Paula Gabriela Núñez

La monstruosa cartografía patagónica o los mapas como discursos retóricos

This article studies the delimitation and representation of Argentine Patagonia in a variety of maps. This territory was incorporated into Argentina at a late date and was characterized as a frontier in discourses that mixed together the border and the territory. This process of appropriation is graphically represented in maps, which demonstrate how the borders and internal organization of the state overlapped. Maps thus construct, reproduce and naturalize discourses.

Desigualdades regionales en planificaciones desarrollistas. Una revisión del proceso de territorialización de Río Negro 1958–1976

This manuscript studies the dynamics of constructing boundaries and the differences within the Rio Negro province. We consider 1958, the year the province was established, as a point of infl ection in the region. The article seeks to show how the spatial fragmentation of previous years continued, deepening and changing provincial divisions through the restrictions of general interests to certain regional sectors. To this end, we will analyze rarely cited sources: the provincial constitution drafted in 1957 and the government development plans from 1958 and 1976. We will discuss the associated hierarchical construction of regions, illustrating how spatial transformation enabled, paradoxically, the assumption of territory not only as a neutral act, but as justifi ed under an unequal social integration, which by 1973 was beginning to arise in terms of geographical determinism, as inequalities were justifi ed by descriptions of the landscape.

The ‘She-Land,’ social consequences of the sexualized construction of landscape in North Patagonia

This article voices a perspective founded in gender geography and regional history, through the study of the symbolic constitution of core and peripheral areas inside Chile and Argentina. This analysis focuses upon the Patagonian territory and aims to reveal the use of female stereotyped metaphors as the basis for territorial subalternity. At this point, revision of Patagonian history shows that this construction of landscape is related to territorial integration, and could have been seen as gender ideology because of the metaphors involved in the States arguments. This idea is illustrated with an ongoing nationalist discourse established in Patagonia since the 1930s, which operates as a permanent patriarchal reference and allows the projection of gender metaphors in land. It also takes the particular experience of Patagonian women to question the recognition of the problem behind the construction of landscape and the geographical and historical patriarchal order. As a result of this process, the possibility to argue against the subordination of the region emerges from highlighting feminine metaphors of land and feminine praxis, which nowadays confront both the landscapes official interpretation and an unequal access to resources.

THE CITY IN DISPUTE: ECONOMYAND TERRITORY IN SAN CARLOS DE BARILOCHE,ARGENTINA

Fil: Guevara, Tomas Alejandro. Universidad Nacional de Rio Negro. Sede Andina; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cientificas y Tecnicas; Argentina

LA CIUDAD EN DISPUTA: DESARROLLO URBANO Y DESARROLLO ECONÓMICO EN SAN CARLOS DE BARILOCHE, ARGENTINA

Fil: Guevara, Tomas Alejandro. Universidad Nacional de Rio Negro. Sede Andina; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cientificas y Tecnicas; Argentina

LA CIUDAD EN DISPUTA. DESARROLLO URBANO Y DESARROLLO ECONÓMICO EN SAN CARLOS DE BARILOCHE

Fil: Guevara, Tomas Alejandro. Universidad Nacional de Rio Negro. Sede Andina; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cientificas y Tecnicas; Argentina

D. Rotherham and R. A. Lambert (eds): Invasive and introduced plants and animals: human perceptions, attitudes and approaches to management

People have different perspectives about exotic inva-sive species, ranging from love to hate. Even thescientific literature has contrasting ideas on basicpremises, such as whether we need to worry about thegeographic origin of species or not (Davis et al. 2011;Simberloff et al. 2011). A book exploring humanperceptions of the issue must therefore be welcomed.The basic goal of this book—to analyze how societiesperceive exotic species, invasions, and methods ofcontrol—is clearly important and timely. However,two aspects of this book are unfulfilling and disap-pointing. First, the authors at times manifest a strongbias in favor of people who do not perceive invasivespecies as problematic. Second, the book focuses onissues related to exotic species in Europe (especiallyinthe UK), which makes it hard to extrapolate to otherregions.The book comprises four parts and 24 articleswritten by 25 authors. Most articles are in parts twoand three, which have 8 and 13 articles respectively.Part two explains attitudes and perceptions aboutexotic, native, and invasive species, and part threepresents case studies. Part one introduces the mainproblems and questions addressed in the book, andpart four is the editors’ opinion of what should be donenext, with perhaps not enough synthesis of theprevious parts of the book. There is great variabilityin the quality and depth of the different articles in thebook. Some chapters are remarkably interesting andwell researched, while others are not as educational orthought-provoking. The compilation lacks articlesfrom South and Central America and Asia, and thereis almost no mention of these regions, despite thepresence of many research groups working withinvasive species and management plans in all three.There is also a dearth of case studies from areasoutside Europe. There are no articles on the currentperception of invasions in Australia, New Zealand, orSouth Africa, three countries that have historically ledand continue to lead inresearch on andmanagement ofinvasions. For example, there is a notable absence of afull chapter on current perceptions and treatment ofinvasive species in South Africa (e.g., the Working forWater Program), and chapters with detailed informa-tion on perceptions and management strategies outsideEurope.Remarkably, of the 25 authors 14 (56%) are basedin Europe, and 8 (one-third) in the British islands. Thisproduces a clear bias towards European perceptions,and more specifically towards species problematic inGreat Britain. Examples of this bias are several