Patrick O'Sullivan

A geographical analysis of guerrilla warfare

Abstract Since 1945 guerrilla warfare has been the principal form of violent conflict. Its successful practitioners apply a highly developed sense of geography to exploit the advantages of terrain to discomfort the established order. To overcome such attacks, counter-insurgents need an equal or superior understanding of the landscape. The tactics employed by guerrillas and their opposition are suggestive of general sets of geographical conditions favouring one side or the other. It is postulated that the principal factors determining the relative advantage of the landscape for guerrilla or regular forces are population density and the cover afforded by the terrain. Empirical data from a selection of conflicts are presented. These suggest that guerrillas are at a comparative advantage in conditions of high population density and greater cover. The density and man-made broken terrain of city and suburb offer a ready explanation for the emergence of urban guerrillas in recent years. These advantages are enhanced by the deterrent the urban setting offers to quantitative military operations. In cities there is the maximum prospect of offending the civilian population in seeking to root out guerrillas.

TRANSPORT NETWORK PLANNING UNDER IGNORANCE

Two sources of doubt face the decision maker - the uncertainty of the future and the way people react to decisions. To determine how rational transport environment decisions can be made, accepting the true state of ignorance, the authors consider traditional approaches under certain and uncertain circumstances. A general model is derived for the transport investment problem. The solution requires information on the demand for movement, but once this is obtained, the environment programme objective can be written to ensure the socio-economic justification of the decision. A lesser presumption is that probabilities can be attached to the future values of the appropriate variables, and the means of the expected values can be used. A Bayesian approach to problems is adopted when there is increased uncertainty about its future. However, some attitudes may change with time and alter the significance of the choice. Methods of making the suggested plan more robust are discussed. (TRRL)

The displacement of identity: on being Irish

Abstract Taylors (1991) analysis of English territoriality inspires an exploration of the prospects for the displacement of identity. Irish identity, customarily assumed by tens of millions who have no contact with Ireland and its present circumstances, provides a suitable case to examine the disconnection of nationality and politics. After a glance at historical origins, the ambiguities involved in the emergence of Irish nationalism in the 19th century are touched upon to clarify the sources of the Irish Republics national myth. The numbers catered for by this sense of being Irish are small compared with those in the USA, Great Britain and the Commonwealth who readily profess to being Irish. Clearly there is a widespread sense of commonality which has little to do with the present realities of Irelands geography and politics. Perhaps nationality, territoriality and politics can be divorced.

A Review of “Military Legacies: A World Made by War”

the consumption of graffiti, poetry, and fashion while neutralizing the threat of counterculture. In the last chapter, “(B)ordering the Body,” the body is examined as a contested site where gender and sexuality are constantly in negotiation. In reviewing issues in this chapter it is possible to posit how bodies have been restricted and controlled by societal borders that are enforced by patriarchy. In the concluding chapter, Anderson discusses various methodologies that will help provide geographers with the tools needed to read cultural landscapes. Overall this book provides an informative overview of the field and would serve as an excellent reader for students interested in the discipline.

An Introduction to Geographical Economics: Trade, Location and Growth

landscape, polity, and the European applications of many of the associated themes found herein, it may not serve these purposes for specialists of other regions. To charge the author with a Eurocentric approach is, of course, facile. This is certainly one of the main points of the work at hand: that the landscape concept is a distinctively European construct. The topics and themes discussed make this book a natural for any seminar dealing with landscape. Professional academics and graduate students will certainly be the main audience for this highly original contribution, but selections can be used for undergraduate upper-division courses in geography, history, political science, and perhaps landscape architecture. Although the aspects of landscape as a conceptualization are uniquely European in this work, it may serve as a spark for future scholarship to examine the possible uses and misuses of the concept and framework in subaltern regions of the world. To what extent this interpretation is useful elsewhere remains to be seen. Perhaps the next task is to extend this analysis of the power of landscape, to gauge its impact on the wider postcolonial world. Such an enterprise was followed by one historian in documenting the importance of botanical gardens to the British Empire, in its quest for the ‘‘improvement’’ of nature (Drayton 2000). In combination with, say, Cosgrove’s (1993) The Palladian Landscape Fthese three works can provide a multiscalar approach to underline the interdisciplinary nature of landscape. While the aspect of nature may remain more implicit in Olwig’s volume, the implications for our discipline are clear, as are the future directions for research focused on the power of landscape.