Search

During academic year 1999-2000, the Geography Department at Michigan State University (MSU) launched a program of online geography courses. Since then, four undergraduate online geography courses have been collectively developed and delivered to over 4,500 domestic and international students in association with MSU's Virtual University Design and Technology (vuDAT). The creation of each virtual course has taught valuable lessons concerning course development and administration; interactions with students have shed insight on course structure, content, and instruction. This article addresses development, management, and pedagogic concerns pertinent to the operation of online geography courses and offers suggestions to others who wish to develop online courses. Preliminary evidence on the effectiveness of these courses is also presented. (Contains 6 figures, 1 table, and 5 notes.)

1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created, By CHARLES C. MANN, xix and 509 pp.; maps, ills., bibliog., index. New York: Knopf, 2011. $30.50 (cloth), ISBN 9780307265722; $16.95 (paperback), ISBN [...]

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jhg.2005.09.028 Byline: Antoinette M.G.A. WinklerPrins Abstract: The Amazon region has long been a place of economic booms and busts. Much attention in the historical literature on Amazonia has focused on the largest and most famous regional economic boom, the Rubber Boom, a period of sustained economic prosperity for some from 1860 to 1920. Other 'booms' have occurred in the region as well and this paper describes and discusses one of those others. The paper demonstrates how an export economy in a global periphery (coffee in Brazil) affected economic development in a periphery of that same country and makes a methodological contribution by demonstrating how ethnographic research can contribute to an understanding of a historical period when the paper trail is weak. Jute, a fiber crop, dominated agricultural production along the Amazon River floodplain in the reach between Manaus and Santarem, Brazil, from the late 1930s until the early 1990s. The crop was introduced to the region by Japanese immigrants in order to supply the demand for jute sacking in the south of Brazil where such sacks were used to package commodities, especially coffee. Local smallholder cultivators grew and processed jute, production being mediated initially through Japanese middlemen, later by Brazilians. Poor fiber quality, several external shocks, including the removal of tariffs on imported jute, and especially changes in commodity packaging such as bulk handling and the use of synthetic sacks instead of jute sacks for the transport of coffee beans, the Amazonian jute market collapsed in the early 1990s. Despite its collapse, the legacy of the boom is still evident in the physical and social landscapes in the region. Author Affiliation: Department of Geography, Michigan State University, 207 Geography Building, East Lansing, MI 48824-1117, USA

A current pattern of seasonal migration, particularly among smallholders, is marked by movement between the Amazon River floodplain and upland bluffs near the city of Santarem, Brazil. Nearly fifty years of jute cultivation 'subsidized' residents of the floodplain, enabling them to remain there year-round. Without this subsidy, annual flooding and the concomitant seasonal dearth of cash-economy activities make permanent occupancy difficult. The present-day seasonal migration and complementary use of both upland and floodplain environments has broad implications for theories about past patterns of settlement and for the region's future sustainable development. Keywords: Amazon River, land use, migration, smallholders., Descriptions of lifeways in the Amazon Basin frequently focus on people who live either in the varzea (floodplain) (1) or on the uplands (Meggers 1996). To date, seasonal migration between [...]

Studies of local or indigenous soil knowledge have tended to concentrate on local systems of soil taxonomy and classification. Less attention has been given to how soil knowledge manifests itself [...]

This is, then, both a collection of fieldwork as it I is i and a window onto where fieldwork practice is headed. Practicing Fieldwork in the Neoliberal Academy Many of the contributors here situate their fieldwork efforts explicitly in relation to neoliberalized forms of university governance - a marked difference from two decades ago, when these pressures, if present, seemed less well recognized. It has been almost 20 years since the I Geographical Review' i s special issue on "Doing Fieldwork", edited by Dydia DeLyser and Paul F. Starr. [Extracted from the article]

Getting to Know Waiwai is a readable and likable book. It will appeal both to academics and to the informed public, especially to readers who are drawn to anthropological and [...]