Articles in Population Geography
The Russian-Finnish Borderlands: Territorial Changes, Population Transfers, and Linguistic Changes
An earlier GeoCurrents post mentioned Finns among the nationalities deported by the Soviets before and during World War II. As it turns out, the situation in the Finnish borderlands is rather more complicated than that. The territory between St. Petersburg and Helsinki is home to a number of ethnic groups whose histories range from cultural and linguistic assimilation to population transfer to outright ethnic cleansing.
Stalin’s Ethnic Deportations—and the Gerrymandered Ethnic Map
An earlier GeoCurrents post on Chechnya mentioned that the Chechens were deported from their homeland in the North Caucasus to Central Asia in February 1944. However, the Chechen nation was not the only one to suffer such a fate under Stalin’s regime. He took to gerrymandering the country’s ethnic map by moving whole nationalities around like chess pieces on the board.
Television and Fertility in India: Response to Critics
(Note to readers: My recent blog post on television and fertility in India has attracted some attention, including a detailed critique on the blog Challenging Civilization. This post is my response to this critique.)
First, I would like to thank Tom Smith at Challenging Civilization for taking the time write a thoughtful critique of my blog post on television and fertility …
India’s Plummeting Birthrate: A Television-Induced Transformation?
(Note: As can be seen, GeoCurrents has a new, more streamlined appearance. The “GeoNotes” feature has been replaced by section that highlights “featured posts,” as we found it increasingly difficult to differentiate regular posts from “notes.” We also hope that the new format will make it easier for readers to access older posts.
To initiate the new format, today’s post is …
Where’s Chechnya?—And a Brief Look at Its Bloody History
As the two suspects in the Boston Marathon bombings—Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, killed by police, and his brother Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19—have been identified as immigrants of Chechen origin, it’s worth taking a look at their homeland, Chechnya, and its bloody history.
Female Mortality on the Rise in Many U.S. Counties
A recent article in Health Affairs by David Kindig and Erika Cheng examined trends in male and female mortality rates from 1992–1996 to 2002–2006 in 3,140 US counties. What they found is a worrisome trend of female mortality on the rise in 42.8% of counties. The situation with male mortality rates is much better, increasing in only 3.4% of counties.
Karaites: Who Are They, and Where Do They Live?
Like the Samaritans, the Karaites accept only the Five Books of Moses (the Torah) and the Book of Joshua, and their identity as Jews has been questioned on a number of occasions. Unlike the Samaritans, the Karaites celebrate Passover on the standard date, though their observance of the holiday is quite distinctive.
Jewish or Not, the Samaritans Celebrate Passover—But a Month Later
Catholics and Protestants celebrated Easter on March 31 this year, in accordance with the Gregorian calendar; Orthodox Christians will celebrate this holiday on May 5, in accordance with the Julian calendar; and Jews celebrated Passover on March 26. But one group, the Samaritans, will observe Passover on April 23, even though they are not considered Jews by Israeli rabbinical authorities. Who are the Samaritans?
The New York Times’ Flubbed China Cartograms
An interesting story in today’s (April 9) New York Times—“Hello, Cambodia: Wary of Events in China, Foreign Investors Head to the South”—is illustrated in the print edition with two striking cartograms of eastern Asia, one of which shows population and the other economic output. The cartogram legends claims that “countries and Chinese provinces are sized according to population” and, respectively …
Global Patterns in Health Infrastructure and Personnel Distribution
This post considers figures concerning physician density, nursing/midwife density, and hospital beds per capita from the WEF and WHO reports. The three sets of figures are mapped; several instructive patterns emerge involving both individual maps and map comparisons.
New Maps of Eurasian DNA from Oleg Balanovsky
The recent doctoral dissertation by Russian geneticist Oleg Balanovsky contains a number of fascinating maps pertaining to the distribution of both Y-DNA and mitochondrial DNA haplogroups and other genetic markers across Eurasia. These maps reveal that the main genetic division divides Eurasia into western and eastern sub-regions; the boundary starts at the Caucasus and traverses through southern Urals, northern Kazakhstan, and southern Siberia, then follows the course of the Yenisey River.
Global Geography of Milk Consumption and Lactose (In)Tolerance
To follow up on the recent GeoNote on wine, beer, and cider consumption in France in 1870s, let’s consider the worldwide spatial patterns of another drink—milk. To North Americans and especially Europeans, both drinking and eating dairy products is very common, but this is far from the global norm.
The Core/Periphery Pattern in Egyptian Electoral Geography
Egypt’s troubled and insecure transition to democratic rule has exposed some intriguing political geographical patterns. Yet at first glance, maps of recent elections do not seem particularly revealing. Consider, for example, the December 2012 Constitutional Referendum, a measure favorable to the ruling Muslim Brotherhood that critics claim restricted basic freedoms and democratic governance. The referendum passed with almost 64 percent …
The Khazarian Hypothesis and the Nature of Yiddish
The Khazarian hypothesis, namely that Ashkenazi Jewry derives from the Khazars, has recently been revived by Eran Elhaik, a geneticist at John Hopkins University. According to the abstract of his recently published article, Elhaik “applied a wide range of population genetic analyses” and found evidence to support the Khazarian hypothesis. But in addition to numerous errors in historical geography, Elhaik also relies on bad linguistics to support his claims.
When Did Roma Leave India?—New Discovery or Corroboration of Old Theories?
According to a short article by Sindya N. Bhanoo in the New York Times, titled “Genomic Study Traces Roma to Northern India”, a research article recently published in Current Biology “appears to confirm that the Roma came from a single group that left northwestern India about 1,500 years ago”. In actuality, the article in Current Biology makes no such claims.
Terranova: The Black Petaltail - A Novel
Diversity Amid Globalization: World Regions, Environment, Development (5th Edition)
Globalization and Diversity: Geography of a Changing World (3rd Edition)
