Place and Environment Commons^™

Framing Asian Atmospheres: Imperial Weather Science And The Problem Of The Local C.1880–1950, Fiona Williamson

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

It would be of the greatest importance to meteorology’, noted the editor of the Singapore Chronicle in 1829, ‘if a set of hourly meteorological observations could be instituted at Calcutta, Bombay, Madras, Singapore, Malacca, and some station on the elevated plains of Hindostan’. 1 Of course, the author’s comments speak from a uniquely imperial perspective, whereby such observations would benefit the colonial service of – in this case – the British Empire, enabling enhanced knowledge of imperial atmospheres and the related economic and scientific benefits that this could bring. That meteorology was closely linked to empire and imperial control has …

The Science Of Stifling Heat: Recognising Urban Climate Change In The Straits Settlements, Fiona Williamson

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Heat is a ubiquitous part of tropical living. During the nineteenth century consumers and writers of travel literature, explorers and colonists became increasingly familiar with the endless, languid summers of tropical climates where continued, unrelenting heat and humidity created a daunting climate for the European.

Quiet River, Heavy Waters: Un-Silencing Narratives Of Social-Environmental Inequalities In The Cradle Of Soviet Plutonium, Rosibel Roman

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In December 1948, the Soviet Union’s first plutonium production facility, Mayak Production Association (PO Mayak), began operation in the Southern Urals region of Russia, at the western edges of Siberia, near the restricted city of Chelyabinsk-40, known in the present day as Ozyorsk. Since then, rural communities located downstream from PO Mayak have experienced health, economic, ecological and social impacts of contamination from high-level radioactive wastes released by the facility into the Techa River and its surrounding ecosystem. My research, drawing from archival research conducted in Russia and the United States, as well as secondary sources in English and Russian, …

The Cape Town Free Walking Tours: Whose History Is It Anyway? The Shaping Of Place And Space In A Tourist City, Allegra Von Hirschberg

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This research focuses on the Cape Town Free Walking Tours and investigates the importance of the role that tour guides play in mediating space and heritage. Drawing upon literature surrounding tourism, the tourist city, as well as memory and heritage, this study uses a mixed methods approach, both surveying tour participants as well as interviewing tour guides and managers of the Cape Town Free Walking Tours. In addition, this research also draws from my own experience participating in walking tours and making notes through participant observation. This research shows that tourism spaces are created, curated and maintained through a performance …

Time Travel, Labour History, And The Null Curriculum: New Design Knowledge For Mobile Augmented Reality History Games, Owen Gottlieb

Articles

This paper presents a case study drawn from design-based research (DBR) on a mobile, place-based augmented reality history game. Using DBR methods, the game was developed by the author as a history learning intervention for fifth to seventh graders. The game is built upon historical narratives of disenfranchised populations that are seldom taught, those typically relegated to the 'null curriculum'. These narratives include the stories of women immigrant labour leaders in the early twentieth century, more than a decade before suffrage. The project understands the purpose of history education as the preparation of informed citizens. In paying particular attention to …

Remembering Negdels: Nostalgia, Memory & Soviet-Era Herding Collectives, Maya Sutton-Smith

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

During the socialist period Mongolia’s nomadic herders were grouped into collective herding units called negdels. Today, over twenty years after Mongolia transitioned to democracy, herding has been privatized completely and negdels are a distant memory. This study explores the history of negdels by conducting twenty-five oral interviews with herders about their memories of collective herding. This study focuses on a soum in the Mongolian countryside, Bayandelger, while also incorporating interviews with people from Ulaanbaatar. Bayandelger is a unique location for this project because it was selected by the Soviets to receive assistance in an effort to make it a model …

The Human Face Of Permanent Climate-Induced Displacement, Alaina Umbach

Honors Projects in History and Social Sciences

Climate change is predicted to lead to mass displacement, since the land where millions of people currently live will be, at some point, covered with water. For some populations, this will mean to be permanently displaced to a different country because the territory that their sovereign nations occupy will disappear. The most well‐known cases involve the citizens of Vanuatu, Kiribati, Tuvalu, and the Maldives. As the negative impact of climate change becomes clearer and closer in time, policy solutions to this problem are discussed. In this paper, I look at previous cases of populations’ displacement to identify policy lessons that …

A Sense Of Home: A Cultural Geography Of The Leschenault Estuary District: Report, Sandra Wooltorton

Research outputs 2013

Executive Summary

In 2012, a project was implemented to determine the place-based social values of the people of the Leschenault Estuary district. The project included a historical study, a literature review, a survey with quantitative and qualitative questions, targeted community engagement (five focus groups, six individual interviews) and a photo-elicitation study with a group of high school children.

Research Question

What is history of the relationship between people and place in the Leschenault Estuary District, and what is the relationship in 2012? What were, and what are the place-based social values of the population?

Flame, Furnace, Fuel: Creating Kansas City In The Nineteenth Century, Twyla Dell

Antioch University Full-Text Dissertations & Theses

Though this work is a fuel and energy history of Kansas City from 1820 to 1920, it also provides a tool to describe and analyze fuel and energy transitions. The four parts follow the rise and fall of wood, coal and oil as their use grows to a peak and, in the case of wood, declines. The founding and growth of Kansas City as an “instant city” that grew from zero population to over three hundred twenty thousand in a hundred years embodies the increased use of fuels and energy in an urban setting and serves as a case study. …

The Road To The Antiquities Act And Basic Preservation Policies It Established, Francis P. Mcmanamon

Celebrating the Centennial of the Antiquities Act (October 9)

3 pages.

The Sustainability Of Sustainable Consumption, Paddy Dolan

Articles

This article examines the limitations of the concept of sustainable consumption in terms of the inadequate attention given to the social, cultural and historical contextualization of consumption. I argue that Macromarketing should adopt modes of inquiry that more fully engage with this contextualization. The implicit assumptions of ‘sustainable consumption’ center on the rational individual and his or her needs and wants, and neglect the significance of consumption practices as embodying the relations between individuals. Acts of consumption are not in opposition to, and prior to, macro structures and processes, they are macro processes at work. Consumer practices are cultural and …

For Providence, Another Era Of Greatness?, Chester Smolski

Smolski Texts

"Providence has come a long way from just 20 years ago when a visitor coming into the city by rail would find sprayed across the walls of the nearly empty Union Station such epithets as 'Providence is the pits' and 'Welcome to dead city.' And it was. I know because I lived there."

New Immigrants Echo Nation's Diverse History, Chester Smolski

Smolski Texts

"Having just eaten our way through Thanksgiving and having watched our school children do a variety of activities dealing with Indians and English settlers sharing the first bountiful harvest, we sometimes think that the English were the first Europeans to settle in what is now the United States. Nothing could be further from the truth."

Glorious Pre-Industrial City, Chester Smolski

Smolski Texts

""There is Jerusalem" was the shout of joy as the convoy drivers crossed a low rise of the Judean Hills and saw ahead the outline of their destination. Bringing supplies into the city after independance in 1948 was a hazardous undertaking because snipers along the route were constant threats to the convoys that supplied this divided city, occupied by both the Jordanian army and the Jews. The stark reminder of that time is today memorialized by the numerous truck chassis found along the side of the highway and at which ceremonies are held to honor those drivers who died so …