Contenu du sommaire

Globalization is a vague concept connected with the whole mutations which leads in competition, at the world scale, not only all the national productions, of goods and services, but also all the human activities, including intellectual or cultural ones. It wears multiple faces and causes all the more pears and oppositions because it reinforces inequalities or at least their perception. It reduces in each place the diversity of the productions by selecting the more competitive, but it offers concurrently to consumers a panel of products at one and the same time more standardised and more large than ever. The local dimension offers refuges against the generalisation of a world System which, on a hand, don't know the majority of the earth's population, too poor, and, on the other hand, rather breaks up for the moment into several subcontinental geoeconomic Systems.

"Truth in front of the Pyrénées mountains, error behind" assert the french proverb. This is exactly the case for the tastes, or more exactly, it was the case, before the recent revolution of travels and information. Food and beverage have been during the largest part of history representative of environments, agricultural and cooking technics, but also, and more and more, cultures. "Tell me what you eat and I'll tell you who you are" wrote the french essayist Brillat-Savarin in 1825. How right he was! We all eat as we can, in relation with our means, but also in accordance with our dreams, the representations we have of the food. That's why food changes in time, in relation with technics and fashions, but also in space and then the geographer is very concerned. Today, in appearance, globalization make uniform the food, as many expressions of culture, but also, paradoxally, reinforces the local foods, beverages and recipes. This example is very representative of what happens in all domains of cultural geography. "Living in diversity" is not only a wish, a program, but a reality implying difficultes and real opportunities to exchange our experiences of life in their deepness and nobility.

The increasing movement of economic growth within the last 50'years has had major spatial effects. In the developed countries, the coastal activities has been more and more important as they were in the past two centuries: ports and touristic areas has suffered a high pressure of men and activities which need large areas to be built. As a consequence, the quality of life in the coastal zone began questionable. In an other hand, in a large part of countries which have chosen a planified way, pressure was higher inside the boundaries and, except some Windows on the sea, the major areas of economic development took plance inland. Since a few years, things are quickly moving. A new deal give way to a major era of economic growth in the coastal zone and nowhere in the world it can be found a territory really out of the movement. Singapour is now the main port ofthe world and a lot of Asian places are also on the coast. All that situation has important geographic effects at all scales of study. As the coastal zone is limited, the increasing movement for the best places on the sea explain a lot of alteration for the environment. During the seventies, some developed countries have experimented local solutions, within the Coastal Zone Management Act in the USA but also in France where a moving policy toward more conservation and protection took place. As exspected by the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992, the world is now facing a lot of challenges, especially for the coastal zone and the oceans, as agenda 21 shows. It highlights a new step with the milestone of an exspected integrated coastal management. According to the new era opened a few years ago, what is the future for oceans and the coastal zone. What do whe know and what are we ignoring at this time? The natural perspectives are dominated by the sea level rise and the communities as the states to mind the future as a management of the sea level rise. As they do according to the climate global change, taking tessons from El Niño as scientific proofs are really convaincing. The technology will also give new possibilities on the good way for a more sustainable development: it depends however of the opportunity to give a large way to integrated coastal and ocean management. That is better to explain on the paper than to train on the field, as geographical studies will take attention for forthcoming years.

Indonesian election in june 1999 were free for the first time since the begining of General Suharto "New Order". It took place in an economic and political crisis context. Geographical analysis of the votes expresses fragmentation of Indonesian society.

The state of Roraima witnesses a process of agricultural land colonization, similar to many other parts ofthe brazilian Amazon. Problems such as land concentration or unmastered deforestation are patent and the administrations in charge of the colonization are developing new strategies to prevent them. However, the great diversity of actors linked with this process makes this task very difficult. This work aims to describe those actors, pointing out the links between regional and local situations. We describe first the situation of Roraima as a whole, and further concentrate on the two municipios of Mucajai and Alto Alegre, and particularly on two colonization projects situated there. This allows us to strike a fist balance of the new agricultural strategies applied in this region.