• Digital Humanities and Cultural Heritage
• Publications close
• Geographical Journal close
• Journal of Farm Economics close

AbstractThis paper represents a “studying‐up” of the controversy over federal regulatory processes regarding protection of Lakota and Dakota cultural heritage in permitting the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL). To analyse this controversy, I engage with interest‐convergence theory, a component of Critical Race Theory, alongside a critique of its arguably simplistic definition of “white interests.” Agreeing that we need a finer‐grained understanding of elite interests as multiple, conflicting, and not always based purely in material self‐interest, I argue that interests should be understood as nonhuman components of elite assemblages, shaped by both emotions and societal ideologies yet constrained by – and in conflict with – top‐down, ideology‐driven missions and institutional cultural norms, as well as pressure from other assemblages. I use this framework to examine conflicts within and among various elite assemblages’ interests surrounding Lakota and Dakota cultural heritage. The US Army Corps of Engineers’ emotion‐ and ideology‐driven interests in demonstrating sensitivity to tribes’ concerns were constrained by their mission‐driven interests in accomplishing duties in a timely manner. These interests, in turn, conflicted with concerns (or lack thereof) manifested by other federal entities (Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, DC District Court) about DAPL’s impacts on cultural heritage, and with the company’s and federal government’s financial interests in pressuring USACE to enable completion of the pipeline’s construction. I unpack power differentials and dynamics among these various groups, as realised through particular interpretations and implementations of relevant legislation. I suggest that examining such “conflicts of interests” within and between elite assemblages, within the legal production of space, can elucidate controversies over industrial expansion’s socio‐environmental threats.

Alluvial fans are constructed when river deposition raises local elevations until the river “avulses” to an alternative lower elevation alignment. Avulsions may be triggered by exogenous events, such as floods that locally overtop the river’s banks; they may then cause extreme flooding on a fan and have major impacts. Rivers draining the Himalayas into the Gangetic plain have behaved historically in this way; for example, the Kosi River’s historical westward migration (1731–1963), and its recent eastward shift (1980). In the major fan‐delta of the Bengal Basin, the Brahmaputra and its tributary, the Tista, have both undergone historical avulsions, with some suggestion that these may have been causally linked. Between the Rennell survey of Bengal (1765–77) and the partial re‐survey by Wilcox and Ommanney (1828–35), the Brahmaputra River substantially changed its course. In Rennell’s time it turned south‐east into the Sylhet Basin leaving the higher land of the Madhupur Tract on its right; by 1830, it flowed due south with the Tract on its left. One hypothesis for the timing and cause of this avulsion relates it to the impact of a major flood and avulsion in the River Tista in 1787. This paper examines the evidence of the Rennell maps, the East India Company archives of correspondence between District Collectors about flooding and avulsion in the Tista, and the diaries of Francis Hamilton Buchanan who travelled along the Tista in 1807–11. From these contemporary sources it is possible to re‐construct the changes in the River Tista in the late 18th century, and to conclude that its avulsion had little direct influence on that of the Brahmaputra, although it went through some radical rearrangements of its own.

This article explores how multiple layers of spacetimes overlap and merge in individuals’ lives and relationships, transforming, enhancing, and/or hampering their abilities to interact with the environment. Drawing upon content‐analysed ethnographic notes, the article investigates the case of irregular migrants in Finland. It shows how their past activities, practices, and relationships, as well as their hopes and fears for the future, materially shape their now‐times. The latter change and evolve through a relentless combination of different past and future elements, in multiple, disparate, and often contradictory ways. This article considers how these migrants survive by inventing new activities and practices and building social relationships (with local residents and their own communities) on a daily basis, negotiating disparate elements, such as laws, digital and physical spaces, and work‐ and health‐related issues. In so doing, migrants acquire, in roundabout (non‐linear) ways, the knowledge and capacity to deal with their current, stressful conditions. The article shows how a spatio‐temporal approach can transform the emotional geographies of irregular migrants by shedding light on how they navigate the disparate and often conflicting elements of their lives, activities, and relationships.

The drastic reductions in human activities and mobilities associated with quarantines implemented to curb the spread of SARS-CoV-2 was recently described as “the anthropause” by Christian Rutz and colleagues Field scientists argue that the anthropause is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for observation and data collection in a world devoid of anthropogenic disturbances, notably those from extractive industries and travel In this commentary, we unpack the anthropause as a spatio-temporal event, attending to its geographies, histories, and genealogies There are multiple precursors of anthropause events which have locally altered human impacts on the environment We document the ways in which the COVID-19 anthropause has brought into focus human–animal relations through an analysis of the practices of scientists, publics, and nonhuman animals themselves Following Arundhati Roy, we conclude by advancing an understanding of the pandemic as a “portal” rather than a pause, identifying lockdown lessons from the anthropause for a post-pandemic new normality © 2021 The Authors The Geographical Journal published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers)

Local, traditional, or indigenous knowledge play an important role in disaster risk reduction (DRR), and many policy recommendations now call for the integration of local and expert views. While these attempts at integration are indeed promising, they are often built on assumptions that local knowledge is inherently separate from, or even subordinate to, expert perspectives. This article presents an account of what we call “local disaster knowledge” (LDK) in the Dieng Plateau of Central Java; a region characterised by volcanic craters that periodically expel poisonous concentrations of carbon dioxide gas. LDK is interpreted as a plural, embedded, relational and embodied knowledge system, which incorporates complementary forms of knowledge gained through everyday livelihood practice, scientific information and cultural‐religious beliefs. Rather than focusing on the “separateness” of local knowledge, this article forwards an ethnographic approach to disaster research that recognises the beneficial knowledge interactions that already exist (many of which occur informally), and the contextual reasons that explain local understandings of risk. Our findings advocate for the more genuine and equal inclusion of local views in global DRR policy and frameworks, as well as in the design and implementation of local level programmes.

The increasing interest in post‐human legal geographies is evident in the Anthropocene, but the agency of place calls for more attention in the discussion. This post‐humanistic study explores the production of lawscape – the bringing together of multiple forms of law and place – in three Indigenous (Adivasi) communities in Central India. According to the interviews and observation conducted in these remote villages, the lawscape of the community forest emerges in encounters between humans and non‐humans, which intertwine with assemblages of formal law. In these community forests, law and place constitute each other in multiple ways. The customs, norms, and relations of the lawscape are not only relationships among people with respect to the land, forest, and resources, but among the whole more‐than‐human community, including the forest itself, with respect to its constituents. The territories and their (external and internal) boundaries are defined through bodily and material practices and in the interaction between different actors. The community forest extends as far as the residents are able to actively protect the forest. The degree of exclusion of the boundaries depends on how actors from outside the villages are perceived to treat non‐humans in the forest, and for what purposes. Inside the boundaries of the community forest there are small patches that have their particular functions and rules: a variety of places for humans and non‐humans. Inside the community forest assemblage, movement, encounters, and materiality constitute these subtle lawscapes, with their particular norms.

In his third and final Address as President of the Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers), Nicholas Crane located our “inner geographer”. He argued that geography is with all of us from birth and should be fostered and celebrated through primary and secondary education. Noting that every major global issue is geographical at root, the President argued that redeployment of our inner geographer is key to encouraging the changes that are urgently needed if the planet is to remain habitable. In this context, the President concluded that the role of the Society, which is already fundamental to efforts to further geographical science, will become ever more important.

Pacific islands are spread over thousands of kilometres of the Pacific Basin and are characterised by similar ecological features but very diverse geologic origins, from steep volcanoes to flat coral atolls. Several climatic phases have been shared across the region within the last 1,000 years. Numerous and abrupt societal and cultural changes during the same period have been described for islands separated by thousands of kilometres. Conspicuous societal changes have been exclusively attributed to the main climatic patterns (changes in precipitation and temperature). The possible role of tsunamis and the occurrence of large volcanic eruptions as regional societal modulators, however, have traditionally received little attention from archaeologists, mainly due to the difficulty of recognising them in the sedimentary and geomorphological records. We explore the potential influence of the most important high‐energy events in the Pacific on Polynesian societal changes, with a special focus on Easter Island. For example, the extreme Samalas eruption in AD 1257 may have been an indirect driver of the sudden population decline, land degradation and decreased food resources on many Pacific islands between AD 1250 and 1300, and the Kuwae eruption in AD 1450 may have triggered the synchronous end of long voyaging expeditions across the Pacific. Important palaeo‐tsunamis have had unquestionable impacts on coastal and seafaring societies. A direct effect of the main eruptions of the last millennia (AD 1257 and 1453) on Easter Island has not yet been identified by any record, but we have calculated the likelihood of destructive tsunamis with an estimated period of recurrence for large events of less than a century. This insight is new and needs to be taken into account to complement what we already know about Easter Island's cultural history and archaeological sites, especially those in vulnerable coastal locations. This research was funded through the projects LAVOLTER (CGL2004-00683/BTE) and GEOBILA (CGL2007-60932/ BTE). We want to thank the family of Lorenzo Dominguez for permission to reproduce the pictures from the artist. We also want to acknowledge the CartoGIS tool from Australian National University College of Asia and the Pacific as the copyleft source of the map of the Pacific (Figure 1) Peer reviewed