Cultural Geography

In recent years, resilience theory has come to occupy the core of our understanding and management of the adaptive capacity of people and places in complex social and environmental systems. Despite this, tourism scholars have been slow to adopt resilience concepts, at a time when the emergence of new frameworks and applications is pressing.

Drawing on original empirical and theoretical insights in resilience thinking, this book explores how tourism communities and economies respond to environmental changes, both fast (natural hazard disasters) and slow (incremental shifts). It explores how tourism places adapt, change, and sometimes transform (or not) in relation to their environmental context, with an awareness of intersection with societal dynamics and links to political, economic and social drivers of change. Contributions draw on empirical research conducted in a range of international settings, including indigenous communities, to explore the complexity and gradations of environmental change encounters and resilience planning responses in a range of tourism contexts.

As the first book to specifically focus on environmental change from a resilience perspective, this timely and original work makes a critical contribution to tourism studies, tourism management and environmental geography, as well as environmental sciences and development studies.

https://www.routledge.com/Tourism-Resilience-and-Adaptation-to-Environmental-Change/Lew-Cheer/p/book/9781138206793

(Please contact the authors if you have any questions).

The Roots of Asian Weaving: The He Haiyan collection of textiles and looms from Southwest China. Eric Boudot and Chris Buckley, Oxbow Books, Oxford, 2015.

This ground-breaking book documents the weaving traditions and textiles of one of Asia’s most ethnically diverse areas, placing them in a regional context. It represents a novel approach to anthropological and ethnographic studies, based on detailed field reports and an explicitly comparative approach, integrating both statistical (Bayesian phylogenetic, Neighbornet) and classical methods to present a unified picture.

The first three chapters describe the ethnographic and linguistic and historical background to the region, focussing on the diversity of ethnicities, and their (sometimes turbulent) relations with the dominant Han Chinese polity. The authors review historical and archaeological remains of textiles and looms from the region, and present a revisionist account of the development of loom technologies.

The core of the book consists of detailed fieldwork, based on more than a decade of first-hand study. The authors record the traditions of Miao, Yao, Buyi, Dong, Zhuang, Maonan, Dai and Li weavers from Guizhou to Hainan Island. Their investigation focuses on decorated textiles made on the loom (as opposed to embroidery or appliqué), since these are the most complex and most conservative part of the weaver’s repertoire. They describe the looms and techniques of these groups, including diagrams, descriptions and photographs of the weaving processes and woven structures. Interviews with active weavers reveal the social dimensions of weaving and the items that are made from woven cloth, including marriage and burial related customs. Each tradition is illustrated with precisely provenanced examples of textiles from each sub-region, drawn from the He Haiyan collection in Beijing, including many nineteenth century examples. The research was carried out with a sense of urgency, since many traditions are disappearing, and in some cases are limited to a small number of elderly weavers. These accounts form a primary ethnographic source for weaving cultures in the region, many of which have never been documented before.

In the final chapter the authors present a comparative analysis of loom technology across the Asian mainland, using techniques derived from linguistics and biology (Bayesian analysis and Neighbornet plots). They use these to chart the evolutionary history of looms in Asia, demonstrating that all the major traditions in East Asia, Southeast Asia and Island Southeast Asia are structurally and functionally related, in spite of their apparent diversity, and have their origins on the Asian mainland in the same region that includes the apparent homlands of many of the major linguistic groups. The results have far-reaching implications for the understanding of how complex culture develops and spreads. The findings also shed light on widely-discussed topics such as the development of the Chinese Drawloom, showing how key features of the complex patterning device on this loom were derived from Tai-Kadai looms.

JELEN, J., CHROMÝ, P. (2018): Krušnohoří jako součást světového dědictví UNESCO? [Ore Mountains as a part of UNESCO World Heritage?] Geografické rozhledy 27(5), 30–33. The most significant area of mining heritage in Czechia are the Ore Mountains. In the local mining landscape, it is possible to find traces of medieval silver mining or remains after mining from the 20th century. The whole complex is nominated for UNESCO World Heritage List due to large number of conserved monuments or still preserved mining traditions.

Located at a former train depot, today ZK/U (Centre for Arts and Urbanistics) is progressively becoming a creative catalyst in Berlin. The goal of this chapter is to explore the processes by which derelict sites are repurposed as new cultural landmarks though minimal, DIY architectural interventions, retaining ruined materiality as an aesthetic value. To bridge the gap between scholarship and the arts, the authors opted for elaborating a photo-comic, and thus, methodology relied on fieldnotes, photos and interviews to grasp the motivations and commitments enabling life within ZK/U and the surrounding Moabit City Garden. Framed by architecture, urban studies, human geography and critical heritage, this chapter builds on ZK/U's collaborative and open-minded spirit.

Data la sua promessa alchemica, cucinare metanfetamina è un esercizio dotato di sacralità e di magia. Gli ingredienti comuni della chimica-industriale alla base della cura quotidiana del consumatore di massa – decongestionanti nasali, nafta per torce, fasciature per impacchi freddi, batterie – si trasformano in un elisir contro ogni male. Il male di un’esistenza precaria: sottoccupazione, insicurezza, sensazione d’inutilità. Con padronanza demiurgica, i meth-cooks svelano potenzialità nascoste e, con le loro arti, preparano questa polvere acre che aumenta il piacere e la voglia di impegnarsi in attività ripetitive, dal lavoro di fabbrica alle pulizie, fino all’affaccendarsi in casa, cuocendo altra metanfetamina. Chi la consuma può rimanere sveglio per diversi giorni, anche settimane. Ci si sente esuberanti, invincibili, liberi da ostacoli terreni come la fame, la fatica o la noia. You get more life, si usa dire. Molte delle persone con le quali ho trascorso del tempo nella contea nord-orientale del Missouri hanno cominciato a consumare meth a lavoro, iniziati dai colleghi o dai loro superiori. La pressione sociale che spinge al consumo può essere considerevole, ma il fascino di quella ritrovata energia può essere persino più potente, come la smania di lavorare più ore per far quadrare i bilanci.