Product Description
This digital document is an article from Revista de Filología y Lingüística de la Universidad de Costa Rica, published by Universidad de Costa Rica on July 1, 2002. The length of the article is 5109 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Siting encounters and encountering sites: contemporary narrative geographies.(gender and geographical situation in Latin American literature)
Author: Kari Meyers Skredsvig
Publication: Revista de Filología y Lingüística de la Universidad de Costa Rica (Refereed)
Date: July 1, 2002
Publisher: Universidad de Costa Rica
Volume: 28Issue: 2Page: 41(10)

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In this wide-ranging, multi-disciplinary study, Setha M. Low explores the interplay of space and culture in the plaza, showing how culture acts to shape public spaces and how the physical form of the plaza encodes the social, political, and economic relations within the city. Low centers her study on two plazas in San José, Costa Rica, with comparisons to public spaces in the United States, Europe, Asia, and Latin America. She interweaves ethnography, history, literature, and personal narrative to capture the ambiance and meaning of the plaza. She also uncovers the contradictory ethnohistories of the European and indigenous origins of the Latin American plaza and explains why the plaza is often a politically contested space. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Interesting look at life on the Costa Rican plaza
Professor Setha M. Low's book On The Plaza-The Politics of Public Space and Culture discusses the interrelationship of public space and culture.She primarily focuses on two plazas in San Jose, Costa Rica, the Parque Central and the Plaza de la Cultura, while also making references to other places such as Tenochtitlan in Mexico. Using ethnographic, ethnohistorical, microgeographical, and statistic sampling methods, Low argues that "these culturally and politically charged public spaces are essential to everyday civic life and the maintenance of a participatory democracy."

Low describes the background of Costa Rica, going into its population, ethnic, religious, and urban proportion distribution.She explains the rise and fall of consecutive monocultural economies, such as cacao, tobacco, bananas, and coffee, its tradition of democracy, and the economic nadir in the 1980's.She then goes into the history of San Jose from colonial times to the present, including the devastating effects of the economic downtown and the trade vacuum created by NAFTA.

She then explores the history of the two plazas.Parque Central dates back to 1761, and is the larger and more densely populated of the two.It became a center for merchants, grocers, lottery ticket sellers, and sundry vendors, as well as shoppers and customers.Also, the trend of regulars sitting in the same benches over time gives Parque Central an ambience of traditional social life and hence less contested space between various social groups.

The Plaza de la Cultura, constructed between 1976 and 1982, was built as a contrast to the closed nature of Parque Central, as a more open space for the middle and lower classes.Central to the plaza was the National Theatre with a museum housing the country's Precolumbian gold.Despite its cultural stance, the new plaza became a haven for underage prostitutes, gangs, and drug users.

Plazas also contain social and spatial boundaries as factors that symbolize differences such as nationalities, race, class, and gender between plaza populations within a capitalist system.Low again contrasted the two plazas in San Jose in the framework of social boundaries:

Parque Central:mostly older men, closed space, clique-oriented, has professional prostitutes, lottery ticket, newspaper, food vendors, less foreigners, older.

Plaza de la Cultura:mostly women and children, open space, not clique-oriented, prostitutes who give services for clothes, nurturing relationships,balloon, popcorn, tourist item vendors, more foreigners, younger.

Another more important function of the plaza is for public protest.Low categorizes them in terms of the kinds of protest and their outcomes.Manifest protests such as strikes and demonstrations usually result in the temporary closure of the public space, followed by a reopening where the space is policed to discourage undesirables.An example of that involved the chasing out of shoeshine men from Parque Central.Latent protests involve conflicts that become apparent in terms of design and surrounding buildings and can result in discussions in various media or a plebiscite.Ritual protests, such as parades, normally involve the temporary takeover of space by a protesting group before it is relinquished to the forces nominally in charge of that space.

Taken in the context of protest, Low sees public space as symbolizing political objectives by those, particularly national leaders, who created them--e.g. the Plaza de la Democracia is a legacy to Oscar Arias Sanchez's Nobel Peace Prize-winning efforts for Central American peace.Plazas that don't fulfill the objectives of their creators or are not deemed valuable are either redesigned or denied access to the public.

Constituting twenty-five years of research spanning from 1972 to 1997, Setha Low's exhaustively researched book depicts the essence of the function of the plaza.

Well written, an unbiased observer
I read this book mainly because as a Tico (Costa Rican) I was very surprised somebody would write a whole book about a couple of places that for me are part of my everyday life. Besides having been to the Plazas of Europe and seen on TV the huge plazas that some other Latin American countries (Mexico, Guatemala, Colombia, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, etc) have I was curious to find out the reason behind her choosing of the Parque Central and the Plaza de la Cultura for this work.
I really liked what I read, she has the benefit of having seen these two public spaces in the city of San Jose, Costa Rica evolve over the last 30 years, from the days we used to consider the Plaza de la Cultura not a nice place to go to, the days when we were outraged by foreign musicians and artist taking over a ground that was supposed to be for the display of our culture till nowadays that the Plaza has turned the city into a sort of fish-tank from where the tourists and US retirees can leisurely watch Costa Ricans as we go about our daily lives.
I truly recommend this book. ... Read more

Product Description
This digital document is an article from Revista Cartográfica, published by Thomson Gale on January 1, 2006. The length of the article is 6403 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Evaluación de la precisión vertical de un modelo de elevación digital.
Author: Marvin E. Quesada
Publication: Revista Cartográfica (Magazine/Journal)
Date: January 1, 2006
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Issue: 82Page: 137(20)

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This volume is produced from digital images created through the University of Michigan University Library's preservation reformatting program. ... Read more

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The disappearance of tropical forests is a problem for the world environment. In this book, experts on four rainforest sights in Central and South America - Manaus, Brazil; Manu Park, Peru; Barro Colorado Island, Panama; and La Selva, Costa Rica - compare the characteristics of these systems. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Understanding Amazonian ecology
Text writed by a great botanist and very helpfull in expanding our knowledge about Tropical forest ecology, specially in the Amazon basin. ... Read more

Product Description
Until recently, the phenomenal economic development of the Asian tigers, Chile, and Malaysia, as well as the sustained economic growth of the United States, painted a very desirable and optimistic picture of free markets, fiscal responsibility, and, more generally, the entire dogma of neoclassical economics. As of the fall of 1998, however, the economies of many tropical countries have contracted severely, and the enthusiasm of the developing tropics for the free market and all of its ancillary policies is decidedly cooler.Have our traditional approaches to economics been failing the developing world?
This interdisciplinary book covers the conditions of the developing tropics, the resistance of some of their problems to earlier attempts at solutions, and the use of new tools to develop a much more comprehensive and empirical framework for analysis and decision making. It also presents the development of cutting edge technology that links GIS and modeling approaches with extensive databases on meteorology, soils, agricultural production, and land use. The book discusses whether development is sustainable through a synthesis of demographic, economic, and resource-specific considerations. Costa Rica is uniquely suited to this study because of its size, stage of development, democratic institutions, and national databases.
A CD-ROM containing all data and programs, color images, animated models, large data tables, and references accompanies the book.

Key Features
* Links economic and biophysical analyses of sustainability
* Presents new tools and approaches for analysis and decision-making
* Includes a CD-ROM containing data and programs, color images, animated models, and references ... Read more

Product Description
In recent years, sustainable development has emerged as a central goal of the World Bank and grassroots activists alike. In Grassroots Struggles for Sustainability in Central America, Lynn R. Horton explores the implications of this new, often contested discourse and related policies for Central America's rural and indigenous poor. Drawing on the testimony of leaders and residents of three communities in Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama, Horton explores grassroots assumptions, values, and practices of sustainable development and, in particular, the ways in which they overlap with or challenge international financial institutions' discourse of sustainability.

With a comparative, empirical approach, Horton also analyzes dominant practices linked to sustainable development--neoliberal reforms, project interventions, and environmental protection. She reveals how these practices support or undermine economic, cultural, and political opportunities for the rural and indigenous poor and impact these communities' advancement of their own visions of sustainability. Finally, the author explores processes of empowerment that enable communities to articulate and put into practice local visions of sustainability, which contribute toward broader social and structural transformations.

Grassroots Struggles for Sustainability in Central America will interest sociologists, anthropologists, and others who study the theory and practice of sustainable development. ... Read more

Product Description
This digital document is an article from Káñina, published by Universidad de Costa Rica on January 1, 2003. The length of the article is 6656 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Dialogizing history, geography, and the American dream: the narrative voice of "Each Year Grain".(short story by author Shawn Hsu Wong)
Author: Lai Sai Acón Chan
Publication: Káñina (Magazine/Journal)
Date: January 1, 2003
Publisher: Universidad de Costa Rica
Volume: 27Issue: 1Page: 31(13)

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The Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve has captured the worldwide attention of biologists, conservationists, and ecologists and has been the setting for extensive investigation over the past 30 years. Roughly 40,000 ecotourists visit the Cloud Forest each year, and it is often considered the archetypal high-altitude rain forest.

This volume brings together some of the most prominent researchers of the region to provide a broad introduction to the biology of the Monteverde and cloud forests in general. Collecting and synthesizing vital information about the ecosystem and its biota, the book also examines the positive and negative effects of human activity on both the forest and the surrounding communities. Ecologists, tropical biologists, and natural historians will find this volume an indispensable resource as will all those who are fascinated by the magnificent wonders of the tropical forests. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Very good reference book
I have found this to be a fantastically helpful reference book for everything Monteverde-related.This book isn't meant to be a best-seller, it (seems to be) designed for the subset of people who are interested in Monteverde, Costa Rica.If you have spent some time in Monteverde, or plan to, it has pretty much everything you could ever want to know about natural history and climate.It is also put together in an easy and intuitive manner, which counts for a lot when you are trying to find one specific thing in a book that is about everything.It is aimed more towards science, but it also has quite a bit about the history of the town.This is the first place I would look for helpful tidbits of information about Monteverde like yearly rainfall/mist, neat graphs that break down the number of species of plants of various life forms ("X% of plants in MV are climbers, Y% are epiphytes, Z% canopy trees"), and the such.I would strongly suggest it to anyone interested in Monteverde natural history.This is not a field guide, it won't help you identify anything to species, but it will be a very good supplement to pretty much any field guide, so you can see what ever you are interested in the large framework of its ecosystem.

It is also just plain fun read. ... Read more