Nature

International audienceFrom the ancient times to the present debates on nature and environment, the idea of Nature has been one of the main concepts which interested Geographers. This paper deals with the representations of this idea in the works of thinkers who played a major role in shaping modern Geography, with a special focus on the Mediterranean world. It aims to clarify how Nature was important in defining heuristic strategies of the geographical sciences and their explications of reality. In the first part of the paper, we start from the early definitions of Geography, provided by Greek authors, and arrive to the establishment of the classical geography between the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 20th, stressing the line which started from the German Erdkunde and led to the creation of classical national schools in Europe at the end of the 19th century. In the second part, we deal with the relationship between Geography and different ecological and environmental ideas in the last century. Finally, we state that the role of Geographers in shaping the present environmental topics, dealing with ecology, landscape and planning is more important than what is normally believed, and that the role of the Mediterranean world in that is a major one

Nature

International audienceFrom the ancient times to the present debates on nature and environment, the idea of Nature has been one of the main concepts which interested Geographers. This paper deals with the representations of this idea in the works of thinkers who played a major role in shaping modern Geography, with a special focus on the Mediterranean world. It aims to clarify how Nature was important in defining heuristic strategies of the geographical sciences and their explications of reality. In the first part of the paper, we start from the early definitions of Geography, provided by Greek authors, and arrive to the establishment of the classical geography between the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 20th, stressing the line which started from the German Erdkunde and led to the creation of classical national schools in Europe at the end of the 19th century. In the second part, we deal with the relationship between Geography and different ecological and environmental ideas in the last century. Finally, we state that the role of Geographers in shaping the present environmental topics, dealing with ecology, landscape and planning is more important than what is normally believed, and that the role of the Mediterranean world in that is a major one

State and peripheries: the political geography of the Maldives between uniformity and segregation

La Repubblica delle Maldive negli ultimi decenni, almeno dagli anni novanta del ventesimo secolo ad oggi, è stata oggetto di spinte trasformative riconducibili all’incremento degli investimenti esteri e nazionali sul settore turistico, alla dipendenza energetica dai paesi produttori di greggio e, infine, all’introduzione e al consolidamento di modelli di consumo allogeni. In letteratura ha prevalso un’attenzione culturalista sulle conseguenze di queste trasformazioni. Noi proponiamo una lettura alternativa che si fonda su due concetti molto celebri nella geografia politica: il modello “centro periferia” e il “paesaggio politico” nelle versioni di Reynaud e di Lacoste. Il contributo mostra come lo Stato centrale, durante gli ultimi decenni, ha esercitato una funzione di controllo sulle comunità periferiche, come tale controllo sia leggibile attraverso questi modelli interpretativi e come la geografia politica maldiviana possa essere letta utilizzando le categorie della segregazione e dell’omologazione. In questo contributo ci si concentra sulla lettura di alcuni atti politici e sull’osservazione di un contesto locale specifico, l’isola di Faaf-Magoodhoo, dove gli autori svolgono ricerche sulla geografia sociale e ambientale presso il MaRHE Center dell’Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca.The Republic of the Maldives during the last decades, at least since the Nineties, has been involved by a complex body of transformative forces due to some factors: the increasing foreign investments in the tourism market; the dependency on oil producing Countries; and the introduction of new consumption models. The literature focused on a “culturalist” approach to these transformations. We aim at proposing an alternative analysis based on two pivotal concepts of Political Geography: the CenterPeriphery Model and the idea of “Political Landscape”, according to Reynaud and Lacoste. The contribution stresses how the central State, during the last decades, has imposed a control on local communities, how such control can be read through these two interpretive models, and how the political geography of the Maldives can be understood by adopting the spatial categories of segregation and uniformity. In this paper we develop our analysis both by reading two political acts, and by observing a specific local context, Faaf-Magoodhoo, an island where the authors carry out researches on environmental and social geography hosted by the MaRHE Center of the University of MilanoBicocca

The right place. Solid waste management in the Republic of Maldives: between infrastructural measures and local practices

Abstract The 2010 UNPD's Assessment of Development Results defined the Maldives "a vulnerable Small Island Developing State" by pointing out the influence of both external and local human factors on their fragile ecosystems. This impact is deeply related to a main geographical feature: the high dispersion of land mass and population, both of them spread over a distance of 860 km. Above all, this dispersion has an effect on two environmental issues: energy distribution and solid waste management. The latter is particularly interesting for the geographical analysis of Small Island Countries. Due to centre-periphery distance and cost benefits analysis, in the Maldives public and private actors have developed different solid waste management models: central and regional waste management dumpsites, hybrid systems implemented by resorts and "informal" practices still followed by local communities. In this paper, we discuss these systems stressing on the relevance of combining infrastructural measures with "informal" practices at local level. Furthermore, we report the outcomes of The Right Place, a participatory waste management action carried out by MaRHE Center (a Milano- Bicocca Research Center) in Faafu Magoodhoo Island

Je ne suis pas là

Dans le cadre d’un projet de recherche sur la désorientation spatiale, je vais m’attacher ici à la dynamique du genre dans l’orientation et la désorientation, ses raisons et ses mécanismes (Schmidt di Friedberg, 2007). Bien que le titre de cette communication soit centré sur la notion de performance et, implicitement sur la non-representational theory, je ne chercherai pas ici à présenter une théorie de la performance. Je proposerai plutôt à une revue critique des interprétations du phénomène..

The city – A bounded infinity

“La città: un infinito limitato. Un labirinto dove non ci si perde mai” (Kobo Abe, 1967): all’interno di un più ampio progetto di ricerca dedicato al “perdersi” in diversi contesti, si esamina il disorientamento nella pantopolis del futuro: La città contemporanea diventa il luogo letterario del vagabondaggio senza meta e il labirinto una metafora dello spaesamento urbano. Nel 2007 la popolazione mondiale urbana ha superato quella rurale. La città dell’urban sprawl e delle baraccopoli sconfinate non corrisponde più a un organismo, a un progetto, ma si presenta come una rete infinita di relazioni virtuali, senza un centro, senza una mappa e senza coordinate. Come ci si perde nella “città diffusa”? La città globale nasconde una realtà complessa e mobile, un mosaico di spazi differenti e frammentati ove è ancor possibile perdersi tra migliaia di sentieri, percorsi da cittadini multiculturali, stranieri ma allo stesso tempo attori e produttori dello spazio che li circonda.“The city – a bounded infinity. A labyrinth where you are never lost.” (Kobo Abe, 1967): in the frame of a broader research project about “getting lost”, we focus on disorientation in the universal pantopolis of the future. The present metropolis become the literary place of aimless wandering, the labyrinth a metaphor of urban disorientation. In 2007, urban world population surpasses rural world population. The city of urban sprawl and boundless slums doesn’t coincide anymore with an organism, with a project. It becomes a boundless net of virtual connections, with no centre, no map, no co-ordinates. How do you get lost in the urban sprawl? The global city hides a complex and mobile reality. A mosaic of different and fragmented spaces, where is still possible to get lost; where multicultural citizens, foreigners but at the same time actors and producers of the space around them, drive though thousands of paths

La città – un infinito limitato

“La città: un infinito limitato. Un labirinto dove non ci si perde mai” (Kobo Abe, 1967): all’interno di un più ampio progetto di ricerca dedicato al “perdersi” in diversi contesti, si esamina il disorientamento nella pantopolis del futuro: La città contemporanea diventa il luogo letterario del vagabondaggio senza meta e il labirinto una metafora dello spaesamento urbano. Nel 2007 la popolazione mondiale urbana ha superato quella rurale. La città dell’urban sprawl e delle baraccopoli sconfinate non corrisponde più a un organismo, a un progetto, ma si presenta come una rete infinita di relazioni virtuali, senza un centro, senza una mappa e senza coordinate. Come ci si perde nella “città diffusa”? La città globale nasconde una realtà complessa e mobile, un mosaico di spazi differenti e frammentati ove è ancor possibile perdersi tra migliaia di sentieri, percorsi da cittadini multiculturali, stranieri ma allo stesso tempo attori e produttori dello spazio che li circonda.“The city – a bounded infinity. A labyrinth where you are never lost.” (Kobo Abe, 1967): in the frame of a broader research project about “getting lost”, we focus on disorientation in the universal pantopolis of the future. The present metropolis become the literary place of aimless wandering, the labyrinth a metaphor of urban disorientation. In 2007, urban world population surpasses rural world population. The city of urban sprawl and boundless slums doesn’t coincide anymore with an organism, with a project. It becomes a boundless net of virtual connections, with no centre, no map, no co-ordinates. How do you get lost in the urban sprawl? The global city hides a complex and mobile reality. A mosaic of different and fragmented spaces, where is still possible to get lost; where multicultural citizens, foreigners but at the same time actors and producers of the space around them, drive though thousands of paths.“La città: un infinito limitato. Un  labirinto dove non ci si perde mai” (Kobo Abe, 1967):  all’interno di un più ampio progetto di ricerca dedicato al “perdersi” in diversi contesti, si esamina il disorientamento nella pantopolis del futuro: La città contemporanea diventa il luogo letterario del vagabondaggio senza meta  e il labirinto una metafora dello spaesamento urbano. Nel 2007 la popolazione mondiale urbana ha superato quella rurale. La città dell’urban sprawl e delle baraccopoli sconfinate non corrisponde più a un organismo, a un progetto, ma si presenta  come una rete infinita di relazioni virtuali, senza un centro, senza una mappa e senza coordinate. Come ci si perde nella “città diffusa”? La città globale nasconde   una  realtà complessa e mobile, un mosaico di spazi differenti e frammentati ove è ancor possibile perdersi tra migliaia di sentieri, percorsi da cittadini multiculturali, stranieri ma allo stesso tempo attori e produttori dello spazio che li circonda

Nature

International audienceFrom the ancient times to the present debates on nature and environment, the idea of Nature has been one of the main concepts which interested Geographers. This paper deals with the representations of this idea in the works of thinkers who played a major role in shaping modern Geography, with a special focus on the Mediterranean world. It aims to clarify how Nature was important in defining heuristic strategies of the geographical sciences and their explications of reality. In the first part of the paper, we start from the early definitions of Geography, provided by Greek authors, and arrive to the establishment of the classical geography between the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 20th, stressing the line which started from the German Erdkunde and led to the creation of classical national schools in Europe at the end of the 19th century. In the second part, we deal with the relationship between Geography and different ecological and environmental ideas in the last century. Finally, we state that the role of Geographers in shaping the present environmental topics, dealing with ecology, landscape and planning is more important than what is normally believed, and that the role of the Mediterranean world in that is a major one

Storia di una montagna, d'E. Reclus, 2008

Ferretti Federico, Schmidt di Friedberg Marcella. Storia di una montagna, d'E. Reclus, 2008. In: Le Globe. Revue genevoise de géographie, tome 149, 2009. Alpes et préhistoire. pp. 180-182

Environmental policy and climate change vulnerability in the Maldives: from the ‘lexicon of risk’ to social response to change

The climate change vulnerability discourse in the Maldives coexists with a pervasive set of critical environmental factors of significance to the socio-environmental systems of small peripheral islands. This implies the need to strike a balance between global challenges associated with environmental processes at the supra-national scale and the adjustments and strategies implemented at the local scale in response to change. The current paper offers a discussion of this dialectic, in reference to both the broader contemporary debate in island studies, and the political and environmental context of the Maldives. We first outline the international scenario, and then go on, in the second part of the paper, to provide a reading of environmental policy on these islands. We argue that emphasizing the country’s environmental vulnerability has reinforced a ‘lexicon of risk’ within the environmental discourse and that, in recent years, this narrative has been one of the main forces driving the construction of contemporary Maldivian ‘nation-ness’