and reactive, that people will undertake as lives and livelihoods are affected by climate change. Yet to date few studies have examined the relationship between these two powerful forces. The natural systems upon which people depend, already under direct assault from climate change, are further threatened by how we respond to …

Modeling Acoustic Scattering From The Seabed Using Transport Theory, Jorge Quijano, Lisa M. Zurk

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Radiative Transfer (RT) theory has established itself as an important tool for electromagnetic remote sensing in parallel plane geometries with random distributions of scatterers, and most recently it has also been proposed as a model for the propagation of elastic waves in layered ocean sediments. In this work the capabilities of this model are illustrated, as the RT method is used to predict backscattering strength from laboratory models of random media. The RT model is characterized by its flexibility on accommodating scatterers in a broad variety of sizes, shapes, and acoustic contrast relative to the background media. Additionally, this formulation …

Object Discrimination Using A Multi-Wavelength Photonic Sensor, Kavitha Venkataraayan, Sreten Askraba, Kamal E. Alameh, Clifton L. Smith

International Cyber Resilience conference

A bench prototype photonic-based sensor for object discrimination is described. A combination module, which allows five laser diodes of different wavelengths to overlap and sequentially emit identically-polarised light beams through a common aperture, is presented. The key visible and infrared wavelengths are selected from sample objects spectral signatures. A cylindrical optical quasi-cavity structure is designed to generate 15 laser spots for each laser. The intensity of the reflected light from each spot is detected by a high speed line scan image sensor. Object discrimination is accomplished by calculating the slope values between selected wavelengths in the blue to infrared range.

Mapping In Philanthropy: Exploring The Use Of Mapping In Foundation Grantmaking, Jim Casey

Geography and the Environment: Graduate Student Capstones

Foundations provide grants to nonprofit organizations in our communities, who then provide services locally. Choosing which nonprofit to fund, and which not to fund is difficult. This study examines current uses and upcoming uses of mapping and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) as part of funding decisions made by foundations. Foundations engaged in strategic funding, especially that which targets specific populations are more likely to use GIS and geospatial analysis in funding decisions. Grantmaking in response to proposals requires less strategic analysis and calls for mapping much less by comparison. As a field, nationally foundations and nonprofits have identified many uses …

A Gis Model To Predict Feral Pig (Sus Scrofa) Habitat On Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, Brian Schnick

Geography and the Environment: Graduate Student Capstones

The applicable Natural Resource area of this project is animal control and wildlife management, as wild pigs can be quite destructive to landscapes (Campbell, et al., 2010) (McCann, et al., 2008). Geographic Information System (GIS) predictive models have proven to be useful in regards to other mammals (Travaini, et al., 2007), raptors (Bustamante, et al., 2004), and pest species such as locusts (van der Werf, et al., 2005). Pigs are often nocturnal and bed down in heavy cover, hindering direct observation. Additionally, Vandenberg Air Force Base (VAFB) encompasses over 400 square kilometers. Therefore, predictive modeling is an appropriate method for …

Developing Tornado Climatology In The Southern Great Plains Per Phases Of Prominent Oceanic Oscillations, Nicholas M. Fillo

Geography and the Environment: Graduate Student Capstones

Meteorologists are continually working toward a greater understanding of which atmospheric environments are most conducive for tornado development. This Capstone project analyzed tornado occurrences across Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana during the period 1950 through 2009 to determine if any correlation exists between the location and frequency of tornado activity and the phases of the El Nino-Southern Oscillation, the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. While it was determined that no phase of any of the oscillations studied was significantly more dominant over the other(s) concerning frequency, this project does identify some spatial shifts in tornado activity depending …

Determining Heritage Oak Tree Susceptibility To Sudden Oak Death Using Gis Risk Analysis, Michelle M. Guzdek

Geography and the Environment: Graduate Student Capstones

Sudden Oak Death (SOD), caused by the pathogenic water mold Phytophthora ramorum, has killed hundreds of thousands of oak trees in the California coastal regions, with redwood-tanoak forests being hit the hardest (Shoemaker et al., 2007). The term “sudden oak death” is used to describe the disease, because of how rapidly the pathogen has killed otherwise healthy tanoaks, virtually in a matter of weeks (COMTF 2010). SOD was first reported in California in 1994 and is believed to have originated from infected nursery or ornamental plants, but the source has never been identified (Mascheretti et al. 2008).

Shale Weathering Rates Across A Continental-Scale Climosequence, Ashlee L.D. Dere, Tim White, Lixin Jin, David Harbor, Meredith Townsend, Susan L. Brantley

Geography and Geology Faculty Proceedings & Presentations

A transect of sites has been established in North America and England as part of the Critical Zone Exploration Network (CZEN) to investigate the rates of soil formation across a climate gradient. Sites reported here are all underlain by an organic-poor, iron-rich Silurian-age shale, providing a constant parent material lithology from which soil is forming. This climosequence includes relatively cold and wet sites in Wales, New York and Pennsylvania, with temperature increasing to the south in Virginia, Tennessee and Alabama. Puerto Rico provides a warm/wet end member for the transect, although this site does not lie on the same shale …

'The Edge Of The Island': Neighborhood Identity And Evolving Community In 'Liminal Places', Gordon Douglas

Faculty Publications, Urban and Regional Planning

This paper examines the contemporary processes at work in urban areas without clear spatial identities that are simultaneously facing the challenges of cultural change and gentrification. I do so through the close analysis of one such ‘liminal place’ on Chicago’s West Side. I use the phrase ‘a community on the edge of the island’ to describe the area, inspired by an interview subject who referred to the tenuous search for a sort of ideal bohemian hipness as the need to stay as “close to the edge of the island” as possible without actually leaving it. Making use of ethnographic and …

The Global Project: Observing Geographic Literacy Obtained By Study Abroad Learning, Erin Joy Greunke

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

One of the major debates regarding studying abroad concerns criticism that it lacks measurable and demonstrable learning outcomes and is usually viewed as less rigorous than other university courses (McKeown 2009). As one Western Kentucky University (WKU) faculty member noted when responding to the Faculty Attitudes Survey deployed for this project, all too often “too many study abroad experiences [are] little more than glorified fieldtrips.....” (Anonymous WKU Faculty Member, 2009, Appendix IV). While this may be the case, upon their return to the United States, students often say their study abroad experience proved life changing. The primary purpose of this …

The Multifunctional Transition In Australia’S Tropical Savannas: The Emergence Of Consumption, Protection And Indigenous Values, John Holmes

Aboriginal Policy Research Consortium International (APRCi)

As elsewhere in affluent, western nations, the direction, complexity and pace of rural change in Australia can be conceptualised as a multifunctional transition in which a variable mix of consumption and protection values has emerged, con- testing the former dominance of production values, and leading to greater com- plexity and heterogeneity in rural occupance at all scales. This transition has been explored in accessible, high-amenity landscapes driven by enhanced consumption values. Less attention has been directed to remote, marginal lands where a flimsy mode of productivist occupance can, in part, be displaced by alternative modes with the transitions being facilitated …

Beragam Islam, Beragam Ekspresi: Islam Indonesia Dalam Praktik, Oki Rahadianto Sutopo

Masyarakat: Jurnal Sosiologi

No abstract provided.

Pluralisme Dan Masyarakat Pasca-Politik, Fransisca Sse Seda

Masyarakat: Jurnal Sosiologi

No abstract provided.

Preservation Ethics In The Case Of Nebraska's Nationally Registered Historic Properties, Darren Michael Adams

Department of Geography: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This dissertation focuses on the National Register of Historic Places and considers the geographical implications of valuing particular historic sites over others. Certain historical sites will either gain or lose desirability from one era to the next, this dissertation identifies and explains three unique preservation ethical eras, and it maps the sites which were selected during those eras. These eras are the Settlement Era (1966–1975), the Commercial Architecture Era (1976–1991), and the Progressive Planning Era (1992–2010). The findings show that transformations in the program included an early phase when state authorities listed historical resources pertaining to the settlement of the …

Density Estimation And Adaptive Bandwidths: A Primer For Public Health Practitioners, Heather A. Carlos, Xun Shi, James Sargent, Susanne Tanski, Ethan M. Berke

Dartmouth Scholarship

Background: Geographic information systems have advanced the ability to both visualize and analyze point data. While point-based maps can be aggregated to differing areal units and examined at varying resolutions, two problems arise 1) the modifiable areal unit problem and 2) any corresponding data must be available both at the scale of analysis and in the same geographic units. Kernel density estimation (KDE) produces a smooth, continuous surface where each location in the study area is assigned a density value irrespective of arbitrary administrative boundaries. We review KDE, and introduce the technique of utilizing an adaptive bandwidth to address the …