Human Geography Commons^™

Thoughts On How New Zealand Could Progress As A More Regenerative Tourism Host, Stephen Bradley

Journal of Sustainability and Resilience

New Zealand has a chance to reset the way we view and manage tourism. We must take this chance to make some changes that will ensure that we have a clean green country to promote as a high quality tourism destination in the future. This perspective advocates that measures such as a high visitor levy, educating tourists and better management of the way tourists travel around the country, can lead to achieving more sustainable tourism industry.

Food Producers And Pandemics: A Mystery Shopping Analysis, Francesc Fusté-Forné

Journal of Sustainability and Resilience

Recent research has widely analysed the significance of food in tourism. Departing from the understanding of ‘cheese’ as part of the food tourism system of a destination, this paper aims to analyse cheese factory tours as a tourism service provided by food producers. A mystery shopping approach is used to study the 75 cheese producers under the Manchego quality cheese. Results show the response behaviour of Spanish Manchego cheese producers to an email sent by a ‘tourist’ who asks for a visit during pandemic times. As a segment of food tourism, cheese tourism is gathering a growing attention by academics …

The Most Important Thing, The People!, Marie Haley

Journal of Sustainability and Resilience

This paper looks at indigenous concepts from New Zealand Maori and American Indians that offer philosophy for long term resilience and human-centred decision making. For true resilience, individuals, businesses and governments need to be adaptable, decisive and make long term changes. Operational changes need to come from a change of mindset and cannot return to old systems. Covid-19 has highlighted placing humans at the centre of decision making. This paper looks at the case study of The Seventh Generation Tours, in Akaroa New Zealand and the indigenous concepts of turangawaewae, knowing our connection to place and environment, manaakitanga, hospitality and …

A Future Of Tourism Industry: Conscious Travel, Destination Recovery And Regenerative Tourism, Asif Hussain

Journal of Sustainability and Resilience

The tourism industry is a complex network of millions of suppliers and consumers who trade experiences and services. The traditional tourism model revolves around increasing the number of visitors to ensure economic return. The conventional tourism models often ignore the real cost of the travel industry’s health and the cost per tourist. Covid-19 has shown us the extent to which the travel industry can be affected. The tourism and hospitality industries is the worst affected industries globally and the continuous waves of the virus, and new variants, are forcing governments to impose strict lockdowns. Misinformation and disinformation are making it …

Government Response To Covid-19 And Gender Discrepancy: Tour Operator Perspective From New Zealand, Marie Haley, Asif Hussain

Journal of Sustainability and Resilience

The New Zealand government closed the international borders for the first time in history to pursuit an elimination strategy to COVID-19. This has had a severe impact upon tour operators who have been excluded from a free and fair market, to protect the broader economic and public health systems. This paper argues that the government response needs a focus at the whanau and community level, with a targeted focus on women empowerment in the communities that are dependent upon international tourism. The government should pursue an approach of engagement with systems to facilitate community lead COVID-19 recovery. Thus, allowing the …

Building Destination Tourism Alliances In The Central-Western Region Of Mexico For The Recovery Of Post-Covid-19 Tourism, Silvia María López Ruiz

Journal of Sustainability and Resilience

This study focuses on knowing the joint work between Mexico’s tourist destinations and the private sector, promoting proximity tourism for the recovery of tourism after the Covid-19 pandemic, through the creation of the “Central West Pact for Tourism” in Mexico. For the qualitative empirical analysis based on a case study, it is based on secondary data and an in-depth interview conducted virtually with two pioneering leaders of this pact and responsible for tourism management in the state of Zacatecas, Mexico. In addition, a qualitative content analysis of the project’s official website (Viaja En Corto – Descubre El Centro de …

From Hurricanes To Pandemics: Community-Based Transformation And Destination Resilience In Utuado, Puerto Rico, Patrick J. Holladay, Pablo Méndez-Lázaro, Katja Brundiers

Journal of Sustainability and Resilience

Community-based tourism that is both sustainable and resilient lends strength to the community-based tourism system. Local mobilization of resources, cohesiveness, coordination, opportunities for change, healthy social and natural capital, economic diversification, strong leadership, and management that embraces creativity all build resilience. An example from Utuado, Puerto Rico is presented that illustrates these concepts with conceptual parallel of Hurricane Maria’s devastating impact to that of COVID-19. Post-coronavirus tourism should support local communities that could be resilient, creative, adaptive and transformative while it protects and provides long-term benefits to local communities and people.

Diary Of An Afghan Woman Collection - September 2021

TSOS Interview Gallery

Four women share with us their daily lives in Afghanistan. Join them as they express their love for the country, the people, and each other; and as they share with you their deepest fears and most intimate moments.

They refuse to be silenced as they journey through this new, uncharted chapter in Afghanistan's history.

We at TSOS are honored to provide a platform for their voices to be heard. We will post entries as we receive them. For safety purposes, names have been changed and only avatars (designed with input from each woman) will be used.

ZOYA

Zoya is a …

Yosuf, Yosuf, Tsos

TSOS Interview Gallery

Yosef and his family of four are from the Herat Province in Afghanistan. The eldest child used to sell potatoes with Ibrahim, the middle child, who was killed by a landmine planted by counter-revolutionaries. As a result, the eldest child, Ismail, developed severe nerve and mental issues, and the wife, who is now pregnant, frequently has seizures. They sold their home to treat Ismail, but doctors say nothing can be done. Ismail’s condition continues to worsen, but he refuses to leave to see a doctor because he is afraid of the police for an unknown reason. Yosef says he is …

Environmental Perception In Colombia's Páramo Protected Areas, Juliana Delgado

LSU Master's Theses

This thesis analyzes the gap between farmers' environmental perceptions in Téquita, a small village in Colombia, and the definition of protected areas has led to a conflict for the use of natural resources. I examine if the protected area's policies have dealt with the social and ecological issues in the páramos and recognized the social construction of the landscape, farmers' identities, and their interpretations about work and land. The case study focuses on Güina High Mountain in the Guantiva-La Rusia páramo complex, which recently the Colombian government declared as a protected area. In light of anthropologist Tim Ingold's meaning of …

Lisa Campbell, Lisa Campbell, Tsos

TSOS Interview Gallery

Lisa Campbell, project manager for the non-profit Do Your Part Refugee Community Center in Greece. Lisa combined efforts with multiple organizations to better the lives of refugees in the Delisi, Greece area. Lisa discusses the evolution of the growing refugee crisis and the millions who flee to Greece and Turkey.

Field Brown Cultural Research And Engagement Fellows Presentation, Field Brown, Brian S. Williams, Kenya M. Cistrunk

CAS Publications

Presentation by Field Brown, MSU alumnus and PhD Student in English at Harvard University, on the meaning of Juneteenth and the ongoing work of freedom. Part of the Juneteenth events at the JL King Center in Starkville, MS. Sponsored by the Cultural Research & Engagement Fellows (CREF) Program.

The CREF Program at Mississippi State University explores the social and cultural dimensions of food systems, food access, land in majority-Black, historically agrarian rural communities by engaging youth at the nexus of food access, farming, and culture. The CREF program is made possible by a grant from the Office of Research & …

Material Encounters: Making Memory Beyond The Mind, Ariel Wills

Masters Theses

Can acts of making carry the memories of our embeddedness within the world? This thesis explores how making things can nurture a sense of kinship that cuts across the organic and inorganic, erasing the distinction between living and dead, material and spiritual. Through handwork such as art-making, sewing, knitting, cooking, woodworking, and beyond, the burden of remembering and of archiving is shared across human and non-human bodies, cultivated through practices of making, and through the materials themselves. By recounting the stories of my family’s experience as Jewish immigrants in the United States, I aim to reveal how their domestic practices …

Sacred Music In Colonial Era Hispaniola: The Evangelization Of The Taino People, Tito J. Gutierrez

Student Theses

During the 15th-18th centuries, the major European religious orders; the Franciscans, Dominicans, Jesuits, and Jeronymites, journeyed to the newly colonized American territories in an attempt to convert the multitudes of natives peoples living there. Along with prayer books, crucifixes, and religious images, these missionaries brought sacred European music to American shores in an attempt to attract the native people to the Catholic faith.The use of music as a tool for conversion of native people in places such as Mexico, South America, California, and the South West United States, have been well researched and documented. However, the research of the spiritual …

Environmental Cues And The Sociospatial Imaginary: An Examination Of Spatial Perception And Meaning-Making In A Gentrifying Neighborhood, Todd Levon Brown

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

What could be more ordinary or pedestrian than two people walking down an urban street and talking about what we see and what we make of it? Yet this simple, quotidian act of walking a street—seeing, perceiving and experiencing physical spaces, places and objects—and making meaning of what is encountered, is the basis of my dissertation. It is also my basis for claiming that I have learned a great deal—and much unexpectedly—about how differently different people see and interpret the urban streetscape. What are the various environmental cues that stand out to different individuals? What are the psychosocial imaginaries that …

Monumentality, Fortification, And Movement: Preclassic Maya Developments As Seen At Muralla De León, Petén, Guatemala, Justin D. Bracken

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Analysis of settlement patterning in relation to natural and constructed defensive elements expands understanding of the impact of warfare well beyond the relatively brief period of active battle. Advance preparation in advance of conflict, including reshaping the landscape for defensibility and conscription of labor toward that end, alters patterns of movement, social interaction, and physical settlement, effects that can extend for generations beyond the cessation of hostilities. This project investigates the role played by warfare in shaping the physical and social landscape of the Maya of the central Petén during the Late Preclassic period (400 B.C. – A.D. 150), as …

Revisiting Prehistoric Archeological Sites: Envisioning First Built Environments To Repossess Geographically Specific Approaches In Architecture, Alisa Mohammad Kheir Abdulghany, Marwan Halabi, Maged Youssef, Bahaa El Dine Abou El Khoudoud

BAU Journal - Creative Sustainable Development

Since Prehistoric times, architecture had been a human response to an occurring natural setting. Starting from places of dwelling to buildings that no longer only serve physical requirements for survival. Architectural languages were approached initially as an expression of culture, evolution, and growth of a community within a natural setting. This response resulted in the creation of built environments, humanity’s decision to become sedentary. This decision took place in the Late Stone age, a key phase in our timeline. First built environments were born in a time known as the Neolithic revolution, which shown itself as humans transitioned from hunter-gatherer …

Mapping Out Our Space In Stories: A High School Curriculum For A Social Justice Tour Of San Francisco, Elena Ramírez Robles

Master's Projects and Capstones

How do youth engage with the spaces around them? In what ways might students connect their personal, lived knowledge to the politics and intricacies of space? The manners in which schools approach outside-of-school learning includes non-critical Place-Based Learning and field trips as optional material; however, doing so breaks the powerful relationship waiting to be explored between Critical Geography and Critical Education. This field project uses Henri Lefebvre’s concepts of The Production of Space and Rhythmanalysis as foundations to argue for the implementation of Critical Geography into high school curricula, and offers a 9-week high school curriculum to create a student-led …

A City Divided: A Gis-Informed Study Of Urban Planning In Amman, Jordan, Ella Lawson

Honors Theses

Amman, the capital of Jordan, faces an impending infrastructure crisis. The city is plagued by water shortages, a lack of affordable housing, extreme traffic congestion, and dwindling open space. Over the past seventy-five years, several urban planning commissions have attempted to address these issues through policy change and other municipal directives. These plans help illustrate the different forces at play in constructing the city—whether they be the residents themselves, city officials, or international consultants. All the plans use neighborhoods as a primary metric for measuring need and organizing development. Likewise, all the plans focus on the importance of green and …

A Journey Of A Thousand Miles Begins With A Single Step: Towards A Confucian Geopolitics, Lily Kong

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This commentary welcomes the opportunity of a dialogue on the development of a Confucian geopolitics that offers an alternative to the prevailing dominant geopolitical theories. Three areas are discussed to further development of such an alternative. The first is the challenges (and not only the opportunities) of recovering Confucian values to inform foreign policy and international relations. The second is the appropriation of Confucian philosophy to legitimize state action, and how this is actually playing out in present-day China. The third is the slippage between narrative and practice – that is, how a narrative of Confucian geopolitics is translated in …

What And Whose Confucianism? Sinophone Communities And Dialogical Geopolitics, Quan Gao, Justin K. H. Tse, Orlando Woods

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This commentary responds to An et al.’s (2020) article, ‘Towards a Confucian geopolitics’ by re-examining ‘the political’ of Confucianism and its contribution to fostering a cosmopolitan form of Confucian geopolitics. By taking note of the differences within and between Sinophone communities, we discuss the variegated forms of Confucianism, and their various geopolitical implications. In doing so, we call for re-theorising Confucian geopolitics as dialogical geopolitics that challenges the cultural and ideological basis of statist and Sino-centric geopolitics.

Latinos In Brooklyn: Demographic And Socioeconomic Transformations In Sunset Park/Windsor Terrace And Bushwick, 1990-2017, Sejung Sage Yim

Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies

Introduction:

This report examines the key demographic and socioeconomic trends in Brooklyn, New York between 1990 and 2017. The report focuses on the two community districts that have the first- and second- largest Latino populations in the borough: Bushwick (community district 4) and Sunset Park/Windsor Terrace (community district 7).

Methods:

This report uses the American Community Survey PUMS (Public Use Microdata Series) data for all years released by the Census Bureau and reorganized for public use by the Minnesota Population Center, University of Minnesota, IPUMSusa, (https://usa.ipums.org/usa/index.shtml). See Public Use Microdata Series Steven Ruggles, J. Trent Alexander, Katie Genadek, Ronald Goeken, …

333— Analyzing The Geography Of The Salem Witch Trials: Studying The Distribution Of People And Places Involved In This 17th Century Witch Hysteria, Hannah Dorn

GREAT Day Posters

Through this research project, I analyzed and studied geographical elements associated with the Salem Witch Trials throughout towns in the Massachusetts Bay Colony during the years 1692-1693. With this research, and the data that I collected and mapped throughout the reseach process, I was able to gain a better understanding of when and where the hysteria of the trials spread. Additionally, I was able to uncover where this hysteria of accusations was most concentrated, and how many people were affected as a result of this puzzling and mysterious phenomenon.

Mapping Staten Island: A Field Study Guide, Nerve Macaspac

Open Educational Resources

This is a guide for the field study and urban lab as partial requirements for GEG 260 Urban Geography at CUNY College of Staten Island. The field study introduces students to spatial ethnography and offers an opportunity to observe, experience and examine a range of spatial urban phenomena that they have learned in the classroom within actually-existing urban environments. Designed as a collaborative activity, students will work in teams in exploring and examining the built environment on-site and then produce multimedia deliverables to capture their reflections throughout the field study using creative and experimental methods. The collaborative and experimental design …

Voting Changes Between The 2016 And 2020 Presidential Elections In Counties Across The United States With Large Latino-Origin Populations, Laird W. Bergad

Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies

Introduction:

This report examines trends in votes cast between the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections in 1) the 101 counties in the United States in which Latinos comprised 50% or more of total populations; and 2) in the 35 counties in the U.S. which had the largest Latino populations.These latter counties were home to 50% of all Latinos living in the United States according to 2019 census data.

Methods:

Exit polling data from 2016 and 2020, American Community Survey (2019)

Discussion:

Of the 101 counties in which Latino populations were more than half of all residents, the Republican candidate won …

Extending Arda: Mapping Beyond The Lord Of The Rings And Silmarillion, Stentor Danielson

Journal of Tolkien Research

The canonical maps by Christopher Tolkien from The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion cover only a small portion of the world of J.R.R. Tolkien's legendarium. In the years since their publication, many artists have been inspired to try to create maps of the entire world. In doing so, they have both curated the canonical information provided by Tolkien as well as engaged in their own sub-creation, drawing on geographical ideas from the primary world. This paper examines a broad set of fan-made maps of Arda to trace the lineages of their geographical conceptions and the principles behind their …

Eggs, Hair, Seeds, Milk, Patrick West

Landscapes: the Journal of the International Centre for Landscape and Language

Short story

Looking For Marianne North, John Charles Ryan

Landscapes: the Journal of the International Centre for Landscape and Language

This poem reflects on the life of peripatetic botanical illustrator Marianne North (1830-1890) who travelled to Southwest Australia in 1880.

Critically Imagining A Decolonised Vision In Australian Poetry, Cassandra Julie O'Loughlin

Landscapes: the Journal of the International Centre for Landscape and Language

Postmodern ecocriticism, given its broad range of perspectives, offers an agreeable platform for articulating a new, advanced and inclusive framework for a decolonising theorisation of literature and the environment. This article seeks to identify Australian Western decolonising poetry that sits in harmony with Indigenous aural and literary versions of communicative engagement with Country. The concept of human embeddedness in ecological relationships and biological processes as part of a complex matrix of interdependent things is embraced. In particular this article focuses on inclusivity and interconnectedness of all life forms to illustrate aesthetic and conceptual interfaces between Aboriginal Australia and Western poetics. …

The Dancing Between Two Worlds Project: Background, Methodology And Learning To Approach Community In Place, Anindita Banerjee, Shaun Mcleod, Gretel Taylor, Patrick L. West

Landscapes: the Journal of the International Centre for Landscape and Language

This article recounts the history to date of the Dancing Between Two Worlds (DBTW) project, which was initiated by a team of artist-scholars at Deakin University in 2018. DBTW’s brief was to engage the Indian community living in the western fringes of Melbourne in a project on civic belonging, cross-cultural artistic identity, and the performance of outer-suburban Indian diaspora. Working with the creative and community energies that are activated at the intersection of the creative arts and demographically inflected place, the Deakin researchers collaborated with local artists with an Indian background on a major performance in late 2019: …