L’espace géographique 1/98Augustin BERQUE. Basho, chôra, Tjukurrpa, or the poem of the world. (1 fig.)
Reinventing place seems inconsistent with the logic of identity which underlies not only modernity, but European thought since the Greeks. On the other hand, the «logic of place» which was proposed by Nishida Kitarô, and which is a logic of metaphorical identification, by rejecting Platonic metaphysics, jeopardizes the moral and political values which have historically developed on this basis. This paper refers to Joel Bonnemaison's concept of «prerequisite place», confronting it with the case of the Aborigines, in order to suggest an overcoming of the alternative between Platonician place and Nishidian place.
Roger BRUNET, Jean-Christophe FRANÇOIS, Claude GRASLAND. Discontinuity in geography: research origins and problems.
The first attempt at a systematic approach to discontinuities in geography is more than thirty years old. It focused on dynamical discontinuities, quantitative-qualitative dialectics, and the limits of system. The relationships of spatial thresholds and with statistical gaps are specified in the discussion.
Claude GRASLAND. The analysis of territorial discontinuities: As an example, the age structure of european regions around the year 1980. (1 tabl., 8 fig.)
Territorial discontinuity, in other words gaps which appear along the boarder of a territorial grid representing different criteria of dissimilarity, could be a sign of the existence of social or spatial discontinuity. The multivariate analysis of these territorial discontinuities allows for the extraction of standard and directional components which simplify their interpretation. The application of the age structure case concerning 701 European regions, around the year 1980, shows the significance and deficiencies of this approach.
Jean-Christophe GAY. Sport: limits for physical activity. (2 tabl., 4 fig.)
The microgeographic analysis, according to two different scales, of premises where sports are practised, reveals their discontinuous nature. First, they are more and more cut off from their environment. At the heart of these premises, the sports area can lead to feelings of high respect which further increases the separation. At a lower level, playing fields which are divided in order to supervise competitions sometimes include structures which imitate natural or artificial obstacles.
Pierre DARLU. Geographical representations of human biological diversity. (8 fig.)
The integration of spatial representation into the description of the human biological diversity is analysed from historical and methodological viewpoints. We show how the cartography of races, based on typological concepts at the end of the XIXth, has evolved to multivariate representations of a genetical continuum between human populations. Biological anthropologists make use of methods which modify space in order to fit the biological relationships between populations as well as methods which project these relationships on the real space by minimizing the loss of biological information. These methods are equally known and used by geographers and anthropologists. However, they are applied to different variables and at different scales and they imply different underlying time-space evolutionary models which, for the human biologists, are directly inherited from the population genetics.
Sophie PASSEGUÉ. A grid-map raster method to encode road roughness and mesure time-access levels in rural areas. (4 fig.)
A GIS is used to provide infra-municipal access measures from residential areas to commercial and service facilities in predominantly rural areas. In opposition to the vector mode (graph theory), the raster data model is not well adapted to the study of networks, but pertinent information in this type of space leads us to choose a grid-map approach rather than a reticular modelling of space which separates supply and demand areas. Beyond a simple network rasterisation, a road roughness model preserves networks-space links and provides different perspectives for spatial analysis and land planning.
Cécile HELLE, Sophie PASSEGUÉ. Looking for the optimal location for a new media library. The Drôme public reading network as an example. (3 fig.)
The cartography of public reading statistics in the department of Drôme reveals an empty central equipment space. This leads to a raster GIS application which is in search of an optimal location for a new media library aimed at balancing the whole network. This approach is spatially complementary to those currently used location-allocation models.
L’espace géographique 3/97 L’espace géographique 1/98
L’Espace géographique: contents
Last modified: November 3, 1997