[Open Access] R Rose-Redwood, CA Rose-Redwood, E Apostolopoulou, T Blackman, H Cheng, A Datta, S Dias, F Ferretti, W Patrick, J Riding, M Rose, A Sabhlok, 2024, Re-imagining the futures of geographical thought and praxis, Dialogues in Human Geography https://doi.org/10.1177/20438206241264631 (original) (raw)
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When it comes to the 'History of Geography', many still think of something descriptive and conservative, which has virtually no links with the 'future', a metaphorical place where 'progress' and 'advancements' are usually located. The existence of such feelings exposes how some lingering positivistic views still remain in parts of the discipline that claimed to have got rid of positivism. In this commentary, we contend that the history of geography can play an important role in reimagining the future of the discipline. First, drawing upon our own research experience and extending recent literature on 'geographical futures', we expose why the history of geography is making increasingly important contributions to key discussions in a plural and evolving discipline. We especially focus on the ongoing pluralistic and multilingual rediscovery of 'other geographical traditions' that is enriching critical, radical, and feminist approaches to geography. Next, we propose to enrich the field of geography and its prevailing 'Western' origin stories by engaging in pluriversal dialogues with Indigenous knowledge and practices, focusing on Latin America and on decolonial notions such as cosmohistory, which show that there are many histories of geography, and they all matter for the futures of the discipline.
Geography's Contested Stories: Changing States-of-the-Art
Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, 1998
Geography lies at the heart of scholarly traditions in many world civilisations, inviting enquiry into the nature of the universe and the dynamics of the earth, prompting exploration and adventure, the naming and claiming of territory, and theories about relationships between human societies and their environments. As an academic discipline and a formal course in universities and schools, geography has acquired other histories, few uncontested. During its disciplinary period, geography has continued to mirror the¯uctuating fortunes of nations and empires,`®tting' itself within nationally de®ned structures of pedagogy and research, while remaining attuned to changing international trends of scienti®c thought and practice. The IGU Commission on the History of Geographical Thought has in recent years explored a variety of geographical knowledges ± academic (scienti®c), of®cial (applied), and popular (folk) ± probing their origins, modes of articulation, and implications for the construction of images: of self and the other, of home place and other's space, and of nature, gender, culture and environmental concern. It has also opened enquiry to a wide cross-cultural range of voices, thereby promoting better communication and mutual understanding among geographers throughout the world
Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 1980
Pluralism in contemporary geography has gone beyond the creative liberty of variety and degenerated into license that threatens the future of the profession. A framework for reintegration of our diverse pursuits is proposed to enable us to create future geogruphies consistent with our enduring values, environments that expand freedom and choice and opportunity, and organized fantasies containing new delights for the scholarly practitioners and the practical scholars who will succeed us as the geographers of the future.
Reconstituting Geography for the 21st century
Environment and Planning F, 2021
We write as the inaugural editors of a new addition to the Environment and Planning family of peer review journals. It is called EPF: Philosophy, Theory, Models, Methods and Practice (phonetically, our subtitle sounds as pee-tee-em-pee). Geography today should be more than the sum of its many lively parts, but as a discipline cannot dance to one tune-be it ontologically, epistemologically, methodologically or otherwise. We believe that the action lies in forging connections, in mutual learning and in productive disagreement. In this editorial, we detail the context, aims and scope of the journal. At the end, we call for guest editors of special sections and issues, and for articles that fit the remit of this exciting new venture. As a discipline, Geography today is both distinctive and exceedingly vibrant. Many other disciplines are increasingly interested in people-environment relationships, in local-global connections, in the nature and significance of various boundaries and borders, in movements (e.g. of people, goods, knowledge and information) between places and regions, in landscape and land use change, in the difference that proximity and distance make, and in the functioning of biogeochemical systems at various scales-but Geography has historic pedigree in all these areas. It remains the discipline dedicated to understanding why, how and with what effects people utilise-and are affected by-both natural and created environments (in both a material and semiotic-representational sense). In the Anglosphere, if not necessarily elsewhere, the discipline is also extraordinarily heterodox: variety of focus, methods and aims in both research and degree-level teaching is the rule, not the exception. This heterodoxy is both the product and lubricant of Geography's breadth of focus, of the virtues of specialisation and-in some parts of the discipline-of a belief that we can learn valuable things by eschewing orthodoxy. Today, albeit not equally across the globe and in different modalities, Geography is burgeoning. Its practitioners have formed lively communities with shared interests in some of the most important issues of our time, such as destruction of the nonhuman world, voluntary and forced migration, rapid urbanisation, new patterns of economic development, the identification and amelioration of concentrated poverty, reduction of the impacts of various natural hazards, emerging geopolitical rivalries and the new cartographies of war, trans-border political struggles for justice, environmental conservation and restoration, infrastructure development and planning for the future, multicultural localities and cities, and much more besides. Even so, many geographers might believe all is not well in the house of Geography. Some lament the lack of unity of purpose and focus in the discipline; others feel that Geography does not offer enough exemplars of 'integrated analysis' that make a virtue of the many specialists we have working side-by-side in the same departments. Yet others believe Geography's public image remains too weak in several countries, allowing other disciplines to encroach on its fundamental research and teaching areas; some assert that geographers borrow too much from other disciplines and do not make formative contributions of wider significance; and still others maintain that what passes for 'geography' in many departments is really 'geography lite' practised by geologists, sociologists or ecologists with little to no sense of the history and achievements of Geography over the last century or so. This is the immediate academic context in which EPF is being launched. The wider context is febrile: the first pandemic in a century, with grave economic and social knock-on effects; the forced 1005376E PF0010.
Publications in the field of history and philosophy of geography have shown increasing vibrancy and consistent alignments around some key foci. These are, first, a renewed engagement with biographies and autobiographies , which is part of wider rediscoveries of individuals as concrete actors in the construction of knowledge. Second, a draw towards interdisciplinarity in reassessing practices such as exploration, mapping and publishing, in connection with broader trends in intellectual history. Third, a continuing interest in topics coming from the 'margins' of mainstream Anglophone scholarship.
Countertopographies and the futures of geographical thought
Dialogues in Human Geography, 2023
In this commentary, I adapt Derickson's (2020) conception of the 'annihilation of time by space' to reflect on an experience of making a documentary about women-led resistance to hydrocarbon development in Southern Bolivia, where the forging of new spatial knowledges, practices, and relations-or countertopographies of extraction-played a critical role in disrupting fossil futures. I consider what geographers might learn from these women's example about the potentialities of space and materiality for shifting our collective understandings of disciplinary futures through the making of place-specific countertopographies.
Human Geography: not ending but worlding the modern subject in new ways
Dialogues in Human Geography, 2023
This commentary engages Bodden's (2023) 'Working through our differences' to draw out how contemporary frameworks of reasoning in human geography extend the limits of 'thinkability', expanding the world, of the modern subject. In response, I offer 'Abyssal Geography', critiquing how the discipline is not ending but worlding the modern subject in new ways.
History and philosophy of geography II: In search of 'a properly geographical theorist'
Progress in Human Geography , 2024
This report offers an interpretation of recent scholarship that articulates pasts and futures of geographical thought and praxis. By focussing on growing concerns about speculative, abyssal, and analytical styles of thinking in Geography, I argue that a more cogent philosophical take on geographic theory-making is needed. Drawing upon ongoing discussions on the role of geographic theory, I use the occasion of the various history and philosophy of geography-related anniversaries to reflect on why we are where we are today. I therefore claim that practitioners of history and philosophy of geography need to address some structural difficulties to navigate tensions between recurring calls for endogenous forms of geographic theory and relentless deconstruction of epistemic and ontological arrays as a way forward for Geography to merge with critical thinking.