It is with great pleasure that the Conference of Latin Americanist Geographers presents its 1986 Honors Award for Distinguished Scholarship to Professor Billie Lee Turner II, Director of the Graduate School of Geography at Clark University.
1986, Mérida, Yucatan, Mexico
It is with great pleasure that the Conference of Latin Americanist Geographers presents its 1986 Honors Award for Distinguished Scholarship to Professor Billie Lee Turner II, Director of the Graduate School of Geography at Clark University.
Professor Turner's contributions to Latin Americanist geographical research have been considerable and significant, particularly regarding prehistoric Maya agriculture, settlement, and demography in Yucatan, Belize, and Honduras. Three books contain much of his research and thinking about the Maya: Pre-Hispanic Maya Agriculture (co-editor, University of New Mexico Press, 1979), which examines the evidence for intensive cultivation; Pulltrouser Swamp (co-editor, University of Texas Press, 1983), which presents the results of a large interdisciplinary project conceived of and codirected by Turner on wetland raised fields in northern Belize; and Once Beneath the Forest (Dellplain Latin American Series, 1983) on terracing in the Central Maya lowlands. He has published numerous related studies, including two articles in the prestigious journal Science.
Professor Turner has moved from painstaking field work under difficult environmental conditions, to rigorous technical analysis, to major theoretical considerations regarding agricultural intensification and demography and the rise and fall of Maya civilization. He has been instrumental in demonstrating that the development of the Classic Maya was based on intensive agriculture, not shifting cultivation as previously thought. It is reasonable to say that Bill Turner is the leading authority in the world on pre-historic Maya agriculture.
Turner's research is internationally recognized by prehistorians. As such, he brings distinction to geeography. In addition, his work has reached the pubblic through writings in the news media and on national television.
This award has been established by CLAG to recognize major research accomplished in recent years. Accordingly, for his contributions to Latin American geography, we present Billie Lee Turner II with CLAG's Honors Award for Distinguished Scholarship. [end p.95]
CF, as he is popularly known to faculty, friends, and students, has made major contributions to Latin American geography and he was a leader in this field for more than 35 years. Born in Radford, Iowa, in 1893, Dr. Jones currently lives with his daughter and her family in Illinois. He is not here this evening because he is away visiting family in Louisiana and could not be located.
He received his doctorate from the University of Chicago in 1923. He held several posts in his earlier years and then served from 1923 to 1942 as a proofessor of Latin American and Economic Geography at Clark University. He authored books in both Latin American and economic geography and his South America (1930) was the leading text in that field for many years. One of his earliest articles to deal with Latin America was "Agricultural Regions of South America." This study, published in 1928, was one of the first to appear in the then newly established journal, Economic Geography.
During World War II, Dr. Jones was chief of the North and South American Section, Board of Economic Warfare, in Washington, D. c., then director of the Latin American Regional Project at the Naational Planning Association for a year, and, finally, assistant Chief of the European-African Division, Office of Strategic Defense. He was appointed a professor of Geography at Northwestern University in 1945.
Clarence Jones began his studies of Latin Amerrica in 1925 and continued to work in the field until his retirement in 1961. Among his many contriibutions to the understanding of Latin America was the Land Survey of Puerto Rico carried out between
1949 and 1951. This was one of the early and immportant applications of geographic methods to an inventory of land resources and land use as a basis for planning. Dr. Jones undertook this project when Rafael Pico, then chairman of the Puerto Rico Plannning board, invited Dr. Jones and the Department of Geography of Northwestern University to unndertake the job of making land use maps of the island at a scale of 1: 10,000. Jones, with Presston James, co-directed a project to commemmorate the fiftieth anniversary of the Association of American Geographers. The resulting work, American Geography, Inventory and Prospect (1954), was a collection of essays by America's prominent geographers that reviewed the status of geography and its subfields and offered thoughts on the direction of the discipline. It is a milestone in geographic literature.
Dr. Jones served in 1957 as president of the Association of American Geographers. He also directed the special committee on the Promotion of Geography in Government and Business. His work proved to be very useful to the memberrship of the AAG and to graduate students who were seeking career opportunities. One of the important legacies of Jones's career has been his interest in students and his unfailing effort to give them professional support.
Again, it is with great pleasure that CLAG honors Dr. Jones with this career award. [end p. 96]
He is a graduate of Ohio State University (1956), where he received all three degrees under the influuence of distinguished geographers. He is a midwesterner who stayed in the midwest, although he received offers from friends to join them at larger institutions elsewhere.
Upon graduation he dedicated himself to just one institution of higher education, Western Michigan University, where he began as an Assistant Professsor in 1956 and remains as a Full Professor in 1985. He has served as a visiting professor during five summers, in places ranging from Quito, Ecuador, to East Lansing, Michigan.
More than any of us, probably more than all of us, the recipient has dedicated himself to teaching. He has adopted a path less chosen in academic life, one where the rewards and the prestige are not commmon, but he has won the alumni distinguished teachhing award and the distinguished faculty scholar award at his institution.
More than that, he has won the affection and admiration of a generation of college students, to whom he has introduced Latin America and Latin American geography. Over the past thirty years he has spent his evenings, his weekends, and his vacations energetically promoting our discipline, building the foundations for innumerable careers among his students. He exemplifies the best of all we ever wanted to be.
The Conference of Latin Americanist Geographers has benefitted from his activities and skills. He has served as an officer on our Board and on its committees, has been an editor and co-editor of our publications, and has helped our organization as mentor and advisor in other ways too numerous to mention.
It is our pleasure to present, with real affection and enthusiasm, the Honors Award for Distinguished Teaching, Research, and Service to Oscar H. Horst. [end p. 97]
As a scholar, Bill is to be commended for his profound contributions to our understanding of pre-Hispanic agricultural resource use and landscape modification in tropical Latin America, for the path-breaking and interdisciplinary nature of his work, and for the thoroughness of his research both in the field and in the literature. His current research innterests can be traced to his graduate student days at Berkeley, where he was greatly influenced by Jim Parsons, Carl Sauer, J. H. Rowe (Anthropology), and Woodrow Borah (History). His initiation to fieldwork in Latin America came in 1957 when he conducted his master's thesis research on pioneer settlement and its effects on the forests of the northern highlands of Nicaragua. Published by the University of California Geography series, his monograph is still a frequently cited example of cultural plant geography. For his dissertation research, Bill investigated pre-Hispanic earthworks in the Llanos de Mojos of eastern Bolivia. Over the past twenty years, Bill and his students have continued to investigate aboriginal earthworks and their agricultural implications through field studies throughout Latin America. Closely related is Bill's work on reconstructing the size of the aboriginal population of tropical America on the eve of the Spanish Conquest. Based both on documentray evidence and on subsistence technologies, he has dealt expertly with the controversial issue of the size of native populations in lowland tropical America.
Within the sub-discipline of cultural ecology, Bill has been concerned mainly with subsistence technologies of indigenous groups in the Amazon and the Andes. He has long been concerned with the implications of different land-use policies on the future of rain forests in tropical America--a topic on which he has authored provocative articles. Among contemporary Latin American geographers, Bill is one of the best known in cognate disciplines. His research on ancient earthworks, historical demography, subsistence technologies, and tropical forest conservation is frequently referred to by Latin Americanist anthropologists, historians, ecologists, and foresters.
In the area of teaching and the training of new Latin Americanists, two quotes from Bill's former students best summarize these achievements:
A distinguished geographer once asked of me, "How is it that Bill Denevan attracts so many of the interesting students entering the Madison department?" This question takes on a particular significance with the realization that many of Bill's students previous to 1974 did not arrive at Wisconsin with a special interest in Latin Amerrican studies. And yet during Bill's tenure there, geography at Wisconsin has become a leader in producing scholars with a Latin American interest.Bill has been the recipient of numerous honors from other organizations. Most significant are a Fulbright Fellowship to Nicaragua (1957), a National Academy of Sciences/National Resource Council Fellowship to Bolivia (1961-62), a Ford Foundation Post-Doctoral Fellowship (1965-66), Distinciones Honoríficas from the Sociedad Geográfica de Lima (1972), and a Guggenheim Fellowship (1977-78). Within the University of Wisconsin, Bill has served as chairman of his department and director of the Ibero-American Studies Program and Latin Amerrican Center. For CLAG he has served on three commmittees (Executive, Honors, and Publications) and he edited Volume 7 in our series, The Role of Geographic Research in Latin America (1978) from the conference in Paipa, Colombia. Thus, it is with great honor and enthusiasm that the Honors Committee presents the 1983 Award for Outstanding Teaching, Research, and Service to William M. Denevan. [end p. 98]Bill treats his students as equals and judges them not on their background, but on their current achievements. Genius never made public is of little value to him. Hard work and production is.
The Conference of Latin Americanist Geographers is especially pleased to present the Exceptional Leadership and Service Citation to Tom L. Martinson. The fact that our group is now a healthy and thriving association is in large part because of his strong efforts. As Executive Secretary of CLAG, Tom has frequently held CLAG together with his enthusiasm and organizational abilities. Tom's many contributions are too numerous to mention here, but they are highlighted by the following: he helped found CLAG and to launch the first Conference of Latin Americanist Geographers meetings in Muncie, he co-edited the first CLAG volume on geographic research in Latin America (Benchmark 1970), he repeated this performance by organizing our Tenth Anniversary Conference in Muncie and co-editing the volume of geographic research for the decade of the 1970s (Benchmark 1980), he founded the CLAG Library and Research Deposiitory at Ball State University, he has devoted his time and energy to both promote interest in Latin America and to coordinate geographic research in the area, and, finally, he has continued to work as Executive Secretary long after he resigned from that position. All of these efforts by Tom Martinson have added immensely to our discipline and have furrthered the work of all of us through a broader unnderstanding of Latin American geography in general.
Several additional points need to be mentioned. Tom has not only helped to advance our organiization, but he has promoted the interests of Latin American geography across disciplinary boundaries and at all levels of society. At his own university he has served as chairman of both the Latin Amerrican Studies Committee and the International Studies Advisory Committee. In his community he is a Founding Member and Member of the Board of Directors of the Muncie International Cultural Centre. In his state and region he was president of the Indiana Academy of the Social Sciences and president of the Midwest Association of Latin American Studies. Nationally, Tom served for five years as the delegate representing geography for the United States in the Pan American Institute of Geeography and History. In addition, he has served as the editor of The Geographical Survey, and for the past fourteen years he has been contributing editor of the Handbook of Latin American Studies. Even though we are here in Ottawa to honor Tom for his exceptional leadership and service, we must also note that he found time for outstanding research and publications on agricultural geography and instructional innovation in geography. It will take three or four individuals to replace Tom in his duties as Executive Secretary of CLAG. Clearly we owe Tom Martinson a tremendous debt of gratitude.
Finally, as a special dimension to this award, the Board of Directors of the Conference of Latin Amerricanist Geographers has voted to give a permanent name to the award for which Tom Martinson is being honored. In the future when this award is being given, the "Exceptional Leadership and Service Citation" will be officially called "The Martinson Prize. " [end p. 99]
Professor Denis was born in Montreal. He studied at the University of Montreal, where he obtained his master's degree and taught geography for several years. He then went to Argentina to teach and do his doctorate, which he obtained from the Universidad Nacional del Cuyo in Mendoza in 1967. His dissertation was entitled "San Rafael: La Ciudad y Su Region."
Professor Denis has had a distinguished teaching career. He has been based at Laval University in Quebec City since 1968, where he was promoted to the rank of professor in 1974 and chairman of the Geography Department from 1976 to 1979. At the same time, however, he has been visiting professor at a number of Latin American universities, including the Universidad Nacional del Nordeste in Resistencia and the Universidade Federal de Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. In 1975, he taught the annual innternational course at the Centro Panamericano de Estudios e Investigaciones Geográficas (CEPEIGE) in Quito, Ecuador.
There are very few areas in Latin America and the Caribbean where Professor Denis has not traveled and conducted research. His major research projects have focused on the space-economy of Mexico; the urban structure of Argentina; the steel industry in Peru; the development of the Argentine piedmont oases; regionalization in Brazil; urban-rural relations; growth poles; political crises in Latin America; spatial organization in Ecuador; tourism development in the Argentine Andes; and frontier expansion. The numerous resulting publications have appeared in French and Spanish in a variety of international journals.
Professor Denis has been active in development-related work. He has served as member of the exxecutive committees of Development and Peace, the Canadian University Service Overseas, and the Canadian Association of Latin American and Caribbean Studies. Since 1970 he has been on the editorial board of North-South: The Canadian Jourrnal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies. And, since 1976 he has been a member of the Canadian national committee of the International Geographical Union.
Professor Denis has served as vice-president of the Geography Commission of the Pan- American Institute of Geography and History from 1973 to 1977, and as president of the Commission from 1979 to 1982. He is well known for his work as editor since 1973 of Revista Geográfica, the most important outlet for the dissemination of geographical research on and in Latin America. Since 1979, he has been a member of the Consejo Académico at CEPEIGE in Ecuador. Finally, as a further reccognition of his work and dedication to Latin Amerrican Geography, Professor Denis was elected vice-president of the Canadian Association of Geographers in 1982 and president 1983.
It is therefore with great honor and enthusiasm that the 1984 CLAG Award for Outstanding Teaching, Research, and Service in Latin American Geeography is presented to Paul-Yves Denis. [end p.100]