Geography of Africa

Author(s):  
Ezekiel Kalipeni ◽  
Joseph R. Oppong

This chapter reviews the state of North American geographical research on Africa in the 1990s. During the 1980s research on Africa dwelt on the many crises, some real and some imagined, usually sensationalized by the media, such as the collapse of the state in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Somalia, and Rwanda and the economic shocks of structural adjustment programs. The 1990s witnessed momentous positive changes. For example, apartheid ended in South Africa and emerging democratic systems replaced dictatorial regimes in Malawi and Zambia. Persuaded that Africa had made progress on many fronts largely due to self-generated advances, some scholars began to highlight the positive new developments (Gaile and Ferguson 1996). Due to space limitations, selecting works to include in this review has been difficult. In many instances we stayed within five cited works (first authorship) for anyone scholar to ensure focus on the most important works and to achieve a sense of balance in the works cited. Thus, research reviewed in this chapter should be treated as a sample of the variety and quality of North American geographical work on Africa. One major challenge was where to draw the boundary between “geography,” “not quite geography,” and “by North American authors” versus others. In these days of globalized research paradigms, geography has benefited tremendously from interchanging ideas with other social and natural science disciplines. Thus, separating North American geographic research in the 1990s from other groundbreaking works that profoundly influence the discipline of geography is difficult. For example, while the empirical subject matter included agriculture, health, gender, and development issues, the related theoretical paradigm often included representation, discourse, resistance, and indigenous development within broader frameworks influenced by the ideas of social science scholars such as Foucault (1970, 1977, 1980), Said (1978), Sen (1981, 1990), and Scott (1977, 1987). This chapter engages these debates. Building upon T. J. Bassett’s (1989) review of research in the 1980s, the chapter develops a typology for the growing research on African issues and related theoretical orientations (Table 36.1). The reviewed works fall into the three main subdisciplines of geography—human geography (by far the most dominant), physical geography now commonly referred to as earth systems science or global change studies, and geographic information systems (GIS).

Environments ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (10) ◽  
pp. 98
Author(s):  
Farhan R. Khan ◽  
Stephanie Storebjerg Croft ◽  
Elisa Escabia Herrando ◽  
Athanasios Kandylas ◽  
Tabea Meyerjuergens ◽  
...  

A convincing case has been made that the scale of human activity has reached such pervasiveness that humans are akin to a force of nature. How environmental science responds to the many new challenges of the Anthropocene is at the forefront of the field. The aim of this perspective is to describe Anthropocene as a concept and a time period and discuss its relevance to the contemporary study of environmental science. Specifically, we consider areas in environmental science which may need to be revisited to adjust to complexity of the new era: (a) recalibrate the idea of environmental baselines as Anthropogenic baselines; (b) rethink multiple stressor approaches to recognize a system under flux; (c) re-evaluate the relationship of environmental science with other disciplines, particularly Earth Systems Science, but also social sciences and humanities. The all-encompassing nature of the Anthropocene necessitates the need to revise and reorganize to meet the challenge of complexity.


2007 ◽  
Vol 72 (1) ◽  
pp. 164-172 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Hershberg

As the editors note in their introduction to this special issue of the journal, for more than 500 years, indeed since the conquest, Latin-American economies and societies have been profoundly affected by developments in the world system. Over the past century alone, watershed moments such as the Great Depression of the 1930s and the oil shocks and international debt crisis of the 1970s and 80s, have rocked Latin-American economies, transforming development paradigms and with them the circumstances of the many millions who inhabit the region. Today, a quarter century has passed since Latin-American economies embarked, unevenly yet largely irreversibly, on the path of market-oriented reform. Designed to stimulate growth through insertion into global markets, structural adjustment programs swept Latin America in the wake of the debt crisis and were followed by a panoply of measures that sought an enduring restructuring of economies in the region. The pursuit of these so-called Washington Consensus policies did away with the inward-oriented strategies that had shaped development in the region throughout the postwar period. However reluctantly, Latin America staked its future on a renewed engagement with the world economy, and became a player in the highly contested processes of globalization that are reshaping societies and economies around much of the planet.


2002 ◽  
Vol 96 (3) ◽  
pp. 676-678
Author(s):  
Nicholas Onuf

The editors of Bridges and Boundaries asked contributors—nine political scientists and eight historians, all of them North American—to reflect on their respective disciplines and the way they go about “the study of international events” (p. 1). We should notice a positivist disposition here. While contributors “share an interest…in the state, politics and war” (p. 2), events are the stuff of international relations. That the state, politics, and war are complex institutional phenomena perhaps not reducible to events points to conceptual issues that this volume fails generally to address. Instead, contributors discuss the many problems attending generalized explanation and empirical fit—theory and science—as if their shared interests imply a common stock of core concepts.


2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (39) ◽  
pp. 26
Author(s):  
Reisoli Bender Filho ◽  
Ibrahima Diallo

Since the local market liberalization in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Senegal has been striving to attract foreign private capital by adopting new economic policies such as the implementation of structural adjustment programs, reduction of the State i


2018 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Chuks Okpaluba

‘Accountability’ is one of the democratic values entrenched in the Constitution of South Africa, 1996. It is a value recognised throughout the Constitution and imposed upon the law-making organs of state, the Executive, the Judiciary and all public functionaries. This constitutional imperative is given pride of place among the other founding values: equality before the law, the rule of law and the supremacy of the Constitution. This study therefore sets out to investigate how the courts have grappled with the interpretation and application of the principle of accountability, the starting point being the relationship between accountability and judicial review. Therefore, in the exercise of its judicial review power, a court may enquire whether the failure of a public functionary to comply with a constitutional duty of accountability renders the decision made illegal, irrational or unreasonable. One of the many facets of the principle of accountability upon which this article dwells is to ascertain how the courts have deployed that expression in making the state and its agencies liable for the delictual wrongs committed against an individual in vindication of a breach of the individual’s constitutional right in the course of performing a public duty. Here, accountability and breach of public duty; the liability of the state for detaining illegal immigrants contrary to the prescripts of the law; the vicarious liability of the state for the criminal acts of the police and other law-enforcement officers (as in police rape cases and misuse of official firearms by police officers), and the liability of the state for delictual conduct in the context of public procurement are discussed. Having carefully analysed the available case law, this article concludes that no public functionary can brush aside the duty of accountability wherever it is imposed without being in breach of a vital constitutional mandate. Further, it is the constitutional duty of the courts, when called upon, to declare such act or conduct an infringement of the Constitution.


2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 1289-1299
Author(s):  
Daniel Victor Martins de Araújo ◽  
Cleire Lima Da Costa Falcão

A utilização de novas metodologias em sala de aula é um assunto recorrente dentro das discussões sobre o ensino de geografia. Possuindo isso em mente, como produto da disciplina de Oficina em Geografia II da Universidade Estadual do Ceará (UECE) foi elaborado um material didático alternativo com objetivo de auxiliar os docentes na construção de um ensino contextualizado de Geografia. Essa pesquisa objetiva apresentar uma metodologia alternativa para o ensino de Geografia que visa praticar além da ação cognitiva de memorizar um conceito, trabalhando a interdisciplinaridade, a criatividade, o emocional e a cooperação. A proposta foi construir um RPG (Role Playing Game), que é um jogo que se utiliza da interpretação de personagens para criar e contar histórias coletivamente nas quais todos os agentes se tornam ativos dentro desse processo. Realizaram-se os seguintes procedimentos: revisão bibliográfica, seleção e adaptação do sistema de regras. Por fim, produziu-se a aventura de RPG intitulada “A busca pelo arco de Gelo”, que trabalha alguns aspectos físicos do nordeste brasileiro principalmente do estado do Ceará. Após a elaboração do material constatou-se a importância de trabalhar perspectivas para além do conteudismo. Sentiu-se a necessidade de aplicar no ensino básico para mensurar seu real impacto. Palavras-chave:  Recurso Didático. RPG. Geografia Física. ABSTRACTThe use of innovative methodologies in the classroom is a recurring subject in discussions about geography teaching. With that in mind, as a result of the discipline Workshop in Geography II from the State University of Ceará (UECE) was created, an alternative didactic material with the aid of teachers in the construction of a contextualized geography teaching. This research looks to show an alternative perspective for the teaching of geography that aims to practice beyond the cognitive action of memorizing the concept, but also working on interdisciplinary, creativity, the emotional and cooperation. The proposal was to build an RPG (Role Playing Game), which is a game that uses character interpretation to create and tell stories collectively in which all agents become active within that process. The following procedures were executed: bibliographic review, selection and adaptation of the rules system. At the end, it produced an adventure of RPG "The search for the arc of Ice" that works on physical aspects from the Brazilian northeast, focusing on the state of Ceará. After the material elaboration, it was clear the importance to work on perspectives beyond content. It felt the need to apply the didactic resource to measure its real impact. Keywords: Didactic Resource. RPG. Physical geography.     RESUMEN El uso de metodologías innovadoras en el aula es un tema recurrente en los debates sobre la enseñanza de la geografía. Con eso en mente, como resultado de la disciplina Taller de Geografía II de la Universidad Estatal de Ceará (UECE), se creó un material didáctico alternativo con la ayuda de los maestros en la construcción de una enseñanza de geografía contextualizada. Esta investigación busca mostrar una perspectiva alternativa para la enseñanza de la geografía que tiene como objetivo practicar más allá de la acción cognitiva de memorizar el concepto, pero también trabajando en la interdisciplinaria, la creatividad, lo emocional y la cooperación. La propuesta era construir un juego de rol (RPG), que es un juego que utiliza la interpretación de personajes para crear y contar historias colectivamente en las que todos los agentes se vuelven activos dentro de ese proceso. Se ejecutaron los siguientes procedimientos: revisión bibliografico, selección y adaptación del sistema de reglas.   Palabras clave: Recurso didáctico. RPG Geografía Física.  


Author(s):  
Shuang Chen

The book explores the social economic processes of inequality produced by differential state entitlements. Drawing on uniquely rich source materials from central and local archives, the book provides an unprecedented, comprehensive view of the creation of a socio-economic and political hierarchy under the Eight Banners in the Qing dynasty in what is now Shuangcheng County, Heilongjiang province. Shuangcheng was settled by bannermen from urban Beijing and elsewhere in rural Manchuria in the nineteenth century. The state classified the immigrants into distinct categories, each associated with differentiated land entitlements. By reconstructing the history of settlement and land distribution in this county, the book shows that patterns of wealth stratification and the underlying social hierarchy were not merely imposed by the state from the top-down but created and reinforced by local people through practices on the ground. In the course of pursuing their own interests, settlers internalized the distinctions created by the state through its system of unequal land entitlements. The tensions built into the unequal land entitlements therefore shaped the identities of immigrant groups, and this social hierarchy persisted after the fall of the Qing in 1911. The book offers an in-depth understanding of the key factors that contributed to social stratification in agrarian societies in the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century China. Moreover, it also sheds light on the many parallels between the stratification system in Qing-dynasty Shuangcheng and the structural inequality in contemporary China.


Author(s):  
Graeme D. Ruxton ◽  
William L. Allen ◽  
Thomas N. Sherratt ◽  
Michael P. Speed

In 2004, the first edition of ‘Avoiding Attack: The Evolutionary Ecology of Crypsis, Warning Signals, and Mimicry’ by Ruxton et al. was published. The book aimed to provide a systematic and up-to-date review and synthesis of widespread anti-predator defences. In it, we focussed on sensorially mediated defences and the many factors that underpin these adaptations, aiming to set out the state-of-understanding in the fascinating world of anti-predator adaptations, and highlight which topics within the field seem most ripe for further investigation....


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