Use and abuse of the planet in non-rich regions: histories of fracking and windmills in a more than human geographical perspective

<abstract> <p>Remote and marginal areas with scarce and vulnerable populations are "comfortable" settings and suitable places for the development of new extractive activities for energy production. Fracking and modern windmills are often controversial activities in marginal areas for native and local populations, with varying political positions from local elites. The new scalar policies associated with the energy project introduce some of the resistance strategies in the form of more than human geographies or hybrid spatial relationships that characterize recent human geography. This paper explores and suggests possible ways of integrating local interests with regional or national policies based on the "health" of marginal populations, marginal rather than human materiality's and marginal more-than-human.</p> </abstract>

Listening to plants: Conversations between critical plant studies and vegetal geography

Attention to plant life is currently flourishing across the social sciences and humanities. This paper introduces recent work in the informal sub-discipline of ‘vegetal geography’, placing it into conversation with the transdisciplinary field of ‘critical plant studies’ [CPS], a broad framework for re-evaluating plants and human-plant interactions informed by principles of agency, ethics, cognition and language. I explore three key themes of interest to multispecies scholars looking to attend more closely to vegetal life, namely: (1) plant otherness; (2) plant ethics; (3) plant-human attunements, in the hope of encouraging greater cross-pollination between more-than-human geography and critical plant studies.

The Position of Cochinchina (Vietnam) in the Trade with Portugal in the XVI-XVII Period

The sixteenth century is considered the beginning time of trade activities between Vietnam and Western countries after great geographical discoveries in the world, in which Portugal was the pioneer country to establish trade relations wit h Vietnam. Cochinchina, with many favourable factors in terms of human, geography, and goods, was the place to attract Portugal on the way of exchange and establishment of Intra - Asian marine trade network. Thus, what factors led Cochinchina to a strategic position in this trade network, and Portugal had come here to trade with specific characteristics are, and the consequences of this trade process are, is the purpose of this article. Based on analyzing objective and subjective factors, generalizing and systematizing commercial activities between Cochin china and Portugal, the author provides objective assessments of the role of Cochin china in the voyage to The East of the Western countries in the contemporary time.

Visiting Places

In this chapter we look at notions of place, as outlined in work in human geography, tourism studies and other applied social fields. We consider the distinction between spaces and places and on how different experiences of place arise in the traveller. This is important to our understanding of tourist and other travel experiences, and to experiencing a sense of place in digital environments. Despite some commonalities, we find that digital travel is unlike physical travel in many significant respects, but that the experience of a place can, in some circumstances, be similar. For digital travel and digital experiences, place attachment is relevant for places that a person knows well. We conclude that a digital experience can become a spatial experience if our bodily senses are invoked by the virtual place.

TED talks as listening activities in the ESP classroom

The paper aims at showing how a well-known website ‘TED talks’ is used for creating listening activities in the ESP classroom in order to achieve the main goal which is to develop active listeners. It is needed when one is talking to another person (interactive listening) or when listening to a talk or a lecture (one-way listening). (Christine C. M. Goh 2012) . Listening tasks discussed in the paper are designed for students of social and political sciences. The syllabus of the faculty includes several disciplines such as Psychology, Politics, International Relations, Human Geography, Mass Communications. The paper presents how ‘TED talks’ might be used for creating listening activities using ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ strategies (Harlan Mills and Niklaus Wirth developed the top-down approach for software development field). In addition, the paper shows how the activities are conducted and what are the results of the performance. ESP listening might be considered as different from ESL listening since each discipline, listed above, has its own specific technical and specialized terms. However, methods of working on listening skills are similar and consists of stages which give opportunity to accomplish the task easily. Since Students who get ESP training are supposed to have experience in doing ESL course, they have motivation to be involved in the process and high interest in order to enrich skills for their professional development.

The roles of human geography in disaster studies

A disaster is an event or series of events which threaten and disrupt the human lives. The studies of disaster are constantly considered related to humans because humans act as the causative factor, victim and at the same time the executant of the effort in disaster handling. Pioneered by Gilbert White and pursued by other experts, human geography later shows the roles in examining issues in disaster studies especially in disaster mitigation. Based on several research and notions, many experts in human geography agree that there is nothing natural in natural disaster. Although the disasters are often affected by geosphere physical phenomenon but various human actions and activities on the face of the earth cause certain population to be more prone to natural disaster. If the risks toward disaster need to be reduced, bigger attention needs to be given to minimize population vulnerability, increase people capacity to overcome disaster and strengthen people capability to adapt to disaster area in a long term. Currently, UN as the responsible party in reducing risk of international disaster has been doing community resilience effort adopting Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA) 2005–2015: building the nation and community resilience towards disaster, followed by Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (SFDR) 2015-2030: reducing disaster risk and loss.