oikumene

Articles

• Territory
  24 November 2013, by B. E.

  A territory is a portion of terrestrial space envisaged in its relationships with the human groups that occupy it and manage it for the purpose of meeting their needs. This notion is, in geography, neither a synonym nor a substitute for the word space. While there is of course a notion of space in territory, it is not viewed as a neutral and isotropic backdrop. Numerous components (which can be environmental, social economic actors, institutional, etc.) impart specificity and identity to (...)

• Maximilien Sorre
  5 July 2014, by J.-L. T.

  Maximilien Sorre (1880-1962), also known as Max Sorre, was a French geographer who, in the first half of the 20th century, was the advocate and developer of the intuitions and orientations proposed by P. Vidal de la Blache. The successive dedications of his works, starting with his thesis in 1913, Les Pyrénées méditerranéennes – Etude de géographie biologique, reflect this scientific and epistemological filiation, and the importance given to the paradigm of the relationship of Man (...)

• Mountain
  29 September 2005, by B. E.

  Attempts to provide a general and universal definition of a mountain either become bogged down in vagueness (a mass rising above the surrounding lands) or run into multiple exceptions (high plateaux, island volcanism) whenever slope and altitude are considered separately. Definitions of an administrative type emphasise limits (thresholds) (the French ‘Mountain’ law of 1985 stipulating an average municipal altitude above 700 metres and a slope steeper than 20%), as well as the (...)

• Risk
  5 October 2005, by B. E.

  The notion of risk provides a means of evaluating the eventuality of a danger or peril, or a break in the balance in the interactions between nature and societies. Risk only exists if human groups and their territorial settlements could potentially be affected by the destruction that would follow upon a catastrophe. The degree of probability of an event implies some consciousness of an existing danger, which distinguishes the risk from the hazard, characterised by its unpredictability. The (...)