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Gilbert Ahamer: Mapping Global Dynamics

Author: Vision & Global Trends – 17/02/2021

Mapping Global Dynamics. Geographic Perspectives from local Pollution to Global Evolution (Springer, 2019) recent book by austrian Prof. Gilbert Ahamer asks “What are the most suitable mapping strategies for detecting patterns of global dynamics?”

It adopts a spatial perspective when trying to understand Global Dynamics and sets out to revolutionise the concept of space as such. Spatial views on levels of increasing abstraction, reflection and self-organisation are developed along eight case studies including air emissions, environmental radioactivity, deforestation, energy from biomass, land use change, food supply, water quality and cooperative interdisciplinary learning for global change.

This book’s conceptual innovation consists in performing a transformation from space & time into functional state space & evolutionary time in order to better recognise the structural patterns of long-term global dynamics.

A transdisciplinary readership in academia including geography, philosophy, economics, global change and future research that is interested in enlarging scientific concepts beyond classical borders would be most welcome!

Mapping Global Dynamics: a new language for the global future

This book addresses a wide readership, interested in our planet’s future options.

You may directly get it as book or e-book at https://www.springer.com/de/book/9783319517025, https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-51704-9 and view also https://www.ahamer.com

It suggests scientific fundamentation for our perspectives on the world and its dynamic development.

Recommended by the forewords of six international personalities (Anne Buttimer, Waldo Tobler, David Christian, Victor Faessel, Gerald Hüther, Alexander N. Chumakov), MGD envisages facts, interactions and perspectives as key components for understanding.

In international dynamics, how do we interact? We think to see facts – but often we fall prey to our own perspectives, which, if not mediated through dialogue and discourse, may remain unreflected.

“Mapping Global Dynamics” (MGD), on the basis of eight scientific case studies, describes how we can understand (= “map”) realities, in its static, iterative, dynamic, recursive and autopoietic (= self-constructing) variants. In a series of growing complexity, MGD’s Part II provides eight strategies to perceive the interactive dynamics of a transdisciplinary global cosmos of environment, air quality, radioactivity, air, water, energy, forests, deforestation, water supply, and finally dialogic discourse.

You as reader will follow the mapping of mapping strategies and thus reflect own modes of perceiving facts, interactions and perspectives.

Starting out from a purely geographic (i.e., space-related) approach, the contemplation of the eight case studies suggests five key “lessons learned” in MGD’s Part III:

  1. How to proceed from one world view (“mapping”) to the next level of world view?
  2. How to make use of the history of geography with its alternating explanations of economic growth and diverging paths of development among countries, with a view to sober trend analyses?
  3. What impact provides “space” for development, and how can we bridge space?
  4. Can we re-define space and time in our epoch allowing for constructing these entities?
  5. Which evolutionary patterns are crucial for global development?

The conclusions (Part IV) not only provide global mega-trends and meta-trends for structural evolution but also outline how a future science of “meta-geography” by which all possible standpoints are perceived at the same time – without wars, revolutions or upheaval, but by mere contemplative power. As one instrument to achieve this, the hundreds of students in “Globalistics / Global Studies” in Eastern and Western universities already train each other in “perceiving the other” as realistically as possible.

Gilbert Ahamer

The author of this 450-page monography, Gilbert Ahamer, recently acted as guest professor at Russia’s oldest and largest university, named after Lomonosov, after having lectured earlier at five Austrian universities, and worked in international institutions for decades. Ten years of multiple personal interaction in dialogue with Russian personalities (and personalities and projects in other eastern European countries and Central Asia) and EU representatives provided substance for perceiving diverging cultures and paradigms at the same time.

CONTENTS

  1. Objectives Leading to a Vision: an Introduction
    1. Front MatterPages 1-3PDF
    2. Objectives Leading to a Vision Gilbert Ahamer Pages 5-13
  2. Part II
    1. Front MatterPages 15-18PDF
    2. Case Study ①: Cadastral Survey of Air Emissions for Salzburg Gilbert Ahamer Pages 19-26
    3. Case Study ②: Mineralogical and Soil Properties Influence Cs Uptake Gilbert AhamerPages 27-36
    4. Case Study ③: Geo-localising of Air Quality Monitoring Sites Gilbert Ahamer Pages 37-44
    5. Case Study ④: Geographic Patterns of Historical Global Deforestation Gilbert Ahamer Pages 45-51
    6. Case Study ⑤: Global Patterns of Energy Demand and Biomass Fuel Supply Gilbert Ahamer Pages 53-65
    7. Case Study ⑥: The Chain of Agricultural Production and Consumption Gilbert Ahamer Pages 67-91
    8. Case Study ⑦: Scenarios of Water Demand, Supply and Quality Gilbert Ahamer Pages 93-101
    9. Case Study ⑧: Social Mapping in the Game “Surfing Global Change” Gilbert Ahamer Pages 103-115
  3. Part III
    1. Front MatterPages 117-119PDF
    2. Lesson One: Synopsis of the Eight Mapping Strategies Gilbert Ahamer Pages 121-142
    3. Lesson Two: The Geographic Perspective Gilbert Ahamer Pages 143-157
    4. Lesson Three: A Brief History of Geographic Thought Gilbert Ahamer Pages 159-172
    5. Lesson Four: Own Deliberations on “What Is Space?” Gilbert Ahamer Pages 173-186
    6. Lesson Five: Evolutionary Patterns Gilbert Ahamer Pages 187-208
  4. Conclusions for Global Dynamics
    1. Front MatterPages 209-209PDF
    2. Conclusions for Global DynamicsGilbert AhamerPages 211-232
  5. Annex to the Main Book Part V
    1. Front MatterPages 235-238PDF
    2. Annex to the Introduction: Which Definitions of Geography Are Provided by Institutions Gilbert Ahamer Pages 239-248
    3. Annex to Case ①: Inventories for Air Emissions: Methodologies and Trends Gilbert Ahamer Pages 249-254
    4. Annex to Case ②: Geo-Referencing Radioactive Deposition and TransferGilbert AhamerPages 255-276
    5. Annex to Case ③: Siting of Air Quality Monitoring Stations Gilbert AhamerPages 277-290
    6. Annex to Case ④: Quantifying, Visualising and Modelling Global Deforestation Gilbert Ahamer Pages 291-300
    7. Annex to Case ⑤: Modelling Future Alterations of Global Carbon Flows Gilbert Ahamer Pages 301-310
    8. Annex to Case ⑥: A Scenario Generator for Global Land-Use Change Scenarios Gilbert Ahamer Pages 311-342
    9. Annex to Case ⑦: A Geo-referenceable Scenario Writing Technique Gilbert Ahamer Pages 343-356
    10. Annex to Case ⑧: Mapping Social Procedures Gilbert Ahamer Pages 357-381
    11. Annex to Lessons Learned: Spotlights on the History and Future of Geography Gilbert Ahamer Pages 383-400
  6. Back MatterPages 401-436PDF