Selected Books written by our Geographers

"Climate, particularly physical and surface climate, plays an intimate role in landscape pattern and diversity in Canada. Focusing on climatic processes at and near the earth's surface and on how these processes interact with the natural and human-modified landscapes, The Surface Climates of Canada goes beyond mere descriptive climatology to reveal the interrelationship between Canada's surface and its climate." (from the publisher)

"The aim of this book is to introduce the general reader and student to the nature and workings of the weather and climate of Vancouver, and through it explain some of the reasons underlying the range of reactions it engenders. It covers day-to-day events such as storms, the seasonal shift of weather types, long-term changes of climate, and the effect of the city on its climate and air quality."

"This modern climatology text explains the climates formed near the ground in terms of the cycling of energy and mass through systems. It begins with a discussion of atmospheric processes, and how they interact with the physical properties of surfaces to produce distinctive climates. This provides the conceptual framework for the subsequent analysis of the climates of a wide range of natural and man-modified environments, extending from the micro-scale of insects and leaves up to the local scale of cities and regional air pollution." (from the publisher)

"A wide mix of students often enroll in college-level meteorology survey courses. Most students find descriptive textbooks, such as Meteorology Today by Ahrens, to be quite appealing, because the books are thorough, up-to-date, accurate, stimulating, and attractive. However, some students have the desire and math ability to go beyond descriptive aspects. It is for this group that I wrote Meteorology Today for Scientists and Engineers. In a nutshell, my book has the equations that are omitted from Meteorology Today." (from the publisher)

"Part of the excitement in boundary-layer meteorology is the challenge associated with turbulent flow-- one of the unsolved problems in classical physics. The flavor of the challenges and the excitement associated with the study of the atmospheric boundary layer are captured in this textbook. The work should also be considered as a major reference and as a review of the literature, since it includes tables of parameterizations, procedures, field experiments, useful constants, and graphs of various phenomena under a variety of conditions." (from the publisher)

Rivers are sensitive to natural climate change as well as to human impacts such as flow modification and land-use change. Climate change could cause changes to precipitation amounts, the intensity of cyclonic storms, the proportion of precipitation falling as rain, glacier mass balance, and the extent of permafrost; all of which affect the hydrology and morphology of river systems. Changes to the frequency and magnitude of flood flows present the greatest threat. Historically, wetter periods are associated with significantly higher flood frequency and magnitude. These effects are reduced in drainage basins with large lakes or glacier storage. Alluvial rivers with fine-grained sediments are most sensitive, but all rivers will respond, except those flowing through resistant bedrock. The consequences of changes in flow include changes in channel dimensions, gradient, channel pattern, sedimentation, bank erosion rates, and channel migration rates. The most sensitive and vulnerable regions are in southern Canada, particularly those regions at risk of substantial increases in rainfall intensity and duration. In northern rivers, thawing of permafrost and changes to river-ice conditions are important concerns. The type and magnitude of effects will be different between regions, as well as between small and large river basins. Time scales of change will range from years to centuries. These changes will affect the use that we make of rivers and their floodplains, and may require mitigative measures. Radical change is also possible. Climatic impacts will be ubiquitous and will be in addition to existing and future direct human impact on streamflow and rivers.

"This collection of papers by internationally known scientists in the field of geocryology was originally presented as a series of lectures at the University of British Columbia in 1980-1 in honour of J. Ross MacKay. Together they illustrate the central dilemma in a science where fieldwork must be undertaken in the harsh periglacial environment and where, consequently, it is difficult to test theory rigorously. The papers provide a valuable overview of the current status of international research in a wide area of the field -- permafrost, patterned ground, and cold climate phenomena and processes. The treatment varies from anecdotal, historical, and descriptive to mathematical." (from the publisher)

"This collection of papers brings together the work of authors from ten countries who examine a wide variety of alluvial landforms in various geographical, climatological and geological settings, from mountainous terrain and shore environments to temperate and dry climates. Ties together basic and applied studies, emphasizing the importance of historical context in geomorphological and sedimentological investigations. Well illustrated, including foldout panoramas." (from the publisher)

"How will global change affect our landscape and the way we interact with it? The next 50 years will determine the future of the environment in which we live, whether catastrophe or reorganization. Global climate change will have a profound effect on our landscape, but there are other important catalysts of landscape change, including relief, hydroclimate and runoff, sea level change and human activity. This volume summarizes the state of the art concerning landscape-scale geomorphic implications of global environmental change. It analyzes the potential effects of environmental change on a range of landscapes, including lakes, rivers, coasts, reefs, rain forests, savannas, deserts, glacial features and mountains." (from the blurb) ""Geomorphology and Global Environmental Change' provides a comprehensive treatment of landscape degradation in geosystems ranging from coral reefs to ice caps that considers humans as a major endogenous forcing mechanism. This long overdue integration of geomorphology and human ecology greatly enriches the global change debate. It should be a primary reference for all serious students of contemporary geomorphology and the full range of environmental sciences" (William Rees, UBC Professor Emeritus, School of Community and Regional Planning)

"The task of selecting a small number of critical concept papers in fluvial geomorphology is highly personal. The priority in this collection was to focus on those concepts that have (a) increased our understanding of the cascades of mass being transported by rivers and (b) have successfully linked those cascades with fluvial forms.
Two consequences follow from this objective: (a) the concepts tend to relate to a limited range of preferred spatial and temporal scales and (b) there is a heavy focus on the Anglo-American literature."
'Fluvial Geomorphology' contains three parts: Part I, on fluvial sediment and solute cascading systems, contains 7 papers; Part II, on river channels as process-response systems, contains 7 papers and Part III, on river basins as fluvial process-response systems, contains 8 papers.

"Mountains represent one of the most inspiring and attractive natural features on the Surface of the Earth. Visually, they dominate the landscape. The increasing realization of the fragility of mountain areas because of changes in land use, management and climate, combined with an understanding of their importance for water and other natural resources, has resulted in a growing interest in mountain environments in recent years. Hence, 'Mountain Geomorphology' is a timely and unique contribution to the literature."

"The purpose of this book is to demonstrate that the land-based geomorphological evidence of environmental change from late Pleistocene, Holocene, historical and contemporary time periods remain central to a full understanding of global environmental change. This book is intended for environmental consultants, civil engineers, postgraduates and researchers in geomorphology, geology, civil engineering, environmental science and geography and as supplementary reading for upper level undergraduates in geography, geology and environmental science."

"The assessment, perception, communication and management of geomorphic hazards is an emergent field which combines the insights of geomorphology and risk studies, A geomorphic hazard is defined as occurring wherever landform change adversely affects the geomorphic stability of a site and simultaneously produces adverse socio-economic impacts. Accelerated soil erosion, desertification, floods, landslides, seismicity, soil salinization, thermokarst erosion and volcanic eruptions illustrate the essential interdisciplinarity of geomorphic hazards and risks."

"Steepland geomorphology concerns high gradient landscapes where there is a perceived close relation between soils, incomplete vegetation cover, recent geomorphic processes and associated landforms. Such areas are difficult to manage because of their high variability in terms of natural stability and inadequate theory and models. This book illustrates the different conceptual frameworks that are used at four different spatial and temporal scales of investigation in Africa, North and South America, Europe and Asia."

"Low temperatures, wind-chill, snow, sea ice and permafrost have been primary characteristics of Canada's northern and alpine environments for the past two million years. The evolution of Canada's cultural landscapes, the processes of settlement of rural areas and the present interaction of Canadian industrial society with its biophysical environment are all deeply influenced, directly or indirectly, by the frigidity of the greater part of the country. The phenomenon of global warming, if it occurs,, will lessen this coldness, but its impact on temperature extremes, sea ice regimes,, vegetation, snow distribution, permafrost, glaciers, lakes, rivers and mountain hazards is the subject of intensive research: the highlights of which are reviewed in 'Canada's Cold Environments'"

"This book advances a typology of experimentation in the field science of geomorphology -- the study of the form of the earth's surface and the evolution of its relief. This typology is then applied to problems of total drainage basin change and subsets of processes of change associated with slopes and channels. Geomorphology has traditionally been a descriptive discipline concerned with the evolution of landscapes over very long time periods. However, since the 1950s there has been a strong trend towards the study of contemporary processes of change and the influence of society as well as of natural biophysical factors. Consequently, an experimental approach is becoming more appropriate. Commissioned by the International Geographical Union, this work is the first to document different field methodologies in geomorphology. The contributors are internationally known geomorphologists from Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Japan. They review methods, global coverage, and advances in understanding while at the same time promoting a more dynamic, more relevant, and more applied science of earth surface change -- the geomorphological aspects of global change." (from the publisher)

"Technical yet accessible, The Avalanche Handbook, 3rd Edition, covers the formation, character, effects, and control of avalanches; rescue techniques; and research on understanding and surviving avalanches. Illustrated with nearly 200 updated illustrations, photos and examples, the revised edition offers exhaustive information on contributing weather and climate factors, snowpack analysis, the newest transceiver search techniques, and preventative and protective measures, including avalanche zoning and control." (from the publisher)

"This is the first textbook to consider all aspects of the cryosphere system in the context of global environmental change driven by human activity and climate. Considers all six aspects of the cryosphere – ice sheets, glacier ice, permafrost, river and lake ice, sea ice and snow – in the context of global environmental change driven by human activity and climate. Describes a new concept of cryosphere transience and landscape transition which links climate, hydrology, ecology and geomorphology. Looks at the evidence, process, and patterns of cryosphere change, on local and global scales. Provides a wealth of data to inform the current global environmental change debate." (from the publisher)

"Water supply privatization was emblematic of the neoliberal turn in development policy in the 1990s. Proponents argued that the private sector could provide better services at lower costs than governments; opponents questioned the risks involved in delegating control over a life-sustaining resource to for-profit companies. Private-sector activity was most concentrated—and contested—in large cities in developing countries, where the widespread lack of access to networked water supplies was characterized as a global crisis.
In Privatizing Water, Karen Bakker focuses on three questions: Why did privatization emerge as a preferred alternative for managing urban water supply? Can privatization fulfill its proponents' expectations, particularly with respect to water supply to the urban poor? And, given the apparent shortcomings of both privatization and conventional approaches to government provision, what are the alternatives?"

"Millions of tourists and residents know the Bow River as it tumbles through Banff's spectacular scenery or carves an elegant arc through the city of Calgary. Fewer people know the Bow as a heavily engineered, hard-working river. Alberta's iconic river has been dammed and plumbed, made to spin hydro-electric turbines, and used to cleanse Calgary. Artificial lakes in the mountains rearrange its flow; downstream weirs and ditches divert it to irrigate the parched prairie. Far from being wild, the Bow is now very much a human product: its fish are as manufactured as its altered flow, changed water quality, and newly stabilized and forested banks. The River Returns brings the story of the Bow River's transformation full circle through an exploration of the recent revolution in environmental thinking and regulation that has led to new limits on what might be done with and to the river. Rivers have been studied from many perspectives, but too often the relationship between nature and people, between rivers and the cultures that have grown up beside them, have been separated. The River Returns illuminates the ways in which humans, both inadvertently and consciously, have interacted with nature to make the Bow."

"Canada has long been seen as a land of natural bounty — a country of lush forests, abundant agriculture, and pristine lakes. Even as the sustainability of many of our resources has been questioned, Canadians have remained stubbornly convinced of the unassailability of our water. Mounting evidence suggests, however, that Canadian water is, in fact, under threat. Eau Canada assembles the country's top water experts to discuss our most pressing water issues. Perspectives from a broad range of thinkers — geographers, environmental lawyers, former government officials, aquatic and political scientists, and economists — reflect the diversity of concerns in water management. Arguing that weak governance is at the heart of Canada's water problems, this timely book identifies our key failings, explores debates over jurisdiction, transboundary waters, exports, and privatization, and maps out solutions for a more sustainable future. Water is arguably the most important resource of our time. How we govern it today has critical consequences for our future. Eau Canada provides a powerful discussion of the most controversial and pressing water issues facing Canadians today"

"The privatization of water supply is an emotive and controversial topic. The 'British model' of water privatization is unique: no other country has entirely privatized its water supply and sewerage systems. This book analyzes the socio-economic and environmental dimensions in privatization in England and Wales. It examines the implications of privatization for consumers, environmental management, and the water supply industry." (from the publisher)

Environmental history of the Fraser River exploring attempts to dam it for power.

"In a developing nation like the Philippines, many mothers provide for their families by traveling to a foreign country to care for someone else's. Families Apart focuses on Filipino overseas workers in Canada to reveal what such arrangements mean for families on both sides of the global divide.
The outcome of Geraldine Pratt's collaboration with the Philippine Women Centre of British Columbia, this study documents the difficulties of family separation and the problems that children have when they reunite with their mothers in Vancouver. Aimed at those who have lived this experience, those who directly benefit from it, and those who simply stand by and watch, Families Apart shows how Filipino migrant domestic workers—often mothers themselves—are caught between competing neoliberal policies of sending and receiving countries and how, rather than paying rich returns, their ambitions as migrantsoften result in social and economic exclusion for themselves and for their children. This argument takes shape as an open-ended series of encounters, moving between a singular academic voice and the "we" of various research collaborations, between Vancouver and the Philippines, and between genres of"evidence-based" social scientific research, personal testimony, theatrical performance, and nonfictional narrative writing.
Through these experiments with different modes of storytelling, Pratt seeks to transform frameworks of perception, to create and collect sympathetic witnesses—in short, to promote a wide-ranging public discussion and debate about a massive worldwide shift in family (and nonfamily) relations of intimacy and care." (from the publisher)

"This is the first sustained discussion of methodological issues in economic geography in the last twenty years. It comprises an extended discussion of qualitative and ethnographic methods; an assessment of quantitative and numerical methods; an examination of post-structuralist and feminist methodologies; an overview of case-study approaches; and an inquiry into the relation between economic geography and other disciplines. With short, accessible, and engaging chapters, this is a critical assessment of qualitative and quantitative methods in economic geography."

"This reader introduces students to examples of the most important research contributions to economic geography in recent years. In its structure and content, it mirrors "Blackwell's Companion to Economic Geography "and it can be used either to complement that volume or as a stand-alone text. The reader opens with an editorial introduction, summarising the nature of contemporary economic geography, explaining the volume's structure, and discussing what it means to take a critical approach to geography. The readings themselves are grouped into five sections, each of which is also prefaced by an editorial commentary, placing them within a critical framework. Suggestions for further reading are included to enable students to investigate particular topics further. The editors are all highly respected international authorities on economic geography."

"A Companion to Economic Geography presents students of human geography with an essential collection of original essays providing a key to understanding this important subdiscipline. The contributions are written by prominent international scholars offering a wide-ranging overview of the field. Places economic geography in the wider context of geography. Presents a comprehensive, up-to-date and accessible overview of all the major themes in the field. Explores key debates, controversies and questions using a variety of historical and theoretical vantage points. Charts the important work that has been done in recent years and looks forward to new developments in the global economy." (from the publisher)

"Logics of Dislocation is the first volume to systematically apply a postmodern sensibility to economic geography. In clear, jargon-free prose, author Trevor J. Barnes integrates a comprehensive review of economic geography's recent past with innovative work in economics, philosophy, and the sociology of science, clarifying key poststructuralist ideas and demonstrating their relevance to the field. In its critique of the rationalism and essentialism that characterizes prevailing models in the field, and its exploration of alternative conceptualizations, this book offers both a novel reconstruction of economic geography's past and a basis for a reconceived future." (from the publisher)

"Covering experiences from transitional, industrialized, and developing economies, this timely book emphasizes the critical prerequisites for effective regional planning. These prerequisites include sustainable institutions, social mechanisms, trust relationships, leadership, and public-private sector partnerships. Questioning many conventional approaches, the book considers the changing context in which regional planning now occurs. Exploring globalization, regions straddling international borders, the position of transitional economies, decentralization and empowerment of local governments, regional competitiveness, mega-urban regions, and new forms of regional governments this work covers much ground. Using such examples as the Arizona-Sonora corridor, the book specifically considers cross-border regions, or trade corridors, including the need to include economic complementarity and cultural differences in development policy. Examining the need to redefine regional planning, the book concludes with innovative strategies from China, Thailand, Japan, and the Philippines as well as the Americas. With contributions from both academe and practitioners, the volume shows that regional development planning involves integrated physical, economic, and social planning and that regional development planning has to address new regional forms, regional competition, and local governance. Based on fully revised papers given at a United Nations Centre for Regional Development conference, the book illustrates the changing context in which regional planning is now conducted, thereby providing a useful resource for planners and academics."

"As more Japanese companies move overseas, international business interest is focused on their operations in host countries. Since 1957 Japan has been investing heavily in Australia, and now that Japan is making headway in other pats of the world, including the UK and the USA, government and business in those countries have much to learn from the Australian experience. The first comprehensive study of post-war Japanese transnational corporations in Australia, this book givers invaluable insights into the particular characteristics of Japanese overseas investment. It looks at how, why and where Japanese corporations have set up their business activities in Australia, focusing on the economic, political, and geographic factors shaping their operations. It deals with all the major aspects of Japanese investment in Australia from the 1957 Australia-Japan Commerce Agrement to the sharp strengthening of the yen (endaka) at the end of 1985, and presents case-studies of Japanese trading companies, manufacturing companies, banks, and financial institutions. As well as highlighting the essential differences that separate the Japanese transnational corporations from those of the UK and USA, the study gives new theoretical insights into the complex behavior of Japanese corporations in their host countries."

"This book critically interrogates the work of David Harvey, one of the world’s most influential geographers, and one of its best known Marxists."

"Jim Glassman addresses the role of the state in the industrial transformation of what was, before the economic crisis of 1997-98, one of Southeast Asia's fastest growing economies. Analyzing the Cold War period, the period of the economic boom, as well as the economic crisis and its political aftershock, Thailand at the Margins recasts the story of the Thai state's post-World War II development performance by focusing on uneven industrialization and the interaction between internationalization and the transformation of Thai labor." (from the publisher)

Remaking the Global Economy offers a state-of-the-art survey of geographical perspectives on the restructuring and reorganization of the global economy. With contributions from leading figures in the globalization debate, the book explores the latest thinking and research, as well as the enduring controversies, across a range of interrelated issues, including: firm strategies and business knowledge; interactions between firms and nation states; production and innovation systems; transnationalism and labour markets; state restructuring. Each of the specially commissioned chapters presents interdisciplinary insights into the complex processes of economic globalization and their impact on the organization of firms, markets, industries, regions, and institutions. An integrated and comprehensive account, this is a sum of the latest work in the literature on globalization that will provide a detailed map of the geography of the global economy.

"Gender, Work and Space explores how social boundaries are constructed between women and men, and among women living in different places. Focusing on work, the segregation of men and women into different occupations, and variations in women's work experiences in different parts of the city, the authors argue that these differences are grounded, constituted in and through, space, place, and situated social networks. The sheer range and depth of this extraordinary study throws new light on the construction of social, geographic, economic, and symbolic boundaries in ordinary lives." (from the publisher)

"Sixteen essays by prominent feminist scholars and authors establish new paths in the study of intimacy and globalization, challenging globalization's grand narratives and their representation of women as either victims of forced migration or local actors of limited influence.
These essays intervene in grand narratives of global relations by focusing on the specific, the quotidian, the affective, and the eccentric. They scrutinize the frames we use to recognize and organize intimacy and analyze the global forces that undergird personal experience and exchange. Writing from multiple disciplinary and geographical perspectives, contributors extend a long-standing feminist tradition of challenging gender-based oppositions by upending hierarchies of space and scale. By placing the global and the intimate in near relation, they forge a distinctively feminist approach to questions of transnational relations, economic development, and intercultural exchange. This pairing encourages more personal modes of writing and engagement with the globalization debate and fashions a sense of justice that responds more thoroughly to the specificity of time, place, and feeling." (from the publisher)

"To disrupt traditional hierarchies of space, to forge productive dislocations, to reconfigure conventions of scale: these are the goals that continue to underwrite feminist investigations of the relationship between the personal and the political, the public and the private.
The Global and the Intimate issue of WSQ extends the feminist tradition by forging another such pairing for our time: the global and the intimate. The domain of intimacy is that of the private sphere, of the interior, of mental life; of individuals and the bonds between them; of touching, feeling, and reacting; of the local, the idiosyncratic, and the personal. How do intimate structures inhere in the global, too often imagined as undifferentiated, impersonal and diffuse space? How do we connect the intimate with the global, and what do such connections reveal about the ways in which we order our worlds?
Grand narratives of globalization have frequently adopted a gender-neutral (and implicitly masculine) stance, while women typically are represented as pure victims of globalization, either coerced to migrate or limited to the local scale, mired in their bodies and familial relations. We seek to push past this dichotomy and, by doing so, to locate agency for women and to understand how deeply global forces penetrate the intimate spaces of our psyches and bodies." (from the publisher)

"Working Feminism looks at key concepts and debates within feminist theory and puts them to work concretely in relation to the real problems faced by Filipino domestic workers and Asian youth in Canada. Geraldine Pratt draws to the fore the metaphorical and concrete geographies that lie implicit and underdeveloped within much feminist theory and suggests that a geographical imagination offers a means of reframing debates beyond polarized theoretical and political positions. Alternating between theoretical and empirical chapters, substantial and wide-ranging discussions of human rights, multiculturalism, and feminist politics are brought down to earth and—by putting them into the context of individual predicaments—to life. The empirical chapters situate and describe a decade-long collaboration by an activist group—the Philippine Women Centre—and demonstrate the fruits of a close and innovative engagement between poststructuralist feminist theory and a participatory action project." (from the publisher)

"This introduction to the philosophy of geography explores some of the liveliest areas of geographical argument. Each selection begins with an editorial that summarizes the debate that follows."

"Derek Gregory and Allan Pred's Violent Geographies gathers together a group of young and well established geographers to look at how territory and space delimit and shape both terrorism and political violence in wide range of places, from the Middle East to Latin America. In short, the book shows how physical violence, especially terrorism, disrupts the distinction between the global and the local by injecting transnational politics into the intimacies of everyday life. Violent Geographies also shows how terrorism is not simply used by nonstate groups --states use it as well, including many of America's allies. It goes far beyond 9/11 moving backward in history and across the globe to other locales to get at the heightened states of emergency that are occurring everywhere."

"In this powerful and passionate critique of the 'war on terror' in Afghanistan and its extensions into Palestine and Iraq, Derek Gregory traces the long history of British and American involvements in the Middle East and shows how colonial power continues to cast long shadows over our own present.

• Argues the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11 activated a series of political and cultural responses that were profoundly colonial in nature.
• The first analysis of the “war on terror” to connect events in Afghanistan, Palestine, and Iraq.
• Traces the connections between geopolitics and the lives of ordinary people.
• Richly illustrated and packed with empirical detail." (from the publisher)

Amongst intellectuals and activists, neoliberalism has become a potent signifier for the kind of free-market thinking that has dominated politics for the past three decades. Forever associated with the conviction politics of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, the free-market project has since become synonymous with the "Washington consensus" on international development policy and the phenomenon of corporate globalization, where it has come to mean privatization, deregulation, and the opening up of new markets. But beyond its utility as a protest slogan or buzzword, what do we know about where neoliberalism came from and how it spread? Who are the neoliberals, and why do they studiously avoid the label? Constructions of Neoliberal Reason presents a radical critique of the free-market project, from its origins in the first half of the 20th century through to the recent global economic crisis, from the utopian dreams of Friedrich von Hayek through the dogmatic theories of the Chicago School to the hope and hubris of Obamanomics. The book traces how neoliberalism went from crank science to common sense in the period between the Great Depression and the age of Obama.

"Security and identity are the rhetorical pillars of European Union and NATO enlargement. Across Europe, that enlargement--not as a one-time event but as an ongoing process--is proclaimed to stabilize East-Central Europe and to create a Europe that is finally "whole and free". Europe's eastern enlargement is a profoundly geographic and geopolitical project, as it is based on territorial conceptions about the essence of places, the borders of cultures, and the locations of threat. It inextricably ties European security to the unresolved questions about the borders of Europe and Europeanness. Geopolitics Reframed asks how the bundling up of geopolitics and culture works, how it affects political debate, and how it is transformed in the course of Europe's eastern enlargement. The book provides the first in-depth analysis of security discourses in the states that acceded into the EU or NATO, or both, in 2004. Tracing the reframing of security and geopolitics from a military to a more diffuse cultural issue, Geopolitics Reframed illuminates the link between security rhetoric and identity politics. For scholars an practitioners of political geography, international relations, and contemporary Europe, it offers a fresh, subtle, and timely analysis of some of the key categories of political debate in today's Europe." (from the publisher)

"A wealth of natural resources such as oil or diamonds should, in theory, favor a country's economic and social development. And yet, from the oil fields of the Persian Gulf to the diamond mines of West Africa, millions of people in resource-rich countries have seen their lives devastated as a result of exploitative commercial relations, corrupt governance and war. Going beyond conventional arguments of resource competition over scarce resources, this book examines the 'resource curse' affecting many resource-dependent countries and the spaces of (mis)governance shaping the violent geopolitics of many raw materials.

Highlighting the multiple forms of violence accompanying the history of resources exploitation and current business practices supporting predatory regimes, insurgent groups and terrorists, this book provides fresh and in-depth perspectives on so-called 'resource wars'. The book includes conceptual chapters and covers a wide range of case studies including the geopolitics of oil control in the Middle East, Central Asia and Columbia, spaces of governance and 'petro-violence' in Nigeria and 'blood diamonds' and other minerals associated with conflicts in Sierra Leone and the Congo. This book is a special issue of the journal Geopolitics."

“Human geography’s concern with the segmentation of population by race and culture has developed over the past decade. This book has been written to reconsider the debate about pluralism as a social state and problem, and to explore this issue in Third World and metropolitan contexts. The field is opened up by a re-examination of the seminal work of J. S. Furnivall and M. G. Smith and by exploring the significance of racial and cultural diversity in colonial, post-colonial and metropolitan situations. Case studies written by specialists are presented in each chapter; they represent a wide range of locales, including the global nature of the theme and emphasising the variable significance of ethnicity in different situations. Reflecting and commemorating the interests and teaching of Paul Paget, Emeritus Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford, and the mentor of the contributors and editors, this book will interest students and researchers in social geography and ethnic relations.” (from the publisher)

"Spatial and cultural analysis have recently found much common ground, focusing in particular on the nature of the city. Place/Culture/Representation brings together new and established voices involved in the reshaping of cultural geography. The authors argue that as we write our geographies we are not just representing some reality, we are creating meaning. Writing becomes as much about the author as it is about purported geographical reality. The issue becomes not scientific truth as the end but the interpretation of cultural constructions as the means. Discussing authorial power, discourses of the other, texts and textuality, landscape metaphor, the sites of power-knowledge relations and notions of community and the sense of place, the authors explore the ways in which a more fluid and sensitive geographer's art can help us make sense of ourselves and the landscapes and places we inhabit and think about."

"Edward Said's oft cited claim that Orientalists past and present have spun imaginary geographies where they sought ground truth, has launched a plethora of studies of fictive geographies. Representations often reveal more about the culture of the writer than that of the people and places written about. Yet the study of imaginary geographies has raised many questions about Western writers' abilities to provide representations of foreign places. Writes of Passage explores the interplay between a system of "othering" which travelers bring to a place, and the "real" geographical difference they discover upon arrival. Exposing the tensions between the imaginary and real, the contributors focus primarily upon travelers from the 18th and 19th Centuries to pin down the imaginary within the context of imperial power. With essays covering the regions of Africa, South Asia, and Europe, this book presents a unique historical exploration of issues of place, space and landscape and contemporary studies on travel writing and migration. Writes of Passage represents a valuable addition to the burgeoning literature on travel writing."

"This book examines the relationship of both countries to the Asian region from the perspective of the opening years of the millennium. Australia and Canada share many similarities, including the importance of agriculture and mineral resources, as well as federal systems of government. Over the last 20 years or so both countries have been impacted by powerful forces of globalization, and in particular by the development of trade, investment and immigration linkages with the countries of northeast and southeast Asia. In 1997 and 1998 the Asian financial crisis led to sudden instability in the region and provided an opportunity to examine the various implications of developments in Asia and their relationships with Australia and Canada. With an emphasis upon comparative contexts, the essays in this volume consider a number of relevant themes, including the challenge of addressing human rights in Asia, trade and economic relations, immigration and multiculturalism, and metropolitan responses to globalization."

"Japan today is at an important historical Juncture, the nation has become an amalgam of the traditional and the modern. As a result, the country has become increasingly difficult to categorize: how are we to represent today’s Japan effectively, and fairly predict its future? How can the opposing forces of “change” and “continuity” be reconciled in order to understand the nation as a cohesive whole?
This critical, multi-disciplinary collection explores the convergence of past and future in contemporary Japan. Contributors comment on a wide range of economic, socio-cultural, and political trends — such as the mobilization of Japanese labour, the burgeoning Ainu identity movement, and the shifting place of the modern woman — and conclude that despite the rapid changes, many of the traditional facets of Japanese society have remained intact. Institutional change, they assert, is unlikely to occur quickly, and Japan must find alternate ways to adjust to 21st century pressures of global competition and interdependence. A pleasure to read, this broad volume will be welcomed by upper level undergraduates, graduates, and specialists in Japanese studies."

"Six members of the Centre for Japanese Research (CJR), an area unit of the Institute for Asian Research at the University of British Columbia, came together in 1989 to work on a common theme of sponsorship of the Japan Foundation. They were motivated by the fact that after over a century of cultural, economic and political interaction between the two regions, mutual misunderstandings or perception gaps remain deep and wide and by the belief that highlighting these differences, as they manifest in diverse areas and manners, might potentially contribute to a better understanding, if not an immediate narrowing, of the gaps. The six essays contained in this volume are the products of such group efforts. Three authors are Westerners and the remaining three are Japanese by origin. By speciality, they represent modern Japanese literature, cultural anthropology, art history, political science, economics and geography."

"With clear, critical, and constructive surveys of key terms by leading researchers in the field, The Dictionary of Human Geography, fifth edition, remains the definitive guide to the concepts and debates in human geography." (from the publisher)

"Based on the premise that the cross-fertilization of ideas and concepts between human geography and the social sciences is central to the continuing process of rethinking human geography, these essays examine some of the major issues and questions facing the world today."

Geographical Imaginations is at once a profound and penetrating reading of geography as a discipline and a discourse, and also an imaginative and sustained attempt to situate that discourse within the fabric of contemporary social theory. Its focus is on understanding the ways in which social life is variously embedded in place, space and landscape. In the fulfillment scrutiny, sociological interpretation, and geographical sensitivity are interwoven in such a way as to move spatial discourse to new levels of sophistication and subtlety. In mapping human geography into contemporary social theory, the author addresses, reinterprets and questions key theoretical debates and issues –postcolonialism, structuration theory, feminism, deconstruction, postmodernism, and poststructuralism, and explores the crucial connection between space, power and knowledge. Deftly argued and illustrated throughout with pointed examples, Geographical Imaginations is both a lucid critique of contemporary social theory and a fundamental contribution to the understanding of social life and its intrinsic spatiality.” (from the publisher)

Gentrification remains a subject of heated debate in the public realm as well as scholarly and policy circles. This Reader brings together the classic writings and contemporary literature that has helped to define the field, changed the direction of how it is studied and illustrated the points of conflict and consensus that are distinctive of gentrification research. Covering everything from the theories of gentrification through to analysis of state-led policies and community resistance to those polices, this is an unparalleled collection of influential writings on a contentious contemporary issue. With insightful commentary from the editors, who are themselves internationally renowned experts in the field, this is essential reading for students of urban planning, geography, urban studies, sociology and housing studies.

"Writing Worlds represents the first systematic attempt to apply poststructuralist ideas to landscape representation. Landscape - city, countryside and wilderness - is explored through the discourse of economics, geopolitics and urban planning, travellers descriptions, propaganda maps, cartography and geometry, poetry and painting. The book aims to deconstruct geographical representation in order to explore the dynamics of power in the way we see the world." (from the publisher)

"The contributors to this volume demonstrate the richness and diversity of the social landscapes and communities in Canadian urban centres, emphasizing changes which occurred in the period from the mid 1960s to the early 1990s. The nineteen non-technical and integrative essays include reviews of the literature, empirical studies, and discussions of policy issues." (from the publisher)

"The devastating Hanshin earthquake that hit Kobe in January 1995 was the single largest disaster to affect Japan in the post-war period, causing over 6,000 fatalities and many hundreds of thousands displaced from their homes. Until Hurricane Katrina it was the largest post-war urban disaster in a developed economy. While many studies have focused on the earthquake and the initial recovery period, few have analyzed the longer-term impact on Kobe and its reconstruction. This monograph seeks to record the first 10-years of reconstruction, and recovery of the city’s neighbourhoods and its economy. The rebuilding of the city was the largest case of redevelopment through urban planning projects in the nation’s history. Within the general literature on how cities recover from great disasters, the study examines the main issues, decisions, and the process of reconstruction. The focus is on the geography of the disaster and its outcomes, and the opportunities that arose for planners to revitalize the city. It examines post-disaster land use changes in neighbourhoods destroyed by the quake and fires, Japanese urban policy and local governance issues, as well as economic recovery. The research indicates that the ability to rebuild stricken neighbourhoods was decidedly problematic, in part due to aspects of Japan’s particular style of urban redevelopment. As the study deals with how central and local governments addressed the challenges of rebuilding a major Japanese city it will be of interest to students of Japanese studies and practitioners in the field of urban planning as well as disaster management."

"This book brings together a series of contributions which examine the processes of contemporary city development and urban and regional planning in Japan. A central theme of the book is to consider, from a range of perspectives and situations, the role, policies, methods, and effectiveness of planning in guiding city development in Japan and in addressing present and emerging urban issues. Areas of particular concern include inner city development, the urban periphery, the institutional and regulatory context of planning, and planning for urban and regional economic and technological change. In many instances, the book draws parallels between Japan’s urban experience and planning approach with those of Europe and North America. Earlier versions of all but two of the chapters were published in issues of the Town Planning Review, but not only does the book have the value of brining these contributions together in one volume, it has also allowed the authors to make major revisions updating their work and incorporating new developments. The editors have contributed to a substantial, reflective introductory chapter and have also included a chronology of Japanese planning legislation and an annotated guide to selected English-language literature on Japanese urban and regional planning. While the main aim of the book is to provide a detailed interpretation of current urban planning issues and policies in Japan, the chapters also provide a foundation for understanding how Japanese city planning may evolve in the future."

Beginning of Preface: "Like any other project, this book was born from a combination of purpose and circumstance.  The purpose is derived from the long-standing interest of both of us in community organizations -in Hasson's case, from detailed work with a range of groups in Jerusalem, including urban social movements and neighbourhood councils, and in Ley's, an orientation nurtured by community involvement in Philadelphia's inner city, and sustained by work with neighbourhood groups in inner Vancouver. Besides a scholarly interest in the constitution and actions of grass-roots groups, and a political-moral perspective that there is much that warrants community mobilization, we are also attracted by the view, enunciated most recently by Vaclav Havel in Disturbing the Peace, that community action matters, and not only for its material results.  Even when there remains little ground for optimism, wrote Havel in Czechoslovakia's dismal days of 1986, there remains hope, 'an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed.'  This humanism stands in stark contrast to other voices in the past decade, invoking both a persisting theoretical functionalism (of the political right and the left) and a practical instrumentalism, which grant such processes as 'globalization' and 'privatization' an unassailable life of their own.  Our boarder theoretical position is that the city is both socially constructed and socially contested, and that the demystification of such umbrella categories not only confirms the status of individuals and groups in a squarely political process, albeit within a range of both enabling and inhibiting contexts.  This project to remake the city, however partially, in their own image through political action was also the objective of the eight neighbourhood groups we will meet in the chapters that follow."

Neoliberalism's 'market revolution'—realized through practices like privatization, deregulation, fiscal devolution, and workfare program—has had a transformative effect on contemporary cities. The consequences of market-oriented politics for urban life have been widely studied, but less attention has been given to how grassroots groups, nongovernmental organizations, and progressive city administrations are fighting back. In case studies written from a variety of theoretical and political perspectives, this book examines how struggles around such issues as affordable housing, public services and space, neighborhood sustainability, living wages, workers' rights, fair trade, and democratic governance are reshaping urban political geographies in North America and around the world.

"What factors lay behind the rehabilitation of central city districts across the world? Set against the contexts of international transformations in a post-industrial postmodern society, this book examines the creation and self-creation of a new middle class of professional and managerial workers associated with the process of gentrification. These are amongst the privileged members in the growing polarisation of urban society. The book examines their impact on central housing markets, retailing and leisure spaces in the inner city. Taking as its focus six large Canadian cities, the author identifies a distinctive cultural new class of urbane social and cultural professionals inspired in part by the critical youth movements of the 1960s for whom old inner city neighbourhoods served as oppositional sites to assail the bourgeois suburbs. The study looks at their close links with reform movements, neighbourhood activism and a welfare state that often provided their employment, in a progressive aesthetisation of central city spaces since the 1980s. The New Middle Class and the Remaking of the Central City offers the first detailed and comparative study of gentrification which locates the phenomenon in broader historical and theoretical contexts."

"Vancouver and Its Region is a broad-ranging account of one of the world's most spectacular and liveable metropolitan areas. It presents a finely drawn historical geography of the city and its surroundings, an incisive commentary on the contemporary city, and a valuable report on the impacts of urban growth on the biophysical environment. A unique collaborative enterprise involving nineteen members of the UBC geography department, whose expertise ranges from physical science through social science to the humanities and landscape photography, the book traces the physical, social, economic, historical, and environmental development of a relatively small but highly important area of British Columbia and Canada. Vancouver's story has many facets. The city enjoys a magnificent physical setting shaped over many millennia but sculpted into approximately its present form in the last few thousand years by glaciers and volcanoes and more recently profoundly altered by urbanization. It is the home of a complex and vigorous Native society, whose culture was based on the rich local resources well into the nineteenth century but was disrupted and marginalized by the impact of the fur trade, the gold rush, the railroad, and the urbanization of its territory. During the latter part of this century, it has developed into a dynamic international metropolis but has also had to deal with the accompanying social, ethnic, and political tensions. Opening with a vivid photo essay, which presents several original views of the metropolitan area, Vancouver and Its Region is richly illustrated with many original maps, diagrams, and photographs, which are filled with local detail yet point out issues and processes that are relevant far beyond Vancouver. The result of decades of research, this readable, provocative, and informative book will appeal to the local community and to students and academics interested in the many disciplines it represents." (from the publisher)