“Religious spaces” can become a powerful nucleus of (geo-) political imaginations, identities, and conflicts. The paper outlines this aspect using the example of Tibet. It does however not primarily discuss the quite well known antagonistic constructions of pro-Chinese and pro-Tibetan geopolitical discourses. Rather, it addresses the differences in the production of religious spaces and identities within Tibetan society and their consequences for the development of a Tibetan national identity.

Some examples of 3-D digital mapping for Quaternary geological and geomorphological cartography are presented in this paper. Examples concern in particular the Quaternary geological cartography around the well-know Flims rockslide area (Graubünden), performed in the framework of the GeoCover project launched by the Swiss Geological Survey, and the landslide and glacial/periglacial landform mapping and inventorying in the southern Swiss Alps (Ticino) for assessing the slope tectonic activity.

In the scientific literature, “protalus ramparts” can designate both a nivo-gravitational landform (also called “pronival ramparts”) and a permafrost-related landform. Thanks to a selection of eight major diagnostic criteria defined from observations carried out in the Swiss Alps, it was highlighted that the structure, ice content and creep dynamics of protalus ramparts are the same as many rock glaciers. Protalus rampart were therefore defined simply as a (small) active talus rock glacier.

The paper focuses on emotions to analyse negotiations of belonging and experiences of difference. Emotional accounts such as childhood stories of second generation Spaniards in Switzerland serve as the empirical material. The analysis of this material exemplifies how such an analytical focus on emotions furthers our understanding of complex stories about social positioning along different axes of difference, complex ways of identification, and resistance to social role models.