Chris Lukinbeal

Practicing physical geography: An actor-network view of physical geography exemplified by the rock art stability index

This paper explores the use of a new pedagogy, the rock art stability index (RASI), to engender deeper understanding of weathering science concepts by students. Owing to its dynamic nature, RASI represents a quintessential actor network for weathering science, because it links task in the landscape with an active material practice and an alternative materialistic world-view recently called for in positivistic science, to create place. Using concept maps as an assessment tool, 571 college undergraduate students and 13 junior high school integrated science students (ages 12—13) were evaluated for increased learning potential between pre- and post-field experiences. Further, this article demonstrates that when students use RASI to learn the fundamental complex science of weathering they make in-depth connections between weathering form and process not achieved through traditional, positivistic weathering pedagogy. We argue that RASI draws upon inherent actor networks which allow students to link weathering form and process to an animate conceptualization of landscape. Conceptualizing landscape as sentient actor networks removes weathering science disciplinary connections and their inherent pedagogic practices. Our focus in this paper is not to challenge weathering ontology and epistemology, but rather to argue that there is a need for a pedagogical paradigm shift in weathering science.

Rethinking “Diversity” Through Analyzing Residential Segregation Among Hispanics in Phoenix, Miami, and Chicago

Hispanics are an internally diverse population, yet residential segregation within census-defined groups is often overlooked. Census data are used to examine evenness and exposure segregation among Hispanics in Chicago, Miami, and Phoenix along the lines of national origin, race, year of arrival, and income. Results suggest that segregation exists in Miami where there is more national origin diversity, between white and black Hispanics in Chicago, in all three cities for foreign-born Hispanic recent arrivals, and especially between high- and low-income Hispanics. Attempts to theorize immigration, social capital and solidarity, and the future of democratic society have inadequately conceptualized “diversity”; our work critically employs quantitative analysis to suggest an enriched and more nuanced socio-spatial understanding of the term.

Comparing Police and Residents' Perceptions of Crime in a Phoenix Neighborhood using Mental Maps in GIS

Neighborhood residents and police have distinct views about crime and safety in their community and/or beat, but comparing these perceptions can be difficult. This study uses mental maps to elicit perceptions of crime and safety from residents and police officers in the Garfield neighborhood of Phoenix. Thirty-eight residents, five police officers and one volunteer from the neighborhood patrol were asked to draw their perceptions of safe/low crime and unsafe/high crime areas on base maps. Data were then georectified, coded, and aggregated for analysis in a geographic information system. Aggregated spatial perceptions between the two groups were compared to crime data. Results showed that police perception was heavily influenced by reported crimes, while residents’ perceptions were not. By utilizing maps of resident perceptions of crime, police may have a new tool with which to pinpoint unreported or new crime activity.

Geographic Media Literacy

Abstract While the use of media permeates geographic research and pedagogic practice, the underlying literacies that link geography and media remain uncharted. This article argues that geographic media literacy incorporates visual literacy, information technology literacy, information literacy, and media literacy. Geographic media literacy is the ability to locate, evaluate, effectively use, and produce geographic information. It is associated with analysis and expression, understanding and praxis. In an era where information increasingly comes from media sources and technologies saturate everyday life, media and media-related technologies have become central to geographic literacy.

“On Location” Filming in San Diego County from 1985–2005: How a Cinematic Landscape Is Formed Through Incorporative Tasks and Represented Through Mapped Inscriptions

The form of San Diego Countys cinematic landscape is shaped by processes of inscription, whereby particular representational techniques are brought to bear, but also by processes of incorporation, which can be understood as the off-camera decisions, tasks, and events that allow for filming to take place. One of the primary tasks involves selecting sites with a high level of production value while minimizing costs and fulfilling the needs of the script. The San Diego Film Commission (SDFC), which aids filmmakers in the tasks required to produce films, is a key entity in shaping this regions cinematic landscape. Where geography often focuses on how a film inscribes meaning and identity into its form, I show how the form of a regions cinematic landscape extends beyond a single filmic event to engage a multiplicity of representations, tasks, and practices. I use a mixed method approach, including spatial analysis to examine and map the inscripted form of San Diegos cinematic landscape. In-depth interviews and fieldwork were used to evaluate how a locations production value plays a key role in the formative process of incorporative tasks of an ever-changing landscape.

Virtual Egalitarianism, Critical Pedagogy, and Geographic Education

Abstract This article explores the implementation of critical pedagogic practices into a graduate level landscape seminar Web site. Critical pedagogy seeks to reconfigure student-teacher relationships and disrupt embedded power regimes within academia and society. Critical pedagogic practices create a dialogue amongst learners, where everyone has a stake in the learning process. By turning all students into instructors on the course Web site, a virtual community was created that allowed for theories and identities to be openly explored and contested. In the seminar, the inherent hierarchies of power between teacher-students were removed, allowing for the formation of a critical moral consciousness that permitted deep learning.

Dick Tracy's Cityscape

Landscape portrayal in film and in comics influences our understanding and perception of the world. The cityscape of the movie Dick Tracy (1990) is Warren Beatty’s interpretation of the cityscape portrayed in Chester Gould’s (1930) comic strip of the same name. Each rendition offers clues to the social milieu in which they were created. Both cityscapes are generic, reflect anti-urban sentiment, and offer a simplistic, moralistic view of reality.

Master's in Geographic Information Systems Programs in the United States: Professional Education in GIS and Geography

This article examines the rise of masters degree programs in geographic information systems (MGIS) in the United States. We reviewed MGIS program Web sites and conducted thirteen in-depth interviews with program directors. Results show the range and complexity of programs in terms of mode of delivery, staffing, and engagement with the geospatial industry. The diversity of MGIS programs, their differences from traditional masters programs, and their focus on professional education all point toward a new style of degree program that challenges us to think differently about the future of graduate education in geography and GIS.

Film Geography: A Review and Prospectus

With this paper we review past works that have established film geography as a sub-discipline. The paper is organized around the author-text-reader (ATR) model and pays particular attention to its role in defining the area of study and how it is approached theoretically and methodologically. The textual metaphor from which the ATR model is derived is a signifying practice associated with the cultural production of meaning through various forms of representation. Textual analysis is a hermeneutical method that became hegemonic in film studies beginning in the 1970s following Christian Metz’s influential application of semiotics to film, which occurred concomitantly with the establishment of film theory as a serious discipline (c.f. Shiel 2001). The method came to geography later during the “linguistic turn” in the social sciences that did not take full effect until the late 1980s (Lukinbeal and Zimmermann 2008). While the ATR model consists of three modalities, researchers have tended to focus on only one at a time (Dixon et al. 2008). An author-centered approach focuses on the pre-filmic processes of meaning creation. Here, the emphasis is on production, labor, the auteur, the generative process of meaning creation, and the overall economic conditions within the creative industries. A text-centered approach analyzes the construction of meaning within the film’s diegesis and mise-en-scene. Reader-centered approaches investigate film as a spectatorial practice, the audience as market, the situatedness of consumption, the ethnography of film audiences, and film exhibition.

Placing Latino Civic Engagement

This study presents survey data assessing the civic and place engagement of Latino residents of three inner-ring Latino neighborhoods in Phoenix, Miami, and Chicago. We utilize a Latino/a Studies-inspired conceptual framework to assess the civic and place engagement of Latinos on its own terms, rather than as in-transition toward a mainstream or as a variation of Black American patterns of engagement. Although we find levels of sociability and trust to be uniformly high in our study neighborhoods, these social capital building blocks do not necessarily translate into civic and place engagement. Rather, we find civic and place engagement to be high in Pilsen, low in Little Havana, and mixed in Garfield. We conclude by suggesting that Latino/a civic and place engagement is predicated on the full cultural citizenship of Latinos; in addition, we suggest that Latino cultural citizenship is a notion that must become more attentive to place-based differences.