New Books for Geographers

New Books: October 2018

October 15, 2018

Every month the AAG compiles a list of newly-published books in geography and related areas. Some are selected for review in the AAG Review of Books.

Publishers are welcome to send new volumes to the Editor-in-Chief (Kent Mathewson, Editor-in-Chief, AAG Review of Books, Department of Geography and Anthropology, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA 70803).

Anyone interested in reviewing these or other titles should also contact the Editor-in-Chief.

PLEASE NOTE: Due to current public health policies which have prompted the closing of most offices, we are unable to access incoming books at this time. We are working on a solution during this transition and will continue our new books processing as soon as we can. In the meantime, please feel free to peruse previous books from our archived lists.

October 2018

Adventures in Archaeology: The Wreck of the Orca II & Other Exportations by P. J. Capelotti (University Press of Florida 2018)

American Tropics: The Caribbean Roots of Biodiversity Science by Megan Raby (University of North Carolina Press 2017)

Anarchy and Geography: Reclus and Kropotkin in the UK by Federico Ferretti (Routledge 2018)

Atlas of the World, Twenty-Fifth Edition by Oxford (Oxford University Press 2018)

Edges, Fringes, Frontiers: Integral Ecology, Indigenous Knowledge and Sustainability in Guyanaby Thomas Henfrey (Berghahn Books 2018)

Eurasian Environments: Nature and Ecology in Imperial Russian and Soviet History by Nicholas Breyfogle (ed.) (University of Pittsburgh 2018)

Garbage Citizenship: Vital Infrastructures of Labor in Dakar, Senegal by Rosalind Fredericks (Duke University Press 2018)

Here and There: A Fire Survey by Stephen J. Pyne (University of Arizona Press 2018)

Imagining the Atacama Desert: A Five-Hundred-Year Journey of Discovery by Richard Francaviglia (The University of Utah Press 2018)

Inevitably Toxic Historical Perspectives on Contamination Exposure, and Expertise by Brinda Sarathy, Janet Brodie, and Vivien Hamilton (eds.) (University of Pittsburgh Press 2018)

The Life of Plants: A Metaphysics of Mixture by Emanuele Coccia (Polity Books 2018)

A Million Years of Music: The Emergence of Human Modernity by Gary Tomlinson (Zone Books 2015)

Mining the Borderlands: Industry, Capital, and the Emergence of Engineers in the Southwest Territories, 1855-1910 by Sarah E. M. Grossman (University of Nevada Press 2018)

Opium’s Long Shadow: From Asian Revolt to Global Drug Controlby Steffen Rimner (Harvard University Press 2018)

Origins and Destinations: The Making of the Second Generationby Renee Reichl, Luthra Thomas, and Soehl Roger Waldinger (Russell Sage Foundation 2018)

Powerful Places in the Ancient Andes by Justin Jennings and Edward R. Swenson (eds.) (University of New Mexico Press 2018)

Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study, With a New Preface by Orlando Patterson (Harvard University Press 2018)

Urgency in the Anthropocene by Amanda H. Lynch and Siri Veland (The MIT Press 2018)

President's Column

Geography and Climate Change in the 21st Century: Keeping our Eyes on the Prize

October 2, 2018

Geography has many grand challenges for the 21st Century: combatting climate change and biodiversity loss; providing clean water; investigating safe refuge, health care, education, and poverty; preparing for natural hazards, and ensuring food security among many. Another grand challenge is ensuring a harassment-, bullying-, and bias-free Geography workplace, to ensure that progress continues on our other grand challenges. This is a “climate change” that we must unite around. This is not an easy topic to write about, but it is my civic and professional duty.

Donna Strickland, winner of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics (Credit: UNI, Waterloo)

On this week that Nobel Prizes are being announced, a cloud hangs over the academy and over our justice system. The Nobel Prize for Literature for 2018 will not be awarded because of sexual and financial misconduct allegations against committee members, culminating in one key figure being sentenced to jail this week for rape. Another news item notes how few women have been awarded Nobel Prizes and raises questions about bias. Fortuitously, the Nobel Prize committee just awarded Dr. Donna Strickland, the third female scientist in history (and first in 55 years), a Physics Nobel, shared three ways by scholars working on laser physics.

U.S. Supreme Court building (Credit: Joe Ravi, CC-BY-SA 3.0)

Meanwhile, the U.S. has just been through wrenching hours of testimony regarding sexual assault allegations, as part of the hearings to appoint the next U.S. Supreme Court Justice. We have not progressed far since Anita Hill testified on Capitol Hill. Another professional woman, separated by nearly three decades from Dr. Hill’s experience, gave solemn testimony last week. Both women came forward out of a sense of civic duty and opened their professional and personal lives and families to public scrutiny and far worse, for no personal gain. This testimony contrasted sharply with a privileged candidate for the highest judicial seat angrily responding during his turn, especially towards female questioners. But these are not the only allegations that have crossed our news feeds or desks. I have learned of recent sexual misconduct allegations, proceedings, and findings against a geographer at a U.S. institution. I also have received a signed request from AAG members for our organization to address a specific case and, more broadly, these issues in more depth. Broadly speaking, as a former administrator, I cannot discuss specifics of cases because victims, witnesses, and accused (and exonerated) parties must receive due process and be protected from retaliation in these proceedings. Meanwhile, the challenge for AAG is what can we do, as a professional organization, to improve the climate for and among our members?

As I wrote in my September 2018 column, the AAG Council appointed a committee to work on improving and strengthening our AAG Meeting Conduct policies, to make our Annual Meeting a safer place. The AAG Inclusion Committee will be presenting their findings and recommendations to AAG Council to consider this fall, so we can move forward with a new plan. I am grateful to the committee, led by Dr. Lorraine Dowler, for their hard work on this. Stepwise, there are other ways we can address the issue of harassment, bullying, and bias in our community and institutions. One of the informal observations by the Inclusion Committee was that science organizations seem to be ahead of the issues in several senses. For the rest of this column, I will share some of the best practices of other organizations, and set an agenda for where we may ask the AAG Council and our membership to go next.

On the topic of equity, The American Geophysical Union (AGU) President and President-elect have raised the issue of gender equity in their awards, and tasked their honors committee to study how to improve in this area, and their members to be more proactive in nominating deserving diverse members. Prompted by this published discussion, an AAG member sent me a query about gender balance in AAG Awards, and asked if AAG has undertaken a study to see where we stand, and expressed optimism that we are doing well. I would expand this to a broader examination of equity in terms of how do we honor, elevate, and retain all protected classes in our profession. This is another of our grand challenges then, to assess the equity in our recognition systems.

Also on the topic of honors, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Board just passed a policy and procedure to revoke AAAS Fellowship status due to “proven scientific misconduct, serious breaches of professional ethics, or when the Fellow in the view of AAAS otherwise no longer merits the status of Fellow.“ This includes sexual misconduct. This is another grand challenge that should be considered by our organization and others as a next step, again building on our Safe Meetings, anti-harassment, and ethics policies.

Broadening out on consequences for bullying, harassment, bias, and workplace hostility, AAG needs to work in partnership with our home institutions and our sibling organizations to ensure seamless reporting, support, and action structures to deal with complicated sets of allegations and due process for all, especially when they cross multiple jurisdictions. I have heard instances where a victim was harassed at a meeting, and the perpetrator was not from their home institution, and the event was co-sponsored by two organizations. Unfortunately, the home institution had limited capacity to deal with this. Therefore, these kinds of cases can fall through institutional jurisdictional gaps when it comes to Title IX enforcement. A further complication to protect victims and witnesses from retaliation is that they are not identified and do not know the penalties handed out to perpetrators. Thus, it will often take a very long time for investigation outcomes to see the full light of day. Creating a reporting structure and clearinghouse in partnership with our home institutions is therefore another one of our grand challenges. For AAG Meetings we have made progress to build on with our Inclusion Committee, combined with our foundational anti-harassment policies, and our existing standing committee that hears meeting harassment cases.

I wish that Geography and other organizations’ “Presidential Columns” did not have to be about demanding that our memberships be more respectful and more inclusive of one another; for civility; and for basic human rights. It is the responsibility of leadership to listen to our members; to shine the light on timely and difficult professional issues that have always plagued our fields, not only recently; and to act to make our professional communities kinder, more inclusive, and in the words of Former AAG President Victoria Lawson, “caring” places, of “human and environmental well-being” (Lawson, 2009, Antipode 41(1): 210-214). I believe we geographers are all on the same page with treasuring our planet and our environment, but we still have to work on valuing and respecting each other. I salute the vast majority of geographers who do care, the women and men who write to me, who sign your names with sincerity, hope, and courage to share ideas and ask for changes, and who are already part of the positive “climate change” in Geography.

Please share your ideas with me at: slbeach (at) austin (dot) utexas (dot) edu

— Sheryl Luzzadder-Beach, President, AAG
Professor, Geography and the Environment, The University of Texas at Austin

DOI: 10.14433/2017.0045

Journals

Meet the AAG Journals Editors – James McCarthy and Ling Bian

September 24, 2018

James McCarthy is the Nature and Society editor for the Annals of the American Association of Geographers and a Professor in the Graduate School of Geography at Clark University. His work analyzes the interactions of political economy and environmental politics, with particular emphases on rural areas, renewable energy, property relations, and social movements. He has published widely on these themes in geography and related disciplines, including two major edited volumes and over 50 articles and chapters. He has carried out research on natural resource management, energy policy, and connections between rural landscapes and livelihoods for the Ford Foundation and Oxfam America. Prior to coming to Clark in 2011, he was an Assistant and Associate Professor of Geography at Penn State University. His current research focuses on the relationships among climate change, renewable energy, and the political economy of capitalism, focusing in particular on the ways in which a renewable energy sector booming in the context of climate change is taking up land and other natural resources in ways that may slow further climate change on the one hand, but create new social and environmental claims, impacts, and conflicts on the other.

Professor McCarthy considers nature-society research and analysis to be an absolutely essential area of scholarship for geography and for society. The field’s breadth, relevance, and potential for integration of diverse topics and approaches is precisely what led him to a career in academic geography after work in the environmental NGO field, and those attributes make creative and committed new work in it needed now more than ever. As editor, Professor McCarthy seeks to ensure that the full range of current nature-society scholarship in geography is represented in the Annals. He enjoys seeing both the tremendous range and vibrancy of work in the field, and working developmentally with scholars early relatively new to the publication process. Professor McCarthy sees cultivating new voices, perspectives, and topics in the discipline and journal as essential responsibilities for an editor, and prospective authors should always feel free to contact him regarding potential topics for the journal.

Ling Bian is the newest of the four editors for the Annals of the American Association of Geographers, having assumed her role in January 2018. She currently serves as the editor for the Geographic Methods section of the Annals. Published six times a year (January, March, May, July, September and November), the Annals also dedicates one Special Issue per year which draws a diversity of papers from across the discipline under a single theme.

In addition to being an editor, Bian is a professor in the Department of Geography at the University at Buffalo where she teaches geographic information systems and sciences, remote sensing, network analysis, and geostatistics. Her research interests are in the general area of geographic information science, but she has decades of publication experience in topics related to GIScience, remote sensing, and geographic image retrieval. In recent years she has focused on the ontological foundation of spatial representation, individual-based and spatially explicit behavior modeling, network analytics, and their implementations in the context of public health.

Bian currently serves on the editorial board of the Annals and has previously served on the editorial board of The Professional Geographer and as Associate Editor of ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing. Bian is the Director of the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis at Buffalo, which was formed in 1988, to promote excellence in GIScience research. Even though she is the methods editor, Bian believes that those wishing to publish their research in geography today should try to pay attention to more than the methods themselves. Scholars should look to tell a story with their research and strive to see the social relevance of their work.

New Books for Geographers

New Books: August 2018

August 15, 2018

Every month the AAG compiles a list of newly-published books in geography and related areas. Some are selected for review in the AAG Review of Books.

Anyone interested in reviewing these or other titles should also contact the Editor-in-Chief.

August 2018

After Heritage: Critical Perspectives on Heritage from Below by Hamzah Muzaini and Claudio Minca (eds.) (Edward Elgar Publishing 2018)

Before Boas: The Genesis of Ethnography and Ethnology in the German Enlightenment by Han F. Vermeulen (University of Nebraska Press 2015)

Cartography. by Kenneth Field (Esri Press 2018)

Creole Italian: Sicilian Immigrants and the Shaping of New Orleans Food Culture by Justin A. Nystrom (University of Georgia Press 2018)

Data Activism and Social Change by Miren Gutiérrez (Palgrave 2018)

Economic Crisis and the Resilience of Regions: A European Study by Gillian Bristow and Adrian Healy (eds.) (Edward Elgar Publishing 2018)

Ethnographies of Movement, Sociality, and Space: Place-Making in the New Northern Irelandby Milena Komarova and Maruška Svašek (eds.) (Berghahn Books 2018)

Exploring Apocalyptica: Coming to Terms with Environmental Alarmism by Frank Uekötter (University of Pittsburgh Press 2018)

Extraction Empire: Undermining the Systems, States, and Scales of Canada’s Global Resource Empire, 2017—1217 by Pierre Bélanger (The MIT Press 2018)

Food Justice Now: Deepening the Roots of Social Struggle by Joshua Sbicca (University of Minnesota Press 2018)

Geography: Why It Matters by Alexander B. Murphy (Polity Books 2018)

Getting to Know Web GIS, 3rd edition by Pinde Fu (Esri Press 2018)

GIS for Surface Water: Using the National Hydrography Dataset by Jeff Simley (Esri Press 2018)

Handbook on the Geographies of Power by Mat Coleman, John Agnew (eds.) (Edward Elgar Publishing 2018)

Handbook on the Geographies of Regions and Territories by Anssi Paasi, John Harrison, and Martin Jones (eds.) (Edward Elgar Publishing 2018)

Historical Animal Geographiesby Sharon Wilcox and Stephanie Rutherford (eds.) (Routledge 2018)

Lining Up Data in ArcGIS: A Guide to Map Projections, Third Edition by Margaret M. Maher (Esri Press 2018)

Particles in the Air: The Deadliest Pollutant is One You Breathe Every Day by Doug Brugge (Springer 2018)

Promises of the Political: Insurgent Cities in a Post-Political Environment by Erik Swyngedouw (The MIT Press 2018)

Sustainability: Approaches to Environmental Justice and Social Power by Julie Sze (ed.) (New York University Press 2018)

Transition in Power: Technological “Warfare” and the Shift from British to American Hegemony since 1919 by Peter J. Hugill (Lexington Books 2018)

Wild Land: A Journey into the Earth’s Last Wilds by Peter Pickford, Beverly Pickford (Thames & Hudson 2018)

New Books for Geographers

New Books: July 2018

July 15, 2018

Every month the AAG compiles a list of newly-published books in geography and related areas. Some are selected for review in the AAG Review of Books.

Anyone interested in reviewing these or other titles should also contact the Editor-in-Chief.

July 2018

All the Agents and Saints: Dispatches from the U.S. Borderlands by Stephanie Elizondo Griest (University of North Carolina Press 2017)

Atmospheric Things: On the Allure of Elemental Envelopmentby Derek P. McCormack (Duke University Press 2018)

The Bohemian South: Creating Countercultures, from Poe to Punkby Shawn Chandler Bingham and Lindsey A. Freeman (eds.) (University of North Carolina Press 2017)

The Bolivia Reader: History, Culture, Politics by Sinclair Thomson, Rossana Barragán, Xavier Albó, Seemin Qayum, and Mark Goodale (eds.) (Duke University Press 2018)

China and Russia: The New Rapprochement by Alexander Lukin (Polity Books 2018)

Climate Change and Human Mobility: Global Challenges to the Social Sciences by Kirsten Hastrup and Karen Fog Olwig (eds.) (Cambridge University Press 2017)

Earth Repair: A Transatlantic History of Environmental Restoration by Marcus Hall (University of Virginia Press 2018)

Evergreen: The Garrett Family, Collectors and Connoisseurs by Evergreen Museum & Library (Johns Hopkins University Press 2017)

GIS Tutorial for Crime Analysis, second edition by Wilpen L. Gorr, Kristen S. Kurland, and Zan M. Dodson (ESRI Press 2018)

The Geopolitics of Spectacle: Space, Synecdoche, and the New Capitals of Asia by Natalie Koch (Cornell University Press 2018)

Global Cities: Urban Environments in Los Angeles, Hong Kong, and China by Robert Gottlieb and Simon Ng (The MIT Press 2017)

The Golden Age of Piracy: The Rise, Fall, and Enduring Popularity of Pirates by David Head (ed.) (University of Georgia Press 2018)

Grounded Authority: The Algonquins of Barriere Lake against the State by Shiri Pasternak (University of Minnesota Press 2017)

Hairy Hippies and Bloody Butchers: The Greenpeace Anti-Whaling Campaign in Norway by Juliane Riese (Berghahn Books 2017)

Imagining the Arctic: Heroism, Spectacle and Polar Explorationby Huw Lewis-Jones (I. B. Tauris 2017)

Island, River, and Field: Landscape Archaeology in the Llanos de Mojos by John H. Walker (University of New Mexico Press 2018)

Migrant Returns: Manila, Development, and Transnational Connectivity by Eric J. Pido (Duke University Press 2017)

Ogallala: Water for a Dry Land, Third Edition by John Opie, Char Miller, and Kenna Lang Archer (University of Nebraska Press 2018)

The Promise of Infrastructureby Nikhil Anand, Akhil Gupta, and Hannah Appel (eds.) (Duke University Press 2018)

Pushing Our Limits: Insights from Biosphere 2 by Mark Nelson (University of Arizona Press 2018)

Science and Environment in Chile: The Politics of Expert Advice in a Neoliberal Democracy by Javiera Barandiarán (The MIT Press 2018)

Tap: Unlocking the Mobile Economy by Anindya Ghose (The MIT Press 2017)

Transboundary Environmental Governance Across the World’s Longest Border by Stephen Brooks and Andrea Olive (eds.) (University of Manitoba Press 2018)

Understanding Conflicts about Wildlife: A Biosocial Approachby Catherine M. Hill, Amanda D. Webber and Nancy E. C. Priston (eds.) (Berghahn Books 2017)

Wildlife Crime: From Theory to Practice by William D. Moreto (ed.) (Temple University Press 2018)

Newsletters

Newsletter – July 2018

July 11, 2018

PRESIDENT’S COLUMN

Toddlers and Tears on the Texas Border

By Sheryl Luzzadder-Beach

Sheryl-col1-illo-sq-290x290 This column begins with special thanks and recognition of our outgoing President Dr. Derek Alderman, and outgoing Past President Dr. Glen MacDonald. Please join me in recognizing their leadership in moving the association forward on so many important fronts, ranging from civil rights to environmental security. We must carry this momentum forward from the strong foundations they established, and I am honored to take up the baton as your new AAG president… In my first presidential column, I address a matter of human rights and global understanding, to which geographers have much to contribute.

Continue Reading.

ANNUAL MEETING

Registration Opening Soon for #aagDC

washington dc Take-a-stroll-along-the-Tidal-Basin-in-the-spring-to-catch-a-glimpse-of-the-Jefferson-Memorial-and-the-iconic-Cherry-Blossom-trees-courtesy-of-washington.org_ The 2019 AAG Annual Meeting takes place from April 3-7, 2019. Participants and attendees can start to register for the meeting at the end of July. Please check your email in the coming days for an important announcement regarding the 2019 Annual Meeting fee structure. And remember, register early for the best rates!

Learn more about the 2019 Annual Meeting.

Annual Meeting Hotel Discount Rates Now Available

The official #aagDC conference hotels are now open for reservations. As you prepare to travel to Washington, DC, explore the Marriott Wardman Park and the Omni Shoreham – the co-headquarters for the 2019 AAG Annual Meeting. The Marriott and Omni are conveniently located directly across the street from each other in DC’s Woodley Park neighborhood. #aagDC will overlap with DC’s renowned Cherry Blossom Festival, which attracts more than a million tourists each year. Because of this, AAG has reserved a block of discounted rooms for Annual Meeting attendees.

Lock in your rate.

“Focus on Washington, DC and the Mid Atlantic” is an ongoing series curated by the Local Arrangements Committee to provide insight on and understanding of the geographies of Washington, DC and the greater Mid Atlantic region in preparation for the 2019 AAG Annual Meeting.

American Indians of Washington, D.C., and the Chesapeake

Become familiar with the Washington, DC and Mid Atlantic region of the US before you visit for the 2019 AAG Annual Meeting with monthly articles in “Focus on Washington, DC and the Mid Atlantic.” This month, hear from Doug Herman, senior geographer at the National Museum of the American Indian. Herman reflects on the cultures indigenous to the geographic area surrounding the Chesapeake and explains the political policies that have shaped their historical and contemporary geographies.

Read more.

ASSOCIATION NEWS

Meet the Editors of AAG Journals: David Butler and Nik Heynen

Published six times a year since 1911, the Annals of the American Association of Geographers is one of the world’s foremost geography journals. The articles in the journal are divided into four theme sections that reflect the various scholarship throughout the geographic discipline: Geographic Methods; Human Geography; Nature and Society; and Physical Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences. There are editors responsible for each of the four themes. This month, meet two of the Annals editors – David Butler and Nik Heynen.

Find out more about the AAG Journals editors.

AAG Welcomes Three Summer Interns

2018-Summer-Interns The AAG is pleased to have three interns join the AAG staff this summer. Alex Lafler, a junior at Michigan State University, is pursuing a BS in Geographic Information Science and a BA in Human Geography (along with a Minor in Environment and Health), Christian Meoli, a senior at the University of Mary Washington, is double majoring in Geography and Environmental Science with a certificate in GIS, and Jenny Roepe, a senior at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, is pursuing a B.A. in geography with a minor in geographical information systems and urban and public issues.

Meet the 2018 summer interns.

RESOURCES & OPPORTUNITIES

Geographers on Film Series Available through Library of Congress

GOF-art The AAG is excited to announce that the first 30 of 308 films in the Geographers on Film series have been digitized and are now available online from the Library of Congress. Geographers on Film is a collection of recorded video interviews conducted with hundreds of geographers between August 1970 and the mid-1980s, including scholars who have shaped the discipline such as Carl Sauer, Richard Hartshorne, Wilbur Zelinsky, Richard Chorley, Mildred Berman, Harold Rose, Jan Monk, Yi-Fu Tuan and Rickie Sanders. The late Maynard Weston Dow (1929 – 2011), Professor Emeritus at Plymouth State College, and Nancy Dow largely produced the series over 40 years.

View the archive.

Ask a Geographer Program Update: Volunteers Needed

The AAG is currently updating the Ask a Geographer program, an AAG outreach project that offers the media, government agencies, teachers, and students links to experts in various fields of geography. Are you looking for a fun service opportunity to support geography by helping others learn more about it? No matter your career status, consider volunteering for the AAG Ask a Geographer program!

Volunteer to promote geography today.

AAG Seeks Editor for ‘The Professional Geographer’

The American Association of Geographers seeks applications for the position of Editor of The Professional Geographer. The new editor, whose responsibilities include overseeing the solicitation, review, and publication of scholarly articles for the journal, will be appointed for a four-year editorial term beginning July 1, 2019.

Learn more about the editor position.

PUBLICATIONS

Read the July 2018 Issue of the ‘Annals of the AAG’

The Annals of the American Association of Geographers is published six times a year. Issue 4 of Volume 108 is now available to read online as part of the AAG membership benefits. This issue features an editors’ choice article on the racial nature of gerrymandering in the US.

Full article listing available.

Volume 4, Issue 1 of ‘GeoHumanities’ Online Now

GeoHumanities features articles that span conceptual and methodological debates in geography and the humanities; critical reflections on analog and digital artistic productions; and new scholarly interactions occurring at the intersections of geography and multiple humanities disciplines. There are full length scholarly articles in the Articles section and shorter creative pieces that cross over between the academy and creative practice in the Practices and Curations section.

View the manuscripts.

New Books in Geography — May 2018 Available

New-books1-1

Keep up with the latest publications in geography and related disciplines with the New Books in Geography List, published monthly. The May 2018 list, which features books on topics such as health, geopolitics, environmentalism, and postcolonial analysis, is now available to view.

Browse the list of new books.

May 2018 Issue of the ‘Professional Geographer’ Published

The Professional Geographer Cover Flat

The Professional Geographer, Volume 70, Issue 2, has been published. Of note to geographers interested in the Public Engagement theme for #AAG2018, the focus section in this issue is Out in the World: Geography’s Complex Relationship with Civic Engagement. The issue also includes short articles in academic or applied geography, emphasizing empirical studies and methodologies.

See the newest issue.

Spring 2018 Issue of ‘The AAG Review of Books’ Now Available

AAG Review of Books Spring cover Volume 6 Issue 2 Volume 6, Issue 2 of the quarterly The AAG Review of Books has now been published online. In addition to scholarly reviews of recent books related to geography, public policy and international affairs, this issue features longer book review fora of Refugees in Extended Exile: Living on the Edge, The Rise of the Hybrid Domain: Collaborative Governance for Social Innovation, and The Great Baseball Revolt: The Rise and Fall of the 1890 Players League.

Read the reviews.

OF NOTE

Africa Specialty Group congratulates Dr. Padraig Carmody, recipient of the 2018 Kwadwo Konadu-Agyemang Distinguished African Scholar Award

Carmody Padraig

Dr. Carmody teaches Geography at Trinity College, the University of Dublin, where he did his undergraduate and masters work and is a visiting associate professor at the University of Johannesburg. His Ph.D. is from the University of Minnesota in the United States. He also taught briefly at the University of Vermont after his graduation from Minnesota. At TCD, he currently directs the Masters in Development Practice. His research centres on the political economy of globalisation in Africa and he has published in journals such as European Journal of Development Research, Review of African Political Economy, Economic Geography and World Development. He has also published seven books, including The New Scramble for Africa (Polity, 2011), the Rise of the BRICS in Africa (Zed, 2013) and as part of the Royal Geographical Society-Institute of British Geographers’ book series with Professor James T. Murphy, Africa’s Information Revolution: Technical Regimes and Production Networks in South Africa and Tanzania (Wiley-Blackwell, 2015). He has won research grants from the United States National Science Foundation, European Commission and Irish Research Council. His current research examines the impacts of large scale land acquisitions in Africa. He sits on the board of Political Geography and African Geographical Review and is a former editor-in-chief of Geoforum (Elsevier) and is a Fellow of Trinity College. He was elected to the Royal Irish Academy in 2018.

GEOGRAPHERS IN THE NEWS

IN THE NEWS

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Journals

Meet the AAG Journals Editors – David Butler and Nik Heynen

July 2, 2018

Published six times a year since 1911, the Annals of the American Association of Geographers is one of the world’s foremost geography journals. The articles in the journal are divided into four theme sections that reflect the various scholarship throughout the geographic discipline: Geographic Methods; Human Geography; Nature and Society; and Physical Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences. There are editors responsible for each of the four themes, two of which are David Butler and Nik Heynen.

The Physical Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences section editor of the Annals of the American Association of Geographers is David Butler. Butler is a Texas State University System Regents’ Professor in the Department of Geography at Texas State University where he teaches courses on geomorphology, landscape biogeography, biogeomorphology, and Nature and Philosophy of Geography. With research interests that include geomorphology, biogeography, natural hazards, mountain environments and environmental change, Butler has considerable experience working with physical geography topics. He has also been the recipient of several awards during his career including the Distinguished Career Award from the Biogeography Specialty Group, the Geomorphology Specialty Group, and the Mountain Geography Specialty Group of the AAG as well as a variety of teaching and mentoring awards.

Aside from working with the AAG Journals, Butler has editorial experience that includes serving as Section Editor for Geomorphology for the AAG International Encyclopedia of Geography, as a section editor for the international journal Progress in Physical Geography, and as long-time book review editor for the journal Geomorphology. He has also guest edited/co-edited nine special issues of the journals Physical Geography and Geomorphology.

As an editor for AAG Journals, Butler feels a sense of satisfaction that he is helping to advance physical geography within the discipline. In his mind, the most pressing issue within physical geography right now is “figuring out how to address the concept of the Anthropocene in classical physical geography research and teaching.” For those who are looking to publish research in physical geography, David says to be sure potential authors completely understand and respect the journal to which they wish to submit research. He adds, “Beyond that, don’t give up! If you feel like you have something important enough to say to be published somewhere, you’re probably right. If your first journal of choice ultimately rejects you, take to heart their critiques and try another journal!”

Nik Heynen is the Human Geography editor for the Annals of the American Association of Geographers, a Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Georgia, and an adjunct Professor in the Department of Anthropology. At the University of Georgia, Heynen teaches mostly large introductory classes, in addition to graduate seminars.

Heynen’s research, for which he has won several awards including the AAG’s Glenda Laws Award for geographic contributions to social justice research, focuses on urban geography, especially urban social movements and urban political ecology. He is also interested in environmental justice; food/hunger studies; race, class, and gender, and science and technology studies.

While also serving as an AAG Journals editor, over the last seven years Heynen has invested time helping to establish UGA’s Center for Integrative conservation (CICR) and for over three years served as the Director of the Integrative Conservation (ICON) PhD Program that was established by a group who came together through CICR. He recently became the Director of the Geography of the Georgia Coast Domestic Field Study Program based on Sapelo Island.

In addition to the teaching and administrative activities he does at UGA, and he is also currently an editor at a variety of outlets in addition to the Annals. He serves as an editor for Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space and was also the founding editor of UGA’s Geographies of Justice and Social Transformation book series. Since 2006 he has been involved with the journal Antipode, first as the Book Reviews and Interventions editor, than as a general member of the editorial collective and he continues to serve as a trustee of the Antipode Foundation, a U.K. based charity. Part of the work he still does at Antipode is Chair Antipode’s Institute for the Geographies of Justice (IGJ).

Heynen enjoys seeing the work of his colleagues and, as an editor, helping their work develop and be published. He believes that both Black geographies and Feminist geographies are the two most exciting areas of geographic thought at this time, but continues to find great value in Marxist Geography.

Learn more about Nik’s research by visiting his website: nikheynen.com.

New Books for Geographers

New Books: June 2018

June 15, 2018

Every month the AAG compiles a list of newly-published books in geography and related areas. Some are selected for review in the AAG Review of Books.

Anyone interested in reviewing these or other titles should also contact the Editor-in-Chief.

June 2018

Architectures of Revolt: The Cinematic City circa 1968 by Mark Shiel (ed.) (Temple University Press 2018)

The Battle for Paradise: Puerto Rico Takes on the Disaster Capitalists by Naomi Klein (Haymarket Books 2018)

Climate Change and Human Mobility: Global Challenges to the Social Sciences by Kirsten Hastrup and Karen Fog Olwig (eds.) (Cambridge University Press 2017)

Communications/Media/Geographies by Paul C. Adams, Julie Cupples, Kevin Glynn, André Jansson, and Shaun Moores (Routledge 2017)

Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climatic Regime by Bruno Latour (Polity Books 2018)

An East Asian Challenge to Western Neoliberalism: Critical Perspectives on the ‘China Model’by Niv Horesh and Kean Fan Lim (Routledge 2018)

Environmental Justice in Postwar America: A Documentary Reader by Christopher W. Wells (ed.) (University of Washington Press 2018)

The Ethnobotany of Eden: Rethinking the Jungle Medicine Narrative by Robert A. Voeks (Univeristy of Chicago Press 2018)

Food and Animal Welfareby Henry Buller and Emma Roe (Bloomsbury Academic 2018)

Franco-America in the Making: The Creole Nation Withinby Jonathan K. Gosnell (University of Nebraska Press 2018)

The Geopolitics of Spectacle: Space, Synecdoche, and the New Capitals of Asia by Natalie Koch (Cornell University Press 2018)

How the West Was Drawn: Mapping, Indians, and the Construction of the Trans-Mississippi West by David Bernstein (University of Nebraska Press 2018)

Ice: Nature and Cultureby Klaus Dodds (Chicago University Press 2018)

Immigrants, Evangelicals, and Politics in an Era of Demographic Change by Janelle S. Wong (Russell Sage Foundation 2018)

On Decoloniality: Concepts, Analytics, Praxis by Walter D. Mignolo and Catherine E. Walsh (Duke University Press 2018)

Popular Geopolitics: Plotting an Evolving Interdiscipline by Robert A. Saunders and Vlad Strukov (eds.) (Routledge 2018)

The Road to Inequality: How the Federal Highway Program Polarized America and Undermined Cities by Clayton Nall (Cambridge University Press 2018)

Otis Templer

Otis W. Templer Jr., 84, passed away on May 8, 2018 at Carillon House in Lubbock, Texas. He was born in Crystal City, Texas, and had lived in Lubbock for the past 49 years. He married Josephine Parks in Dallas. She preceded him in death. He was a member of First United Methodist Church.

He was valedictorian of his high school class and an Eagle Scout. He graduated from Texas A&M University in 1954, and then served as an artillery officer in the United States Army. In 1959, he received a J.D. degree from the University of Texas School of Law and practiced law for several years in Central Texas. He returned to graduate school at Southern Methodist University, earning a master’s degree in 1964, and later a Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1969.

He was the first permanent professor of Geography hired at Texas Tech and was among the founders of the Department of Geography. He came to Texas Tech as an Assistant Professor of Geography in 1968, and was promoted through the ranks to Professor in 1978, and he taught at the university for over 45 years. He served as chairman of the Department of Geography for 15 years until 1994, and as associate chair of the Department of Economics and Geography from 1994 to 2001. He retired from full-time teaching in 2001, and continued teaching part-time until 2015. Almost everyone with a Bachelor’s degree in Geography from Texas Tech has had a class with Dr. Templer. His research primarily revolved around arid lands and water law, largely in Texas.

Survivors include a brother, a son, four daughters, six grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.

The family suggests memorial contributions be made to the Texas Tech Foundation, Inc. for the “Otis and Josephine Templer Geography Scholarship Endowment,” c/o P.O. Box 41034, Texas Tech.

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Robert W. Kates

Robert W. Kates, geographer, sustainability scientist, beloved husband, father, grandfather and great-grandfather, died in Trenton, ME, April 21, 2018. He was 89 years old.

He was a professor of Geography at Clark University, Director of the Alan Shawn Feinstein World Hunger Program at Brown University, Senior Research Associate at Harvard University, and most recently Presidential Professor of Sustainability Science at the University of Maine.

He was born in Brooklyn, New York on January 31, 1929. Following high school, he studied at NYU. He married Eleanor (Hackman) Kates when he was 19, a marriage that would last 68 years. They moved to Gary, Indiana, where Bob worked in a steel mill for twelve years, and where their three children, Katherine, Jon, and Barbara were born.

Thinking it would be nice to have a job with summers off so he could take his family camping, Bob enrolled in night courses with an eye to becoming a schoolteacher. An instructor who noted his apparent academic aptitude introduced him to University of Chicago geography department chairman Gilbert White, who would become Bob’s life-long friend and academic mentor. Dr. White facilitated Bob’s admission to the University’s post-graduate geography program, despite his lacking an undergraduate degree.

It would be an understatement to say that Bob thrived in this academic environment. Thirteen years following receipt of his PhD in 1962, Kates was inducted into the National Academy of Sciences in recognition of his groundbreaking work in a variety of geography-related fields. He was a recipient in the first annual MacArthur Fellowship in 1981.

Over his multi-faceted career, Bob Kates received multiple awards and honors including the U.S. National Medal of Science in 1991, Honorary Doctorates from Clark University and the University of Maine, the American Geographical Society’s Charles P. Daley medal, the Stanley Brun Award for Creativity from the American Association of Geographers (AAG), and most recently a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Human Dimensions of Global Change section of the AAG.

He served as the president of the AAG, and was proud to be a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007.

Bob’s academic career was prolific and spanned several interrelated areas. His earliest work was in natural hazards and human perception of environmental risk. His research took him worldwide, from studying reconstruction efforts following the Alaska earthquake in 1964 to helping create what is now the Institute of Resource Assessment in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania. Later his work broadened to how, in his words, “hazards, nature, technology and society interact to generate both vulnerability and resilience.” This led to work in population studies, hunger reduction, natural resource management, climate change, and foundational contributions to the emerging field of sustainability science.

A geographer by training, Bob’s curiosity and creativity were not constrained by traditional academic disciplines. He loved to ask big questions: “Why does hunger persist amid a world of plenty, and what can be done to end it?”; “How has humankind transformed the earth; indeed, can life be sustained?”; “Can there be a transition to sustainability that over the next two generations would meet human needs, while maintaining the essential life support systems of the planet?”

To help answer such questions, Bob enlisted hundreds of people from the world of academics, policy-makers, and international organizations to work on answers and solutions. His ability to combine ideas that at first glance do not seem to belong together was matched by his ability to engage and recruit wide circles of people from diverse fields to work together. His work style was collaborative: He helped author several books and hundreds of papers, many of which were in conjunction with others.

Confronted with the daunting scope of the problems he studied, Bob’s mode was to fuse academic rigor with a commitment to find achievable goals that could, in his words, “in some small way help change the world.” The question he often shared with his family, underlying all the rest, was “How does one do good in the world?” His lifelong concern with social justice and human rights made him unwilling to divorce practice from theory, to dismiss incremental improvements in people’s lives, or to lose hope.

For example, during his time directing the Alan Shawn Feinstein World Hunger Program, Kates helped develop a program not only to define the scope of global hunger, but also to develop an international multi-component plan to address it. The typical “Kates question” that shaped the program was not how to end world hunger. Instead, it was “What could be done to cut world hunger in half, in the following decade?” What concrete measures were possible, what resources were required, what it would cost, who could pay for it, then how to advocate for action? Bob’s prodigious energy, organizing talent, and inveterate optimism made such undertakings possible.

Bob was predeceased by his wife Eleanor in 2016. He leaves his children: Katherine Kates and her husband Dennis Chinoy, Jonathan Kates, Barbara Kates and her husband Sol Goldman. He leaves six grandchildren: Sam Kates-Goldman, Miriam Kates-Goldman, Shanyu Wang Kates, Sara Kates-Chinoy and her husband, Eric Nelson, Jesse Kates-Chinoy and his wife Mariemm Pleitez, Hannah Shepard and her husband Wade Shepard. He also leaves four great grandchildren: Petra Shepard, Rivka Shepard, Jack Nelson and Ezra Nelson.

Bob loved his family dearly as his life’s bedrock, and welcomed each new member, by birth or by marriage, into the family circle. He was gratified to live long enough to see his grandchildren launched on their various life adventures.

His health declined over the last several years. When his energy and capacity waned, he reluctantly relinquished his engagement with long-time friends and colleagues, and took comfort in the love and care of his family. He continued to relish a tasty grilled steak, a good mystery novel, Patriots football games, and the view from his deck overlooking Trenton Narrows. He died suddenly and painlessly the day before Earth Day.

To foster continuing work regarding his quest, “What is, and ought to be, the human use of the earth?”, gifts in Bob’s memory may be made online to the Robert W. Kates Fund for Creative Graduate Studies at umainefoundation.org/memorial to benefit the Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions at the University of Maine. Or donations can be mailed to the University of Maine Foundation, Two Alumni Place, Orono, ME 04469 with a note that it is for the Mitchell Center Robert Kates Fund.

A memorial service will be held sometime this summer.

Source: https://obituaries.bangordailynews.com/obituary/robert-kates-1929-2018-1057279836

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