Kategoria BISAC: History >> Historical Geography

Ellen Semple's Influences of Geographic Environment (1911) -- a treatise on what would later be called environmental determinism -- coincided with the emergence of geography as an independent academic discipline in North America and Britain. Highly controversial and written by one of America's first female professional geographers, it was considered by some a monument to Semple's scholarship and erudition, while for others it was conceptually flawed. And yet its influence on the development and direction of the new discipline of geography was profound. Innes Keighren explains why...

Food provides a particularly exciting and grounded research site for understanding the mechanisms governing global transactions in the 21^st century. While food is intimately and fundamentally related to ecological and human well-being, food products now travel far flung trade routes to reach us. International trade in food has tripled in value and quadrupled in volume since 1960 and tracing the production, movement, transformation, and consumption of food necessitates research that situates localities within global networks and facilitates our capacity to "see the trees and the...

The traditional image of New Zealand is one of verdant landscapes with sheep grazing on lush green pastures. Yet this landscape is almost entirely an artificial creation. As Britain became increasingly reliant on its overseas territories for supplies of food and raw material, so all over the Empire indigenous plants were replaced with English grasses to provide the worked up products of pasture -- meat, butter, cheese, wool, and hides. In New Zealand this process was carried to an extreme, with forest cleared and swamps drained. How, why and with what consequences did the transformation of...

As the world's population continues to grow apace and an increasing number of countries aspire to a twenty-first century lifestyle so the question of access to water resources becomes ever more critical. This timely volume shows how the struggle to control water is an issue of growing geopolitical importance. Drawing on a wealth of examples, and revealing how current problems are not necessarily new as often suggested, the international contributors provide a deeper theroetical analysis of the issues, enabling a clearer understanding to be obtained of how experience in one region can...