Patterns of urban stream stability: relaxation times and the conditions of (dis)equilibrium in low-order urban watersheds

There is a need to understand the drivers and process mechanisms by which urban stream channels change, to include the pathways through which they evolve. Finding appropriate criteria for accurate assessment of stream adjustment in urban environments has emerged as an important, but difficult endeavor. The overall goal of this study is to determine what morphological variables, if any, achieve a new equilibrium following the disturbance caused by urbanization as well as ascertain the relaxation period associated with this adjustment. For this thesis a total of 19 channel reaches in North and South Buffalo Creek were studied in terms of several morphological characteristics, as well as the accompanying characteristics of each sub-basin these channels were within. The sub-basins were analyzed in terms of impervious cover, peak construction period, and topographic considerations. These values, both at the channel and watershed scale, were analyzed statistically to determine any predominant trends observed as a means of ascertaining the timeline between peak construction periods and channel stabilization. The overriding finding of this study was that the morphological channel value of the width/depth ratio appears to display a relaxation period of approximately 60 years, equilibrating at a value around 4.8

Interventions on rethinking ‘the border’ in border studies

The expansive understanding of borders and boundaries in recent scholarship has enriched border studies, but it has also obscured what a border is. This set of interventions is motivated by a need for a more sophisticated conceptualization of borders in light of the recent trajectories of border scholarship. In contrast to the much-feted “borderless world” of the early 1990s, the trend during the past decade has been to consider the exercise of state sovereignty at great distances from the border line itself as “bordering”. Indeed, Balibar’s (1998) notion that “borders are everywhere”—that the sovereign state’s loci of bordering practices can no longer be isolated to the lines of a political map of states—has gained tremendous currency but it is also quite a departure from traditional border studies. Thus the broad question posed to our contributors was: Where is the border in border studies

A Splintered Heartland: Russia, Europe, and the Geopolitics of Networked Energy Infrastructure

Much has been made about a revival of Mackinderian geopolitics in Eurasia, largely centred on struggles over access to energy resources and rooted in a territorial understanding of space. This paper proposes that the conceptual political cartography of Eurasia is indeed largely being rewritten, but conventional understandings of space, territory, and resources are insufficient in providing insight into a changing geopolitics. We interrogate the geographical logics of Russia's role as energy provider to Europe by focusing specifically on the provision of gas to Europe via Nord Stream, a new underwater pipeline that is scheduled to go online by late 2011. Drawing on debates in human geography on relational/topological views of space, and on the “splintering urbanism” thesis, the paper describes a rapidly evolving networked space that effectively “splinters” the territorial integrity of the region and thereby complicates notions of Eurasian geopolitics that emphasise proximity, territorial hegemony, and state-centric international relations

Re-Assessing resource dependency and criticality. Linking future food and water stress with global resource supply vulnerabilities for foresight analysis

While strategic studies on natural resources usually focus on the criticality of certain single materials, our paper starts from the inter-linkages between and among resources (called “the resource nexus”). It examines the impact any food and water stress may have on extraction activities in fragile states and regions. According to our approach, conflicts are likely to increase and may escalate in a number of countries, many of which are of relevance for the global supply of strategic materials. Future criticality for European and other industries, thus, is more likely to result from particular regions surpassing their adaptive capacities, and not mainly from limited availability or bottlenecks in the supply chain. The paper first develops a heuristic model of drivers for stress in resource-rich regions. Applying this approach, our paper then develops a global three-layered map along the dimensions of (i) future regional food and water stress, (ii) fragility of countries, and (iii) resource-rich countries with relevant reserves of strategic materials. As a result our paper tentatively identifies 15 countries at high risk and some 30 other countries being at relevant risk of causing resource supply disruptions. The conclusions underline the need to analyse those global inter-linkages and institutional mechanisms for strategic futures studies at a regional scale. As this may go beyond the capacities of actors on commodity markets, our paper also draws conclusions towards the establishment of an international data hub on the global resource nexus and for futures research. The paper points to some of the long-term implications of these issues

Euro-politics of scale: competing visions of the region in eastern Germany

As John Agnew (Political geography: a reader, 1997) has argued, political and economic change often occasions competing visions of the scales that are appropriate for organizing particular political and economic activities. Nowhere is this more evident than in the European Union, and eastern Germany offers compelling evidence of the contested nature of contemporary scalar politics. Yet a recent debate in human geography (see, e.g. Marston et al., Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 30:416–432, 2005) calls into question the very concept of scale and rejects its hierarchical conceptualization. In light of this debate, it is appropriate to draw on real-world case studies to examine the ways in which geography figures into policy. Drawing on field work in Saxony, evidence is offered in the form of competing visions of regionalism in the EU context. The evidence presented complicates both hierarchical and flat notions of scale. The current process of querying space to identify those scales that are best-suited for the globalized economy offers insights into both the socially constructed nature of scale as well as the ways in which scalar lenses help to illuminate the geographical aspects (and consequences) of strategies for coping with structural changes

Gender dichotomies in the kitchen: feminine and masculine qualities in spaces and artifacts

Using a postmodern theory of close readings, I investigated three artifacts: the KitchenAid Stand Mixer, the George Foreman Grill, and the Keurig Coffee Maker to trace the changing values as imbedded in kitchens in the early twenty-first century. The kitchen indicates a space in the home filled with hidden symbols and ideologies that reflect the identities of its owners. Historically, the kitchen has primarily been associated with feminine qualities, but today it represents more of a hybrid space, intertwining masculine and feminine genders. I observe this gender dichotomy in the layout and design of the kitchen, but also in the objects placed there. In addition, I characterized a set of wedding registries from Belk Department Store and investigated a set of floor plans from Better Homes and Gardens to further investigate the gender dichotomies of the kitchen

The biopolitics and geopolitics of border enforcement in Melilla

This article uses the multiple and contradictory realities of Melilla, a pene-enclave and -exclave of Spain in North Africa, to draw out the contemporary practice of Spanish, European Union, and Moroccan immigration enforcement policies. The city is many things at once: a piece of Europe in North Africa and a symbol of Spain’s colonial history; an example of the contemporary narrative of a cosmopolitan and multicultural Europe; a place where extraterritorial and intraterritorial dynamics demonstrate territory’s continuing allure despite the security challenges and the lack of economic or strategic value; a metaphorical island of contrasting geopolitical and biopolitical practices; and a place of regional flows and cross-border cooperation between Spain, the EU, and Morocco. It is a border where the immunitary logic of sovereign territorial spaces is exposed through the biopolitical practices of the state to ‘protect’ the community from outsiders. In light of the hardening of borders throughout European and North African space in recent years, this article offers a rich case study of our persistently territorial world

From the "silent majority" to "identity politics": the majoritarian imaginary and its rhetoric of minority excess

The purpose of this work is to engage in an analysis of political rhetorical strategies that invoke phrases such as the “silent majority” and “identity politics” in order to understand how these strategies operate logically, how they figure and define the “political” in the context of contemporary American politics, and what effects they have on minoritized subjects and their political labor. In this work, I place these strategies in an historical context of ongoing sociopolitical dominance by white, hetero-normative, and cis-normative ideologies with special attention given to the turn-of-the-century eugenics movement and its rhetorical operations. I engage in an extended analysis of these strategies and their historical and contemporary contexts through a series of close readings of political texts that theorize with, through, and against, including an historical white supremacist text that theorizes a political sphere based on the will of the “majority,” a contemporary monograph that claims “identity politics” poses a threat to the “properly political,” and the Combahee River Collective, a Black feminist manifesto that coined the term “identity politics” and uses it to both engage with and interrogate the “political.” By engaging with these texts, I hope to demonstrate that the visions of the “political” these texts map out are not inconsequential or dismissible as mere “strategy.” To the contrary, they constitute serious theorizations of what the “political” is and thus need to be critically engaged with in order to understand how the “political” is imagined and re-imagined through the deployment and re-deployment of these strategies

German Geopolitics in Transition

Two American geographers examine the evolution of Germany's geopolitical orientation in the aftermath of World War II, through the Cold War era, the war on terrorism, 9/ 11, and the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003. Drawing on public statements by German officials, government documents, opinion polls, and media accounts, the authors analyze the country's increasing post-Cold War assertiveness in foreign policy and much greater autonomy from the United States. They also evaluate the plausibility of two proposed geopolitical scenarios: that Germany will become part of a Paris-Berlin-Moscow-Beijing axis and that Germany will adopt a Europeanist, rather than Atlanticist, orientation

Fun=Learning: Teaching Strategies for the Early Elementary Curriculum

This thesis focuses on the creation of a thematic unit to teach during an internship at the elementary school level. The thematic unit includes a pre and post assessment, unit goals and objectives, general pre unit materials, lesson plans, data analysis and reflections. The purpose of creating a unit was to implement different fun techniques and strategies and to analyze assessment data from the unit to see if the strategies produced successful results