Cowboys, Cookouts and CanyonsAuthor(s): Michael PacioneSource: Area, Vol. 20, No. 3 (Sep., 1988), pp. 289-290Published by: The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers)Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20002635 .

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Conference reports 289

these debates was given by Richard Morrill's (University of Washington) discussion of state local commissions and Rex Honey's (University of Iowa) assessment of central-local conflict in

New Zealand. Seymour Sacks (Syracuse University) put such debate in the context of central city-suburb contrasts for the UK and USA. It was also a major benefit to have the participation of George Enyedi (Academy of Sciences, Budapest) and Jerzy Regulski (Academy of Sciences,

Warsaw) who were able to comment on the East European dimension. The key conclusion to be drawn from these debates was the need to accept new balances of

revenues and responsibilities: both to achieve new objectives and to respond to the changing structure of incentives in western societies. Traditional theories of fiscal federalism, in particular, were therefore seen in need of a better balance of local needs and resources. This led naturally to very active debates on new revenues to satisfy new needs: to be achieved in particular through privatisation, improved accountability and governmental efficiency, as well as fees, charges and tax reforms. Competition policy was seen as particularly important, and quite capable of generat ing efficiency gains in intergovernmental competition. This in turn seemed to suggest a shift in interest from questions of fiscal capacity to ones of fiscal effort in relation to services received. Further emphasis to this debate was given by the presentations in the White House sessions by Ralph Bledso (the President's Adviser on Intergovernmental Affairs) and Jim Dwight (Commis sioner of ACIR). The involvement of geography and the IGU in these debates should prove an important stimulus to workers in this field and the full papers will be published in a volume to appear in late 1988.

Robert J Bennett London School of Economics

Cowboys, cookouts and canyons

Report of the annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers, held in Phoenix, Arizona, 6-10 April 1988

Visitors to the AAG are invariably impressed by both the size of the congregation and the organisational efficiency of the enterprise. In Phoenix participants were offered a choice of 21 field trips, 10 workshops, a cowboy cookout and a golf tournament, almost 400 paper sessions, and over 1200 individual papers. One of the most attractive field trips promised the temptations of Las Vegas, followed by the mile deep Grand Canyon which may have assumed a particular attraction for heavy losers.

The diversity of the lecture programme underlined the synoptic character of our discipline. Major themes focused on the contemporary geography of world regions, the reconstruction of human geography, a significant input on computer applications in geography, locally-relevant issues such as the Indian question and solar energy, world-scale themes such as the global debt crisis, and contemporary social and environmental issues including nuclear war, ozone depletion and the geography of AIDS. The familiar (eg factorial ecologies) and the novel (eg the geography of the bible), the pure and the applied, and of course the erudite and the awful were all represented.

The daily choice of over 100 different themes in 30 simultaneous paper sessions presented a formidable logistical challenge to even the most determined conference goer. One could begin

with a breakfast meeting commencing at 6.50 am and work through the day, with or without a lunch break, until 11.00 pm. Long before the half-way point, 'conferenced-out' delegates clutching annotated programme guides littered the armchairs of the hotel lobbies.

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290 Conference reports

It is clearly impossible to do justice to the plethora of geographical expertise assembled in Phoenix. There was something for all geographic tastes. Since one of the benefits of such a gathering is the opportunity afforded to attend papers on themes not necessarily central to one's particular area of research interest, I should like to conclude this report by identifying a number of topics which caught my eye, which might appeal to the geographically curious and which illustrate the diversity that is both a strength and weakness of modern Geography. In retrospect,

my top ten papers from Phoenix for the eclectic geographer would be:

1 Dynamic cartographic software for training cab drivers. 2 Where does the Gulf of Mexico end and the Atlantic begin? 3 Residual soil compaction in semi-arid Montana ghost towns. 4 Jesuit cartography in sixteenth century China. 5 The unexpected use of garden catalogues. 6 Yard shrines in Tucson. 7 The decision to illuminate relief maps from the north-west corner. 8 Women's role in changing the face of the earth. 9 Solving minimum cost fixed-topology value-linked tree networks using nonlinear program

ming and heuristics. 10 Geography: a discipline at risk?

The annual convention of the AAG is large in size, broad in scope, bright, brash and extremely well organised. The wagon train rolls on to Baltimore in 1989.

Michael Pacione University of Strathclyde

Association of American Geographers-Annals Did you know that you can subscribe to this publication through the Institute at a special rate for our members of ?35 per calendar year?

If you would like to subscribe to the Annals, please send your cheque, payable to the IBG, to Alison Hind, 1 Kensington Gore, London SW7 2AR by the end of October 1988.

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