How do the places where people live help structure and restructure their sociopolitical identities and interests? In this book, renowned political geographer John A. Agnew presents a theoretical model that addresses the relation of place to politics and applies it to a series of historicogeographical case studies set in modern Italy.

On the open landscape of Israel and the West Bank, where pine and cypress forests grow alongside olive groves, tree planting has become symbolic of conflicting claims to the land. Palestinians cultivate olive groves as a vital agricultural resource, while the Israeli government has made restoration of mixed-growth forests a national priority. Although both sides plant for a variety of purposes, both have used tree planting to assert their presence on and claim to disputed land.
Shaul Ephraim Cohen has conducted an unprecedented study of planting in the region and the control of land it...

Nazareth, the largest Arab city in Israel, is a surprising example of ethnic harmony in a region dominated by conflict. A recent trend toward integration of its historical Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Muslim quarters however, has disrupted the harmony. In "Beyond the Basilica: Christians and Muslims in Nazareth, " Chad F. Emmett provides penetrating analysis of the complex relationship between the structure of Nazareth s quarters and the relations between its ethnic communities.
Emmett describes both the positive and negative effects of Nazareth s residential patterns. He shows...

In the most comprehensive and detailed cultural-geographic study ever conducted of the American Indian reservations in the forty-eight contiguous states, Klaus Frantz explores the reservations as living environments rather than historical footnotes. Although this study provides well-researched documentation of the generally deplorable living conditions on the reservations, it also seeks to discover and highlight the many possibilities for positive change.
Informed by both historical research and extensive fieldwork, this book pays special attention to the natural resource base and...

In the mid-1800s, a group of High Anglicans formed the Universities' Mission to Central Africa (UMCA). Inspired by Dr. David Livingstone, they felt a special calling to bring the Church, education, and medical care to rural Africans. To deliver services across a huge, remote area, the UMCA relied on steamer ships that were sent from England and then reassembled on Lake Malawi. By the mid-1920s, the UMCA had built a chain of mission stations that spread across four hundred miles.
In "The Steamer Parish," Charles M. Good Jr. traces the Mission's history and its lasting impact on public...

Bringing immigrants onstage as central players in the drama of rural
capitalist transformation, Anne Kelly Knowles traces a community of
Welsh immigrants to Jackson and Gallia counties in southern Ohio. After
reconstructing the gradual process of community-building, Knowles
focuses on the pivotal moment when the immigrants became involved with
the industrialization of their new region as workers and investors in
Welsh-owned charcoal iron companies. Setting the southern Ohio Welsh in
the context of Welsh immigration as a whole from 1795 to 1850, Knowles
explores how...

Long considered both best friend and worst enemy to humankind, fire is at once creative and destructive. In the endangered tropical paradise of Madagascar, the two faces of fires have fueled a century-long conflict between rural farmers and island leaders. For the farmers, wildland burning plays a key role in sustaining their agricultural livelihood and maintaining control of the island's rangelands, croplands, and woodlands. For the government, fire is the chief threat to the island's economic development and environmental stability. In Isle of Fire, Christian Kull argues that the antifire...

The only quantitative deforestation study to focus on one country, this case analysis of the Philippines since 1946 yields more concrete data than previous cross-national studies. David Kummer's close examination of the interactions among political, economic, and cultural factors and their environmental consequences sheds light on similar situations in other countries.

If a city based its planning decisions on the needs of an international bureaucracy rather than on the traditional needs of local residents and businesses, how would that city change? How might it look?
In Brussels, Belgium since 1957 home to the European Union such change is taking place. Observing the change, Alexis G. Papadopoulos explores a new geographical concept, the Central Executive District. This urban form is significantly different from the Central Business District, its conventional counterpart. Drawing on game and rational choice theories, spatial analysis, and land...

Tanga Region, Tanzania, is an area of persistent rural poverty with a long history of drought, floods, food shortages, famine, and social and economic disruption. Though farmers have been cultivating the land therefor hundreds of years, they have consistently been unable to supply adequate food for the region's inhabitants. In "Challenging Nature," Philip Porter examines eighteen farming communities to understand what the farmers there know about their environment and which historical and economic factors play into the lack of food security.
Porter first began work on this project in...